Keenan
The band of merry apocalyptic survivors had thankfully pulled together in the intermittent moments, agreeing for the most part that the chance of having their family members turn back into regular people was worth the risk of having their limbs removed from their bodies by the creatures outside. It was resolved that, led by Dr. Keenan, the mysterious and benevolent science-man, they would press onward to wherever he led, to salvation and hopefully some tea and biscuits afterwards.
The target was the Methuselah Institute - only about 10 minutes as the crow flew - but with all manner of unearthly terrors sitting in wait of a tasty human-shaped morsel to eat, as the crow flies would very likely get it eaten. So Tully, taking over as chief tactician, mapped out a plan of assault on a Curry Palace Roti roll.
The A5204 was off-limits certainly. Apparently a group of rabid stockbrokers were hunting slow-walkers there, and several of the groups’ members were less than speedy.
No, Tully reasoned that if they took the slightly more inland route through the BBC offices, up Langham and Foley, through Middlesex House, Up Chitty and Torrington to come at the University of London through the South-West Gate. This route minimised the chances of disembowelment to a much more palatable level, apparently. This pleased Gary; since Gary was generally opposed to disembowelment.
Marching in a trembling triangle formation, the group of unlikely soldiers of fortune hesitantly pushed out onto the street, taking care to look both ways simultaneously, which made everyone go the opposite of cross-eyed and gave Keenan the beginnings of a ripping headache.
The BBC building was eerily empty, save for a few sketch comedians yahoo-ing halfway up the flagpole out the front.
The team passed through the reception area virtually unmolested, and pushed on through the scripted drama area. The canteen had been thoroughly pillaged unfortunately, which was, frankly, to be expected in publicly funded organisation.
The motley crew had the BBC buildings east exit almost in sight when they clocked Ernest Templeton, an evening news anchor, hanging from a ceiling fan, blood dripping from his mouth, shrieking like a banshee with ants in its’ pants. Tully hadn’t particularly liked Templeton - he was about as arch-conservative as one can go on the BBC - and being a friend of Dorothy, she didn’t feel too badly at all while dispatching him with a brisk ninja star to Templeton’s temple.
Once through Templeton, the crew pushed onwards to the East wing exit. Of interesting note; they came across a janitor strangely continuing on with his job like nothing out of the ordinary was going on. They even asked him if he would like to join them, considering that he would have a much higher chance of survival, and for the company, too - to which he simply waved and replied “No English” without removing his headphones.
After peering outside the BBC block; the Wall Street savages nowhere in sight; the team pressed onwards, using a skip bin to scale a back fence so they could cut through a few backyards onto Langham street, safe from any peckish local cannibals, aside from a person acting like some sort of marsupial nesting inside the skip bin itself with its two young children. Thankfully, the maternal instinct was stronger than any urge it may have had to do violence to members of the group.
Langham Street wasn’t as wide open as a main street - but there were plenty of opportunities for people to get picked off as they ran, shrieking and whooping from behind retaining wall to hedge to Purple Smoke Bush. Thankfully the street seemed to be hunted out - piles of bones picked dry lay in piles left and right, averting anyone of thinking that their situation was anything other than deathly serious.
Foley Street was relatively empty, too. Which made Keenan wonder. Was the problem as widespread as he had believed? He thought it to be affecting roughly 50% percent of people he had seen so far. Perhaps the problem was limited to specific area around Fyvie Hall, where he had held his failed presentation. That would certainly be somewhat of an ideal situation out of a series of very unideal ones.
The team pushed forward silently in shaky triangle formation; a bit like a Roman phalanx with a learning disability. Tully had read a few books in her time which had helped her to develop her leadership abilities on the soccer field - like Sun Tzu’s Art of War, and a few Colleen McCulloch books on the Caesars. But truthfully - she hadn’t understood a lot of it, or even finished any of them, really. She was a professional sportsperson, after all - not a scholar.
And some of the younger members of the group were getting hungry. Specifically an eight year old boy with red hair, freckles and a fairly nonchalant attitude to staying alive. Ron - as it turns out the urchin was named - had mentioned that his tummy was grumbling on a number of occasions by now, and if he were pressed - Gary would probably admit that he could do with a snack himself. So Tully resolved to find a source of munchies (without risk of getting munched on) in short order.
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As they approached the end of Foley Street, human remains became commonplace, littering the sides of the streets. Being a corporate campus housing a number of High Street corporate raider finance outfits, it was not surprising to see these generally disagreeable types, feasting on each other openly in the courtyard of the building. Somehow, they had managed to carry over a semblance of their devil-may-care attitudes to social mores in their previous life over to their newer, much more openly violent, post-apocalyptic personalities. Keenan wondered quietly whether this was a feature that had applied more broadly to the phenomenon and thought it rather curious in a rather dark way. (There was no quieting the compulsive ticking over of a mind whose life has been dedicated to scientific enquiry - it analysed, it made hypotheses - and unfortunately in Kennan’s case, it was capable of the most dastardly actions of which he had become progressively more ashamed as the day went on).
Finally at the gate of Middlesex House, our team of unlikely heroes lined up along the outside fence with Tully at the front. Carefully, Tully peered through the gate. Ron, being a precocious young freckled boy, couldn’t help but sneak a peek, and unfortunately, got more than he had bargained for. When Ron wasn’t able to stifle a terrified yelp as he witnessed a bike courier prancing about wearing the skin of a justice of the peace, Tully and Gary had to dispatch a few rogues, which they hadn’t wanted to do.
It was here that Gary received the first of a series of mortal wounds; namely a totem soccer pole through the left lung. Everyone was now very worried about Gary, being the good cop to Tully’s bad cop of the group; the peoples’ leader.
Middlesex House, previously thought of as a not-an-option option, considering the blatant murder and mayhem going on inside it - became more of a necessity, considering the middling possibility of a OH & S-mandated first-aid kit existing somewhere on its’ grounds. Gary colour was quickly changing from a warm mahogany to a rather sickly gray, and Ron was quite anxious that his erstwhile apocalypse father would last the night, considering his actual father had been torn to shreds by a postman only 11 hours previously, and he had become quite attached to Gary in the time intermittent.
The first enemy Tully had in her sights was an overweight accountant-type who had been snacking on a receptionist, until Ron accidentally stepped on a dried-out rib bone. Alerted by the shrill snap of some poor sods’ 7th verterbrosternal rib; the rabid bean counter fixed its blood-thirst on the group, specifically Sheree, a 52-year old astrologist from Debenham (who certainly did not see that coming).
Sheree shrieked, but Tully sliced expertly, liberating the offending calculator wielder’s head from his body with a satisfying SLOOSH followed by a sickening THUD. THUD.THUD.
Emboldened by the disposal of the accountant, Tully moved onto the bike courier, who had interrupted his feasting to begin several ranging strides towards Ron. Thankfully, by repositioning her sword ever so deftly, Tully ensured that the courier strode straight onto her blade, doubling him up into a sort of sickly human kebab. SLOOSH. CHITTER. HEAVE. And then silence. And then another SLCHLONCH as Tully removed her blade, and the courier crumpled onto the ground in a way a human body generally shouldn’t.
Now that the bike courier and the accountant had been dealt with, that left only a shrill human resources manager (her occupation being something nobody could have rightly known by her appearance - it is only mentioned here for added clarity) who had taken to darting back and forth along the entranceway to Middlesex House, foaming at the mouth with a vacant look in her eyes. She reminded Sheree of a pitiable tiger she had once seen in a tier-10 zoo in Darjeeling - bereft of hope, and probably wanting it all to be over if it were completely honest. Tully decided to simply bop her on the top of the head, neatly placing her out of harm’s way.
And if they thought they had seen the extent of the weirdness London had to offer them that day - they hadn’t. For upon entering Middlesex House, they found a hoard of people walking upright with their arms out adroit to the left and right, pointed like crabs. And sounding like crabs, with a faint ‘CHITTER, CHITTER, CHITTER.’ And even walking like crabs - a little to the left, a little to the right. And there were thousands of them, walking in a swarm, tearing apart desks and chairs as they moved in lock-step, and leaving droppings as they went, never stopping to drop a bog - simply dropping them as they walked.
Thankfully these crab people were skittish as all get-out, and when approached, they retreated en masse, leaving carnage in their wake.
It wasn’t looking good for a first aid kit - and Gary was bleeding out quickly. The crabs left devastation wherever they crab-walked. Every room was reamed, cleaned out, and mulched into little chewed up bits. Ron’s stomach audibly groaned at the sight of a break kitchen fridge door, separated from the rest of the fridge, pummelled and chewed lying pathetically on the floor. Food would most likely have to wait a little longer.
And first aid, it would seem, would have to wait as well, which was bad news on the order of ‘I brought home a train hobo for Christmas’ despair for the entire family. But particularly Gary was crestfallen by this, as his blood loss was becoming imminently unsurvivable.
But thankfully, what they did find - unbelievably - was a bottle of glue. And Tully had watched enough army thrillers to know that anaconda grip can usually and in a pinch be a really top notch substitute for stitching.
But sadly, as it turns out, the movies are not much help for informing best practises in real world medical emergencies, and there wasn’t nearly enough Hobby Glue (as it turned out - not quite Hercule’s grip unfortunately) for both entry and exit would (of which there were both). So now Gary had to continue to limp on looking like a sort of human pin cushion (it was earlier decided that short of knowing what to do with a wildly gushing transected aorta, they would probably be best leaving that totem soccer pole where it was for the time being).