We Are Awakened With The Axe [Open to All]

[applesaucemod]

The city has been abandoned.

Its infrastructure has been slowly deteriorating for quite some time, now. Traffic has long since ground to a permanent halt, taxis and trucks rusting by the curbs or abandoned mid-intersection. Most of the ground-floor windows have been shattered. Electricity is spotty, if it can be found at all. The eerie silence is broken only by the wind, the calls of crows, or the gentle collapse of some structure or other. And, of course, the occasional screams.

The city has been abandoned, but it is not empty.

What caused the various outbreaks hardly matters. Viral infection, fungal infection, some new or ancient bacterium suddenly released into the general populace - who knows? What does matter is that the city has become home to thousands if zombies, some slow, some fast, some mindless, some retaining a savage kind of intelligence. And they are all so, so hungry.

There are weapons to be found or improvised, and places to hide if you're lucky enough to come across someplace well-fortified and otherwise empty. Others have clearly had the same idea, leaving hastily constructed barricades in some places. You might even take those as a blessing, if the conspicuous absence of the original builders doesn't bother you. They're probably living on a nice farm somewhere.

One thing is certain: if you don't want to succumb to whatever plagues have ravaged this place, you will have to fight for your survival.

[OOC: usual dream party rules apply; all are welcome to participate, and characters can remember or forget at the players' discretion. Also, usual zombie rules apply: if you get bitten, you'll be turned into the sort of zombie that bit you. Whether your characters deal with comically dim shamblers or the terrifying sprinty variety is up to you.

Finally, let's just go ahead and say tw: violence and gore for the post as a whole, because it's gonna get messy, folks.]

Comments

[fucking_ebay]

They've been lucky, haven't they? For a place with the population of Manhattan, there haven't been that many zombies (god, he just called them zombies in his head) shambling about. Maybe there was an evacuation. Maybe someone's come in and shot most of them.

Or maybe the things have just been congregating. Peter sees his companion freeze, registers something's wrong even as he, too, rounds the corner --

She doesn't have to tell him twice. Or even once, really. The sound that comes out of him is more moan than scream as he turns on his heel and sprints back the way they came, not thinking to even make sure she's coming until he's already in motion.

[driftseeker]

He is a tall, dark blur beside her, and that is how she knows he is keeping up. She sprints with incautious abandon, tearing frantically down street after street as the sounds of their slavering, snarling herd of pursuers grow ever and ever louder.

Run, hisses Raleigh. Get outta here, Mako.

For her part, she would love to. Unfortunately, she sees a very simple, unpleasant way out of the predicament.

She peels away from her companion, sprints down a narrow strip of alleyway, and lashes out recklessly with one foot, sending a contingent of aluminum trash cans cascading loudly to the ground with a roaring, angry clatter.

They like noise.

Oh, and she'll give them noise.

She does not yell. She simply sends another knot of trash cans clanging to the ground, and hopes it will be enough of a distraction. If he keeps running, he will make it.

He will have to.

[fucking_ebay]

Peter runs full out, not knowing where they're going or what they'll do. At every turn he expects to find another hoard of them, at every little stumble he expects cold fingers snagging into his back. Up, maybe, like before -- up to be trapped on some fire escape. Out over a bridge like they planned, except they were damned fools to think that all the ways out off the island wouldn't be chokepoints for the living dead.

She's a steady presence beside him as all their non-options flick through his mind, until she...isn't. He isn't in any kind of shape to run indefinitely, and when his steps finally slow through sheer lack of breath, he finds himself panting and sweating alone on the sidewalk. His breath catches when the realization comes to him that he doesn't even know when he last saw her, and he curses quietly.

He should go on, save himself. If she's fallen behind she's probably as good as dead...or she thinks she has a better shot at survival without him weighing her down. He should keep running (alright, walking), find another way out or another place to hide. He should save himself.

With a groan, he turns and starts walking back the way he came, twitchy and silent as he watches for reasons to bolt again.