Desmond Williams
Desmond watched as his new partner dismissed the threat with a wave of her hand, and a slight frown appeared on his face.
"Yet," he replied, "But ever since shit hit the fan, I've been of the mindset that anything with dead eyes and rotten flesh and wants to tear into me is better off with a bullet in the brain, or two, to be safe." As the two made their way over to the stairs, Desmond lightened up. With a smirk at her comment about clothes, he looked down at himself, and then back to her, and gave a shrug.
"I suppose I do stick out here. I swear, I didn't back where I came from. Just a bunch of empty suits, following the same routine, waiting for the moment to pounce and tear you limb from limb. I guess the only thing that's changed now is that that last part is literal."
They made their way up the stairs, his partner heading up first, Desmond going quietly behind her. There was always something nerve-wracking about situations like the one they found themselves in. Headed into a hostile environment with no knowledge of what lay beyond the door. Desmond nodded silently at the woman's offer, and gripped the cold knob, turned, and pushed. A small gust of stale air pushed back at him. Pistol raised ahead of him, he stepped into the room. There was no danger, though: the man, or what was a man, was handcuffed to a radiator in the corner. His head turned to meet Desmond, and his body immediately began flailing in his direction to no avail. There was a dried pool of blood which began beneath the walker and stretched halfway across the carpet, almost reaching the disheveled bed. Desmond, sensing no danger, ignored the walker initially, and walked instead to the bedside table, where he could just barely see a picture frame which had fallen off and lodged itself between the leg of the table and the end of the bed. He picked it up, gingerly (to avoid the shattered glass), and plucked the picture out from within. In it, a forty-something man with glasses and a mild-mannered smile stood with his arms around his wife, a blonde lady who looked about the same age, and their teenage daughter outside of what looked like the kid's middle school graduation. Desmond held the picture out in front of him, and turned again to face the indisposed walker. The glasses were missing, but it was him. His family had gone, probably cuffed him at his own request, and left him to turn. And here he was now, dead and back, and hungry, staring at the faces of two strangers with a passionate fervor to feed likely not dissimilar to the passion and love he had for his family, once.
"You were right," he said softly, turning to his partner. "The thing wasn't hurting anyone." He stepped closer to the man's reanimated corpse, kneeling down so that he was eye-level. The zombie never stopped trying to claw toward him. Desmond found a disturbing lack of fear within himself. He kept his eyes locked with the glazed abysses of the man's, and raised his pistol to the guy's forehead, and pulled the trigger for a second time today. The corpse went still. Setting his pistol down on the floor, Desmond procured the picture of the man with his family, and tucked it in the corpse's shirt pocket. Then he retrieved the gun, stood, and turned again to the woman at the door.
"We should start with the kitchen, the family may have left something of value behind."
Douglas Knowles
The minute or two which passed after the radio went live felt like some of the longest in Doug's life. The four stood in silence, shifting gazes back and forth, to the radio, to each other, down at the floor.. Each one wondering if anyone would come, or if anyone was even left out there. And then a woman's voice piped up, crisp and refreshing, through the speakers. And there was another agonizing second of disbelief, before a wide smile spread across Doug's face, and he picked up the microphone and turned on his audio.
"This is Wilmington, we read you. How far away are you from our location? Do you need an escort back to base? Over." Setting the microphone back down at the table next to Patricia, he crossed his arms and leaned against a nearby pillar, allowing himself a moment of satisfied relaxation. Ron was less than sold.
"We don't know who that was, Doug. We should at least be careful -- be prepared," Doug's old partner warned him, knowing that his friend had always been too idealistic for his own good.
"Maybe," was all Doug could say, without taking his eyes off of the radio once.
