Sleepwalkers (BLITEOTW)
Jun. 13th, 2007 04:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jack_babalonMyra sits on the ledge of the rooftop, downs three blues with the last of the bottle in a single swallow and quickly realizes that despite her improvised cocktail, it'll still be a while before she can pass out tonight. With nothing better to do but wait, she watches the last light of day sink behind the cradle of the Atlanta skyline. The buildings and skyscrapers fade into a solid wall of shadow without any power to light them. She focuses on the faint silhouette of the half of a helicopter embeded in the Bank of America Plaza. Everyday she bets herself that today will be the day when gravity and decay will release it from it's nest in the side of the building. Then she notices that the fire in Grady Hospital has finally died down from the rain earlier this afternoon. The wind shifts and the smoke wafting from the building hits her. She welcomes the acrid sting of it in her eyes. It kills the Stink coming from below. She's managed to get used to everything else since the Great Outbreak but the perpetual reek of sweat, shit and meat rotting under a long summer sun still got to her. It wasn't just the smell but the way it seemed to bring with it it's own heat, a sick humidity that coated each breath she took. The worst part was the way the stink followed her, the way it lingered in the nostrils, seeped into the palette of the tongue so nothing tasted right, clung to the body and wouldn't let go. Even back in the last days of running water it wouldn't wash off... despite scrubbing until the skin bled beneath her fingers.
It burnt in the center of the skull until the liqour killed the pain.
The liqour she was now out of!
She mutters a curse (the first word she's heard outside the walls of her thoughts in over a week) and flings the empty bottle at the black veil of skyrise. The bottle spins in an escalating parabola towards the cloudless sky, reaches the top of its arc and plummets downward into a muffled crash somewhere in the endless sea of dead faces that stare back up at her.
There were a lot of names for them in the early days of the Outbreak. The talking heads on TV sometimes called them Cannibals, Maniacs and sometimes Victims... she noticed the difference there often depended on their color. The CDC stoically refered to them as the Infected, the military the Contagion and the religious right, perdictably, settled on the Risen. It was as if the problem could only be solved if the right title could be agreed upon. With their eyes clouded into a milk white fog, their clumsy stagger balanced only by arms perpetually reaching forward and the yawning groan they released in mass they reminded her of Sleepwalkers and so the name stuck.
They knew she was up there. She didn't know how or why. The time for such questions had long passed. There was only a few of them at first. A dozen or so that somehow managed to follow her back after one of her weekly expeditions into Downtown for supplies. They arrived an hour after she made her way back, shambled, moaned and pounded at the steel doors to the old cotton mill turned nightclub relentlessly. By the next day there was a crowd of them staggering along the perimters of the wall looking, without really looking, for a way in. That night they were packed shoulder to shoulder in the parking lot just standing there motionless until she would appear at the edge of the roof and within moments, one by one, they would lift up their heads in a wave of recognition, released a death rattle growl from dead lungs and reached out their hands towards her desperately, grabbing at the empty air the way small children reach for the moon in a naive attempt to snatch it out of the sky.
Now they flooded much of surronding North Avenue in their masses, along with the adjacent side street and outdoor music park. Even if she cared to she couldn't possibly count them all. A swarming puddle of raw hunger trying to leak its way past the stone walls that protected her.
It occurs to her that the reason there might be so many of them outside was that there was no one else left in the city for them to... but thankfully the Blues are kicking in now with a wonderful numbing of thought. She laughs to herself. Staggers to her feet coming dangerously close to falling off the roof into the sea of faces below. She waves at the Sleepwalkers, a Queen greeting her subjects from a castle balcony and bellows out to them with cupped hands...
"Alright you Motherfuckers lissen' up ... any y'all got a request?!?!"
She is answered with a blast of a thousand rattling sighs that rise up toward her and segue into the single moan of a large dying animal.
"Sorry I don't know that one" she yells back, swaying along the waves of her intoxication "How 'bout a lil' Patsy instead?"
The Sleepwalkers moan swells back up at her in response. Myra closes her eyes and off key the words rise up strong from a place where even the fear and the lonely can't touch...
"Cray-Zeeee....
Crazy for feelin' so blue...
I knew you'd love me as long as you wanted
And then someday, you'd leave me for somebody new.
Worry,
Why do I let myself worry?
Wonderin',
What in the world did I do?
Ohhhhh...
Craaaaay-zeee...."
It burnt in the center of the skull until the liqour killed the pain.
The liqour she was now out of!
She mutters a curse (the first word she's heard outside the walls of her thoughts in over a week) and flings the empty bottle at the black veil of skyrise. The bottle spins in an escalating parabola towards the cloudless sky, reaches the top of its arc and plummets downward into a muffled crash somewhere in the endless sea of dead faces that stare back up at her.
There were a lot of names for them in the early days of the Outbreak. The talking heads on TV sometimes called them Cannibals, Maniacs and sometimes Victims... she noticed the difference there often depended on their color. The CDC stoically refered to them as the Infected, the military the Contagion and the religious right, perdictably, settled on the Risen. It was as if the problem could only be solved if the right title could be agreed upon. With their eyes clouded into a milk white fog, their clumsy stagger balanced only by arms perpetually reaching forward and the yawning groan they released in mass they reminded her of Sleepwalkers and so the name stuck.
They knew she was up there. She didn't know how or why. The time for such questions had long passed. There was only a few of them at first. A dozen or so that somehow managed to follow her back after one of her weekly expeditions into Downtown for supplies. They arrived an hour after she made her way back, shambled, moaned and pounded at the steel doors to the old cotton mill turned nightclub relentlessly. By the next day there was a crowd of them staggering along the perimters of the wall looking, without really looking, for a way in. That night they were packed shoulder to shoulder in the parking lot just standing there motionless until she would appear at the edge of the roof and within moments, one by one, they would lift up their heads in a wave of recognition, released a death rattle growl from dead lungs and reached out their hands towards her desperately, grabbing at the empty air the way small children reach for the moon in a naive attempt to snatch it out of the sky.
Now they flooded much of surronding North Avenue in their masses, along with the adjacent side street and outdoor music park. Even if she cared to she couldn't possibly count them all. A swarming puddle of raw hunger trying to leak its way past the stone walls that protected her.
It occurs to her that the reason there might be so many of them outside was that there was no one else left in the city for them to... but thankfully the Blues are kicking in now with a wonderful numbing of thought. She laughs to herself. Staggers to her feet coming dangerously close to falling off the roof into the sea of faces below. She waves at the Sleepwalkers, a Queen greeting her subjects from a castle balcony and bellows out to them with cupped hands...
"Alright you Motherfuckers lissen' up ... any y'all got a request?!?!"
She is answered with a blast of a thousand rattling sighs that rise up toward her and segue into the single moan of a large dying animal.
"Sorry I don't know that one" she yells back, swaying along the waves of her intoxication "How 'bout a lil' Patsy instead?"
The Sleepwalkers moan swells back up at her in response. Myra closes her eyes and off key the words rise up strong from a place where even the fear and the lonely can't touch...
"Cray-Zeeee....
Crazy for feelin' so blue...
I knew you'd love me as long as you wanted
And then someday, you'd leave me for somebody new.
Worry,
Why do I let myself worry?
Wonderin',
What in the world did I do?
Ohhhhh...
Craaaaay-zeee...."
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
on 2007-06-13 08:22 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2007-06-13 08:50 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2007-06-13 08:52 pm (UTC)Crazee crazeeeee for lovin you...
arg i dont know if I can even answer the phone now
[ring] [ring]
"hello this is crazee crazee for fellin blue... err david how may I I let myself worry?
Wonderin',
What in the world did I do... arrgggh"
no subject
on 2007-06-13 08:58 pm (UTC)... or did I?
no subject
on 2007-06-13 09:34 pm (UTC)da na na na na click click
They're cooky and they're spooky
...
Payback!