up in smoke [Gina]

[LEONARDO "LEO" ACEVEDO]

There was a dull ringing somewhere in the back of his head, and he was pretty sure that was the faint smell of smoke. Just the same he couldn’t be asked to open his eyes and investigate it because truthfully he didn’t have the strength nor the desire to go poking around in things he didn’t much care for. If he was to be completely honest with himself he was rather comfortable cloaked in the darkness and solitude that he currently found himself in. Save for the insesent ringing and whatever was on fire it was a rather peaceful escape from life.

”Am I dead?”

He didn’t know where the thought came from but he thought it rather ironic that he would have gotten killed without actually meaning to, at least not in that current moment before where he was currently. Which he had no idea, that involved opening his eyes and taking stock in the situation and that sounded like a lot of work for very little pay off.

”Okay. That ringing is annoying.”

He tried to move or force himself to move but the action or thought of action only caused a dull pain to travel through him.

”Not worth it.”

He quickly decided to allow the darkness completely wash over him once more and was all too happy to slip below the surface of it.

Leo forced his eyes open with a low groan. He stared at the sky above him and for several painstaking moments he could not for the life of him figure out why he was looking at the sky at all. He didn’t remember being outside or hell even going outside.

He sat up with a groan his entire body protesting the movement. His eyes widened slightly at the sight which sat at least an entire floor above him. There was a wooden porch that sat just outside of a large glass window, it could more so be classified as a wall than just a window. Regardless, the glass was shattered and the porch was very much on fire. Tendrils of smoke snaked out from the various cracks in the glass giving evidence to the idea that it was more than just the porch that was on fire.

“Que carajo?” he muttered to himself as he pulled himself to his feet and took a few steps back to take in more of his surroundings. His head was killing him, though he was surprised to find his palm covered with fresh blood as he attempted to wipe away the rain that dripped from his hair down his face.

More alarming was as he stared at the palm of his hand all the way up to his elbow he found the skin on his right arm torn, mildly burned, and with several pieces of alarmingly large shards of glass poking out of his flesh.
“That’s…”

He felt the world swim to the side slightly before he backed up, his movements stopped by a well placed tree, his eyes once again focusing on the smoldering porch of the restaurant which sat at least a floor above where he was currently standing. He couldn’t be certain but he was almost willing to bet that he had been up there prior to being on the rain soaked ground bleeding. He was also willing to bet that the broken glass window was to play a part in the pieces of glass in his own arm. Leo prodded at the pieces of glass in his arm, grimacing as blood began to flow out the wounds. He gritted his teeth and pulled the large piece of glass from his arm followed quickly by the other. Dropping the pieces of glass upon the rain soaked ground he held his now bleeding arm against the front of his shirt in an attempt to staunch the flow of blood.

”Stay right here, I’ll be back.”

Rosemary.

He had left her by her desk, left her because...he couldn’t recall. There had been a reason, they were looking for someone?

”I’ll be back.

Someone she knew. A friend.A friend who was hopefully not dead but the signs around them had not been exactly promising.

”Lo prometo.”

She had been scared. Hell, he had been scared. Those things were everywhere, whatever they were. Some form of demonio or brujeria that had brought these walking corpses to them. He’d left his jacket with her, taken the pocket square to….to what?

Oh right.

The molotov cocktail.

That would explain the burns and the fire. His memories were starting to return very vividly now.

Blood. There had been a great deal of blood, more than he had seen in a very long time in the restaurant and then there had been the corpses; some who were very much dead and others who were moving at a slow but never the less alarming pace since corpses were not meant to be moving at all. He’d managed to get to the back of the restaurant before realizing he was cornered. His options had been very slim and so he had said a quick prayer and thrown the bottle hoping for the best.

After that he didn’t remember anything except for waking up a floor below the restaurant porch...outside in the rain.

His thoughts were quickly interrupted by the sound of someone in the trees behind him. He turned around quickly taking a few steps back as he scanned the area immediately around him trying to find a source for the noise he had heard moments ago.

He pulled his pistol from its holster and aimed it towards the darkness unwilling to be caught off guard by anymore of those demons. The adrenaline immediately taking over and overshadowing his injuries and confusion.

“Venga, hijo de puta,” he muttered to whoever or whatever was out there in the darkness.

[GINA LOMBARDI]

Gina had been dumb enough to think that once she made her way back to the resort it would be better than the village.  The resort had security, it was more secure, right?  

Wrong.  

What greeted her was the shell of the island paradise she had left only a short time before.  It was coated in broken glass, blood, and dead bodies.  There were also a fairly large supply of not so dead bodies.  

She wondered if this was her personal Hell.  She had never been a religious person, but this made her wonder if God, the Devil, or karma were fully set on punishing her for her affair.  She had never anticipated a deity who chose punishment by being eaten alive by a living corpse, so she had to throw in a few points for creativity.  

She picked her way through the resort towards the restaurants.  Restaurants had knives-lots of them.  Not that she wanted to be close enough to have to fight one of those things that closely, but she also did not want to be that close to one with nothing to defend herself.  Besides, the resort seemed to be low on firearms.  She thought maybe there would be some in the security offices.  If she could get something to make it through now, she'd try and find a way to check.  She hadn't shot in years but she hadn't been bad when she was a teenager.  

A throng of the dead were blocking her clearest path.  Gina froze, backing away from them.  She'd need to go outside.  Through the darkness.  And the rain which was now falling.  Through the forest.  

Things just kept getting better.  

Her sleeveless emerald green blouse and slim black skirt were coated in blood.  Somewhere along the way out of the village, she'd given up her heels for the flat sandals in her bag.  They weren't much better, but they weren't four inch pumps.  She knew she was cut and scratched, but she had no idea how badly.  There was one on her left arm that felt like it hurt a good bit more than the rest.  She'd stop and check it later.  Maybe.  

Now the trees were filling with smoke.  It made her cough, drawing too much unnecessary attention to herself.  In the dim light, Gina could see why.  The restaurant was on fire.  Well, so much for her plan of finding knives.  Maybe it wasn't bad enough that she couldn't get in.  She hated being unarmed.  Being helpless was not her strong suit.  

That was when she saw the man.  He stood before her, holding a gun, which was conveniently aimed at her.  He looked a bit worse for the wear-covered in blood and what appeared to be burns.  It was hard to tell in the dim light.  Gina weighed her options.  

He was no threat to her with his injuries.  But the gun was another story.  She could run, but chances were he didn't want to shoot her.  He was no doubt just as terrified as she.  She'd have to take her chances with his character.

“Venga, hijo de puta,”

Yeah she had no idea what that meant.  She didn't speak Spanish, and if he didn't speak English, she was screwed.  Oh well...she was no doubt screwed any way.  Might as well risk it.  

Gina raised her hands to him, palms out, fingers spread.  She met his eyes as her head shook once.  

"Don't."  

[LEONARDO "LEO" ACEVEDO]

Leo kept his eyes trained towards the patch of trees and brush directly in front of him as the sound grew nearer. He felt his teeth grinding in his mouth and his heart threatening to jump from his chest but he did his best to remain focused on whatever the hell was making its way towards him. His eyes were cold and and focus, his finger trembling ever so slightly upon the trigger of the Glock.

He had worked on the police force for over a decade and he had seen some of the most horrific things that humans could do to each other as well as to themselves. He had seen death and all manner of the darkness that life could hand out to individuals and yet it had been nothing compared to the horrors he had witnessed in the last handful of hours upon this island, and it had shaken him to his very core. He was a rational person, truly believed that everything had a cause and an effect, that things simply did not just happen without reason and yet the very world he had currently found himself within existed without reason and was driven purely by madness and nightmares.

Leo had believed that man was the worst monster to dwell upon Earth; he had apparently been very wrong.

The sound continued to draw near and he could have sworn he heard a cough but he couldn’t be sure over the sound of the storm, the crackling fire above him from the burning restaurant, and the ringing in his ear. He hadn’t expected the woman to exit out of the trees directly in front of him. His felt his eyes narrow in speculation as the woman walked out of the brush towards him, her arms outstretched in a form of surrender. He didn’t know her, had no idea who she was or what she was capable of or even how it was she could be involved in whatever it was that was happening.

His eyes never left hers and he felt his finger tightened against the trigger as she moved, even though it ended up being a small shake of her head.

"Don't."

She was unarmed, at least it appeared that she was unarmed and she hadn’t as of yet given him a reason to not trust her act of “surrender” and yet Leo could not find it in himself to lower his gun. There were too many variables and too much chaos to simply go off of the good word of strangers.

“Don’t move. Quedate donde estas.”

He closed his eyes in frustration for a brief moment. He’d come to realize that the more stress he was under the easier it was to fall into Spanish instead of English. While the situation definitely merited the label of stressful it would do him no good to talk to the woman in Spanish if she had no blessed idea what he was saying.

“Stay where you are,” he corrected himself his eyes trained back upon the woman the gun still trained on her but his eyes not nearly as acquisitory as they had been moments before. A flash of lightning brightened the sky for a moment and Leo was able to get his first good look at the woman in front of him. Her appearance was in tatters and she was cut and bleeding but it didn’t look as if she was dead, or had recently been dead. She looked alive and terrified as was becoming the norm.

“Who are you?” Leo asked lowering the gun but keeping it firmly within his grasp.

[GINA LOMBARDI]

Gina pressed the tip of her tongue to her teeth, drawing a slow breath as her eyes flicked from the gun to the man's face.  In the end, did it really matter if he shot her?  She had two options: she could fight, survive, get off of this island and never leave the continental United States again, or she could end up dead by a human hand or ripped apart by the dead.  There were no other ways out.    


“Don’t move. Quedate donde estas.”

It had to be his native tongue.  It seemed to come too naturally, and it seemed highly unlikely that he was just covering both languages for safety's sake.  She wondered who he was.  In the occasional flash of lightening, she could vaguely make him out, but not enough to see him.  His voice did not sound familiar.  That largely ruled out the rest of the resort staff.  She was fairly certain that she would have been able to identify one of them.  

“Stay where you are,”

Ah.  That made much more sense.  Not that she had much intent on moving anywhere.  Her intended target was burning down rapidly before her eyes, she had no other game plan, and the direction that she was currently headed was blocked by a gunman.  Even if he was injured, Gina was not certain she cared enough to put herself at this much risk to help a man who did not want it.  There was entirely too much at stake.  

“Who are you?”  The gun lowered, and Gina felt a faint stab of relief.  

"Gina."  She didn't see the need to elaborate.  It wasn't like who they had been when they'd each woken up that morning much mattered anymore.  She was fairly certain that the dead weren't going to ask before making a meal of them.  

The wind blew a gust of rain and smoke into them.  Gina frowned, turning her face away from it.  Hesitantly, she turned one hand slowly towards her and used the heel of one palm to brush a lock of hair out of her eyes.  To make sure the gun stayed away from her, she brought it back out in front of her.  

"At this rate in the game, you're welcome to shoot me, but I'm pretty sure making that kind of noise is not what you want to do."  She stole a glance back towards the burning restaurant.  She hoped that the flames were hot enough to consume everything inside, and they were not about to be joined by flaming, walking corpses.  

"Look, we can either help each other or pretend that we never saw each other.  Your call, but you look like you might need some assistance."  

She wasn't entirely certain that she wanted to start making acquaintances, but there might be something to that safety in numbers thing.  It wasn't like she had much to loose anyway.  

[LEONARDO "LEO" ACEVEDO]

”Gina.”

That was direct and too the point if not vague. Though in fairness he had asked and she had answered. Just the same his eyes narrowed at the woman ever so slightly, though not offering up a name of his own. She looked normal enough, aside from the bumps and bruises. Though technically they had all looked normal enough a few hours ago and now it seemed like half of “them” were trying to eat the other half.

It had all gone to hell very quickly.

Another flash of lightning illuminated the sky followed by a large clap of thunder. The storm seemed to have impeccable timing to accentuate whatever was happening on the island. Though it was very possible that the 2 were related somehow. Leo ducked his head onto the sleeve of his shirt as the storm caused another gust of wind to blow smoke and ash in their direction. He could feel the heat from the fire above them as the wind served to fuel the fire. It was definitely not going to be extinguishing itself any time soon, though perhaps the rain would help out a bit.

"At this rate in the game, you're welcome to shoot me, but I'm pretty sure making that kind of noise is not what you want to do."

She had no idea. He had already encountered what sort of attention firing off a gun could bring. Though in fairness it had not been that bad, though it had occurred inside of a secluded hotel room and not on the edge of the jungle; he was fairly certain there would be a vast difference.

“You’re not undead yes?” He shot her a speculative glance already knowing the answer.

“Then there is no need to shoot you,” the gun remained trained away from the woman yet Leo did not reholster it. He felt safer having it out and at the ready should things begin to deteriorate as they seemed to have a habit of doing.

“Why do you keep looking up there?”

Leo’s eyes had followed the woman’s as she looked up at the burning restaurant porch once more. There had been nothing there, nothing save for a rather big horde of walking dead and a lot of carnage. He had regretted his decision to enter the restaurant nearly the moment the door had closed behind him.

“There is no one left in there,” he explained his head lightly nodding towards the smoldering porch.

“Alive,” he corrected himself.

“There is no one left alive in there. Only dead.”

"Look, we can either help each other or pretend that we never saw each other. Your call, but you look like you might need some assistance."

The woman was direct, he would give her that whoever she was. Yet aside from that he didn’t have a very good read of the woman. He was generally able to tell a great deal about someone with no time what so ever spent with them yet apparently the curve ball of complete chaos seemed to throw off observation skills.

“I can manage,” he answered curtly. This was not a situation in which to appear weak and due to the large amount of adrenaline which was coursing through his veins he really did not feel as much of the pain as he should have. He pulled his arm away from his shirt, the blood sticking to the fabric for a moment before pulling free. The gashes upon his skin bleeding freely once more.

He was of course full of shit but again weakness was not something which could currently be afforded.

“What are you doing out here alone?”

The decision seemed unwise especially considering that he was pretty certain the woman was unwise. Unless of course she had a death wish and then that was completely her own business and he would leave her to whatever it was she hoped to accomplish.

[GINA LOMBARDI]

With the gun lowered, Gina brought her arms back to fold over her chest.  Instantly, her left thumb slipped under her index and middle fingers to rub her ring finger.  When she was married she'd had that habit of spinning her wedding bands during meetings.  Since her divorce, she'd never quite lost the habit even after she'd lost the rings.  

“You’re not undead yes?”  Her mouth opened quickly, but he spoke again.  “Then there is no need to shoot you,”

She supposed that she should have been grateful for that.  But then she was still standing in the middle of the forest, wondering when and if a pack of undead corpses would show up to eat them.  For a brief moment, she thought that being shot and bleeding out quickly might have had its advantages.  

“Why do you keep looking up there?”

"I have a thing against walking, burning corpses."  Gina could not imagine that if a body was already dead, that would stop them from attempting to walk.  

“There is no one left alive in there. Only dead.”

That made a faint rush of emotion flash over her.  She knew staff in that restaurant.  They were dead-or a form of it.  She couldn't imagine people she knew, good people she had come to like, in that condition.  Shambling, looking for humans, feasting on their flesh.  

She flinched, making a face and not sure if it was her thoughts or the driving rain and smoke.  A bolt of lightening jolted through the darkness.  This was dangerous on so many levels.  The storm was easily the worst she had seen on six months on the island.  She hoped it was a passing fluke and that the wouldn't be stranded with the dead and monsoon like weather.  

“I can manage,”

"Ok."  Gina shrugged.  She didn't beg.  And she was not begging a complete stranger to let him help her when her own life was highly in danger.

“What are you doing out here alone?”

"My goal was to reach the restaurant.  I thought-."  Gina sighed, deciding it wasn't much worth it to hold back.  They were safe for the minute.  Even if that was all the had.  

"I work-worked-here.  I was in the village when all this broke out and-.  I thought the resort would be secure and the restaurant might have knives that would serve as better than going around unarmed.  Then I'd try to get-."  

She didn't say the word home.  Home had been here in the beach bungalow that they'd shared, but now it was back in Milwaukee where Bill was no doubt in the condo he had yet to rent out, wondering why she'd stopped texting him hours ago.  She had not really thought of trying to get to the house, but it seemed reasonable.  It was smaller, easier to secure, and stocked with food and reasonable footwear.

Gina shook her head in the darkness.  This was not her life.  She was supposed to be at home, watching Real Housewives of Atlanta and sexting with her boyfriend over a glass of wine.

"The world turned upside down," she murmured to herself.  

[LEONARDO "LEO" ACEVEDO]

"I have a thing against walking, burning corpses."

Leo cast a curious glance of his own towards the burning porch, he actually hadn’t thought of that possibility but now that it was in his mind he couldn’t seem to think of anything else. He had only managed to shot a few, 3 before he admitted to himself that he was vastly outnumbered and only had a limited supply of ammo. He didn’t know what had happened to the corpses which had surrounded him, ideally he would have liked to believe that they had been blown to several small pieces so that they could not just get up and walk around...now covered in fire. It would stand to reason though that he hadn’t been blown to pieces so those who had not been directly near the explosion would have remained relatively intact.

“We would hear them coming,” it was the only solution he had to offer up but it was something. Being that the undead would have to shamble out onto the porch and them proceed to fall off of it down to the ground where they currently resided it was very much a reality that they could not sneak up on them. At least not those from above.

"My goal was to reach the restaurant. I thought-."

That had been his goal as well. They had thought that they could find a place to set up a barricade and wait out whatever it was that was happening and the restaurant had seemed as if it was the best place to do just that. There was plenty of tables and chairs to help set up the barricade to block any of the undead from just walking in. It had been their best bet and yet when he had entered it had proven to a lost cause.

"I work-worked-here. I was in the village when all this broke out and-. I thought the resort would be secure and the restaurant might have knives that would serve as better than going around unarmed. Then I'd try to get-."

“Broke out? Que...what--what broke out? What happened in the village?”

The thought of the rest of the island hadn’t crossed his mind, he had for the last few hours been consumed by the hell which had been unravelling Rosemary and himself in the very resort. The had stumbled across the first few of the corpses on the 5th floor and by the time they had made their way back down to the lobby the rest of the building had seemed to fall into chaos.

He had thought that perhaps, just maybe the rest of the island was fine. That it had been an isolated incident, one that could perhaps be contained within the borders of the resort.

Yet if this woman had been in the village and looked as she did the possibility was very real that the incident expanded far past the borders of the resort.

Leo heard the woman mutter something under her breath yet he didn’t hear what it was. His attention had suddenly been grabbed by the low sound he had very much hoped not to hear again. It was a low gurgling noise, the sound of blood gurgling up from the throat of one of the undead. His eyes quickly scanned around the trees which surrounded them in an attempt to pinpoint where exactly the sound was coming from and where the creature behind the sound was located at.

[GINA LOMBARDI]

“We would hear them coming,”

That was a good point, and the thought momentarily eased Gina's mind.  It would be hard not to notice a flaming corpse, and they would both have plenty of time to move before one toppled down onto them.  
"You're right."  Gina agreed.  She raised her hands to run her fingers through her rain soaked hair, combing it back from her face.  It did not make a lot of difference in the driving rain and wind but she felt less like a sheep dog for the moment.  


“Broke out? Que...what--what broke out? What happened in the village?”

"Hell happened in the village."  She had no clue what had started this...how things had gone so epically bad so quickly.  She also knew that if she lived another forty years from this night, she would never forget what she had seen.  The blood, carnage and screams had been forever etched into her brain.  Her fingers went to the scratches on her arm.  Her brain recalled that some of them were scratches and fingernail indents.  They'd grabbed for her, teeth snapping, moaning uncontrollably.  

Gina flinched, shaking herself back to reality.  She could not focus on anything but the fact that she had survived, and that she needed to keep surviving.  

"People fell down, died, got back up and started eating each other."  It sounded sarcastic, but it was the truth.  People had been ripped down in front of her seconds before they'd risen to join the leagues of others running through the small village.  

A flash of lightening illuminated them in enough time for Gina to see a look register across the stranger's face.  She opened her mouth to ask what it was, but immediately closed she.  

She heard it too...the undeniable moan of the undead.  It was close, somewhere off to her right she suspected.  Gina turned and became aware of a dark shape limping along near the treeline.  She brought her hand to her lips to stifle the gasp which nearly left it.  She had been right-a moment's safety was all that they'd had.  

Was it possible that under the cover of darkness it wouldn't notice them?  Those things did not seem to be particularly smart.  Gina could only hope.  She moved forward, closing the distance between them while using one hand to nudge the man in the opposite direct of the lumbering corpse. They had to go-now-no matter what condition he was in.