World of Darkness World of Darkness: Attrition - New Dead On Campus [Fin]

[Sarah Dead-Wolf]

[around 12:30am, 1 Aug 2008]

"Deadsville. Fuck."

This wasn't Sarah's first visit to the UCLA campus. Back in the brief happier days of her brief unhappy life, she had taken a train down the coast from UCSF to attend a seminar at the Young Research Library. It was an eerie feeling to stalk past it at night, with both the library and the huge sculpture garden in front of it devoid of the usual throngs of students and faculty.

And therein lay the problem. Her tip had been to find the local werewolves in the vicinity of the campus. But with classes still weeks away, the campus was effectively a graveyard. And that was a severe limiter... not only for the hopeful contact, but for the little matter of food.

With a sigh, she made her way up to one of the big campus maps. The original plan had been to go hit one of the residence halls on the far side of Marshall Field. With the usual tangle of students, it was far from impossible to blend in long enough to raid a laundry room for something a little more appropriate to a college environment, to grab a quick bite in some darkened corner (or some cute guy's room), and then find a maintenance room in the basement for safety from the blazing sun.

But now, she realized, that plan was moot for at least the next couple of weeks. The dorms would be empty at best, locked at worst. In fact, the campus as a whole would be a danger zone; nearly deserted at night, she would stick out like a sore thumb to the security details that trolled the place in the deathly boredom of summer.

As she considered her options, she continued gazing at the map, hoping for inspiration. Her eyes came to rest on a faded sticker that had all but become part of the surface on the right side of the map, damaged by countless scrubbings but still faintly legible. Just outside the bounds of the campus itself, across Hilgard Avenue, the nigh-ancient marker denoted "Greek Row".

"Hmmm... now that might actually work...." Sarah had never joined a sorority during her brief collegiate career, but the closest thing she had to a friend at UCSF had been in Delta Sigma Beta. Among Kari's many stories had been talk of the massive pre-semester bash that had been held by one of the fraternities, before she had transferred up from L.A. She'd answered Sarah's confused look by explaining that many of the sororities and fraternities started showing up at their respective houses weeks before classes actually kicked off. Ostensibly, it was to prepare for the many Greek-sponsored activities during the first month of the fall semester. In practice, it often turned into a rolling party.

Smiling, Sarah muttered, "let's hope they haven't changed traditions," and headed off east toward Greek Row.

[Sarah Dead-Wolf]

Sure enough, whereas the campus was as dead as a golf course in a snowstorm, Greek Row showed definite signs of life. Sarah set about her first order of business for the night. Careful to stick to the shadows, she managed to sneak unseen between two of the massive frat houses; once in back, the search could begin in earnest.

Lesson in survival #38: you can tell if someone is doing laundry without ever going into their house.

Going from house to house - and avoiding those with college kids in various states of inebriation lounging on decks or patios - she hunted until she found her prey. Only when she was absolutely certain that the coast was clear did she close on the target: an active dryer vent, piped through a single boarded pane of a basement window. Hoping for the kind of lax security she remembered from her own college days, Sarah began moving from window to window.

The first, sadly, proved to be locked, as did the second, and she grumbled as she made her way on. But sight of the third held promise; the latch was obviously left open. Grinning, she crept up close, gave the glass a gentle shove...

...and cringed as it fell out of the broken frame, shattering on the basement floor. Freezing, she dared hope for a moment that the kids in the house would be too drunk, uncaring or both to notice. No such luck; after a few seconds, the basement light snapped on, and footsteps could clearly be heard pounding down wooden stairs. With the gig very obviously up, Sarah did the smart thing: she cut and ran as fast as undead muscles would move her, out of the yard and past the next two before slowing down.

There was a time when her heart would have been racing after the near miss and dash for safety. That time was over three years gone; now, there was only deathly silence as she gathered herself, sighed, and moved on until she found another active basement laundry vent.

This time, luck was on her side. The window that had been modified for the vent did so at the cost of it's lock; carefully swinging it open, the vampire slipped through and dropped lightly to the cellar floor.

Sarah had to pause for a moment until her eyes, even with the uncanny night vision of the undead, adjusted to the blackness of the basement. Gradually, shapes began looming out of the darkness... and she realized she'd hit the jackpot. Not only was there a dryer chugging away with a solid half-hour still on the timer and mounds of clothes beside it, but there in the corner stood an honest-to-Luna shower stall! In sheer joy, Sarah stripped down, chucking her tattered clothing in a pile beside the washing machine, turned the shower on full-hot, and stepped into the stream.

It was a luxury that she could seldom afford... and then, only in stolen moments. But there, in the unbelievable bliss of a hot shower, Sarah felt her dead body begin to warm without burning precious vitae to do it. She wasted an entire two minutes just enjoying the sensation before reaching for some of the dozen or so bottles of soap and shampoo and setting about the task of making herself look and smell something resembling human.

The job wasn't an easy one. She had caked blood and dirt and gods-only-know-what lodged in places she barely knew she had. Every pore of her lifeless skin was clogged with the stuff. She almost wore out a loufa in the process. But after fifteen long, long minutes, what emerged from the shower was rosy skinned and clean as a whistle.

Now of course came the moment of truth. Shaking what water she could free, she stepped lightly across the cool floor - which immediately began stealing back her stolen warmth - and opened the dryer. What she saw couldn't have made Sarah any happier if it was a pile of hundred dollar bills.

First, she pulled out the fresh, warm towel and dried herself off. Then a pair of soft crew-cut socks that went straight onto her cooling feet. Then the faded Levi's that, despite being men's, fit her like a very naughty glove. Then the UCLA Athletics Dept. T-shirt. And finally, as the piece d'resistance, the oh-so lovely Arizona Trading Company denim jacket.

Her boots were still in fairly good shape; she gave them a good wiping down in the deep sink, then threw the rag, the towel, and what remained of her old clothes into the washer, started it up on the longest cycle available with nearly half a bottle of bleach, and slipped out the way she had come in, back into the night. No longer did she appear to be a ragged homeless woman who had been dragged by a bus over a country mile of bad road; now, to any casual observer, she did exactly what a vampire needed to do: she belonged.

[Sarah Dead-Wolf]

When someone looks like a duck, smells like a duck and quacks like a duck, only the most paranoid will think of them as anything other than a duck. It doesn't really matter if the underlying truth is something very much different. And it was this simple psychological fact that Sarah used to her advantage as she strolled along Greek Row.

Getting her fill that first night was as easy as pie. (1) Find drunk horny frat boy. (2) Take drunk horny frat boy into the bushes. (3) Give drunk horny frat boy the Kiss... and be oh-so careful to take only a little bit. (4) Wash, rinse, repeat as necessary. The net result was a small handful of slightly-lightheaded beacons of our future, and one very pleased vampire with a slight buzz.

The buzz was almost enough for her to miss the sign. Almost.

Most people would have never noticed the big tree at the corner of Wyton and Hilgard. Rather, most wouldn't have noticed the spot where it seemed like a very large cat had decided to use the thing as a scratching post. Indeed, it was only dumb luck that Sarah happened to spot it. It wasn't something intended for her to notice.

But in the past three years, she had spent time around just the sort of creature that made just that sort of mark. On a couple of occasions, she actually watched one being made. And one very special night about a year and a half earlier, a very tolerant individual took her to a tree not unlike this one and showed her exactly what the mark meant. The lesson had required several nights of hunting to fully heal up from, but it had been worth every painful moment.

Whatever the literal translation may have been, Sarah knew with painful memory that the mark meant that this was someone's territory, and that she was not welcome there. Taking a couple cautious steps back, she began to look around for similar marks. And knowing what to look for, she found them. With mixed excitement and trepidation, she began to trace the bounds.

A mere hour before sunrise, she was back at the big tree, muttering under her breath. "They said the pack was near UCLA; they didn't say they'd taken the whole fucking thing as theirs!" If her eyes were worth a damn and her memory solid, every square inch of the campus was claimed - lock, stock and library - by whomever had made these marks. Every last square foot... plus this one modest house, one of the few along this stretch of Hilgard that wasn't sporting Greek letters over the porch. The point was pretty obvious; the pack, or at least one member thereof, lived here. But she was more than a bit worried about violating his or her territory to go knock on the front door... and sure as hell wasn't going to do so with the eastern sky starting to move past the false dawn toward the real thing.

But at least now, she knew where to look.

Skulking off around the back, she jogged about a block's worth of backyards south, found a good spot behind a garden shed, and sank into the protective arms of Gaia once more.