Hey there everyone! I was just looking through some of my old DF stuff and stumbled across this story that I started writing while I was playing the Zombie mod. I never finished it and I believe the members of the settlement ended up having their brains eaten by zombies, but it would be a shame for the story so far to go unshared, so here it is. I hope you enjoy it!
The Aftermath
They were everywhere. Swarms of them. It started with a simple chemical leak at one of the government’s factories and quickly turned into a worldwide plague. But it wasn’t any normal plague. The victims didn’t just die, they became undead. They became immune to pain and bleeding. One could hack off whole limbs without fazing them. And they began to hunger for living flesh.
We survived only because of a freak genetic accident. Somehow we were immune to this horrible plague. But that wasn’t enough to save us. The infected still hungered, and their saliva was rank with horrible poisons which would paralyze the victim for the rest of his or her very short life.
We had no choice but to run. The cities and towns were decimated, full of these roving hoards of former friends, co-workers, and family members. We grabbed what provisions we could and took off as fast as our legs would carry us. We ran through the forests and the mountains until we finally came to a place that seemed relatively safe. But when Cil spotted an infected torso crawling through the brush in the distance we knew we had to do something to protect ourselves.
Thanking the foresight that caused us to grab a couple of chainsaws, we began clearing trees and using the wood to construct makeshift walls. We used a rusty old jackhammer to carve a bit of a cave out of the rock, and also to chip away at any slopes that might allow enemies to come down on us from above. Escu, a former boy scout and foreman on a construction site in his old life, began giving orders straight away. Gather berries from that bush, secure this wall like so, that cliff isn’t steep enough yet. Nobody questioned him. Fear and desperation made us grateful for an authority figure to tell us what to do.
Before long we had a decent collection of wild strawberries, potatoes, and wheat for food. There was an impenetrable wall all around us, and the cliffs would keep any undead away – they may have been stubborn and fearless, but they couldn’t climb or jump. We found a use for everyone’s talents, even mine. Who would have thought a simple farmer could have been so important? I showed the others how we could cultivate seeds from the plants we found, becoming completely self-sufficient as far as food was concerned. We even managed to brew ourselves a little moonshine to help against the cold and the fear and the sleepless nights. Meanwhile, Escu took his old jackhammer underground and dug straight down looking for stone to use as building materials. Good thing, too – we were running low on wood.
Escu came up with a great idea for us to get provisions from the forest outside our little compound. We constructed some makeshift stairs out of the claystone he found below the soil, a short distance from the walls, and he helped us build a bridge across to the plateau above us. Then we worked together to figure out a mechanized system for pulling the bridge away from the cliff, so when we saw any infected nearby we could keep them out.
Our good leader’s digging gave Innah an idea, and under his guidance we started tunneling under the ground out away from our little compound. Thinking always of the safety of our shelter, Escu dug out a pit along the hallway and had us build another bridge and lever system over it, in case anything should show up while we were building new walls. Then he dug up, out into the open air. We all quickly threw together some walls out of stone, and we had our first house.
We furnished it with a bed and small office so that Cil could do some organizational work. She thought it a good idea to keep track of our tools, food, and other supplies, to maintain “an orderly society.” I figured he was trying a little too hard to cling to the society of the past which is gone forever now, but I suppose I should give him a bit more time to cope.
In the midst of autumn there came a welcome surprise – a group of survivors armed against the infected who were traveling about looking to trade with other small colonies. As luck would have it, Gel had whiled away some of the time by carving trinkets out of leftover turtle shells which we managed to trade for some extra food. More important, however, was the knowledge that we were not alone. We offered the others a place in our bunker, but they politely declined, preferring to brave the masses of infected and seek out what remained of humankind. They did, however, promise to return, and to alert others of our presence here.
Though Cil had her bedroom all ready, the rest of us were still sleeping in our first dwelling and with the success of our first house, we started digging tunnels to new locations for more. On Escu’s recommendation we dug only one at a time, first securing the drawbridge in the tunnel in case any infected should be spotted in the area. This precaution turned out to be necessary sooner than we’d hoped.
Until this point we had seen the occasional infected dog or legless torso scrambling around in the forest. There were perhaps four or five of us outside putting up new walls for a second house when a veritable army of infected appeared not far from us, all looking hungry. We all ran back into the tunnel as quickly as possible, Ramkal pulling the lever to retract the bridge. He wasn’t a moment too soon, either. The hideous beasts were clawing around the staircase, too close for comfort. Convinced that we were safe, we retreated to the compound.
We all agreed that there was nothing to do but wait them out and keep a watchful eye for any weakness in our defenses. Though the constant sounds of scratching, moaning, and now and then the blood-curdling screams of some poor animal having its throat torn out kept us awake at night and huddled together during the day, they never breached our wall. In fact, they seemed to have forgotten our presence entirely once we disappeared from view.
Our fear at this point was nourishment. As winter came we were unable to grow any more of our own food in the frozen ground. We had been stockpiling what food we could scavenge and the alcohol we had distilled from it, but each day the supplies dwindled, bit by bit. We lived like this for a full season.
At long last, the sounds faded. I was chosen to make my way through the tunnel to Cil’s house, up to the roof which we had surrounded with fortifications. It seemed to be a miracle – the last of the infected mob was disappearing into the distance. We waited another day to make sure they weren’t coming back, then pulled the lever for the drawbridge and carefully ventured back outside.
It was a mess. The grass had been trampled all over and there were few bushes left from which to gather food. We took what we could and as the ground was finally beginning to thaw, planted the seeds we had saved from the previous year, and began to gather wood from the trees which were newly mature enough to harvest. We continued work on the second dwelling, but were still unfinished with the perimeter when the second wave came.
It had hardly been two days since we dared to venture out when Asseg saw them coming, a second mob of infected, this one twice as big as the last. Once again we dashed inside and pulled the drawbridge in.
It was another full season that we lay in hiding, though it was made a bit easier by the warmer weather and the fact that we could grow enough food to keep ourselves going. In the meantime, Escu continued to dig tunnels, deeper and deeper into the earth. He stumbled on some old deposits of garbage matter, which Ramkal volunteered to sift through looking for useful material. In this way we acquired some old plastic toys for trading when the others returned (if they returned) and some basic raw plastic mush that we could try to form into something useful later on. We also kept ourselves busy with the farming, cooking, and distilling, as well as carving out mechanical parts for more drawbridges and so forth.
At last we saw the shambling mob disappear into the distance, and once more we crept outside, even more nervous than before. By then it was summer, but the warm air and chirping birds simply felt surreal. We began to gather more food and wood with even greater caution, jumping at every broken twig and falling acorn, but as a week passed with no incident, we began to grow bolder. With the walls on the second building almost complete, we began work on a third, leaving a hole in the wall for ease of traveling in and out. Life, it seemed, could still be good.
Near the end of summer Gel came running inside with an excited look on his face. At first we feared that the infected had returned, but as soon as he caught his breath he assured us that it was nothing terrible. Leading us up onto the cliff he showed us another group of survivors coming towards us.
At first we thought they were the traders returning, but as they grew closer we could see that this was not the case. They carried no extra goods, but only their tools and the clothes on their backs, which were looking the worse for wear. They approached and asked to speak with the leader of our settlement, and we led them without hesitation to Escu. They explained that they were looking for somewhere safe to life and were willing to work for their keep. They were eight in number and clearly half-starved and exhausted, but the way they carried their tools gave us the impression that they well knew how to use them. We all agreed to let them stay.
A few of them knew a thing or two about farming, so we redoubled our food production efforts in anticipation of the winter, which was not too far off. They helped us to finish the second building’s defenses, and we moved on to the third.
At the very end of autumn the traders were spotted heading towards our settlement, and we all stood on the plateau to wave at them as they came. But our expressions of joy rapidly turned to horror as they came closer, and behind them we saw yet another mob of infected moving slowly in our direction. We tried to alert the traders, to encourage them to run, but they mistook our shouts and waves as greetings and continued to stroll slowly towards us. We watched in horror as the undead overtook them and began picking them off. However slowly they wandered around without aim while we were safely within our walls, the moment they had a target they moved with frightening speed.
Only one of the traders realized what was happening quickly enough to flee towards us, and we all ran inside and pulled up the drawbridges to the still-open half-finished buildings as quickly as we could. But the infected continued to walk towards us, towards the second of our buildings, with the same speed with which they overtook the traders. We couldn’t understand what their aim was until Batow, one of the newcomers, suddenly grabbed a stone and ran towards the building as quickly as she could.
It took a few moments for it to sink in, what had happened. Batow, overconfident about the amount of free, safe time we had, had forgotten to finish her section of the wall in the second building. There was an argument in our shelter as some wanted to go out and help her, and others wanted to pull the bridge back straight away before any infected got inside. As they grew closer and closer we found ourselves left with no choice. Batow would never finish the wall in time, and there was none left to help her. Isi, another of the newcomers and a good friend of Batow, insisted that he be the one to do it. The lever was pulled, our shelter secure, and Batow’s fate was sealed.
We could hear her screams as she tried to run from them, cries for help, begging for us to extend the bridge and let her inside, but the infected were right behind her, and to allow her in would be suicide for us all. I muttered a secret thanks to the gods that we could not see her, for the sounds of her being torn to pieces and devoured by these former men was already too much to bear.
The mood in the settlement was bleak for several days. We all tried to distract ourselves from the death of our comrade with small talk, but there was little to be made. There was a bit of farming to be done, but the seeds were few and it was mostly a game of waiting until they had ripened. We did our best to keep ourselves busy over the next few weeks, but the going was more difficult now that one of our group had been lost.
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Topic: A Story Involving Zombies (Read 615 times)