"The Third Floor" ("The Walking Dead")

[TonyDeeDee]

"The Third Floor"

A tale of survival
from
"The Walking Dead"​

NOTE:
This role play is available to a Female writer.
(My previous co-writer has stopped writing.)
If you are interested, PM me and I will start a new thread.
You are invited to pick your own image for Martin.
I have picked an image for the 18+ year old female character,
using one that gets my blood a'boiling.​

Martin Bell awoke with a start, leveling the shotgun in his lap directly at the closed door of the walk-in closet he'd been hiding in for a day and a half.

It was an unconscious reaction that was becoming second nature to him, pointing a gun at people. He'd grown up in a hunting family, so he'd always known how to use a fire arm. But he'd never imagined shooting a person.

Of course, what he was shooting wasn't people. They were more like monsters, tracking down other people, mauling them, biting them ... eating them. After a local radio host referred to them as Walkers, the name stuck.

Martin had just moved into the city, to an apartment building just three blocks from the community college at which he'd landed a part time math and science teaching position. He hadn't expected trouble like what the city was facing now, so he hadn't brought any of his weapons. The shotgun he had now had come from a dead police officer on the street out front.

He'd had no qualms about putting a slug through the brain of one of the Walkers as it came at him. But he soon learned that there was no end to the Walkers and fled down the street to this building. He'd barricaded the doors with furniture, hid in the closet ... and just waited.

The Walkers, it seemed, had left the building hours earlier. Martin could only assume that they'd killed everyone and moved on to other hunting grounds. But, he could hear someone on the floor, and something about the noise told him it wasn't a Walker.

He rose quietly, having learned that it was noise that drew the Walkers, and made his way out of the closet to the bedroom door. He listened, but heard nothing. He carefully pulled the dresser back, making as little noise as he could, opened the door, and made his way to the apartment's front door.

He stood at the front door for quite a while, but the sound he thought he'd heard simply wasn't there any longer. He looked out of the peep hole and saw nothing but the door of the the apartment across the hall.

Feeling brave, he stepped back, opened the door -- and found

(OOC: See note at bottom concerning what follows from here.)

her staring at him with a shocked look in her eyes.

Her youth, her innocent look, her school uniform, and her huge stuffed bear, clutched to her body like it was her best and only friend, gave her the appearance of being no more than a little scared girl. Martin would find out soon enough that the recently turned 18 year old may have been scared, but she was no little girl.

He looked up and down the hall, then backed up and waved her inside, whispering, "Come in ... before they hear you ... come in."

**********​

OOC: My original co-writer stepped out of the role play, apparently, so this role play is currently open to a new female writer. The image for Martin can be replaced with a male of your choice, giving us each someone we like to look at while we ... write.

This first reply is the only current post that will carry over to our new role play, which I will fire up as soon as I have a new writer. Do not post to this thread, obviously. It is dead.

Just in case my original writer returns, I have left the original text and photo below:

her staring at him...

 

[MichelleP]

Megan Hughes was shocked how quickly it all had changed her. Over the course of a few weeks, she had gone from a personal trainer and yoga instructor at a local gym to what felt like a sole survivor after the fall of civilization.

She found herself alone in her apartment as the infection started the so-called Walkers started roaming the Earth. She watched, at first from her TV and later her apartment window as these monsters dragged down and devoured living people. The screams of someone being eaten alive was hard to forget, and something that continued to haunt her dreams.

She didn’t own any guns, and she used a trusty screwdriver as her only means of self-defense as she make short trips down to the corner gas station for food and water. Her encounters with those… things had thankfully been mostly distant and brief. Five days ago, with the nearest gas station running low on candy bars and potato chips (much to her chagrin, as she liked to keep a healthy diet) she had been grabbed by a Walker from behind and just barely got away from him. It was getting harder and harder to just avoid the stumbling creatures and she was running low on food and water.

The apartment building, in a middle-class part of town, was mostly empty. Most of the residences (none of whom she knew that well) had heeded the TV’s advice and evacuated to the biggest cities where it was supposed to be safe. A few Walkers near the outside of the building were easy to outrun. Then, she saw him arrive.

She spied him from the window. He was dark and handsome, and had sprinted inside the building. She heard him run into another apartment on her floor. After weeks without human contact, she imagined she would have been desperate for an ally, but instead, she was afraid. She didn’t know this man, and he could be a bandit. She had meager amounts of junk food and bottled water left. He had a gun. He could have her way with her, steal her minimal supplies, and leave her for the Walkers.

After a day and a half, she hadn’t heard him move from the apartment down the hall where he had run into. With just scarce supplies left, she needed to make another run, and he had a gun. If he had killed himself, he wouldn’t mind parting with the gun.

She carefully pushed her couch away from the door and unlocked it. The apartment hall was quiet, dark and empty. A musty smell ran through the place. She tiptoed quietly down the hall to the apartment where she assumed he had run into. She ducked down on her knees and pressed her ear against the door. She could hear him moving furniture out of the way. She stood up as the door open, and stood face to face with him.

She stuttered for words. “H..h..hey, I’m Megan. I’ve been alone since this all started and wondered if you wanted to team up and share supplies.”

 

[TonyDeeDee]

Martin was stunned. After all that had happened -- all the death and mayhem and destruction -- he opened the door to the apartment in which he'd been hunkered down and found ... her, a beautiful woman who, without knowing anything about him, wanted to team up?

"Of course," he said, not really even thinking about what he was saying before he said it.

He was starving for normal people interaction: Martin had always been a big group kind of guy, and to be isolated in that closet for a day and a half with nothing to do and no one with whom to talk -- not to mention thousands of Walkers wanting to eat him alive -- he was eager for any interaction he could find.

He let his eyes drop to her figure for just a flash, then looked off, embarrassed. Now was not the time to be thinking those kinds of thoughts. But he couldn't help it: it might have been a long time since he'd talked to a woman, but it had been a much longer time since he'd been with one, too.

"Come in," he said, backing into the apartment. He realized he was still holding the shotgun in both hands before him and quickly slung it over his shoulder, hoping it would seem less threatening that way. As he continued to back, he said, "I, um ... I have to be honest. I haven't looked for food or anything. I've been..."

He was embarrassed to admit it, but he told her, "I've been hiding since yesterday. I think those things ... they're calling them Walkers...? I think they're attracted to noise ... people noise. So, I've been waiting them out."

Suddenly, Martin realized he was about to be even more embarrassed when his guts reminded him that he hadn't seen a toilet in a day and a half. He'd found a plastic trash can to take care of peeing, but he'd been holding out on anything more substantial ... and his body was telling him now that time was up.

"Make yourself at home," he said, grimacing, as he headed off toward the hallway. He made an assumption about the other door leading away from the living room and said, "Kitchen's in there. Feel free to..."

He disappeared into the bathroom, barely making it to the toilet before Nature caught up to him. His mind was whirling with how stupid he had to look to this woman, greeting her with a shotgun and then running away to take a poop.

Good first impression, loser, he thought. 'He's the kind of guy I want to team up with' ... loser.

When he was finished, he washed not only his hands but his face and neck, too. He needed a shower, but it could wait. He had a guest for whom he needed to tend.

There was a sudden unexpected sound, and Martin's first thought was Walker. His second thought was even more devastating: She's pillaging MY stuff!

Ironically, it wasn't losing the resources in the apartment that was truly bothering him. It was the thought that after she stole what she wanted, she would leave him and he'd be alone again.

Of course, it wasn't his stuff -- it wasn't his place -- and, when he emerged, he realized she wasn't looting it either. He smiled to her and said, "So ... what's to eat? I'm starving."

(OOC: That "sound" can be anything you want it to be. I just needed an excuse for him to panic.)

 

[MichelleP]

Megan carefully eyed the man as he first introduced himself. He seemed a bit odd, she thought to herself, although maybe that was to be expected after what she assumed was weeks of isolation (like herself). She was about to ask him how much food and water he had stocked up when suddenly he disappeared into the bathroom…? She carefully eyed the bathroom, unsure of what this guy was up to.

As he had told her she could make herself at home, she headed into the kitchen and began inspecting what they had. Whoever’s apartment this had been didn’t leave much more food than had been in her apartment. A couple of bags of junk food and some old cans of Diet Pepsi. They would have to salvage for more food if they wanted to survive, she thought to herself.

She opened up the freezer and was shocked when the old plastic shelves inside collapsed, making a racket. There wasn’t much there, either. Their first order of business, Meghan decided, would be to salvage for food outside the apartment building.

Her new companion came out of the bathroom. "So ... what's to eat? I'm starving,” he asked.

“Not much, I’m afraid, “ she said. “The fridge might as well be empty. Just junk food and diet soda. We might need to have to take a run out for food and supplies.”

She walked over to the window and pointed down the street. “There’s an old gas station down there, but it’s pretty much picked over. That was the first place I hit when this started. I think there’s a big Walmart two blocks down that should still have some supplies, but it’ll probably be crawling with Walkers. We should head out at night. It’ll be easier to conceal ourselves from the Walkers,” she said, already planning their first run out.

She turned back to him and smiled. “I don’t think I ever caught your name, by the way.”

 

[TonyDeeDee]

He looked out the third floor window in the direction of the unseen giant of a store and, only half consciously, said, "My name is Martin ... and I don't shop Walmart."

After a moment of considering what the streets might be like after all this time, he looked her way and caught her reaction to his comment. He laughed, explaining, "Just kidding. We never shopped Walmart before..."

He looked, then gestured out the window, finishing, "...before this. But ... given the choice of starving to death, I guess ... Walmart it is."

He unslung the shotgun from his shoulder and checked to ensure their was a round in the chamber. He only had three rounds left, not enough if they ran into trouble. He looked to Megan for a weapon, then said, "We might want to scavenge the rest of this building first ... see what we can find. I've been stuck in that closet for two days. Never got a chance to check it out."

Martin didn't know whether his new partner had been through the whole apartment building. It was 3 stories, about 150 apartments in a big square with the apartments on the outside facing the street and other local buildings; and the apartments on the inside looking down upon a central court yard.

He'd only barely gotten a glimpse of the court yard two days earlier as he'd been fleeing Walkers up a staircase, but he knew there was a grassy area large enough for frisbee or badmitton, a sand volleyball court, and a pool surrounded by a concrete patio. During his time in the closet, he'd imagined all the sexy girls and buff boys from the local college out there on a sunny day in their skimpy suits, flirting and laughing and drinking beer before retiring upstairs to fuck the night away.

(OOC: Lunch is over. Martin will follow her lead if you want to "take a walk".)