Meet Joe Strummer

Who: Doc and Pandect
Where: Outside Bethesda, Maryland
When: Evening (also 1982)

There was, as always, a job to do. Very rarely was there ever not one, in fact, but that was the way life went when you were part of a war pack. Doc and his partners were always on the move, always correlating data and news reports to glean where the next bout of trouble was going to hit. Sometimes it was the Enemy, the people whose names they didn't even use, but just as often it was any number of other supernatural presences out there. Really, someone was always overstepping their bounds.

And that was where Doc and the others came in. Sometimes they got a job offer or a lead, most times they just found their own. They were self-financed, which made the nomadic lifestyle easy enough to maintain. Doc knew, though, that not everyone was as big as being constantly on the road as he was. And honestly, even he wasn't all for it. Motel beds got old fast, so did a total lack of personal luxuries, but those things and others were small sacrifices in the name of doing what was right. What was necessary.

So he was on the move again, or would be in the morning. Wherever they were staying was a flyspeck on the map outside of Bethesda, but it was a necessary staging ground. intelligence was being gathered, and if it connected to what was already there? They had a job; a crop of strange diseases fluctuating randomly through the nearby city, which was odd all on its' own. Even odder once one considered that the town was the home of the National Institute of Health and had its' own CDC field office. Doc's hunch told him there was at least one Shabiri at work here, but hunches didn't line up the gunsights for him.

That meant he had to wait, and that meant he had leeway for a drink. He would've liked more than one bar to choose from nearby, but Doc would take what was given. He'd crossed the strip of asphalt running between the motel and the bar, lighting up en route as he looked to his destination. Tiny, sparsely decorated, the paint was peeling, it'd be good for a quiet shot or three. Slipping in the door, Doc was feeling like he was right as he looked around at the dozen or so patrons, moving for an open seat at the bar. "Whiskey," he ordered as he settled, "Whatever the well brand is. Straight up."

Pandect looked up from behind the bar and nodded at the man while he was finishing off a couple girly drinks for a couple of ladies who's skirts were far too short. Meg, who owned the bar, was always getting at him to smile, good luck with that. The short skirted girls would be alright. (He wasn't going to stop wearing plaid shirts either, not for a bar like this.) He was only signed on to clean up the place, but the third person in Meg's little staff trifecta had gone down sick and Meg looked like she was getting there pretty close. Honestly she didn't look too hot, and a lot of the bar patrons were too, nothing definite, but it was making Pandect's feet itchy. He didn't like it. Two hundred years of immune system was working in his favor, for now, to keep him disease free, but something didn't quite smell right about this whole thing. For one thing he had been sneezing periodically in the bar, and that could only mean one thing, demon. And that had every part of him humming to get away, he had spent too weeks here anyway, that was plenty of time to get money up to live off.

But he couldn't leave the bar, it needed to be fixed desperately, sometimes it only seemed to be standing up by force of will. And he couldn't leave Meg alone, it wouldn't be right, not when she was looking so miserable, the regular bartender would be better soon and Pandect could take off, him and his truck and the open road. He nodded at the man who'd just bellied up and reached , he had learned to be a quick learner moving around but he was only finally starting to feel at home behind it after a week and a half. He poured and turned the whiskey bottle, wasn't great whiskey but there wasn't much difference in the way you poured whiskey not matter the quality, and slid the shot glass across the bar, "Anything else?"

He keeping his accent vaguely New England for this town, a French accent was useless for keeping things low key it made all the ladies twitter at him and it set him apart, and he was pretty good at it. The only accent that was better was his Georgian one, and he figured, if he could fool the natives of New England (albeit drunk natives) he was pretty decent at it. At least the sick patrons at the bar were too tired to start trouble, he'd probably have to double as bouncer too, not that he didn't already. Some of the bar's traditional drunks waved for beer and Pandect slid the bottles down smoothly (he kept his bar clean thank you very much, so the bottles didn't stick) and wiped his hands on his apron.

Tossing back his shot with a practiced ease, Doc slid the glass forward for another and smiled slightly. "Not bad," he commented on Pandect's bottle-slinging, nodding to his glass, "Hit me again, and toss a beer-back on too." Glancing back at the others in the place, Doc frowned in thought as he looked back Pandect's way after a moment. "Folks catching the bug out here, too? I'd heard about some cases up Bethesda-way, but I figured the CDC would have things pretty wrapped up by now," he mused conversationally, figuring that grilling the locals for anything unusual in their area was never a bad tactic.

Pandect tensed, poured and set the beer in front of the man. "Thank you," he said finally. These were not the questions that he wanted to answer, not his favorite topic at the moment, only made him feel more antsy to leave. Meg pulled faces at him that seemed to express that he was the worse barkeep ever and that she was dying could he please try harder?

"A lot of people are getting sick through here too, mostly only the drunks and travelers left," he half joked weakly. "The CDC rolls back and forth, but they can't seem to decide what the problem is."

Nodding gratefully over his drink, Doc took a moment to pay and tip before raising his glass for a sip. It was a good little personal occupier, one that kept his expression focused and (he hoped) hid the look in his eyes when his gears got to turning. "Well, that's not a good bit of news," he said, tapping out a cigarette and screwing it into one corner of his mouth, "You'd hope the experts would be able to find their asses with two hands and a map, yeah?"

Of course, he knew bits more than he was saying. There was no decision on the problem because it wasn't just one problem. Teddy's reports had flagged cases of malaria, dysentery, vicious flu viruses, and even cholera. There wasn't a common pattern there, except that all of the illnesses were out of the blue. "Anyone been quarantined around here?" he asked Pandect, playing oblivious to the muted scrape of a chair behind him as a couple of people in the bar turned to look over.

If there was thing that bothered Pandect it was attention, but part of avoiding attention was pretending it didn't bother him. "I suppose they're trying as hard as they can under the circumstances. People can't seem to pick one thing to be sick of, one guy who usually comes through here was sick with something like the Plague. They've threatened to quarantine a couple times, but nothing ever came of it other than a couple of holidays for some of the public schools in the area. The kids like that I guess."

He scanned the bar behind the stranger quickly just to make sure no one was getting too curious before his face went carefully neutral again. The thing was the patron had come down with the plague, Pandect wasn't so young that he didn't know the symptoms. This man sure had a lot of questions. "Didn't catch your name?" he asked against his better judgement.

"Good thing I didn't throw it, then. Might've made a mess," Doc joked tamely, lighting up and looking past Pandect to the mirror lining the back wall of the bar. There were definitely people casting covert glances his way, two at a table together, and a third in a booth by himself. It didn't sit right, and it made Doc loathe to offer his real name, or even the one most people knew him by. Hunters earned reputations, after all, and not just among their peers. "Strummer, Joe Strummer," he lied casually, giving a little nod to Pandect.

With some time and less scrutiny, he could tune into the deeper levels of reality and ferret out anything strange in the bar. But Doc had neither, and zoning out even for the thirty seconds he'd require might come off as strange. "And Plague? Like, Bubonic Plague?" Doc asked, brow raised in surprise. That snapped another puzzle piece into place for him, really. The NIH headquarters in Bethesda would be one of the few places left to have access to strains of all of those diseases, especially that last one. Which would make it an inside job.

Waving one hand absently Pandect looked at the men paying more and more attention to them, it got his wings up. Not that he'd ever have them out in public. "People use it as a saying, like a watched pot never boils," a statement of fact, even if the vague misdirection made Pandect uncomfortable. "But it certainly seemed like it," Pandect amended. "Several people. Not that I ever said I was an expert." That was true, he hadn't. He was a little suspicious of Mr. Strummer, but at least Pandect wasn't sneezing, and he was about a foot away from him.

When there was any possibility that a job might involve demons, Doc and his people knew how to hunt. They'd made contacts over the years who could obtain genuine holy water, and knew people in more than one part of the world who could line up relics if needed. That was the good thing about saving lives; the chance to keep living usually outweighed the trouble of getting what Doc needed. "No worries, I'm no expert either," Doc assured Pandect, dipping one hand into his coat pocket to upend a small vial of holy water, splashing a few drops on his palm, "I'm a writer, actually, doing some field work for a paper down in D.C. And this is a nice place you've got here, Mr. ..." he trailed, fishing for Pandect's name and extending the dampened palm for a shake.

Pandect tilted his head a little to the side at the hand (something had happened, he wasn't sure what), and looked at Mr. Strummer consideringly, he wiped his right hand on his apron and shook the man's hand cordially and firmly (people really didn't know how to shake hands anymore). The palm was damp and he froze for a half second with the man's hand in his (the man was either nervous or something was going on, or he was nervous because something was going on) but covered it as quickly as he could. Which after all this time was pretty quick. If something was going on he didn't want to be pulled into it. "Garnier," he said, keeping his accent firmly in place like a shield and pulling his hand back to wipe it on his apron again. "And its not my place, I'm only the help, and temporarily at that." Pandect enacted a temporary retreat to the other end of the bar where the drunks were and went about his bar keeping business.

"Well, seems like you're a good hire, then," Doc complimented, watching Pandect move away before he looked back to the mirrors on the wall. He couldn't help tensing when he saw one of the two men from the table rise and start ambling his way, and Doc rolled his neck with a soft pop as the guy stopped next to him, setting an empty glass down for a refill. "You say you're a writer?" the man asked, drawing a nod from Doc as he looked the guy up and down. Big, girthy, wearing one of those awful trucker hats (this one said 'Too Funk To Druck'), and smirking a bit in Doc's direction. "A journalist, actually," he answered, "Mostly freelance, working on a piece for the D.C Metro Times."

"Oh yeah? 'Bout the sickness?" the guy asked, getting another nod from Doc. "There's word of mouth already, some people like to use words like 'pandemic' a little too freely. So the papers are looking for details beyond CDC press releases," Doc answered smoothly, offering his hand over. "You a local?" he asked as the guy reached for his hand, shaking for all of a second before a faint sizzle could be heard. Definitely not local, Doc had time to think before he was shoved backwards, sprawling partially onto the bar and into the glasses there.

There were no words (in either French or English) to explain how little Pandect wanted to get involved in a bar fight, not with this guy and not right now. But some instinct kind of flared up. It was probably the sneezing. The sneezing always got him in the end. Pandect did a neat little lunge down the length of the bar (sneezing twice into his shirt, he was pretty well informed about how germs spread for a guy who was sitting at about 250 years old considering in his day good medical practice was considered beating the evil spirits out of you, or even more delightful, leaches, and with all the stuff going around it was just polite) grabbed hold of Mr. Strummer as firmly as he could before the demon could get another swing in and pulled him as gently as the situation allowed to the safety of the space behind the bar. Interposing himself between the two (in the back of his mind there was a voice in French complaining about how stupid he was for getting in the middle of this fight.) The demon did one of those grins his kind liked to pull off, like he was better than anyone else, like he could eat Pandect up for lunch and Pandect just tried to keep himself calm. "There won't be any fights here," he said calmly and sneezed once more into his shirt. The demon just grinned wider at him.

Pandect wanted to cut him open.

This wasn't the place for a fight.

Landing on his boots as Doc was pulled beyond the bar, Doc would've agreed with Pandect's perspective if he knew of it. Sure, a bar like this had a hundred little distractions he could draw on, but for all he knew? Most of the people in here, Pandect included, were human. And while Doc knew the inevitability of casualties in his work, he didn't use that logic to just make more of them. Still, he had the feeling that there may not have been much of an option as the other two who'd been watching him at the bar rose from their seats. "C'mon now, guys," Doc said with a huff of exasperated breath, "Let's take this outside, yeah? Fewer chairs for me to bust over your heads."

They would've been terrible odds if the demons had taken them, that was for sure. But Doc would've chanced them and counted on support from his allies if he could've, it would've been better than watching one of the demons move to the bar's front door, twist the lock into place, then twist harder to snap the lever free. "Back door out of here?" Doc asked over his shoulder as the third demon moved to a table of patrons who were already standing, acting like they might be able to control the situation.

"Of course," Pandect said. "Might be a little difficult to get to though." He kept his eyes locked with the still grinning demon and his body tilted so he could sidestep between the demon and Mr. Strummer should it try to make any untoward motions. Strummer landed on his feet well, spoke with confidence, but a bar fight with a demon was a little different than what Strummer was probably used to. While he abhorred the idea of hunting (Mache having more than a hand in that) Pandect had learned to keep his eyes open for ways to slide away and escape, more often human interaction than demon attack, but he was all for using a variety of skills.

Listing things off in his head like a list of repairs (which by the way he wasn't going to finish because he was going to leave tonight, merci) Pandect took in the bar room. Padlock. Demons. (He wasn't a werewolf, he couldn't sniff them out, but he was definitely sneezing.) One of which was blocking the hall to the bathrooms and the back door. There was a window in the back room big enough for Strummer and himself to pop through. "I think you should step back," Pandect said sharply. Carefully he reached with the fingertips of his left hand toward a bottle of something, anything he could try to bless quickly. He had his blessed rifle in his truck, if he could get them there.

"How's your throwing arm?"

There was no need to blow his cover yet, not with the unexpected aid the bartender was giving him. Even if he'd been made as a hunter, which was almost a guarantee after Doc's holy water handshake, they still didn't know who he was. And it wasn't him people worried about so much as his associates; plenty of targets tried to vanish if they got word that Doc's crew was on the trail. "Pretty good?" Doc answered with feigned uncertainty, wincing as the demon dealing with the other bar-goers slung one into a table and upended it with a crash, smashing a fist into another with a crack that Doc hoped was the sound of a broken jaw, not a neck.

The one corralling them in behind the bar lunged suddenly, trying to scramble over the wood surface and grab at Doc, which was an opportunity. "Fuck off!" Doc snapped, stepping into the grabbing arms and bouncing the demon's head off the bar, then hopping back all wide-eyed, as if he wasn't nearly as aware of the situation as he actually was. "Whatever I'm throwing? Hand it over fast," he told Pandect, eyes fixed on the rapidly recovering demon he'd smacked.

Pandect handed the blessed bottle of beer over to Strummer, twisting his lean body instinctively away from the stunned demon's scrabbling arms. Pointing with one narrow arm to the demon leaning against the wall (taking far too much pleasure jamming innocent - it was all comparative really wasn't it? - patrons back into the fray so to speak), "Guy there in the doorway, can you throw it above his head, so it breaks?" He managed to hand the blessed bottle over before the demon suddenly recovered and pulled Pandect over the top of the bar in a flailing mess, sharp elbows and knees going everywhere, before the tumbled in front of the bar.

In the rush, Pandect accent fell away like, well, like the morals of most of the girls that came here to drink. He let out a litany of French obscenity and swung at the demon that had a hold of his hair (since when did men pull hair? In his day men struck each other not yanked at each other like school girls). "Throw it!" Pandect said in heavily accented English. "I'll be fine." He caught a knee to the chest and presented a counter argument of an elbow to the neck before sneezing three times in rapid succession.

If there was one thing Doc knew well, it was the art of bar brawling. Which, by proxy, extended to the fine art of throwing a bottle, glass, pool ball, or even ashtray when needed. "Done!" he said, taking the one step to the bar before slinging the bottle towards the back door. Doc didn't wait to watch it shatter, hopping the bar back to the other side as the bottle sailed and exploded. The blessed contents poured out and down, dousing the demon watching the rear with a sizzle and an abrupt scream of agony. Fighting his smile at the sound, Doc turned to the demon grappling with Pandect. He was brutally efficient in his motions, grabbing the demon by the scalp and yanking his head back, then drilling forward with a headbutt to smash one corner of his brow into the demon's eye.

"We should be going," he said Pandect's way, tugging the demon free and smashing his free hand down in a cruel throat shot before he let their mutual foe drop.

Pandect stood up quickly (one benefit to long legs) and had to resist the sudden impulse to put an arm around Strummer's shoulders to herd him out. For one he had a feeling that would be taken the wrong way, and for the other, Strummer could apparently take care of himself. "Thank you very much," Pandect said in his carefully cultivated accent. He used an elbow as a weapon when someone got too close and Pandect sneezed and half herded (without a guiding arm, thank you) Strummer toward the door where the demon was busy rolling around in agony. He couldn't hide a sort of satisfaction from that.

He cast the man a sidelong look, "So you're a hunter then?" If the man wasn't Pandect could say something about the hunting of wild game or some such, but he was just getting a feeling. For one thing the man fought with Purpose with a capital p. Pandect recognized the look, it was the look that said 'what I'm doing is The Right Thing.' A little more than just a writer turned brawler.

The question came as the third demon finished with the bar's patrons, leaving one man in a prone heap as his friends bolted for and through the back door in a panic, letting the fire alarm shriek when they banged past it. "One second," Doc growled sideways at Pandect, sizing up the last foe as the demon looked his way. The two moved on each other in quickening steps, colliding in a sudden mash of fists and, on Doc's part, an errant bottle that came up to shatter on the demon's temple.

He staggered back from Doc with a snarl, but nothing menacing issued forth. Definitely Shabiri, Doc thought for an instant, grateful for the lack of curses hitting him. "Like I said, I'm a writer. More Hemingway than Proust." He had a moment of confusion as the demon laughed, wiping at blood leaking from his brow and glaring balefully at Pandect and Doc. "This? This doesn't matter, there's more of us! More than you can imagine." Which was bad news, to be sure, but Doc already had a scowl on. "Flank this asshole with me, I've got no clue what he's talking about and it's not like I can use this in a story anyway."

Pandect moved quickly, efficiently, the way he'd work on wiring. It was almost academic, killing demons, he tried to avoid it because it got him attention. But really, down deep he was an angel, and had an immediate twisting dislike of demons. The man said no, and Pandect would respect that he thought as he went left to Pandect's right, lunging viciously into the demon, all his tall sharp angles biting and stabbing and twisting at demon. Distracting him and making his life difficult while Strummer came up from behind.

The list of the conscious and aware was small at this point, limited to Doc, Pandect, one demon who was occupied by the angel and two who were hurting. It meant Doc could cut loose, but only for a moment or two before they'd need to get the hell out or deal with the other two. Doc took the provided opening, yanking the demon's head back at the same moment he railed a fist into the base of his skull at the peak of his neck. It was a brutal hit that yielded a sharp crack, making Doc flinch as the man toppled. "C'mon," he grunted, wondering how he'd excuse likely breaking a spine, "Let's get the fuck out." That said, Doc turned and rushed for the back door, hopping over a weak grab from the demon who'd been doused in holy water.

Focused on the demon he was fighting, the crack made him step back just as a startled look crossed the demon's face and he toppled backward, letting Strummer come into focus behind him. So Strummer wasn't a hunter was he? Pandect followed him quietly enough (although he may or may not have let a stray foot catch the demon in the doorway in the ribs, he rather deserved what he got anyway). He had to think carefully before he spoke, Strummer was a stubborn dodger, despite what his actions said, quite loudly.

Standing in the night air, rather nice actually, Pandect turned a lazy eye toward Strummer, "I've always thought Hemingway was more of a shotgun man myself, although I'm sure breaking backs was plenty manly enough for him." He kept his tone even keel, calm, hopefully avoiding pressuring Strummer into further bouts of defensive violence. "Hunters though," he said, "have in my experience routinely... moved decisively."

Nothing left but to wait for the reaction.

"Keep moving," Doc said tersely, maintaining a light jog to distance himself from the bar. He was lucky he'd walked from the motel; a bit of time on foot would eventually give a clear shot to slip back unnoticed to his motel room. Still listening for the sound of the bar's door opening behind him, Doc eventually stopped and looked back to Pandect with a huff of breath. "If you've got experience with hunters," he began, lighting up a cigarette, "I'd recommend you put distance between yourself and this town. Head west, my gut says the roots of this are due east." The advice was fair, when he thought about it; Pandect had blessed that bottle in the bar, he'd only fought back against the demonic foes within.

Pandect nodded, "Thank you for the advice. I would say I hope to see you again, but I have a feeling that isn't necessarily something either of us would want. Good luck then."

"Keep on the up and up and there'll be no problem if we meet again," came Doc's reply with a curt nod, shoulders still rolling from the exertion of the fight. "Good luck to you too, Garnier," he added before turning away. He walked across the barren lot surrounding the bar without a sound, listening to the dull rumble of semi trucks on the distant expressway and watching for trouble that might still find him. Need a drink, he mused, Check in with the others, arm up, clean this place out. Not even thirty yet, but damn if I'm not getting too old for this shit.