The Last Stand

[pheliskougra]

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.

You are inside your sedan, face-first into the deployed airbag. Your chest hurts a little from the yanking of the seatbelt, but besides that minimal discomfort you seem uninjured.

The car is halfway into a ditch beside the road, the left-side light still on. The engine is stopped, and the whole of the car is askew, stuck in an odd angle. There's a crack on the windshield, passenger side, and the rain is washing off what seems to be blood.

You remember... a person, running into the road right in front of you. No time to stop, and you only had a glimpse before hitting the person, losing control of the car and crashing.

Probably you should do something about your current situation.

Who are you?

Why were you going to Union City?

Comments

[aeons_crackshot]

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.

[pheliskougra]

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.

[aeons_crackshot]

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.

[pheliskougra]

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.

[aeons_crackshot]

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.

[pheliskougra]

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.

[aeons_crackshot]

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.

[pheliskougra]

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.

[aeons_crackshot]

Time to head into town on foot, then. Put a metaphorical ear to the ground and see if anything....odd is going on.

[pheliskougra]

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.

[aeons_crackshot]

"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.

[pheliskougra]

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.

[aeons_crackshot]

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.

[pheliskougra]

Well, there's a gate and... an intercomm? Well, it does hint at survivors, right?

[aeons_crackshot]

Annabelle moves to press the intercom button. "Candygram!"

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

[pheliskougra]

Buzz, crackle, and a male voice, uncertain. "Hello? Who's there?"

[aeons_crackshot]

"Annabelle Newfield," she announces. "Got into a car accident on the way here, and now I'm wondering where the hell all the zombies came from."

[pheliskougra]

"Well, we're all sort of wondering the same, lady." The man gives a bitter chuckle, and the lock on the gate clicks open. "Come on in, but be careful to shut the gate well after you enter."

[aeons_crackshot]

"Oh, you can count on that," Annabelle replies with a sharp smile. "I'm already getting damn tired of putting down corpses."

She opens the door and goes on through.

[pheliskougra]

As you approach the house, the door and security gate are opened by a gray-haired tall man who regards your presence with curiosity. "Hello, I'm Jackson Hall. Welcome to what's left of Pinedale."

[aeons_crackshot]

"Good to see someone alive for a change," she says with a grim smile and an extended hand. "Annabelle Newfield, at your service."

[pheliskougra]

He shakes your hand firmly. "Come in and meet the others." Jackson steps from the entrance, allowing you inside the house.

There are three people in the living room: a balding, short man, a tall, strong one with a buzzcut, and a pretty young woman with cropped black hair. Jackson introduces them as Ed Boone, Ed's son, Ted Boone, and the woman as Monica Anderson.

"Ray, Peter and Sarah are upstairs. And... I guess that's all." Seven people.

Out of a few thousand at least who lived in the area.

[aeons_crackshot]

Please excuse Annabelle's French. And Italian, Hindi, Swahili, Cantonese, German, Spanish.....

She mutters a veritable dictionary of profanity and then sighs. "It's good to meet all of you, it's just...." she apologizes. She expected more people to be alive, you see.

[pheliskougra]

The balding man, Ed, can not help it but chuckle at your tirade. "I know the feeling. It still feels unreal, three days ago it was an all normal day, and now..." Then he frowns, fiddling with his wedding band. His son places a hand on Ed's shoulder.

Jackson shakes head. "We're holding on better than most. Are you hungry or thirsty? HERC left us supplies for a few hundred people, my basement is packed."

While this, Monica's looking out the front window, frowning.

[aeons_crackshot]

Annabelle catches Monica's frown, so she turns to see what Monica's looking at out the window.