There were many ways in which his current actions checked off boxes for stupidity, albeit mildly cushioned by the timeframe in which he was executing them. It had been precisely fourteen minutes and seventeen seconds since he'd witnessed the end of the unusual assault on the video cameras of the mall according to his digital wrist-watch, which gave the two involved parties plenty of time to disappear.
He'd stopped trying to make sense of the motions he'd seen - they'd effortlessly violated the physics he'd been taught in school, there was no use trying to make them work or endlessly worry about that he couldn't - but he accepted, mutely, that his gun would make no difference. It didn't protect him. It wouldn't help him save the victim - especially not now that he'd left it so late. But however he spun it, it felt better than staying in place.
He was still trying to work out whether he should shoot anyone approaching the breached front foor without waiting to be seen in the shadows, or shoot past them in some strange test of regular humanity, or ask questions first, but none of the options really satisfied him. The central one seemed appealing, but what did he expect the reaction that would differentiate people from what he'd seen to be? There might be a subtle distinction, but that would only help him in a scenario where he came across a regular human being. In the other, it would just make him more of a target.
The splinters of glass at the entrance disappointingly tell him nothing - he hasn't spontaneously become a gifted detective. Left to himself, he wouldn't even be able to begin to guess the direction in which the forces in question would have acted on the thick glass. None of this makes any sense - including his being here, looking for signs as to where the two fellows might have disappeared to, cherry-picking his reality and neatly and with practised ease quelling any urge to panic.
His first reaction to two figures registering as a hint of motion across the street is to whip his pistol up and aim it in that direction - a steady grip, a careful aim, there was no use in being premature about firing the weapon if it wasn't going to meet its target. All quite commendable. His breath is steady, his thought processes clear. Then the fantasy morphs into a deep grimace, weapon dropping, letting himself be guided by instinct. There wasn't much of an alternative left to him, given he'd opted out of rationally addressing the problem. He exhales his frustration - then he's calling across: "You all right?"
They'd been seeking other people, preferably people with a clue what was going on and both the skills and knowledge to do something about it as well as somewhere safe to hide until someone else fixed the problem. Preferably one of the aforementioned "people with a clue". And by that metric someone with a uniform and a gun that wasn't panicking looked like an excellent start. Nobody would have both unless they knew how to use them, and that was already a big advantage over [[characters:Keneh]] and her. Even implausible physics-bending humanoids required a brain and brains were less efficient with several high velocity holes punched through them.
So in theory when she catches motion out of the corner of her eye and spins towards it the sight should be comforting. After all, isn't this what they were looking for? That does not stop her yelping and freezing like a rabbit in headlights when she realises that there is someone pointing a gun //at her//. Guns are scary! Guns shouldn't be anywhere near her! And if they were she should be //behind// the gun and wearing earmuffs, not a target.
And then it is pointing at the ground and that is somewhat better but her instincts are still screaming "Enemy enemy! Danger!" as her hand presses over her chest as if to re-enforce her ribs and stop her hammering heart escaping. A swallow, a second one, tongue run across dry lips and finally [[characters:Delaney]] manages to respond: "We have no idea what is going on, which way is safety?"
[[characters:Robert]]'s reaction is one of silence - his gaze sweeps through the landscape one more time to be sure that no immediate other threat is lingering nearby, coming out of the woodwork now that a sound had roused it, then he glances back at the two passersby and raises his left arm, sans gun, to wave them over, taking a step back through the punctured entrance of the mall.
There's something about the way he's moving and about the circumstance that inspires Keneh to trust he's not about to turn psychopath on them once they're inside. After all, if he wanted to harm them, there was no one else around right now and he could easily riddle them with bullet holes from a distance. No, everything about him had the markings of someone similarly wary of the turn of events from a little over an hour ago as they were.
Still, hesitance. Hesitance feels right in a situation that she's still not wrapped her head around. Hesitance feels right when they've just had a gun pointed at them, no matter how much it can be explained away. So it takes a moment for her to nudge herself into motion. The mall might not look like the best place to hide right now, but it's an acceptable first step - it's not outside.
Her gaze flits to Delaney as if asking for permission, but it comes to late to stop the motion. Might as well. At the very least, they'd be able to get a second opinion on what's going on, right?
It's a stranger with a gun, which is not good, but at least if they get attacked he might be able to do some damage or at least distract it while the pair of them start running. So as long as they don't get shot then hiding with another survivor (don't think of it like that, DON'T!) is a good idea.
Keneh seems to agree so her brain mustn't be completely broken yet. Gravel crunches under their feet as they skip the long way around and cross straight through the decorative verge in front of the store. It's weirdly loud. There should be so many other sounds wrapped around them and Delaney doesn't know if they've all suddenly ceased or her mind is blocking them in favour of hyperfocus on immediate threats.
They stop just slightly beyond normal polite distance, but he's an armed stranger and they're all freaked out. Which is probably a bad idea because if he turns violent they need to be able to leap onto him and snatch his arms before he can get the gun up but if things are quiet then noise is probably a bad idea and hopefully he's smart enough to realise that too.
If he's not and he shoots them... well, it sucks for them but at least the thought of karma punishing him in a blaze of lava would be satisfying. "Do you know what's happening?" Delaney asks again.
Robert's gaze scans the exterior of the building one more time - then shrugs noncommittally as he takes a moment to secure and holster the gun again. There's a moment awkwardly rendered without eye contact where it would have been appropriate, then he's glancing into the mall and stepping away from the entrance, giving them another wave. For a moment, it looks like he's not going to answer the question verbally - then he breaks the silence: "No." He sounds mildly frustrated about that, but not shattered. "Haven't seen anyone that does, either. Plenty of theories, but that's the internet for you." Evidently, what they're talking about can remain unstated - the very fact Delaney asked her question the way she did leaves little question in Robert's mind that this is about the mysterious fires and what he'd caught on camera. "I'm Robert," he adds in afterthought, half turning toward them mid-step, body language one of a casual friendliness currently trapped in red alert mode. "Night security shift," he adds, tipping one shoulder into another shrug while he leads them through the mall, their path beginning to hug to the right of the hallway.
A scared security guard. Great. Although it'd probably be worse if he wasn't scared because that suggests the sort of mental issues they really cannot afford to deal with. And he has the internet! Which means and more importantly communication. That's a nice step forward.
"Delaney," she offers in reply as they tag along after him. Okay, so if he doesn't know what is happening that suggests the authorities don't either. Not good, but not really surprising; it may feel like lots of time has elapsed but that's the adrenaline talking, it'll probably take a day or two to focus on causes rather than responses. Especially when physics is being messed with. (She still doesn't want to think about that.)
"Is the internet saying anything helpful about what people should be doing, then?" Presumably 'stay indoors' and 'avoid this area' but she'll take what they can get. And at least an area to avoid gives a direction to flee in.
Was it doing that? Not really. What **was** it saying? It was full of fragmented facts and dithered between opinions that none of it was real and that the end of the world was near. "Eh," he comments, syllable the carrier for a tone meant to convey that the two shouldn't get their hopes up. They've turned into a side-path by now and he's unlocking a door to a narrow flight of stairs, then holding it open by mostly leaning against it with his back. His lips press together, cheeks puffing out ever so slightly in subdued frustration. "Let's take a look at the data together, shall we?" he offers, tone still remarkably neutral for someone whose designated mall now had a hole in it.
Great. That meant it was probably 4 parts panic, 5 parts conspiracy theories and 1 part wrong directions. Why couldn't this have been a flood or a bushfire or a cyclone or something natural that they at least had some idea how to cope with? I mean there wasn't anything you could do to stop a natural disaster and you just had to ride it out, which on the surface seemed worse than a man-made disaster that you could shoot and be done with, but all natural disasters had plans and she really wanted a plan.
At least they got to see what the security room of a shopping center looked like? Not that she'd ever really had the urge to but she was scrambling for distractions right now. Like from the major question of 'where is everyone?' because there really should be more people. Had they all done the sensible thing and fled? Or... hang on, wasn't there some big rugby match on this week? Maybe everyone was at home watching that.
A minute later, they're in a small room where a handful of monitors is enough to register as 'plastering one wall'. There are two chairs in the room, one which has long since been re-designated as an inconveniently shaped cupboard, some books stacked up on it in nostalgic defiance of e-reader devices, with a backpack of sorts balanced on top fo the same. A laptop with a dark screen sits on the desk under the monitors. The images are cycling at a glacial pace, but even just the first swap of images reveals that at least one camera is out. Probably one of the entrance ones.
Robert absent-mindedly gestured to the empty seat, clearly not about to mediate between Delaney and Keneh as to which of them would actually get to sit down, then slung himself across his laptop, briefly fingering at the bridge of his nose with one hand while the other tips the screen from its forward-leaning angle into a back tilt, impatiently tapping at the [Ctrl] key the whole eternal second it takes the laptop to wake back up to a youtube page with a black still.
"So what- oh," he begins, cutting himself short, before gesturing past the seat and onto the ground next to the repurposed one, where a pack of soda cans sits, one corner already molested and empty, but with five cans remaining. "Feel free," he offers - some part of him briefly wondering why he was going to add insult to injury by not only letting two random strangers into this room but also offering drinks, neither of which him employers would particular enjoy - then clears his throat, spilling into a matter-of-fact toned mini-ramble. "So what would you like to see first? Local footage, internet footage? Mind, there's not much, this hasn't much woken Townsville up just yet. I'd blare a siren if I could, do the trick, let everyone deal with this with their eyes open, but-" He stops, glancing at the two of them as if in apology. "Well, see for yourselves, right?"
Sugar suddenly seemed a wonderous idea but first she wanted to be sure that she'd seen and more importantly how much her brain had made up. Delaney had never wished so much to see an over the top raygun that could be overlooked, and no she was not letting herself wonder if that was a contradiction. "We saw the state of the bridge, and someone being a meteor in a carpark and smashing shop windows," she offered. Although it was unlikely Robert had footage of that. Or that anyone did unless someone saw it on a traffic camera or something and risked their job uploading it to Youtube.
Although that meant that more stuff had been broken, if the videos weren't of what they'd seen. Nervously, Delaney took a step closer to peer at the laptop. "What else has happened?"
With Keneh's gaze lingering on the monitors and no other direct decision being made, Robert nods a little as if Delaney's question needed acknowledgement and pushed a button on the device with the most cables. A near inaudible click - probably more button than any mechanics - accompanies the motion, then he's pushing against a narrow piece of plastic. It pops out, revealing itself as an SD card. "There's this," he comments, slotting it into his laptop. "Give me a second," he comments, softly, his attention on the laptop.
A file browser with a flat list of cryptically named files pops up. A click sorts them by time. A near-inaudible 'uuh' bridges two more seconds. Then he's double-clicked on one of them, spawning a media player. Bland, night-time footage of the entrance can be seen, starting at 22:00. He checks his watch as if to be reminded of the timestamp he's looking for - it's showing 23:03, obviously not useful. Then he's skipping ahead, clicking along the time bar. "Ah, there," he comments, turning the laptop so Delaney and Keneh can see it.
The time on the video, ticking relentlessly in the corner, declares it 22:35. The view is from above and beside the entrance, looking down, catching a generous chunk of space before the mall on top of half the stretch of its front. At this point in time, someone is hiding behind a decorative shrub next to the entrance, set in some heavy, fat-bellied faux-ceramic pot. With Robert's helpful skipping, it's unclear how the anonymous figure got there, but the body language is tense.
For long, arduous seconds, nothing happens, prompting Robert to glance at the screen almost nervously, as if at this point courtesy still mattered and making his two guests wait for the event was an unforgivable sin.
Then the floor ruptures.
It's not a gradual, cinematic motion taking its time to creep around the base of the deco - the ground splinters delicately and uselessly from forces not meant for it, the anonymous figure leaps back in instinct, and in another mere second, the heavy object is invisibly lifted and tossed aside, skittering across the thick glass of the entrance before flying well out of the screen - presumably, it was still lying somewhere off to the right of the entrance when they went it, part of it splintered much like the doors.
The uncovered human's instinct evidently guides him into the other direction. A plume of fire, disconnected, cuts his attempt to flee short. Then the presumed author steps into the reach of the camera, gait neither lazy nor in haste. The soundless video reveals that the trapped man's shouting something, but obviously not what - only to cringe down as a shallow circle of fire, open only to the approaching figure, fences him in.
The approaching figure seems entirely unfazed by the display. Its gaze shifts down to its hands, where it's picking at something - a close-combat wound, perhaps, a slash from a knife, it's hard to see any details. Then the fire extinguishes and something grips the hapless human by the torso, visibly compressing his shirt against his skin, sliding his back a few inches up the wall immediately next to the entrance, just enough to deny his feet any purchase on the ground.
It takes another arduous minute of only minimal visible motion on the victim's part for the stranger to approach him, reaching up with both hands, physically grasping at his jaw with the one. The motion of the other is hard to make out in clarity from the video, but it ends with the hand clasped over his mouth. Then long seconds of nothing - and an abrupt stepping away. The human crumples, half curling in on himself. It doesn't need a soundtrack to be a harrowing, obvious sob.
The stranger offers a hand up and a few words are spoken - but the folded character's reaction understandably seeks no reconciliation. He's on his feet a moment later, trying to kick at the other, claw at him, but while his assailant is backing away, none of the motions look like they're hitting it. Then the human folds over again - and after a long moment of watching the new display, the figure, having apparently lost interest, leaves with the same neutral pace that brought it close.
It isn't real it can't be real she's not even going to //begin// listing all the laws of physics that is breaking and maybe it's time to start embracing magic and demons and the concept of 'Chaotic Evil' as a genuine measurable thing, because whatever //that// was not of this world. Or of any world she wanted to be a part of. She would really, really like to wake up now. Please? Pretty please with a cherry on top?
Explosions. Effortless control of fire. Some sort of telekinesis. Super strength. And then whatever it was the... the **thing** had done to its victim. It. She was no longer considering it human. It was inhuman and dangerous and had a grab bag of powers from horror movie halls of fame.
And some creeping part of her felt like the worst part wasn't the way it ruthlessly stalked and snared its prey. The worst part was that it //let him live// because there had to be more going on. Whatever was said or done while he was pinned to the wall, whatever could put that look of sheer desperation on his face... she didn't want to know what it was because she instinctively knew the answer was worse than she was imagining. It had to be, it was bad enough to provoke the victim into a fruitless and frantic animalistic attack against a being that could annihilate him and that spoke of desperation. Or a will to die. And she did not want to be on the same continent as beings of elemental evil that could deal fates worse than death.
There's a pain in her arms and Delaney realises she's wrapped her arms around her chest and her nails are digging in deeply enough to damage skin through her shirt. But that doesn't matter because her heart is hammering loud enough that she knows she can't hide and all her muscles are locked up and there is no thought of fight, no flight. She can't kill it. She doubts she can outrun it. Hide. Hide, freeze, play dead and hope it doesn't pay attention and wanders elsewhere. Hide and hope someone more reckless and foolhardy knows how to deal with it. Pray for a demon hunter. Except she had no idea who to pray to, she should really look into that, there were enough deities in enough pantheons that surely one of them was the patron of 'I am not here'.
"Sirens are a terrible idea, yes, I agree //so very much//," Delaney croaks at last. "And I see why the internet thinks this is a hoax, I would like to think it a hoax and if I hadn't seen that thing with my own eyes I would be because..." Her words trail off into a strangled sound. English simply does not have terms to deal with this situation.
The sheer surreality of it helped keep Keneh's reaction in check. Perhaps if the video came with sound, if the sobbing motions had come with an equally heart-wrenching emotive noise, her reaction would be quite different, but at the moment she's still dealing with the new information with a surprising outward calm. Inwardly, she's adjusting the scope of what they're dealing with upwards, but it has no shattering emotional effect. She doesn't doubt the material's veracity, not after what Delaney and her had already come across, but there's still a disconnect: This can't hurt me, it's in the laptop, not here.
On the one hand, it was a wise attitude to have - panicking was only potentially useful if the thing came directly after her. On the other, she could hardly be any more stupid - this was part of her reality now, whether she agreed with that assessment or not.
Her gaze is still fixed on the screen even after Robert closes the media player and lets his glance drift between the both of them, his lips pressed to a thin line. Her fingers fold together, beginning to rub absent-mindedly at her knuckles, keeping busy with a task that held no purpose.
Then, finally, her eyes close and she exhales, becoming aware of the tension that had built up inside her in the meanwhile. Her left hand detaches from the tangle of fingers and the first joint of her thumb rubs against her forehead in a gesture of disorientation.
"Okay," she says, nodding as she opens her eyes again, slowly. "Okay, so that happened here about an hour ago," she observes, drawing out the words, gradually convincing herself this is real. "Is this just one- one person?" she asks Robert, hazarding a guess on the answer, bracing for it.
Robert shrugs very lightly. "Probably not, unless you want to add teleportation to the list of tricks," he comments. "Youtube, ah, had three original clips that I could identify, they're from all over the city best I can tell," he explains, then lingers for a moment, visibly dithering, before turning his attention to the laptop and motioning briefly with his left hand to wait. A browser window opens and fingertips tap at the letters of ''youtube.com'' on the keyboard.
"What did he //do//, anyway?" Keneh finds herself asking, automatically, even as Robert is typing.
"Eh?"
"To the victim? Did he infect him with something?" Keneh's enquiry sounds chiefly incredulous, clearly unsure where to place the witnessed actions, not finding any other explanation off-hand to fit 'make a huge pyrotechnic fuss about getting within mauling range of someone' to 'let them live'. If it was simply about humiliation, there were other ways that seemed more plausible. But an infection didn't fit into the picture at all.
"I'd prefer to add teleportation to its list of tricks, it's doing enough other things and I'd rather there only be one to kill. One for someone that isn't us to kill," Delaney ammended. Why couldn't they have the teleportation, then they could go hide under Uluru or something.
Which still left the glaring question of what happened. "It can't have been mind control, the man attacked after. Slave drug? Horribly painful slow acting poison? Xenomorph babies?" Those were mental images she did not need, curse you brain, the potentialities of demonic reproduction were too horrifying to contemplate. "What happened to him? Did he crawl away at some point?"
By now, Robert's paused on youtube's front page, search bar half filled with his search terms, currently discarded as ''townsville parano'', cursor blinking in patient wait for his return. The theories floating around thankfully seem to bounce off him, though whether he's already simply inoculated against them by having had similar thoughts or is incredulous that it could be anything of the sort is hard to tell. "The-?" He begins a question, aborting it to touch his lower lip with the tip of his tongue briefly, then subtly gestures uncertainty. "He gathered himself into a sit a few minutes later, sat there for another two or thereabouts, then just got up and left as far as I was able to discern."
Delaney bit her lip as she thought. So it was nothing that would stop someone moving. That was good. Possibly. Maybe. Unless Keneh was right and he had been infected with a face full of alien eggs somehow and they were going to spew out of him and then wear his skin like that locust thingy from Men in Black. Because one to three of the things was bad enough, they didn't need exponentially increasing swarms daring the government to drop napalm all over the city.
Somehow she doubted that disguising themselves and trying to casually walk out of the blast range was going to work, in that sort of case.
"Explosions I can understand. Strength I can understand. But it's throwing concrete and making flame rings and mangling bridges and none of this makes any sense!" she wailed. "I mean if one of them can do that to the bridge no building is going to stop them, and if it takes several of them then we've got several running around and if we stay here the air base is probably going to drop a bomb on our head but if we go those things might catch us and I don't want to get any closer to them ever again!"
Keneh's support is fairly subtle given the options, left hand reaching over to grasp at Delaney's right, giving it a gentle squeeze and glancing at her with a gaze that forbid any sort of panicking, while a lightly bitten lower lip assures she's nonetheless understood.
Robert frowns lightly, perhaps unsure how to calm Delaney down - his own reasons for calm aren't the reassuring sort. 'It's okay, we're dead already, the details just need to catch up to this fact,' was not something to tell someone who was in obvious distress.
Instead, he goes back to his internet search, finishing the typed phrase with ''rmal'' and an enter key stroke that might as well be part of the word. Then he's scrolling with two fingers across the touchpad, looking for the more obscure ones at the end of the list first. A few seconds later, he's tabbed open three videos, only briefly switching to their tab to pause them; then he's back to the results page, giving it a final skim - perhaps looking for new entries and finding none for the time being - before closing it. Another browser window opens, ''maps.google.com'' ends up in the URL, and a moment later, he's arranged the blank map of Townsville to cover the left half of the screen and the first paused video's page - along with the hidden other two tabs - to the right of it.
Then he peers across at Delaney, wordlessly asking for permission, cursor hovering over the play button. A second later, he supplements the unspoken question with a soft, slightly halting: "We don't... need to look at this - I can keep it paused, skip to relevant stills."
Not looking sounded good. Comforting. Utterly stupid, given the circumstances. "Knowledge is power. Success comes to those who see all," she quoted and was proud that her voice was only very slightly hysterical. "We... we need a plan. And we need to predict them or it will be a very short plan, so we need to know what they can do." And maybe the plan would be better than 'attempt to outrun them' or 'hide and hope they go away'.
Keneh's hand is squeezed more tightly in return and then she's shuffling close to hug the limb in lieu of an absent plushie.
Robert's gaze lingers on her a bit past its welcome, adopting a questioning air without any change in his demeanour. "Let's verify these on the map," he nods, then. Then he's turning back to the laptop, making sure the cursor hasn't slipped, and starts the first video, body language one of caution.
This video has sound - though it's mostly the local sound of the owner of the mobile phone's fumbling. A confusing light stretched in a gradient across one corner of the slightly shivering view, only to abruptly extinguish. It took a moment for Keneh to realise it was someone inside, filming through a window, turning off a lamp. That made sense - the angle on the scene is fairly steep, from someone in a second storey apartment at the very least. A stray flame is busy dying down - there's no telling what it might have been before, another circle or arc razed into the ground, perhaps - and another human figure with an alien calm is standing above two writhing shapes. A singular shout muffled both by the distance and the glass briefly spikes through the silence.
The video zooms in a little, the waver of the image increasing, showing that nothing visible is pinning the two victims to the ground. The figure crouches, actions partly obscured by the darkness, partly by the useless, grainy image, and there's relative silence for long seconds, image held reasonably steady. Then the character's gaze swerves upwards - looking right at the camera. A flicker of flame licks at the edge of the window, extinguishing as quickly as it appears and the image jerks down and back across a soft "Shit!", then the video cuts out.
The description reads: //'Paranormal stuff in Townsville??! Prbly won't be around to answer questions, sry'//. Yes, we can see that. You got a bit busy. Thanks for being a good journalist, remembering to upload the video to youtube with a short description before succumbing to your fate... whatever that might be.
Robert drags the position marker on the video back to before the video zoomed in and pauses. A moment later, he's tapping at the screen lightly with the tip of a pen. "That'll be a view near Melrose or Cutheringa Park, I think," he postulates, then drops a streetview icon onto a road just west of the first mentioned park and takes a moment to orient the view to show that the shape of the ridge of the mountain in the video fits the one in the video quite well.
There were several long moments of silence. "I'm going to try to convince myself that the filmer made it out of there," Delaney offered at last. That was far nicer than the alternative. Clearly they taken the film, been spooked, run away, and //then// uploaded it. And weren't around because they were sensibly fleeing and didn't have wifi.
At least now they had locations and a few rough times. They could work out which direction the demons were moving and pick a path perpendicular to them. That way they wouldn't be running into them and hopefully not moving slow enough to be caught up with.
Delaney paused in those thoughts and turned to Keneh. "Um. I'm bad with geography, but isn't Melrose sort of putting them on a arc with the apex at the bridge?"
In a way, it was what Keneh would have expected a recording on youtube to look like, right down to the grim punchline. The sharp-tipped silhouette of Castle Hill was surreal in it, though - like it had been pasted in from a different reality, one where spontaneous fires had plausible sources.
Either way, this was clearly on this side of their bridge. That made it being bent out of shape much stranger - if anything could be cordoned off by mangling the bridges, it was South Townsville and the Railway Estate, not West End. So what did that mean? That it hadn't been twisted to prevent passage, but just as... what? A casual display of power? That wasn't exactly a soothing train of thought, but at least had the benefit of adding even more surreality to their current situation. More surreality was good for her psyche, it prevented these strange occurrences from reaching her emotionally for the time being, at least full force.
The motion of her head is awkwardly slow at first, but culminates in a single nod. Yes, if the mutants were travelling together and the timestamps were any indicator - ignoring the isolated case near where they'd first gotten and then left their late night groceries - then that was the... very implausible path.
Robert saves her from having to say anything about it. "Not much of a path," he comments, shaking his head slightly. "That's the incident closest to us that I can determine. The furthest is down near the river bend between Douglas and Cranbrook..." - he zooms out of the map with one hand and indicates the curve he means with his pen - "...though it could also be one further west, I'm not that familiar with the buildings over there." The pen taps at it. Then he's zooming out a little more, tracing the rough lines of Townsville with a frustrated exhale. "Nothing from the edges of town yet - but unfortunately that might as well be the time of day more than anything else."
"Okay. So, random distribution, multiple individuals, and no clear path?" Delaney clarified. She did not like that at all. Maybe that was the plan with the bridge, to ensure that any attempts to leave were going to be scattered and uncoordinated because nobody knew where the fuck they were supposed to go. Out of the city, apparently. Somehow. A car would be nice right now, even pyrokinetic demons may stagger at a tonne of high velocity metal slamming into them and the triple benefits of crumple zones, fire resistance and speed looked really good right now. From what happened to the bridge a stationary car wouldn't //stop// them but anything that slowed them down and enabled running like hell was good. Better than squishy weak flesh.
Current plan: try to work out a path, steal someone's car keys and break lots of speed limits escaping, and if anyone threw fire at them run them over should it be reasonably practical. Did it count as a plan if it was something out of Grand Theft Auto?
Plans with quite so much lawbreaking weren't comfortable but surely this was extenuating circumstances, and if she didn't try to think logically and work out what they were doing that would be worse. Because those two videos had shown that if they were found freezing was the worst possible response. The only thing to do was to run. To ignore the fire, to ignore burns and injuries, to bolt as far and fast as possible and pray to... she was going to go with Hermes, he was fast, to pray to Hermes that being awkward annoying prey was enough to make those things give up on the hunt.
"Pretty much," Robert nods, bringing up his left hand to rub at the back of his neck. The fatalistic nature of his calm is probably most apparent at that moment, with his mild grimace speaking volumes. He stares at the open tabs, wondering if they should continue with the clip verification, then shrugs one shoulder, angle of his posture practically hiding the motion and glances over to the pack of soda cans. Then he gestures across to them again, a misplaced glance of concern flitting across his expression. Then he's sliding himself down into a sit with his spine against a leg of the table. "For what it's worth, this is probably a reasonably safe fort. Not the rest of the mall, but this room in particular. I've got a car, though, and I'd be happy to give you two a ride if you want to disappear, but I can tell you now that I'm not leaving here until five. My shift ends at six. I don't know how long Townsville is going to have the privilege of electricity and internet, but I want to make the most of it. Start a wikia, perhaps; drop in links to the youtube clips, make a collaborative map, give other folks a fighting chance. Also hopefully get more information that way."
A wiki. The city was in peril and Robert wanted to stay here and write a wiki. Instead of go somewhere else and write it. Delaney couldn't object to the idea itself, but the circumstances were surreal. But maybe this was how he was keeping himself from panicking. Information was good, putting information into useful forms was also good, and if you had it you may as well share it.
"If the things are going all xenomorph on their victims giving them hours to spread might make getting out harder," she felt she had to point out. Giving them time to decide this area had been picked clean may make things safer for the time being, but they still had the issue of getting clear afterwards. "Unless someone finds out they're deathly allergic to olive oil or something, that would be really nice." If movie aliens could be allergic to water and dogs could be allergic to chocolate and mammals hated capsaicin but birds love it then that wasn't so far fetched. It was entirely possible for these creatures to have a bad reaction to something innoculous to humans.
She just didn't want to be the one dumping the assorted contents of a supermarket onto one to figure out //what//.
Still, previous plan could work. Rob had a car and that was so much easier than stealing one because she doubted Keneh knew how to hotwire something either. (Unless she'd had a much more adventurous youth than had been shared, which probably wouldn't surprise her all that much.) Sit tight, hope for news, then take a path out of Townsville with no bridges unless otherwise informed. That was workable. Delaney hugged her friend's arm tighter.
That was workable. Delaney hugged her friend's arm tighter. Now she just had to stay calmish.