We built this city on rock and roll

[fleurdesel]

Who: Adele LeBlanc, Derek Bliss, gawkers, assistants, and whoever wants to help or mock
What: Building a beach house (not actually on the beach)
When: June 12th - 15th
Where: The Beach
Summary: A house is built, there's a bonfire at night and food provided for those that helped.
Rating: PG-13 for potential language

[After a brief posting the day before on the journal network mentioning the construction project, it's location, and offering a meal in return for work, Adele assists Derek in moving the supplies they've collected since picking the site and in the initial set up. Knowing little to nothing of construction she follows his lead every step of the way, breaking off only to set up water or a quick meal for them in between shifts of planing wood, cutting trim and hammering nails.

It takes time to get it built, but the end of each work day is met with a small or large bonfire, a hot meal, and cool drink.

And at the end there may very well be a house.]

Comments

13th - 15th

[rather_be_surfing]

[Once Derek realizes there's someone here with electrician tools, he'll make his way over, giving the man a nod, and giving him an inquiring look.]

I wasn't expecting much to be done about the electrical. Sorry about that. The plans make sense, though?

[250mhzwabl]

Oh, they're fantastic. Pretty much what we work with back home, honestly.

[It's not quite the understatement one might anticipate, given the thoroughly English accent lilting through the words. But then again, one probably does not get the impression of restraint or propriety from the guy with beat-up trainers and a pierced ear, who's been bobbing his head to himself as he reads plans and listens to The Chemical Brothers on his iPod. The tinny treble beat emerges into the open air as he looks up at the newcomer and tugs one earbud free, leaving it to dangle down the front of his shirt. After that he pulls off one of his gloves (the one piece of equipment he'd been hounded incessantly about having before leaving the house), offering his hand.]

Jack Holden. I . . . don't believe we've been introduced?

[There's a faint note of question with the greeting, because while he's pretty sure they haven't met, the man looks bizarrely familiar.]

[rather_be_surfing]

[He's...seen that look before. A long time ago, when he was fifteen or so years younger, still in California, and still seen by enough people that the wrong connection could be made. The English (London?) accent only helped to confirm that this man may come to the wrong conclusion as well, depending on what version of Earth he came from.

Fortunately, Derek was at least getting a chance to introduce himself before that could happen. He'll take the hand offered and give it a firm grip and shake.]

Derek Bliss. I'm a friend of Adele's. Nice to meet you.

[250mhzwabl]

Likewise. Well, on it being nice to meet you.

[He gives a flash of a cheeky grin, then glances back down at the plans, just for a moment.]

I may well have been downgraded from 'friend' status into 'barely-tolerated former patient' since the time I spoke French at her. Hard to say.

[rather_be_surfing]

Oh, ouch.

[The wince of sympathy is tempered with a sort of fond amusement.]

You might not be that bad off, though. She got angry enough to throw me out of the med ward at one point while I was still her patient, and she still talks to me, so you might be all right.

...Unless you really mangled whatever it was you tried to say. I've never tried speaking French at her, so I don't know the transgression scale on that one.

[250mhzwabl]

I'm English, she's French. She's honour-bound to resent my so much as breathing upon anything of hers, culturally speaking, just as I am honour-bound to occasionally be an incorrigible shit. [He feigns a sigh of lament.] It's a bitter cycle, really.

[rather_be_surfing]

Ah, all right. Well, since I'm American, I'll just stay out of it, if that's all right. I give her enough reasons to be ticked off at me.

So is being an electrician your main thing back home, or something else?

[250mhzwabl]

More or less. I'm one of the radio guys, for-

[He hesitates a moment, trying to think of a suitable simplification of where he comes from, then shrugs.]

-well, let's just call a spade a spade, a post-apocalyptic survivors' settlement. We run radio communications and a sort of primitive radio-based internet. But since the communications shack is right by the generators, and everything is rather do-it yourself, and since our main electrical engineer is usually busy running everything . . . yeah. I managed to pick up the basics, too. I won't be inventing anything new, but I won't do a wiring job that'll waste power or start a fire, either.

[rather_be_surfing]

Necessity and the mother of invention. [Derek nods]

...All right if I ask what happened? Or is that something you don't want to talk about?

[250mhzwabl]

Oh, no, it's fine. Zombie apocalypse.

[How everyday the concept has become to him is probably evident in the way he says the words, a tone not unlike one in which other men might say 'a spot of rain' or 'bad traffic.']

Well, the Grey Plague. ZN1 influenza. But the practical result thereof was a drastic worldwide increase in the percentage of the population that was dead, shambling, and likely to bite.

[rather_be_surfing]

That sounds rough. So not a lot of people made it through. Anyone able to work on a cure or anything?

[250mhzwabl]

I think the military has been trying to organise efforts along that front. Our doctor in the township is trying as well, but . . . [He trails off, then smirks mildly, lifting one shoulder in a hapless shrug.] Resources. We have enough trouble keeping ourselves in the essentials. It took ages for the runners to bring back a centrifuge and a microscope, and as I understand it that's the least of what the doctor needs.

[rather_be_surfing]

[That makes Derek frown.]

Man, I wish I could help you guys out on that.

[He can't, of course, but the offer that can't be taken is still there.]

[250mhzwabl]

Thanks.

[The offer is appreciated, truly. Jack can't think of many people who'd actually wander into a zom-infested world of their own volition.]

But! I'm in Narnia at the moment, so everything will hold until I can get back to playing Tom Waits for the last survivors of humanity and teaching people via ham radio how to make their own communication equipment from scavenged bits. [The little speaker in his ear is still thumping along distractingly, and he reaches into his pocket to turn his iPod off, killing the sound neatly.] And what is it you do?

[rather_be_surfing]

[Derek chuckles a little]

Not quite as bad off as you, but it's a possibility in the future. I hunt vampires for a living.

[250mhzwabl]

[Jack looks impressed by that, to say the least. Fighting the undead out of necessity is one thing, but as a career choice? Hell.]

Hey, that's nothing to brush off. At least my brand of the living dead are brainless and typically slow, not . . . sentient and ageless and probably evil.

[Most zoms aren't really evil, just dangerous. Some are even sort of funny, once you've cracked enough to stop being piss-your-trousers terrified of the mere suggestion of them.]

[rather_be_surfing]

Well, I've seen some pretty speedy zombies on film in my time; for all I know you guys wound up with those instead. Still, the slow ones are nothing to sneeze at. All it takes it getting bitten once, right?

As for evil, yeah, I'll give you that; the vampires from my world are the result of an exorcism gone wrong. So 'evil' definitely fits.

[250mhzwabl]

Eugh.

[Yeah, sentient evil above and beyond your worse type of human being. No thanks.]

So, where in all of the vampire hunting did you pick up construction? Or is this more of a hobby.

[rather_be_surfing]

Downtime jobs. You hunt vampires all the time, you tend to go a little bit crazy. Or a little bit crazier, anyway. Construction's easy to get into in some places; they just need a warm body that knows what they're doing and since I'm a fill in and won't be around after the job's done, they don't have to front me for insurance or anything. Works out for both sides.