Chloe was slowly making her way down the street, doing her best to avoid the increasingly thicker crowds on the street, when the doe stopped moving. Unlike before when it had stopped with some clear purpose, this time it appeared to be turning its head slowly as it surveyed the streets, its body beginning to tense as if readying itself to bolt. For the first time, the doe was acting like a regular animal might. One that was scanning around for a possible predator.
Stopped her pushing, she looked out through the crowd. Everywhere there were people who looked to have been caught mid sprint. Some heading towards the nearby buildings and others headed further down the road heading inland. If she looked closely enough, she could even see the faint hint of motion to their bodies. As if they were moving in super slow motion.
But none of them looked out of place. Freaky, yeah, but she had gotten used to the people being slowed down over the past hour or so she had been working through the town. And none of those had gotten the doe nervous.
So what was she missing. The rain and wind were still lightly going at it, nothing looked like it was ready to topple, and the cars were also pretty damn stuck, still.
She was about to call out to the doe when the sound of something metal scraping against concrete nearly caused her to jump out of her skin and let go of Max. It was only the fact that her arm was looped under her armpit, that meant she kept her grip tight on her friend. She started looking around quickly for the source of the noise, although the best she could do was tell it seemed to come from further up the street they were headed.
Out of the corner of her eye, she could see that the doe had bolted, jumping through the crowds and between the buildings somewhere. Unsure what else to do, and feeling the adrenaline rush through her system, Chloe lifted Max under the one arm that was already holding her and carried her into the shadow of a nearby alley. Quickly readjusting so she had both arms hooked underneath Max's shoulders, she let the girl's back rest against her chest as she tried to quiet her breathing and hide.
A moment later, she heard more sounds, coming roughly from the same direction as the first. peeking her head around the edge of the building, just making out a middle aged man walking down the street. He had close cropped dark brown hair, a well kept beard and mustache, and was wearing a fine suit that clung to him now that it had gotten wet. Normally she would concede that he would be a relatively handsome man, but she could just make out a scowl on his face from this distance. It added a cruel cast to his expressions that sent a shiver along her spine.
Something about him seemed vaguely familiar, though she knew she had never seen him before. he also seemed to be scanning the street, as if searching for something. Leaning out to get a better look was definitely a bad idea now. So she just inched back into the darkness slightly, settling for trying to track his location by sound alone.
Chloe tensed as he drew even closer to the alley where Max and her were hiding. She could even hear him angrily talking to himself at this point in this quiet pocket of time, even though she couldn't make out the words from this distance. She began to curse the wheelchair that was just sitting out in the street, almost begging him to come over and inspect it and find them a few feet away.
But instead of coming their way, he stopped about about a block away, choosing to head down another major intersection that passed through town.
'What the hell was that? The guy wasn't frozen like the rest...and he seemed super pissed, not confused.' Chloe waited a few minutes to make sure she didn't hear him again before poking her head out from the alley. Looking about, she couldn't see the man anymore. Gratefully she deposited Max back into the wheelchair, taking a moment to catch her breath and let her arms recover from holding the girl up for a few minutes straight.
Meanwhile, she was turning the encounter over in her head. The direction he was heading in was total shit for escaping the storm. A local bank, a police station, a few new shiny realtor offices, and some strip malls. If he wanted to get away from the storm, that was about the last place she would want to get caught in it. And judging by his determined and angry march through town, he had something specific in mind. That, or he was real touched in the head.
'Either way, another thing to put in the figure out later category.'
It took another moment before the doe poked its head out from between the people ahead. Its eyes wildly looking this way and that, still acting like a panicked animal.
'Great. The man makes the creepy intelligent time travel animals nervous too. Just what this day needed.' Waving for the doe to come over, it eventually made its way to the two girls. As it picked its way through the crowd, it was clearly keeping one eye on the street the man had gone down before circling Chloe and Max, pressing into her in what seemed like a need for comfort. She scratched at its neck briefly, not sure how else to calm the creature. After a moment, it seemed to work as it broke from her grasp and slowly worked towards another cross alley that would take them deeper into the town.
Whereas before the doe had seemed in control of the situation, sure about some secret plan only it knew, now she realized that there were forces at hand here that spooked it as well. Whatever was going on, it seemed like everyone was just stumbling their way through this. She just happened to be the one with the least information to work off of.
'Wonder-fucking-ful',she thought, as she just kept moving, keeping an eye open for anymore surprises.
'Of course it was leading us here.'
Just ahead was Arcadia Bay hospital. An older five story building that had seen better days and not enough money to keep it in shape. Most people with serious conditions were sent a town over to the better hospital, where they could get better treatment. And now that she thought about it, this place had been directly in the path of the hurricane as well. While she wasn't sure how well it fared, it was pretty obvious that most things in the direct path of the hurricane had been flattened pretty quickly.
Luckily she was able to get Max and the wheelchair up the ramp to the front doors without trouble. The doe remained standing down at the bottom of the ramp just watching them as they approached the doors frozen in the open position, a flow of people fleeing the building in search of somewhere safer.
Still, there were a lot of people currently huddled down in the lobby. Judging by how crowded the space was, it looked like they had cleared all the upper floors to get as many patients as possible somewhere safer. Without having a better place to hide, she imagined it was probably the best idea. Though she knew that in the face of this storm it wouldn't be enough.
There had to be something she could do to help here.
'Think Chloe. Is there anywhere safer than here?'
Chloe wracked her brain, unable to come up with any good ideas. Despite her spending most of her time in town, she tended to stick to the outskirts, enjoying the parts of the town where people knew to stay out of each other's business. She was less familiar with the haunts around downtown. And while she could remember the path of the storm pretty vividly, the lighthouse was still pretty far off from this part of town. Once it had left the bit of coast near Frank's RV and the Two Whales, its path had meant she had been staring at the ass of the storm for most of its time pushing through the town. And a lot of the town had looked fucked after it had passed, with debris strewn about everywhere, making it hard to know for sure what buildings had survived.
"Somewhere close enough for the patients to reach, but out of the way. And to the East from here. I remember the storm moving towards Blackwell, so it would have to move West pretty quickly past this point."
As she talked to herself out loud, she carefully pushed Max around the bottom floor of the building. She was killing time at this point thinking, but the doe had brought her here for a reason, and she had to come up with something to try and help.
Just down the hall she could see what looked to be a waiting room with a number of children inside, and even a few standing near the doorway. Moving a bit closer to get a better look, she could see they had clustered around a girl sitting off to one side of the room. There, holding a large colorful children's book, in mid story, was Kate Marsh. She appeared to be telling the kids a story to help calm them, and though she had a calming smile on her face, Chloe noticed that she was gripping tightly in one of her hands a small chain, at the bottom of which dangled a small cross.
'That's it!' The memory hit Chloe suddenly as she saw the cross. The one place she knew in this part of town that might work. A few blocks Northeast of here was an old church her family and the Caulfields used to attend when they were younger. She never went anymore, but she remembered spending long Sunday's stuck in the squat concrete building covered in false wood siding. More importantly, she remembered the basement where they had worked on the sets for Sunday school plays and local theater. It was large enough to house most of the people she had seen, and could probably stand up to the wind.
Now the harder part. How to convince someone to take everyone there.
Max was beginning to get really pale, and her skin was getting cold to the touch. The rags in her nose has begun to soak through again, and Chloe wasn't sure how much was too much blood to lose. Pulling someone into this little time bubble had wrecked her the first time, and it seemed like it would only make things worse to do it again.
Looking at Kate in the room, she figured she was her best choice, but could she do it without talking to her?
She hadn't had to talk to Kate before. At least with Warren, the guy had a pretty good idea that she and Max were close. So seeing them together, even in the middle of all this madness, probably made some sense. She didn't have that to go on with this girl. She would have to try something a bit different.
Looking around, she found a pad of paper on one of the coffee tables and slowly made her way over there with Max. Grabbing it and a pen sitting nearby, she began writing out a note to Kate. In it she pretended to be Max, explaining that she was working to help save people from the storm. The girl had sounded like she had a serious hero complex for Max, so it seemed like a good place to start. She also explained how the storm was headed this way, and told her where to find the nearby church to hide under. Not sure what else she could do, she just signed the note as Max and placed the pad of paper on the girls lap.
Still worried that the girl wouldn't buy it, she then proceeded to do something she knew would add credibility, but was surprisingly difficult despite the circumstances. She reached into Max's bag and pulled out her camera. "Sorry, dad. Max. This is probably the best proof for the girl that it was Max who was here." She then placed the camera on the notepad as well, ignoring her guilt at abandoning the link to her father in favor of the confidence that it would help sell the story.
As she began to make her way back to the entrance of the hospital, she saw one Doctor just entering the call room there, where a few other physicians were scrambling about. Seeing the purse of one doctor hanging off the back of a chair, she smiled as she got another idea of how to help.
As Chloe stepped out from the hospital, she noticed that the wind and rain had definitely picked up in the short while she had been inside. What had started with a light rain and gentle wind had picked up to a more regular beating of raindrops on the pavement and a light whisper to the air as the wind passed by. The temperature had also dropped by a few degrees, causing her to shiver slightly. Compared to the tempest that the storm had started as, this was still quite mild, but it was a clear sign that whatever hold Max had on the storm was wavering. While she couldn't see it from here, she wouldn't be surprised if the Hurricane had begun to build up force once more.
Below her hand she could feel the faint shivers passing through Max as a mixture of the cold and blood loss seemed to be getting to her. Leaning down, she placed her mouth down by the girls ear. "Come on Super Max. I'm doing everything I can to help fix this, but you've got to help me here. Just hold on a little bit longer and we can give some people a fighting chance."
She wasn't sure if the girl had heard her, but it felt like she had stilled slightly under her hand when she said it. Nodding, she stood up, casting her gaze off in the distance to where she could just see the doe. It was standing on another road heading toward the northwest edge of town. Right in the direction of Blackwell.
As she took a step in the direction of the doe, she felt a rush to her head and had to stop to steady herself. She felt an odd pressure building in her head for a moment before a wet sensation came over her upper lip. Reaching up, she wiped her hand across her face to find a small trickle of blood on her fingers.
Questions began to fill her mind, but stopped when the butterfly, which had been staying primarily on Max's shoulder for the journey, made the short trip to her shoulder now. She could see its wings opening and slowly out of the corner of her vision, distracting her. She stopped her rising panic, and took a deep breath. If she had any right to tell Max to keep fighting, then she could get over her own problems.
And so Chloe started pushing the wheelchair after the doe once more, headed towards what she hoped would be the end of this strange nightmare.
Whew, one more chapter down. Its fun to get my ideas for Life is Strange down on paper. I haven't written much non-work related documents in a few years, and its good to get the creative juices flowing again. I have quite a few ideas for the characters of this story, and while I have a definite premise and overarching story line in mind already, I am looking forward to seeing how this evolves.
As a point of establishing geography, I envision the town of Arcadia Bay like a big crescent shape, with the lighthouse on the South end and Blackwell in the Northwest. So I imagine the storm having made landfall near the southern tip, heading roughly North,. and then veering towards the school. So from where Chloe was, she would have seen the areas hit hardest by the hurricane with the most clarity near the beginning and end, whereas the middle of the storm she would be looking at the storm from behind post land fall.
The one other point I want to make is I am assuming the town is fairly spread out. If they needed buses to get around, I imagine it to be a few miles across. So getting a wheelchair around in a city, when you can only push and steer with one hand, is slow work.
Anyways, hope you all enjoyed. Please like and review!