Ski and his 'Pokey Stick' (a little more, long way to go, sorry!)
(Follow-on/part of on-going 'Daria's Journal'. Warning! Mature, icky stuff, not fun)



It happened very quickly. One moment in eternity and the little foraging group was making its way quietly; the next hellish moment they heard the moans, seeming to come from all directions at once. The hitters, the fighter types, spread out to the rear and ahead on the left, where a rats' nest of alleys led to the old supermarket. Daria and Ski hustled the rest to the right, and at the next T-intersection they ran into more walkers; less on the left, towards a gas station, and more on the right, coming from a school. Daria looked that way.



"Jesus wept."



Ski followed her gaze- kiddie zombies. KZs were his least favorite kind, too. But Daria was especially freaked out by them. She was a good hitter otherwise and often took point. Ski turned to her.



"Get them moving!" he told her, indicating the rest of the foragers, all kids and old people, the soft underbelly of the group which he and Daria had recently joined.



"What about you-"



"Do as I say!" Ski growled, and then added, "Please?"



He turned to his work, and tripped one of the leading zombies with his crutch so that three of them went down in a tangle of small limbs and biting heads. Ski put two of the KZs down for good with the point of the big stick, ignoring for the moment what they had been; they were dead, now, and he could not hurt them anymore. He settled into what he called ‘hack and back’, the perilous street-fighting of the Z-pocalypse, giving ground to keep from being overwhelmed, and delaying to let the rest of your group find a safe place, or hoped-for reinforcements. The other hitters out there were receding by the sounds of things, but still up and fighting.



For her part, Daria said "Lifeboat Captains?" at his back, smiling and not waiting for a reply before she tunred away. The dog, Scar, whined and then followed her. He was Daria's dog, after all.



She went through her half dozen zombies like a Valkyrie; a chooser of the slain, only she and Ski were actually choosers of the living. With a little assist from the wonder pooch, she got all of her ducklings to high ground, up on the roof of a liquor store. Scar took the scenic route, up on a car, then a van, then a breath-taking running jump to the edge of the roof, where he scrambled up and over. The hitters who had been separated were visible, doubling around the long way, very loudly retreating and drawing off most of the local zombies. They couldn’t see what was going on with Ski but they could hear sounds from over there. Ski was cussing and fighting and making comments like, "Why don't you just go munch on somebody else?"



Daria smiled.



At last he cleared the top of a slatted fence, paused to kick with his good leg, and clambered over onto a dumpster, from which they pulled him up onto the roof of the liquor store. Mrs. Dempsey was staring at the man with the broken leg and the gory steel-toed boot.



"How did you..." she trailed off.



"I was motivated," Ski said simply, and wiped off the stick he'd been using as a crutch. He glanced at Daria. "My pokey stick."



Daria laughed. "I'm glad you're alive."



"Yeah, me too." Ski looked over at her and added quietly, "The world is a better place with you in it."



Daria waved a hand at the restless walkers, looking up with dead eyes. "It's still not great."



"Pessimist."



"Realist! And I'm not saying we accept the world as it is, but we can start from there..."



"Now you're being an idealist; pragmatic, but still an idealist," Ski grumped.



(jumping around to the good parts and knitting it all together, eventually)



It wasn't a particularly good night. The air was still and hot, oppressive, and the baby whined and fretted. Daria went off to be by herself, but Scar followed her, and later Ski.



"Are you alright?"



"I’m well enough... how about you? How's your leg?"



Ski scowled. "It’s hurting, but not bad; better than I expected, after all that excitement today. It won't be long before I'm dancing again."



"That's good."



"Not really- I’ve got two left feet."



Daria smiled at the weak joke and hugged Scar to her, and then sniffed ominously. "You need a bath, Mister."



Scar whined soulfully and looked at Ski, who shrugged. "Lotta work, and then we got a wet dog to dry off."



"I suppose," Daria said, 'agreeing not to disagree', as she put it.



Three of them sat apart from the others in a companionable silence, and a breeze picked up. Ski sighed and, almost, he relaxed. But he had things to attend to, like it or not.



"What do you want from life, beyond survival?"



Daria didn't bother to look over at Ski; he was in one of his moods, she supposed, where he asked the questions that ate at him like little fishes tickling your toes in a stream. One more thing you didn't dare do now, not in a body of water of any size.



"I suppose I want to be rich in friends, the only true wealth in this world, and have that strange sort of immortality, the chain of continuity from one generation to the next, from the past on into the future." She debated the next part a long time, before she put a hand on her belly and added, "I want this child."



Ski froze and his thoughts raced. So. She knew that he knew... "May not be a good idea, at a time like this-"



"This is exactly when we, we-" she spluttered.



"Calm down," Ski said, looking around. People were looking. "Look, I'm in favor of letting nature take its course. Safer."



"You've given this some thought. How long have you known?"



"A few weeks."



Daria thought that over, then asked, "Safer, how?"



"Well," Ski began and then shrugged helplessly. He gritted his teeth and went on. "We're not gonna find an abortion doctor, nor many regular Docs, now are we?"



Hospitals and clinics and the like had been ground-zero for this thing. Doctors and police and firefighters, they were all in short supply just now.



"Hypocrite!" Daria hissed. "We carried your sorry ass, and now you'd rather-"



"I'd rather not risk a lot of people's lives, for years to come. But, as I said, that's not really an option."



Mrs. Dempsey was walking over and Daria said, rather tightly, "Later!" to Ski. He nodded, and said good night to the both of them. Scar got up and decided to tag along with him, and Ski was glad of the company.



***



(gotta fill in how they make contact w/ the bad guys)



They two thugs shoved the prisoner into the room ahead of themselves and he got to look the boss over while that worthy made a show of not being impressed. "You've got a Svengali thing going on with your eyes," Ski said finally. He looked around at the rest of The Jackal's goons and saw the fear and hope in their eyes. Fear that their master would get mad, and the hope that this was the end, he supposed.



"And you're a runt. How have you managed to stay alive?" The Jackal mused.



"This and that, friends and a few enemies; that's what's kept me going. Love and hatred."



"Well, you don't seem like you belong with that goodie-goodie, 'The Care Bear'," the bad man said, chuckling, and the whole room laughed with him.



"I belong where I'm needed, and just now, this is where I am." The room got deathly quiet. "You don't have anything, here," and Ski touched two handcuffed hands to his chest above his heart. "No heart, just a hole, a hollowness inside that you can't fill up with murder and rape, and fear and power-"



The Jackal backhanded Ski. The little man rolled with it, then lunged forward and got his hands up over the other man's head, with the chain between the cuffs behind the Jackals' neck, all in a split second, and then Ski had a good grip on the Jackals' head. Ski dug in with his thumbs, pulling the big man around to keep the worst of the blows from killing or stopping him, and said over the shouts and screaming, "I knew a blind boar once, down in Florida, that let me goad him into getting him just where I needed him-"



One of the lieutenants got a good hold of Ski, pulled him off the boss and slammed Ski against the wall. Then the goons jumped all over Ski, but not before he got a good look the Jackal's empty eye-sockets.



"Keep on smiling, you bastard!" One of the goons screamed. They might very well have killed Ski if help hadn't arrived. There were gun shots and the grunts and the scuffling of dead-quiet fighting, the kind of fighting that happened away from movie cameras in a world full of the undead. When Ski was helped to his feet, he saw it was Bear and Daria, and others. Daria was holding her side but smiling. Bear was alternatively pissed and very happy to see Ski. He finally just bear-hugged the stuffing out of the little man.



"Good to see you're still alive!" Bear released Ski and he staggered to lean on Daria. The big guy hooked a thumb at the dead and dying. "Making new friends, are we?"



Ski wiped the mess on his hands off on the front of his shirt. "Just doing the best that I can, for as long as I can."



"Why, Ski? They got him away, but, well, the ones who surrendered are saying you..."



"I did." Ski sighed and shook his head. "You're a good man, Bear, so you don't really understand evil."



"And you do?"



"I do. He was in their heads. He owned them. I had to destroy him in their minds. Now he's not the boogie man; he's a blind beggar. He won't last long on his own, and the guys who took him away, they won't look after him for long, not like that. He's finished."



"Still, he was a man..."



"That's why you're the good guy, Bear, and I'm not. You'd give him a chance. Well, he never gave his victims a chance, and he wasn't planning anything good for yours or mine. He had to go, I had to do it, and now you need to decide what you're going to do about that."



"You always going to be difficult to live with, Ski?"



"Always; just ask Daria- Daria?!"



The young woman was doubled over in pain. They sent for Mrs. Dempsey.



(Jump!)



The thing was so small and didn't look like a baby at all; not human. But Ski watched it to see that the miscarried fetus was dead and stayed... dead. Daria was going to be okay, and that was all that Ski had ever asked for from an absentee god. He found that Daria was watching him, watching it.



"This is what you meant when you talked about letting nature take its course..."



Ski wisely said nothing. It was true and that didn't help matters any.



"I hate you!"



"That makes two of us."



Mrs. Dempsey looked form one to the other, shocked. Scar whined, but they ignored everything else. Daria struck at Ski blindly and he rode the blows a bit before he grabbed her hands, more to keep her from hurting herself. Daria keened with incoherent loss, away in the land of sorrow.



Presently she came back to herself and to Ski. "I'm sorry."



Ski shook his head, and Mrs. Dempsey cleared out of the room. "Don't be. I was starting to look forward to helping you raise the kid..."



"Why?" Rather than take offense, Ski chuckled.



"Because I love you very much, Daria. You and the damn dog... I suppose you might say that there is one thing I believe in, and that's you. Me, not so much. I know what I'm capable of and... 'Heroes need not apply.' But I'll keep on, for as long as I can keep you both alive." Ski sighed. "I guess I was starting to believe in that kid, that poor damn kid-" and his face crumpled up, but he smoothed it away again. Gruffly, he finished, "I guess I'm not so tough, am I?"



"Bend, so you don't break, Ski."



"I'll try."