PHD #353: Zombie Apocalypse
Zombie Apocalypse
Summary: Bunny and McManus share a tender moment… of killing zombies.
Date: 14 Feb 2042 AE
Related Logs: None
Players:
Evandreus McManus 
Recreation Room
This huge room spans quite a lot of floor space, the support beams crisscrossing at even points throughout the room. The two sides are divided fairly between the Enlisted and Officers with an unseen line more or less running down the center of the room. A couple pool and card tables sit in no-man's land with a series of regular mess tables at the rear of the room, nearest a counter full of minor refreshments like coffee and bags of chips. Magazines and reading material are spread out over the couched seating areas and a few televisions are set-up with a couple of video game systems made available.
Post-Holocaust Day: #353

Evandreus is just off of his half-shift volunteering in the Sickbay, dressed in his own set of dusky rose volunteer scrubs he's worn enough to have had alloted to him and had his last name, Doe, sewn on the front top pocket. Beside him on the couch is a large reinforced duffel with his flight suit in it in the off-chance he needs to jump to at the sound of a klaxon. On his lap he holds a video game controller hooked up to a game system below one of the big lounge TVs, but his head's tipped back and his mouth's just slightly open, having fallen asleep mid-game. Zombies are eating the corpse of his poor pilotless avatar. Woe.

McManus stretches as he steps into the room, yawning widely. He gives Evan a look over, then the TV, then swoops in to requisition the controller from the sleeping man, plopping down to sit beside him, poor sofa cushions groaning with the effort. A few taps of a button and the level is reset, zombies miraculously disappearing from the screen. For now.

"Gr-gmm?" Evan's closed eyes squeeze shut all the harder before they peel open again, hands moving for the controller and grasping nothing but tummy. When the world comes back into focus and the source of the earthquake that woke him turns out to be the broad-shouldered PO, "Oh. Hey," he blears, mouth drawing into a friendly smile. "Sorry, didn't mean to hog the game or anything," he squints over toward the chronometer to try to piece together how long he's been asleep.

"I'm just saving you from the zombie apocalypse, sir," McManus insists solemnly, flicking a button as it scrolls through various weapons. "You look tired, sir. Sorry to wake you."

Evandreus humms out a pitched laugh though closed lips and flared nostrils, corners of his eyes pinching in mirth in the wake of the report. "My hero," he replies. "No, it's cool. Just a lot of scrambles recently. Screwing with my sleep schedule. I swear, this fleet needs a Do Not Disturb sign."

"I'm not convinced that the cylons would be good sports about honouring that, sir, sad to say," McManus notes drily, eyes fixed on the screen as he does his best to explore an abandoned, zombie ridden town. "But by all means, it's worth a try. I just had one of you pilot chaps try to jump my bones when I was taking blood. All a bit disconcerting."

"Can't trust a cylon for anything, these days, can you," Evan drags up a fist to his mouth as his words get a little muffled with the force of a yawn. Then, brows quirking, "Really. Well. You know how we are," he chuckles. Pilots. A horny bunch. Or so goes the fable. But from his tone of voice, he doesn't sound like he actually believes it, he's just running a finger around the crystal rim of the stereotype to see what noise it makes. "For serious, though?"

"She had a head injury," McManus explains, loosing a half dozen shotgun shells towards the encroaching hordes. "They never warn you about those perils of the job when you sign up, do they? Warning, women will throw themselves at you. Really quite uncomfortable."

Evandreus' eyes drift toward the screen, attracted by the action thereon. "I think that might have been a key point on quite a number of recruitment brochures, actually," he replies. "Besides. Hard to believe you're just now getting used to having the women all up on. I mean," how to put this discreetly? "You're kinda hot." Not like that. But Bunny doesn't seem to mind, too much.

McManus just gives Evan a sidelong look at that, before firing off another few shots as a zombie appears from nowhere. He clears his throat mildly. "Ah. Um. Thank you," he responds, brows drawn as he shoots. "I'm not really here for that, though. I'd rather just do my job, hm?"

Evandreus does not sidelong back, eyes enchanted by the gameplay on the TV screen. "Hey, no, guy, I getcha. I'm just saying it's not like it's weird someone would take an interest, that's all," he tells him, reaching across his oen chest and twisting his back away from McManus for a second to unzip his bag and get out a water bottle full of Mess Hall Red.

"Well, I hope she didn't think me too rude for turning her down, then," McManus replies, jerking the controller to one side as another zombie looms. "Oh… sugar. Where's the extra ammo on this level, bud?"

"She probably wont even remember," Evan tries to assure the guy. "Head injury, right? Uh, it's back. Back. Back, and between the white house and the chain fence over there," he lifts a hand, pointing with two fingers and moving them as if tracking on a touchpad as he guides. "You have to go all the way back to the storm hatch."

McManus wrinkles his nose at that news, turning his avatar this way and that on the screen as he looks for a good route to take. "Well… fiddlesticks." A few more flicks of the controller, and he's set, lined up with a plank with a nail in it to take on any zombies in his way. "You have this problem, too? Women coming on to you, I mean, not running out of ammunition, although that's equally a problem."

"Yeah, I know," Evan murmurs in sympathy for the plight of the fellow trying to get to the ammo. "At least there's a shortcut out the back if you go to the corner of the link fence. You won't get trapped in the wire if you jump there. Doesn't help much getting in, but at least you don't have to go all that way out again. Eh," he makes a sort of non-committal noise at the other question. "Not really. I mean, I have a lot of chicks I'm friends with, but… just friends, ya know?"

McManus flicks that sidelong look to Evandreus again, nodding as he tries to beat away the zombies standing in his way. "Yes, I know what you mean. Women friends, but not… /women/ friends. Just to the left here, is it? Man, they're /everywhere/!"

"Uh-huh," comes the affirmation from the Bunny. "It just seems like a lot 'cause they're all squeezing through the narrow passage with you. you can always go in once, make a ruckus, then head out into the street again. They'll follow you and you can do your thing in the open before you go back through." Not that Evan plays this game that much, or anything. "Yah, exactly." Women friends. "We have a kind of tacit understanding. We bunkhop and cuddle and such, but… nobody tries anything."

"I want the machine gun on the next level," McManus decides, frantically tapping buttons. "You want to maybe go get a drink some time?" he suggests casually, plank with nail whirling around and decapitating zombies left right and centre. "Die! Bloody zombies! Die!"

The question is enough to draw Evan's attention back from the pass of Thermopylae writ small on the TV, just enough of a pause to let the Bunny's brain take a second to parse the spirit with which it was offered before the corners of his mouth shrug downward and his shoulders shrug upward. "Sure, okay. I can't really drink, right now, though. I mean, we're basically on 24-7 call with these spot inspections the Cylons are pulling on us. I can't really risk going up even buzzed, y'know? My SL would freaking murder me, over and above it generally being a poor plan. But I head over to Elpis third shift tonight and third shift tomorrow, doing taxi runs, so if you wanna hang out or something, I'm game."

McManus backs up into the alleyway, teeth gritting as the zombies slowly but inexorably overpower him. He exhales as the cut screen shows zombies eating his brain, offering the controller back across. "Maybe a coffee or something, then," he agrees, absently scratching at the scar on his forehead. "That'd be cool. I'll see what shifts I'm down for the next couple of days."

"Sure, guy, just lemme know, yah?" Evan goes on, taking up the controller again, his Leontinian accent drifting more pronounced. "You can call me Evan, by the way. Unless you're in my boat you don't really need to bother with the whole… sir thing." Which could be interpreted as an invitation to tell the pilot what he should call the PO in return. He starts up the level again, off and running like a man who's hit these damned streets before.

"Paul," McManus offers by way of reply, leaning an elbow on the armrest as he watches the expert play, thoughtful expression on his face.

"Paul," Evan repeats, as if tucking the information away somewhere. Then, falling silent, his tongue pokes out at the corner of his mouth, teeth biting down on it as his thumbs and forefingers work the controller with the finesse borne of the mother Familiarity and father Coordination, turning to flame down some deaders before they even show up on the screen. Maybe he just likes setting stuff on fire? But there's very little actual aggression showing in him as he kills the undead. He might just as easily be controlling a metallic ball through a maze or something equally stimulating of hand-eye coordination and perfectly bloodless. He swaps out weapons every few seconds in a manner efficient if unrealistic. Into the alleyway, then back out behind the corner, he pops off the zombies from a distance as they shamble into the open one after the other, rather than facing them in the close quarters where their number becomes an advantage as they all start chewing on you at once. And the avatar is off at a sprint back behind the house, catching up the ammo by the storm cellar and jumping the fence down to the shopping center parking lot, running through it to rack up a kill score with his flamethrower.

McManus raises both brows, impressed. He whistles through his teeth as the score keeps climbing upwards. "You've done this before, huh?" He taps his fingertips together, glancing to Evan and tilting his head. "Remind me not to upset you. Not if there's a shotgun handy, anyway."

"It's just a game. It's easy once you figure out how the monsters are programmed," Evan defers with a gentle shrug of a shoulder. "And it's not true what they say about violent video games, y'know. I don't believe in guns. Not real ones, anyhow. These ones," he swaps through a selection of guns briskly, breaking his way into the mall with a few well-placed bullets, "These ones are okay. Heh. Paradox for the ages. What man believes in fake guns but doesn't believe in real ones?" Playing on the twin connotations of belief.

"I signed up to save lives. I don't believe in using guns against people," McManus argues, "But against the cylons, I wholeheartedly approve. They're machines gone wrong, and if you hand me a shotgun and tell me it'll stop them, I'll happily go find that extra ammunition at the storm cellar and go out shooting. Figuratively speaking."

"Exactly. There was too much killing in the world even before the world became nothing but killing," Evan murmurs dimly as he peppers some storefronts and then pulls out his flamethrower again, looking considerably sedate for all the carnage on the screen, beginning to slouch comfortably on the sofa again, drifting back toward that position in which Paul had first found him. "Nothing good ever comes from using a gun. Though Cylons are a different case, of course. Like… bombs. Bombs are bad, yo? But, uh." Distracted. Wave of zombies. Wave of BUrNdeDED zombies. "I mean. You can use a bomb to detonate a building."

McManus lifts his chin. "Hey, where do you get the flamethrower from? I missed that." Slightly incongruous conversation, perhaps. "So you don't approve of guns, but you fly fighters for a living?" He tilts his head, raising an eyebrow. "How'd that happen, then?"

"Meh, it's a cheat. If you hit delta, delta, delta, delta, delta at the end of your inv roster the first time you scroll through it it'll put it on there for you," Evan explains, setting some couches in a furniture store on fire 'cause… why not? "I don't fly vipes, guy. I just drive the bus." Raptor pilot. Chauffer to the stars. Or. Marines.

McManus nods a little. "Makes sense, sure." He nudges Evan with a fist, pulling himself upright. "You go get some sleep, bud. I'll check my shifts and let you know about that coffee, okay?"

"Yah, I should probably run that sleep thing," which is why he's just sitting here burning things at random. He's not even racking up kills anymore. He's just raging on an empty mall. Though his placid demeanor doesn't shift in the least, and then he just shuts the game down with three swift taps of a button — pause, off, are you sure? Yes. He tosses the controller in the warm spot where Paul had been sitting, and looks up to him. "Sure. I live with the rest of the pilots, come on by if you feel like braving the sea of hormones," he grins. "My bunk's right by the hatch." Y'know, if he wants to leave a note or something.

"I'd be too terrified to come near, I think," McManus admits, cracking a shy smile at that. "There's bravery, then there's insanity. I'll send word when I know when I'm free, though." He touches his forehead in pseudo salute. "Night, sir."

Evandreus gives Paul a sort of uneven, chiding stare as he gets sirred at again after all the trouble he went to to acquaint the guy with his name. But turnabout is fair play, and he returns a tip of a salute. "PO," he retorts impishly.

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