6502/Stand up and Fight

Stand up and Fight
Date of Scene:	26 June 2021
Location:	Island off the coast of Maine.
Synopsis:	Several dead, one infected with an unknown bio-weapon and one fiery explosion. The good guys don't always win but the ones left standing will still fight another day.
Cast of Characters:	James Barnes, Jovian Anderson, Sharon Carter, Jessica Drew, Cael Becker, Sam Wilson

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James Barnes has posed:
    <<Copy, we'll head back as soon as we're done here.>>

    A common garter snake comes crawling its way out of the bloated corpse's mouth. It likely sought out refuge there the night before.

    That even sets Bucky's nerves further on edge, because ... really? It was a split second that he was distracted by the sight of that snake. ...and one of his damned charges wanders off.

    "MARSH!"

    "You, shoot to KILL anything that comes at at," he BARKS at Darcy, but he's already full tilt in the direction of the side of the house and Rachel's scream before the order is even finished. When he finds the open cellar door and Marsh nowhere in sight, he just... jumps, skipping the concrete stairs entirely and landing in a slight crouch on the cellar floor.

    <<Sam! fifteen, side yard, cellar door! Send Redwing!>> He called the thing by its name, it must be bad.

    It's dark down there, pitch, can't see a hand in front of your face *dark*.

    The bell from the clock tower chimes once to mark the half hour.

    Somewhere on the other side of the island, down in the lab, there's no one there to press the button, no one there to reset the timer.

    "Ten, nine, eight, seven..." A booming voice echoes through the entire town via loudspeakers perched on houses and store fronts.

    It begs the question, what happens when the voice reaches zero?

Jovian Anderson has posed:
Tapper Anderson did not sign up for this. He is a deep cover sting agent for corrupt federal agencies that violate international treaties. He was DONE with this. He did his time. This was nuts. He held his ground and looked around, ready to open up with the strengthened ICERs at anything that approached him or Agent Carter.

Sharon Carter has posed:
While holding the jug, Sharon glances around upon the floor to search for a top, just as she had asked of Tapper a few minutes ago. But hearing the bell from the clock-tower, and the booming voice that echoes through the town, Sharon glances up towards Tapper with brows furrowed and her teeth already gritted. Water was already discarded and tossed to the side, creating even more of a mess in the kitchen. Sharon doesn't go for the ICER, she pulls her glock from it's holster to rack it and flick the safety off.

And that took a lot, as told by the *squeak* that came from her involuntarily.

"Anderson.." She nearly snaps, looking around the kitchen. Was this going to be a nuclear blast? Should she tell him to get in the fridge? Where the hell was she going to go? "..fuck it. It was nice knowing you."

And into the comms?

<<Khorosho rabotat's toboy, Bucky.>>

Jessica Drew has posed:
The twop twop twop of the copter fills Jessica's head. The white noise washes away the blackest thoughts about what they are going to find on the island. Like the others, she is in black tactical gear, a heavy belt with ammo for the P-90 and its dual magazines for ICERS and armor-piercing rounds at her waist. Jessica leans as the copter makes a steep final descent, the morning sun warming her face as she watches the ground rushing up to meet them.

Cael Becker has posed:
    "Baaaaaarnes!" Okay. From the sound of that shriek, the doctor is at least still alive. There's also the sound of her I.C.E.R. being fired off repeatedly in quick succession - along with scrambling sounds, and thuds, and a pained scream.
    Rachel is doing her damnedest to fight off whatever's got her - and while she may have received some training, did she really train for //this//? "Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease-!"

Sam Wilson has posed:
    It hasn't been more than a few seconds since Sam's directed Redwing from its monitoring position several hundred feet above the settlement off into a perimeter sweep instead, so the drone is still overhead. Even though its thruster is comparatively tiny, even against the main thruster of the EXO suit, it packs a big punch. And when Sam calls out for the emergency reroute to Agent Marsh's location, the resulting sonic boom is audible even over the ominously loud countdown coming out from the speakers.

    <<Evac back to the quinjet, now!>> Sam doesn't even have time to worry about what might happen when that countdown reaches zero. All he can do is deploy his wings and launch himself up in the air.

    Redwing beats Sam to Agent Marsh's last known location, and it deploys a mini-turret from its underbelly that is already spinning up as it zips into the cellar door. For Bucky's benefit only (given that its optics work in a much broader spectrum of light than just visible) the front-mounted floodlight pops up and illuminates a wide swath of the area. As soon as it gets a target lock on whatever has grabbed their resident doctor, it begins firing.

    Thankfully, Sam has preprogrammed a subroutine that specifies aiming for the head.

    Sam's still in the air, attention divided between the feed from Redwing's camera and a satellite view of the island overlaid with location trackers of the team. There's no way they're making it back to the quinjet in time.

James Barnes has posed:
    He can't see /shit/ beyond the small patch of sunlight streaming through the cellar doors. That's only enough to light the steps. The rest of the area is nothing but a dark, endelss pit of shadows in his mind. If Bucky opens fire with that SMG, it's just as likely that he'll kill Marsh as he will whatever has her. For just the most fleeting of seconds he wonders if maybe the girl wouldn't be better off if he just ended her along with them. How bad off is she going to be, will she turn into one of those things? It's just a split second, really... honestly, he wouldn't really do it.

    The fog is finally starting to burn away in the rising sun. It might not be a blessing. All around the town, the sound of the countdown is waking the residents that are still able to be woken. Cellar doors, much like the ones Marsh was dragged into, open. The dinner bell has been rung in the form of that booming voice over the loudspeakers. The horrors hidden beneath concrete and stone from prying infrared are famished.

    Six, five, four, three...

    When Redwing illuminates the situation for Bucky, he doesn't hesitate. The bucket of bolts may get one, but it's the Winter Soldier that puts a bullet through the head of Rachel's other attacker. One shot, one kill. "Marsh!" He takes the few steps needed to reach her.

    ... two, one!

    The EMP blast that follows will encompass the entire town and part of the surrounding area, immediately cutting off all communication, other than, those damned speakers. "Thirty minutes and counting until phase two cleanup."

    The EMP hits just as the chopper is landing, things might get a little bumpy!

    Fortunately, the jet, and probably Sam, is out of range of the thing.

Jovian Anderson has posed:
The lights go out. And somebody's home. At first there are just eyes...glowing red eyes with milky white pupils and then the tracer fire from the icers light up the room as ghastly faces are briefly visible as the extra strength ICERS do exactly nothing. Unfortunately, they are fast, blindingly insanely fast as they are on him before he can switch to live ammo, ripped apart in seconds.

Sharon Carter has posed:
With the lights out, it was hard for Sharon to see what was going on. She was already on guard, preparing for a blast of something that would never come, something fiery, and hot. But instead, she could hear the tracer fire from the ICER, the stop-motion capture of Tapper and his death.. Sharon was left stunned, and now she was overwhelmed!

"Goddamn it.." She hisses out, immediately darting for the counter, hand planted to fling her upon the other side towards the kitchen window.

While they eat, she does not scream. But she makes her exit quickly as the other 'things' rush towards her by barreling herself out of the double paned glass window as she was taught to do. And they follow.

Upon that one side of town, Sharon scrambles to her feet and begins a break-neck, painful run, bearing down and footing it right in the middle of the street. If one manages to pop up in front of her, they would catch it right in the middle of the eyes.

First vampires. Now zombies?

Fucking Bucky.

Jessica Drew has posed:
The pressure of the EMP blast deafens Jessica. The pilot's mouth opens, but she can't hear his curses as the helicopter loses all power and drops like a rock the last thirty feet. The copter lists to one side with an under strut broken, the blades still turning overhead.

Shaken, Jessica makes a thumbs up to the team as they unclip harnesses and gather gear. Jake carries the rocket launcher, Declan and Susan carry guns like her own, Veeta is in charge of communications and another EMP. Ears still ringing, they do a final check on coms.

"Declan, Veeta with me, Jake and Susan will go to the south. Check in as soon as you see what is going on. I still don't have contact with Bucky or Falcon."

Jessica Drew has posed:
The pressure of the EMP blast deafens Jessica. The pilot's mouth opens, but she can't hear his curses as the helicopter loses all power and drops like a rock the last thirty feet. The copter lists to one side with an under strut broken, the blades still turning overhead.

Shaken, Jessica makes a thumbs up to the team as they unclip harnesses and gather gear. Jake carries the rocket launcher, Declan and Susan carry guns like her own, Veeta is in charge of communications and another EMP. Ears still ringing, they do a final check on coms.

"Declan, Veeta with me, Jake and Susan will go to the south. Check in as soon as you see what is going on. I still don't have contact with Bucky or Falcon."

Cael Becker has posed:
    "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry," Rachel Marsh is repeating over and over again. The I.C.E.R. that had been in her hand has tumbled from her fingers - and her hand instead covers one of her eyes. Her head was swimming from being dragged abruptly down the stairs, and the way her head had slammed into the railing on the way down. Her arm ached - was it dislocated? Or merely strained? How many places was she bleeding from? She wasn't entirely sure - couldn't think straight enough to do a proper assessment, and it was //so dark//.
    The injured doctor tries to leverage herself up on her injured arm - but lets out a cry of pain.
    You have to get up. You have to get up and out of his basement. Dropping her hand away from her injured eye, she pushes herself to her feet, so she can start limping towards the light above them.

Sam Wilson has posed:
    Sam is up high enough in the air that he'd have to pull his chute if his wingpak lost power, and it would only deploy with enough time to soften the impact of his landing. So he'd probably break his legs, but at least he wouldn't be dead. Thankfully he's also up high enough in the air that the EMP doesn't hit him.

    It does hit poor Redwing, though.

    In its last second of mechanical life it sends out a burst of electronic noise as its circuits short. Just as suddenly as it had swooped down into the cellar for the save, the drone drops like a rock to the ground with a metallic thud, and once again both Bucky and Agent Marsh are down there in the dark.

    At the same time, overhead Sam wobbles in his trajectory and bites out a "Shit!" that probably no one hears, because comms are down. The screech of Redwing's electronic swan song still fills his ears and his vision is nothing but static as the drone's feed is cut. He's faced the wrong way to see the helicopter approach, and it'd been too noisy beforehand to hear it, but as he twists his head around he catches sight of their impending backup and he can feel the ache of relief in his teeth--or maybe that's just because his head is still ringing.

    His landing on the roof of a truck nearby Bucky and Agent Marsh's last known location puts him down on one knee, not particularly graceful. But then he pops back up, rifle tucked against his shoulder, and aims down the sights to fire at an oncoming hostile. He can't manage the same pinpoint accuracy of Redwing's targeting algorithms, but a couple squeezes of his trigger finger and the resulting spray of automatic gunfire should put a bullet where it needs to go. "SHARON! BUCKY! Someone give me a sitrep!"

James Barnes has posed:
    "Sit down," Bucky hisses, his voice commanding despite the low volume of it. "Now..." From one of the many pockets of his pants, he pulls a few small 'glow sticks'. He snaps them, shakes them and then brushes past Rachel to... close the cellar doors again. They're safer down there now and he knows it. It *kills* him to not rush out and to the aid of his teammates, but they're not his mission. Keeping Rachel safe is his mission. At least half of it anyway. He tugs her back to the corner of the little basement cave. The glow from the sticks is eerie, but better than complete darkness. "You have anything in that bag of yours to clean those wounds?" he asks. His pale blue eyes refuse to land on her face though, he won't look her in the eye. If he does, she might be able to see his thoughts.

    She's bitten, do they know that bites don't transmit this, whatever *it* is? "Comms are down." He knows because he doesn't hear anyone screaming. Will he have to put a bullet in her brain anyway?

    Fortunately, the other half - Darcy is being whisked off to safety in a tactical retreat made by Sara.

    The chopper's team will be met by a nightmare on their way toward the little town. Of the five hundred or so residents, only about a quarter of them actually laid down and died. That leaves plenty to go around.

Sharon Carter has posed:
There was logistically no way she was going to make it back into the quinjet in time; Sharon weaved around the walking dead, taking a sharp turn to cut through a backyard that housed a high fence. She holsters her glock before she takes a leap, both fingers catching onto the chain-link, feet burrowing into holes as she performs a quick scramble, along with a throw of her body to the other side. She doesn't let go until she's over the top, finally letting go to soften the fall with a crouch and a loud crunch that has her grunting in pain. She couldn't hear anything. Just the slam of bodies against the fence that rock and nearly topple it down upon her.

With the yard empty, Sharon moves to the middle to give herself time to breathe. With these injuries, she was already feeling a little bit out of shape and near her limit, but eventually, she was going to have to leave and keep moving.

<<Hello hello goddamn it mutherfuck!>> Sharon says into the comms, repeatedly smacking at her ear as if it'll make it come online. She retrieves her phone from her back pocket, raising it high into the sky to check for a signal. There was none.

Jessica Drew has posed:
Jessica and the team have no idea how lucky they are to have coms still. <"Still no contact with those on the ground,"> she says into her throat mic. <"We are on our own. We are moving lethal on this. Head shots. We take no prisoners per Bucky."> She exchanges a grim look with Veeta, then motions them forward to the houses across the athletic field they landed in, freshly chalked for summer softball.

Cael Becker has posed:
    "Sitting down, sir," Rachel agrees immediately - happy to drop down to the floor. "I- I do," she confirms, as she carefully takes off her pack - wincing at the pain in her arm. Maybe a painkiller first, then a dose of antibiotics, before she starts cleaning her wounds? And she doesn't even want to know what shape her eyes is in. She can feel something streaming down her cheeks - and she hoped it was only the dim light impeding her vision with it. But she knew that wasn't the case - the other seemed to be doing just fine.
    She starts fumbling with her supplies - it was a good thing she knew her pack as well as she did - knew where everything was kept. She injects herself with something - and then starts cleaning her wounds as she adds, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to- I should have stayed closer." She flushes out one of her wounds - wincing as she asks simply, "...Lewis?"

Sam Wilson has posed:
    Okay, technically, Sam's comm is still live. Same with the HUD on his goggles and his wingpack, but a single live comm isn't really useful for... you know, communicating. He's given up shouting for his team because no one has yet to respond, and it's not like they wouldn't be able to just follow the sounds of gunfire straight to him, anyway.

    Without any return pings on the channel, the comm unit in Sam's ear has started an auto-scan of other standard SHIELD channels. It tunes in more than halfway through Jessica's orders so that all he hears is "take no prisoners per Bucky" but Sam recognizes the voice. <<Agent Drew, this is Agent Wilson. We've taken some kind of EMP hit, I've lost contact with my team. Two agents in the quinjet and-->>

    He gets flanked. While he's busy taking down one of the hostiles that comes right at him from the front, another sprints towards him from the side and manages to get a hand around Sam's ankle. The follow-up pull knocks him down, but Sam deploys his wings and jets off parallel to the ground, firing as he goes.

    A few seconds later he lands on a nearby roof for a breather and the chance to send the last known coordinates of his team to Jessica and her crew. Sharon and Tapper (whose fate Sam is yet unaware of) are only tagged as within a general area to one side of the small settlement. <<Priority on evac, there's no way we can take them all. I'll try to draw as much attention my way to clear the path.>>

    With that, Sam fires off a few flares from his wingpack that pop and hiss, colored smoke beginning to drift up in plumes from his location. More gunfire and a few louder explosions commence as the Falcon continues targeting any and all hostiles on the street he can see, though now with a secondary objective of making as much of a commotion as he can while doing .so
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James Barnes has posed:
    Bucky's pale blues go into a thousand yard stare at a point somewhere behind Rachel. It takes him a second or three to snap back - sue him, it's been a rough fucking week. He might only be barely holding it together and this situation isn't the least triggering he's ever been in. "I dunno," he admits softly and it's pretty obvious that the fact that he doesn't know is killing him a little on the inside.

    "Lemme do that," he offers before reaching to take the supplies from her. He's no medic, but he's patched up enough wounds - his own and others - in his one hundred plus years to do a passable job at first aid. To his credit, his hands are only shaking a tiny bit, well... hand... that left one is pretty steady. "Sam'll find us when the shit settles." For now, he truly believes that. Give him a few and that hope may fade.

    "Phase 2 clean-up commencing in fifteen minutes." God, would someone just shoot all those speakers already?!

    Sharon may want to step up that 'getting herself moving' thing. While she's holding her phone in the air, distracted and wondering if anyone can hear her now, one of those... what? People? Zombies? NotZombies? Whatever they are, one of them vaults itself right on over the fence she just climbed to land in front of it.

    Jessica's team isn't faring much better. It might become apparent that these things aren't completely mindless, they're moving with a purpose, about a dozen of them, to surround the team and keep them cut off from the rest of the SHIELD agents in town.

Sharon Carter has posed:
The *THUD* of the undead hitting the ground causes a slow look in the direction of where she just once was. There wasn't too much room for her to back up and gain distance, but as it stares her down and -starts- in that breakneck speed these types have, Sharon bears down and rushes towards it, bending low to shoulder check its belly to throw the zombie backwards.

And that -hurts-!

That momentum has her falling to her hands and knees, but she keeps going, rising to her feet to turn to run the opposite direction of where she came, scaling that side of the fence into the other yard where there was none, hearing.. and hoping the riff-raff that Sam was causing would draw them away from her so that she could sprint.

"Zombies. -RUNNING- zombies. REALLY JAMES? ZOMBIES THAT RUN?!" Sharon was clearly bitching to herself, the comms were completely down.

Jessica Drew has posed:
A street begins at the edge of the field, an older neighborhood with clapboard siding and front porches hung with hanging baskets of geraniums. Doors hang open; a bicycle lays askew on the sidewalk, and a lawnmower has rolled into the street.

Just as a voice surprises her over coms, Jessica sights movement from a side yard. An older woman shambles toward them and within seconds, others join her, coming from the houses that looked abandoned. Oddly, Jessica notices an older man in blood-covered pajamas and one slipper.

<"Falcon, we have company. The copter might be down after that EMP. Where do you need us?">

<"Change of plans. Stay with me.">> She subvocalizes to the team.

Back to back, the agents face outward, guns raised toward the incoming...Jessica has no idea what they are facing, only that all traces of humanity have left the eyes of the things closing in on them. Veeta's gun coughs, mowing down a young woman in flip flops and cutoffs. Jessica's spider senses flare off the charts as she turns her gun on a blue-haired grandmother with a 70's perm. Next to her, Jake and Declan fire into a knot of the menaces.

<"Damn, what are these?> Disgust twists Declan's face as he takes down the second of the things advancing on them.

Cael Becker has posed:
    "Thank you," Rachel Marsh breathes as Bucky starts to take over the first aid. Lewis would be alright. She'd be fine.
    Alright. Painkillers onboard. Antibiotics onboard. Flush out the wound... "You need to-" To what? What's next, Rachel? She hesitates - unsure of the next step, a tremor in her hands. "Barnes?" she asks. "Something's-"
    That's as far as she gets - though her mouth continues to move for a moment as if she's still trying to speak. Rachel gags, then convulses - her one remaining eye growing fixed, and then milky - and then an alarming shade of red. She wasn't moving - yet. But how much longer would that last?
    Why'd you have to go and be right about this, Bucky? Was there anything left of Rachel Marsh anymore?

Sam Wilson has posed:
    More than once, Sam has to leap up into the air and redeploy his wings to find another roof to perch on. Pop culture's got it wrong, because there's no shuffling of feet and low moaning, it's all yelling, running, scrambling hands and feet that propel them up over garbage cans or window ledges or whatever can be used to leverage them up onto the rooftops Sam is taking shelter upon.

    Right now, Sam would really prefer the standard slow zombies, please and thank you.

    "What the hell is phase two?" he asks nobody in particular. He's trying not to think about the rest of his team, insofar as what has happened to them. Their comms are down. Of the unaccounted-for, the agents Sam has less familiarity with are paired up with Bucky and Sharon, and the other two are already safe.

    <<Agents Barnes and Marsh are probably pinned down in the cellar of the building they're geo-tagged in.>> The whole rooftop thing is becoming untenable, because the hostiles surrounding them are so unlike Romero zombies that they're actively swarming the buildings he hasn't yet touched down on, limiting his options.

    <<Get them outta there, evac to the quinjet. I don't think I'm going to shake these guys off, but I can try to get some altitude and see if I can spot Carter and Anderson.>>

    And then that's what he does. The Falcon is airborne once more, ascending in a steep bank until he can see most of the town, and then he starts to scan. "Come on, Sharon, where the hell are you?"

James Barnes has posed:
    No. No. No. Nononono. Bucky shoves himself away from Rachel the moment the convulsions start. His SMG is on the ground beside her, but he has a Glock from his hip in hand lightning quick. He points the business end of that thing at her head. He knows it's the right thing to do, it's what he should do. But his arm lowers, raises again, lowers. The pain in his expression, the horror reflected in his eyes, the indecision, the regret, the guilt... this is just too much.

    "Fuck!" He can't, Bucky just cannot shoot her. Instead, he sits on the ground, pulls her basically into his lap and gets a hold around her neck with his left arm. If she manages to bite that, all's still good. His other arm is wrapped around her body, pinning her arms to her sides. "Fucking hurry, Sam," he whispers with so much damned 'please' behind the words, so much emotion, so much 'willing Sam to hurry', that his friend might actually feel it. He braces himself and waits for her to wake up just as pounding on the cellar doors starts. Do they smell him? Or maybe it's her they sense, but one, two... three... of those things are now trying to beat their way into Bucky's hidey-hole.

    Sam's little show works, mostly, it works on the ones that don't already have a bead on a potential meal or three in the form of other agents. It'll keep his teammates from becoming even more overwhelmed and overrun.

    The next corner Sharon rounds, she'll find herself face to face with four salivating, lip smacking, crazed ... NotZombies.

    One that slips through the ranks, sliding in under gunfire to further prove they're not mindless things, manages to wrap a hand around Declan's ankle and yank hard in an attempt to pull him off his feet, teeth already snapping together menacingly in anticipation.

Sharon Carter has posed:
That tired, sprinting run comes to a slow stop as she's face to face with four.. of them. Her hands were up due to her running, but slowly they lower as she takes a few steps back. She doesn't go much further than that. She could hear the ones coming up upon her rear, and at this point? She's flanked.

And potentially done for.

"Fine." She says, hands dropping down to the blades to pull them from her belt. Her fingers notch into the loops of them, twirling then clasping the handles in such a way that she'd be ready to cut and kill with a minimum of four manuvers.

"Fine." She says again, looking behind her, then forward, soon raising her blade-clad fists upright as she braces herself.

"COME ONN!" She screams out, creating her own battle cry because..

This is the end.

Jessica Drew has posed:
"Fuuuu...", the word is cut off as Declan stumbles and falls, gun pointed downward into the face of a twelve-year-old boy with the strength of a bear who has sunk his teeth into the tactical armor above the boot. He shoots the boy's face away, wincing. A tackle from a woman that is likely the boy's mother takes him out of the fight. The throat mic treats the team to his last gurgles as she rips out his throat.

Then they were four. Veeta falls next under the weight of three of them, slavering and tearing chunks of flesh away from her face.

Fast and vicious as their attackers are, they have no fear of the guns turned on them. They rush towards a meal until whatever drives them is obliterated by the guns.

Eight of the twelve, Jessica estimates are down. Paid for dearly. They have no time to drag the dead away. <"Copy that, Falcon. I have them on my HUD. We are three streets away."> A burst of gunfire cuts her off as Jake takes one coming from her left. She crossfires taking the one out trying to leap on his back.

Cael Becker has posed:
    For a time - all is still in the basement, aside from the pounding at the door. The convulsions over, Rachel doesn't move. Is she breathing? Is she simply... dead? Would that be easier? Better?
    But then there's a twitch. And a jerk. And within moments, a writhing and unnaturally powerful force pulls against Bucky's restraining grip. If it had been someone - almost anyone else - the relatively petit doctor would have overpowered them, and torn them to shreds.
    But it was not someone else. She (whatever she is, for she is no longer Rachel Marsh) struggles against Sergeant James Buchannan Barnes. And despite struggling for all she is worth, her body bucking and twisting in the vise-like grip, she seems to find no purchase.

Sam Wilson has posed:
    Sam is burning through his ammo stores at a speed that is starting to become concerning. There's another counter ticking down in his HUD too, synced to that ominous 15-minute warning over the loudspeakers.

    This has all gone pear-shaped, and Sam will beat himself up over his willingness to bring a SHIELD team onto a legitimate zombie-infested island later. Right now, though, he has work to do. <<We're running out of time, Jess. Be careful!>>

    Without Redwing's cameras, it's left up to what Sam's goggles can do, which are still plenty capable. It's just all manual work, which means Sam is tilting his head back and forth as he scans, like a sniper trying to get a bead on his target. And that is precisely what Sam does, Sharon's blonde hair the first sign of her he sees. He gets confirmation of her identity a second later but he's already diving, the EXO jets a loud roar as he arcs across the sky. "Heads up!" he calls just before emptying the rest of his clip in the direction of the quartet of hostiles bearing down on Agent Carter, and Sam isn't really aiming for the head as much as he's aiming to distract them while Sharon gets in any hits she can.

    Either way, the Falcon is down at her side momentarily, wings still out as he bends at the knee to duck his head under one of her arms and get one of his around her waist. It's the standard Falcon carry maneuver for anyone who isn't a super soldier that's just thrown themselves off some sort of vertical structure, leaving Sharon a free hand to continue firing as he tries to get them both up into the air.

James Barnes has posed:
    Bucky's head drops back against the wall of the cellar the's leaning against and he just holds on. His eyes close, he almost looks like he could be sleeping if not for the strain in the muscles of his right shoulder and arm and... the mother fucking tear, that's right TEAR - who's gonna say anything about it, huh? - that runs down his left cheek. "C'mon, Sam, c'mon..." Not even a whisper now, just mouthed in the failing light of the glow sticks that are starting to fade, along with his hope.

    "Phase 2 clean-up commencing in ten minutes."

    The fight to transverse those three streets won't be an easy one for Jessica's team. Without Sam's continued distraction, the group he'd gathered are starting to run through the town again. Grunts and screams and growls fill the otherwise silent air. Anyone paying any attention with everything else that's going on would notice that those sounds those things are making? Well, the move from group to group, back and forth. They're communicating.

    The doors to that cellar splinter and creak, two more join the efforts to get through them. How long will the wood hold?

Sharon Carter has posed:
Was Sharon ready to die? No. But she was going to go out swinging and probably unalive herself if she was bitten before she turned into one. The roar of Sam's jetpack could be heard as salvation, especially when one of the not-zombies breaks formation and comes charging.

Cutting them down at the knees, they fall over on each other, Sharon now looking up with one arm already raised so Sam could grab her. Still, one hand upon the dagger and the other sheathed, She retrieves her glock to empty the rest of the clip into the brains of the fallen, crawling ones.

"Ten minutes!" Sharon calls out over the roar of the pack once they take off. "Where's everyone?!" It was hard to do, exposing her clip belt, taking one out.. plastering it between her lips so that she could eject the empty one within her gun. She doesn't reload, but she was working towards it. In middiar.

Jessica Drew has posed:
They may have just killed off a neighborhood, Jessica thinks as she motions to Susan and Jake to follow her. Behind them, a body twitches, trying to rise.

Machine guns under their arms, the three agents jog through someone's placid backyard, a rose enthusiast from the looks of it, into the next street. A dog barks wildly from behind a screen door in the otherwise still street.

A door slams behind a little girl in a nightgown. She runs full-tilt at them.

<"I can't."> Are Susan's last words as three rise from behind a construction dumpster and pull her to the ground. She glimpses the little girl with blood smeared on her face.

The two agents pound through another yard and veer left, slowing at the cluster of monster-townspeople trying to break into someone's cellar.

<"Falcon, I have them. There are at least six trying to break into the house they're in.">

P-90's are premium tac gear, and yet Jessica can feel the heat radiating off the barrel as she slides to a stop behind the group and fires into them. Next to her, Jake fires, tears streaming down his face. One by one, they break off from trying to break into the house to turn on their assailants and fall under the barrage of the agents.

"Hey! Hey! Is there anyone in there?" Jessica's hearing tells us there is, focusing she can hear heartbeats from behind the door.

Cael Becker has posed:
    The creature in Barnes' arms continues to buck, twist, and writhe - shoving all her weight and strength backwards as if trying to bang his head back against the wall. The same sounds emit from her as she struggles - the grunts and shrieks only seeming to fuel the efforts of the creatures tearing at the door.
    They would be in the cellar soon. How many of them would it take to bring down Bucky Barnes? It wouldn't be long before the found.
    If not for Jessica and her team, of course. The creature in Bucky's arms screams, unable to writhe her way free, her hands scrambling for some sort of purchase - on the ground, on Bucky, on his arms... And she showed no signs of tiring.

Sam Wilson has posed:
    "I know!" Sam answers, eyes focused forward as he concentrates on flying, having to put real effort into keeping them balanced without Redwing's AI providing some automatic stabilizing. "Agent Drew's here with a team, they're headed for Bucky and Marsh--where's Anderson?"

    They don't have much time for more discussion as they come down towards the ground at the quinjet's landing site. "Get the engines up and running, we need to get the hell out of here." He turns and starts a running takeoff, using some initial momentum from his thrusters to drive the butt of his empty rifle into the face of one hostile running at the quinjet, and then Sam takes to the skies once more. <<On my way to you!>>

    The SMGs deploy from their rack inside the wingpack chassis, but Sam preserves ammo as he crosses the settlement from above towards Jess and the cellar housing Bucky and the zombie formerly known as Rachel Marsh. Sam's HUD is filled with flashing warnings of the stress he's putting the wings through to get there as fast as he can, but it's fine. He knows the limits and where he can test them.

    <<I'll provide covering fire from above, just get them to the 'jet.>>

    The impact Sam makes with the ground is loud, and it jarrs his bones, but he's up and firing right away.

    He'll just be feeling that in the morning, is all.

James Barnes has posed:
    He takes a head to the chin hard enough that it rattles his already scrambled brains a bit and causes him to bite through his tongue, but he doesn't let go. If only he could knock her the fuck out!

    Fuck, why didn't he think about it before? These things may take a licking and keep on ticking, but they're still /alive/ and that means they have to /breathe/. Bucky's hold on Rachel's neck tightens without him ever lifting his head or opening his eyes. He's skilled enough to kill a man with a paperclip, so he's certainly skilled enough to choke a NotZombie into unconsciousness without killing it.

    Damned if Bucky doesn't actually choke a little himself, on a sob of /relief/ that he's fighting when he hears those sounds of destruction outside the cellar doors. "Yeah... " croaked, barely a whisper before he tries again, "Yeah! It's Barnes! I need the strongest fucking sedative you can find, like stop a polar bear dead strong, down here!" The words are a little slurred around his swelling tongue and the blood pooling in his mouth. He turns his head to the side and spits blood and tissue onto the ground beside him.

    "Phase 2 clean-up commencing in seven minutes."

Sharon Carter has posed:
Sharon was working, now manuvering herself to slightly face Sam, trading a knife which was dropped middair to the clip to smack it right into the glock. Oh well. "He's dead." And that was all Sharon had to say about Anderson, they will mourn later over scotch and a picture frame on the wall.

R.I.P'd right into Gods Spam folder.

Sharon occasionally blasts a few rounds, careless shots to keep them looking, stopping once they're nearing the vacinity of the Quinjet. As he puts her down, she was already in motion, glock holstered and hop-skipping to the front of the jet to strap herself in and begin the launching sequence.

Bad comm traded for another, one hand upon her ear switching frequencies and the other flipping switches.

<< Wheels up in five! >>

Cael Becker has posed:
    It takes longer than one would expect before the thing formerly known as Rachel Marsh begins to slacken and slow in its movements. The shoves lack the strength that had moments before. The scrambling at Barnes arm is sluggish. No sound is able to emit from the woman's throat as she struggles weakly and goes limp - just as Jessica Drew's surviving team members make it to the stairs.
    It paints a disturbing picture. What did Bucky just //do//?

Jessica Drew has posed:
The countdown nearly covers the sounds of struggle behind the battered door. Jessica hears the plea for a tranquilizer. As if she had elephant tranquilizers in her kit. The spider woman may have something better. With an audible click, she switches to the ICER setting on her submachine gun; if that doesn't work, a venom blast might.

"Go ahead, Jake. Blast it open."

"Agent Barnes! It's Drew! Stand back from the door." Jake obliterates the lock. Neither of them sees the crowd about two blocks from them as Jessica bursts through the door. "Guard us," she calls over her shoulder.

She leaps down the stairs, the open door illuminating the strange scene of Bucky wrestling with a diminutive wild woman. "Her?" Not waiting on confirmation, Jess fires an ICER into her shoulder.

Sam Wilson has posed:
    All the reaction Sharon gets out of Sam when she relays Anderson's status is a tense nod. That bit of info goes up on the shelf in the back of Sam's mind, partitioned away from all of the key thinking processes that are keeping him alive and leading the team right now.

    He'll definitely be taking her up on that scotch later, though.

    Sam doesn't hear Bucky yelling for a tranq, but he does hear Jess calling back out to him, and that's a huge fucking relief. Some confirmation that the other half of his missing team might come out of this alive, and it's all Sam needs. He finds a new perch on the corner of a building within line of sight and lands, then lays down suppressive fire. From an external perspective it looks like his aim's way off here, but he's really just trying to get as much attention on him. A couple of non-lethal but painful bullet holes is enough to do the job, he hopes.

    His last mini-rocket takes out a nearby car for additional 'Hey, look over here!' action. <<What's going on down there, Jess?>> he asks. He doesn't sound frantic over the comms, but there's a tense unease to his voice that carries across just fine.

James Barnes has posed:
    With Rachel choked unconscious, it's hard to tell if the ICER actually works or not. She's not moving, but is that the ICER or... looks like they'll find out of she rips Bucky's throat out while he's carrying her to the jet!

    "Fuck..." he breathes out before he uses the wall behind him to leverage himself to his feet with Rachel in his arms. "... check her pack, see if there's anything stronger in there," he says to Jessica. Yeah, no throat ripping on the way back allowed, really. "We need to make sure she's down for the duration." All that emotion from before is gone, now he's just flat and detached. "We need to double time it if we're getting back to the jet before..." ...whatever happens in Phase 2 clean-up.

    Clawed, battered, maybe missing a bit of his tongue, but thank GOD not bitten, Bucky carries Rachel up out of the cellar, giving Sam a view of his friend and Bucky's fallen charge for the first time. To say Buck looks a little defeated might be an understatement. He spies Sam almost immediately and jerks his head in the direction of the jet and then nods down at the girl in his arms. 'Get her back there'... once she's properly sedated though!

    "Phase 2 clean-up commencing in five minutes."

Sharon Carter has posed:
The Quinjet was ready.

As soon as the final switch is thrown it would create a hell of a lot of noise, and all eyes would probably be on her. So she waits. Listening to the voice over the citys' speakers, fingers hesitantly tapping on the the strap of her belt.

"C'mooon guys.."

And then there was a thought.. she hasn't flown a goddamned quinjet in...

Jessica Drew has posed:
Any comments Jessica might have about the situation, Bucky's condition, and the woman he is supporting go unsaid. "Copy that," she replies tersely, shaking her head, looking around for the bag.

"Let's move!" she commands, following them out the door.

Jake has spotted a crowd moving their way. "Agents, it's time to book!" He motions with his gun toward the knot of creatures.

<"I've got Barnes and a woman with me, Wilson. We're on our way! Have that jet up and ready. We need to get the helicopter pilot, too.">> Little does she know that the pilot has been dead for the last fifteen minutes, the victim of the local neighborhood watch.

Sam Wilson has posed:
    It'd be different if Agent Marsh was dead. Which is an awful thing to think, isn't it? But it's the truth. Sam can deal with dead agents under his command because he's been to war. People die, it happens. But this is different. Sam doesn't need to see her flailing around in an animalistic rage or the color of her eyes to know, the implication is all right there in the way Bucky's carrying her.

    <<Get them back to the 'jet. I'll go get the pilot.>>

    Maybe she hit her head. Maybe that's it. There's blood, and head wounds bleed a lot, yeah? Sam would very much like to believe that is the case, but the horror that's sat, quiet and patient, in his gut since they've touched down doesn't let him.

    The assumption he makes as to what happened in that cellar gives Sam enough pause that one of the berserker townfolk on the ground, clearly tired of the Falcon's shit with all the rooftop hopping, stops trying to climb up and get at him. Instead they pull a hunk of loose brick from a decorative retaining wall and chuck it straight up at him, and it smacks Sam right in the face. He goes tumbling backwards, off the edge of the roof and out of view, with an erratic upwards spray of gunfire.

    The seconds start to tick away with no further sign of life from that direction beyond the chaotic noise of hostiles still swarming the streets.

    1... 2... 3... 4... 5... 6... 7...

    And then there Sam is, his silhouette framed by his wings against the morning sunlight. There's a crack on one lense of his goggles, blood dripping from a gash on his forehead--and yeah, head wounds really *do* bleed a lot--but he's mobile, vanishing out of sight towards the helicopter's landing site.

James Barnes has posed:
    "Someone grab that bucket of bolts fucking bird!"

    This is normally when Bucky would be 'one shot, one killing' it all over the board as the remainder of the team made their way back. But he's really the only one strong enough to make the trip back to the jet quickly enough while carrying the dead weight of a young woman in his arms.

    ...and make it back they do, just barely.

    Once he's on board, Bucky dumps Marsh into a seat and straps her in. Yes, dumps her... cause there's shit needs doing. The flight back will be crowded given the extra people they need to transport, but... not crowded enough.

    Bucky advances on the pilot's chair and issues a gruff, 'don't fuck with me', "Move," for Sharon. Seriously, Do. Not. Fuck. With. Him. right now. Once she complies he slides into the seat. The second everyone is on board, even before the ramp is completely up, he's taking that bird off the ground.

    *BOOM* *BOOM*... Over and over, the sounds of explosive charges detonating in the town ring out. It's probably a good thing Bucky's more experienced hands are at the controls because the little quinjet is rocked by the concussion of the blasts more than once.

    When they're clear of the danger, the view will be nothing short of ... incredible. The entire damned island seems to be in flames.

Jessica Drew has posed:
Jessica has the strength to run, she doesn't fight with Barnes over who can carry the girl. Spider-woman could lift a tractor without much effort. Jake, though in superb condition like most SHIELD agents, flags behind her. She slows somewhat not willing to lose yet another of the team she came in with.

A door slams open, making the glass store front of a small cafe shudder. The patrons come pouring out, no longer interested in their morning coffee or the breakfast special.

They race up the street toward the quinjet, the ramp shaking under the impact of their feet.

"We're in. We're in. Don't know about the pilot," she shouts, slamming the door mechanism to shut it. Behind them, creatures hunger for the flesh they saw running by while the town rock with explosions.

Sam Wilson has posed:
    The quinjet lifts off, the island begins to implode, and on the whole it's a better ending than most Stephen King books, isn't it? They're never really satisfying, and the good guys almost always die off in a way that ends up being little more than a sentence or two, like an unimportant footnote.

    But people did die, and the ones who survived are several varieties of fucked up ranging from infected to bloodied to just plain traumatized.

    It's long after the island has begun to go up in earnest that Sam's voice crackles over the comms. <<The pilot was dead,>> he reports, voice flat, and then there's a soft thunk of something hitting the quinjet's hull, but it's from above, not debris impacting from below. An external signal comes in through the 'jet's system and even before the cargo door has fully opened in response, Sam has swooped in and landed. He's still bleeding, a little bit more battered than the last time anyone saw him, and covered in soot from the explosions and resulting fire, but he's alive.

    Redwing's lifeless hull is tucked under one of his arms.

    He sets the drone aside and immediately moves to begin triage on Agent Marsh, starting with enough tranqs to knock out a horse, and then with some assistance relocating her onto a medical backboard with some high-tensile-strength restraints. The rest of the flight, Sam spends monitoring her vitals in silence.