Dark Fever

Status
Not open for further replies.
Gabriel rose after she did and came to the entrance, leaning against the opposite side of the wall, crossing his arms as he watched the rain start to slow a bit. The land would muddy and difficult to travel on for about three days before the sun and heat would dry the moisture up again. He wondered if maybe the rain would have caused a stream, though. It would be nice to actually be able to bathe one of these days...

"I've heard rumors of infected groups coming together, but I've never found anyone...I don't think I have anyway. From what I remember about the news, their really secretive and only accept members when they know they're 'clean'." He had no idea what that meant, but it's what he had heard a couple of years ago, which was probably why he remembered it.

Even as Gabe spoke, the rain had started to trickle down to a drizzle and he smiled a bit to see the that sky held a faintly pink glow, the sun trying to make itself known. The scent of wet earth filled his nose and he breathed in deeply before looking down the cliff-side. His voice is wry. "Well, that should be fun to climb..."
 
Cassandra looked at him curiously as he spoke about the groups of infected. She wondered if it was true and part of her hoped it was; to be surrounded by a group of people like her, not being feared or judged just because she was infected, sounded like heaven. What did he mean by 'clean' though? She had heard the term 'clean' used to describe normal humans that were not infected with the virus. However, was there a level of 'cleanliness' that separated infected from other infected? Cassandra shook the thought away and returned to the matter at hand.

She peered over the edge of the cliff and turned back to Gabriel. "Will you be able to climb down or do you need more time to heal?" She didn't want to rush him and risk making the injury worse, but she was eager to begin her search for the forest. Plus, their limited resources wouldn't last forever and the sooner they got moving, the better.
 
Gabriel chuckled, looking down again and in answer, he went back and got his pack, giving his new companion a devilish smile. "Let's go." He wasn't one to sit around for long and already he felt restless. The rain had stopped now so he didn't see any reason to stay.

Getting down the cliff-side was harder than getting up, but soon both he and Cassandra were on the ground and Gabriel's dark amber eyes looked around carefully, making sure they were alone as he sniffed the air carefully and let the scents on the wind tell him if there was danger anywhere near. He wasn't really aware that his mouth opened slightly like a cat's might, helping the scents come to him more strongly.

He finally stopped sniffing and smiled, fangs showing as he looked at Cassandra, his dark amber eyes intent like a wolf's might be when excited. "Deer." He pointed in the general direction the scent had come from and he wasn't surprised to have found meat so quickly. It had rained and in this land that meant all creatures came out to partake in the water.

--------------------------------------

"Has the signal moved?"

The speaker of the question was well-dressed, too clean and well-fed for this landscape and this world. He didn't blend in at all but he didn't have to. The badge on his coat gave him the liberty to behave as he wanted and to not fear retaliation. The men around him with guns provided a great deal of safety, too. The man he had spoken to swallowed nervously and adjusted the device he was holding before answering.

"It's moving now, yes, Sir."

"Good. Keep track of it."

Another man addressed the dark-haired and even darker-eyed man who seemed to be in charge. "And the girl with the target, Sir?"

The dark man smiled slightly and the expression was not pleasant. "Leave her, for now. Let's see where they lead us."
 
((OOC: Ooo, I like that. I am intrigued. ;) ))


Cassandra immediately perked up. "Deer? Really?" A deer was basically a wasteland jackpot. The meat would feed the two of them for days and she could exchange the inedible parts of the deer for other supplies. She started walking in the direction that Gabriel had pointed, her shoes sinking slightly with every step as she walked through the mud. It was an unusual feeling for her and she decided she preferred the normally dry, cracked earth for walking.

"I have never taken down a deer before... I can catch smaller game okay but a deer might be difficult for me," she admitted. Nearly everybody had at least rudimentary hunting skills these days, but she didn't know Gabriel's skill level and she only hoped that the two of them combined would be enough to successfully take down a deer.
 
(((OOC: Thanks! I try...)))

Gabriel nodded at her words, walking after her, his strides naturally longer but the mud seeming to even things out between them as he also weighed more and sank further. "Don't worry. We'll bring it down between the two of us." To be honest, he didn't know exactly what he could do, but he FELT confident and Gabriel had learned to trust those feelings when he couldn't trust his mind.

He spoke softly again after a time - about half hour maybe - and sniffed the air once more, having done it multiple times as they walked through the canyons they deer had led them into, making sure they hadn't lost the trail. "It's close." He stopped abruptly as the wind shifted and a growl started in his chest quite swiftly as his amber eyes darkened and his fangs bared. If he'd had hackles, they would have been raised. His behavior was that of a predator scenting another predator and Gabriel had to concentrate and force himself to focus on the person at his side.

Cassandra. Right. He wasn't alone.

"There's a cougar." He bit out the words, still growling, unable to stop really.
 
Cassandra froze and wordlessly scanned the canyons for any indication of where the cougar might be. She spotted nothing and that only heightened her anxiety. She wished she had Gabriel's improved senses; she hated knowing there was danger without pinpointing where it was. Still, she drew her hunting knife and listened closely for any sign of the cougar.

"...How far away is it?" she asked softly. If it wasn't close, they might have time to leave. She wasn't sure if the deer was worth potentially dying from a cougar attack.
 
"Close. Not close. Hunting."

Gabriel wasn't even really aware that he'd started speaking in one or two clipped words. Later if she asked, he'd be able to explain that this was the way animals spoke to him....but then that would raise the question of why HE was doing it. Infected with animal-like abilities were known to go feral quicker than any kind of virus-human. The next in line were those with elemental powers, but always the ferals seemed to have some kind of connection to a wild part of themselves.

Most infected and even humans without the virus had to resort to animal-like natures at some point to survive, but among the animal-like infected, it was avoided at all costs. Gabriel...didn't seem to really hold that caution and his attention drifted further away from his companion and closer to their hunting. He started to move again without speaking and if his body had been graceful before, it was beyond fluid now, like something wild himself as he scented again and picked up his speed, now climbing over rocks, single-minded.

He didn't even know if Cassandra was following anymore when he finally spotted the deer. It was grazing on some spars vegetation below them and when Gabriel scented again, he knew they'd gotten to it before the cougar had. If they could bring it down first, the kill would be theirs.
 
Cassandra watched Gabriel leave and she hesitated to follow him. His behavior was alarming, to say the least. She knew about feral infected being associated with animal-like powers and Gabriel certainly seemed to have plenty of those. Again, she had the nagging thought in the back of her mind that he was not to be trusted and she felt herself becoming wary of him again.

Still, there was nothing she could do about it now so she followed him up the rocks as quietly as she could. She was nimble and well-practiced at being stealthy but she still was not as soundless as he was. When she reached him, she peered down at the deer below, then looked at Gabriel. She didn't want to risk scaring away the deer by speaking so she merely gave him a look of confusion that asked, What do we do now?
 
Gabriel didn't look at her at first, but he knew she was there like a pack-members knows another is near. Sensing her gaze and something niggling in the back of his mind, something intelligent that told him she wouldn't understand if he used an animal-like signal, he finally looked over and his dark amber eyes were different, contracted into cat-like slits. It was something he wasn't aware of - he'd hadn't been around a mirror in years - and Gabriel blinked at Cassandra before looking back at the deer and then at her again.

His eyes went to her knife and he held out his hand, no question in his gaze, just waiting.

He almost seemed completely uninterested in her, focused on what he was doing.
 
Oh s***.

Cassandra's jaw dropped when she saw his eyes. That's not good. She stared at him in shock for a few moments before thickly remembering that he was waiting on her for the knife. The very last thing she wanted to do was arm the male, especially while he was like this, but he wasn't feral - not yet, and if they wanted to eat then he'd need that knife to take down the deer.

Slowly, she handed him the knife and then stepped back a few feet, deciding she'd let him handle the killing on his own. She had no desire to mix herself up with an animal-like Gabriel on the prowl in addition to a potential cougar that could wander in at any moment.
 
Gabriel took the knife and turned his attention back to the deer, almost forgetting about Cassandra entirely again as he let the backpack slip from his shoulders and then crept forward with all the skill of a cat, every move silent, every placing of the foot precise. The deer looked up at one point, ears twitching and body tense and Gabriel stilled, his own body coiled until the deer looked down again and started to eat once more.

He waited a moment before moving slowly closer again. His eyes calculated the distance with human intelligence mixed with something purely instinctual and his arm came up in a blur of speed. The knife hit the deer behind the shoulder, burying into its heart and it took two leaps away before falling.

Gabriel smiled then and his eyes slowly lost their cat-like look, returning to their normal dark amber, calm once more as he looked back toward Cassandra and grinned at her. "I got it!"
 
Cassandra breathed a sigh of relief. "Great job!" she called back. She had meant it to sound encouraging but instead it sounded weak and unsure. Gabriel was much more in tune with his animalistic side than she had initially thought and seeing him stalk down the deer and dispatch it so quickly and easily made her nervous. She had thought he would be incapable of being dangerous while he had that bullet wound, but the wound didn't seem to slow him in the slightest when he shifted to his animal side.

She climbed down from the rocks and walked back over to Gabriel. "You're a good hunter," she said lamely. 'Good' was an understatement but she didn't want to say what was really on her mind, which was 'Terrifying'.
 
Gabriel was still too close to his animalistic side, too elated about the kill that he didn't really pick up on the tone of Cassandra's voice and he merely smiled at her words before taking his backpack from her, thanking her for getting it as they approached the deer. He got to it first and crouched beside the animal, pulling the knife out cleanly and wiping the blood on the animal's fur before handing the knife back to Cassandra with a calmness and friendly demeanor that was completely at odds with how he'd behaved a few minutes before.

He set his backpack down and rummaged around until he came up with another knife, this one smaller than Cassandra's and not good for hunting with, but perfectly adequate for skinning. He flipped his dirty-blond hair out of his eyes and got to work without hesitation, slitting the deer's throat to start draining the blood. They'd have to wait a few minutes before doing any actual skinning and Gabriel's dark amber eyes moved to Cassandra again.

"You move well. I thought you said you didn't hunt anything big?"
 
"I generally don't. It's hard for me to take down large animals by myself and in all fairness, you were the one hunting today. It seemed like you had it handled so I didn't want to interfere," she said absentmindedly as she watched the blood drain from the deer. It saddened her that they had to kill it but necessity demanded it and she had learned that not killing animals based on principle was equivalent to choosing suicide via starvation. Still, it didn't make watching the death any easier.

She tore her gaze away from the deer and back to Gabriel. "Sorry I was kind of unresponsive earlier. Your eyes took me by surprise. You never told me that they change like that."
 
Gabriel blinked, frowning slightly as he tilted his head. "My eyes?"

Any response Cassandra might have given was drowned out by a sudden and deadly roar and Gabriel sprang to his feet, knife in his hand and fangs bared in a snarl. Said amber eyes swiftly went cat-like again as they met the gold ones of the cougar on the rocks above them. The feline roared again, hoping for the puny human hunters to simply turn tail and run, but Gabriel heard something else entirely, not just a bloodcurdling roar.

MY KILL!

He snarled back, the sound seeming to come up from the very depth of his being and it was no less savage than the cougar's. NO. My kill. Pack's kill. he warned back and the feline laid her ears back and hissed, coming down further on the rocks, undeterred. It instantly puzzled the more human side of Gabriel - because it was still there - and he watched the cat carefully, body still coiled and tense.

Why fight? Go hunt. he tried, but the cougar only hissed again, now pacing above them, too close for comfort for both parties. She growled low, eyeing the deer. Will fight. Must fight. Hungry cubs. No food. No milk.

Gabriel blinked, uncoiling slightly as he straightened becoming more...well, more human as he tilted his head, eyes fading back the way they should be. Have cubs?

The cat merely looked at him intently and Gabriel growled slightly and looked at the deer and then the cougar. We need. You need. What offer? Cats, he'd found, were prideful things but honest when cornered and the feline hissed at him but offered what she knew, what she could, desperate.

Man-house. Metal-food. Deep rocks.

Gabriel nodded slowly and without a word, he slowly backed away and grabbed his pack before grabbing Cassandra's upper arm, too, and pulling her away. The cat watched them, but once they were far enough that she felt safe, she merely went to the deer, ignoring them entirely.
 
Completely bewildered, Cassandra's eyes remained stuck on the cougar as Gabriel led her away. It was only until they had distanced themselves sufficiently did she look back at him. "What....? What happened? We needed that deer. Do you think the cougar could have beaten us in a fight?" She assumed Gabriel left to avoid a conflict, but judging from what she had seem him do earlier to the deer, she felt like he could have defeated that cougar if he really wanted to.

Then again, she wasn't entirely sure if she would have been okay watching Gabriel fight with the cougar; she was intimidated enough as it was just by the rawness of his animal actions and she was becoming progressively more uneasy around him the more she saw that animal side of him. It was becoming quite easy for her to imagine him turning feral and she didn't like it one bit.
 
Gabriel shook his head. "No, I don't think she could have beaten us. She's starving and so are her cubs. That's why I gave it to her." he explained softly, looking back at the feline with a sad expression clearly written upon his face.

This meal would probably be her last decent one for a while if not longer and he dreaded to think the state her cubs might be in. They might not last this season, but he had to at least give the mother a fighting chance. So many animals had gone extinct...

The male finally looked away and hefted his backpack, wincing as his side finally told him it was NOT happy with the stunts he'd pulled today. Gabriel mentally told it to shut up as he brought his attention back to Cassandra, smiling reassuringly. "Don't worry. She said there's a house ahead with food. She wouldn't have gone near if the humans were still there." he supplied before starting to walk deeper into the canyon, scenting as he went to see the path the cougar had taken. It would lead them to their destination, of that he was sure.
 
A house ahead with food? What if the cougar was lying though? Wait a moment, are animals even clever enough to lie?

It struck Cassandra that she knew nothing when it came to communicating with animals. Then again, this had been the first time she had ever witnessed the communication of an animal and an infected. "What is like to talk to animals? Do they speak like we do?" she asked curiously. "Can they do things like lie and deceive? Can they talk across species?"

She was overwhelming him with questions again and she knew it, but she was just so curious and her mind didn't let go of its questions easily.
 
Ahh, that was what had been missing. Her talking. Gabriel had known something was off but he'd been unable to pinpoint it until now. Cassandra had been too quiet for some reason and he wasn't aware he'd grown used to her questions until now. The male chuckled softly and glanced at her before looking ahead again, sliding carefully down a slope in the canyon and reaching back without thought to grab Cassandra's waist when she came sliding down, slowing her descent until she found her feet. He let go then without comment and started to answer her questions.

"I only talk to predators, so I really don't know if they can talk to prey. I've never asked, honestly." he said with a small smile before going on. "They talk in one or two words at a time and their speech is...blunt, childlike at best. They communicate more with body-language and I hear them in my head, so...it's almost like I FEEL what they are saying."

His amber eyes looked back into her bright blue ones with a glimmer of mischief. "Many animals can lie, but felines are too stuck up to soil their honor that way. That's more up a fox's alley to do. Canines are the best species to get information from, though, out off all the animals I've spoken to."
 
Cassandra nodded along as though she was listening but her head had ground to a halt when Gabriel had held her waist to help her down the slope. She was so used to doing everything on her own that she was continuously surprised by his decisions to help her. Further, it startled her how quickly his touch was able to calm her, even after his animalistic side had put her so on edge. Looking back however, watching him become more animal-like had only been uncomfortable because it was unfamiliar. In reality, she supposed it was fascinating and kind of exciting...

No, not exciting. Dangerous. He's at a huge risk of running feral. What's wrong with you? Get your head together.

She snapped her thoughts back to the present and looked at Gabriel. "I hope you're right about cats not lying. I can't imagine how there would be a house out here that wasn't already scavenged clean or has been taken over by now." She sounded cynical and bitter but she hadn't meant to - the anger stemmed from her frustration at herself and her increasingly uncooperative emotions.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom
Back