After some soda, the other two videos were unspectacular when it came to granting new information. They'd pinned two new markers onto the map and shared it publicly - and Robert had found a way to add commentary to the markers, in which he pasted the associated youtube links (though he accidentally switched up two for the whole five seconds it took to realise it).
A Google search (prompted by 'Have you searched anywhere other than youtube?') for Robert's prized keywords yielded a clearly well-established joke site about conspiratorial and paranormal phenomena around Townsville, but also turned up a handful recent Twitter messages. Twitter had taken to the subject with the vanity hashtag #ashfall, which served to give Robert a name for his wikia. Apparently he didn't much care about formatting - everything went on one page, as blandly as possible for the time being, a collection of links with descriptions most often simply the title of the source.
They spent another hour calming themselves down a little, awkwardly talking about other things as if their past lives still held relevance… and then noticed one of the twitterers was, in a stroke of irony, the author behind the joke site. A curious - perhaps also hopefully sceptical - click onto the page in question revealed that the latest blog entry was entitled 'Something unexpectedly serious for a change', lamenting that the site was probably the worst place to put it, but he didn't maintain a different one, linking to the youtube videos and explaining that it was, as far as he could tell, real. The blog entry was being actively expanded, although chiefly with observations they'd already made on their own. The activity was enough for Robert to link to the wiki in the comments, suggesting collecting information there.
From there it was less than half an hour until Robert and 'Ethan Z' (Ethan did not like giving out his last name) had opened a Hangout. Ethan was blogging and tweeting from mobile, moving through the city at the moment, trying to chart out some of the damage. In the solitude past midnight, he enjoyed the virtual company - he'd already explicitly thanked them for providing some much needed emotional support just by being alive, and suggested they read his 'Zombie Survival Guide', including applicable paragraphs about how to stay mostly invisible while on foot, how to pack if a return to one's safehouse was not promised by fate, how to pick safehouses… matters he hadn't thought he'd ever need to take seriously, much as he'd nerded out getting them right, but was now following meticulously.
At the moment he was travelling up Castle Hill with binoculars to see if he could estimate the relative density of the problem in the various suburbs by signs of fire by charting the city from the highest point, and things were fairly calm.
The Hangout popped up with Ethan Z: got any theories?. They'd only exchanged facts so far - nothing about what might have caused this, what the mutants hoped to achieve. It was Delaney's turn with the laptop at the moment. Robert had encouraged both of them to treat it as if it were their own, given his concern for the information infrastructure. Who knew when they'd lose contact? No point being territorial about it.
Delaney finally understood the phrase 'crawling up the walls'. Tiredness, anxiety, fear, doubt and the urge to do something were a volatile mixture and attempting to go Spiderman on the bricks was starting to seem reasonable. It wasn't as if anyone ELSE was obeying the laws of physics. Why should she have to?
Instead she was sitting here playing at being that annoying voice in RTS that calls out map positions and provides canned responses and helps move the plot along and warns 'enemy unit sighted!' whenever something went ping. Which was better than being Ethan and out there in person, but she'd always thought people that had full scale zombie survival plans were crazy.
And no, this situation was not changing her opinion of that. Zombies did not have telekinesis, pyrokinesis, the ability to crush steel or the foresight to capture people for non-edible purposes. Ergo any plan based purely on zombies was not going to work, and it was sheer luck that Ethan's schemes were more broadly apocalyptic-survival in nature.
Which was also unfair. If they were stuck in a post-Apocalypse situation surely they were supposed to know what the Apocalypse was.
Multiple, and they all sound like Hollywood. Xenomorph wearing human skin is winning she tapped back under Robert's Hangout name. Which was admittedly unhelpful, but how could you apply logic to something that was gleefully breaking science left right and centre?
Ethan continues: ok! I got nothing better, would guess government project gone wrong but as much as my opinion of them is not very high this seems like more of a fuck-up than even they would manage.
Robert and Keneh meanwhile are sat with their backs against the wall, watching the security cameras continue to stream unfettered images of the dishearteningly boring exterior and interior views of the mall. On the one hand, it was a welcome assurance that they had more than a few minutes left. On the other hand, if it weren't for Ethan, they'd feel like idiots for staying here when there was clearly nothing terrible going on any more. They're both enjoying a can of soda, each, but it's Robert that looks more refreshed. Likely he'll have no problem outlasting either of them. No surprise, he probably slept during the day.
Ethan comments: what I don't get – why is there no clear epicentre? short of 'townsville as a whole' which doesn't count
Government project hadn't actually occurred to her as a theory. It probably should have but that would require compentence she wasn't entirely sure they possessed, or offloading it to the CSIRO who definitely knew better and understood how containment worked. Or at least she hoped they did. If it was government Abbott would be boasting about miraculously breaking science and blaming townsville for panicking she typed while rolling her eyes.
Ethan had a good point though. If this was 'something from space' there should be a crater somewhere, and she wasn't sure that carpark fiery skid mark counted. Didn't re-entry cause a sonic boom? Because that hadn't happened.
Could the epicenter be something non-obvious? A device they can't get too far from? Throwing random ideas., or some sort of latent incubation period that gives them time to scatter and now they're looking for something.
It takes a minute for Ethan to start typing again, judging by the Hangouts activity indicator. incubation period? what kind of disease gives you super powers? Then: I mean.. could be I guess?
It took a moment for her to reread the conversation and realise what Ethan was getting at. I wasn't thinking disease, more parasite. Like that fungus that enslaves ant. Sorry, biologist here, Delaney responded apologetically. Doens't explain where it might have come from or how to stop it if that's the case.
A disease would be nicer than a parasite. A disease could be cured, a parasite had to be killed and extracted, possibly not in that order. And sometimes actively killed its host. And now her thought were going incredibly dark places again, so she took a sip of soda and ordered the sugar to make them go away.
Maybe if he'd been less enamoured with the weirder side of life before Townsville's 'ashfall', the reference to Ophiocordyceps unilateralis might have left him confused - but unsurprisingly, someone who'd written a Zombie Survival Guide didn't miss a beat.
Ethan Z: invasion of the body snatchers! :) I can get behind that.
Judging by the emoticon, Ethan's approach was to somehow amuse himself over this phenomenon from afar for as long as circumstances permitted. Maybe that was a sensible tactic for staying sane. On the other hand… he was out there by his own free will, sanity might not necessarily be a trait of his even now.
Then there's silence for a while from Ethan's side, Hangouts ignored in favour of pictures taken, their collaborative map updating with a few markers for fire. Ethan had cursed the latest version of Google Maps earlier, complaining that he'd spent a subjective eternity trying to find out how to change the marker image, and how it used to be easier just a few months ago, but now they had a fun little animated fire sprite they could use for their purposes.
North Ward was free of markers so far, as was anything north of it along the coast, potentially charting a way out of the city without high risk of detection - but since the city was a fairly thin sliver along that edge, anyway, it was hard to say whether or not the lack of any visible issues with it was a reliable gauge.
Ethan Z: not much of a view in the middle of the night from up here. :P
A video stream was offered. By the time it was accepted, the view was of a few too regular lights scrolling sideways steadily, punctured by two thin, flickering wounds. The starlight was practically invisible. Ethan's mobile phone did not have particularly quality video recording. His voice snuck in a calm, narrative (albeit badly compressed) comment: “Guessing you can't see the smoke on the feed; there are some less obvious fires, too. Took me a while to make them out.” The camera pans a little longer, then jitters in the tell-tale motion of its quest deemed completed, records the floor for a split second, then turns off. A moment later, he's back in Hangouts. Ethan Z: sitting down for a while. you guys still OK?
At least it had been wet enough lately that those fires weren't going to take out the entire city. Although personally she'd have felt a whole lot better if those fires were accompanied by red trucks and hoses and disaster-trained people trying to put them out. The fact they were burning unmolested was, to her mind, the most post-apocalyptic part of the entire bizarre night. Human-shaped entities with comic book powers was something her mind was still trying to shy away from, but 'lone terrorist run amok wrecking stuff' she could cope with. Not having a swarm of lights and sirens swarming after said lone terrorist? That did not compute. That was their JOB. And even if the bigwigs in government ordered them to abandon city Delaney thought that surely at least some of the police and fire fighters and general emergency services would be experiencing convenient radio trouble and charging in to defend their home.
If we had cards, poker would be breaking out she responded with a glance at the other two. Not only were they stuck in a bad disaster movie (if it was a good one they'd know what was happening, if it was a horror movie the cameras would see more screaming extras) but the magic 'make cards appear' effect was failing. What was next, a lack of harmonicas in the local lockup?
That would be noise, though, and everything about the city was far too quiet. Are we sure the majority of Townsville hasn't been Raptured, abducted or turned into fluffy pillows?
Ethan responded with nah, not sure. Then: but I'd wait till the morning before worrying about that.
Robert's caught Delaney's gaze, craning his neck a little for a view of the laptop screen sufficient to read the chat. Keneh and him had seen the video feed, of course, and heard the brief narrative, but the chat was mostly invisible to them for the time being. “Need any help?” he asks, tone accommodating but largely neutral, not having managed to interpret her glance, but not currently concerned.
She was playing mission control for a zombicide enthusiast that was applying book and game knowledge to real life in order to hunt slash avoid deadly mutants while debating missing firies. So yes, Delaney thought she probably did need help. Just of the professional nature. Because if she wasn't in some inexplicable psychotic episode she was in an equally inexplicable disaster and was probably going to get diagnosed with some sort of PTSD.
None of which came out her mouth, even if her lips quirked at the thoughts dashing through her brain. “I'm fine,” Delaney said instead. “We're just wondering why all Townsville's emergency services seem to have vanished, the fires seem to be spreading unhindered.”
Robert seems to contemplate this. “…maybe no one's called for their help?” he offers after an awkward pause. “Otherwise preoccupied?” Of course, the latter part of that potential answer is a transparent attempt not to fall back to their worst case theory - after all, if what he'd caught on SD card was any indication, people don't seem to be dying and could rise to their feet and walk of their own supposed volition after the surreal attack on them. To assume all of them would still be 'otherwise preoccupied' afterward required stretching suspension of disbelief a bit thin. At the very least, ambulances ought to be involved, but Robert couldn't remember hearing any sirens.
“I think someone in the store we were in called triple zero?” Delaney offered uncertainly, glancing to Keneh for help. She had memories of a person and a phone, at least, but given everything that happened she wasn't sure how reliable that was. False memories were too easy to conjure. And her making that statement had probably compromised Keneh's memory too, damnit.
Still, the footage of the creatures had shown them attacking swiftly but approaching their victims at a leisurely pace. Someone was bound to have called the cops. So they knew. If it weren't for the fact they had power and the street lights were still on she'd be suspecting some sort of EMP effect that was crippling vehicles.
No, breaking the bridge did not count.
“I'm worried they've been told to stay back,” Delaney admitted. “If someone has called in the army they probably don't want potential collateral casualties, or whatever friendly fire gets called these days.”
Keneh hadn't paid attention enough to shoot Delaney anything other than a mildly helpless and confused look in response to the implicit question.
Robert took a while to parse Delaney's comment. “You still think they'll throw bombshells?” he asks, cautiously. It wasn't something he was willing to outright dismiss, but it seemed improbable to him, and as long as that was true he saw no reason to fret about it, himself. But if Delaney was seeing mounting evidence for that, he was more than willing to listen.
Ethan was busy writing some commentary attached to the fresh markers on their collaborative map, some notes on the fuzziness of the location and the nature of the sighting, his lack of apostrophes and other typing laziness while on mobile still mostly caught by the system's autocorrection. Then, invisible to the crew of three in Robert's proverbial cubicle, he transitioned to checking Twitter for new messages and video links, answering a few questions, chiefly from foreigners.
The biologist pondered. “I don't think they'd start off with bombing the city, but you know those not quite tank armoured assault vehicles? I could see them loading some of those up with shock troops to take a closer look. Something fire and blast-proof that is capable of running the things over.”
That seemed more reasonable - and less prone to collateral damage even if other people weren't told to stay away. In some way casually reassured, Robert nods in acknowledgement, the motion slow, then settles back into his casual sit. At least the tense fear of before had dissipated by now. The situation was clearly still grim, but at least they'd sunk their panic in their fizzy drinks in the meanwhile. This was probably the closest to relaxation that they were going to get for a long time yet.