1963-10-14 - AKA Zombies
Summary: Jessica is hired by someone to investigate the gravesite robberies and gets more than she bargained for. They're not undead, but they're not-not dead either… she really needs to charge more for her work…
Related: Once Upon a Hellmouth Plot
Theme Song: None
jessica morgan 


It's midday, and Jessica Jones is working. Kind of. Well, she's getting paid for this job anyways. She pads around one of the now-excavated tombs and stares down at the sheer emptiness of the hole in the ground. She crouches down, and runs her fingers through the soil. "I have no idea what the fuck they think I'll find the police didn't," she mutters to herself before looking over her shoulder at the head of maintenance. "So, basically," she slows her speech to make sure she's making sense to the fellow, "you came in early yesterday and noticed there was holes — everywhere — " she lifts a hand, "and there was nothing left in the graves?"

"Exactly ma'am. The graves had been emptied. Quickly. Overnight."

"So you're saying, there was a hole," she puts the sunglasses on, "in your security?" her eyebrows lift and her lips quirk into a near-smile. It's the most charming one she can muster.

*

That gets her a flat look. "Ma'am. Nobody in a graveyard has security to keep the dead from getting out. This dirt wasn't shovelled out. It was shoved out." The man points at the way the dirt is arranged around the graves. "We have security to stop people from getting in and digging things up. But this time…it's like they all just got up and left. So. If you know where the dead might be…?" He holds his hands up helplessly.

He does have a point. And they have an audience. People are hanging around the edge of the cemetary, clutching flowers, looking confused. A couple of them are actually crying.

*

Jessica's arms wrap around herself and her head cants to the side irritably. "Right," because bodies can walk out of cemeteries. Again her eyebrows lift. She stares at the ground, and pushes down on the soil — indeed it's not piled the way one would expect if someone had gone ahead and shovelled out the soil. She frowns.

"Alright. Thanks for your help." She peeks down the row of now-empty tombs and her lips purse. "Well if they're not in the cemetery they went somewhere." Right? "I'm going to patrol the perimeter." Her jaw tightens and her hands drop to her sides, causing the leather in the jacket to creak. "I won't be long." And she'll let them know if she finds anything of interest, especially around finding wherever the bodies have gone.

She takes a few steps away and reaches the fence. Slowly, she reaches out a hand and allows it to touch the fence. It wouldn't be easy for anyone to have gone the bodies out, but not impossible. "Dismemberment?" she mutters to herself.

*

The wrought iron fence isn't particularly tall but the bars are pointed at the top. It wouldn't be fun to get over but you'd have to give a damn about pain. The spikes in one area, right where the roses have been crushed and trampled, are slightly…ew. Jessica's fingers come away sticky. It's embalming fluid. And there, further down, there's some rags caught on another spike. A clip-on earring — looks expensive — is crushed into the dirt of the garden bed, under a footprint.

The more Jessica looks, the more evidence she uncovers that someone, a number of someones, left the cemetary. There's even a scrap of what looks like leather, thin leather, hooked on an iron scroll. It's not leather. Well. Not animal leather.

*

Jessica's fingers wigeon her pants to remove any leftover guts and fluid on them. She frowns and glowers as her hands tuck into her pockets. Carefully, she bends down and inspects the footprint. Her eyebrows draw together sharply, and she plucks the earring from the dirt, before putting it in her jacket pocket.

She pauses at the leather and reaches out to inspect it — running her fingers over the flap. She frowns deeply and takes a single step back. A glance is cast over her shoulder. Something isn't right. A lot of something isn't right. When she's fairly convinced no one is watching, she kicks off from the ground and flies high enough to vault the fence. The trail demands to be followed — even if it leads to a lot of nothing…

*

The footsteps converge into a trail that's easier to follow. They lead down, across a highway, and into a greenspace. Down deep in the trees, there's a swampy area and a a drainage tunnel. Not much else there at all. There's the same rags here and there. A gold watch. A shoe.

It's a sunny day but there's a cloud passing over the sun. Looking up, the sky is still blue but the feeling persists. The wind, curling around leaves and tugging trash by the road, is cold. Jessica can see her breath.

*

The cold prompts Jessica to retreat further into her jacket, thankful for its leathery protection, and oversized nature. Men's clothing always was good for that. She blows out hard as she picks up the watch and pockets it. If it belonged to her client, it could get her paid.

A glance is given to the sky, and Jess shivers as goosebumps draw across her limbs and down her neck. The cold leaves more than a chill. Jones writes it off as little more than temperature fluctuation.

She continues on her path, footfalls becoming heavier with each step taken. The breeze warrants a sneer — it's possible the path will get blown away. That would put a damper on the investigator's efforts.

*

Once in the trees, the otherworldly feeling grows more intense. The scrap of forest cuts off civilization, the sound of the city is dampered by the woodland and…fog. It's a slow thing, just a haze at first that thickens almost imperceptibly. A grey chill creeps over everything, a thin line of white frost crackles along the edges of leaves and blades of grass.

Deeper in, something rustles. Behind Jessica, someone groans. That's a human sound, air forced out of lungs and past slack vocal cords. It holds the suggestion of a slack jaw, a numb tongue, nothing with which to form words.

*

The sound vibrates in her bones, causing Jessica to stop dead in her tracks. Her stomach lurches with the flipflop feeling deep within. She twists around to push against where've rate sound comes from. Her hand reaches out, solidly to grab at whatever she can find in the weird, unexpected, haze.

"Hello?" she calls haphazardly. Her eyes squint. The cold enters her very being, and defensively, her free hand balls into a fist. She reminds herself she literally got out of hell. She can handle anything here.

*

The groan comes again. It sounds painful. A woman's form is visible in the haze. She stumbles from tree to tree, holding onto them for support. Every time she takes a step of her own accord, her unsteadiness is apparent.

Behind Jessica, something whispers. It's not comprehensible, just audible. Low to the ground, it sounds as though someone is speaking far away and under the earth, a voice that drifts up through rabbit warrens until it reaches her.

*

"Hey!" Jessica calls towards the woman needing support. Again, she pivots to seek the whispers, but nothing stands out. The limping woman, however, is. She picks up her paces, breaking into a light jog to catch up to the woman ambling from one tree to the next.

"Hey! I'm Jessica Jones — private investigator — " she reaches out to grab the woman's shoulder, " — you need help?"

*

The woman looks up and her auburn hair falls back from her face. Her skin is tight over her bones, worn through over them, and greenish in hue. Her eyes are empty and cloudy but, somehow, she looks Jessica in the eyes. She opens her mouth and makes that moan again, grabbing at Jessica with sharp-clawed fingers.

*

Instinctively, as the woman reaches for her, Jessica leans backwards, dodging from the woman's grasp. She reaches up, to grabs at the woman hand. She tugs at it, and pushes the woman around, in an aim to push the eerie woman away from her. "Back off lady — "

*

The woman only moans again and lurches forward. She's fast, crashing into Jessica and flailing at her face. She tries to bite or kiss as well, dry mouth and jagged teeth striving for Jessica's cheek. There's a rustle in the underbrush and something else, fast as a fox, hits Jessica in the back of the legs and clings there. Sharp nails cut through her jeans, dig into her legs. Whatever is on her, out of sight, is keening — higher pitched and angrier.

*

"FUCK!" Super strength does Jones well. An elbow sharply delivers a blow to the woman's face, smashing whatever it can. On the ground, she stomps hard against whatever assaults her legs before kicking off the ground to put a few feet of distance between her and whatever these things are. She squints to try to see something through the fog. She comes down hard on whatever clawed at her leg (or relatively where it would be). She needs to eliminate it.

*

The woman goes down with a groan, the thing around her legs shrieks and scuttles away. The fog has darkened now, or at first glance it's darker…a second look suggests that the growing shadows around Jessica are human forms closing in on her. They're not fast but they are numerous and they seem mindlessly determined, the way they keep shambling.

Something else, another scuttling thing, darts out with a squeal, grabs the front of her shirt as it heads for her face. It can't be bigger than a toddler and it's light as though it's been dried out but it's horribly strong. Its eyes are glittery and wet, its teeth are tiny and sharp.

*

The tiny thing causes Jessica's lips to part as she tries to grasp at the tiny thing grabbing for her. "What the hell?!" she calls into the fog. Each of Jessica's hands try to grasp at the toddler's arms. The way it nips at her and bares its ever-crumbling teeth causes her to wretch unproductively. "The bodies!" her eyes widen as it finally sinks in. Indeed, the bodies had come up from the ground.

She physically throws it off her, tossing it back into the crowd that seems to be bearing down on her. She reaches for one of the signs along the side of the street. Ironically, it's YIELD word is he exact opposite that she aims to do. She swings hard and mighty, using the metal pole with its dark sign, as a baseball bat to sweep a large circle around her self. She uses the centrifugal force to continue the spin without becoming too dizzy.

*

The shamblers slow their approach but one of the scuttling things grabs the sign and rides it, hitching up the pole toward her. The keening noise it makes is piercing.

The ground under Jessica's feet shifts, crumbles, and something from underneath grabs her ankles. Her footing is getting more unstable by the second, claws scrape at her boots.

*

"SHIIII — " Jessica literally throws the pole, launching it towards the crowd that caves in on her. She teeters as she tries to maintain her balance, but while the things grasp at her ankles, she stomps HARD on the grounds clawing at her. Following the stomp, she pushes off the ground, launching herself into a hover above the ground. She extends a single arm into the air and aims to fly above the fog.

*

Jessica manages to clear the fog, going upward. It spreads wide but she can see the edges of it. She can also see more figures moving across the highway. Gravity pulls her back down before she soars past the edge of the fog and she hits asphalt within arm's reach of half a dozen of the shamblers. Something about her being here has stirred them up and they're not happy.

As Jessica gets ready to react to the new threat, tires screech behind her. A car, going too fast, crested the hill and hit the fog bank — and the slick asphalt — without warning. The driver hits the brakes but the car only fishtails, spinning out of control. There's a sickening crack as it hits a zombie and comes at Jessica side-on.

*

The asphalt causes Jessica's body to vibrate hard as she hits it. The thud causes her to curl into herself while her body takes the impact. Thankfully, she is resilient. She spins to her back, just in time to hear the tires screech. She leaps to her feet and reaches out to grasp the bumper of the car. She bears her heels down, trying to use them as breaks as she attempts to bring the car's momentum to a halt.

*

Jessica's boots smoke as the car drives her back into the oncoming horde. The cemetary was newer, sprawling, with hundreds of relocated corpses. Maybe them being disturbed once made it easier to raise them this time. They swarm Jessica and the car, some are crushed under the bulk of the vehicle but the rest are undeterred. In amongst the shamblers, the scuttling, skeletal things are weaving around, grabbing at Jessica's ankles, trying to pull her down.

The driver of the car looks panicked, lays on the horn. He's shouting something incomprehensible but it's obvious that he blames Jessica for the entire mess.

*

The heat from her boots aches through Jessica's body, but there's no time to reflect on the feeling of friction in her skin. She crushes bones that grasp at her ankles, stomping down harder and harder with each step. Her hands lash out, punching hard at anything they can strike — pounding at dead flesh in an effort to eliminate and crush anything they can hit.

She turns back to the bumper of the car, and spins it towards some of the amblers. They're already on a rampage and if she can stop them at all, she'll use anything at her disposal, including a car. With a passenger. He may blame her, but she's going to use the weapons at her disposal.

*

The car is effective, moreso than the sign, but the shamblers are strong. Their fingers tear through cloth, their ragged teeth snap at Jessica's skin. There are more of them than she can count and they keep coming. The longer Jessica stays in one place, the more the ground gives. The weight of the car only makes the earth give away faster.

The moaning is oppressive, the breath of the corpses is rank and stinking. One of the skittering ones latches onto Jessica's waist and starts gnawing through to her belly.

*

And that's quite enough of that. Jessica shakes her head, and mutters to herself. She grasps at the door of the car, and pulls it off its hinge. "Come on!" she orders the driver. She tugs at him, and once again kicks off the ground to fly into the air with the human in tow. She aims to get the pair of them to safety — far enough away from the cemetery and the path that she'd brought both of them on.

*

The driver decides to go with Jessica as the lesser of two evils, which is better than most mutants get from people these days. He scrambles out and hangs on for dear life — and will apologize to his wife for the rest of the evening, confusing her immensely, but she's going to appreciate the flowers he buys her. This time, Jessica is closer to the edge of the fog.

She sails back up to the rise where the car lost control, out beyond the reach of that boiling mist. The lowlands look like a cauldron from up here. The driver is sputtering, stunned and clinging to her jacket.

"That's zombies, are those really zombies, is there a camera, is this actually happening, my wife is gonna kill me, holy shit, are you a mutant?" The words just keep coming but it's better than the godawful moaning of the zombies. Now, less disturbed, the survivors are turning back to their original course of finding a place to rest.

*

The sputtering has Jessica's expression souring. "No," she finally answers bluntly. "Not a mutant." She wasn't born this way. "Just adrenaline," that makes her strong and lets her fly. She finally slows just passed the road the cemetery is situated. She emits a long puff of air and her shoulders slump. "They were dead," she finally confirms before looking over her shoulder.

Her eyebrows draw together and she finally offers, "Jessica Jones. Alias Investigations."

*

"Holy shit. My car. There are dead things on my car, I ran over a…" The man crosses himself three times in a row. "I gotta go to church, I gotta tell Father Anthony. It's the end times, lady. You gotta be blessed or something."

The wind blows again and, this time, it's warm. The fog begins to break, the center line of the road shows itself. The sun actually has a bit of warmth to it. Bodies are scattered along the road, corpses that have lost their animation. When the fog peels back, one of the skittering smaller undead can be seen tearing chunks off a discarded corpse. Another is gnawing on the remains of a crow that lost out to a truck some time earlier in the week.

*

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