Realistic or Modern Our Parents Are in Russia and People Are Eating Each Other

[BatBrainBat]

New York State, America
August, 2018
Two days after the outbreak​

Megan Cox

Age: 17yrs
Height: 5'7"
Weight: 158lbs

Loves: burritos
Hates: fortune tellers

Preferred weapon is a metal baseball bat. Has a strong opinion on cats and dogs. Probably hates you.

Kormal

 

[Kormal]

Richard Cox

Age: 17
Height: 176cm
Weight: 60kg

Fraternal twin. Doesn't like his name. Has bad eyesight but doesn't do anything about it.
Doesn't have any real hobbies, which makes him sort of bored with life.

 

[BatBrainBat]

Something popped.

Megan winced as she stretched out her back, producing several more of the gross sounds. You'd think someone so revolted by it would naturally develop a better posture, but Megan went right back to leaning heavily on her elbows as she propped them on her knees. If she bent any further forward, she'd be completely folded in half. Even her ass was on an angle, as the old couch's cushions of questionable cleanliness sloped rudely inward towards the back.

None of this is really of any particular interest though. At least not at this point in time, in this household. Even the deep frown, narrowed eyes, and slightly agape mouth of the girl's face as she stared at the television wasn't much of an oddity, even though the expression was rather intense. What is interesting, however, is what was on the television itself. It was a news broadcast - something Megan would usually never bother with - one speaking of an outbreak of some strange disease. Apparently, the number of people abruptly deciding to chew on the face of the person next to them had begun to increase at an alarming rate.

"Hey... Dick?" Megan called loudly from the couch, not really knowing where her brother was in the house and so shouting anyway. "Can you get me a soda?"

 

[Kormal]

"Moron, I'm right next to you" answered Richard. It sounded like something that should be said with an annoyed voice, and yet he was more bored and indifferent than anything else. "Don't have to shout."

He stayed in his weird position for a moment. That is, with his back lying on the floor and his legs pointing towards the ceiling while leaning against the sofa - the so-called "Bored Kid" position.
After that moment, however, he clumsily got up while looking at what seems to be just more hyperbolized American news. "People bitting each other? What's next, people burning shoes they already bought over some insignificant thing?" he thought to himself.

He turned towards the way to the kitchen and away from the TV. Before anything else, he, of course, had to scratch his head, then his back, then his arse.

"Fine, fine. What soda do you want?"

 

[BatBrainBat]

"Coke. Not that Dr. Pepper crap."

The news was a little odd, yes, but something about it struck Megan as a little too odd. American news by no means felt realistic to her, especially with all the cheesy background music they used as if it were some action movie. But something about this seemed a little off. Would they really go to this extent of exaggeration just for more profitable views? That sounded more like something they'd do in Russia. Or at least something people would say would be done in Russia. She'd have to ask her parents about that when they got home.

Of all the places in the world, her proud American parents had decided to vacation in Russia. They didn't have any Russian heritage, didn't know anything at all about the culture, and they didn't even speak the language. Sometimes Megan thought her parents clung a little too strongly to their 'all-accepting' beliefs. It went a little bit beyond simply whether or not you should judge somebody. This wasn't the first time they'd gone out of their way, wearing their obnoxiously over-enthusiastic smiles, to demonstrate this belief to pretty much nobody. It made the teen roll her eyes just thinking about it.

Some banging sounds on the television distracted her from staring into space. They were showing a clip of some police officers shooting at another face chewing person. Only they didn't go down after already being hit in the chest three times. Only the fourth shot killed them when it went right through their skull. Megan grimaced a little. "Tough bugger..."

 

[Kormal]

"To each their own" said Richard, addressing Megan's tastes. He was already heading toward the kitchen though, so he wasn't so sure if she even heard him at all.

As he grabbed the Cola from the fridge, he noticed that there's nothing there that he particularly enjoyed drinking, and the small lack of food made itself apparent as well.
"Oi, the fridge's getting empty again" he said in the still indifferent voice, but louder so that his sister could hear him.

Richard enjoyed stuff like playing games and watching movies, but he couldn't exactly call them his hobbies or anything like that.
That and his clear laziness to do anything productive made him rather unsociable. Combined with the fact that it's the summer break at the moment, he didn't have much of a reason to go outside, usually. Despite all this though, he has always been rather independent from his parents and even did fairly decently at school. That's why he didn't mind the idea of his parents going to Russia, of all places. Walking back to the living room, he wondered about what could be interesting about Russia, a place his family didn't have any connection to whatsoever. Perhaps it's interesting, because based on all these crazy videos you can find on the internet, things actually seem to happen there? Sure, America has it's share of happenings , but the way the news talk about small insignificant things like they're the biggest things ever makes actual big significant things so much less interesting. Whereas the news here obviously didn't talk much about Russia, at least outside of politics. At least that was his views on things.

"Wanna go buy stuff?" he said as he came back, holding his arm outstretched to pass on the soda.

 

[BatBrainBat]

Megan took the drink without looking over, her eyes still glued to the T.V. "Yeah, whatever. We're out of grilled-cheese cheese anyway."

She reached over to grab the remote off the coffee table and flicked off the news, then stood, and stretched, cringing once more as her spine played a symphony of crystal clear cracks and pops. She huffed as she relaxed into a slight slouch, and walked past her brother to grab a coat. "I'm driving," she declared bluntly.

It was a bit nippy out as she walked down the front steps. August was the beginning of that stupid time of year when the weather couldn't decide if it wanted to be summer or fall. The weather was stupid. It wasn't even at least sunny. It was gray and cloudy and gross. It made Megan sneer as she walked over to the truck, and heaved herself up into the driver's seat. "Dumb Shaws or good Shaws?" she asked, not bothering to wait till her brother had even closed his door before starting the car. "I say good Shaws. I want a sandwich." The dumb Shaws had been dubbed as such for its shitty deli. It didn't have half the stuff the further one did. To Megan, it was worth the half hour drive just to get a decent sandwich.

 

[Kormal]

Richard just followed her, not responding to her declaration that she'll be driving. As long as she won't kill them or run someone over, he didn't care. Besides, he wasn't wearing his glasses again anyway.

As he stepped out of the house, he looked at the sky. It was a habit he acquired some time ago, for no particular reason - the clouds or the sky itself didn't interest him much. He didn't mind the colour of it all, he actually enjoyed it a little, without knowing why. After a moment, he set his sight back down again with a quiet sigh.

After getting in the car, he rested his arm on the door, and his head on the arm. Without looking at Megan, instead setting his eyes on the front window, he answered the same way he said everything else today. "Well, whatever, you're the one driving anyway. Your pick."

 

[BatBrainBat]

"Perfect..." she muttered in satisfaction, more to herself than to him. She pulled out of the driveway, and drove off down their street.

It was rather calm in the grocery store. The drive there had been nearly silent, though not uncomfortably so. It fit the mood of the dreary day. It seemed others felt that was as well, as the people they past in the grocery store sluggishly scanned the shelves.

The twins had already picked up their items, enough food to fill their fridge, and now stood by the deli counter as they waited for their food to be made. Though even the people behind the counter were a bit slow, making Megan tap her foot testily on the floor.

 

[Kormal]

Richard groaned quietly, waiting for the food. "Hey, I'm gonna walk around a bit. Call me when the food gets done, we can meet up outside" he said as he left without waiting for an answer.

Since he was leaving without any items with him, he took special care not to look like he stole something - which he didn't anyway. It was an odd form of paranoia, though one that everyone has... or so at least he hoped.
Of course, doing that ironically made him more suspicious, so the personnel glanced at him oddly.

As he got outside, to the gray parking lot with its gray sky and gray air, he felt it would be very fitting to sigh and smoke a cigarette.
...he doesn't smoke though, so he left that thought behind and wandered around, moving away from the parking lot, without any particular destination in mind.

 

[BatBrainBat]

Megan only responded to her brother with a bland look as he walked off. She didn't care much, it just made wait more boring for herself. But at last, of course only once her brother had disappeared from sight, did she receive her sandwich.

She was about to walk off toward the cash, but something caught her attention. One of those mini, metal shelves went crashing to the ground. At first it seemed as if someone had just tripped and fell back against it, but as soon as they hit the ground, a woman lunged after them with spastic speed. Everyone around stared in horror, but it also seemed that someone on the other end of the store had begun to scream.

"Oh fuck..."


Outside, beyond the parking lot, it was an incredibly noisy day. Hardly three-thirty, and the roads were already unbelievably crammed with traffic. People were honking their horns left and right, making an incredibly obnoxious racket.

It nearly all but drowned out the sound of Richard's phone, as it buzzed on in his pocket.

 

[Kormal]

"Dammit..." whispered Richard only to himself, although even he couldn't hear it with all that noise. "...Should've stayed with Meg."

He stared at the noisy cars in annoyance, already tired by having to listen to it all."What the hell... this isn't even NYC, why all the traffic?"
He turned around from it, somehow hoping that it would stop if he did. It didn't, of course.
Only then did he notice that his phone is vibrating in his pocket. He moved back towards the grocery store, where the noise ought to be muffled at least a bit.
As he did so, he took the phone out and accepted the call without checking who it was.

"New York State Sperm Donation Centre. You squeeze it, we freeze it. How can I help?" he said in a deadpan voice and with a little smirk to the person in his phone.

 

[BatBrainBat]

"Just get back to the car, you idiot!" Meg snapped on the other end. Apparently she was having none of it. "And don't be all slow and mopey for once! If you're not at the car in three minutes, I'm leaving without you!"

She hung up. She preferred to have her hands free as she wove through the small crowd of distractingly hysterical people running for the doors. Three people were attacked. At least that was as much as she had gathered from the barely coherent shouting. She broke through the crowd and sprinted towards the truck. "Dick, you better be at the car!" she shouted into the parking lot.

 

[Kormal]

"Guess she didn't have any to offer" Richard said to himself again and shrugged. He looked back at the traffic behind him and sighed again.
"She sounded mad, guess I should hurry" he mumbled right before moving towards the car, in what could only be described as a mix between a jog and a run - enough to be quick, but not enough to be tiring. He wondered what could've possibly upset her so much. Then he thought about how difficult it will be to drive through all the traffic and groaned in annoyance again.

He wasn't too far away from the parking lot, so it barely took a moment to get there. By the time he heard Megan's shouting, he was already sitting in the front passenger seat.
He opened his window and waved his hand to signal he's there. When she got to the car, he asked - this time more audibly and with less indifference - "Gods, what's the fuss about? Is there a promotion in a different store or something?"

 

[BatBrainBat]

Seeing her brother already seated, Megan wasted no time in swinging open the door and leaping into the car. She slammed the door shut, and finally, sunk back in her seat with a heavy sigh. "Jesus... No, it was the thing from the news," she panted. "The face-eating bullshit."

She sat up a bit, leaning forward to peer at the front of the store through the windshield, before plopping back into her seat once again. She looked a bit shaken, and even locked all the doors.

Then, at first it looked like she was going to shove off her jacket. Her sprint was tough, she easily could have been overheated. However, instead she seemed to pull something out. It was her deli sandwich. She unwrapped it, and simply began to eat.

 

[Kormal]

"Face-eating?" Richard scratched his recently-shaved chin. "Huh, the trends Millennials will think of these days..." he sighed, resting his head on the seat and closing his eyes.

He sat for a moment like that, simply thinking, who knows what about. Then he turned his head towards Megan, though without opening his eyes.
"Oh, by the way, the road ahead is stuffed. It'll be difficult to drive through it, probably. More importantly..."
He opened his eyes and spoke in a much lower and serious tone of voice.

"...Where's my sandwich?"

 

[BatBrainBat]

"You didn'f orther one, dingus," she said with her mouth full. She swallowed her bite, and frowned at him. "If you had ordered one, I would have snagged it for you. But, more importantly..." she echoed testily.

"I wasn't making that up. Or like, being sarcastic or whatever. I meant, like, literally. Literally people were eating each other's faces in there, like on T.V. It was super gross. Why did you think I yelled at you to get over here?" She sighed in exasperation, and began to wrap up the remains of her food, then stuffed it in her left pocket, a precaution in case Richard suddenly decided he wanted to steal it. "What do you mean the road's stuffed though? Does nobody work these days?"

She pulled out of the parking lot. Right away, as they neared the road, she saw what he meant. On a normally smoothly flowing street, it was completely bumper to bumper, and people were making a right fuss about it. Megan stared in disbelief, even lifting a hand to silently say, 'what the hell is this?'

They hadn't even had a chance to inch onto the road when the situation took a turn from unbelievable to unreal. Some guy went barrelling down the sidewalk on the other side of the street. He ran up to the nearest car, and shouting inanities, began pounding on the window. The couple inside leapt out in a rush, abandoning their car without a moment of hesitation. It took the man a second, but he managed to circle the car. Before the driver could even get across the street, the maniac tackled him to the ground. From where Megan and Richard sat, they could no longer see either person as they struggled behind the tight line of cars. But the woman who had been in the car with who must have been her husband looked back. She stopped dead in her tracks, and started shrieking.

 

[Kormal]

After a moment of thought about the matter of importance - the sandwich - he decided that she was a little right in what she said about forgetting to order.
"Gah, fine, I'll just make something out of the ingredients we bought."

It took him a moment to remember the other thing she told him about, as he was too focused on the food.
"Huh... It's an odd disease though, isn't it? Faces aren't even nutritious, they're all bone with some skin and a little muscle pulled over it" he said, gesturing a little like he usually does when talking about something he finds intriguing. He must have misunderstood just how face-craving these people become.
He then looked at Megan's face and smirked a little.
"Hey, it's a good thing I'm not infected. I'm pretty damn hungry right now, you know."

He didn't comment anything on the traffic though, because he knew seeing it herself couldn't be worse than any description.
And as they pulled out of the park, he saw through Megan's expression just how right he was. A small "Mhhm..." was all that he did to comment on it.

He watched the improvised American-football match with the married couple and the barrelling guy as the main stars for a while, but he didn't see or understand it very well with his bad eyesight and how far away it was. He set his gaze on the road up ahead instead and groaned.
"Well... We should probably find a different road. Even if it's longer than this one, it'll probably end up being quicker."
After he said that, he looked around to see if there are any openings.

 

[BatBrainBat]

Megan slowly turned to look at him, her eyes narrowed at him with a sort of, "Really?" expression. But she knew her brother, and guessed he probably couldn't see what was happening.

"Damn it, Dick, you missed it! Why do you never wear your glasses? That's what I'm talking about!" she exclaimed, gesturing to the scene despite knowing he couldn't see too well. "Ugh."

She turned her body to look out the back window. No cars were behind them, so she hurriedly backed up. There was a back road behind the store. Surely that would be a better route to take. She made a u-turn, and sped off through the parking lot, coming to a quick halt at the stop sign before the back road. There was a hedge one side, bordering the yard of someone who probably didn't want to have to see the broad, blank wall of the grocery store every time they stepped outside or glanced out a window. Though they really needed to trim it back. Meg had to really lean forward to check the road for coming cars. It seemed clear enough. She began to turn out.

Two seconds hadn't even gone by. Their trucks front wheels had just barely cleared the curb. They were on their way, they could find a better route from here. But two seconds hadn't even passed, when a car screeched onto the road from another side street, some ten feet away. Their turn was too tight, and as they passed, clipped the whole front corner of the twins' vehicle, spinning them a jarring ninety-eight degrees into the middle of the road.

 

[Kormal]

Hearing Megan, he turned his head back towards the match, squinting a bit this time around. Unsurprisingly, it didn't help. He shrugged.
"Hey now, you know I don't like them. And usually, I don't need them anyway" he explained again, the same way he usually does when this topic comes up.

As they kept driving, he also kept talking, while gesticulating a bit again.
"You know, I could get contact lenses, but they're sooo uncomfortable! And where would I keep them anyway?" he pointed at his clothes, not considering keeping them on his nose. "They're so fra----"
As the car crashed, his passionate speech was forced to crash as well. His long-ish hair was now in ruin and in front of his face.
"Holy fucking milk McNuggets" he groaned while fixing his hair. After a moment, he looked up and towards Megan, making a sigh of relief because she didn't seem to be in a serious condition.
Despite that, he still wanted to make sure and asked "Oi, you alright?" with a more serious tone of voice than usual, as his humoristic mood was ruined, although just a bit.
He looked around to see what happened.

 

[BatBrainBat]

Megan grunted in response. She wasn't injured at all, but the jarring crash had hurt her neck a bit. Of course, her head also had to start pounding. She looked up from where she'd been staring at the wheel, wincing at the ache, and gazed at the car that had hit them. They'd gone right up onto the sidewalk, and partially onto the front lawn of that house with the hedge. But the car just sat there. Nobody was getting out, nor were they trying to pull off that poor person's lawn.

"...What do you think they're doing? Think they hit their head or something?" Megan asked her brother without tearing her eyes away from the scene. "Should we like... go check?"

 

[Kormal]

Richard just looked at her, a little irritated by how she didn't really respond, but also glad she was okay. He himself was lucky enough not to feel any pain at all.
"I guess that's a yes" he mumbled to himself, a habit he realized he has been getting into more and more.

As Megan was looking at the same thing as himself, he thought about how oddly out of the ordinary the day was.
As she asked him a question to which the answer should be obvious, he just turned his head to her and said "Well yeah, I think that's what good people would do" as he unbuckled his seat belt.
"Come, let's go. Grab your phone and prepare to call an ambulance" he said as he stood up and left the car.