ellis
Cosa Nostra
Posts: 133
AKA (in game): Elisa
AKA (in game): Wilson
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Post by ellis on Jun 9, 2015 4:02:03 GMT -5
Part 1
We are looking for a girl, or at least her story, but we keep up hope. I could tell you about our attempts at information from a local recluse named Bill, about the dangers that were hidden there. I could name the ones we lost. Or I could talk about the road it led us to, south, the living we redeemed along that path. Again, the list of our own numbers lost against this new and terrible world. The great structures, the desperate survivors, the death, the victory. How the great armies of dead alive humans now populate our world.
I only want to tell you, because we are moving again soon and I have little time, about what we encountered when we arrived to calls of distress at a pitstop between the overrun towns back north and further south. A stop off for gas, a restaurant and a clothing store, the Barg-n-Clothes. As we approached, wearied from the yet untold tales of our grueling journey thus far, we met another survivor in desperate need, there in the Barg-n-Mart. I will say it again, unnecessarily, Barg-n-Mart, because I shall never forget it. In fact it stands like a constant stain across my thoughts, a blur.
We go south soon, and I do not think we will ever come this way again, in this life. I need to think I told this story, that someone knew what happened. So I write this, and will leave it behind. They hurry me to get moving now, everyone nervous about where we are going, what we will find, and how it will find us.
The building was well fortified, maybe the most defensible of our recent encounters with large group of the dead. Some of us felt a little bolstered by our own selfish sense of 'survivalism', forgetting the lives lost, telling ourselves we are strong enough, we are ready in these calamities. I can tell you, perhaps you already know, when the dam truly breaks no hand shall hold its waters back.
It started about evening, the day we arrived. A few had gained a lead to scout and we calmed and stabilized the survivors. Our girl had come this way, and we needed to know all there was to learn about her whereabouts. The walls began to thump as we were eating, first only a few. These things move in groups now, large ones, guided by some thoughtless aim, but eager lately, energetic. A few of us went outside to clear them off the walls. Some never made it back behind the barricades.
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ellis
Cosa Nostra
Posts: 133
AKA (in game): Elisa
AKA (in game): Wilson
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Post by ellis on Jun 9, 2015 13:04:02 GMT -5
Part 2 of 2
For the first few hours it was just a steady flow of them, tiring but manageable. Hundreds in groups on the move, or coming for us, just as before. As the full dark of a moonless night came on heavy and blue-black, we realized we had only yet met the vanguard of an unprecedented mass traveling right across our location.
They are pressing me, no one else understands why I would take the time to write this. I owe it more time.
Sun rose across us and a short relief from the long night, the gunfire clashing on gunfire, thousands of clamoring corpse creatures grunting and beating on the walls til the dawn. We tried to convince each other, they have passed our position, these are only stragglers now. We have survived this night (some of course were dead but not us). All of us tried to sit, shaking from the hours of adrenaline and dehydration, hunger, exhaustion. No one would sleep. It started back up in minutes, incredible crowds of aggressive, flesh eating, solid bodied ghosts. Maybe people we knew, maybe Kitten lost in the first waves now turned and come to spread the lifestyle. They hammered us hour after hour, our hands ached from the thrashing explosions of every shot fired, legs cold and numb. Our eyes sloppy with exhaustion. Sometimes we wondered, who else is left? I'm still here, we all thought it, and I could be the last one...
On that second day we set up a massive SOS signal fire, a plea to any local citizens who could help us. It was clear that even we, who had survived unimaginable things, would not last another day at this pace. And the dead showed no signs of stopping. As the dark spread over the second night, we began to despair. Perhaps we were not the men and women of grit we had imagined ourselves to be. How frightening to admit small lucks alone had taken us this far, that none of us was as matched to this battle as we thought. The calls out for help intensified through the evening and into the night. It was a risk considering many people have become raiders and hostiles, killing for a few more moments in this world themselves. We had no choice but death.
First came a few friendlies, a needed boost to our dwindled ranks (how may lost? how many yet for the fight?). The waves of dead bolstered their numbers by the blackness of night, power failed inside and the lights we derived comfort from went mute. Some of us began to say our goodbyes or simply voice our terror. It was looking more grim than any of us, even the veterans, had accepted.
However the few friendlies who arrived made an impact immediately. Each of our exhausted fighters had that much more relief, if only a second to stop and breath. The tide did not turn in our favor but we felt the strength of their aide.
Among the tired, repetitive blasts of shotguns (now two days of echoes piling up in our heads)erupted a pistol being fired with skillful quickness and great accuracy. A man most of us feared ran into the fray. Some knew him as T-Dog, others only knew his reputation. He a very real reason for fear among the survivors, especially those refugees from West Point. But he took no aim upon us, showed no sign of robbing us. Instead, he joined our struggle with little words. Some say he said only, 'do not shoot'. Was he as scared of us as we of him?
It did begin to turn around though as we fought through the second night. Huge waves of dead were pushing us hard but we pushed back in surges. Everyone doing what most they could for any other, buying a second for a small piece of leathery jerky, a sip of water. Enduring alone almost had us defeated, we needed proper food, rest.
They press me, because we go south toward a diner. If nothing there we continue to Muldraugh and the hope that somewhere out there, this has an end. I want to say the names, give every detail, but I must leave off very soon before they find us here unprepared on the road.
Our man inside with the wounded fought relentlessly to protect those who could not protect themselves. Our men and women outside pulled hundreds of zombies off the walls, slaying piles in the parking lot and the street. Our bandit savior, perhaps redeeming some of his own karma, quickly proved his value to a fight.
And there in the unlit night of the second day, one of our 'leaders' fell. He never called himself our leader of course, but those of us that had survived some of the unmentioned troubles on our way here knew. He was either the leader, or we were the followers, because without his judgements, his calm approach and his bravery, most knew we never would have made it this far. We called him Raz. After two full days of fight we were too exhausted to keep moving. Without a cry of any kind, I saw Raz overrun and destroyed. We almost lost heart, but just as before he gave us a point to rally to, a passion to the battle.
Around midday on the third day, nearly sixty hours after the first small groups arrived, we were sure we had broken the bulk of the dead army. A few more people had come to help, very few of us in the original assault were left. Those who were had another piece of the puzzle and another collection of terrifying memories.
We go south to the diner now, I must stop. I only hope I told you what happened, that you know what people can still resist. That you know the cost. I'm certain we will never come back this way, no longer believing it was my abilities that took me this far. It was other people, it was Anna, it was luck. We paid the price of admission to follow this tale and so we go south.
My name is Wilson, I will be dead soon. If not at the diner then likely in Muldraugh. I fought for myself like I fought for any of us left alive. We lived and died among heroes. If the world of living men and women ever recovers, tell about We Who Stood.
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ellis
Cosa Nostra
Posts: 133
AKA (in game): Elisa
AKA (in game): Wilson
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Post by ellis on Jun 9, 2015 13:07:58 GMT -5
I couldn't make it shorter or better guys, but I had to try and story that third Dead Ends Raid
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Post by Clutch [FM] on Jun 10, 2015 4:54:11 GMT -5
I love this story. Makes me want to join the raids. Reason I can't: the unholy ping. I come from the east side of asia and I might even cause lag when I'm around. Damned capitalists not providing proper service. My sad existance aside, that raid sure sounded like a grueling test of humanity. A salute to everyone who participated (and to everyone who had fun without me).
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ellis
Cosa Nostra
Posts: 133
AKA (in game): Elisa
AKA (in game): Wilson
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Post by ellis on Jun 15, 2015 14:22:28 GMT -5
Dead Highway Addendum: Subsequent Journal Discovered
The road took all they had. Only three arrived at the Diner and them unprepared for what came next. A precision attack from the hordes of the dead, shorter in duration yet more intense as if rudimentary tactics were being employed by the zombies. The three fought hard into the night, quickly driven out of the barricaded diner the fighting filled the parking lots with gore and the miserable sounds of rent flesh and bones. Tommy was caught first and try as they might the others could not free him, hundreds of hands and mouths holding and tearing him to pieces. It was a blow to the spirit of the two who remained, yet they did remain and fought harder. The rain came on and the fires were extinguished, a darkening dark swaddled the scene. Next to fade into the clamoring mob was Wilson, him utterly exhausted from the fight and the road leading into it. No longer able to outpace and maneuver among the dead, his heart dull and pounding into his head. This was his first death, and stranger than even these living dead, it was not his last. Only one of them survived to escape that Diner which was overrun utterly as he fled (with full pride after such a fight). These new engagements so much more a test for we survivors than ever before as if time has given these undead an opportunity to 'evolve' in some horrible way. Perhaps even to learn, though we yet dread to allow this thought. Raz lived though, carrying the story forward, continuing the struggle south. Wilson remembered the death, not like a vision or a dream but a very clear memory complete with the agony and heinous sensation of being dismembered, bitten and eaten in pieces while alive. However, it came that Wilson was beyond the death, with no idea how such a thing had occurred. He was living with the memory of his own death. In shock and panic at the unsettling recollection of that night, he moved north again, briefly fleeing the pursuit that had taken him for all he was. Here he met a strange woman, there at the location he had battled a week before his first death. She seemed pale and ill, outside herself in some way. She too, he thought, had suffered as he had, this unsettled attitude the result. It was quicker the second time (can one become used to this, he asked himself). Her gun erupted with its voice before he even had a chance to hear hers. Three bullets struck him with an anger or a pain that the woman seemed to feed outward into her weapon. Whether she was supernatural he could not say. Breaking away, fearing the return if he should die again, he made for the trees and the concealment they offered. A short distance yet too great, the woman moved fast on his heels and the gun sounded just after he felt the fourth and fifth shots strike him. He saw his blood dropping steady on the grass, saw a small spurt splash upon the pines he had almost made it to. His head struck a branch that reached out to embrace him as fell forward, his knees into the dirt, his upper body slumped against the boughs. This wasn't enough though, some people have a greater due than others, and Wilson would pay this world in his own life, suffer his own deaths again.
I remember this, I was Wilson once. We fought our way south, we were keeping alive. Something has changed now, and Wilson sometimes feels dead even to me. I am here however, unsure of how or what I have become. With effort I hope to remain as much Wilson as possible, but this world has become so unsure. Uncertain of what side of this struggle I now belong to, what power keeps me struggling, I fight for the living still. And I take what remains of Wilson along.
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