[img]https://txt.1001fonts.net/img/txt/dHRmLjExNi5hY2FjZWYuUTJ4aGJtTjVJRkJoZEhKcFkycy4x/burn-out-fade-away.regular.webp[/img] [@Punished GN]George[@AtomicEmperor]Edict[@FernStone]Luca[@Blizz]Stormy[@Atrophy]Sloane [code]No Man's Land, aka Kari Wilson's (Wrecked) Yard[/code] [hr] Clancy felt his [i]fingers[/i] tear through the man's abdomen, leaving a few inches of small intestine exposed to the elements. He could smell it. Blood, meat, [i]death[/i]. A gut wound was a nasty way to go, and he could see the panic setting into the man's eyss as his gaze turned downwards. Before Clancy could make an end of it, there was a distant pop. A round punched through his sleeve and burst, tearing open his arm from wrist to elbow. A second later, he felt another round puncture through his back, and then- [I]Pop.[/i] A hole ruptured through both sides of his midsection, back and belly both torn outwards into gaping wounds with a black void where blood and viscera should've been. The axe slipped from his fingers as he pivoted, looking for the shooter, ignoring the bolts that bedded into his flank like feathers, experiencing a certain [i]hyperawareness[/i], as though the world had turned its gaze on him. Clancy didn't see the big man charging him, but he felt the weight of a boot slamming into him like a freight train, and he arced across the sodden yard like a ragdoll, into the range of the green [i]sun[/i]. For a single moment, that burning green light seared at him mid-air, worse than the [i]real[/i] fire that had torn through the upper floor of the cabin, an agony which only ended once he skidded in the ground, tumbling into a deep, waterlogged crater formed by the fighting. Immersed in water, raging, he lashed out as what felt like a dozen arms tugged at his limbs, threatening to drag him to the dark depths beneath the earth. Cold viscera squished between his finger tips, brittle bones caved under his feet. A head, blindly pulled from the mouldering neck which anchored it, [i]worthless meat[/i] that served no purpose but to be crushed. More came at him, a dozen silent foes clamouring for whatever they could blindly grasp. He rolled and wrestled with bodies that held no warmth, that broke upon him like waves on a castle, [i]useless flesh[/i] that tasted like mud as he kicked, smashed, [i]gnawed[/i] his way through an agitated swarm of animate corpses that had piled into the gap. He raged in the darkness. [hr] Clancy finally emerged from the flooded crater, surrounded by the formerly reanimated carcasses of the [i]finally[/i] dead, torn apart in a moment of instinct and rage. 8th Street were gone, or [i]leaving.[/i] The others seemed in shock and awe, idly flailing about as a pink fog rolled over them like a noxious veil. It dispersed over him as he passed through, barely lingering in his peripheral vision. For a moment, he caught the outline of two interlocked figures. One masculine, the other feminine and a little shorter. They looked [i]familiar.[/i] [I]Judy,[/i], the name came forth unbidden, followed by another. [i]Frank?[/i] [b]"No."[/b] They were [i]hugging.[/i] That in itself was a little hard to believe. Clancy blinked, and the silhouettes remained. But it wasn't either sibling. Not his big brother, or his sister. It was Sloane and Luca, and he was still in no man's land, surrounded by a landscape littered with mudholes and broken bodies. And he could [i]see[/i] Sloane was in Lucas's arms, even as the skinny latino boy flailed away, trying to break away from her. She was [i]dying.[/i] The smell of [i]rot[/i] emanating from the two with a potenacy beyond the formerly animate dead around him was telling enough. She was being eaten away fron the inside. He looked half a corpse himself, a tattered child in charred rags, pockmarked with deep gouges in the flesh that [i]should've[/i] killed the strongest men, a mortal abdominal wound that punched through his body, a dark emptiness where blood and innards should've been, more of the pink fog uselessly swirling at his feet as the storm scattered it far and wide. It was now or never. Chase down 8th Street before they got away, and let her [i]die.[/i] His eyes harboured a feral expression, pale skin flecked with mud and viscera that clearly didn't belong to him. [i]Ashley wouldn't want this.[/i] One foot lifted from the mud and traipsed forward, followed by the other. Idiots or not. [I]Assholes[/i] or not. [I]He[/i] didn't want to watch her die. Clancy trudged through the sodden yard, pacing towards them. Sloane was barely on her feet at this point, half-slumped into the boy's legs, clutching at his calves..Kneeling over her, palms clasping around her wrists with an uncharacteristic gentleness, he felt it now, the corrosive presence, the [i]Rot[/i] eating away at whatever it could. If she was still conscious, she might've felt the cold iron grip prying her away. For.him, the Rot found another target. Patches of his damaged form further receded like burning paper, a dark, angular shadow outlining wherever flesh melted away. That feral expression in his gaze scowled back st the [i]thing[/i] that hid within Luca. It wouldn't find sustenance, not with him. There was no meal for this [i]Rot[/i], he'd denied it that. The feral child pulled the girl free, arms looped under her shoulders, fully cogniscient that she was still in a bad way, her flesh and innards equally eroded by the poison that infected the boy. And the others were still stationary, drowning in fantasies of their own. [b]"What are you looking at?!"[/b] Clancy growled, an inhuman, guttural resonance overlapping his voice, [b]"[I]Help[/i] her!"[/b]