Manic-depressive didn't even cut it. Hysterics were one clean break short from going off the deep end, and his snickers might tilt toward feverish laughter, he wasn't dejected (in the barest sense of the word). That particular emotion implied a sense of hope, nostalgia a star-crossed lover to peace, and Desmond pulled the stakes on any notion of returning home a long time ago.The de facto leaders in post-apocalyptic cinema flicks usually had intuition and social tact, but he had neither. Miles wasn't all that great with collaborative effort, much less holding any ragtag band of misfits and killers together by the mawkish promise of better days. The politics of survivors dealt with animalistic impulse and paranoia and always, always waking terror, with the integrity of self leaping off the balcony for forays of homicide under a misnomer. The infected were still alive, after all. Fear rippled in the same manner as paranoia. The loss of volition was just the same as smearing the line behind inhumanity and wholeness, with whatever contrived form for being self-conscious, thinking, alive exchanged in alchemical equivalence for personal autonomy from societal norms.
Through that lens, the social sphere of the hereafter left much to be desired (less small talk, more murder).
"Might as well. It's FUBAR either way, but it wouldn't hurt to try." he answers distantly, blinking up at the termite-bitten wood and wrapping one palm over the steeled railing, internally debating how long it'd take to vault over the stairs in case of a rampage. With silence is as thick as blood, out past the witch with her inflamed, godawful wailing padded behind another door, Desmond opts to blink up at the swaying form of Ellis, who is probably good as dead if they continue twiddling their fingers. At any rate, it wouldn't hurt to look. Sitting on their asses wouldn't solve anything (besides buying enough time for the horde below to break through whatever paltry defenses the entryway below offered in terms of extending their mortality, dwindling as it was). After a second or two of deliberation, Miles hesitantly nods, raising one hand to indicate the doors nestled into every high-tier floor like a bait-and-switch at saving graces. "I'll check the lower ones, you check the upper ones. Just, uh. Let me know if you find anything."
Biting his tongue over the foolhardy assumption of whistling (sure, with a potential onslaught of zombies cloistered near the bottom and probable Witches stalking the halls, they could legitimately just sign their own death warrants and get on with it). Unsurprisingly, the first three doors yield absolutely bupkis. Locked or welded or door knobs snapped off to reveal plastered wood, Desmond doesn't waste a second attempting to lock-pick his way through to spent the rest of eternity with the faint scrabbling of human fingers and keening sobs. Evidently, it'd been a good idea to enforce a no-shouting policy. The fourth door opens to a supply closet swiped clean, save for a puddled mess of detergent at the far left. Further down, he concedes to sticking his head like a friggin' idiot through the seventh door and finds — office space.
It was inconceivably weird, that secular glimpse at the trappings of domesticity preserved under dust like a time capsule, sans the suburban service workers to fill the cubicles. The fluorescent lighting won't flip on a switch, but it's only a matter of allowing his eyes to adjust to the looming darkness before proceeding. Stacks and stacks of foldable boxes and Styrofoam peanuts, but — a shimmer of glinting metal at the far periphery of his vision leads to investigate a bit more thoroughly, and Miles nabs a slightly sticky semi-automatic handgun from between the fax machine and the bulking printer. And back out in the open air of the floor, he unloads the firearm, a full clip on-the-ready. The blood gunking up the entire external barrel is nothing he hasn't already dealt with, and he placidly wipes it off on his jacket before a signaled retreat upwards. No use trying to break defense through the hoard with a puny collection of knives and one pistol. Maybe Ellis had better luck.
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