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He wakes up suspended in the dark, on his side, ringing in his ears and the pain of a sudden stop in his chest, smelling blood and dust and gasoline.
Light filters in above his head.
His cheek is pressed against glass, which is flush with the ground.
Someone bombed the school, Camillo thinks, disoriented.
(Who the fuck bombs a community college?)
He struggles to right himself in the wreckage.
His seatbelt keeps him from orienting himself properly.
There’s a seat in front of him — looks like he was in the back of a car?
Above his head, a little light filters in from a window turned to the sky.
This is even more disorienting than the rest of the situation! He's never in the back of cars!!
He fumbles for the seatbelt release until he hears a click. The car's probably not going to explode or anything but he'd really like to get out of it, like, now.
The seatbelt obligingly releases him. He can probably open the side door above him from here, once he rights himself.
There’s a muffled scream from outside.
It takes some force to pop the door open, between the slightly crumpled body of the car and the weight of the door itself, but it’s manageable.
The car is tipped on its side, smashed against a rock, skid marks on the asphalt.
In the dust by the side of the road, something the rough shape of a human being is dragging Z upright by the broken wrist.
Its body is thickly muscled, impossibly so, its features obscured by melting tissue on a head half sunken into the absurd bulk of its shoulders. The organ dangling half-erect between its legs is almost comically large.
Z is coughing like he’s just had the wind knocked out of him, his side sunk in where ribs should really be curving out.
Camillo feels the inclination to reach for his gun.
This barely manages to supersede the inclination to simply bull-rush the ... thing ... with absolutely no plan or chance of success.
Camillo pulls out his gun, tries to remember if you're supposed to aim at the head or the center of mass, decides that in this case those are very close together, and shoots at the thing. Several times. A lot of times.
“A lot”, it turns out, is the right number of times. He’s not a perfect shot, and some of the bullets end up tearing through skin or embedded in the mass of its neck, but he gets in a headshot or two.
The thing stumbles towards him a few times — more steps than is really comfortable — and then crashes thunderously to the ground.
Z sits up, coughs a few times, spits blood into the dust.
Guns are loud!! No one warned him that guns were going to be loud!
Camillo holsters his weapon, shakes the sting of the recoil out of his arm, and runs for Z.
Z waves, with his intact hand, and coughs up a little more blood.
“Thanks,” he says, once he’s caught his breath a little, in a sort of half-wheeze.
"Oh my god lie down your everything is broken!"
Camillo pats his pockets for a phone. Where are the EMTs? Where are the police? Where is animal control??
He takes a deep breath, and there’s a crunch as some bone and cartilage comes back into alignment. He shudders.
"Gah!"
That really didn't sound like a good noise. And yes okay he is starting to orient himself enough to realize that this has got to be another dream. He is still allowed to be freaked out.
twists everything back into place.
He breathes through the pain, holding the ends of the snapped bone together. His muscles twitch and tighten around the break.
He laughs, a little drunkenly, lets go of his wrist and flexes his hand experimentally.
“C’mon. Could’ve been way worse.”
“…car might be fucked, though. Shit.”
He pulls himself to his feet and stumbles over to the upturned vehicle.
Z takes a quick walk around the car, regaining stability as he goes.
“—here, help me tip this thing over—”
He clambers up the rock to brace his feet on it and sets his hand against the roof.
Two people is, apparently, enough, in this case. The car groans, shifts, and then crashes back down onto its wheels.
It’s looking pretty grim. And crumply.
“…smells like gas to you too, right?”
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