(no subject)

[ogunquit_girl]

Frannie wasn't sure how long she stood in her bedroom with the door handle in her hand. All she knew was that her jaw ached from holding it open for so long.

She also knew that she was standing in her bedroom. Her old one, in Ogunquit, with the same posters and trophies it had held since she left for college years ago. A lifetime ago. Before the end of the world.

Eventually, when her brain processed what she was seeing, she started thinking. As much as she wanted to rush out into the house, and into...into the garden...she was afraid of what she'd see there, too. Afraid she'd see her father, alive but sick. Afraid she'd see his grave.

Afraid she'd see that it had been disturbed somehow.

Afraid that if the door she still held closed, she'd be stuck here in her old house alone again. Alone in Maine with everyone she knew on the other side of the country. Alone in the world.

Once the first tremors of fear passed her, she realized something else. She was standing in a world that had been toxic to 99% of it's residents....and she held the door open, spilling that air into the hotel.

Before that thought even finished forming, Frannie stepped back into Nexus and slammed the door as hard as she could and pressed her back against it.

"Anyone got a hammer? Some nails maybe?" she called out to anyone that could hear her voice.

Comments

[rangerbecket]

Raleigh actually has both since he's been spending most of his free time in the hotel doing repair work to keep him in pocket change. He guesses he could try to trade in his ration cards but he likes the mental break of working hard all day and then relaxing at night...when he's not heading back to the Shatterdome, that is.

"Yeah, I've got both. Something broken? I can probably get it fixed for you."

[ogunquit_girl]

"It's not broken. I just need to make sure it never opens," Frannie said and then took a quick step away from him. They never knew how the virus spread exactly, but they'd all assumed it was like the flu. That said, she didn't know how much of the contaminated air ended up on her clothes even from the few minutes she was inside her bedroom.

"And I mean never."

[rangerbecket]

Raleigh arches a brow but he's happy to do it. There's no sense in questioning it if that's what the lady wants and he's not doing anything else at the moment.

"Sure thing. I can board it up for you."

[ogunquit_girl]

"I don't suppose you have any bleach? Lysol?" Frannie let go a laugh that had a slightly hysterical edge to it. "Flamethrower?"

[rangerbecket]

"I think we can find some cleaning stuff. What am I trying to keep out?"

Raleigh remembers the clean up crews coming in after kaiju, trying to clean up the toxic blood before more people died. It feels the same way now, the urgency.

[ogunquit_girl]

"Oh, you know. Nothing much. Just a virus that managed to take out most of the world's population in under two weeks," Frannie said, her need to keep herself from completely losing it from fear interfering with any politeness her mother tried to drill into her.

[rangerbecket]

"Yeah I've never worked that kind of decon but we have similar in my world," he explains. "And we sure as hell don't want it creeping in here, right?"

[ogunquit_girl]

"No," Frannie said and shuddered again. "Living through that once was bad enough. I'd really rather not see anything like it again."

She brushed her hands down her jeans and then stopped. "Can viruses live on clothes? I mean, should I go change? Burn what I'm wearing, maybe?"

[rangerbecket]

"Uh, I don't know. I'm not a scientist or a doctor," Raleigh admits. "Just good with a hammer and a pilot. So. Maybe you should just in case? I'll try to see what I remember about decon from...from back home."

It's a lot to explain and he doesn't want to overwhelm her.

[trulyoracular]

Olaf has been blitzed on some prime weed from Bali for what feels like a week. Or maybe it's only been a few minutes. The point is that he's been generally chilling out at the Nexus after Mike started bitching about 'not drinking all the alcohol in his bar' again and when someone wanders out of a door asking for a hammer, Olaf's first instinct is that he's seeing shit.

"Are you real?" he asks, reaching a hand out and pressing his splayed fingers over her face. "Hammer girl," he says, in awe. "What are you fixing?"

[ogunquit_girl]

"No!" Frannie said when he reached towards her and dodged out of the way as effectively as she could with six months of pregnancy messing with her center of gravity. "Don't touch me. I was just...I was home. I don't know how much of the air came back with me. I just need this door nailed shut so no one can go through it."

[trulyoracular]

Olaf stares at her and though he can practically see the waves coming off her that scream 'do not touch', he's also sort of immortal and no illness has brought him down yet. "It's okay," he promises. "I'm reborn every morning," he says, and if she takes it in the hippie way, that's great. "Promise, you can come closer."

[ogunquit_girl]

"Well, congratulations to you and well done on everyday being your birthday," Fran replied with a smile that didn't come close to her eyes. "For my part, I watched my entire world die from what's crawling around in the air through that door. I'd just as soon not watch it happen here. Cool with you?"

[trulyoracular]

"No, really," Olaf says, both hands up in the air now like that's going to convince her. "I'm not going to get sick from whatever germs you're carrying. True, if my cousin was around, I'd ask you to stay away from him, but I'm safe. Really. And I know how to hammer."

[ogunquit_girl]

Fran relaxed, a little, when he appeared to take her seriously. "Can you get them, please? The hammer and nails? From what I heard, this illness didn't screw around. Stu said he saw it jump from one person to the next within minutes, both wearing gas masks at the time."

She looked from the man to the clothes she was wearing. "As soon as you're back, I'm going to take these off and burn them."

[trulyoracular]

"Awesome," Olaf says, definitely on board with that idea. "I can strip down right now and burn the clothes to get ahead of this thing," he offers, one hand fisted in his shirt as he pulls it up and off, shirtless within a single breath as he heads over to grab the hammer and nails from where she'd pointed them out. "Do I get naked before or after I hammer and nails you?"

[ogunquit_girl]

"Since you weren't in there, there's no reason for you to be getting naked, and the only thing getting nailed here is the door," Frannie said, a giggle finding its way from the depths of her own internal hell to smile all the way to her eyes. "And I'm getting naked elsewhere, in case you were curious. Or terrified," she added with a hand on the mound of her stomach.

[trulyoracular]

"Oh," Olaf says, heavily disappointed that his nudity is not required for this situation. In fact, he excels at the very idea of being naked, so to be told that his clothes need to stay on is fairly disappointing. "Don't worry. I've seen loads of pregnant women in my life," he confides. "At least twenty-eight."

[digyourman]

The call of Frannie's voice would have been enough to put Larry in motion, but there was a particular quality to it that managed to shoot straight through him. A barely-controlled waver, the attempt to mask a fear perhaps not obvious to anyone but himself. He knew that fear, had heard that waver in his own voice.

A quick sprint down the hall found her leaned against a closed door, her pregnant belly jutting gently out before her like a life preserver. Fortunately, she appeared shaken but unhurt.

"What happened?" he hurriedly asked, eyes jumping from Fran to the door she was guarding.

[ogunquit_girl]

"I was looking for a linen closet," Frannie replied, knees buckling in relief when she saw Larry approaching. "I walked into my bedroom, Larry. The one in Ogunquit. The..the windows were open. I could feel the breeze on my face."

He'd know as well as she did what that meant.

[digyourman]

Larry's hands reached instinctively out to catch Frannie under the arms, afraid that in her relief she might slide all the way down to the floor. There hadn't been many people in his life who had ever framed him in such terms, a tangible enough savior that rescue was implied by his mere presence, and it took him a moment of swallowing back against the strange and potent reaction it evoked before he was able to process what had been said.

The room. Of course.

Larry frowned, his eyes briefly flicking to the smooth wood of the closed door as if he might see what lay beyond.

"I don't know if it's the real thing or not," he said, thinking of his own room, an almost exact replica of the living room he'd shared with Lucy and Leo back home. "Better safe than sorry, though, yeah?"

[ogunquit_girl]

"It smelled real," she insisted. "I've been missing Maine a lot lately, a really lot. And what I smelled coming in through that window smelled like Maine. Just salty enough to be a little sea air in there, the flowers."

Frannie shuddered. "And probably guaranteed to wipe the hotel out in two weeks if people start wandering through there and bring the superflu back through that door. I don't know about you, but I'd really rather not go through that again."

[digyourman]

"You're right," Larry agreed with a hasty nod, hands slipping away now that he felt confident Frannie could stand on her own. He didn't know how to tell her that his own room was the same, that everything about it was destined to pierce him right through, from the lovingly-worn sofa he used as a bed to Lucy's faintly lingering scent, but that it couldn't be real, was missing tangible elements even beyond the people who should have been there with him. The doors didn't open and the stairs led nowhere, like the place was a mask, a facade designed to either comfort or grieve him depending on the day.

"We'll seal it up," he continued, despite knowing the futility of the act. "I've got some tools down in the garden shed, you okay waiting here while I go grab 'em?"

[ogunquit_girl]

"Someone should," Fran agreed, "just in case. I'd offer to let you play guard duty guy while I went for the tools, but I'm not exactly speedy these days."

The whiplash was long gone, as were the bruises from the explosion, but she still wasn't in any hurry to push herself. Not without a doctor here.

[digyourman]

"It'll be alright," Larry said, and gave Frannie's shoulder a brief squeeze, hoping he seemed more confident than he felt, if only for her sake. Even now he lacked the sort of quiet assurance that had made Stu a natural leader. Fran would probably see right through him.

Before he left, he hastily grabbed a nearby armchair and hauled it over, providing Frannie a place to sit while she waited. Maybe having the door more fully blocked off would make her feel better.

"Sit tight, I'll be back in a couple minutes," he promised, and then sprinted down the hall.