A morning walk

[deadman]

The morning light cut across the barren complex with a bluish tint, giving the eerie cast to angular stonework that implies the surreal, the not quite living.

No birds. No insects. A complete abnormality for the dawn... but the abnormality only began there.

At one corner of the walls, barely out of eyesight to anyone who'd be standing in a spot to see the whole of the thing, a tattered hand clasped the jutting stone at it's peak. Slowly, it drew forth the dry, nearly skeletal remains of someone long dead. The body crawled like a poorly animated insect, jerking its way over the wall, and inching down the other side with twisted marionette movements.

Another followed, ten feet further along the side of the wall, stilted movements the trademark of how long it had been dead. It was a skeleton, nearly completely decomposed. Then a third, again further along the wall.

Through the center, shadows long in the blue light, a quartet of skeletal figures jerked and shambled, moving at a pace that didn't match their lack of real coordination. The memory of how to move long gone even to their basic subconscious, the raised remnants of Genosha's original inhabitants looked like stop-motion animations, twitching and spasming as they marched forward.

Beyond this quartet, a trio of nearly gigantic quadrupeds moved in a much more fluid fashion. They were over three meters in length, and stood shoulder to chest with the other skeletons. These were also clearly dead, try husks clinging dustily to old bones. Their teeth were jagged and sharp, long talon-like claws decorated their massive bony feet, one of the few reminders of their once proud feline stature.

In the middle of his newly raised army of the dead, The Dead Man walked with purpose – with pride – and surveyed the base with glassy red eyes. He had raised 22 creatures, all told. Two more than his prior limit. Combining this with the fact that this week would be a red week, a bloody page in the annals of histories most atrocious acts of malign passion.

Commanding his army to stay perched upon the walls, surrounding the base, like Gargoyles, he went into the building looking for food.

[Pyro]

On his way in, he quite literally ran into Pyro, who was carrying a piece of toast in one hand and rubbing at his nose thoughtfully with the other.

"Oh, sorry," said Pyro, then visibly shyed back slightly from the Dead Man. Looking over the other man's shoulder, he saw the assortment of guards on the walls and his eyes widened. The man seriously creeped him out, but he had to concede that the power was quite phenomenal.

"We will be heading for Baltimore tonight," he said, eventually finding his voice. "I - ah - I was just hunting people down to let them know. And everything."

Another glance over the Dead Man's shoulder, another involuntary shudder.

[deadman]

Dead Man eyed Pyro's toast hungrily, then followed his gaze back over his own shoulder towards his minions.

He did not respond to what Pyro had to say, but instead addressed another issue.

“There's nothing to fear from the dead, Pyro.” He whispered, his face a bit too close to John's own as he turned to look with him over the yard. The scent of ginger-death was great from this close, and very sweet.

“They only wish to stay dead. That is the sole purpose of what is left of their mind. They only want their rest, the ultimate promise given to them the second they were brought into the world... The advantage of these long-dead ones is that I don't have to exert control on keeping them from screaming or babbling on and on about it. Only a fraction of it, to stop them from doing so up here.” He tapped on his own temple.

“Are you going to eat that?”

[Pyro]

John was horribly fascinated by the Dead Man's words and stared at the little undead army currently guarding his base and he suddenly saw a lot of things with a sort of clarity he'd never expected to gain from this...spine-chilling addition to what he suddenly realised was his team.

His team.

What the hell was happening to him?

"No," he said, "no, I'm not going to eat it." He proffered the toast to the Dead Man. It was almost as though the blockage in his brain had been plucked free. "There's nothing to fear from the dead. You're right. And if there's nothing to fear from the dead, if I can get over my fear of death, of what they are..." He gestured vaguely at the corpses. "If I can stand here and realise that they're nothing more than tools, than instruments..."

A delighted smile lit his face. "You're fantastic," he said, to Dead Man. "You've helped me to see the world a different way this morning. I'm sorry if my greeting the other day was anything less than pleasant, you sort of caught me up short. Welcome to my team."

MY team.

Hell, yeah.

He could have laughed out loud.

"Do you intend to bring any - uh - troops - with us when we go to Baltimore, or will you wait and see what you can...um...organise...when we get there?"

[deadman]

Dead Man's blinkless eyes looked at John, and then at the toast as he raised to his mouth.

Crunch.

He chewed methodically, and nodded at Pyro. “I was testing my limits. These ones are powerful, though incredibly stupid. The fresher the smarter, and these are long gone. I will bring a few. I'm unsure what kind of space you have available, though we can crate them together and pack them tightly. I want the tigers, and the five I brought with me to the island. The others can stay behind and keep Gill safe.”

Crunch. Chew.

“When we get there, I figure the best plan would be to create armed minions. The tigers and my five should be able to take down some police. The police I raise can then take down more police. Then I will have armed, intelligent, weapon-trained dead. The havoc, Pyro, will be glorious.”

[Pyro]

There was something fascinatingly intriguing about the way the man ate toast. It was somehow an act of morbid brilliance. He took the man's words on board and tried to push down the sense of revulsion at sharing the plane with corpses.

Ever since his journey in the Blackbird when Storm had performed a barrel roll, John had disliked flying intensely. And now, here he was, about to spend time in an enclosed space with a man who could easily punch through the wall of the plane if he so desired, a woman who could cause plants to drop down instead of oxygen masks, a cured - but brilliant - mutant, a man with a poisonous bite and...Dead Man.

And corpses.

The theme tune from the Magnificent Seven stopped abruptly.

"Yes," said John, vaguely, "The havoc will, as you suggest, be glorious. Well, get yourself sorted, do whatever preparation you have to do...we'll be leaving at nine tonight."

Then he fled.