The Apocalypse Log

Game Talk The Bunker
21

I spent the week taking apart the semi and sedan, and sorting out all the billion parts that those vehicles were made of. The cold bit at my body, but at this point I was used to it. What I wasn’t used to was the whirlwind of snow that killed visibility. Wolves and Cougars kept attacking me the entire time, along with wolf spiders. Why were they still out here? They should be trying to find shelter from the cold. If they didn’t, frostbite would claim them.

Then, on the seventh day, I spent my last day in Gearhead.

I was working on building a new vehicle that would not be so dependent on gas. After laying down the initial framework, I realized that there was no constant wolf or cougar attacks. Something was wrong, but I couldn’t place it…

I immediately reached for my pistol and took cover behind the half-walls I built outlining the hangar I was going to construct. There was something heading this way, and it wasn’t zombies or local fauna.

A unique and intense fear gripped me as I heard gunshots. They were short bursts, well timed and disciplined, unlike the frantic gunfire you would experience when being on the defensive from a zombie horde. It was coming from further north. I headed to the source through the ever growing snowstorm, gun at the ready. I took cover behind houses, taking extra precaution with an unseeable threat that could use guns. There would be no mistakes with this kind of threat. One wrong move, and it was all over.

I was near the location where I found the motorbike and spotted a small platoon of humanoid shadows patrolling the streets, aiming their guns this way and that checking for any hostile targets. Some of them were examining the remnants of my handiwork when I claimed this location. I could also spot many more fresh kills and spots in the snow where hot bullet casings melted the snow and exposed the asphalt underneath. Soldiers? YES! They came to rescue me!

“Hey! I’m a survivor!” I called out, stepping out from behind the wall. Immediately the entire platoon had their guns trained on me. I nearly crapped myself.

“FREEZE!” one of them shouted. Before I could even hold my hands up, one started shooting at me, and that seemed to spur the others on. I quickly dove behind the wall as chunks of it were blasted off from the overwhelming hail of bullets. When there was a lull in the volley, I responded in kind. I fired blindly around the corner, a move that was not exactly smart in hindsight, but I was running on fight or flight instinct at this moment from being shot at and from living as essentially a mountain man for the past year with no form of human contact aside from a loon with a mininuke.

Reptilian brain aside, I was still thinking very strategically. If these were trained soldiers, they were going to take advantage of numbers and try to flank me. I could make out about ten of them at least. I checked the boxes of .45 bullets I kept with me. I had about a hundred rounds total. Ten for each man. If they were wearing full body armor, it was going to take a lot more. If I had to, I’d chuck a few spears at them, even though I had little faith that it’d actually do anything. I was likely not going to survive this fight, but I’d take out as many of them as I could.

As I was reloading the gun and its spare magazine, I looked up to see a soldier rounding the corner on the other side of the building. Shit! I fumbled with the bullets and dropped the first box on the ground, which within seconds got eaten up by the snow, and I ran off away from him, hoping to turn the corner before he could catch me.

As I rounded the corner, I came face to face with one of the soldiers, his face actually obscured by a gas mask. I didn’t have much time to think before I felt something pierce my chest. Several more things pierced my chest. I could both feel the pain and not feel it. My brain turned off all the nerves to my body in protest, and it was through that knowledge alone that made me know I was in pain. I pitched back into the snow. Everything seemed to move very slowly. The soldier who shot me stepped over me and pointed his gun at my head, obscured by a helmet made from chitin, which I now regretted ever putting on. What did I look like to him? Probably an amalgam of his worst nightmares. I had all kinds of strange mutations that together, probably didn’t give the impression that I was once even human. Combined with blood and filth and the bear fur I wore to keep warm, his delayed reaction was probably his brain trying to figure out what exactly I was before he made me even more unidentifiable with another volley of bullets.

Suddenly, another soldier appeared in my fading vision, grabbing the barrel of his gun and pulling it away from me. He was saying something in a muffled tone, but I couldn’t hear it, and my brain was in no mood to try and understand it. Was this what death was like? It was… horrible. Nothing but blackness was closing around me. No chorus of angels or cries of the damned. Nothing but eternal blackness…

22

Alright, this is part one of a very long post. I had to basically fabricate an entire story to explain why the world save got deleted, but not my character. He didn’t die! Huzzah!

I don’t remember the last time I woke up with my head in a fog. Living in the apocalypse didn’t allow me that luxury, even when my safehouse was pretty extravagant in these trying times, being full to the brim with food and guns. I woke up to find myself in bed in a sterile room with bright lighting; a place I had never seen before. How did I get here? What happened last night? And why does my chest and head hurt?

I went to sit up, but I felt a strong resistance in my torso and arms. I looked down and saw that my extremities and body were fastened to the bed with thick leather straps. What the hell?! I tried to twist my limbs to free them from the shackles, when I heard a voice echo through the room from a PA system.

“Stay calm. Someone will be down to meet with you shortly.” a calm but stern voice said. I stopped fighting against the straps and laid back on the bed, waiting for my guest. At that moment, what happened the previous day came running back to me. I was shot! Several times! Did I die? Was this Heaven? Or Hell? Or was it Purgatory? Or something else altogether?

The silent hiss of a door across the room alerted me to the world again. A middle-aged man wearing army fatigues came in. He had a crew cut and wore an army cap, indicating that he was in the military, and not a looting charlatan like me. He was at ease, but he also had a gun holstered at his side. I tried to keep calm in my helpless state. If his intention was to murder me, I wouldn’t be here right now.

“You’re a lucky man.” he said. “You weren’t wearing body armor and took a full burst to the chest, and still here you are. A lesser man would be dead. Can you, uhhh… can you understand me?”

“Y-yes.” I said. The words kind of tripped coming out of my mouth, so unaccustomed I was to talking to people after a year of isolation. “Where am I?”

“You’re at Camp Epsilon in Texas, a military bunker designed to withstand a nuclear war, and one of the last safe havens in the world.” He sat down on a nearby chair and took out a cigarette from his shirt pocket. “Sorry if you’re uncomfortable. We’re trying to test your blood, see if you’re infected.”

“I’m pretty sure I would have turned a long time ago if I was infected.” I said. He asked me about my story, so I explained to him that two days after the first outbreak, FEMA picked me up and threw me into a stasis pod, and when it ejected me, I was in an unfamiliar land with my only companion being some blathering idiot who got himself killed during a zombie attack early on. In my lengthy story, I omitted my trips to the two science labs where I learned about the heinous experiments that probably led to the outbreak, just in case this was a ruse and he would execute me for knowing too much, and I explained away that I drank a few flasks of mutagen in an effort to strengthen myself to fight the horde. Of course, what he said afterwards put me at the edge of my seat, had I been sitting in one and not strapped to the table.

“If what you told me is correct, you were only in stasis for a few days at least, or a few weeks at most.” he explained. “As for where we found you… you were dropped off in Mississippi.”

Mississippi?! That’s halfway on the other side of the country from where FEMA picked me up!

“I don’t know the circumstances that caused you to be left behind, but if you weren’t, you would likely have been subjected to a far worse fate. After the outbreak, my team located and stormed a research facility in the middle of a forest that wasn’t registered in any government database. Inside, we found the byproducts of horrible science experiments and documentation about creating different breeds of zombies and mutation of surrounding wildlife. It was probably for military purposes, but I wasn’t aware of such a project, and if it wasn’t on a government database, then it meant a foreign power was at play here.”

I obfuscated stupidity, despite him telling me what I already knew. I was still not taking chances. After all, either him or one of his men shot me.

“If that’s the case, then maybe an accidental breach in containment led to the outbreak?” I suggested. Immediately the man shook his head.

“No, the outbreaks were intentional. Searching through their security logs, we managed to find a record where all containment protocols were suddenly and immediately rescinded and deactivated, leading to the breach. A raid on another “ghost lab” led us to the same rescind order, identical down to the second. Our investigation led us to believe that it was premeditated in some way, but who gave the order and where, and who carried it out is all still a mystery to us. One thing’s for sure, though, is that they intend to cripple the world government and replace it with their own system.”

“How do you know all this? Does the President know about this conspiracy?”

The man’s face darkened.

“My name is Jack Schneider; I’m a general of the US Army, and the President… he has been assassinated. Two weeks after the outbreak, one of the Project Thor satellites was hijacked and aimed at Washington DC. Before the President could be sent into the underground bunker, the White House, and half of the surrounding city block had been blasted off the face of the map. All communication has since then stopped working, so I gathered whatever army personnel I could find and now we’re making regular excursions into towns and cities, trying to round up whatever survivors we can find and then ship them to one of our military bases out west in California. Some volunteers stay here to assist in the relief effort. Of course we don’t expect you to, if you don’t want to.”

“No no, I can help. I just can’t… I can’t help you like this.” I said, wriggling in my binds. I knew they’d need my help. I had more experience killing zombies than anyone he could bring forth.

“Oh right, sorry, lemme get that for you.” Jack loosened the straps on my body, and I sat up, stretching my sore limbs, back and neck. I looked down and saw that my chest was bare, and I mean literally bare. The feathers had been plucked, revealing the pale green skin underneath. I could see the fading scars of where I had been shot.

“Our medic did his best to extract as much of the shrapnel as he could, but there might be a few fragments still inside you.” he explained. “You might find it hard to exert yourself for a while, so try to take it slowly at first. It’ll probably be a little too early to send you out on a search and rescue mission, but I’m sure there are other things you can help with around the base. For now, though, you should try to rest and recover your strength. A fresh set of civvies will be brought shortly.”

“Thanks.” and with that, he stood up and walked out of the room. I laid back on the bed, trying to rest and not think about the gap in the feathers. As fruity as they looked, I grew used to my developing bird persona, and having them plucked was a little embarrassing and just plain looked unsightly. Thankfully they didn’t stuff me full of the antigen stem cells and revert the mutations. Maybe they assume some of them will come in handy?

Whatever the case was, I was not in any condition to investigate further or even worry about it. I was still recovering from being shot, and I was more than confident in my mutated body’s ability to heal after I was impaled by the tree branch. For some reason, though, I was actually quite tired. I wonder long I’ve been out? He said I was in Mississippi, and now Texas. I must have been out for a few days, at least, but that didn’t seem to account for anything. I rolled over on my side and allowed myself to go back to sleep, which came minutes later.

23

This was awesome.

I hope you write more of these.

24

I woke up to an ear-shattering klaxon alarm echoing throughout the bunker. I rolled out of bed and threw on the clothes that were provided for me which were sitting on the chair. I ran outside and spotted a soldier running from room to room, I guess trying to wake everyone up.

“Red Alert! Red Alert! We’re under attack!” he shouted above the alarm.

“What’s going on?!” I asked.

“We’re getting attacked by the Project Thor satellite! It just targeted Schneider! He’s dead!”

Oh shit. So much for a rescue effort.

“What do you need me to do?” I asked.

“Wake anyone up that you can find and get the hell out of here through the emergency escape tunnel down that hall!” he pointed to the right of the intersection he just came from. “The bunker isn’t safe anymore!”

“Got it!” I replied, but he was already off running down the hall, continuing to wake people up. However, before he could get to the end, a deafening boom accompanied by a shockwave with the force of a wrecking ball blasted me off my feet and knocked me backwards nearly twenty feet. Aside from being a bit stunned from the ordeal, and the ringing in my ears, I was not badly hurt. I got to my feet and saw to my horror the entire section of the bunker the guy just ran into, and where I was sleeping not five minutes before had just been blown away, and now nothing but twisted metal and rubble remained. I made an immediate beeline to the exit. As I was in the underground tunnel, the ground shook as several more shots from the satellite destroyed more of the bunker. I looked behind me. No one was following me. Was I the only one that escaped?

I ran up the smooth ramp to the outside into a forested area and continued running. I now knew what a rabbit felt like when it was being tracked by an eagle, except in this case the eagle is a satellite in space with supersonic tungsten rods for claws. Several more shots penetrated the bunker and presumably killed everyone else inside. I continued running for another mile before finally coming to a halt to catch my breath.

Then it finally started to hit home to me. I was possibly the only survivor of that attack. Survivor’s guilt would probably have claimed other people, but I was not other people. I already survived for this long after so many dances with death, what was just one more event? I was more frustrated with the fact that the first contact with other humans in over a year was punctuated with me being shot and later them getting killed by a satellite. Still, I at least now knew there were others out there, and maybe the entire world hadn’t gone to hell. But one thing was for certain: I wasn’t walking to California!

I was going to need a car, one with renewable energy and a lot of capacity to carry lots of food and water. I needed my dreadnought if I was going to get to California, and until I had it, I was stuck in Apocalyptia.

Some things never change…

25

I remember the time I took Blackhive, and my three day siege that cost so much energy and nearly my life. So much has changed since then. I was stuck in a house bathroom for the past six hours, stabbing zombies almost nonstop until their corpses nearly obstructed the door. I was able to push the pile aside with considerable ease, probably another hidden effect of the mutations, and I was quickly pushed back against the wall by another wave. I thought it was going to be my tomb, but wow, spitter zombie acid is pretty damn corrosive. I’m glad I have a beak now, or else the smell would have done me in before any injuries could.

It’ll probably be another day before I finish my siege.

26

This is awesome, don’t stop now!

27

[quote=“Lost, post:25, topic:500”]I remember the time I took Blackhive, and my three day siege that cost so much energy and nearly my life. So much has changed since then. I was stuck in a house bathroom for the past six hours, stabbing zombies almost nonstop until their corpses nearly obstructed the door. I was able to push the pile aside with considerable ease, probably another hidden effect of the mutations, and I was quickly pushed back against the wall by another wave. I thought it was going to be my tomb, but wow, spitter zombie acid is pretty damn corrosive. I’m glad I have a beak now, or else the smell would have done me in before any injuries could.

It’ll probably be another day before I finish my siege.[/quote]
I didn’t see another drink to Science! there. Radiation involved, perchance?

(And non-player smells would certainly be interesting–there’re a few mutation ideas in that too.)

28

I’ve been trying to think of a way to “import” my character into version 0.3. I could just cheat and add in everything I had. The problem would be the skills and bionics, which you can’t individually upgrade.

There are some mutations that aren’t visible, like the ones that improve your base stats, Deft, Poison/Disease resistances, Quick, thick-skinned, Fleet-footed, Road Runner, and a few others that I can’t think of off the top of my head. He has some of those, but they aren’t directly mentioned because he doesn’t know that he has them.

29

I suggest sticking in 0.2 for a while more, 0.3 is still buggy.

30

Good thing I kept the previous version, then. Also in the process of training my dodge, I realized that you don’t gain dodge experience from actually dodging attacks, but rather from being hit, and at my current level (12), I get hit very rarely, even less so if I have any weapon that can block. Ironically, I’ll have to burden myself down with lots of clothing to further level up dodge. Weighted training.

31

After dealing with another one of those accursed fungal spires and its complementary legion, I once again descended into the pits of moral ambiguity that are these black-ops science labs. I hacked into several terminals to find any more evidence regarding the outbreak and this conspiracy General Schneider warned me about. Unfortunately, most of the data was wiped, and most of what remained was more surface data and several damaged entries regarding some of their tests. Nothing pointed to a larger conspiracy, but the lack of records in very specific time frames in certain directories indirectly pointed to a cover up operation. How I was able to recognize this pattern is beyond me, but I realize now that if I tracked down each individual lab and compared the gaps, if there was a conspiracy, they’d end up remarkably similar.

Of course, whatever I could do with this data would be a bit pointless. Most of the country, and the government along with it, was probably in a state of total anarchy at this point. Last time I checked in before the outbreak happened, the government wasn’t doing too well, as infested with corruption and scandal as it was. However, I was in a key position to strike back with the most effectiveness. I had the fortune of being considered dead, and all my training in this apocalypse gave me the skill to take on a whole legion of zombies, robots, mutated flora and fauna, and any other eldritch creatures Apocalyptia can throw at me. Problem was, if this was a takeover by a hostile force, more than likely they’d have their own contingent of mercenaries and PMCs, and all the firepower they could carry. I almost died from a few shots, so I’m still as mortal as any human when it comes to gunfire, and my avian features make it impossible for me to blend in a crowd or hide behind the veil of anonymity. Not to mention that I don’t even know who I should be looking for, or how I should strike, making an uprising attempt utterly pointless!

As I pondered what I should do, I discovered a wing of the lab lined with warning labels and sporting some very advanced security measures. Of course, the lab was running on minimum power, so they weren’t active; I let myself through. Inside, I found a small platoon of sentrybots patrolling the room, the center of which was dominated by a table with some very alien hardware on it. I easily dispatched the bots with my adept marksman skills, then I checked the equipment on the table.

Now, I’m not a gun expert; most of what I know about guns I learned from years of playing video games, but I immediately knew these weren’t any normal guns. They were very sleek and shiny like a new piece of technology at an electronics expo. The lack of serial numbers implied these guns were still in their prototype stage. What was even stranger was that they were clearly not ballistic weapons. The barrel was too small for any caliber of bullet, and there was no slider, or even any noticeable movable parts to speak of. I picked up the pistol - the other was a rifle - and examined it more closely. There was a strange gap on the top where the slider would be, and a port inside the gap that looked like something plugged in there. I looked over at some of the other objects adorning the table. They looked like they would fit. Experimentally, I picked one up and plugged it into the gap. It was a perfect fit, and the pistol clicked as if power was now running through it.

I took aim and fired a shot at one of the wrecked sentrybots. A beam of bright blue fired from the barrel and punched clean through the sentrybot’s armor, leaving a large fist-sized hole of white hot metal that was visible even if I didn’t have night vision. There was no recoil to speak of. Impressive! And there was quite a few of these clips to boot! I scooped the clips into my backpack. Unfortunately I had to leave the rifle. As cool as that one looked, I needed to travel lightly, and I already had three guns including my newest addition, and a few boxes of bullets to complement each of them. Once I found a new vehicle, and I remembered to, I’d come back for this one.