Part two:
(For some context, I’m only calling it the city because I forgot what the name of the city actually was. It was a random character as left behind scenario as a backpacker with some bashing skills that I can decently remember, but I can’t completely remember the starting skills completely and spoilers!!! she has changed drastically from the beginning, plus I forgot her traits, but they do play a big part in-game.)
Manik peered outside from the garage to the world she was now rebirthed to, knowing so much had changed, and so much will change, she could only hope she would live long enough to see it turn for better. For now, she would have to escape the city, there was no other option: she only knew the way out and nothing of the city from her limited memory after experiencing “The Cataclysm”.
The pack of Mutilation had moved farther away, but still noticed the noise of the garage door clanging upwards. Manik quickly jumped back into the car, stumbling with the foreign objects that appeared in front of her. She had only seen older, decrepit cars from the scrapyard near her old house, and this car was completely different, she decided to press one of the pedals- lurching the car forward- luckily she saved the car from crashing into the workshop. Manik decided to mess around and noticed a stick with different letters on it, and intuitively noticed it was in drive, she pushed it back to the letter “R”, this caused the car to lurch backward, throwing her into the steering wheel “I probably need this” she mentioned as soon as she stopped, placing her seat belt into place.
By now, the pack had noticed her and was moving in close, she put the stick back into drive and pulled into the street, noticing the hordes around her and started to gun it, going 64 mph in what she thought was an empty street- until she noticed the luxury RV seemingly pop out of nowhere- it was too late to stop, and too late to turn away- she violently smashed into the rear end of the vehicle, launching her from the now completely totaled car onto the road a couple of feet away.
Luckily her injuries were nominal, although painful… After getting back up from the havoc of the crash, Manik was very disorientated but was smart enough to know that crash caused a new sonorous wave of noise to echo throughout the now (un)dead city. She quickly started to run towards the outskirts of the city, noticing the flood of mutilation following her… She quickly ran to another smaller car that she recognized as a beetle and noticed that the only thing it lacked was a full tank.
Manik jumped into the beetle, buckled up, and quickly started (now slowly this time around) speeding around the mutilated and weaving between cars. While checking her map, she took a wrong turn and wasn’t on the road out of town, but at a dead end with only a field at the end. With all that had happened, Manik wasn’t ready to turn around into the city of death, so she gunned it down the street into the field where she eventually corrected herself onto the roadway out of the hell-hole that trapped her for seven days of genocide.
Driving down the road barely conscious from her recent crash she wanted to stop- and was about to when she noticed something horrifying in the distance, seemingly ants of inappropriate proportions roamed the roads in front of her. At first, Manik thought she was dreaming, dead, maybe even worse, but the realization came quickly to her when she splatted one of the bugs accidentally while zoning out. “What has this world come to? Please, someone, wake me from this nightmare…” “Hopefully this is the only city with this issue…” Manik pessimistically commented, almost too smart for her own good, knowing this is must be the end of the world- and no-one is waking from this nightmare, even when they die.
Manik checked the beetle’s dash, it felt like days since she got out of the garage, but realized that it was only a few hours into her first day of escaping the hell-town. She drove down the highway a few more hours, to escape her memories of the town, and mostly the ants. Manik, after a couple of hours, found a campsite with a few motorcycles and not much else. “F#ck, it’s spring, and I’m dressed like it’s a hot summer day,” “I’m stuck with an almost broken down beetle, with almost no gas at all, and all my loot was lost in that car crash,” “I don’t even have enough food or water to survive a few hours out here,” she thought to herself.
She wondered if maybe dying back in the town was better than starving, freezing, and suffering from dehydration. Her mood quickly changed once she saw an APC ahead of her vehicle, thinking maybe that the occupants of the APC would save her. Manik quickly drove to the APC, and screamed “Help me! Please!”. She waited for a few seconds and received no response, and in those few seconds, she noticed that the APC was looking a lot more decrepit than it was before…
Manik managed to pop open the door without much effort, she then realized why: the interior seemed lacking anything, and when she stepped in, she only noticed a few amenities inside: a magazine for some rifle, and a used heat pack. So much for any kind of help… She stepped outside and back into the beetle, she needed to find someplace else, as hunger and thirst became more prevalent. She didn’t know what exactly, but anything that would keep her sheltered from the harsh New England spring.
Another couple of hours later it was getting late too fast, and Manik hadn’t found any shelter for the night. She was bitterly cold from sudden flurries and lightning storms throughout the day, and her food and water situation worsened, she wasn’t showing signs of starving or dehydration, but she knew it wouldn’t be long until she saw signs of it overtaking her. She, however, noticed through the forest something called an “LMOE Shelter” she wasn’t sure what it was and wanted to pass it by for the time being.
Manik wasn’t given much of a choice however, once her beetle came to a stop, dying from the lack of gasoline in its tank. She reluctantly walked out of the beetle into a violent torrent of a lightning storm, quickly getting colder and colder. She made frigid steps into the woods where she last saw the shelter, wondering if maybe some of the minefields that appeared on the road while driving could be lurking in the forests and openings leading to the LMOE.
(Another break for this, as it is a lot to write, and I don’t want to lose it from a random crash caused by my super bad laptop. The next post will be sooner than this one, and I think that the story might be up-to-date with my current game within another post or two.)
