Aberrant: Dead Rising - Vesication [Complete]

[Amarant]

It was the middle of the night, and an unwholesome darkness blanketed the small Oklahoma town like the greasy ashes of a funeral pyre, making the once-welcoming homes and quaint shopping centers that sprawled across the low, flat landscape look more like the bones of some great, dead beast now largely decayed. The faded, peeling paint on the houses, the rotting picket fences, and the formerly well-ordered front lawns that were rapidly being overrun by weeds and small, burrowing, disease-carrying rodents were all that was left to give evidence of the town’s former life, draped across it like the stretched and sagging skin of a bloated corpse. Boarded up windows and blocked doorways, police barricades still in place and, here and there, the charred remains of burned-down houses and stores: these were like scars on a dead man, giving evidence of the long, hard battle for life that had been fought, and lost, in this place. Yawning doorways and shattered windows gave vent to a blackness within that seemed to conceal another, deeper darkness behind and beneath it. A blackness that glistened darkly, like dried and hardened scabs of infected arterial blood, providing a glimpse of the unholy infestation that still thrived in the deepest recesses of this corpse-town. Here and there, the infection staggered openly through the streets, in the form of the walking dead.

,,

Tonight, however, the town known as Lawton was host to something new. A hidden presence that passed through its streets undetected, moving like a shadow at midnight in search of undead prey, until finally this unseen presence had arrived at its intended destination, where it now waited with mantic patience, as motionless as a dead man’s heart.

,,

Like all diseased beasts, Lawton’s infection was worse – was more deeply rooted – in some areas than it was in others. And one of the most deeply rooted areas of infection was located at the town’s north end, a mile or so past the Lawton Indian Hospital, in the basement of Fort Sill’s armory. The rotten malignancy within this pit was so thick and all-pervasive a kind of unseemly condensation had taken place there; cancerous drops of insalubrious evil slowly beading up on every available surface only to drip and drop and trickle as the vile fluid sought out the basement’s lowest level, eventually forming into a pestilential pool of liquid that seemed to be made up of equal parts misery, death, and battery acid. A miasma of despair and passionless malice drifted languidly over the surface of this inky pool like a fog bank across the Acheron, and within its waters swam lost and damned souls, whose bodies had been warped and twisted beyond all recognition.

,,

It was a place that was antithetical to life, within which there was no perch for fluttering Hope, and where a heart’s Courage could find no sure footing. It was, in short, a little outpost of Hell, jutting unwelcomed into the world of men.

,,

Day in and day out, and all night long as well, the monstrous denizens of this pit lurched and swam through the gathered tears of their own desolation that oozed from them incessantly in hideous fashion. Their moans of hunger and hate and despair had been the only sound, apart from the slick, pulpy murmurings of the tarry waters that surrounded them for so long that the sudden, loud clacking that erupted from the basement’s darkest corner carried all of the sonic impact of multiple gunshots.

Each of the so-called ‘tar-babies’ immediately ceased their moaning and thrashing, and turned towards where the sound had originated from. As much as such mindless, aberrant creatures could be, they were confused. They could hear sounds, which often meant food, but there was nothing there to have caused the sounds, only the same dark and empty corner that had always been there. The clacking sound erupted over the basement cesspool again, only this time from a different corner. Again, there was nothing there. Like all of the undead, these monstrosities had no knowledge of fear, but somewhere at the back of what passed for their minds a sensation was developing that might have been described as ‘uncertainty’. Something was different. Something was wrong.

Had a living human been there at that moment, they would have known what was wrong immediately, and would likely have been screaming their lungs out over it. What was wrong was the thing that loomed over the undead pit-dwellers as they investigated the empty corner from which the clacking had seemed to emanate, huge and glistening and lethal and strangely unnoticed. But there were no living humans there, and even if there had been, it would have done no good as their screaming would only have incited the tar-babies into a feeding frenzy.

The unremarked nightmare behind them lowered itself silently, and with surprising softness, down from the ceiling from which it had been hanging. Nonetheless, its bulk caused the level of the tarry liquid pool to shift and ripple, and one of the tar-babies turned in the direction of the movement. The zombie gazed unseeing at a segmented, many-limbed monstrosity that stared right back with a multitude of lidless, unblinking eyes blacker than the darkness that enveloped the basement. For several seconds, they stayed like that, unmoving, one nursing a mindless hunger and the other harboring a cold murderous will. Then: a sudden motion; so quick and silent as to be almost unnoticeable, and so subtle that not so much as a ripple could be felt in the brackish waters around them. The tar-baby’s head exploded, spattering its fellows with gore, and the headless body toppled into the water noisily and messily and stirring up quite a few ripples and wavelets in the process. The other two tar-babies instinctively began to turn at the noise and motion, hoping mindlessly to discover that something they could eat had caused it, but before their turns were more than half-completed everything from their necks on up disintegrated in a cloud of red mist and grey matter.

Two more bodies toppled into the water, and the splashing and rippling it caused utterly masked the soft sloshing sounds of the creature’s departure as it lifted its massive form out of the pit and vanished into the darkness. In the pit below the armory, silence reigned, and death hung like a shroud over everything.

All zombies have one glaring weakness, which the hideous predator leaving behind the scene of its latest kills had long since learned to take advantage of: they disregarded anything that did not register as being alive. Even sounds, to which they were instinctively attracted, only merited notice because they were so often caused by the living.

So while the normal senses of the tar-babies had detected the arrival of the nightmarish creature that had stalked and killed them in the same way they had stalked so many of the living, they had mindlessly ignored it because nowhere in its towering frame had there been even the faintest glow of the life that they so craved.

As he continued his circuit of hell, Walker considered this irony as he had so many times before. For him, zombies were the hunted, not the hunters, and they fell to him easily and without struggle. Unlike any of the other so-called 'supers' that he had met or heard about since the onset of the Z-plague, Walker's mutations hadn't turned him into someone better able to survive a zombie-apocalypse, they'd made him into a predator perfectly suited for hunting the walking dead carriers of the plague itself.

It was because of this that he was here alone, in Lawton - a town where more 'super-zombs' had been encountered than anywhere else - in the middle of the night. Fox's Refuge paid him to be a scout and a protector of the Refuge. So he would scout this town, and he would protect the Refuge by scouring this town clean of any and all unnatural undead activity he came across. He intended to be back at the Refuge before noon the following day, and he had not told anyone of his coming here. Nor would he, unless his scouting revealed any stashes of weapons or supplies worth coming back for.

The people at the Refuge paid him to keep them safe. That did not mean they needed or wanted to know of all the horrors he kept them safe from.

[Amarant]

Having come to Lawton for more than just killing zombies, Walker made the Lawton Indian Hospital his next stop. It was a perfect place to scout, and it was only a very short distance from Fort Sill – in fact, he’d already passed it on his way to the armory, and needed only to retrace his steps to return there – and it was a full-fledged hospital. Chances were it had been raided at some point or another for basic supplies, at least, but there was always a chance that the sorts of supplies that would be useful to a place like the refuge – hospital gurneys, clean bandages still in their sealed packages, threading, syringes, sterile gloves, and who knew what else – would still be there. Walker figured it was at least worth checking out.

As Walker approached the Hospital’s entrance he reverted back to his ‘normal’ appearance, and dropped his cloak of lifelessness. He didn’t expect to run into any real trouble within, and even if he did encounter any deaders inside, he fully expected to be able to handle them without much trouble. Trying to search the sometimes-cramped halls and rooms of a hospital at his full size would be difficult and tedious, and doing it all while maintaining his lifeless mask would be draining.

Walker pulled a flashlight out of his pack as he crossed the threshold of the hospital’s main entrance but didn’t turn it on. He didn’t need its light to navigate with, as he could ‘see’ just fine using his ability to detect even the subtlest of currents in the air, but he would need the light to examine any potentially salvageable materials – his ‘wind sight’ only told him that something was there, not what it actually looked like or what kind of condition it was in.

Walker’s first point of exploration was the hospital’s pharmacy, which was easy enough to locate. As expected, it had been largely cleaned out; either during the initial panic when the Z-plague was first setting in, or by raiders and scavengers afterwards. Still, there was a fair collection of drugs and medication tucked away in the various drawers and cabinets. Unfortunately, Walker didn’t recognize most of the names, so he had no idea what they might be for or if they would be at all useful to the Refuge. He’d have to mention this place to Singh and Shattuck though, just in case.

After he’d finished with the pharmacy, Walker began a systematic search of the rest of the hospital’s first and second floors, though he became increasingly aware of the fact that he didn’t really know what he was looking for as he went along. He did find some of the clean bandages and sterile gloves and so forth, and he even stumbled on an impressive stash of hospital blankets and other bedding material that was still clean (if a touch dusty), and he knew all of it could likely be put to use somewhere at the Refuge. But he also came across a large number of things that he simply wasn’t qualified to decide on the usefulness of. For instance, the x-ray department was still largely intact, including all of the machines used in that department, but Walker realized he had absolutely no idea how important that was or if it even mattered. Given all of the talent and resources at the Refuge, it was almost certain that some of the equipment he uncovered could be salvaged, and power restored to it – but did they actually need any of it? Walker couldn’t tell.

One thing Walker could tell however, was that a lot of people had died here. The smell of old death filled the entire facility, and the emergency ward had practically been repainted and the floors refinished with dried blood and other, less savory and identifiable materials. He encountered several zombies, shambling and stumbling about in various dark corners and locked rooms, all of whom he dispatched silently and quickly with a quick slice or jab of his combat swords.

,,

The last place that Walker reconnoitered was the morgue – and for obvious reasons. The others at the Refuge might view Walker as something almost inhuman, a creature with no heart and no feelings that was immune to the horrors that surrounded them all every day but this simply wasn’t the case. Walker knew that whatever he found in the morgue, it probably wouldn’t be good, it would almost certainly be messy, and would likely take years to forget. But that was just about par for the course in the world today, such as it was.

The morgue was down in the hospital’s basement, which Walker didn’t like, as it seriously limited his available escape routes, but that really couldn’t be helped. The morgue’s receiving error was a mess, but was clear of any real unpleasantness. The morgue’s processing room (or maybe it was just ‘the morgue’ – Walker wasn’t really clear on his hospital-terminology), on the other hand, was an absolute nightmare of rotting, half-eaten, entirely eaten, and still-walking corpses, along with a healthy portion of dried guts and orphaned limbs scattered here and there about the once clinically-clean room in a way that made them seem both lost and strangely out of context with their surroundings. Walker didn’t really have time to take in such details though, because he was too preoccupied with the rotting corpses that were still walking around – of which there was an alarmingly large number, even for such a spacious room.

Walker quickly backed out of the room and shut off his flashlight, even as the first few zombies took notice of him and began shambling in his direction. He slammed the heavy, reinforced double-doors and thought about trying to reinforce them before it clicked in his brain that they had opened inwards – towards the room full of zombies he’d just closed them on. Walker backed away from the doors deliberately and stared at them fixedly. It looked like he was about to find out just how uselessly stupid the Zed-heads really were, because all that stood between him and all of them were a pair of unlocked doors.

The first thud came within a few seconds of his shutting the door, quickly followed by one, then two, then three, then a whole bunch of other thuds and thumps. So yes: zombies really were so utterly stupid that an unlocked door was all it took to stop them.

Walker filed this information away for later use.

Unfortunately, the doors being shut didn’t stop them from beating their fists against them repeatedly, and because of the sheer number of them it quickly became apparent to Walker that the doors were not going to hold forever – maybe not even all that long, actually. Time to go.

He turned abruptly, in his inhumanly smooth way, and walked around the receiving area’s counter and then out the door and into the hallway that would take him back to the stairs and out of this place. Walker hadn’t yet closed the receiving area’s door behind him when he froze in his tracks, going as still as a statue. There was something at the other end of the hallway, at the foot of the stairs. It appeared that someone, or something, had been following him without his ever being aware of it. Walker found this troubling. Whoever it was, they were standing as motionless as he was at the other end of the hall, but Walker could still make the figure out well enough to know there was something… wrong about the way they were displacing the air around them.

His neck twisted unnaturally in the pitch blackness as his head rotated away from the door to the morgue so that he was facing his pursuer. At the same time, he silently pulled his flashlight out again and aimed it towards the end of the hall. He hesitated for only a moment, and then his finger depressed the Maglite’s switch. Walker remained perfectly motionless in the face of what he saw waiting for him at the other end of the hall, but he couldn’t quite keep his nostrils from flaring in alarm, which for Walker was quite the show of emotion. But then his pursuer was quite the monstrosity.

Her face was striking and lovely, even in the harsh lighting given off by the Maglite, and an ever so slight smile touched her lips as she stared unblinking at Walker in a way that creeped him out in exactly the same way that his own stare creeped out everyone else. Below her neck however, her body quickly shriveled away into a ruin of emaciation and blackened rot, leaving Walker no doubt as to whether she was one of the undead or not. Her legs – stick thin and fearfully jagged in shape – were unnatural in form, with too many joints below the knees, and what appeared to be a cross between hooves and bony talons where her feet should have been. And there was something strange about her hair, which seemed to erupt from her scalp like an angry thunderstorm into the darkness behind her head, but Walker was having trouble making it all out because his flashlight was aimed too low.

He raised it slowly and cautiously towards the zombie’s face, which was still smiling beatifically at him. Just as the core beam of the light struck the creature’s chin, Walker realized what was wrong with her hair: it wasn’t hair at all. Sprouting a few inches above her eyes and continuing over and back down her skull were a series of thick, gnarly horn-like antlers. As the light hit them, her antlers almost seemed to be quivering slightly, but Walker’s attention was pulled away from this bizarre sight by what was happening below them. As soon as the flashlight’s core beam struck the super-zomb’s face, her expression rapidly transformed. Her blank, milky-white eyes widened unsettlingly with an expression that was equal parts absolute horror and pure murderous animosity, while her smiling lips drew back, bearing jagged and rotting teeth as her mouth opened wider and wider, and wider still, and a terrible scream issued forth from her throat that Walker would remember for the rest of his life. It was a scream that was filled to bursting with fear, hate, and self-loathing, but what made it so truly terrible, and what burned it so completely into Walker’s memory, was how clearly it conveyed its owner’s all-consuming hatred for him, and her absolute need to drag him into hell with her.

As her unearthly scream reached its loudest point a swirling blackness erupted from her mouth, exploding rapidly into a huge buzzing cloud that filled the tight confines of the hallway and careened down the hall at Walker with astonishing speed, scattering and drowning out the beam of his flashlight as it came. As the cloud hit him, Walker felt a thousand tiny impacts, and realized that the cloud was comprised entirely of black flies (or something less natural, but just as repulsive), all of them swirling around and past him as they rushed to fill the hall from one end to the other. He realized that their mass and movements would mask the super-zomb from his wind sight as well as it would from his normal sight just before she lunged at him from out of the greasy black cloud of flies, her eyes and mouth still opened unnaturally wide with fear and hate.

Walker leapt away from the morgue's door just in time, the horned woman's jagged, bony fingers missing his torso by mere millimeters, and landed partway up the opposite wall facing outward with his hands and feet placed flat against the vertical surface. Like Spiderman, Walker's hands and feet clung to the smooth wall, and he backed up it quickly with an unnatural, jittery smoothness. When he reached the ceiling, he twisted himself around so that he was more properly 'crawling' along the ceiling, and disappeared back through the morgue's door, dropping back to the floor with feather-light softness about halfway in. He dropped the Maglite so that it rolled to a stop with the beam facing directly at the hall door and kept heading deeper into the receiving area.

Back in the morgue-proper, the press of zombies trapped on the other side of the unlocked double-doors were suddenly sent hurtling in every direction as both doors were kicked off their hinges as though by an angry elephant. Walker stalked into the room without even slowing from his kick, turning back the way he'd come as he walked and masking his life-force at the same time. The zombies who hadn't been knocked flying to the back of the room by the double-doors were already pawing at his back and shoulders as he walked backwards into their midst, but as his cloak of lifelessness took effect their grasping lots its urgency, and quickly ceased altogether. In seconds, Walker was just another corpse amongst many (albeit a very healthy-looking corpse with too many arms).

Out in the receiving area the light from the flashlight could not pierce more than a few inches into the swirling cloud of black insects, only a tiny few of which seemed to be making any effort to come out of the hallway and into the morgue itself. The horned woman stepped out of the buzzing plague-cloud with the suddenness of a demonic summoning, her form clearly lit in heavy contrast by the flashlight at her taloned and inhuman feet. This time Walker could see that her antlers were most definitely quivering in a disgustingly visceral way, and as he watched each of them began to extend and spread outwards from her skull somewhat, accompanied by a sound like bones being repeatedly broken. She screamed again, and while the sound of it was just as horrible as it had been the first time, nothing else poured from her mouth.

She seemed to look around herself with her dead eyes for a moment before bounding through the ruined double-doored entrance with broad, loping steps that were disturbing precisely because of the vital energy inherent in them. Walker backed a little deeper into the milling crowd of undead, vanishing deeper into the shadows, watching her silhouetted form as she stalked him. She waded quickly and authoritatively into the crowd of 'normal' undead, ignoring them all as she sought Walker until one of them bumped into her, and then bumped into her again.

The super-zomb turned her fearsome countenance upon her fellow zombie and let loose with another of her awful screams right into its unseeing face. The other zombie didn't so much as twitch in acknowledgement of her challenge, and proceeded to shuffle directly into her a third time. The horned woman's scream turned abruptly into a snarl as she lunged at the other zombie, sinking her teeth and her bony fingers into its rotting face. With a speed and ease that was shocking, her teeth and fingers tore into the other zombie's skull, quickly reducing it to an unsightly mess of gore, whereupon she set upon the unresponsive corpse's torso before it could even collapse to the floor. In seconds, she had quite literally torn the offending zombie into pieces.

Walker had never seen this sort of behavior between zombies before, but was quick to take advantage of it, coming up behind the horned woman as she slaughtered her fellow. He approached her quickly and quietly, drawing one of his combat swords as he approached, and then lunged at her with a sweeping strike meant to decapitate her deformed head in one swing. Impossibly, the horned woman whipped herself around with lightning speed and knocked Walker's attack aside with a ferocity that left him momentarily stunned. She glared into his face with her cataract-covered eyes, and then screamed at him the way she had just screamed at the pile of gore that had been a zombie until a few seconds ago. Walker ducked as she lunged at him, appearing again just behind her back almost instantly, his face still showing a disturbing lack of emotion even in the midst of all this horror. The horned woman stumbled a bit, and then lurched forward again as she seemed to be trying to find the creature that had had the effrontery to upset her. Walker followed behind her, and could clearly see how her antlers twitched and shivered in the dim lighting cast back from the flashlight out in the receiving area, and realized they must be sensory organs of some sort. They probably even granted her a sensory ability not unlike his own wind sight.

Walker was about to attempt another swing at her neck when the horned woman stopped suddenly and screamed once again. This time however, the cloud of plague insects out in the hall came roaring into the tight confines of the morgue as though summoned by the sound. She turned towards him partially, and he could see her jagged mouth - which had seemed so gentle and pleasant when he'd first seen her - opened as wide as ever, and the flies were streaming into it like dust motes into a vacuum cleaner. Because he was standing so close to her, Walker became utterly surrounding by the whirling and buzzing cloud of insects, and for a moment he was utterly blinded in all of his senses. And then the cloud was gone.

Walker blinked once - perhaps the first time in days - and looked around himself in the dim and ghostly light. The horned woman was gone. He turned in a quick circle, but could neither see nor sense her anywhere. Walker blinked again.

He left the milling crowd of morgue-zombies behind and stepped up to his flashlight, still sitting on the floor. He had just picked it up and clicked off the light when he heard the scream again. It already sounded as though it was quite far away, probably outside of the hospital already. Walker hurriedly stepped back into the basement hallway and closed the door to the morgue behind him, leaving the horde within trapped behind another locked door, and then he hurried up the stairs in the pitch darkness.

Back out in the cool night air again, Walker stopped in front of the hospital while he tried to determine where the horned woman had vanished to. Then, faintly, he heard another scream carried over the wind, sounding like the cry of someone lost, in the most eternal sense of the word.

It was coming from the direction of the Highland Cemetary, the town's chief repository of the dead. Walker pulled his cloak of lifelessness tighter about himself and went in search of his quarry.

[Dawn OOC]

There could be no worse place, psychologically, to fight zombies than a graveyard at night. The Highland Cemetery was not particularly ominous itself. Its roads were laid out in neat rectangles, their corners rounded as if sharp angles would upset the dead. There were two places where the grid was interrupted: one was a diamond, accommodated the flag pole where the American and Oklahoma flags had once flown. The other was the fountain, or where the fountain would be, if it could get water.

Walker knew this from a map of Lawton he’d been able to loot from a gas station. Now he paused at the edge of that cemetery. There were more zombies here, standing listlessly. With no life sensed nearby, they didn’t seem inclined to move. Perhaps they were saving their energy for the day they sensed dinner?

That scream came from ahead, not far away. Walker followed it audibly, his head swiveling around to orient on the creature. Mentally consulting the image of the map he’d seen, he determined that she was near that fountain. Plotting a path through the forest of zombies, he stepped into the graveyard proper.

The air swam, the world exploded and Walker thought he’d blacked out for a second. When he came back to his senses, he was on one knee, his hands braced on the earth. A hungry groan caught his attention, and he saw the zombies orient on him. During the moment of vertigo, he’d dropped his cloak of invisibility. He snapped it back into place and the zombies lost track of him again. They began to mill around, agitated by sensing him earlier. He waited a moment, slowly rising, and they gradually went dormant again.

Walker took another step, this one more cautious. He still felt dizzy, but he pushed in a little further. The dizziness didn’t worse, but the slight buzzing headache was getting stronger. It reminded him of when he’d gotten sick and become what he was now.

[Amarant]

Everyday since Z-Day had been one long series of strange, new and terrible things to see and experience, but this one night in Lawton had, so far, brought Walker face to face with more strangeness and terror than at any point previously. He could see now why the others at the Refuge were spooked by this place, and for the first time he began to wonder whether he had gotten himself in over his head. But, in Walker's mind at least, it was too late for such considerations and the only course open to him (that he would consider) was to continue forward.

Of course he could turn back now, perhaps even go back to the Refuge for help. But he wouldn't. He would track the evil in this place and he would expunge it, and he would do it alone - because it was in his nature to do so. Ever since he'd woken up alone in the middle of a New Mexico desert after recovering from the Z-plague Walker had found that not only had his physical form changed, but so had his very nature changed, and since that time he'd found it more and more natural to take on the role of the predator. More specifically, the solitary predator.

So he would track his quarry here in Lawton, he would run it down, and he would end it. 'Kill' wasn't really appropriate anymore; not for his quarry at least. 'End' was a better word, and endings seemed to be what he was best at these days - what he understood.

Even so, just because Walker still saw himself as the hunter in this scenario, walking into a cemetery in the middle of the night in what just might be the most dangerous town for several states around, that didn't mean he had to be careless about things. Like most solitary predators, some of Walker's greatest strengths were his patience and cautiousness. Carefully and deliberately, Walker took one step and then another, heading in the direction of the fountain. As he moved he stayed alert for any sign of his prey or anything else unusual.

Click to reveal..

Awareness roll (8 dice, 1 mega - mega is the last die): (23:16:22) ChatBot: (Centimane) rolls 9d10 and gets 10,6,7,2,7,10,2,6,6.

4sux.

[Dawn OOC]

He'd only taken three steps when it felt like something hit him. Walker didn't even grunt, though it felt like something had hit him all over the body with a gut punch. He stopped and looked for the source of the 'attack' but didn't see it. When nothing more happened, he started forward again cautious and careful.

The creature was crouched at the fountain, her beautiful face reminding him of Jules. The rest of her definitely was nothing like the woman at the Refuge. As he watched, her antlers twitched slightly and she looked agitated. Could she sense him? She couldn't before.

There was a shuffling among the zombies. Walker froze and glanced over to see a large beast of some sort. It wasn't quite a lion, though it bore some similarity. No lion Walker knew walked on its hind legs, nor did it drop clumps of hair like a mange-infested dog. It stalked to the fountain and crouched there, looking like a cat basking in the sun. But no zombie had ever needed to sunbathe.

The two super-zombies stood there, unmoving in the natural way of their kind. Silent, still and dead, they waited for something only they knew.

Click to reveal..

Walker gained one temporary taint during his post.

[Amarant]

By this point, the only thing Walker really wanted to do was get out of that place. The further in he'd gone, the worse the sense of 'wrongness' had gotten. By the time he'd reached the actual fountain itself the very air seemed saturated with something nameless and vile. Walker was glad he didn't need to breathe.

He was also increasingly alarmed by the amount of 'super' activity in this town. Especially because it all appeared to be of the undead variety.

As Walker watched the two undead monstrosities he let his mask of soft flesh fall away, and his form became huge and every bit as monstrous as the things he was observing, perhaps even more so in a way. His many legs curled up around him as he pulled himself low and taut and prepared to strike.

A silent span of time passed, interrupted only by a single moan from a nearby zombie, and then Walker leapt into the air. His powerful, many-jointed legs catapulted him into the black night above with speed and power, which only increased as his leap reached its apex and he then began his descent.

Above the undead, mange-covered leonine zombie, a multi-limbed horror descended from the sky with lethal intent and all the ballistic force of an artillery shell.

Click to reveal..

Walker is performing an Ambush attack on the lion-monster, and is using the Aerial Splash maneuver (found in the XWF supplement, pg. 23), which does Strength +2 damage dice per level of mega-strength and +2 damage dice per level of Density Increase (or +6 per dot of Growth, a single dot of which is equivalent to 3 dots of Density Increase), and is performed at +2 difficulty. If his attack is successful, he will attempt to grab and Throw the Horned Woman (the details of his combat maneuver are found in the Core book).

Inviz roll (last die is a mega): (23:07:19) ChatBot: (Centimane) rolls 8d10 and gets 8,6,10,4,10,5,4,9. 5sux + 3auto = 8 total.

Stealth roll for Ambush (last 2 dice are megas): (23:07:38) ChatBot: (Centimane) rolls 12d10 and gets 7,3,10,7,1,4,7,6,4,9,7,2. 7sux.

Lion-zombie's Awareness roll (last die is a mega): (23:09:45) ChatBot: (Centimane) rolls 6d10 and gets 3,8,4,5,6,1. 1sux.

Walker's Stealth Total for the Ambush: 15 - 1 = 14 total.

Multitasking activation roll: (23:15:06) ChatBot: (Centimane) rolls 6d10 and gets 5,4,7,8,5,1. 2sux.

1st Attack: Aerial Splash combat roll (last 2 dice are megas - this is the ambush attack, and adds in Walker's extra Stealth sux from the resisted roll): (23:11:24) ChatBot: (Centimane) rolls 24d10 and gets 9,9,5,5,5,10,1,6,4,2,4,8,9,7,1,3​,10,4,3,2,5,10,8,3. 10sux, minus the +2 diff to hit on the Splash maneuver, so 8 total.

Poppin' those 10's for Coordinated Quality: (23:12:36) ChatBot: (Centimane) rolls 3d10 and gets 10,7,8. +3sux. So 11 total on the first attack.

2nd Attack: Throw combat roll (last 2 dice are megas): (23:13:43) ChatBot: (Centimane) rolls 9d10 and gets 9,6,2,4,2,4,4,10,3. 4sux, minus the +1 diff to hit on the Throw maneuver. So 3sux total.

Poppin' those 10's for Coordinated Quality: (23:13:58) ChatBot: (Centimane) rolls 1d10 and gets 3. 0sux.

1st Defense (last 2 dice are megas): (23:14:15) ChatBot: (Centimane) rolls 9d10 and gets 7,1,5,3,9,6,6,1,5. 2sux.

2nd Defense (last 2 dice are megas): (23:14:27) ChatBot: (Centimane) rolls 8d10 and gets 9,8,2,7,4,10,2,2. 4sux.

Poppin' that 10: (23:23:19) ChatBot: (Centimane) rolls 1d10 and gets 2. 0sux.

Damage Roll for the Aerial Splash: (23:27:47) ChatBot: (Centimane) rolls 17d10 and gets 3,8,10,4,10,9,1,3,4,1,9,9,10,3,2​,8,2. 8sux + [15] = 23 Bashing damage.

Additional Damage Dice from the Attack Successes on the Ambush Roll: (23:40:04) ChatBot: (Centimane) rolls 5d10 and gets 7,9,2,2,4. +2, so 25 Bashing damage total (I almost forgot to add these in).

Damage Roll for the Throw: (23:31:48) ChatBot: (Centimane) rolls 20d10 and gets 9,1,10,6,9,7,3,8,6,7,10,10,7,4,9​,8,8,2,1,7. 13sux + [15] = 28 Bashing damage (and target is Knocked Down, if it the attack lands successfully).

[Dawn OOC]

The damned thing was tough. Walker’s full weight on it bowed the creature’s back but didn’t break it, and the massive body was slammed into the ground. He also missed its head, a sure-fatality, he hoped. Before it or the other could react, Walker twisted and snagged the woman-zombie in chitin hands. When he twisted back, he threw her away from him, tossing her away from him and through several zombies.

The creature under him twisted, bringing itself to its feet. Leaping, it raked at the underside of his body, its claws reaching for him. Pain lanced through him as the creature tore into him.

Click to reveal..

Multitasking roll (mega is last): 2 sux, 1 action to stand, 1 action to attack, 1 action to defend

1d10=5, 1d10=10, 1d10=2, 1d10=8

Leo’s attack: 5 sux, beat by 3, 2 overage dice

1d10=2, 1d10=2, 1d10=2, 1d10=9, 1d10=2, 1d10=9, 1d10=4, 1d10=3, 1d10=10, 1d10=4, 1d10=7, 1d10=8

Damage (soak is already figured): 5 Lethal

1d10=4, 1d10=10, 1d10=10, 1d10=9, 1d10=9, 1d10=10, 1d10=5, 1d10=4

That sucked.

[Amarant]

Stupid, Walker! Stupid!

He'd become so cocksure of his own lethality, Walker hadn't seriously considered the possibility that his target might actually survive such a devastating assault. And now it had, and he was surely paying the price. As he felt his insides leaking out onto the ground beneath him, he realized amidst his pain and delirium that he had no idea what actually was inside of him anymore, and he briefly wished it weren't so dark out so that he could see to find out.

With a *snap* like joints popping (painfully) back into place Walker's mind refocused itself, and he pushed thoughts of his injuries to the back of his mind, to be dealt with at some later point. He had a half-lion, half-zombie to deal with at the moment, and he doubted it would wait patiently until he was feeling better.

In desperation Walker called upon that core of strange power that he'd felt at the center of his being ever since he'd become what he now was. That energy within himself that was, in a way he couldn't properly define, both the source of his powers and their foundation. He 'flexed' the same 'muscle' that allowed him to take on his secret (and as he increasingly thought in his own mind, his true) form, except that now he flexed it far beyond its limits, straining it until he thought sure it would snap like a rubber-band. He felt something inside of himself begin to stretch and tear, as though the metaphysical canvas on which everything that John Walker was had been painted had begun to fray at the edges - felt it come so close to coming apart entirely that he could almost see the black pit of oblivion yawning open before his minds eye - and then he felt something give and the strain vanished and the entire world shrank by half.

Or that's how it looked at first, but Walker was already well-acquainted with this effect, and knew that he had in fact just grown to an even larger size than he had been already. The monster under him suddenly looked more like a mangy undead cat than a lion-sized abomination from hell.

Dimly, Walker was aware that he had just injured himself somehow - in some way that would probably take a long time to fully define and understand - but for now he busied himself with the matter at hand and pushed such thoughts out of his alien mind. He raised two of his enormous, many-jointed chitinous arms over his head, and as he did so his glistening black fingers popped and elongated as their tips narrowed into needle-sharp tips as strong as steel.

And then he struck, first one inhuman claw, and then the other descended on the monster below him with as much strength as he could muster. He fully intended to tear this creature apart - literally - in the hopes that he would be alive long enough to learn from the lesson in pride he'd been given tonight.

Click to reveal..

Walker just purchased himself another (tainted) dot of the Growth effect for his Body Morph, which not only made him stronger (and thus deadlier), but also tougher and more able to ignore injuries (at least for now).

The last two dice on all the following actions are mega-dice.

1st Action (Activated Claws): automatic - no roll.

2nd Action (Strike): (21:35:59) ChatBot: (Centimane) rolls 10d10 and gets 10,2,2,1,4,7,6,2,9,8. 6 successes.

Poppin' that 10: (21:36:58) ChatBot: (Centimane) rolls 1d10 and gets 3. 0 successes.

3rd Action (Strike): (21:37:52) ChatBot: (Centimane) rolls 9d10 and gets 3,7,10,4,1,4,8,10,3. 6 successes.

Poppin' 10's: (21:38:28) ChatBot: (Centimane) rolls 2d10 and gets 6,1. 0 successes.

4th Action (Defense): (21:39:31) ChatBot: (Centimane) rolls 9d10 and gets 8,9,3,7,8,8,4,1,5. 5 successes.

1st Strike Damage: (21:40:57) ChatBot: (Centimane) rolls 13d10 and gets 6,8,8,8,4,5,3,4,5,5,1,10,9. 5 successes. [25] + 5 = 30 lethal damage.

2nd Strike Damage: (21:41:59) ChatBot: (Centimane) rolls 13d10 and gets 3,2,10,10,3,8,8,2,5,10,3,1,3. 5 successes. [25] + 5 = 30 lethal damage.

NOTE: Carver, I added the maximum of 5 extra dice to his damage rolls, as he had 5 extra To Hit successes over the minimum of 1 (6 - 1 = 5). But that assumes the Lion-thing doesn't/fails-at dodging, so just subtract any dodge successes from the ChatBot dice result on a one-for-one basis.

P.S. - Damn, almost forgot to roll for his Multitasking. Here it is: (22:10:15) ChatBot: (Centimane) rolls 6d10 and gets 5,1,1,9,4,6. 1 success.

[Dawn OOC]

The creature hunkered below him exploded in a mass of meat and blood. It was rotten, gray meat, and black, tar-like blood, but it was impressive regardless. The zombies around him milled anxiously, sensing that something was wrong but lacking the coherance to understand what.

Click to reveal..

Jezzzus, Cent.

The bitch was still up; Walker quickly turned his focus back to her as he realized she was finally one her feet.

[Amarant]

Walker's enormous form skittered rapidly on its many legs to face the Horned Woman as she rushed blindly at him, letting loose with another of her horrific screams in the process. Her movements were astonishingly fast and otherworldly, and yet unfocused at the same time, and Walker realized that she was simply attacking a threat that she knew was there but couldn't see. He was still stunned to see a Zed-head show such initiative.

The antlered monstrosity's attack was fiercer than Walker would have ever thought possible. He'd pegged the mangy lion as the greater threat - and perhaps it would've been in a straight fight - but this smaller undead 'super-zomb' was obviously much faster than Walker was, and it was all he could do to fend off her attacks, even with his invisibility to aid him.

He danced inhumanly around her attack, dodging her shattered teeth as well as her clawed and bony hands, his multiple legs jerking, lifting and bending in ways that were as beautiful as they were bizarre. As she pulled back to prepare for yet another lunge at her undetectable foe, Walker lashed out violently, and desperately, with a gleaming black arm that was twice as long as the Horned Woman was tall and tipped with those deadly, needle-sharp claws.

Most of the super-zomb's upper body was obliterated, and what was left slumped to the ground, truly lifeless at last.

Click to reveal..

Horned Lady activates Quickness - automatic

Walker rolls Wits for Multitasking: (Centimane) rolls 6d10 and gets 8,4,7,10,9,9. 6 successes total (last die a mega).

Horned Lady attacks, against blindfighting penalty of +2: (21:55:33) ChatBot: (Centimane) rolls 12d10 and gets 1,5,1,3,9,9,3,4,10,10,5,3. 6 - 2 = 4 successes total (last 3 dice were megas).

Walker defends: (22:08:31) ChatBot: (Centimane) rolls 10d10 and gets 3,9,10,9,2,5,6,10,8,6. 6 successes total, Walker wins.

Walker Attacks (Horned Lady's next attack is 2 down on Init, so follows Walker's actions from here on out): (22:09:37) ChatBot: (Centimane) rolls 9d10 and gets 8,10,3,9,1,3,8,2,2. 4 successes total (zombies don't dodge).

Walker's damage: (22:12:33) ChatBot: (Centimane) rolls 8d10 and gets 5,1,1,10,7,6,4,8. 3 rolled successes + 25 auto-damage = 28 Lethal effect total.

Horned Lady's 2nd attack: Doesn't happen!

In the smallest and darkest hours of the morning, the fountain in the midst of the Highland Cemetary sat empty and dry, the gory remains of two inhuman and undead abominations scattered across the concrete tiles surrounding it, while all around a thin herd of more 'mundane' zombies milled about with no purpose, will, or hope. A clacking noise that was as organic as it was alien in its sound echoed out over the otherwise silent grassy lawns and aged tombstones of the cemetary, and then was replaced by a sound not unlike dead leaves blown across cold stone as something huge that was neither precisely alive nor precisely dead vanished back into obscurity, leaving behind a silence that was (quite literally in this case) as deep as the grave in its wake.

[Dawn OOC]

Walker began to move away from the cemetery, but he chanced to see something a little unusual. A mausoleum stood just off his path, not far from the fountain. Normally, he wouldn’t be interested in it, but the door had fallen off, and some morbid curiosity caused him to pause to peer inside.

To his surprise, the floor inside had cracked open, revealing a pit below the building. Warily, he looked for more pit tar-zombies, but found only one regular zombie, standing listlessly at the back corner of the hole. Beyond the zombie, at shoulder height, there was a crawl space. Walker peered at the hole, then realized that it was a natural crack in the earth. And it led away – back toward the fountain.

Walker turned and looked at the lackluster zombies. They just stood there, without even the slightest shuffle. And there was the absolute silence – bugs could still be heard, even after birds left, but Walker heard nothing. It was as if life, even the smallest life, had abandoned this place.

[Amarant]

Walker gazed into the crack that bored into the earth itself like an abscessed wound and hesitated. That was an awfully small hole. But he had come to this little outpost of Hell for the express purpose of excising as much of the undead taint in this place as he could find, and damned if this wasn't the most death-tainted place he'd ever laid eyes on.

His decision made and needing to be able to fit into the crack in order to investigate, Walker tried to take up his cloak of flesh again and revert to his 'normal' appearance - and failed.

Concerned, but not yet worried, Walker tried again, concentrating more this time. To his relief, he felt himself shrinking back to man-sized again, but whereas before it had always taken effort to take on and maintain his other (secret, true) form, it now seemed to take the same effort to abandon it and retake his 'normal' form. It had always seemed to take little or no effort to maintain his normal form, but maintaining his secret form was like flexing his muscles so that they bulged - it was tiring and he could only keep it up for so long - but now he found that taking on his normal form was like constricting his muscles, or perhaps sucking in a beer gut, and he could tell already that he would not be able to maintain it indefinitely. It was like some great switch inside himself had been flipped, so that once had been 'On' was now 'Off', and what had been 'Off' was now 'On'.

It seemed he'd crossed some kind of size threshold or something when he'd forced himself to grow larger than he ever had before. Or perhaps he really had 'damaged' himself, as he'd feared. Walker didn't know, and at the moment he didn't really care.

As soon as he'd shrunk back down to human-sized he'd realized his mistake; that mangy lion zombie had really torn him up badly, and while at his full size that damage had seemed to be little more than an inconvenience, at his present size it was so severe he felt that his body was barely holding itself together. But then, as Walker 'contracted' that invisible muscle that allowed him to alter his own flesh in so miraculous a fashion, something amazing and very welcome happened: the damaged areas of his flesh began to grow back in, healing in seconds what would otherwise have taken weeks or even months. As soon as the process began, he realized what a simple trick it was, and wondered why he'd never tried it before.

Physically whole once again, Walker took a moment to collect himself, and then he stepped to the crack and crawled inside.

[Dawn OOC]

The crawlspace was small, barely big enough for him to get through. It reminded him of a friend telling stories about crawling under houses to install pipes one summer. Fortunately, the space opened up, allowing him to rise to his feet in the next room. It was, by his estimation, roughly under the fountain.

At first, he didn't see anything worrisome, and he decided that he'd wasted his time. He turned to go when his 'other' sense told him something was off. It wasn't something easily defined, and Walker took another long look around the area, his carapace-black eyes searching. A flicker of something caught his eye, and Walker took a step forward. Slowly, his eyes focused on the black dot hanging in midair.

There was no expression on his face, but Walker didn't like what he was seeing. He edged closer, and felt that awful draw again. The dot was the source, he was sure of it. Some intuition told him that was true, though he wasn't sure how.

[Amarant]

Walker edged closer to the tiny marble of Stygian blackness hovering in the air before him, stopping when he was within arm's reach of it. Examining it, all he could see was utter blackness in the form of a perfect circle, that floated in mid-air. He circled around it, and was startled to see that it was also perfectly flat - so flat, in fact, that it disappeared from his view when he drew even with it, only to reappear again as he came around behind it.

Walker had seen a lot of strange things in the past several months, but even in a night full of strangeness like this one had been, this was easily the strangest thing he'd seen. It wasn't the most disgusting or terrifying exactly, but even so it was somehow worse than everything else too. Maybe it was because this little black hole in the air wasn't just beyond his ability to explain, it was also beyond his ability to describe as well. His senses couldn't seem to tell him for certain what he was seeing, and it was disturbing him on a level more fundamental than any zombie did.

Stooping, Walker reached down to his ankle and unsheathed the small knife he had sheathed there. He stood up again and cautiously drew nearer to the black dot. Slowly, carefully, even hesitantly, Walker reached out and tried to touch the blackness with the knife's tip.

[Dawn OOC]

The tip connected, and Walker paused, waiting for a shock or the earth to be destroyed. Nothing happened, and he felt nothing. He extended it a bit further, and now felt something; the slightest of tugs from the knife. Concerned, he pulled backwards, only to achieve nothing. With gathering speed, it pulled itself forward relentlessly.

For a moment, he thought that the knife might become stuck where the diameter of the hole was dwarfed by the height of the knife, but the blade began to distort, disappearing into a tiny silver dot. He engaged in a tug of war, but without something to grab, he couldn't get enough leverage to stop its relentless progress. Finally, he had to let go, or lose more than the knife.

He watched it disappear into the hole in space. Within a few minutes, it was gone as if it had never been there.

[Amarant]

Walker backed up slowly and cautiously from the tiny hole in the air, keeping his eye on it as he did. He was unsure of how to progress. He had promised himself that he would search out and cleanse this town of any so-called 'super-zombie' activity, but this... How was he supposed to deal with this?

It was - literally, if not accurately from a scientific viewpoint - a black hole, hanging there in the air right in front of him. And Walker had no idea what to do about it. Other than to simply call this job done, and head back to the Refuge for help, which didn't sit well with Walker's nature. It would feel like he wasn't up to the job or something, which he knew was silly, but he was who he was and Walker couldn't help that.

Still...

Finally, Walker seemed to deflate the tiniest bit (it didn't really qualify as a 'sigh'), took one last look around the small cavern, and returned to the crack in the earth through which he'd entered. Time to head back to the surface.

[Dawn OOC]

He crawled back through the hole, the loose dirt crumbling under his body as he edged out. He didn't feel much better under the pale moonlight. The image of what he'd seen was imprinted sharply on his mind. Little shook Walker up, but this had managed to rattle him.

He relaxed that tense muscle in himself and relaxed his form, settling into the alien body. In some ways, this was his true form now, he sensed, unsure what to feel about that.

For now, he should focus on the enemy. All that was around him were normal zombies. They were easy to kill, and he resumed his patrol, looking for the more malevolent kind.

After several hours of looking, he was convinced that the town was empty of super-powered zombies. Clean, save for the problem he didn't know how to fix. He wondered if anyone knew how to fix it.

[Amarant]

Frustrated, Walker began the long trip back to the Refuge. Long in terms of distance, but not in terms of the time it would take. Walker couldn't fly like some of the supers at the Refuge, but over land he could really move when he wanted to. As a result he was able to make the trip in less time than a fast-moving vehicle, and was back at the Refuge's gates in less than two hours.

Still maintaining his invisibility, Walker went over, rather than through, the main gates without anyone's being the wiser and immediately found himself in the middle of a Refuge in turmoil. It was obvious immediately that some sort of meeting or decision (or perhaps both) had taken place while he'd been away and he wondered what it was and whether it would affect him in any way. For now though, he was determined to stay focused on the matter at hand.

Once inside the base, Walker found a suitably out of the way spot and once again took on his cloak of flesh, simultaneously dropping his cloak of invisibility. A 'normal'-looking Walker then went in search of Fox. As luck would have it, Walker stopped at Headquarters first so that he could question his fellow Security personnel as to The Man's whereabouts, only to discover that Fox was already there.

Walker approached him and waited patiently until he was obviously available to speak with and then cleared his throat in preparation for what he figured would be a somewhat lengthy debriefing.

"Sir", he began, "Just got back from Lawton. Went there last night, clearin' out th'super-zomb activity people've been talkin 'bout. Mostly a success. Almost didn't make it out alive. Found somethin' there ya should be 'ware of."

For a moment Walker - the man who never reacted to anything - hesitated with evident uncertainty. Then he cleared his throat again and continued. "Dunno how ta describe it 'zactly. But m'pretty sure it's what's causin' all the super-zomb stuff."

[Mr Fox]

Fox peered at the man curiously. "Tell me about it. If it is a thing that is creating these super zombies that would be a big relief. Much better that than them spontaneously mutating or something."

He gestured toward a chair, "Get comfortable and give me a full report if you feel up to it."

[Amarant]

Walker nodded with a single sharp, jerking motion of the neck, and then moved with alien grace to the chair Fox had indicated. Using a combination of pen and paper interspersed with vocal accounts given in his rasping and curiously clipped voice, the four-armed super laid it all out for Fox.

He went over what he'd encountered at the Fort Sill armory and how he'd dispatched the so-called 'tar babies', leaving the way clear for any future reconnaissance or raiding that the Refuge wanted to do there.

He listed the supplies that he'd uncovered at the Indian Hospital, including the various, more advanced hospital equipment that had all seemed to be in good working order, in case Fox or Dr. Shattuck felt it necessary or desirable to harvest any of it.

Then Walker got to the really interesting stuff. He started with the encounter with the Horned Woman down in the Hospital's morgue, taking care to describe her unusual, un-zombie-like behavior with as much detail as possible. Then he went on to recount his experiences in the town's cemetery, taking some time to try and describe the sensations he'd felt when he'd first stepped into the cemetery proper, as though the entire area were surrounded or permeated with some kind of unhealthy aura.

When he got to the part where he'd had to fight the Mangy Lion and the Horned Woman at the cemetery's fountain, Walker suddenly grew uncomfortable. He'd slipped up - badly - with the Lion, and it had nearly cost him his life, and that in turn would have cost the refuge the information he was now bringing them. Externally, the only sign of Walker's discomfort was a slight hesitation as he recounted his battle with the Lion, but he otherwise maintained his implacable demeanor. Internally, he was just wishing he could skip that part of the story entirely and forget all about it.

When he finally did get past it and reached the final part of his adventure in Lawton he was almost relieved, even though what he'd found underneath the mausoleum still unsettled him greatly.

Taking his time, Walker described to Fox what he'd found there with as much care and detail as he could manage. He told him of the crack in the earth that he'd had to crawl through that had led him to a subterranean chamber underneath the cemetery fountain. And then it was time to tell of the 'black hole'. Walker did his best to describe the disc that hovered in the air, that had vanished when he'd tried to look at it from the side and that could only be seen when looking at it head on. He did his best to describe the sense of pulling or drawing in, that had left him with no doubt that the little black dot that hung in the air, that hole in space that he couldn't quite describe, was the source of all the unnatural activity in Lawton (Walker new full well that he could be wrong on that last point, but it was how he felt so he described it for Fox anyway). And of course, Walker described how the little black hole hanging in the air had 'eaten' his knife.

After that things got boring again, and all that was left was - briefly - describing his several hours of searching for anything else unnatural or supernatural in Lawton, and his return journey home after he hadn't found them.

Finished, Walker sat back and waited to see Fox's reaction to his story.

[Dawn OOC]

Fox had asked few questions throughout the debriefing. His sharp gaze had remained fixed on the paper or on Walker's face during his dry rasps, focusing on the data being delivered to him. When the four-armed super was done, Fox sat back, his face impassive.

"This is not good," he said in what had to be the understatement of the year. Still, Walker saw that he understood the import of what had been brought to him. Fox's green eyes looked up and caught Walker's obsidian ones. "Can you take me back there? I think I need to see this."

Walker nodded, not showing his nervousness at the idea. Fox swung into motion, grabbing up the radio and clicking the button. “Jules, Markham, Ger – I’m heading off-base for a bit with Walker. You guys are in charge. Over.” The confirmation calls came back as Fox grabbed his rifle and a box of shells. By the time he had clipped on an ammo belt and loaded it with shells, everyone had replied.

Fox immediately opened a warp; one on side was his office. On the other was the armory at Lawton. Fox let Walker go first; the warp closed as Fox crossed the threshold. Together, the two supers made their way to the cemetery; Fox from twenty feet up, Walker moving on foot. On the way, they killed the zombies that had amassed since Walker’s fight, though thankfully none displayed any supernatural powers. Walker led Fox to the crawlspace and then through.

The dot was still there. Fox peered at it closely, then picked up a bit of rock. Careful not to touch the ‘black hole’ directly, he repeated Walker’s experiment. Together, they watched as the rock was pulled into to the hole.

For a long moment, Fox was silent. “We’re going to seal off the tunnel,” he said softly. “Don’t tell anyone else about this. I need to think about this.” He didn’t say it, but Walker know: Fox didn’t know what it was either. And he didn’t have any idea what to do about it, either.