The Dead Tenants

For somebody who’s saving up ammo, Charles Ravensdale sure is trigger happy. For somebody who is that trigger happy, he’s most definitely not skilled enough. Still, for what he does this is enough. He shoots at what little windows are still whole – large, static targets that fall apart and bleed glass when shot. Ramiel doesn’t think it will help them much, but that, perhaps, is not the point. The point is to ease things a little, only slightly – to give them the idea of how many might be there.

The groans Ramiel half-hears each time he closes and opens the metal plates on their building are nothing to this. They don’t compare, not in the slightest. They’re same to some extent – animalistic, guttural and deep, shrieks straight out of the bloodiest nightmares. But those at his apartment, they’re dulled out by the walls and the metal and the glass and even though his home shakes when the creatures are passing around in their unorganised mass, he doesn’t hear them, not truly.

But this – this raises the hairs at the back of his neck and on his arms and runs down his spine. He knows, somewhere in the back of his mind, that he cannot die, but he also knows that he can feel pain and, in all open honestly, Ramiel would rather not.

“We should back off.” Simon says then – to be honest it’s the exact same thing that Ramiel is thinking, but he remembers all the time wasted. He’s not sure he would have any energy left.

“It’s fine. If we use the emergency stairs right there—“ Ramiel even shows them to the others; they’re apparently very damaged at the bottom, which is why they probably failed to notice them immediately, but they should be able to get to them one way or another. “We should be fine. They can’t all go to the stairs with us.” They can’t go to the stairs at all. The three of them should be able to reach the top safely. If Ramiel fails the jump, though—

If he splatters against the ground between two buildings, so be it.

“That’s crazy.” Simon says, but Charles is moving already, legs carrying him fast and he’s paces ahead of them. “That is absolutely crazy.” It’s a mere mutter, but Simon doesn’t follow his words; instead, he moves right after Ramiel when he follows Charlie, shaking his head in disbelief. Ramiel can hear him cocking his gun. “Bauman, to my right, if you will. The bastard forgot his promise.”

“Oi!” Comes right after Ramiel’s moved where he’s been told. “I didn’t.” Charles sounds indignant. “But somebody has to move you grannies all the time.” If not wanting to feel pain made him a granny, Ramiel’s very deep into his retirement already; he doesn’t comment.

The climb isn’t painful – it’s just very tiring. Two steps in and Ramiel is just about ready to climb down. There are hands protruding from the darkness and sometimes they don’t resemble hands – they’re merely limbs attempting to grab them and pull them in. The blonde spends more time jumping from the nearby dumpster to the bottom of the damaged stairs than he spends actually climbing up.

The closest call was a creature surfacing from the darkness, limbs spread out and could’ve-been-mouth gaping open. It was Simon who shot it back, much to Ramiel’s surprise, and he shook the gun out of his and into Ramiel’s hands as if though it was contagious. Ramiel passed it on to Charlie, who muttered something about doctors, but the blonde couldn’t exactly catch it.

“They’re not very active still.” He comments, unsure of how else to put his thought, and Charles and Simon shrug at about the same time.

“They’re plenty of active when it’s dark out. Like vampires, hah!” Charlie seems to find this amusing and it’s not so hard for Ramiel to believe it. Vampires? He doesn’t believe in them, of course not. And yet, undeniably, Ramiel is dead and Ramiel is trapped here, in the afterlife, in some unknown plane outside of time. Either that or he’s gone batshit crazy. There is no different explanation.

“Oh God.” The blond says in the end, completely serious. “I hope they’re not vampires.”

Charlie only cracks a grin, throws his head to the side and shrugs again. Nothing much to be afraid of, his posture screams, and Ramiel’s not quite sure where he drains all that confidence from. He smiles reassuringly, though, and follows the two men up to the top of the building on shaky, slippery metal stairs. His fingers, when he dares to put his hand on the rail, catch on something slimy and sometimes on blood, but he tries not to think about it and instead ruins his coat by swiping it off.

The top is serene – the only entrance is not bolted and there is wobbling monster in the crook of the stairs leading into the throat of the building, but it’s not willing to come out and stand under the sun and burn down, like Ramiel’s heard happens to them. Smart, or perhaps wired for survival more than anything else. But it’s quiet, here, and there is nothing threatening them and their peace.

The other building, the one they’re making the jump to, is close enough. They can, he tries to think realistically, make it over there. What’s more, he can finally see why they’re doing this. They wouldn’t have been able to access the other building by foot – the debris is everywhere and they would have to lose a lot of time just trying to climb over it with possible dire consequences.

Nah, thank you. He’ll jump from one building to another instead.

“What do you think?” Charlie asks and Ramiel needs a moment to realise that the other male is talking to him and not Simon. It’s Simon’s questioning stare that truly brings him back to conversation.

“I think it’d be a lot harder to climb back down again.” He stands firm behind his words. It probably shows on his face, too, because Charlie grins and, without any further ado, makes a run for the edge of the building.

In one second, Ramiel watches him gain enough momentum and push himself upwards off the cliff – in another second, Ramiel stops his breathing and doesn’t blink, afraid he will miss a moment. It’s more than a moment – it’s several of them ticking by each other in rather slow speed. Within them, Charlie flies from one concrete structure to another and Ramiel is sure, at one point, that he will splatter against the concrete edge.

He doesn’t.

But it’s not the whole of Charles that gets over the edge of the neighbouring building. No—instead, his knees come in what must be painful contact, but the upper part of his body is on the top of the building. For a second, his legs are hanging over the edge and he’s suspended like that, until he manages to get his arms and hands into a proper position. Ramiel would like to help him, but he’s not sure how, exactly, because he can only watch—instead, he keeps observing as Charlie pushes himself up using his hands until he’s high enough to throw his leg across and land safely on the building.

When he turns around, he’s grinning a Cheshire’s grin. Adrenaline junkie.

“Come on, grannies!” He calls, hand up and waving. “We don’t have the whole day. Come on, come on!” He still has his backpack on. He should’ve just thrown it over the edge; Ramiel doesn’t doubt that he has the strength for it.

“It’s either you or me now, isn’t it?” This might’ve been a pretty bad idea, after all.

“You.” Simon says, shrugging. “I did this before. We don’t want you to chicken out. You go over first.” It makes sense. Ramiel’s pretty sure he wouldn’t chicken out, but—he knows why Simon wouldn’t trust him. (Apart from, of course, his normal suspiciousness—he still hasn’t forgotten the whole Moe conspiracy.)

Ramiel breathes in, then exhales slowly and loudly. If does this one more time he is going to die – no pun intended – on the spot again, so instead he just runs towards the edge. He’s died; he’s been shot in the chest. Does it get worse than this? He doubts so.

By the time he’s run over the edge, he doesn’t really feel his legs so he steels himself for the thud and the fall. Still, Charlie is taller and heavier than Ramiel is, so Ramiel flies over the edge. His right foot catches on the concrete and it hurts, but the pain is dull in the comparison to what comes next. He stretches his arms out to break the fall and truly, it’s the only thing that saves his face from the endless mockery he would have to endure from Charlie in case he broke his nose or something like that.

It still hurts a lot, though, because he falls flat down on the floor and everything is aching only a second after he’s landed. There is hands pulling him up and he can see somebody – Simon, who else would it be? – rolling quite close by him, too. Neither him nor Ramiel are as enthusiastic about this as Charles had been.

“I’m going to feel this for days.” He says in the end, exasperated, as Charlie helps him up to his feet. “I’m not sure how I’ll go back.”

“You’ll do fine.” The male assures him and, when he pulls Ramiel up to his feet, he sits down. Simon’s sitting down, too, and Ramiel spends a minute in this half-crouch before he comes to conclusion that they’re not in that much of a rush. He drops down, too. “It’s a weird thing, this. We recover from wounds easily.”

Charlie is still smiling. Simon still looks indifferent. The sky’s still grey. The adrenaline catches up with Ramiel now, too, and he grins as well.