Preparations Underway [O]

[Zeppelin]

Nowhere to go but onward. Zeppelin’s first night was like a barely remembered song in her mind. Snippets of blurred memories would surface whenever she would try to recall what happened, what had been done to her, what was said. Sometimes she would close her eyes and see monitors or hands, or a treadmill, a weight bench, cages, and a woman’s voice- but nothing more. The last thing that she remembered with true clarity was waking up in this dull building with nothing but the clothes on her back. Her mind was a frenzy of panicked thoughts upon her realized situation that only grew in momentum when she glanced out of a small dusty window. What happened was generally obvious. She had been caught rather easily and taken to a lab, then dropped off when they were done. Zeppelin didn’t feel any differently, so they probably didn’t experiment on her; just an evaluation in preparation for the experimentation that seemed to be currently underway. The test involved her being plunked smack dab in the middle of a f****** empty city filled to the brim with unknown smells, sights, and sounds. If she had been taken into the woods, it would not have been a problem- Zeppelin knew how to co-exist with the wilds. But this… this wasn’t good. The unloving cement around her would not offer any kindness, and she would have to work hard to adjust. Zeppelin was on the second level in a squat grey building of unidentifiable purpose. The roof and floor seemed sturdy enough and she had plenty of mold and bugs for company. Some of the windows were blown out, there was a sizeable hole in the South wall, but it was good coverage for the most part from whatever lurked out there. Although she was in territory that she was not prepared for, Zeppelin refused to be beaten so early in this game; she decided to act as if she was amongst the trees regardless of the lack of them. The first rule of survival: water. The second: shelter. At least she didn’t have to worry about one of the two. The young woman tried to scout for a leak in the building, or a puddle of rain water but none could be found. The lack of moisture on the walls revealed that the area had not seen rain in the last five days and confirmed by the dry heat of the air. She would have to go outside, but Zeppelin was loath to go scouting about unknown land with so many mysterious factors in play; she would have to be patient to extract her water. Scattered about the building were various junk items such as broken wires, aluminum cans, plastic containers, puffs of soggy cotton, and other such pieces of trash. It was pretty convenient that she wound up in this particular building despite her earlier grievances- she had everything that she needed. It only took a short amount of time for her to gather three aluminum cans and two battered bricks, it took considerably longer to strip the plastic wrapping off of the wires and cut the bottom out of a square plastic container. Zeppelin used a shard of glass wrapped with her socks to accomplish the task and only received a few shallow cuts for her efforts. She dashed downstairs and out of the broken door onto the sun-stroked cement. Vegetation was limited around the building, but luck shined on a patch of grass located at the corner of her building- that would be her water for now. There was a wide area of greenery and trees a little beyond the concrete walkways, but she would not chance a visit there quite yet; she had to remain diligent and stay close to her shelter for now. Zeppelin worked at a mad pace with her shard of glass to dig a circular hole into the earth and when it was of sufficient depth she sat her three aluminum cans into an upright triangle to collect water. She covered her hole with the jagged sheet of plastic and sealed the gaps with damp dirt so that the vapor produced could go nowhere but down. The two bricks sat on either side of the cover and acted as weights- the whole thing looked inconspicuous enough for a person to ignore if they weren’t looking for signs of life. When Zeppelin was safely inside again, she allowed herself to breathe. Next: protection. She had no worries about beasts and animals lurking into her domain- it was people she was wary of; and there were definitely people here. The law of averages dictated that the huge expanse of area and the expert timing of her handlers were not meant for just one person. The existence of people was almost absolute, but the nature of the people remained to be seen. This was a try or die scenario for her, and she could only assume the same went for them. Dog eat dog. Only the strong thrive- and the assumption was that they would be aggressive. For defense against these would-be killers, Zeppelin broke a corroded piece of wood up into tiny tooth picks and proceeded to bury the slivers of wood into the cracks of the separated slabs of flooring on the first level. They were almost undetectable and were raised just a touch above the cement, like a tiny line of road-spikes. It actually took a good part of two hours, and it was almost completely dark outside at that point. Not the best time to go scavenging for plants, it would wait until the morning. On the bright side, Zeppelin could plainly see trees and greenery everywhere from her second-floor vantage point… just not anywhere near her building. Next: fire. Zeppelin made it on the first floor and covered the two small windows with her shirt and the extra pieces of plastic from her water trap then set to work on her fire. With grim determination, she used the old spindle plough method and sparked a small flame within record time; damn handlers couldn’t have at least given her flint for her troubles. The rest of the night was spent making nets, snares, and snare pegs from the copper wiring and wooden boards while she soaked into the warmth of her tiny fire. Zeppelin’s second day was spent hunting for poison ivy, sumac, and hemlock for her traps. She had her socks over her hands in place of gloves and went gallivanting around with a little more confidence than the day before. She would live, it was a certainty that she placed upon herself. With the considerable amount of troublesome plants gathered in her make-shift copper net, she set off for her temporary homestead to tip her wooden nails with the milky sap of the hemlock. After that task was completed, she used the last of her copper wires to twist the poison ivy on and strung it up around the corners that had to be rounded to reach the second floor and the staircase railing- all too easy to miss until you ran into it. The sumac was crushed and the juices where painted onto the doorways. It wasn’t much, and it wouldn’t stop somebody from trying to kill her; but a smart person would pause when they felt the burning cuts from her tiny floor-spears and think twice about coming any further. She set her game snares with young springy trees around the area and went to bed for the night. It was the fourth day that she began to get stir-crazy. Zeppelin had her basic needs met, but she was going wild with boredom. She needed a creative outlet, and drumming on her lap only held so much rhythm to occupy her for a short time. She drew on the walls with charred sticks and wrote nonsensical thoughts along with them. She hadn’t seen a soul besides small animals and insects, and she didn’t feel that she was in danger so long as she stayed in her humble abode. She figured that she was being watched by the people in the blurry labs, so she decided to speak to them in absence of anything else to do. Well… speak in song form. Zeppelin was standing with her arms outstretched on the third floor with her eyes closed to make an over-exaggerated stance of passion. “Ma Cherie, ma petit bebe! How you wound me. You’ve set the snare, you’ve caught the hare. But a hare needs to be free. What do you hope, Monsieur Connard? Do you hope to see what may be, God? I’ll tell you what I know to be true. Please do keep in mind; You’ll get nothing from me, nor I you. Unless this song just shows that I’ve left my brain behind. I’m tired of singing, kindly f*** off. You’re all horrible people, I hope you die. But have this little gris-gris before we say goodbye: I hope you outlive your children.” Her outstretched arms reach towards the ceiling and flipped the whole room off while she slowly spun in a circle, noting to pause at the windows just in case there were cameras outside. The song had a very incorrect rhyming pattern, but Zeppelin had to admit that the tune was quite catchy. Now, she had to do something else- pausing was not an option because she didn’t want to think about her current worries. Did not want to think about her family and wonder if they were indeed safe from the hunters, if Isi followed her instructions and went home like a good deer. No, it was better not to think of that at all. When Zeppelin let her emotions come out to play, it was a dangerous tornado of extremes; she had to remain calm if she was going to formulate a rational plan for herself. She needed to figure out how long she would be here, and in which direction she would go scouting. It seemed to her that the place she was in was landlocked- though the humidity that was coming from the East indicated a sizeable mass of water somewhere. It would be best to find cover in the park and decide what to do from there. Until then, she would draw up a map for herself along the wall of the tiny area that she had already scouted. Zeppelin got to work on that project and hoped that it would keep her thoughts at bay.