The Last Stand

Sep 29, 2011 17:57

It's a dark stormy night might be a cliché in story-telling, but it's also stark reality now: the patter of heavy rain and the crack of thunder rousing you to conscience ( Read more... )

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aeons_crackshot September 29 2011, 22:08:39 UTC
The hero business is a job. And, like any job, it often requires a commute. Annabelle Newfield is used to never staying in one place for long, and she's seen things that are weirder than most people are capable of imagining, but this.....this is new.

The sight of the blood on the windshield prompts a stream of cursing as she unbuckles the seatbelt. Please, please let her not have killed someone.

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phelis_kougra September 29 2011, 22:14:38 UTC
Getting out of the car into the rain gets a bit of effort: the doors are not jammed, but the driver's door needs to be firmly pushed up and out, before she can climb from the car, and the wet ground outside does not help much.

A flash of thunder reveals the skid marks on the road, and a prone body, a few dozen yards behind.

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aeons_crackshot September 29 2011, 22:17:37 UTC
Annabelle curses furiously at the sight of the body. She's never hurt anyone by ACCIDENT before, you see.

She un-holsters a pistol, and moves through the squelching mud to check on the body. They might not be dead, after all.

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phelis_kougra September 29 2011, 22:22:20 UTC
Mud, then asphalt, the road seems quite empty this late at night.

Hmm, the pool of blood and gray matter, and the odd shape of the head, suggest that indeed, we have a fatality. Head smashed, by the windshield or by an impact into the blacktop, it's anyone's guess.

The body seems to be of a young adult, male, and is wearing sneakers, sweatpants and a long sleeve t-shirt.

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aeons_crackshot September 29 2011, 22:26:29 UTC
Damn.

Annabelle swallows hard, guilt forming a lump in her throat. She moves to see if he has any ID on him, if there's anyone who's going to be getting very bad news tonight.

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phelis_kougra September 29 2011, 22:34:25 UTC
The body is already cold, and pale; the clothes are dirty and a bit torn, and OMFGWHY'SHISWINDPIPEMISSINGTHEFUCKBEINGRUNOVERDOESNOTMAKETHATHAPPEN!

Good gracious, if it were not a completely nonsensical idea, you could imagine this person was already dead before being hit, but you remember seeing him walk into the road...

Dead people don't walk.

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aeons_crackshot September 29 2011, 22:35:26 UTC
Zombies do though, and Annabelle has run into plenty of them. "Fucking Mr. Saturday," she growls.

At least she didn't kill anyone by accident.

The other question is what tore his throat out. Humans don't generally kill like that, after all.

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phelis_kougra September 29 2011, 22:38:23 UTC
Whatever the corpse was, well, it's just a corpse now, truly and fully dead.

Let's take inventory: you have two heavy pistols, and two spare ammo clips for each. You have clothes (soaked right now).

The car is pretty much useless, since you can not pull it out of the ditch.

Union City is a few miles ahead.

At least the rain seems to be stopping: at least down to a drizzle.

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aeons_crackshot September 29 2011, 22:40:09 UTC
Time to head into town on foot, then. Put a metaphorical ear to the ground and see if anything....odd is going on.

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phelis_kougra September 30 2011, 22:26:34 UTC
You soon reach the suburb of Pinedale, a nice place of nearly-identical houses of lower middle class people. Jefferson Avenue saw better days, and right now offers a panorama of looted stores, broken down vehicles and vandalized homes.

And of course, a few more zombies and a few more truly dead corpses.

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aeons_crackshot September 30 2011, 22:29:33 UTC
"Well, SHIT!" Annabelle grumbles. "Knew I should have packed the shotgun."

Right. First things first: find someone neither dead nor undead and find out what the hell happened.

Oh, and head-shot any zombies that are trying to munch on her along the way.

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phelis_kougra October 1 2011, 11:12:23 UTC
Older shamblers, young adult shamblers, teenage shamblers, all lurching and groaning and looking for a snack. A good headshot is all you need, to stop them.

You have 48 rounds of ammunition left.

Turning into Smith Street (seriously, who names those things?) you see a sign spray-painted on the asphalt. The same sign is painted on a house across the street.

The house... well, it seem to have been reinforced, a chainlink and barbed wire fence set up, bars in the windows and steel shutters, a barred gate bolted to the wall over the doors.

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aeons_crackshot October 1 2011, 13:06:10 UTC
Someone looks appropriately paranoid! Maybe there's someone alive in there, or at least weapons to be looted.

Annabelle eyes the fence, looking for a way in.

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phelis_kougra October 1 2011, 15:14:57 UTC
Well, there's a gate and... an intercomm? Well, it does hint at survivors, right?

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aeons_crackshot October 1 2011, 15:17:44 UTC
Annabelle moves to press the intercom button. "Candygram!"

Yeah, sorry. Someone saw that Saturday Night Live skit for the first time recently.

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phelis_kougra October 1 2011, 15:18:51 UTC
Buzz, crackle, and a male voice, uncertain. "Hello? Who's there?"

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