Zombiepocalypse Game Thread

July 19th, 2073.

6 days after the first Seattle outbreak.

Charlie shakes you awake at 6 AM, just as the sun starts peeking over the horizon - no audible alarms, since they might be heard by the ghouls. Charlie had been keeping watch for the group for the last two nights - courtesy of one of the doses of Long Haul he'd spirited from somewhere, early in the outbreak. The blankets and couch cushions on the floor weren't the most comfortable bed you've ever slept in, by any stretch of the imagination. Still, the bedroom had a picture window, and none of you wanted to risk that. Glancing out the small window above the apartment's kitchen sink, you remember where you are - the old run-down apartment building in southern Redmond. 4th floor... 3rd... no, 4th apartment from the stairs. A cozy enough little hideout, and out of the way of the largest concentrations of the horde... though hardly large or secure.

Slinging his shotgun over his shoulder, Charlie hands out bowls of lukewarm soymeal - the apartment's former owners had had a small backup generator, which ran quietly enough and could power a few essentials - the SPU, for example. Hardly high quality, but after the last week, you couldn't care less. Having handed everyone their breakfast, Charlie looks around, his face set in a rather solemn scowl. "Them ghouls were getting nosy last night... I think they were smelling us, or sommat. We're gonna have to move - this place isn't safe no more. I'm afraid I don't have much idea where we might hole up... so if any of yous got some ideas, now'd be a good time to speak up."

I muttered a sputtering curse as I felt Charlie shaking me awake. Of course. Two days of early bed rest that I didn't need. Then, the one day I'm up til three in the bleeding morning tuning that gorram satellite dish and he's gotta shake me outta bed at 6 AM. I could kill the bastard.

I throw aside the covers, trying to jump-start my brain with a quick burst of activity. It won't work for long, but at least I'll be coherent momentarily. Maybe I'll take some G3, but I'd prefer to avoid that.

Feeling myself grow groggier, I shake my head.

Great, now I'm groggy and I've got a headache. What a marked improvement.

Walking to the table and plopping myself down, I dragged the bowl to me and began eating. Ugh. Soymeal. A week ago I wouldn't touch this crap with a ten-foot spoon. It's amazing what one gets used to. I nodded to Jen as she walked over to the table, her presence a reassuring reminder that however bad today gets, we'd probably survived worse.
I smiled grimly at the thought. If I get out of this alive, I'm never stepping into another zoo ever again.

My vision began to clear as the sleep drained away. The two previous nights had given me a buffer, so the fatigue wasn't hitting as hard as it could have. My ability to listen was not too heavily impacted, at least.

I sighed slightly as I listened to Charlie talk. Great. Moving again. And I had just finished setting up the sat link, too. Well, might as well get some use out of it while it's up.

"Charlie, I can see if I can pull a few current satellite photos of Seattle from off the Matrix. Also, I've got a direct line to people on the space station. They might be able to give us some intel from up there. I'd like to get us to the hospital first, then raid an armory if we can. We're gonna need medical supplies, and we can never have enough weapons and rations."

Andrea grumpily swats Charlie's hand away after the first shake and sleepily mutters, "Alright, m'up. Lay off already." After a few days without her regular comforts, Andrea has found that she can be fully conscious in a matter of seconds, although it takes around a half hour before she is in any way pleasant. Sitting up, she runs her hand through her tangled hair and grimaces, {Two weapons, three kinds of illumination, and enough explosives to level a small building, yet somehow a simple hairbrush got left out.} "Oh well, not like I could clean it anyway."

Andrea stands up and immediately staggers a little, holding her right leg. "And my leg's asleep. I can already tell it's gonna be a great day."

After walking the sensation off, she belts on her sword and gun before putting on her coat and finally taking the bowl of soymeal with a small nod of thanks. When Radek suggests an armory, she offers, "My arc had some nice arms at all the security stations. If everyone infected went atavistic, then everything at outlying corporate checkpoints should be there for the taking and not too far from the street."

I nodded, trying to think through the early-morning mental fog. I put down my spoon, having eaten all I could really stomach. I'm never hungry early in the morning anyways.

"Arc..." I muttered, grabbing my commlink and bringing up the map I'd cropped from a Seattle tour guide. It was outdated, but it was better the nothing. If nothing else, it told us where everything used to be. "You mean Arcology, right? Do you know where it is? The only Arcology I know anything about is ACHE, but you're obviously not from there."

Mornings... best time of day... to sleep through, that is. I guess that's not really a fair statement. I'm good with mornings, I just dislike them. Maybe something left over from before I got the sleep regulator put in. I'm a night person, and now I'm a morning person after two or three hours rest... but the same couldn't be said about the others in our crew. If there was any time when tempers were high and attitudes nasty, it was in the morning, faced with the dangers of a new day, although night was almost as bad; time to mentally review the close calls and place blame.

Me and Radek had done good so far about that. We'd both slipped up at times (seriously, why did I let him talk me into sneaking through the animal exhibits? Ghouls aren't the only thing that can tear your friggin' arm off...) but we'd managed to avoid pointing fingers for longer than a few minutes.

It wasn't Charlie's fault for waking us, and I nodded at him with a smile, instantly awake. There was surviving to be done. That's all it ever was now; surviving. That meant soy slop for breakfast. But first the necessities: getting dressed. This part of the morning had devolved into something of a joke but- and I'd never tell anyone this- but I saw it as something of a ritual. Living in the same outfit as though it was my second skin was horribly disgusting, but you get used to it after a bit. It's just something you get used to, the smell, the scratchiness, there's nothing to be done so you live with it. What little water we had was for drinking, not showering and washing clothes... unfortunately.

But my boots, those I took off to let them air out. And by 'out' I mean 'out': in the master bathroom where they wouldn't bother anyone. Running around a ghoul-infested city was hard on your feet, but there was one good thing about squatting in an abandoned apartment: free socks. If I had to rewear socks after running around... yeah, it wouldn't be fun. And so I passed the table on for now, sparing a glance towards the others slowly rousing from their sleep, and quietly opened the door to the master bedroom. We had decided early on that the window was a threat... I still don't think it posed much problem with the shades drawn, and with us off street level, but it wasn't something to get into an argument over. And so, every time I went in there, I made sure to stay low, crawling or crouch-walking over to the dresser to grab a new pair of worn socks, and then into the bathroom to put them on and slip on my boots. Didn't take long, thanks to the velcro straps (dorky they may be, but I won't ever trip while running from a ghoul, so definitely worth it). Then back to the table for that appetizing breakfast.

If only we had bananas... that about sums up opinion on the soymeal. Some nice banana slices, or raisins, would go a long way. Blech... It occurred to me the others were talking, and I tuned in.

"Arms? Is it really a good idea to be looking for more weapons and ammo? I mean, it's good to be able to defend yourself but the only reason we should be stocking up on guns is if we intend to kill all of 'em, in a certain area or something. Because I think we both know how bad an idea it is to have to carry something heavy around when trying to keep away from ghoulies," I leveled a meaningful glance at Radek, smiling for a moment before taking another bite of slop. "And guns get pretty heavy when you take into consideration all the ammo that goes along with them, you know?"

I looked at Jen and grinned. Probably a little psychotically, but early mornings make me a bit manic sometimes. "I'm not gonna pick up a minigun or anything. I just want some grenades. And some explosives for Andrea here. And a flamethrower, if we find any."

I didn't need to say any more than that. I'd already been expounding at length for some time regarding our lack of explosives and incendiaries. Andrea had a demo kit, but no explosives to go with it. None of us had any grenades. If we needed a quick diversion or needed to collapse a wall, we'd be stuck. If we got attacked by a horde of ghouls, we'd have to pick them off one at a time as we ran. And what if we ran into something worse than those standard ghouls? I didn't want to find myself confronted with a Wendigo without some fire at my disposal. We didn't need more weapons. We needed better ones.

I went back to scrutinizing the map. "Now, let's see...we're in Southern Redmond. Bellevue to our West and Renton is to the South. Both are fairly close and each has around a dozen hospitals and clinics. Also...." I looked up. "Now this is interesting. Seems the Knight Errant Training Academy is in Renton. If the Arcology is far away, this could also be a viable source of supplies and possible survivors."

"M'up, m'up.."

Mornings were never my best. Not by a long shot. Even before my joints started getting sore and my muscles shakey, I was never a morning person; Wrong circudian rythmn or something along those lines. Once, in high school, I took a little test to determine my best job placement; It included a graph of energy throughout the day. Mornings was a zero. Night was the highest mark. I waved my chewed up hands to ward off my woman's insistent shaking; Maybe it was my daughter, jumping on 'daddy bear' and trying to bite.

My eyes snap open, blurred and gummed open. "Mmph." Dang. Still the same nightmare. Six days of this sugar, and I couldn't even bring myself up to a good cuss out yet. The ingrained habits of six years. I roll off my side, wincing as I feel the skin there get thick and hard; Muscles seizing up, protesting that I'd dare move around. . o O (I'm too old for this.) O o . With a long and elaborate ritual, I slowly ease my way up to a sitting position, knuckling those knots in my spine that never quite seem to crack. I then pat the belly earned by being a husband, and move from sitting on my protesting rear to kneeling on my enraged knees. With methodical precision I pull the Ugly Stick out from under my 'pillow', and quietly begin loading up my pistol. Vision still blurry. I slap my head a few times to clear it, and can dully hear people murmuring.

I focus. Something about explosives?

".. D'need explosives." My grumble, twisting my neck until it pops. "Just need to get out of this city, and quit piddling around playing heroes." My heart went out to the other survivors; It really did. But the survival of my family came first. As good as my old man was, even he'd get tired eventually. With a wince, I pull my legs up and stand at a crouch; It killed my back, but at least my legs were straightened and could get some blood. I take a moment to glance around at all the others; Never was good at names, even now. That guy, that girl, that guy... Trying my absolute best not to get caught up watching the dust motes in the air. Gotta keep off those distractions.

"Tchyeah, that's what we need..." I rolled my eyes with annoyance. "A weapon the size and weight of a full backpack without actually holding any of the useful stuff a backpack does." He was probably just joking... probably. I could see him being perfectly serious about that though. Either way, I held back from commenting on the grenades. I could see the appeal for blowing up a bunch of ghouls at once (assuming whoever used them knew how to throw them properly), but they would make such a ruckus going off, it seemed more likely they'd just attract more. Radek and I had encountered more than our fair share of noise-induced danger, but I guess if you're going to be moving around in a group with guns, noise is going to happen; might as well have a way to deal with the ghouls when they do show up.

"I actually agree with Gramps," I jerked a thumb in Book's direction, grinning mischievously at him as he went through his painful-looking morning stretching routine. "Maybe we should find some kind of... big... truck. Like a... uh, construction truck or something, but really big. Big enough to run over the cars and stuff in the road, and one we can all fit in. Or more than one, I guess. Because trying to get out of here on foot is going to be crazy dangerous." It felt like every day we spent in the city we were just tempting fate, taunting statistics to correct the deviation. "We should probably gather a lot of food for the trip too..."

"Believe me, Jen, a minigun would weigh far more than a full backpack," I said, chuckling as I scraped my finger against the stubble on my chin.

I brought my feet up, sitting cross-legged on the chair as I rolled my head to the side, the air escaping from between my upper vertebrae with a series of loud cracks. My torso swivelled 70 degrees in each direction as I stretched out my back, the motion accompanied with more popping sounds from my lower spine. What I needed was a shower. Nothing like hot water to clear the fog. Ah well, one can't have everything.

"Alright, we've got a lot we need to do, so let's review our basic goals," I said, absent-mindedly popping my knuckles and fingers. "Our overarching goal is obvious: survive. Long term, that will mean we need to get out of this city to a place that's long on resources and short on infected. Unfortunately, we have no knowledge of such a destination, so we're going to need to focus on short-term survival until we can dig up somewhere for us to go."
I looked at Sparky, feeling at a pang at the thought of what he must be going through. It was touch and go just for Jen and I to survive with just the two of us. But this man had to survive while protecting his family. "I know you want to get out of the city, Tsotsoe, but we won't stand a chance if we just start trekking out into the barrens without some good vehicles and adequate defense. Out there, we'll have to worry about raiders and bandits as much as we'll need to worry about ghouls."

I turned back to the rest, putting words to ideas that had been churning in my mind for days. I knew we'd need to move sooner or later, a fact which I had been obsessing over every night as I lay in bed, listening to the howling of feral corpses. At least during the day I could distract myself with searching the Matrix for information. Nighttime brought no such reprieve.
"For short term survival, we're going to need food, water, medical supplies, shelter, and weapons. Plus, we're going to need transportation, because once we do have a destination we're going to need a way out of here. Now, medical supplies and drugs we can get at a hospital or clinic. I think we should go to the Knight Errant Training Academy for the rest. It's close and the place is a full military base. They will probably have all kinds of useful supplies. More importantly, they are the most likely to have some heavy armored vehicles."

Charlie nods to Radek. "Makes sense... where do we want to go first, though? I'd imagine that most of the hospitals are overrun - not much security in the first place, and all those people who can't run away from the horde... But by the same token, it my be rather difficult to get into the Knight Errant facility."

"I meant the flamethrower..." I muttered, shrugging the matter off. It was probably a moot point anyway. But Radek had a good point, beyond just having weapons they'd likely have armored vehicles. "Alright, I guess that's our best bet, then. Maybe we can even find a tank or something like that," I tried to laugh but in all honesty a tank was exactly what we needed to escape this mess. Anything less would be a risk; one we might not all walk away from.

"One other thing we might want to think about is seeing if we can scavenge some solar cells from somewhere, like a smart car or something. Never know when you're gonna need a portable, lightweight power source."

I consider the others carefully; Younger than I am, obviously. Hard to tell anymore, of course, but they acted younger. Talks about weapons and explosives. Maybe having a kid just made you feel older, added on twenty or thirty years of responsibility on already sagging shoulders. I smiled grimly to myself as I remembered, long before I found my wife, how I'd love to be in a situation like this; No obligations, no responsibilities, just destroy with abandon all day and take what you want. Lawless was a lot less appealing once you've hit the hard end of a mortgage and realize how much sweat and blood goes into maintaining a good home.

The classic cartoon caricature of an angry old man yelling at those punk kids chewing up his lawn with their sharp shoes was suddenly a lot less funny.

Shaking my head to clear it out of such thoughts before I lost in tangent contemplations, I pick up my own gray gruel. Eyes close, arms crossed over mid-drift, and I say a quiet prayer for myself. "Dear heavenly father... I'd like to take a moment to thank you for my life today, to thank you for what I have, what I hold, and what's to come. Keep my family in your gaze, keep my pappy's eyes sharp, and give me the strength to get through this, if that be in your plan. Keep those that travel with me whole as well. I ask these things in thy son's name, Jesus Christ, Amen."

In these modern times, a real old fashioned practicing Saint was an odd sight; Especially when mages and shamans slipping their way around all sorts of mumbo jumbo planes all the time. Hard to maintain the mystique of the Heavenly Father when the guy with the weird tattooes claims to have tea with him every Tuesday. Still, sometimes you gotta just say 'bugger 'em' and do what feels right. I scrape the semi-solid meal off the pressed-board spoon with my teeth, feeling the greasy texture curl up in my mouth. I think of ice cream, even as I'm swallowing fecal taste. Lord above, I already miss ice cream.

The dull throbbing noise resolves itself into words again as I bring my head back out of the clouds, my nose wrinkling as the scent of a stranger's body hits my nostrils. "Big? No, not big. We need small. Small, quick, and agile. A bike for all of us. Even big things will get hung up, slowed down, or stopped altogether by a blow out. If one of the bikes goes down, we double up and keep moving. Dodge around traffic, not over or under. Move during day; They can see us, but we can see them too. Tanks aren't nearly as useful when you can't turn the stupid things, like down a narrow pass. Whole body turns around the middle, means you gotta have room for the rear to swing too. Doesn't drive like a car, which turns the front first and the rear follows. Same with bulldozers. Whole stupid thing turns around the center, unless you wanna risk throwing your thread off..."

I cut myself off before I start giving away the tips and tricks to getting a back loaded through a cause-way. Just another one of those odd jobs I picked up in my years. I grin at the girl, a bit belatedly, for her gramps joke before I turn back to the others. "Guns ain't going to help us. More of them than we have bullets, even if we dump all our food and precious water. Get something you can stick down your pants, not something that's gonna take up a hand or an arm to carry. Two hands will server you a hell -... excuse me... heck of a lot better than any bazooka you'll find."

I nodded, smiling inwardly. People were awake and thinking. That's good. We needed that.

I continued. "Ah, the flamethrower. I confess I was only half joking about that. While a full-sized one would be useless, one of those pistol flamethrowers would be handy. Blazers, I think they were called? Anyways, you can hold it in one hand, the tanks are small and light, it's got no recoil, and it can spit fire. What more could you want?"
I flashed a sardonic, lopsided grin. "Not that I'd be any good with it. Honestly, I just brought up weapons because I figured some of you might want to look for something you might find useful. I've got my claws and my sword, and that's enough for me."

As I spoke, I extended then retracted the claws in my left hand, feeling the hard bone scraping along the nerves of my fingertips. It was a half-conscious thing; I'm a bit of a fidgety person, which means I'm always sliding my claws in and out. The sensation was a weird one, but not unpleasant. My claws had become important to me lately, but I guess that happens when a part of your anatomy lets you tear out a ghoul's throat with a single swipe. I reached down under the table, retrieving my boots from where I had left them the night before. They were a find pair of brown leather hiking boots, a bit worn from prolonged use but otherwise in good condition. These boots had taken me around the world in the past few years, from The Great Wall to Il Coliseo. Now they were taking me through the apocalypse.

"Anyways, an armory has more than just weapons. If we can't get to a hospital, it's the next most likely place to have medical supplies, plus there'll likely be survival gear and body armor. I know we already have body armor, but there's some seriously effective mil-spec stuff these days that'll offer great protection and can assist movement. As for vehicles, I see your point, Tsotsoe, regarding mobility. However, I feel I should point out that we're probably going to want a large vehicle eventually. Large vehicles have space. Some have lots of it, in fact. Once we get out of the city, we're gonna need to carry our necessities with us, and we won't always be able to find a roof. We get a big, well-armored vehicle with plenty of storage, we'll be able to lug along plenty of food and water, and we'll be able to keep out of the rain. We'll be able to take the bikes with us, too." And it would put some armor between us and any crazies with guns we encounter, I didn't say. That is the greatest tragedy of such times, I feel. Not what is done to us, but what we do to ourselves. I finished lacing my boots.

I stood up quietly, slipping on my coat as I reached for my sword. "So, to rehash, we need medical supplies, food and drink, small vehicles, and some kind of larger transport we can prep for our trip out of the city. Anything else?"

Andrea chuckles grimly, "No, I think that's plenty of opportunity for things to go horribly wrong right there." She begins nervously twirling her hair around her right index finger, a habit she falls into when she's afraid he her attitude is going to irritate people, "If we think of anything else we need once we survive getting all that, we can take care of it then, but if we don't get moving soon, we'll lose all our daylight."

I nodded. Well, time to get to work. "Then lets try to get what information we can over the Matrix before we leave. I finally managed to get that satellite link established last night, so we should be able to reconnect with people in orbit and with what servers are still running. Come upstairs when you can; I've got it hooked up to a trid."

Strapping my sword to my belt, I crept upstairs, careful to avoid the windows. There sat the fruits of three days labor, a small satellite dish hooked to a trideo screen. I could've just used my commlink downstairs, but this way others could see, too, if they wanted. I started up my comm, first seeing if I could reconnect with anyone in orbit.