Day -4 midnight
Part 2
Kiseith
West side, in an abandoned apartment. Searching for survivors is paramount. Brave and reckless.
You don’t even know if what you have is worth carrying. You look over your equipment again. “How many knives do I need?!” you ask yourself. But no. These doubts have no place here. You decide the best place to find survivors is the police station or the fire station. They’re both about the same distance away. But with no car, you’ll have to walk.
You look outside. There are a couple zombies hanging around. They don’t seem to notice you, although they must know you’re there because you’ve been throwing things at them for a couple days. You did manage to down one zombie, then you felt really bad because it was your neighbor who had that model train setup in his basement.
You can carry your five cans of gas (Strong, Tough) but it’ll slow you down a lot.
There’s not much else to do but to just do it, after all, it’s only going to get colder and darker and … deader. Deader is a word? Internet has been out with the phones, so you can’t look it up anyway.
You decide to hit the fire station. Out in the street, you’re able to stay ahead of the zombies as they try to catch up to you. At one point, while you’re waiting at an intersection trying to remember which way to go, one of them manages to claw at you from under a wooden fence. You jump away, and realize there are a bunch of zombies all around. They’re half a block away, but are all around you. You run down the way that has fairly few zombies, just two in your way. You dodge around and plant your curtain rod in the chest of one, pushing it into the other, and slink between the two zombies and the concrete retaining wall at the sidewalk. You keep jogging downhill now, and double back a block later to start heading south again. You almost pass the fire station, but notice the fire truck parked outside. That’s strange …
You approach, walking down the center of the street. You pull out your sword and toss the curtain rod aside as you close with a lone zombie. With the sword’s reach you easily slash at it the way you’re supposed to. Not a chop, but a cut, along a good length of blade. While this would be a really horrible wound for a human, the zombie doesn’t seem too distracted. You stumble back as the zombie lurches forward. It’s missing both eyes and instead of teeth it has dentures, which promptly fall out. You kick it in the hip to push it back, then stab straight through the open mouth. Again, the disoriented zombie doesn’t seem to be in any pain. Its moans become more frantic, though, as it swipes through the air with its claws. (Skilled: Melee)
You run back a little bit, and the zombie calms slightly, its expression of hunger and rage relaxing a little. It shuffles toward you. You run back and grab your curtain rod, and run around wide of the zombie to get to the fire station. You see the corpses of three firemen who died on either side of the driving compartment of the truck. They lie on the ground, not wearing fire fighting gear, but instead just pants and dark blue t-shirts with the city fire department logo.
Inside, the lights are out. The first floor is a parking area for the fire truck and another space, reserved for some other vehicle. There’s a workbench, a row of lockers, and stairs leading up to the second floor. It doesn’t look like there are any survivors here.
You consider grabbing a fireman’s helmet instead of your sauce pan. One of those nifty axes would be cool too. You close one of the two heavy metal roll-down garage doors, which are manual. When you turn around to close the second, you see two zombies shuffling down the back stairs, awakened by your noise. You grab up a handy oxygen tank and smack one on the head. It cracks open like a month-old melon, pouring black sludge out in one burst (Skilled: Melee, Strong). The second zombie lunges at you, tripping over its fellow and landing low, grappling your knees together. You try to smash downward, but the angle is all wrong. You fall over backward, and the zombie wriggles up a little and opens its jaws, teeth dripping with foul saliva. Just as it goes for the bite on your thigh, its head explodes in a shower of black gore and you hear the report of a gunshot. Standing in the open garage doorway is a woman in jeans and a dark blue t-shirt, a little ripped up, a black sports bra underneath, with heavy black boots and short-cropped brown hair. She’s holding a hunting rifle, no scope, with a messenger bag and a makeshift thigh sling for her axe. She circles around a support pillar so she’s standing where the fire truck should be parked, you in the second space over. She’s still aiming at you, and you can see the uncertainty in her expression. “Don’t shooot!” you cry, holding up your hands. She forces herself to turn the barrel away from you, though she still holds it at the ready. “Are you okay?” she asks with a hint of Canadian accent. “I didn’t think anyone was left”
She wants to stay here to wait for her husband, in case he comes. She seems confident he would come here looking for her.
Dreadfang
West side, second floor apartment, hunting zombies found in small packs or alone, carefully.
Well this was one you weren’t prepared for. Oh yes, they always say to keep a few days of canned and dry food in the house. But the days of relying on fast food and delivery are over. You look out the big smashed-and-boarded-up window at the street outside. There are a few zombies milling around, unable to get in. Your apartment building has exterior walkways, and the bottom floor is accessible to the outside directly. But the stairwell towers that lead up to the upper floors are blocked by heavy metal doors that lock, which means you can exit anytime but would need a key to get back in. The building is five stories tall, and you can access the second to sixth stories, and the roof, without touching the ground.
The voice on the radio said to get to the Garrison downtown. But right now was a good time to practice zombie killing, gather some supplies, and try to survive. After all, you are really hungry after eating the last of the leftover pizza and those Graham Crackers you found in the back of the cupboard. Being at zero food is a surprisingly good incentive to get out of the house.
You strap on your armor, piece by piece. It’s heavy, and it’ll slow you down, but no zombie is biting through this. First the quilted cloth long shirt and pants, the hard cup, then the breastplate, the neck guard, the arms, and the heavy boots. You put on the heavy metal helmet, shaped like the end of a bullet with a cut-out part for the face, which is covered by a rounded grille that hinges at the top and straps down to the helmet at the bottom. Finally the articulated metal gauntlets. Over all this goes your backpack and some spare straps on your belt for carrying loot. It’s heavy and it’s hot, but that’s a welcome change with the cold winter air blowing in through the window. Your blades are secured to your gauntlets and the lower parts of your arm pieces, 18 inches long from your knuckles.
You leave the apartment, your stomach growling. The next apartment over. You never knew any of your neighbors. The door is closed, and you realize it’s locked when you jiggle the knob. The noise of your armor is attracting zombie attention downstairs, but who cares? They’re not the jumping type.
You lean back and try to kick the door. It’s not very effective. You can’t get a running start because the funky wrought iron rail behind you is in your way, and you don’t feel like testing whether it can hold your weight (300 pounds or so in the armor). The manager’s office with all the keys is on the bottom floor, where all the zombies are (Inept: Lockpicking).
Damn.
You go back inside, and take off your gauntlets and helmet, setting them in the doorway. You shake out a can of gasoline on the zombies below, who are oblivious. You rig up a spark using the car battery and it ignites the zombies. They seem to ignore the flames as you retreat inside to get away from the stench. But after a few minutes they drop one by one, lying on the ground moaning, apparently unable to move around anymore. You sneak a peek outside and see more zombies coming toward the commotion. Now is probably the only chance you’ll have. You put your helmet on, strap on your gauntlets, grab your keys, and jog toward the stairwell door on the opposite end of the building. As you go around, you see zombies coming toward the building from all directions, but they seem more interested in the fire until they see your movement. By the time you get to the opposite stairwell, there are a couple zombies on the ground floor waiting and more coming. You push open the door and back up the stairs a little. The zombie nudges his way in, and you stab downward into its skull as it steps on the bottom stair. Black goop squirts out, and when you withdraw the blade it wells up and drains down the zombie’s face. The zombie drops, and the next has already grabbed the door and pulled himself in. This zombie’s milky eyes turn up toward you as it moans and you stab it in the head like the last one. You push it away as it claws feebly at your armored legs. At the last minute before it falls lifeless it suddenly grabs your ankle and might have pulled you down but for your solid stance and weight (armor, Skill: Melee, Strong). The door closes before the third zombie can come through. It sounds like it’s fooling around with the handle outside, groaning, but it’s not able to turn it. You graciously open the door for it with your foot, stumbling back over the zombie corpses and falling onto the stairs. The third zombie sticks its head in and looks all around with wild milky-white eyes, as you pick yourself up off the ground and take your place on the stairs. It pauses a moment, looking at something outside, and shambles its shoulders and body into the stairwell. Its mouth gapes open, and its tongue spills out followed by a froth of bright red foam. You wait for it to get to the bottom step, then stab it with one sword. It’s still clawing at you, so you stab it with the other and push, pulling your first sword out. This time the skull splits apart and you realize this zombie has a hatchet stuck in the back of its head. Not very deep, but deep enough to stick. It drops on the other three.
You look out the little window in the metal door. A couple of zombies are coming your way, but they’re far enough out to let you open the door safely. You get out, propping the door open with a zombie’s hand.
You trot around the building, swishing your swords around to get the goop off of them. You get to the corner of the building where the manager’s office is. The front window is still whole, and the door is closed. The zombies are approaching from behind you at the stairwell, and ahead of you through a stand of evergreen bushes planted in a divider between this property and a parking lot next door. These three zombies seem like they’re trying to decide whether to attack you or go around the other side of the building. You try the manager’s door. Locked.
DAMN!
You turn around to assess your position, and the stairwell zombies are suddenly right there. they must have moved a lot faster than you thought. Both of them lunge into you, grabbing you around the arm and the head with their clawed hands. You backpedal, crashing through the big window and falling backward on your butt. You turn over and get on your hands and knees as the zombies start clambering in through the window. You turn and slash at one’s belly, and foul-smelling rotting intestines spill out. Undeterred, the zombie swipes at your head, slamming your helmet and jiggling you around in there. You stab forward with both swords, rushing the zombie, pushing it against the half-wall where the window was and knocking the second zombie out. The three zombies coming through the trees are almost here. You pull back with your right and stab the disemboweled zombie in the side of the head, and black blood pours out its mouth all over the front of your armor. You push it back so it’s hanging on its back half in and half out the room. You back up a bit, getting to the wall of keys, grabbing the one with the Pikachu dangly that you saw the manager use to open all the doors. Turning around, you take out the zombies one by one as they try to climb in. Sweating and exhausted, hungry, and scared you listen for shuffling footsteps. You hear none. You lean out the window and look in one direction. Nothing. In the other. Nothing. You climb out the window and round the corner. A couple zombies are standing around at the next corner looking all around and huffing at the air, moaning angrily. They notice you clanking along as you get back to the stairwell. You get inside, slam the door, and watch as five or six zombies slam into it and fill the little window with their flailing hands. You turn and stumble over the three zombie bodies, stepping on them really hard for good measure, and get back up to the next floor. You use the Pikachu keys to open the door from the inside and get out on the second-floor balcony. You get back around to your apartment, and see that the fire has died down. Melting snow spread the flaming gasoline around, but put it out before it caught the building on fire. The burned zombies are lying very still and look crispy. Twenty angry zombies are milling around below.
You start searching the apartments for food. The first one contains a zombie cat, which you quickly dispatch. There’s enough food in here to feed you for a couple days. The next apartment is unoccupied. The next was occupied but nobody is home. You move your stuff into there, and the food, and take off your armor to take a break and clean it off in the bathtub. Fighting for an hour straight in plate armor is tiring. If you’re going to walk all the way to downtown in this stuff it’ll take forever, especially fighting the whole way. But the world has about 12 less zombies in it thanks to you!
Oh and one cat.
Indonesian War Minister
Northeast section of town, small expensive house. Survival, long term is find an airplane and get back to my country! Quick but stealthy.
You hold in one hand your holy book, and in the other the hilt of your saber tied to your belt. There’s no question of the evil outside, the unnatural plague and the walking dead. The radio indicated that the old Army Garrison downtown was where an airlift would come in and save them all. That seemed like a good first step toward getting home.
You pick up your equipment in a leather airplane carry-on bag. It’s not much, since you don’t have any food in the house. You typically are here on business, and the place stays empty most of the time. You shoulder the strap for your rifle, grab the leather bag in your other hand, and head downstairs. This wooded area has winding concrete streets with no curbs, but the houses are very nice and have excellent views of the water.
Your car is outside, in a covered area under your house, under a balcony leading from your living room. As you walk out, you notice the gas tank hatch is open. Looks like someone came through and siphoned off fuel. You close the tank, get in the car, and start it up. The fuel gauge settles well into the red zone – almost empty. You pull out of the driveway and drive down the snowy street. You get down to the hill leading to the waterfront, to the road that winds along the coast and down into the industrial section of Westhaven. The car slides out of control in the snow, and you find yourself careening downhill until you land in a ditch at the bottom where the road turns sharply left to head south toward the city. You’re dazed for a moment, and then your airbag goes off.
Choking on the dust that now fills the car, you get out and survey the situation. Your car is pretty much stuck in the ditch. You sure can’t pull it out. Looking around, you see some zombies shuffling around among the warehouses and marinas. But the street is fairly clear. You start walking south, and soon come to a parking lot and a two-story barn-like wooden tavern called the Shipwreck. The neon is dark, and the lights are off inside. You decide to stop there, since you’re still feeling a little dizzy from the crash.
The front door is locked up tight. The windows have thin metal bars on the outsides, and they’re tinted black. You look around for a side door, and find it. It’s locked, which completely foils you (Inept: Lockpicking). You try kicking it in, but you’re not strong enough. It’s starting to get pretty cold outside.
You continue around the back. It’s very dark. You think you hear a noise, but it might just be an animal in the bushes. Suddenly a floodlight turns on, probably a motion sensor. And you realize that in this narrow gravel lot behind the Shipwreck there is a small group of zombies closing in on you. The motion sensor light clicks off.
Frantic, you draw your saber and swing it around. Nothing turns on. You hear ominous moaning around you. A moment later the floodlight clicks on again, and in the brief time you figure out where the zombies are. You see a path where there is just one zombie, and you charge at it leading with your saber. As the light clicks off, you swing, and connect with the handle because the zombie lunged in at you at the last second. You threw the zombie off balances and ran right past, into the amber glow of a standard streetlight from the front of the building. You avoid another zombie that was hanging out very close to the side of the building and get back to the well-lit part of the front (Skilled: Melee).
You sheathe your saber and pull out the rifle. Its 8-round magazine is full, and as the first zombie rounds the corner to meet you, you take aim and pull off one shot. CRACK! The report echoes up and down the empty street. It strikes the zombie in the shoulder, but it seems unfazed. You work the bolt action on the rifle and aim, firing again. This time it hits the zombie in the hip, dropping it. The zombie is still crawling toward you, but very slowly. Behind it four more shuffle around the corner.
From inside the Shipwreck you hear a man shout “Come inside! Quickly!” and you see they’re holding the door open for you. You sprint over, get inside, and they slam the door shut. It looks like there’s a small group of survivors here armed with scavenged melee weapons. They seem to be just regular people. They explain that three of them are Shipwreck staff who closed the tavern and holed up here. Two are their friends. One is a retired policeman, and he’s the only one with a gun (a revolver with 15 bullets). Four are children. The policeman limps around, and it’s obvious that his leg has been injured. They plan to leave in the morning to go to the garrison.
They have food and water, and you’re taken care of there. It turns out you suffered a head injury in the crash. One of the women had a sister who was a nurse, and she’s the only one with first aid knowledge. She takes you into the bathroom to clean your wound. It turns out to be minor, in her opinion. But you’re still dizzy and it’s hard to keep food down. Then again, maybe it’s just the whole zombie apocalypse thing.
Little
West side, living in his divorced dad's apartment. He hasn't seen his dad in a week and a half, but who cares? The old man was drunk all the time anyways. Looting and barricading, trying to be as stealthy as possible.
Your dad left to pick up some cigarettes ten days ago and never returned. If you cared, you might have hoped for the best, but he probably got eaten by zombies or something. Now the apartment the two of you lived in is running low on supplies, you don’t have a vehicle, and the Garrison is a long way off.
You decide to prioritize (Smart). First you need to barricade this place, or find someplace better. Then you need to gather some supplies. In the morning, when you can see a good distance and you’re rested, you need to get to the Garrison.
The apartment is on a third floor of a three-storey apartment building in a complex of such buildings. Between them is a swath of concrete used for parking. All this has just one road exit, but you can just walk out anywhere. Zombies are milling around fairly thick – five or so within a block in your field of vision at any time.
Your apartment has a strong wooden exterior door. The apartments are in pairs, sharing a landing, and the stairs are open to the outside and made of slabs of concrete. The zombies haven’t noticed anything interesting enough to go up and investigate.
The apartment manager has keys to all the apartments. But the manager’s office is way on the other side of the complex, near the entrance. The neighboring apartment complex has its manager office just on the other side of a short concrete-block rise (they’re up about 6 feet from your street level) (Smart). So you decide to make a break for it to the next apartment complex, get the keys from them, and loot the neighbors. You grab the guns your father left behind, and some empty cloth shopping bags, and head out. The coast seems clear enough.
As you make your way around the building, the zombies don’t seem to notice you. You toss the shotgun up onto the rise, and start climbing. It’s slow going, both because your hands are cold and because you aren’t used to climbing (Clumsy) but luckily nobody’s chasing you. Eventually you get up to the top and look out. There are a few zombies shuffling around and what appears to be a fire on the other side of the building. You scramble out and up to the manager’s office. Locked. You try kicking it in. No dice (weak). Just then you hear loud moaning coming from around the corner where the fire was, and behind you from through the evergreen bushes where you climbed up there are three zombies stalking you. You panic and run to the right, around the building and away from the loud moaning on your left. A short alley opens up on your left, where a concrete wall becomes just a row of rough decorative rocks. You dash down the alley, away from the zombies, and turn the corner to come face-to-face with a zombie coming towards you. It’s covered in snow, and its mouth works open and closed as it advances. Those years of playing first-person shooters have finally paid off, as your first reaction is to bring up your shotgun and blast its head off. You’re at point-blank range, and you hit it dead on. The zombie’s head explodes in a shower of black gore, and the noise of the shot rings in your ears as you move on without thinking. Up ahead is a bowling alley with most of the neon letters blacked out from neglect over the years. It now reads: “T_ _ er L _ n _ s”. You get inside, as the glass door was unlocked. The place is eerily quiet. You get far enough in to feel more comfortable that nothing is following you from outside, and sit down to reload the shotgun. You raid the food counter for six corn dogs and some ketchup, which you microwave. While you’re waiting you clean yourself up with some paper napkins and pull off a few cups of soda from the machine. It hums in the otherwise silent bowling alley.
You calm down and pack up some more food. You clean out a plastic jug and fill it with water, and grab some bottled water.
The place has a mini golf section, a small arcade, the bowling alley, and some back offices and storage. It seems clear of zombies, though there are a few corpses that really freaked you out until you poked them with a mop over and over and realized they weren’t going to start moving.
Out of the corner of your eye you spot movement back in the mini golf. There is a pair of double metal doors leading to it from the bowling lanes, right where the concession stand is. You pick up your shotgun and creep over there. You peek in. Nothing seems amiss. The nasty water features gurgle away, the windmill turns lazily, and the many garden gnomes stare back at you smiling. They’re all smiling. When the last human dies and the power runs out and the roof caves in those gnomes will sit around in the rubble and smile at the moon.
So after reading that, decide on your next actions. Consider it to be 3 or 4 AM, so the end of your next action will be a couple hours before dawn on Day -4.
If you think I'm not quite capturing your character, feel free to PM me and let me know what kind of changes you'd like to see in behavior in the future. But what's already down is down, I spent too long writing it to change stuff now
And of course, midnight (my time) Saturday will be the end of this second set of actions. So for example, Qwerty didn't post today so he was pretty much just goofing off or hiding and he didn't do anything important from midnight to now on Day -4. He can jump in and post a set of actions Saturday Jul 27th, though, and it'll happen at the same time as what you guys are going to do next. He just missed his Jul 26th post.
But if you do read more than one, you'll find out why I'm doing it like this. Also note that only two of you have met anyone else to talk with yet. But feel free to chatter or whatever, especially the people who have the opportunity to talk with their new friends.
As always, in your action post please write:
What you want to do, where you want to go.
What your goal is (looting, finding other survivors, just moving, hunting zombies)
How you're going to approach your goal (stealthy/no risks, as quickly as possible while being quiet, or full on LETS DO THIS)
oops, also:
I will be updating the first post to reflect changes in your character, any changes in the map, etc. I'm not putting your locations down on the map, because you really do only need to keep track of your own whereabouts. And I don't want to have 11 copies of the map floating around every day -_-
So good night!
PPS:
I'm Pacific US time. GMT -8. This means if you're in England, your definition of midnight is not the same as mine. I chose midnight because I can make a turn results post before I go to bed.
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Topic: My Little Zombie Apocalypse (Read 39539 times)