Mortuua
From C2Wiki
| Mortuua | |
|---|---|
Christina Loken as Mortuua. | |
| Concept | Zombie ex-cop |
| Status | Active |
| Alts | None here. |
| Vitals | |
| Real Name | Officer Laurie Turner (deceased) |
| Species | Zombie Human |
| Gender | Female |
| Hair | Black |
| Eyes | Green, glowing, pl10 fear inducing. |
| Height | 6'2 |
| Age | 32 |
| Profession | ex-cop, now street-heroine, monster hunter, and misc. |
| Characteristics | |
| Notable Aliases | |
| Alliances | The police tolerate her, slightly. |
| Base of Operations | |
| Abilities | Fear gaze, Enhanced Strength, Regeneration/Resurrection, enhanced smell and vision, can animate (other) dead enough to talk to them in certain circumstances. |
Contents |
Zombie Cop Stalks City. Film at 11.
Intro
Mmm. Yeah. Zombies. You expect zombies to be shambling mounds of undead flesh with glowing eyes, rotting as they walk, lurching slowly along in their everlasting hunger for human brains.
That's a bit of an oversimplification.
I know.
I am one.
Before the Ring? Six feet under, baby. Stone freaking dead. Requisat in Pacem Officer Laurie Turner, PLPD. Killed in the line of duty. Yeah. There's a memory I'll cherish. You go on a simple meth lab call. You end up doused in who knows what and set on fire.
You live long enough to see your partner get shot in the head.
Then you die.
Lots of things happen after that. I know. Lots of things happened. But the memories are like roaches. I can dream them with all the intensity of being there. But when the lights come on, they scatter, and all I see is a blur of motion, and they're gone. Back into the walls. Waiting for the lights to go out again. Somehow, I don't think I went to heaven. If there is such a thing.
I wouldn't have expected to, either.
Dirty Cop
I wasn't exactly a great cop.
I did my job, yeah. I was even good at it. But there were times when ... it was easier to turn my back. Make a little money. It's no big deal, you tell yourself. Everyone does it.
I'm pretty sure I don't dream about my partner, though. I'm pretty sure he didn't wind up where I was. So. Call that how you see it.
Once you're bent, though, it's like hooking someone up on smack. It sneaks up on you. A little more here. A little more there. Cover up some arson evidence here. Let a mafioso go there. Then you cover up your first murder. And you say to yourself, "Guy did the city a favor." The perp, I mean. The victim? Drug dealer. To kids.
But you know you're hooked. Because once you do some syndicate a favor like that? They never forget. And they never let you forget, either. On the one hand, you're their best buddy. And they pay. And on the other hand, you'd better keep coming up with the favors, because if one of them ever gets run in, there's a good chance your name is going to come up.
It wasn't too long until I did the shooting for them. Crossed the line. Became a murderer. And you lie to yourself, even then. You say, "This guy? He's one of them. World's better without him. It might even be true.
But.
Maybe smack would be easier.
The Long Road Back
I tried to quit. For what that's worth. Cold turkey and everything. Lost my house. Couldn't pay for it. Moved into a cheap apartment. Sold my Porsche. I tried to go clean.
It was working, too. Slowly.
And then I died.
I know what you're thinking. I'm not telepathic. Not like that. I've just been around a while. I know. You're thinking, "Laurie, it was a setup."
Maybe you're right. That's something I still have to figure out. Who killed me. And why.
Anyway. There I was. In a box. In a concrete vault. In the ground. Not a care in the world.
When I woke up, the ground was shaking from the impact from the comet.
When I woke up, I could still feel the burning I died from.
When I woke up, I could feel the white hot cinder of the comet that went through the ground. And the vault. And the box. And my ribcage. And my heart.
It's still burning hot in there. I can feel it.
Everything I felt in the last moments of my life. Plus, everything they do to you when they embalm you. Plus my little piece of comet. All of that, I felt. In the dark. In the box. In the vault. In the ground.
When I woke up, I woke up screaming.
You can do a lot when you have a lot of time, and don't care what you do to your body anymore. Break through a coffin lid. Bust a few knuckles. Kick through concrete with your feet. Be thankful for steel toed boots. They keep your feet in one piece when you break all the bones in them. Dig through six feet of wet earth with your bare hands. You get the idea.
Scare the living hell out of a bunch of mourners. I looked like you'd expect a zombie to look. All the injuries I died of, plus everything I did to myself as I clawed my way back to the surface. Missing a hand. Not sure where it went. No hair. When they dress you after you die, they slit your clothes down the back. They don't stay on after that. So. Yeah. Pretty nasty.
What Now?
I try to do better. Not to scare people. To pass. Most people can't even tell when they look at me. It's not vanity, the time I spend with the mirror in the morning. It's me trying to make sure I look human. Alive. Whatever you want to call it. My body helps where it can. Stuff grows back, slowly. It took me a month that first time. New hand. New skin. Hair. If I've been good, you wouldn't look at me and think zombie. I breathe. When I think of it, at least. Some things do work on automatic, when I'm in good condition. I have a pulse. My mouth stays moist enough to talk. If I drink too much coffee, and keep it in my stomach, I absorb some of the water, and my kidneys eventually do what you'd expect. The food I eat. Moves through me. I wouldn't say I digest it, really. I don't have to eat. It's ugly when I do, too, so I try not to most of the time.
Sense of smell? Check. Works better than ever. Like a dog's nose.
Hearing? Same.
Touch? Eh. About like it was, after a couple hours in the hot tub. Everything feels a little strange.
Vision? Mm. Yeah. the eyes. They glow. Green. Like I broke open a cyalume light stick and poured the contents in my eyes. Don't try that at home, kiddies. The glow's subtle enough that I can wear glacier glasses and get away with it. In bright sun, you might miss it if you saw my eyes, although they're all cloudy. Still kind of freaky in the mirror, first thing in the morning, though. How do I see? Beats me. Pretty much like they were before, where that's concerned. Except that I can read in bed with no lights on. And see body heat. And then there's the fear thing. Look into my eyes. See your own death, and your own eternal reward. Or so they tell me. I can't see it in the mirror.
Yes, before you ask, I do have body heat. It's distributed a little differently. Probably just heat from the comet shard radiating out into my blood, but when the heart's beating? Yeah. Sure. Cold hands? Clammy feet? Probably. They don't bother me. I can't imagine anyone else being in a position to care about my feet.
That's something I miss. But I'm dead. All this moving around stuff doesn't change that. Nobody's going to fall in love with a dead girl. Nobody'd I want anything to do with, at least. Hell, even if I met someone exactly like me, who was nice. I wouldn't. Ew. But yeah. When I'm freshly healed and scrubbed clean and pretty-smelling, and feeling almost like I'm alive, yeah. It sometimes goes through my mind that it might be nice. To be in love.
Then, usually, I get messed up on a case. Mess me up bad enough, and I start decomposing. Here's a hint. Antiperspirant, mouthwash, body spray, deodorant maxi pads and odor eaters in your shoes do not in any way cover up the smell of rotting flesh. Plus, I attract flies. Blowfly maggots. There's a fun sensation. Give them their due, they do help me clean up so I can heal. And when I'm like that, when I'm lying there feeling the blowfly maggots crawling around inside me, all I really want is someone to put me in the ground, take away this sad parody of life I lead, and be done with it. Love's for the living. Not me. Not anyone like me.
What does kill me? I dunno. Cut out my heart, maybe. Cut off my head. Given where the comet fragment is, and what happens when I lose a limb, I don't think I'd survive beheading. I'd rather not find out, frankly. I've got work to do. Here. In the world of the living.
And One More Thing
Oh yeah. There is, like Steve Jobs says, "One more thing." I can animate the dead. Don't picture zombie legions here. Picture me with my arm up someone's guts, and my hand around their heart, sharing ... whatever it is that makes me keep going with them for a few minutes, so I can ask them some questions. When I let go, they stop again. Before you ask, you have to keep the hole in their diaphragm smaller than your arm, so their chest will seal enough to breathe. That's how. Could I make it permanent, say, with a hunk of the comet? Plug it in, crank 'em up? I don't know. And I'm not interested in finding that out either.
To Serve and Protect
No uniform. Police department considers death, yours, as grounds for termination of your employment. On the flip side, the law also sees death, yours, as absolution for any crimes you might have committed. That's something, I guess. I did get my personal effects back, at least. My riding leathers. My personal sidearm. My bike. No next of kin, so it was all sitting in impound, waiting for probate court to sort out who owned what.
So I work freelance now. Gotta be careful. Without a badge, what I can do is a lot more limited. Although what they'd do with me if I did cross the line, I have no earthly clue. Probably bury me. Been there. Done that.
Not that I'd cross the line. Not that I'd go bad. How many people get a second chance? Should I waste it? You gotta be kidding me.
So. This second chance. It's not life. No. But it's something, at least. It's a living, as the saying goes. What do I do with it? Try to make it worth something. Try to make this go-round ... good. So that when I lose this chip of comet. When my extra inning on the earth is over, maybe I can go somewhere ... maybe I can be ... may be.
Better.
Laurie Turner
aka
Mortuua (dead, deceased, passed on, shuffled off this mortal coil, ex-parrot.)
Categories: PC | PL10
