So after de-animating the platoon of soldier zombies, my weak but nimble and sharp-eyed survivor, Augustus, sorted through the tremendous pile of valuables, finished his mission, and headed back to the hub. After bargaining for a few more books, I headed northward on yet another mission. This one requiring the circumnavigation of multiple towns filled with undead. About a day’s drive north, I came across a lonely lab. Rumors and vague genetic memories (aka past play experience) lead me to believe this would be a worthwhile location to loot. That, of course, was where the trouble started.
After bypassing the outer security lock with the…very slightly bloody… card of a poor, deceased scientist I came across an unexpected anomaly. Rather than the expected staircase down, this facility had a working elevator. Gearing up with my trusty compound bow and a pair of back-up pistols, I headed down. Immediately I came face to face with an unexpected horde of scientist and security guard zombies. Augustus prefers to zip around, shooting the enemy from well out of claws’ reach. Not an ideal tactic for dealing with a horde in choked, underground tunnels. Small matter…a few buttons, and a moment later I’m back at the surface. I’ve been hoarding all kinds of weaponry and useful tools. Given the lightly armored enemy, I choose a nice submachine gun which uses the common 9mm round. Should be good for dealing with masses of enemies at close range, right? I leave my well-stocked mobile base and head back down. I empty the clip almost immediately, downing a couple zombies. However, I’ve already made a critical error that I don’t notice at first: The zombies have been pounding at the elevator controls. They quickly destroy my way out and it suddenly dawns on me that I’M TRAPPED SEVERAL STORIES UNDERGROUND AND SURROUNDED BY A SOLID WALL OF UNDEAD.
Augustus is wearing a nomad suit, which is decent armor but hardly claw or shock proof. I’m slowly taking damage and I’ve got nowhere to run. Because reloading the submachine gun takes far too long when you’ve got six of those blighters pounding on you at the same time, I drop the gun and pull out my pistols. These are quickly empty and STILL the horde keeps pressing in on me with not only claws but spidery robots and manhacks. I try my Serpent Style shaolin training at that point. I can get several unarmed strikes in the time it takes me to get a single arrow shot off. However, these barely make a mark on the undead flesh and tire me out quickly. So I reluctantly grab my bow, grit my teeth, and just do my best to power through the pain. The zombies tear my precious travelpack to shreds, dumping a good portion of belongings on the floor. I do my best to fend off their attacks with my arms, but suffer significant damage and pain. I’m in unbearable pain and my arms are nearly mangled to the point of uselessness. But my bodkin arrows still do good damage and at last I manage to clear the crowd to the point where I can my favored hit and run tactics to keep myself safe. While a good many of arrows dropped to the floor with the destruction of my pack, I’ve still got a quiver. When I must, I race back to the arrows and fill it before the stragglers reach me again.
Right. So…now I’ve got to find a place to hole up and face the small matter of the two stories’ worth of earth and rock between myself and my vehicle. I’ve got all the heavy equipment I need to just dig out…stored in my vehicle, impossibly far away now. A little exploration yields a few salient facts: This place is still filled with many more undead and robots. Many more than I was initially expecting. Most of the doors are made of glass, so I don’t really have a good place to hide and rest. However, I do find an underground subway station. I’ve never encountered another subway station since the onset of the cataclysm, but I’ve found maps pointing them out. Not anywhere near, but the tunnels seem a safer prospect than further hordes of undead with shredded arms while still dizzy with pain. So I down some more painkillers and head out. I walk for miles. The old railway at first heads in promising directions. I find what is likely an underground entrance to the hub I’ve been working for. But there’s no way in and, shout though I try, I am completely unable to contact either my employers or any allies on the surface. I follow other tunnels…and eventually realize that they will NOT be heading anywhere reasonably safe at any time reasonably soon.
So it’s back to the lab. I’ve cleared most of the undead from around the subway station, so that’s…safeish. A few scientists and others occasionally come to attack. But nothing a few arrows can’t easily handle. To get back to the surface I need either a pickaxe or a jackhammer. I have a nice electric forge back in my vehicle…but a pickaxe is prohibitively difficult to craft without that. A normal jackhammer needs gasoline fuel…that unfortunately cannot be found down here in the lab. I don’t even know how to make an electric jackhammer. After some sifting through the remains of the undead I previously killed, I find a wealth of books and technical devices. Amongst them is a recipe for the much sought-after electric jackhammer. Even that’s pretty tricky to build. I first need a welder of some sort. But a makeshift welder isn’t too difficult to make. I need a lot of copper wire; it takes a long time to gather from breaking electrical equipment and broken robots down. But I can’t do without it…so I do what needs must. Eventually I find some heavy cable and all my wire needs are over. I don’t usually carry around welding goggles, but one of the undead won’t be needing theirs. Filthy but functional. I break apart a number of appliances looking for a small, electric motor. A centrifuge, I believe, obligingly gives me one. So I assemble the parts and build myself a heavy and regrettably powerless electric jackhammer. This all takes a good amount of time. I’ve mostly kept myself awake through caffeine, but I do try catch some sleep at some point. I stitch together a blanket out of rags, block myself in a room by hauling bookcases in front of the door, and fall asleep on a couch. I get rudely interrupted by zombies, but feel a bit better. However, the only food I’ve got through this whole ordeal is a can of mushroom soup that I was carrying around and a bag of popcorn I found on one of the zombies. There are a couple vending machines that serve sugary drinks…but that’s all the sustenance I’ve managed to find. About two stories up is my lovely, cosy, safe vehicle…filled with all the tools I would need to get out of here and enough food to last a year. My stomach feels so very, very empty.
I need 8000 units of charge per level upward. I build a UPS to power the jackhammer. There are a fair few batteries around but it’s slow going. I carefully venture in the bowels of the lab, killing off small crowds of scientists. One drops an advanced UPS, another some plutonium cells to power it. I destroy a spiderbot, which yields 10 more cells. And at last I’ve got the electricity I need. I use a hotplate and some shattered computer casing to make a plastic mold and a hard hat. I practice my survival skills a bit by making crude axes out of metal. And at LAST I’m ready to head for the surface. At an eight-hour stretch per level upward, I’m weak with hunger and thirst by the time I reach the halfway point. I down water, fruit juice, soda, anything to keep my stomach from growling. I take an atomic energy drink and prepare for the final stretch.
The sunbeams drift lazily over the woods. The birds chirp nonchalantly. The air has that pungent scent of decay…but it’s the sweetest thing I’ve tasted in a long, long time. And over there is my lovely, safe, wonderful home. My eyes fill with tears.
, now to back off for some much needed recovery. I’ve successfully screen shot 56 different computer enteries and as a result pushed my computers up to 12, not sure how many more there are to get but I’ll keep looking.
