Adventure! RPG: American Revenants - American Revenants

[Centimane]

Such an Occasion

Hurrying into his living room, Rick comes bursting onto a bizarre scene. Someone has actually come bodily through his window and is now trying corner his very large, and very scary looking german shepherd, Sam. Who is actually backing away and looking increasingly agitated, though his barking and snarling hasn’t lost any of its edge or ferocity.

The man’s clothes are torn (probably from coming through a glass window), and he’s just about covered in blood and grime and gore. However, his wounds don’t look serious enough to have been the cause of all of the blood on him, and none of his wounds account for the gore and blood around his lips. It reminds Rick of the way his dogs’ lips look after they’ve caught and torn apart one of the many rats that plague the junk piles out back. Obviously this man is some sort of psychopath, and he’s dangerous at the very least.

As Rick comes into view the man who’s just come through his window looks up and sees him, and seems to hesitate for moment. Then he comes directly at Rick, seeming to have forgotten the dog entirely. Seeing his master being threatened, Sam instantly forgets his own safety and leaps at the Intruder, with Sierra rushing out from behind Rick to join in the attack. Both dogs will be all over the trespasser in an instant, unless Rick chooses to do something to intervene.

((Blade, in case I’m being unclear here, Rick has the Initiative advantage here, and so he’ll go first unless you decide to delay your action, which is fine. So write up Rick’s reaction to the scene or whatever, and then declare Rick’s intended action and I’ll roll some dice to see how things turn out.))

Vehicular Manslaughter

The soldiers see Burt at just about the same time as he begins to lay down on his horn, and they’re very careful not to fire their weapons in his direction as he barrels his way through the surrounding hordes. Burt collides with over a dozen of the plague victims, but he’s moving too fast and far too focused on his objective to see whether any of them get back up again or how badly injured they are. Meanwhile the soldiers continue to fire in virtually every other direction as Burt approaches. One of them even has a sawed-off shotgun which thunders loudly over the engine of Burt’s truck. In the time it takes Burt to reach them the soldiers manage to take down at least half a dozen of their targets, maybe more, and they keep themselves tightly grouped and in formation.

As soon as Burt squeals to a stop in front of them, the soldier with the shotgun signals the rest and they all rush his truck. Three of the soldiers leap onto the bed of the truck and begin laying down covering fire into the encroaching horde. A fourth soldier stands just outside the passenger door and lays down yet more cover fire while the one with the shotgun yanks open the door and leaps into the passenger seat. The fourth soldier immediately leaps for the bed of the truck with the aid of his fellows, and there’s a thumping on the roof of the truck’s cab. The officer with the sawed-off starts shouting, ‘Go! Go! Go!’ , while simultaneously rolling down his window so he can stick his shotgun out of it.

Descent

Alex is down at street level in a flash and issues his orders while laying down a few shots as cover fire. Horn immediately begins pulling back to the NYPD officer’s location while laying down some suppressive fire of his own with his assault rifle, which is a big help. All four of the soldiers from the barricade begin moving in Alex’s direction immediately, obviously glad to have somewhere to flee, though the wounded man looks to be in bad shape.

The soldiers form up quickly enough, and between the lot of them they drop a good ten of the walking corpses. From up above there’s another volley of fire and a screaming Private Durden drops another three of their enemies. This leaves about eight that are still more or less ambulatory, with all the rest lying on the ground in a bloody heap. Blood is everywhere. It seems like the entire bridge is slick with it. One of the two fallen soldiers is laying still and silent underneath two of their attackers who haven’t been hit, and who seem largely oblivious to the exchange going on around them. The other soldier is still screaming his lungs out and feebly attempting to fight off the young dead woman who is busily pulling his innards from a gaping wound in his stomach and eating it.

This sight is obviously causing the soldiers around Alex no small amount of distress (and it probably isn’t sitting too well with Alex either), but before any of them can reach the point of full panic, or even simply take any action, there is a loud gunshot from immediately behind them.

The wounded soldier’s head explodes, and he jerks forward out of the arms of the man who was supporting him and collapses heavily to the ground. The survivors all spin around to face behind them, having temporarily forgotten the atrocity at the barricade, and face the shooter. Private Durden’s gun is smoking and there is a wild look in his eyes.

‘He was bitten!’, he says. ‘I had to do it! He was bitten! He’d a become one of them! He’d a killed us all! I had to! I had to!!’

‘Ah hell!, mutters Sgt. Horn, ‘He’s lost it. He’s completely lost it.’

The other soldiers are all raising their weapons, but they look completely unsure of what to do next and their eyes keep shifting between each other, Durden, and the walking dead behind them. No one else speaks. The screams of the wounded soldier behind them, and the half-hearted moans of their attackers are the only noises, and this only adds to the sense of madness and chaos of their situation.

[ezekiel]

Sheathed in Her Heart

The ex-stripper’s legs brace themselves firmly against the walls on either side of the hall as she twists upwards and pulls her knife from the dead man’s bleeding chin. Bunny twists back just as quickly and plunges it into the heart of the blind girl with a soft, meaty thunk. Without stopping to observe her results, Bunny drops her legs and tucks into a roll, aiming between the man’s legs.

Unfortunately there simply isn’t enough space between those legs for Bunny to fit through, and she ends up rolling directly into his shins. Fortunately, this has the unexpected effect of knocking her attacker entirely off-balance and he falls over the balled-up Bunny and directly onto the girl still struggling blindly on the floor (and who’s taken quite a beating in the past few seconds).

Wait, she’s still struggling on the floor?

As Bunny comes out of her roll she sees that, yes, the girl – who’s eyes are now replaced by bloody red wounds, and who has a knife sticking out of her chest – is still struggling underneath the man Bunny just tripped. How is that even possible?

While the girl still seems to be having trouble getting herself coordinated, the man on top of her is already pulling himself back up, and is looking over his shoulder at Bunny all the while, though he hardly looks graceful as he does so. Looking over her own shoulder, Bunny is just in time to see the woman she missed with her thrown knife stopped cold as she is smacked hard across the right ear by Bunny’s baseball bat.

The woman’s only reaction, other than a sharp jerk of her head, is another moan as she slowly turns to face her attacker. As she shifts her body out of Bunny’s way, a frightened looking Mandy comes into view, holding the bat in her shaking hands.

Bunny runs towards the woman and jumps up high, over the woman, twisting as she does so and expertly grabs her left arm below the shoulder. With a slight tuck as she lands, she uses her weight to throw the woman above and beyond the short, brave and scared Mandy.

Looking down at the girl she grabs the baseball bat and nods towards the apartment.

"Thanks Mandy...now go get what we need before we go."

With that she swings the bat upwards and swings it down on the woman's head...hard.

[SkyLion]

A Way Out

Dr. Shaw moves only a few feet to his left when his searching hand finds what he elatedly realizes is a door handle! But those pattering feet are still coming, and David’s leg kicks out viciously to meet it before he has time to try the door. He feels his foot connect with something, and there’s a soft exhalation of air, and the sound of something thumping across the tiles in the dark, but no other noise. Wait! No, there’s a hiss, as of something breathing between clenched teeth, and the sound of footsteps so light that David might never have heard them had he not already begun to pay so much attention to what his ears were telling him. Whatever it is will be on him in a moment, but he should be able to get through the door before then if he moves now.

,,

David's senses are reeling with a heady and terrifying vertigo.

*I must be dreaming...that's it...a nightmare brought on from the fever. Must be why my head aches so much. Wake up David. WAKE UP!*

,,

Despite his panic, David's body still acts as if a marrionette, moving of it's own accord with a smoothness that feels more and more unnatural. His hand suddenly graps the door handle and he he rolls his body towards the opening as the handle turns, quckly shutting it behind him.

,,

*Body reacting like adrenaline..but without the shakes. Not real...a dream.*

,,

David turns, slowly, to see the room he has entered, his face bearing an expression of morbid curiosity.

[archer]

Vehicular Manslaughter

The soldiers see Burt at just about the same time as he begins to lay down on his horn, and they’re very careful not to fire their weapons in his direction as he barrels his way through the surrounding hordes. Burt collides with over a dozen of the plague victims, but he’s moving too fast and far too focused on his objective to see whether any of them get back up again or how badly injured they are. Meanwhile the soldiers continue to fire in virtually every other direction as Burt approaches. One of them even has a sawed-off shotgun which thunders loudly over the engine of Burt’s truck. In the time it takes Burt to reach them the soldiers manage to take down at least half a dozen of their targets, maybe more, and they keep themselves tightly grouped and in formation.

As soon as Burt squeals to a stop in front of them, the soldier with the shotgun signals the rest and they all rush his truck. Three of the soldiers leap onto the bed of the truck and begin laying down covering fire into the encroaching horde. A fourth soldier stands just outside the passenger door and lays down yet more cover fire while the one with the shotgun yanks open the door and leaps into the passenger seat. The fourth soldier immediately leaps for the bed of the truck with the aid of his fellows, and there’s a thumping on the roof of the truck’s cab. The officer with the sawed-off starts shouting, ‘Go! Go! Go!’ , while simultaneously rolling down his window so he can stick his shotgun out of it.

Having forgotten to breathe, Burt inhales in relief as the soldiers climb aboard. Glancing in his rearview to make sure everyone's accounted for, he screams out a quick "Hold on!", before slapping the gearshift into reverse and gunning it backwards.

Twisted in his seat to stare out the trucks rear window as he drives, he addresses the soldier next him, bellowing to be heard over the gunfire. "Radio's right in front of you, get on there and tell Sergeant Shaw we're coming in!"

[Shade Sentinel]

Alex needs to get them out of there, knowing full well they may all come apart soon enough. He turns to Sgt. Horn, who appears to still have his head screwed on.

"Lead them to the barricade, I'll make sure you aren't bothered from this group." He nods in Durdens direction very slightly. "Leave him, I'll take care of it."

Alex's quick speech is finalized with a resounding click as he slips another clip into his service issue.

"Good Luck Gentlemen, we'll see you on the other side. Durden, you're with me!"

Holden waits until the group moves away towards the safety across the bridge with the chaos of the scene his focus is perfect. For some reason, he was spared in this mess. For some reason, he had to bare witness to it all. These thoughts take his hand to casually slide out his baton. In one move he brings the weapon down near the rear of the skull of private Durden, hopefully rendering him unconscious.

With that task done, and far enough away from the mob to be a target on the ground...he moves in slowly to engage the hoarde.

[Alex Green]

New Wheels

As the “car” starts John winces and reflexively lowers the volume. Then he sits in his new, horribly expensive wheels look over the situation and pauses to just watch them. Reality finally starts to sink in. He's used to thinking with his muscles but eventually the wheels have to start turning. He thinks,

*Even if they'd had a shotgun there's more of them than I can carry bullets. Not attacking each other. Not flinching from the daylight. All of them acting the same. There's no randomness. Moaning let's them cooperate. Trying to eat people. So... Zombies?*

*OK, so what does that mean? Magic? Possessed by evil spirits? Bad special effects? Plague? Someone saw too many movies and decided to make a war germ. So... are they alive? They can die. Don't need silver bullets, don't need cremation. But let’s break some bones and see what happens.*

John picks a likely candidate and tries to just barely hit him with the massive car (i.e. with the front corner of the car) then see the results.

*So where now? Hospital? No! Not a good move, they were being stacked up like cord wood, and the early dead went there. If the plague brings them back after a day or two, they should be already swarming there. Real question is how long they stay alive. Got to be using the bodies resources somehow. Unless magic is involved. Maybe I died and this is hell.*

*Focus John, You've got three quarters of a tank of gas, call it 30 gals at 10 mpg, that's 300 miles. Get out of town? Maybe… and maybe someone else has already figured this out.*

John fiddles with the radio and puts it in “search” mode looking for live stations, then starts to drive towards “out of town”.

[Jeremiah]

Going Down?

It catches Chris a bit off guard, but when he steps out of his room’s front door he finds that several of the hall lights seem to be out, and many of those still on are flickering dimly. This has the general effect of making the hall look like something out of a horror movie and, considering the events of the past few days, Chris can’t help but think how appropriate that is. He’s doesn’t really let it get to him though, and he continues on his way down to the elevator. The hotel’s apparent power troubles do leave him a little concerned about the condition of the elevators. If those aren’t working he’ll have to lug all his stuff down the stairs, and man will that be a pain in the ass!

Looking up and down his hall, Chris doesn’t really see anything particularly out of the ordinary (other than the flickering lights of course). A few of the doors are open here and there along the length of the hall, but the rooms are dark and Chris doesn’t hear anything coming from any of them. One thing that definitely catches his notice though is the smell! Chris probably doesn’t want to think about what’s causing it, but whatever it is, it’s unlike anything he’s ever experienced before. The entire length of the hall seemed thick with the foul smell, and it made Chris all the more eager to get to the elevators.

He reaches them quickly enough, and thankfully the buttons are still lit up and nothing seems obviously out of order or wrong as he presses the button for the lobby and waits for the doors to open.

Immediately after he presses the elevator button, something catches Chris’s attention – perhaps a noise or maybe a something different about the flickering shadows along the walls – and makes the hairs along the back of his neck stand up. When Chris turns around to look behind him, and can just make out a backlit silhouette in the dim flickers from the overhead fluorescent lighting as it walks towards him.

The atmosphere of the hallway itself makes even the fake potted plants next to the elevators look sinister, but even so there’s something about the person approaching Chris that puts him on edge.

Chris glares into the darkness at the figure.

"Yo, whattup mane?"

Chris sets the two bags and the bow case down on the floor and straightens back up. He watches the figure, still holding the heavy bench press bar in his hand, one end resting on the ground.

"You know what's been goin on outside? I been up in this room for like three days and I gotta get out."

He's on his guard and very uneasy as he waits for the figure to respond or emerge from the shadows.

[Blade90]

Rick comes running into the living room and almost immediately starts to yell. "Hey! What in the heck are you........" But this is cut off as he starts to take in the situation, and more specifically the man that had just broke in, a little closer. And for the few moments that the man would just stare at him, Rick would stare back with a look that pretty clearly says 'What on earth?'. But then when the guy lunges at him, Rick would quickly back away, and noting Sam and Sierra lunging at him, Rick would wait until they pull him to the ground, being fairly sure that would be the result of their attack. Then assuming they do bring him down, Rick would step forward to swing his pipe at the guys head. However he wouldnt do so full force, not wanting to kill the guy (not realizing he was already dead) but instead just attempting to knock him out. On the other hand if Sam and Sierra dont bring the guy down and he kept coming, Rick would quickly bring up his pipe to try and guard himself and hold the guy back with it.

[Centimane]

Making New Friends

At first, the figure approaching Chris says nothing and makes no response to his query. But then Chris hears a low moan come from out of the shadows, and he realizes with a greater sense of discomfort than he already felt that the moan is coming from the approaching figure. More troublesome to his sense of calm however, is the two or three other moans that he hears coming faintly from out of some of the rooms that line either side of the hallway.

When the figure steps into a lighted portion of the hall Chris finally feels the first twinge of fear. The man is... not healthy. It is immediately, and painfully obvious that there's a whole lot of things wrong with him on many different levels. The aweful smell increases as the man works his plodding way towards the elevators, and Chris suddenly realizes something else. Now that the man is firmly in the light, Chris can see that he's covered from chin to waist in some dark crusted material the color of dried blood, and Chris has the nagging sensation that that's exactly what it is...

Like something out of a classic horror movie, when the man gets within a several yards of Chris he reaches his arms out and moans a second time. And, for a second time, there are answering moans from down the hall.

Plan B

Burt guns his truck into reverse and they all go plowing backwards through the surrounding hordes of undead. The truck starts jumping and bumping like they're going down a badly maintained dirt road.

The officer with the sawed-off looks over his shoulder as Burt shouts and after a second apparently spent trying to see what Burt is talking about he suddenly jerks a hand out and grabs the radio mic.

'This is Corporal Harris calling Manhattan HQ, do you read over?!'

The Corporal's shouted words are answered almost immediately by Shaw, 'Corporal! This is Sgt. Shaw! What is the status of your Mission, Corporal? Is the objective completed, over?'

Corporal Harris answers back with a sound of bitter disappointment in his voice, 'Negative! The Mission's a bust, sir! We lost Beals in the tunnel and had to retreat before we could deliver the package. When we got back up top Privates Cox and Serle were already dead and the transport was toast. It looked like somehow a grenade was set off. Over.'

'Dammit!', says Shaw and then, 'So they're already coming through the tunnel then? Over.

Harris shakes his head as though the Sgt. can see him and then says, 'No, sir! As soon as we arrived on site the $#@&ers started homing in on us. Before we were even a hundred meters in they'd almost blocked up the entrance. We had no choice but to retreat. As far as we could see the tunnel was still clear. Over.' After he lets go the button on the mic, Harris adds under his breath, 'Except for the noises....'.

There is static on the line for two or three seconds. Finally Harris clicks the mic again and says, 'Sir, you read? Over.' Sgt. Shaw's voice responds quickly, 'Just a moment Corporal, we think we've found an alternate route into the Tunnel. We're checking now. Over'

'Great...', says Harris without enthusiasm.

After another brief pause, Shaw is back on the line, 'Ok! We got it. Mr. Hoffman? You there? We're going to need you to divert your course over to the corner of Spring and Hudson. There should be a deli there on the Southwest side. Corporal, across the street from the Deli is an office building that's currently under construction. Our info says there's an entrance into the Holland Tunnel that can be accessed through the building's basement. We're going to use the convoy originally intended for your pickup to distract those deaders at the tunnel's mouth. You boys get in that tunnel and deliver the goddam package! Understood? Over!'

Corporal Harris lets out a sigh, but responds, 'Yes, sir! Understood sir!'

'Glad to hear it, soldier', says Sgt. Shaw. He then goes on to briefly explain the route they'll need to take to access the tunnels.

When they're finished, Harris hangs up the mic and sighs again. Then he hangs his head out the window and hollers out the new mission to his soldiers. They don't seem very happy about it, to judge by the sounds. Pulling his head back in, Harris turns to Burt and says, with the tone of someone asking a friend if they'd like to join the group on an impromptu trip to the movies or something, 'So what about you? You coming? Sure could use a designated driver for the ride back.'

Flipping Out

For someone who's never done this sort of thing before Bunny certainly looks competent as she tosses her undead opponent through the air. The woman sails over Mandy - who ducks and lets out a short squeal - and lands roughly on the ground nearby her former partner with the knife in his eye.

Thanks Mandy...now go get what we need before we go."

Mandy gladly reliqueshes the bat and nods her head at Bunny's order. 'Ok.', she says, and then wriggles along the wall to get by the fallen woman before sprinting down the hall towards the door to her apartment.

Turning back towards her target Bunny raises her bat and smashes it into the woman's head. There's a loud crack as the wood makes contact, and she collapses back to the floor with a visible dent in her skull. Her eyes roll up into her head, and she begins to spasm and twitch as though in the midst of an epilectic attack, though she obviously isn't quite dead. But neither does she look like she's going to be getting back up again real soon. Meanwhile, the man behind her has pulled himself back up and, blood streaming down his chin and onto his shirt, has started closing the distance to Bunny again. The young girl with Bunny's knife in her heart is also showing signs of recovery and will likely be back up on her feet shortly.

Seeing the handle sticking out of the eye of the dead man at her feet, Bunny makes a snap decision. Whipping around she hurls her bat in a powerful overhand swing at the man with the knife wound in his throat. The bat hurtles the short distance between them in an instant and plows into his face, right between the eyes. His head snaps sharply back in a spray of blood and he falls backwards, narrowly missing the young girl behind him, with the head of the bat apparently embedded in his forehead.

((One Zed is down for good, the girl who's so kindly acting as a sheath for Bunny's knife is back up and moving, and the second woman is down on the ground twitching like an epilectic.))

Hit and Run

John puts his new Navigator in drive, hits the gas, and performs his first ever hit and run (or at least, one hopes it's his first hit and run). He tags his undead target with the corner of his bumper on the driver's side and watches as his target goes spinning away and hits the pavement hard. But he can see through his rearview that the man begins to slowly pull himself back up onto his feet almost immediately and begins to move in the direction of the Navigator, despite having no hope whatsoever of catching up with it.

When John turns the radio back on he scans through most of the bands before he finally hears a voice. Listening carefully, he quickly realizes it's a prerecorded message. The speaker is a 'Sergeant Shaw' who claims to be broadcasting out of Times Square. The message states that it was recorded at about 6am this morning, and will play through until about the same time tomorrow when a new message will be broadcast. The overall gist of it is simple: any survivors should make their way to the New York Times building in Times Square where there is a cordoned off safe zone established by remnants of the 7th Regiment, and there is a somewhat vague reference to a possible evacuation through Jersey City taking place sometime soon. Somehow, the message manages to sound every bit as boring and un-urgent as those "emergency broadcast" messages that used to play during natural disasters before the Plague.

While listening to the message a second time through, John realizes with a start that his fuel gauge is already firmly in the red! Whether he wants to go 'out of town' or head towards the Military Safe Zone, he's going to need to find some gas quick.

[Centimane]

Killer Instinct

Sam and Sierra both tackle Rick's attacker with brutal force, knocking him to the ground in a flurry of fangs and fur. Sierra ends up on his chest and immediately goes for his throat. When the man tries to grab Sierra and bite her back(!) Sam grabs his wrist in his fangs and begins to tear viciously at it.

Sierra shows a degree of ferocity and a killer instinct that catches Rick off guard as she clamps down on her victim's throat and neatly tears it out in one swift motion! Even more suprising and shocking though, the man doesn't even flinch as his larynx is forcibly removed, and instead lunges forward with his teeth bared. Meanwhile, Rick tries to step in and clock the guy over the head, but with two big dogs swarming all over him Rick can't get a good line-up going and his swing misses the man's head by scant fractions of an inch as he lunges for Sierra ((or to put that differently, you failed to exceed the +2 diff penalty for Targeting the head)).

The man's teeth bite down hard a little to the left of Sierra's own throat and she lets out a sharp yelp and jerks backwards, pulling herself free. Sam continues to tug and pull and tear at his wrist however, so he can't follow after Sierra. Instead he begins to reach for Sam with the obvious intention of trying the same trick on him. Between his torn wrist, the huge gaping wound where his throat used to be, and the fresh wound on Sierra's neck, there is blood everywhere and the sharp rust tang of it fills Rick's nostrils. With Sierra off of his chest, Rick now has a much larger target to aim for however.

No Man Left Behind

Horn eyes Alex for a moment, and then grunts his understanding. 'I appreciate that Officer Holden, but I can't just leave a man behind. And besides', he says, giving Private Durden a reproachful look, 'he needs to answer for his actions just now.'

Turning to one of the other soldiers standing nearby, Horn says, 'take his weapon', and indicates Durden with his own rifle. Then the Sergeant turns back to Alex and the remaining soldier and points towards their screaming comrade with the undead woman eating his insides and says, 'We can't leave him behind either. At the very least we need to see to it that he's out of his misery.' Both of the dying man's fellow soldiers shake their heads in sincere agreement, and even Durden looks a little bit saner as he considers this comment.

'Let's go get 'im boys! Aim for their heads!', says Sgt. Horn and then they all (excepting Durden) move in a tight line towards the remaining zombies, weapons blazing. Officer Holden shows his relative skill with his own weapon, taking down two targets with clean headshots, while the soldiers each take down one. This leaves the two plague victims who are still quietly munching on their kill and completely ignoring all the activity around them, and the young woman who is doing the same with the screaming soldier - who isn't really screaming anymore.

Horn lets his rifle hang by its strap and unholsters his sidearm as he walks towards her. As he gets near the young woman, she finally seems to notice him and looks up; seeing him aproaching her kill she bares her bloody teeth and hisses noisily at him. Horn responds by shooting her in the head.

Everyone else joins Horn around the dying soldier as he kneels down next to the man. 'Oh god!', says the man as he looks down at his ruined stomach with a look of desperate horror. His face is almost sheet white, and it's obvious that he's on his last leg and will probably be dead within moments; his eyes have a wild and feverish look about them and are beginning to take on a far-away look.

'...Jeezus God, it hurts!'

He looks up into Horn's eyes and grips his hand with a bloody one of his own and says, 'I - I don't... I don't understand... did you hear her, Sergeant? ...that little girl, howling in the dark?...it's not right, none of this is right.....'

'Hear who, soldier?', says Horn looking dubious and concerned. But that's it. The light goes out of his eyes, and his hand slips out of Horn's....

[Centimane]

From Across the Acheron

As soon as David pulls the door open a glimmer of red light comes streaming in through the opening, catching David off-guard and nearly blinding his hyper-sensitive eyes. The door is apparently one of those that does an exceptional job of sealing in a room because it hadn't allowed even a hint of light through while it was closed, though admittedly, the light (as David quickly realizes once his eyes adjust) isn't very bright at all. As the wave of fresh(er) air from outside hits his nostrils, David suddenly realizes just how aweful the room he's been in smells. Though his eyes are momentarily stung by the (to him) blinding light, David doesn't hesitate as he squeezes his way through before the door is even fully open. But as he spins his way through the door and pulls it shut a narrow bar of the reddish light pierces the blackness of the room where he'd been left for dead. It all happens too fast for David to make anything out clearly, but there are bodies in there. A lot of bodies. Bodies in bad condition, which would explain the smell.

But that isn't what nearly causes him to turn and run screaming in horror.

In the gloom caused by his own body partially shielding the light streaming in from the other room, not five feet away from David, is Samantha, running at him from out of the darkness with what can only be described as a purely demonic expression on her little face. David slams the door closed, shutting out the horrific sight, but an instant later something small and low slams into the other side of the door with apalling force, and this time Dr. Shaw does jump back from the door, though he still doesn't turn and run in blind terror. On the other side of the door there is the insistent sound of thumping and scrabbling for several seconds, and then it abruptly stops.

David spends a few seconds warily watching the door in the low red light, trying to calm his racing heart and wondering what in the hell just happened. After a few moments he collects himself enough to turn around and take in his new surroundings.

It turns out that the light is coming from an Emergency Exit sign mounted over the door on the other side of the room he's in, and even though David's eyes are already well-adjusted to the gloominess around him, the reddish glow nonetheless has the irritating quality of lighting without actually illuminating. The areas that are lit by the light are all the same monochromatic reddish colors, making it hard to distinguish shapes and details, and the shadowed areas seem as black as pits. Worse, the sign itself is low enough to be directly in his field of vision, and the red plastic that gives the bulbs within their color has apparently slid just a fraction of an inch out of alignment. This leaves a sliver of glaring yellow light that streams directly into David's eyes and leaves him seeing spots that further hinder his ability to pierce the gloom. From what he can see though, he's in a room dedicated to some clerical work or other, as there are four or five desks and a scattering of cubicle walling spread throughout the large room. He thinks he remembers this room being in the basement of the building, which would make sense.

As he scans his surroundings however, something catches his eye. Looking towards the door, David suddenly sees a flashlight standing end-up on top of the computer moniter on the desk between him and the door leading out of the room. But even as he catches sight of the flashlight and feels a sense of relief at (hopefully) finding something to properly light his way out of all this darkness, David realizes that it wasn't the flashlight that had caught his eyes. It was the occupied doorframe beyond it.

Samantha is standing directly under the Emergency Exit sign, partially hidden in the shadows beyond. David has no idea how she could have gotten from inside the closed room behind him to the open door in front of him, but there she is.

As David stares in disbelief she opens her mouth impossibly wide and lets out an empty gasping howl with a mouth that seems to have nothing beyond its lips but a swirling blackness. Despite the fact that her howl is barely audible, even from such a short distance, the terrible sound of it seems to fill David's head, and tear at his soul, echoing across some aetheric void as it dies away. From somewhere down the shadowy hallway behind her more of the same cries answer her own. The aweful sounds fill the very air itself with feelings of emptiness, hunger, and madness of such immensity and substance that they threaten to drown out all thoughts of reason or sanity within David's mind.

From the hall beyond the open door, shadowy shapes come crawling out of the darkness. Even in the dim light, David can tell that each little shape is a carbon copy of Samantha.

The silhouette of the Samantha standing in the door flickers for an instant. There is something small and grotesque left behind when it does, but the flicker happens too quickly to see what, and the flashlight and the moniter it sits on partially blocks David's view.

All of the identical little girls are looking directly at David and making whispering, moaning noises that carry unnaturally well in the close air.

Then they all freeze simultaneously, their eyes growing round and black and afraid, and they all open their mouths wider than should be possible. Screaming their hellish screams, all of the Samanthas except the one in the door turn and scitter back into the shadows, disappearing immediately. The one in the door continues to stand frozen for an instant, her eyes huge and inhuman. Then she twitches and lets out a sound like the combination of a dying person's last gasp of air and the scream of damned souls crying out from hell. It is the most aweful sound David has ever heard.

From some distant room there is a crash in the darkness, and Samantha's scream suddenly shuts off mid-scream like someone turned off the power on a radio, and she takes a single step into the room with David. Then she hurtles towards the wall to his left at an impossible speed, leaving Davids eyes with little more than the impression of movement. She hits the wall at full speed and is simply gone, leaving David all alone.

The Emergency Exit signs shut off simultaneously, leaving everything in blackness once again.

Another crash sounds in the darkness, only closer this time, and something lets out a deep, bestial scream of pure rage and hate....

[Alex Green]

Hit and Run

John puts his new Navigator in drive, hits the gas, and performs his first ever hit and run (or at least, one hopes it's his first hit and run). He tags his undead target with the corner of his bumper on the driver's side and watches as his target goes spinning away and hits the pavement hard.

John says out loud,

"Now that's got to hurt."

But he can see through his rearview that the man begins to slowly pull himself back up onto his feet almost immediately and begins to move in the direction of the Navigator, despite having no hope whatsoever of catching up with it.

John continues, "Or not." John thinks, *No pain? Can't get stunned?*

When John turns the radio back on he scans through most of the bands before he finally hears a voice.

"YES!" John thinks, *Careful there. We're from the government and we're here to help you.*

Listening carefully, he quickly realizes it's a prerecorded message. The speaker is a 'Sergeant Shaw' who claims to be broadcasting out of Times Square. The message states that it was recorded at about 6am this morning, and will play through until about the same time tomorrow when a new message will be broadcast. The overall gist of it is simple: any survivors should make their way to the New York Times building in Times Square where there is a cordoned off safe zone established by remnants of the 7th Regiment, and there is a somewhat vague reference to a possible evacuation through Jersey City taking place sometime soon. Somehow, the message manages to sound every bit as boring and un-urgent as those "emergency broadcast" messages that used to play during natural disasters before the Plague.

John thinks, *Boring! But that's ok. Boring is good. I could use more boring here.*

While listening to the message a second time through, John realizes with a start that his fuel gauge is already firmly in the red! Whether he wants to go 'out of town' or head towards the Military Safe Zone, he's going to need to find some gas quick.

John mentally swears.

John thinks, *What kind of idiot let's his car run out of gas in an emergency situation?!? For that matter, what kind of idiot steals a car with no gas? What now? Go shopping for another car? Same risk if I do. Wait, I've been here before. Big malls attract lots of cars, and that attracts gas station. So where's the closest? Preferably one with power. Ha, I still have my credit cards, if the power works then so will they?*

John heads for the nearest gas station, if there's no power he'll head for the next closest, if there's no power there he'll "shop" for another SUV.

[ezekiel]

Mandy gladly reliqueshes the bat and nods her head at Bunny's order. 'Ok.', she says, and then wriggles along the wall to get by the fallen woman before sprinting down the hall towards the door to her apartment.

Turning back towards her target Bunny raises her bat and smashes it into the woman's head. There's a loud crack as the wood makes contact, and she collapses back to the floor with a visible dent in her skull. Her eyes roll up into her head, and she begins to spasm and twitch as though in the midst of an epilectic attack, though she obviously isn't quite dead. But neither does she look like she's going to be getting back up again real soon. Meanwhile, the man behind her has pulled himself back up and, blood streaming down his chin and onto his shirt, has started closing the distance to Bunny again. The young girl with Bunny's knife in her heart is also showing signs of recovery and will likely be back up on her feet shortly.

Seeing the handle sticking out of the eye of the dead man at her feet, Bunny makes a snap decision. Whipping around she hurls her bat in a powerful overhand swing at the man with the knife wound in his throat. The bat hurtles the short distance between them in an instant and plows into his face, right between the eyes. His head snaps sharply back in a spray of blood and he falls backwards, narrowly missing the young girl behind him, with the head of the bat apparently embedded in his forehead.

((One Zed is down for good, the girl who's so kindly acting as a sheath for Bunny's knife is back up and moving, and the second woman is down on the ground twitching like an epilectic.))

The stripper bends forward and grabs the knife from the dead zed's eye socket. She straighten's back up in a fluid motion as she flips the blade and lets it leap towards the blind girl's pre-digged eye hole for a nice swim in cerebellum. Not bothering to see her fall, she glances at the twitching "woman" on the floor and twists her body into a devastating kick into her already dented skull...

[Shade Sentinel]

After witnessing the end of these poor men and women, Alex takes a quick breather, staring out off the bridge towards the quiet city. It is a minute before he realizes that the rest of the band is waiting for him. He turns to regard them all with a stoic face.

"Sgt. Horn, we have to get to safety zone. I'm sure we can help people from there. Lets get moving."

Alex moves off with the soldiers along the bridge.

[Jeremiah]

Making New Friends

At first, the figure approaching Chris says nothing and makes no response to his query. But then Chris hears a low moan come from out of the shadows, and he realizes with a greater sense of discomfort than he already felt that the moan is coming from the approaching figure. More troublesome to his sense of calm however, is the two or three other moans that he hears coming faintly from out of some of the rooms that line either side of the hallway.

When the figure steps into a lighted portion of the hall Chris finally feels the first twinge of fear. The man is... not healthy. It is immediately, and painfully obvious that there's a whole lot of things wrong with him on many different levels. The aweful smell increases as the man works his plodding way towards the elevators, and Chris suddenly realizes something else. Now that the man is firmly in the light, Chris can see that he's covered from chin to waist in some dark crusted material the color of dried blood, and Chris has the nagging sensation that that's exactly what it is...

Like something out of a classic horror movie, when the man gets within a several yards of Chris he reaches his arms out and moans a second time. And, for a second time, there are answering moans from down the hall.

"Oh hell no. Don't tell me the whole world got on some 28 days later tip while I was up in this damn hotel room. Don't tell me that."

Chris yells this at the man, not exactly expecting a response. The second moan and the extended arms are all the answer he needs though. He nods and raises the 45 pound bar easily like a bat, choking way up on it to account for the nearby walls.

"Yeah, yeah. I see now. Well you think VooDoo gonna go out like this?"

He then turns and yells down the hallway

"YEAH I HOPE THERE'S MORE OF YOU DOWN THERE. COME ON OUT, I'M BOUT TO DO WORK ON YOUR MAN HERE. THEN I'LL BE READY FOR YOU!!!"

Chris tightens his grip one more time and takes a step back, a look of fear and uncertainty flashes across his face, piercing his bravado...but only for a moment. He recovers, sneering, and barks at the man in front of him again.

"Yeah, but for now its just you and me. You know I lead the whole state of Mississippi in homers, mane? Yeah, you're moaning ass prolly didn't even know that. Lemme show you how I do though."

Readies his stance and takes a small but powerful step forward as he follows through with a hard swing. His body twists and his muscles tighten, a loud grunt of effort escaping as he swings the heavy bar at the mans head.

[archer]

Plan B

Burt guns his truck into reverse and they all go plowing backwards through the surrounding hordes of undead. The truck starts jumping and bumping like they're going down a badly maintained dirt road.

The officer with the sawed-off looks over his shoulder as Burt shouts and after a second apparently spent trying to see what Burt is talking about he suddenly jerks a hand out and grabs the radio mic.

'This is Corporal Harris calling Manhattan HQ, do you read over?!'

The Corporal's shouted words are answered almost immediately by Shaw, 'Corporal! This is Sgt. Shaw! What is the status of your Mission, Corporal? Is the objective completed, over?'

Corporal Harris answers back with a sound of bitter disappointment in his voice, 'Negative! The Mission's a bust, sir! We lost Beals in the tunnel and had to retreat before we could deliver the package. When we got back up top Privates Cox and Serle were already dead and the transport was toast. It looked like somehow a grenade was set off. Over.'

'Dammit!', says Shaw and then, 'So they're already coming through the tunnel then? Over.

Harris shakes his head as though the Sgt. can see him and then says, 'No, sir! As soon as we arrived on site the $#@&ers started homing in on us. Before we were even a hundred meters in they'd almost blocked up the entrance. We had no choice but to retreat. As far as we could see the tunnel was still clear. Over.' After he lets go the button on the mic, Harris adds under his breath, 'Except for the noises....'.

There is static on the line for two or three seconds. Finally Harris clicks the mic again and says, 'Sir, you read? Over.' Sgt. Shaw's voice responds quickly, 'Just a moment Corporal, we think we've found an alternate route into the Tunnel. We're checking now. Over'

'Great...', says Harris without enthusiasm.

After another brief pause, Shaw is back on the line, 'Ok! We got it. Mr. Hoffman? You there? We're going to need you to divert your course over to the corner of Spring and Hudson. There should be a deli there on the Southwest side. Corporal, across the street from the Deli is an office building that's currently under construction. Our info says there's an entrance into the Holland Tunnel that can be accessed through the building's basement. We're going to use the convoy originally intended for your pickup to distract those deaders at the tunnel's mouth. You boys get in that tunnel and deliver the goddam package! Understood? Over!'

Corporal Harris lets out a sigh, but responds, 'Yes, sir! Understood sir!'

'Glad to hear it, soldier', says Sgt. Shaw. He then goes on to briefly explain the route they'll need to take to access the tunnels.

When they're finished, Harris hangs up the mic and sighs again. Then he hangs his head out the window and hollers out the new mission to his soldiers. They don't seem very happy about it, to judge by the sounds. Pulling his head back in, Harris turns to Burt and says, with the tone of someone asking a friend if they'd like to join the group on an impromptu trip to the movies or something, 'So what about you? You coming? Sure could use a designated driver for the ride back.'

Burt can't help but mutter to himself. "That damned package better not be what I think it is." Raising his voice to be heard over everything else, he glances over at Harris before returning his eyes to the road ahead. "Now I know why my grandpa insisted I never join the military! You don't have to answer, but I'm going to go ahead and assume your mission was to blow the tunnel to prevent the infected from escaping the island?" He waits to hear the corporal's response. As he waits for what he's sure is an inevitable confirmation, Burt reviews Shaw's directed course in his head, trying to figure if there's any other suitable routes.

[BlueNinja]

Bobby McCracken (by the Force, he hated his name) woke up in semi-darkness. It wasn’t the smell that woke him – though his room smelled like a backed up sewer. It wasn’t the quiet that woke him – though normally there were enough electronic gadgets going to almost require hearing protection. It was the great and terrible thirst that woke him.

He turned, and collapsed onto the floor, dragging sheets caked with his own urine and feces. A sharp, painful tug on his arm brought awareness to the bone-dry pair of IV bags, hung on his life-size Darth Maul cardboard movie promotion by the bed. Gritting his teeth, he pulled off the tape and pulled out the needle, watching a tiny bead of blood form on the surface of his arm. Guess I should be glad mom’s a nurse when I get sick, he thought.

Crawling forward, he shoved his computer chair out of the way, and stretched forth his other arm, grasping a cold can of sweet green nectar. He was shaking so hard that he spilled an ounce of the Mountain Dew on the hardwood floor, but the rest of it he guzzled as fast as he could swallow. A second can, minus spillage, followed the first one. Next to the case was a package of Nutter Butters, and Bobby went through a dozen of them like a super star destroyer went through y-wing fighters.

Letting out a prodigious belch, Bobby sat up, massaging the sore spot on his arm. “Holy crap.” He sniffed, then made a gagging sound. “Crap is right! What the hell happened to everyone?” Standing up on shaky legs, he dropped the sheet, grimacing in distaste at the smell and body waste smeared all over his pudgy body. After a moment, he remembered catching the news, hearing about the plague – watching Jon Stewart trying to crack jokes to a half-full theater between racking coughs. Now the power was out, and at a guess, he’d been unconscious for at least two or three days.

Fumbling around near the base of his bed, Bobby pulled out his lightsaber, and turned it on. The LED lights lit up the blue plastic with a comforting glow, and he used it to guide him through his room. The sun was setting, was below the horizon by now, he thought, though his window faced east. Down below in the streets was carnage – dead, or at least unmoving, bodies, stopped cars, including a few burned-out wrecks. Central Park was only a block away, but it might as well have been a mile for what he could see of it.

Suddenly nervous, he pulled open his dresser drawers, pulling out a clean set of clothes, as well as his autographed-by-Brent-Spiner phaser prop, and opened the door of his room. “Mom? Dad? Annie?” There was a quiet rustling, as though a window was open somewhere. He moved down the hall one door and backed into the bathroom. He stared at himself in the mirror for a moment. His face was a little gaunt, and his stubble was turning itself into a full-on beard. Setting the lightsaber and phaser on the toilet lid, he stepped into the shower and turned it on.

The cold hit him like a warp core explosion, and Bobby let out a scream that would have done his twelve-year-old sister proud. Yipping and dancing up and down on his feet, he scrubbed himself clean as quickly as possible. “Screw shaving,” he stuttered to himself as he turned off the water with a vengeance. Pulling back the curtain, he let out another, slightly quieter, scream, before giving a big, heaving sigh. “Damnit, sis, couldn’t you say something, or at least knock?”

He grabbed for a towel, wrapping it around his waist, and tucking the end under his paunch to hold it up. Not that his sister hadn’t walked in on him before, but, well, a man’s got to have standards, even if he is twenty-five and still living with his parents collecting unemployment after getting fired for having sex in the walk-in freezer at McDonald’s.

Annie still hadn’t said anything, but she had shuffled forward a few steps. The blue light made her look sallow, like she’d been unconscious for as long as Bobby had. “Sis? You okay?” Suddenly frightened, Bobby picked up his two implements, pointing the lightsaber at his sister; the white LEDs shone through the hole at the top of the plastic, silhouetting her face perfectly. She was wearing a mask of blood, mostly dry, dripping down from her mouth and congealing in her bra and sweatpants. Screaming for a third time, Bobby pointed the phaser at his sister, pulling the trigger in a panic as he tried to become part of the back wall of the shower.

When his sister’s head burst into flames, he slipped, cracking his head on the tub without passing out. He just lay there, watching his sister creep slowly closer, the flames consuming her head, until finally she swayed, crumpled to her knees, and then fell sideways onto the bathroom floor. Carefully untangling himself, Bobby levered himself upright, then picked up the phaser next to his feet. Hand shaking like a leaf, he pointed it at the corpse again. “Pew?” he said, then pulled the trigger. This time, nothing but the sound effect and the laser pointer came out of the phaser.

Back to the wall at all times, he circled the now-still body of his sister, fleeing back to his room, slamming and locking the door as he hurriedly dressed. Then he stopped, looked at himself in the mirror, and changed to a gold shirt. “Red shirt? Not today, Kirk!” he muttered to himself. Reaching into the back of his closet, he found the dusty old camping backpack his dad got him in junior high, before he gave up on Boy Scouts. A case and a half of Mountain Dew tumbled into it, followed by two bags of Cheetos and the rest of the package of Nutter Butters. “Raid the kitchen? Assuming there’s anything still there. Got to keep my eyes open, I know the zombies will be coming for me. I mean, my brain’s got to be, like, extra tasty or something.” Still muttering to himself distractedly, Bobby stopped in front of the door. Lightsaber in one hand, phaser in the other, he took a deep breath, and unlocked the door.

“Time to gain a level,” were his last words before he left his refuge.

[BlueNinja]

Yep, more.

=====

Bobby hesitated in the hallway for a moment, then turned and pulled closed the bathroom door. He really didn’t want to see that again, though the greasy smell of it lingered in the air. Lightsaber pointing the way, he inched down the hall, into the living room, staring at the empty room. The air was thick and full with the coppery tang of blood, though he couldn’t see a body.

In the kitchen, he stopped, staring fixedly at the stove rather than look down. He knew, knew, his parents were dead, and his sister was responsible, but that didn’t mean he wanted to see the gory results. Swallowing heavily, he inched around the island and opened the pantry door. He paused, trying to figure out how to hold both lightsaber and phaser and still load canned goods into the backpack. Taking one furtive glance around, he set his toys on the island counter, and swung the pack down. Without really looking at the labels, he tossed in two dozen cans, and a couple bottles of Evian that his mom loved.

The cry took him by surprise, and it took him a moment to realize it was his own sobbing. Tears rolled down his face to drop onto the packaged food. Grunting with the weight, he swung the pack onto his shoulder, and picked back up his implements. Turning, he moved back through the living room. Outside in the hallway, he fumbled out his keys, locked the door, and looked up and down. No one was in sight, alive or dead. But there were a couple of doors that looked broken into … or out of? Shivering, even though he wasn’t really cold, Bobby turned towards the end of the hallway. No power meant no elevator, and he wasn’t looking forward to climbing down twenty flights of stairs. “Better than climbing up them,” he whispered, then continued his furtive creep down the hallway.

At one door he paused, looking at the open crack in indecision. Pam lived here, a sweet elderly lady who was the closest thing he had to a grandma. Odds were she was dead, but he couldn’t make himself keep walking past the open door without checking. With the point of the lightsaber he nudged the door open, and glanced inside. No wreckage, nor smell of blood, and that encouraged him slightly as he tiptoed inside. Once past the door, he paused again. If he locked the door, he’d be safe in here if another zombie came up behind him. But if he locked the door, and Pam was a zombie, then he’d be trapped inside.

Waving the lightsaber around, he glanced at the familiar room before settling for returning the door to its almost-closed position. Then he carefully dragged over one of Pam’s little decorative tables with a vase on it. If a zombie came in the door, it should fall down, break, and alert him. If he had to leave in a hurry, hopefully throwing the table in the way of zombie-grandma should help him escape. Win-win, he thought.

He could see the kitchen over the bar counter, and it was empty. A box of insulin and testing strips lay open on it, the strips scattered across the length of the counter. The hallway to the bathroom and bedrooms was silent and dark. He moved down it, shuffling his feet on the laminate. Some of the streetlights were still on, despite the lack of power inside, so faint, still shadows patterned the wall through the open doors.

The bedroom was empty, though the room still held the familiar old person smell that Bobby was used to. Pam’s spare wheelchair was folded up in front of the closet. He picked up the mag-lite sitting on the nightstand, and tested it briefly. The sharp glare, much brighter than the LEDs in his lightsaber, left spots across his vision. Nodding with satisfaction, he slipped it into the carpenter loop on his jeans, then turned towards the bathroom.

Maybe she’s not here, he thought. Maybe she evacuated, heading for a hospital or out to Connecticut to stay with her grandkids. Even as he thought it, he was inching towards the open bathroom door, the faint blue glow leading the way. The tip of white light flashed on something, and he fought to steady his hand. After a moment, he realized it was her motorized wheelchair, parked next to the tub.

Gulping nervously, Bobby turned the narrow point of white towards the tub. Again, he sobbed quietly. Pam’s body lay in the tub, bloated with water from her last bath. He stared at her corpse for a moment, reassuring himself that she was truly dead, and not about to get up and try to lunge at him and try and eat his face off. Though, since her legs ended at the knees thanks to diabetes, that would be a little difficult for her.

Stonefaced, he turned around, and slipped back to the kitchen. He didn’t think there’d be much here he could use, but he’d check the cupboards anyway. Then he’d have to start the long hike downstairs, out into the city. He couldn’t be the only person left alive in New York … could he? After adding two boxes of honey nut cheerios to top off his pack, he moved around the decorative table, back into the hallway, and pushed open the door to the fire stairs.

Lightsaber pointing the way, he headed down and out.

[BlueNinja]

And some more! Anyone else, feel free to chime in here - I'm going solely off of Google Maps for my knowledge of NYC, I have no idea where anyone else's PCs were, though I'm not adverse to writing them anyway.

=====

He took a quick stop every floor, just long enough to pull the door open an inch or so and look down each hallway. In a few, there was movement, shambling corpses that he didn’t want to think about. In a few, there was only stillness and silence. On the third floor, there was a skipping CD still playing in a player. He detoured long enough to turn it off, and drank a can of coke out of their fridge. Bobby made sure to stay well away from even the non-moving corpses. After all, he wasn’t sure if one of them might get up again.

Trying not to think about it too much, he paused at the ground floor. There were three floors of parking garage below him. Technically, his license was suspended for another two weeks, but Bobby didn’t think there were too many cops around to ticket him. On the other hand, he didn’t have car keys to his parents’ cars. And he wasn’t going back upstairs. He didn’t want to think about what he had to do to his sister, let alone what she would have done to his parents. “Zombie” doesn’t have enough impact when you’re staring at the face of someone you used to know.

Taking a deep breath to steady himself, and readjusting the straps on shoulders already sore, he headed down one more flight. The door into the parking garage squealed out loudly, and he winced with fear. Holding the heavy door open with his foot, he stared into the utter darkness, lightsaber by his side. No noises were coming from the garage that he could hear, though the wind outside was rustling something around. Whatever streetlights were working, they were too far away to shed light down the entrance ramp.

Bobby thrust the glowing plastic through the doorway, illuminating the immediate surroundings. Someone had left a Big Mac box next to the trash can, so he picked it up, crushed it carefully, and used it to jam the door open. If there were zombies, he’d run back here, and slam the door in their face. Thus fortified with a line of retreat, he stepped into the garage.

It seemed much larger from inside than from the stairwell. Off to his left somewhere was the exit to the street, and there was rustling noise and the occasional whooshing of the wind. He started that way, pressing the tip of the lightsaber against one car window after another, checking to see if, just by chance, someone had left their keys in the lock. There were two like that, but driving them would mean first pulling out the dead person in the front seat … and then sitting in the exact same spot where they died.

A scrabbling noise came from off to his right, and Bobby spun around, bringing up his light and dropping his other hand to the plastic phaser at his belt. It might just be a rat, or a stray, but given what Bobby had seen during the hour he climbed down from his apartment, he wasn’t taking any chances. Silence reigned again for a minute or so, then the scrabbling noise. Swinging the light around to glance at the parking space numbers, Bobby realized that the noise was coming from the exit to the street.

Gulping, he drew the phaser, and started forward. “Captain’s Log, stardate 20050907.19. I am currently trapped in this cave, possibly being hunted by the local fauna. There’s noises from up ahead, closest to the best exit to safety. The rest of the away party have already fallen victim to the vicious creatures, and my phaser power is running low.” He stopped against the side of an SUV, the metal catches on his backpack leaving scratch marks as he slid along it to the side.

Holding the lightsaber with his elbow, he switched it out for the mag-lite, then stepped around the back of the SUV in a Hollywood-perfect SWAT pose. The brilliant beam shone on a convertible, smashed into the concrete pylons near the entrance. Pinned beneath it was another zombie, someone wearing a suit and tie. The body inside the car was also scrabbling at the window now, pinned inside the wreckage.

Bobby stood there for a good minute, too terrified to try and move past them or turn his back and return to the stairwell. Then he heard the window of the car crack a little bit further. The cracks spread rapidly as the zombie inside pushed harder, slamming hands and head against the fragile walls of its prison. The beam of light shook violently as Bobby started sliding his feet back, unwilling to take his eyes off the undead menace.

Finally the window crumpled outward, the safety glass spattering to the concrete floor as the zombie started prying itself out of the window and after the warm, bloody meal. As it thumped to the ground, Bobby’s finger squeezed the trigger in a panic. Once again, flames engulfed a zombie, though no laser beam or sound effect came from the toy. Writhing for a moment as it tried to get to its feet, the zombie driver set fire to the greasy puddle of motor oil spilled underneath the car, spreading the flames to the undead trapped below.

Seeing the fire jump, Bobby turned, running as fast as he could. He bounced off of trucks and scrambled over cars, even managing one decent hood slide as he neared the stairwell. Reaching the door, he yanked the cardboard aside and let it slam closed with a very final-sounding bang.

Shuddering, he fell to his knees, dropping the mag-lite and the phaser on the floor as he wrapped his arms around himself, crying in fear and anguish. He had no idea who that person had been, but he did know who he’d left upstairs. Nothing intelligible came from him, but he might have been saying, “I’m sorry,” over and over again.

An hour later, all cried out, Bobby straightened up a bit. Pulling out a can of soda and the last of the cookies, he ate somewhat glumly. Shouldering his pack again, and switching the mag-lite back for the lightsaber, he climbed back up one flight. The stairs exited on 73rd avenue, half a block from Columbus and, past that, Central Park. The streets were deserted, with only one in five streetlights lit up. He could barely make out other forms in the darkness, shambling across the streets and the sidewalks. Where should he go? Where could he go?

Finally, he pulled out a quarter from his pocket, and flipped it. Glancing around one more time, he headed towards Central Park. If he didn’t find anything there, he’d head for the Lincoln Tunnel, and see if he could get off the island. “What am I, a contestant on Survivor?” he whispered to himself. It was a bit too close to the truth for him to be happy with his own words.

[BlueNinja]

So, no one else going to join me in writing more stuff?

=====

It was nerve wracking, moving down the streets. To be fair, there were a lot more unmoving corpses than moving ones – but there were a hell of a lot of moving ones! In general, Bobby kept to the middle of the street, ducking behind cars occasionally as a zombie stumbled past. Fortunately for him, they didn’t seem to notice him as long as he was quiet and didn’t draw attention to himself.

He came to the end of the block, and stared ahead of him at Central Park. Several fires were burning, whether from cars or something else he couldn’t tell from here. Still, not a chance he was going in there now. He turned south, walking parallel to the park towards the tunnel. Maybe he could still get off the island, see if there was maybe an Army checkpoint or something there to keep the zombies in.

After two blocks, he heard a sharp crack. Then another, and another. He looked around, and started following the zombies near him who were heading for the noise. Was that gunfire? he thought to himself, and cautiously flexed the fingers holding the phaser. None of his role-playing games had led him to expect that holding it for so long would make his hand this sore.

About a block and a half away, he found the commotion. Some man was standing on the roof of a stopped semi-trailer, with a camping lantern on the roof to give him visibility. He had a pistol of some kind in his hand, and was calmly taking aim, and blowing the head off of any zombie that started to climb the truck. Still, from where Bobby stood, he thought the guy was doomed. There were at least forty or so zombies that he could see, and if there were the same number on the other side of the truck, the guy would need boxes of ammo.

Glancing over his shoulder, Bobby circled a Prius that had rolled up onto the sidewalk. No sense in making himself zombie chow, as more of them came out to the booming of the dinner gun. Bobby knew he should get out of here, while the guy up there made a perfect distraction for the undead horde. But at the same time, he didn’t want to walk away from the first living person he’d seen in the hours since he woke up.

He glanced down the street again, and noticed the lack of zombies on his escape route. He started to move away, then glanced back. The man was pulling new rounds out of his pockets to reload his pistol. “Well,” Bobby muttered to himself as he turned back, tightening the grip on his phaser, “if they’re the Horde, I guess that makes me the Alliance.” Leveling it at the crowd of zombies, he pulled the trigger.

The laser pointer light made a lovely little dot on the back of a teenager, and the sound effect came through perfectly clear. As the zombies in the rear started to turn around, Bobby pulled the trigger again in disbelief. Again, and again, as his panic started to rise as half the zombies on his side of the truck turned towards the easier, plumper meal – him. Panting heavily, he stumbled backwards, then tripped and fell to land on what must have been the zombie’s last victim. He could feel the blood soaking through his jeans quickly, and the smell of blood surrounded him as the first of the zombies stepped past the Prius.

Too stunned to do anything else, he pulled the trigger on the phaser again. This time, the two zombies in the lead burst into flame. “Yeah, that’s the way to do it!” he heard a voice cry, then a splash came, and a gas can sailed out to hit one of the flaming corpses in the head. Instantly, fire spread through at least half of the zombie crowd, following the scattered puddles of gasoline.

Bobby managed to stumble to his feet, backing down the street while looking over his shoulder. The fear was gone … well, mostly gone, he’d admit to himself. Taking a deep breath, he leveled the phaser and pulled the trigger again, aiming past the few that were on fire. Another zombie, closer to the truck, burst into flames. He grinned, thinking he was finally getting the hang of this.

The man came hurtling down from the trailer, skipping over the hood of the truck and emptying his pistol as he went, then sprinted down the street with a neat tuck and roll over the Prius. He slid to a halt beside Bobby, firing the last few rounds in the clip at the lead undead. “I’m Butch. What you say we blow this popsicle stand?”

Bobby glanced at the guy, then nodded. “I was thinking the Lincoln tunnel. Get off the island.”

Butch shook his head. “Can’t. Army folk tossed in about a crate of grenades. Blew it to smithereens. I was heading north, towards the bridge. Sound like a plan to you?”

Glancing north, he shrugged. “Sure. Got to be better than right here, right now.” Leveling his phaser, he gave one last squeeze of the trigger. The closest zombie was only slightly singed around the legs, and she now burst into flames. Half the crowd was already laying in the street, dead – again – and filling the air with the stink of burnt pork.

Turning north, the two men started walking. Butch glanced at the toy phaser several times, finally saying, “That’s a neat trick. Like I said, I’m Butch, Butch Jones. You?”

Bobby stuck the phaser into the top of his jeans pocket, flexing his fingers. “Bobby.” He paused, then continued. “Bobby Skywalker.”

“Like the movie, huh?” Butch laughed, reloading his pistol as they walked down the street.

Smiling slightly, Bobby shrugged. “I always wanted to change my name. So I did.”