Here we are folks, turn one of ZA.
For everyone except you, Rickvoid. Sorry.
I decided (after finishing Silu's mini-novel. Ironic, considering how little happened, at over 1,100 words) that I would post these three before writting yours Rick. Don't worry though, it'll be VERY intersting, although you might not like what happens . . .
<Cuts to the chase>
Vaiolis
After several days of staying in his apartment, Markov decided he needed to scout around. The previous night he had looked around his apartment building, strangely enough, it was completely deserted. Markov wondered about his former neighbors. At lest they didn’t make noise when he was trying to sleep anymore. After scouting around his building and not finding anything useful. Markov decided that he’d have to go further out to find good plunder.
Grabbing his ‘work’ tools, Markov quickly locked up HIS building. He had been able to find a set of keys in the office on his previous excursion. He doubted that the front door would be able to stop a serious excursion, but it would do. His top floor apartment was much more secure. Heavy security door and a couple of locks would keep anyone out of his stuff. He supposed that it was possible that one of the tenants might try to come back. They’d be locked out. Markov hoped that it would rain.
It was a relatively bright night, no clouds and a full moon. There were a lot of street lights in the area, but Markov had no problem sneaking past them, moving in the shadows. He decided to head east, in the direction of one of the larger apartment buildings. .Before long, the streetlights became sporadic. They had never gotten around to putting the rest in. They never would either. In the distance, he saw a figure standing in the glow of a solitary street light. Inside his mind, Markov swore, “Damnit.”
As he approached, he quickly realized he was not dealing with a real human. The stories were right, there were zombies. Markov resolved to kill it; a walking corpse might complicate his escape efforts. Markov got very close to the edge of the light. Markov drew his dagger. The zombie was facing directly away from him. With a quiet sprint, Markov closed in a second. The gleaming dagger flashed into the zombie’s lower back. A bit of blood dribbled out. Experience showed that this was immediately fatal to any human. Markov removed his dagger, but he wasn’t dealing with a human. The zombie moaned and turned.
Markov felt the zombie tackle him, almost in a daze. He saw a flash of bloated skin, and blood-red eyes. Then the frothing mouth and the teeth. Markov tried to bring his knife up, but the zombie knocked his arm away. The knife skittered to the edge of the light. The hungry jaws came down. Markov somehow rolled to the side, right on top of his knife.
In one movement, Markov stood and picked his knife. Moaning, which seemed so loud in the night, the zombie charged. Time seemed to slow. When the zombie was a foot (an inch?) away, Markov stabbed with all of his strength. The knife smashed into the side of the zombie’s head. Unable to change the first law of motion, the zombie crashed into the thief. Shoving the body to the side, Markov slowly got up.
The knife was buried in to the cross-piece. Only a little blood flowed out of the wounds. When Markov savagely pulled the knife out, it bleed profusely. Markov tried to clean a couple of dark blood spots off of his clothes. Unsurprisingly, the tattered garments that the zombie wore didn’t work to well. Resigned to wearing bloody clothes and wielding a bloody knife for awhile, Markov continued on. “At least I know how to clean blood. Heh.”
Shortly later, Markov saw a group of zombies clustered together, moaning. The experience burglar melded with the shadows, nearly impossible to see. Although, did zombies need to see their target? Irregardless, Markov didn’t get closer to the zombies and they didn’t seem to notice him.
A bit to his right, Markov saw the wooden frame of an unfinished house. Wondering if there would be anything interesting there, he changed his direction. The construction site was deserted, it looked as if the workers had left for the night and never returned. Markov didn’t see the usefulness of stealing a miter saw, but he found a portable office trailer. There was the glow from a light inside.
The door was locked; quickly, it was unlocked. The room was not that big, just a small table and a desk with the lamp. The meager floor space was dominated by a corpse. It seemed the site foreman had died peacefully. His closed eyes faced the ceiling and his arms were crossed. An empty pill box was clutched in his right hand. Markov pried it away, some name he couldn’t pronounce, with a subtitle of anti-depressant. The black garbed man mused to himself, “A suicidal idiot, or . . . lucky?”
There was a coffee machine on the table. Markov fired it up. With a Styrofoam cup of coffee in hand (no cream, two sugars), Markov rifled through the dead man’s desk. Architect’s plans, order forms, loan details, and a love letter. Markov wondered if the lady was dead too.
Needing at least something to show for his work, he stole the foreman’s watch. It was a nice one too. Rolling the cadaver onto its front and disrupting his peaceful repose, Markov gently lifted his wallet. Only a couple of dollars in paper. Markov briefly considered grabbing the driver license, but he instead just took the cash and credit cards. Markov supposed that eBay would be down though.
Looking out of the window, Markov could see the ten story apartment building in the distance. He sat in the chair and put his feet up. His new watch said 7:00. “Now, what shall I do now? I could return to my apartment or keep going. I really don‘t have much loot right now. Strange though, if it‘s seven o’clock, shouldn‘t the traces of dawn be in the sky?”
Zako:
BTW That would be tile D. Does the second map not work on PSP’s? I get them both fine on my cell.
Zak paces around his house with frantic energy. He just had to do SOMETHING! He had the couple of supplies that he had gathered in his house but decided to scout around some more. When looking through the basement Zak found a couple of interesting things. A small fishing rod with tackle, a old but sturdy rope ladder, and a broken radio. Assuming (but secretly fearing the worst) that there must be more survivors, perhaps they are transmitting something? After fiddling with the machinery for a bit, Zak gives it up. (Weak: Electronics) If he was to play around with it for another hour or so, Zak felt that he SHOULD be able to fix it. Hopefully. But for now, Zak decided that there were more important things to do. Priority number one would be . . . not dieing. “Now then,” Zak thought, “the best defense is a good defense. I’ll make this my stronghold.”
Zak eventually comes up with a clever defensive plan. He would create a system where zombies would be kept out, but where he could easily get in. He would completely barricade the first floor of his house. Then he would put up a movable barricade on the staircase to the second floor. To get in or out of the stronghold (as he now thought of it) he would use the ladder from the second floor. Zombies shouldn’t have the coordination to climb a ladder, and he could always just pull the thing up. He said quietly to himself, “Perfect, just like Swiss Family Robinson.” (Smart)
Zak put his plan into action. He quickly found a slight problem though. There wasn’t all that much stuff in the house. He was able to use the couch and kitchen table to barricade the front and back doors, but damn, there were a lot of windows. He did the best that he could, using the chairs and a china cabinet to block the larger ones, but he would really need some proper building materials (some wood, or better yet, steel) to do a proper job. Zak threw the rest of whatever he could find against the remaining first floor windows and moved to the second. He used the spare second floor mattress and a dresser to make an effective, but movable barricade for the top of the staircase. It took no time at all. There was another big, heavy dresser on the second floor that would be perfect for barricading another weak window, but Zak didn’t think that he could get it down the stairs without breaking it, or himself!
Tired after all his work, but still with more than enough stamina to continue (tough), Zak tried to some recon from his second story window. Zak decided to open it to get a better view. The first thing that Zak noticed was the cold. It was a pretty brisk night out. In a couple of days, heat would become a problem. In a month, Zak knew that he might have it worry about snow (Smart). Zak could not see a lot from his window, even though the moon provided a fair bit of light.
Zak thought that he could make out the shape of a human in the distance. Thinking that it might be another survivor, Zak shouted out to them. The figure turned and moved at a decent pace towards the stronghold. When it got a bit closer, Zak could hear it moaning. He had just told a zombie his position (Weak: Sight). “Frak.”
The zombie closed distance quickly. Zak felt like he was missing something. He didn’t have his gun! He thought that he had left on the kitchen counter. Zak sprinted to the staircase, knocked aside the wardrobe and crashed through the mattress. He could hear pounding on the walls. Thankfully, he had known exactly were he had left the thing. Zak moved back to the second floor. From his previous scouting window he could see the zombie, smashing through one of the weakly barricaded windows. Thankfully, Zak was able to quickly prime the rifle (Smart; Skilled: Guns).
He leaned out the window, took aim, and fired. Strangely enough, the shot was dead on. Also strange, but spectacular too, the head well, exploded into gore. The zombie dropped like a sack of potatoes, an undead sack of potatoes.
A shaken Zak closed the window gently and noticed his bedside alarm clock: 4:12. “Now what?”
Yours was the shortest of the three, Zak. I'll write more next time.
Silu:
Jacob (Never Jake) looked up from the paper. Always having been a bit of a night owl, he had no problem being awake this late. The newspaper was a couple of days old, the headline said ‘Our Saviors!” Underneath was a collage of stock photos showing the heads of the provisional government. According to the article, the army was fully deployed and the zombies, although very dangerous, could do little to stop even a light truck. Silu wondered aloud, “I wonder what happened to them. Zombies shouldn’t be able to stop tanks. It’s strange.”
The next article discussed the zombies themselves. It seemed that even in the couple of days that they had been around, whatever caused zombisim had mutated. Apparently, at the current (several days ago?) moment, a person could only become a zombie it they were bitten, but not killed by one. There was the gas as well. However, it seemed that traces of the zombification gas had spread throughout the country. Living experts declared that this would cause everyone to begin to build up an immunity to the disease. In fact, many people showed traces of an, as yet, undisrupted antibody. It was theorized that if enough time elapsed, zombies would not be able to do a single thing to the humans.
Jacob wondered how much of the paper was propaganda, setting it down. He checked his pockets. His handgun, loaded but not cocked was in his sweatshirt pocket. The other clips rested in his cargo pockets. This way, they couldn’t knock against each other and jangle or dent. Silence was life.
His house was not particularly warm. It was an ancient building, the old lady who had built it had refused to sell it, and the malls grew up alongside it. Before eminent domain, apparently. It ran an oil fired furnace, and Silu wanted to keep his fuel stocks up as long as possible. It was a noisy hunk of junk too. Silence was, of course life.
When trouble had started brewing, Jacob had drawn his shades in good time. A couple of soft lamps provided more than enough light for Jacob to work (Strong: Sight). Jacob made the decision to secure his second floor, there was no reason to waste stuff for space that he didn’t need. Jacob made a quick sweep of the house, looking for anything that he might want. He had rented it, as is, for a song when the previous owner had bought the farm (now that this is happening, was she the lucky one?). There had been a hell of a lot of stuff to throw away, although he claimed to have out it in storage. Maybe he left something useful?
The answer, not really. He did, however, find a small pair of mother-of-pearl binoculars. On a stick. Weird.
There was one spiral staircase that lead to the second floor. Jacob wasn’t sure how best to block it off. Throwing the two china cabinets that he hadn’t sold into it would probably be a good bet, but that would be loud. Carefully sliding one of them to the foot of the staircase and stacking a couple of chairs behind that. A pair of night stands with another chair on top completed the defense. It wouldn’t keep out a brute force approach, but would make sure that enough noise was created to alert Jacob. Then he had his Glock. In the event of an emergency, Jacob could hurdle the end tables, and then jump the railing halfway down. That would, of course, be loud.
Jacob thought of a second option as well, he could try to scale the side of the building, landing safely (and quietly) outside. He had a strange feeling that attempting would end in disaster though (Weak: Climbing).
He considered setting up a third line of defense at his bedroom’s door, but Jacob decided that it would be to much work for too little advantage. (And, it might be loud to set up) Unable to think of what to next, Jacob decided to see what he could see.
With the use of his new binoculars and his formidable power of observation (Strong: Sight) Jacob got to know his area. Across a major (but deserted) street to his north, there was a two floor hotel. He saw lights on in a couple of hotel rooms. As he watched, on of the rooms blinked on and off. Short, short, short. Long, long, long. Short, short, short. S.O.S. . . .
Not knowing what to do about the possible survivors across the street, Jacob looked in the other directions. Two blocks to the East, the big interstate went over the smaller roads. Right next to that, there was the big local mall, darkened. There were an awful lot of cars there, but Jacob couldn’t drive very well (need I say it?, Weak: Driving). Across the street to the south was a very large bank branch, if memory served Jacob, it was where they had kept their main offices. There was also the big electronics chain store next to the mall (obviously on side furthest away). The lights still seemed to be on there.
There were a couple of zombies that Jacob could see, but none of them were very close. Most of them stood still or wandered about, occasionally in small groups but never en masse. Jacob didn’t see any other signs of survivors. The hotel room blinked again. S.O.S: the international distress call.
Still unsure of whether he should break cover, Jacob decided to try his radio. He had always had a strange gracefulness when playing with radio knobs. He surfed through the different frequencies, the volume very low (silence is good). Just static. Jacob passed the still looping panic message. The channels whisked by, nothing. Then, it sounded a bit different. Jacob strained his ears. There was a lot of ambient noise in the transmission, some sort of heavy machinery? Then, he heard a voice.
Nothing more than a voice though. The radio was too quiet. Disregarding his new motto, Jacob turned it on louder. He could hear a bit more clearly now. He thought that it was, “Yes purple two-one, I know that were low on <garbled> stop in fifteen minutes. <garbled> to get there. <short garble> ve to transmit anyway.”
Then, there was a very loud moaning. It was very close. In a second, Jacob turned the radio all the way off. He sank to the floor, slowly, with his back against the wall. A couple of seconds later, he risked standing up quietly and peeking out the window. Three zombies were nudging the building carefully, seemingly unsure about where the sound had come from. Again, Jacob slid to the floor and scooted against the corner. Drawing his pistol, he whispered his mantra, “Silence is golden. Silence is good. Silence is god?”
A half an hour of an eternity later, Jacob got up. The zombies seemed to have wandered off. He really wasn’t sure what to do next. He didn’t like to risk the noise, but his curiosity about the voice abounded. It might be very important. Then there was the hotel. What should he do?
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Topic: Another Little Zombie Apocalypse . . . (Read 22904 times)