Cleaning crew

[ronfiction]

Like most nights, after most of the town had retired for the evening Lou can be found sweeping up in the diner. By now some of the folks had mistaken him as an employee but he was not. He generally cleaned the place because the high traffic made the place filthy and he was not one for eating in a dirty place. However, he had started to clean the diner late at night as some sort of coping mechanism. He couldn't quite explain it but cleaning was a comfort to him. It reminded him of more simple times and generally took his mind off of the strange occurrences that had cropped up recently.

He waited till about 4am at the earliest to start his cleaning. By then most of the people and... other things, had left the diner and headed off to the apartments or main street. He would start by clearing tables of most of the garbage. He was careful to leave things that people may actually still be eating or drinking. Half a bottle of Gatorade? that could stay. Empty soda cans? Tossed into the recycling. Still packaged food? Leave it. Solo cup with water in it? They could get another tomorrow. He toyed with the idea of bringing a sharpie so that folks could mark up their cups and thus they would use less, but what did he know? He was just a humble janitor.

Sweeping was the most relaxing part of the job for him. Moving back and forth across the dinner, making piles of dirt as he went. The feel of a tool in his hand and the visible difference he made was gratifying. With a solid sound track coming out of the jukebox and the calming sweeping sound by his feet, whatever awful monster, robot, ghoul, ghost, spirit, gangster, or hippie that had just attacked him faded out of his mind and left him calm, cool, and collected. On this night however, his calm sweeping was interrupted by a dull pain in his chest. The small scar left over from his attack and visit to the E-R was nagging him and started to wear on him. The normally relaxing task of cleaning the diner was now becoming some what of a nuisance.

Having finished sweeping half the diner Lou took a stool and sat for a moment, gently rubbing the aggravated section of his chest. He gave an annoyed, soft curse at it and propped his broom up against a near by pillar while he took a short break.

[Sally]

Late into the night, Sally steps into the AAA's back door and is surprisingly silent. His eyes are on the floor, then the walls, then back to the floor. His tactical vest and the accompanying chains are nowhere to be seen, though dog tags and his dog-sigil pendant swing against his chest as he scans the floor. In one hand he's got a bucket, in the other a rag. To anyone watching, his hands shake.

With a swept floor, it's not hard to find what he's looking for. A glob here. A dollop there. Some of them are on the backs of stool legs. Others have congealed between the slats of the table where Drs. Zinc, Rue, and Ness had put him back together.

Someone had bleached the floor after the Gaia's Soldiers mess, but bits of him were right where he'd left them Friday night. Sally hunkers down in front of Dr. Zinc's table, sets down his tools, and rolls up his sleeves. His forearms are marred by uggly, jagged scars, as if someone had unzipped the skin and flesh of his limbs. A similar mark runs down his throat, into his shirt.

He gets to work, scrubbing between the slats, muttering away as he cleans. On his hip, the purple-and-pink lacquered grip of his pistol swings as he moves. At some point, the tremor in his hands grows so bad that he has to stop and reach for the flask at his belt. For a long moment, he stares at the steel container, then shakes his head, screws off the top and takes a long swig.

Back to work.

[PoeticJustice]

Alice comes in behind him, silent as a ghost. She's dressed in the clothes she wore to the warzone earlier, and her leg's still bound in now abhorrently dirty bandages from where Kennigan had to sew her back together, being held down against the porch thrashing and screaming. Her fingers are twisted around the hematite cross she wears, her eyes resting on Sally. She stands out of the way as he begins to clean, watching. Her expression is hard to read, but there is a softness to it that is almost uncharacteristic. She isn't wearing her gun, or carrying her pipe. Just the bat, the trusty bat that is almost never seen anywhere but by her side.

When his hands begin to shake sufficiently that he has to pause, she steps forward, taking a knee beside him.

"Sometimes it's easier with more than one person," she murmured softly, putting her hand over his hand on the drinking vessel. "But I know some things you have to clean up alone..." there was a tremor to her voice, and one can watch her struggle to swallow something down. Her eyes close for a second and her lips part in a soundless exhalation. Then they open again and fix on him.

"Do you want help?" her tone is quiet, never raising above a murmur, but there is a weight to the words.

[ronfiction]

Lou watched the other two enter and gave them both a shallow nod in greeting. Sally had gotten it pretty bad the other night from penance. Lou and Leo had tried to mount a rescue but penance was not having it. It was the first time Lou had ever tangled with the thing, every other time he had seen penance, it was at a distance while pumping gas. He stabbed at the thing with his pole saw and it didn't even seem to care, then forces the two of them out of the building with a look. Once they were outside, penance went to work on Sally.

The rest of the two eventually showed up but they too just had to watch. They couldn't get into the building either. In the end Lou was in agreement with Mason; all the townsfolk who called for Sally to give in we're cowards and worse. Sally was tough, brave and many other things. Watching the townsfolk yell for him to give up was just demoralizing.

Lou was just coming to terms with the idea of some of the others in town being made of softer stuff. Folks who would rather cower behind a locked door than go out and confront a problem. Folks who would throw in the towel than stand up to a monster. Lou eyed over Sally from his seat and gave him a smirk.

"You're up late tonight Sally. You hunting? Or just can't sleep?"

Lou asked and stopped rubbing his shoulder.

[Sally]

It takes Sally a moment to realize that he's not alone in the room- something his old CO Thompson would have taken him out to the woodshed for if he were still in the 'Stan. His hand steadies some, and pat's Alice's before putting the flask back. Standing, the jagged lines that marks his arms are also apparent on the back of his legs- a tree of woe carved into his flesh from shorts to the thick wool of his trail socks.

He responds to Lou first, "All's quiet on the northern' front, so I figgered I'd get ta cleanin' up the mess I made. I-" he turns to face the man, "I, uh, was in a right state when I woke up on that there table. Somebody was chained up on the floor and... He..." Sally shakes his head some, "And the Butcher done butchered him right there, quick like, 'fore turnin' to me. But, before he could start ha-hackin' away, I saw somethin' else. A little flash of light on metal, ya know? Thought I heard somethin' to in all the commotion. Say maybe a splash of flou-rescent or-range. Thought mebbe we was back in that field on the island fer a sec."

With another shake of his head, Sally says, "I know that there Limb-Chopper 2000 ..." Sally's face goes a sallow, ashy color for the moment, and he steps back in a shuffle that stops when he bumps into Alice, "...I can spot that thin' from halfa mile away. I figger any man willin to go C-Q-C with a modern day pole-ax in a room not much bigger than an outhouse against a Thing the size of Grizzly deserves a night's rest. S-specially given that some halfwit Canine went chawin' on ya." For the moment, Sally's color comes back, and he reaches into his shirt to pull out yet another dog-tag chain. Penance might have robbed him of his other trophy, but where the leathery ears of some dead demon had once sat, now were a pair of mangy wolf ears. "JD's got a plan fer that, by the by. That thang picked ta wrong golldarn herd to start 'cullin' from."

"An', looky here, I got me a Chickadee that come to help do some clean up. Make sure I don't make a right worse mess of the place. Tha's teamwork, fer ya," Sally will glance back to Lou, his face stricken less and less, and he says, "Ya'll take a load off there. I gotta coupla Ondrej's brews stashed in a cooler b'hind the jukebox, if yer so inclined, 'fore the sun comes up."

Swinging his head down quickly back to the table, Sally hunkers down to work, shoulder-to-shoulder with Alice. Flo had been quite astonished as to what happened to one of her table clothes, and hopefully she hadn't seen what had managed to drip through them...

"Tell me ya got some sorta plan to hit up them Ross boys and they bar-b-q at the least, Lou? The lot of us 'ave gotta find somethin' to do other than shootin', stabbin', and gettin' knocked flat on our asses. Gotta have some kinda softball league or barn raisin' or somethin' useful beyond thuggin' it up. Summer is comin', and there's gotta be somethin' fer a grunt her two to do 'round these parts. You hear of anythin' like that?"

[ronfiction]

Lou was about to get back to cleaning but the mention of his attack made the pain in his chest act up again. He decided to take a pause in civic duty and continue talking with Sally and Alice. The mention of J-D got a little bit of a displeased look onto Lou's face. Lou was still pretty mad at the biker shaman and his odd speech that he had gone on about. The man practically justified his murder by declaring part of the natural order and doing in front of so many towns folk only made it worse.

Lou side stepped the topic and spoke about the Ross family. He had yet to interact with them but they seemed like alright (and mostly normal) people. His kind of people. He would have to make it a point to speak with them especially considering their issues with one of the union members. Maybe he could put on a good face for the union.

"Well, that sort of thing would certainly be welcomed. Some... Normalancy is always a nice thing. Being locked up in quarantine was bad enough. Mainly the reason why I keep sweeping."

He says and motions to the broom.

"But a cook out would be nice. Maybe we should get a horseshoe pit made up."

Lou suggests and looks at Alice.

"What do you think?"

He askes her in an effort to get her in the conversation.

[kimp]

:: Liberty, sitting with her back to the wall at the long table near the jukebox, looked up at Sally's entry. Once she noted who it was she went back to her book, only to look up again as he started his task. Her eyes narrowed for a moment, then she stood up and left the diner ::

:: About five minutes later she returned through the woods facing door, slightly out of breath and holding a large, square brown plastic bottle. She walked over, crouched near him and placed the bottle within reach on the floor ::

Hydrogen peroxide. It eats blood and leaves less stains than bleach.

:: she levels him with a steady look, then without lowering her gaze from him reaches to unscrew the bottle ::
Here. Your hands look...full.

[PoeticJustice]

She waits, silent, stoic, and still. As Sally talks she watchs him, her gray eyes not moving or wavering. When he goes pale, she reaches up to put a hand on his shoulder, although it stops a bredth away, not making contact. When he steps into her, she doesn't move, fixed in place. The hand connects with his shoulder and she shifts to the side, quirking her head as her brow furrows.

As he brings himself back, she relaxes some, pulling a bandana out of her back pocket. It's white and there's a crudely drawn rabbit on it. She goes to her knees beside the bucket and begins to scrub, focusing only on the floorboard and the blood stains there. She focused on this moment, this place, refusing to let her mind wander to how the blood got there. She couldn't let herself think about that night, for fear of slipping back into it. Better to wash it away. As they talk she just moves on autopilot, focused on her task of banishing every last reminder of what had happened from the closest thing to a meeting hall they had.

When Lou addressed her directly, she looks up a bit owlishly, wiping at her cheek as she considered.

"I've never... had anything like that before," she admitted. "I... A sense of normalcy is somewhat lost on me, as this place is as close to normal as I have ever known since..." She stopped herself immediately, and a hand went up to the sun on her upper arm. A violent headshake. Don't look back. Don't look back. She pulled her hand away and returned to furiously scrubbing the floor.

"A dinner. People being happy. Laughing. Not interrupted by horror or bloodshed. That could be nice. A change of pace..." She looked to Sally self-consciously, almost as if checking to see if her answer was correct.

[Heather N]

Normally she would be asleep at this time, but no tonight. There was just too much on her mind that she just couldn't sleep. She knew Lou would be awake cleaning the Diner, so she walked into keep him company. To her surprise, the Diner seemed a bit more full that she had expected. She put on a tired smile and strode over to Lou and the others.

"Lou, looks like you have some competition for that janitor thing you were trying to do for this diner," she joked as she watched them scrubbing the doctor's area. Her smile was also offed towards both Sally and Alice in an attempt to lighten the mood, although all she really felt was incredibly awkward. It was always hard to tell how people will react to some things in this town.

"Was I hearing things when I was walking in, or did I hear someone mention a cook out?"

[Sally]

Wincing some at Lou's discomfort- JD had given him the run down about the Big Bad Wolf after Sally and Alice had encountered it on their own in the pre-dawn ours- Sally says, "Feel free to dis-regard this, but ya gotta take what ol' JD says with a grain 'a salt when tensions run high. He'll say whatever comes to mind, if it'll keep skin attached to bone- it''s just that I'm usually tha' one that plays the fool on them instances-"

Something massive and horrific occurs to Sally in that moment, something that he hasn't quite put together about his current predicament with a certain Big Knife. Glassy eyed for just a few seconds, he shakes his head and glances jerkily towards Alice, then to Lou and Liberty to make sure there's nothing looming.

"But, let's just say, 'tween the few of us, Little Red Ridin' hoods gotta trick 'er two to put that things tail 'tween its legs. JD don't hold ta much a what most people keep sacred, but the difference between a man and a monster is sure somethin' he does. Either way, folks that don't sleep inna bunk above 'im might not take too kindly to his backwoods chess game with big uglies. He'll do right by ya," Sally says, almost too eagerly.

As Alice responds, Sally nods to her and then slides behind her, so that she can have actual face-to-face conversation with someone about such a delightful, everyday topic. The smell of hot coals and cold beer wafting over that big clearin' down by the lake would be somethin' like a slice a' paradise.

Crouching down to better look at the table, he then glances up to Liberty and offers gratitude,

"Thank ya kindly, Ms. Blue. I reckon that I ain't never tried to actually wash blood outta anythin' b'fore. Any wonder I wear so much red n' pink? Well whaddya know, this is doin' a far better job already!" he scrubs away at the AAA table. Liberty's unblinking stare would have unnerved most people, but after so much time around Alice, it just makes him look Liberty in the eye more. "What book you got there?"