411 replies to this topic

[some_weirdGuy]

Kelvin went over and grabbed himself some good weapons ((i cant think of any, so i'll just say they are good))
"anyone else coming with?" he asked

[southsidediablo]

"Nah, I'm going to stay here and see if I can find anything else in this ruin. That or help out these guys."

[Paladin58]

"Hey, perhaps you should let someone a little more experienced handle that plasma torch, Ryn" motioned Titus, being the only person (as far as he knew) with taking a blowtorch to a vehicle frame.

[Fire Ze Missiles!]

((OOC: Er...apologies in advance for this, I did go off on one a bit. But it was fun to write, and it does add something to the story. In a roundabout way. So you have to read it, I'm afraid. Mwuhahaha!))

"I'll come with;" spoke up Dean towards Kelvin, "Ain't got nothing better to do, I suppose."
Carl watched as the trio wandered vaguely away. He didn't smoke, but he felt sure that if he had done so, then now would have been a great time to light up. He sighed a long, deep sigh, and leaned back against the perimeter fence. He felt calm, relaxed even. The wind was blowing the smoke from the tyre-fire away from them, and in the absence of smoke it was a beautiful day. The sun was shining, the leaves on a nearby copse of trees rustled pleasantly, all to the reassuring background murmur of car engines and human chatter. Carl sank gratefully to the floor, and allowed himself to close his eyes. It was almost as if he could fall asleep here...

***

The silence was the first thing he noticed. It surrounded him, permeating everything. No engines, no talking, no footsteps on the ground.
Carl's ice blue eyes snapped open, and his mouth opened in horror. Climbing to his feet, he surveyed the devastation around him. The already burnt out buildings had been reduced to piles of ash and a few loose lumps of crumbling masonry. Of his friends, there was no sign, but the Jeeps lay gutted and flaming, releasing an oily black smoke which coiled lazily up to the blackened skies above him...
"Dear God in Heaven...the sky!" It was not the black of night-time. It was a terrible, roiling blackness; it seemed almost alive, writhing with ceaseless, tortured movement. As if noticing his attentions, the boiling clouds above suddenly slowed, becoming sluggish, almost still. But even as he reflected this, he caught the flash of the writhing movement out of the corner of his eye. The skies were not still. They were merely waiting. But for what, he could not say.
A sudden flash of dark green light flared behind the huge black clouds that he stared at still, and it was with this flash that sound returned to him. He heard a boom, as if from thunder, echoing across the plains around him. He heard the crackling of flames and the sighing of the gentle wind.
Carl gazed in horror at the blackened, decimated landscape all around him. What had done this? How had he survived? How long had he been here? He couldn't even see his rifle. He was sure he had left it just beside him...
Something moved behind him. He could hear it, a quiet rushing sound. Slowly at first, then with an unexpected suddenness, Carl swung round to face his enemy and saw-
Nothing. There was nothing there. Carl frowned. He had definitely heard...no, he could still hear the rushing noise. And it was getting louder. Something moved, right out on the horizon. Carl strained his eyes to see it. But his eyes weren't what they used to be, and he couldn't make it out. All he could see was a black stain, slowly spreading across the skyline.
He stood, waiting for the being to come closer. But even as it did so, he could see nothing more in the semi-darkness that now gripped the world. The thing, whatever it was, was only a patch of greater darkness in a black world. But it was spreading, even as he watched it. First it came to envelop the entire edge of his vision, from horizon to horizon, until wherever he looked Carl could see the blackness approaching. Then, it did the only remaining thing, and approached. At first it was slow, creeping, almost tentative, but it grew bolder with every second. Creeping tendrils of blackness soared into the skies, as if seeking for something, clearing the ground for the main body to come. Seeking for life. Seeking for him.
Suddenly, a vast revulsion and gut-wrenching terror gripped Carl. Letting out a suffocated cry, he turned and sprinted away from the encroaching darkness. But wherever he ran, it was always there, seeping in from every direction, surrounding him. A strangled, crying noise escaped his throat as Carl stumbled to the floor, his every move controlled by the mindless terror. Collapsed on the ground, he glanced frenziedly around him: the darkness was everywhere. He looked up, and cried out in horror and fear as he saw it close in on itself, enveloping him in a world of darkness and death.
Carl lay in the darkness, muffled sobs escaping him, his mind numbed with fear. He felt questing tendrils of darkness glide over him, exploring his body for signs of life. They found them, and around Carl, reverberating through the darkness came an enormous roar of unparalleled anger. The traumatised man curled himself up, hands over his ears, willing the terrible noise to end.
But the noise would not stop. It continued for an age, endless, rumbling. It pierced Carl to the very centre of his being, and he felt the terrible frustration behind the inhuman roar, the endless reserves of energy, raring to tear him limb from limb, raging around his frail form. He felt the boundless hunger that could never be sated, he felt the eternal lust for combat. He felt the absence of sanity, and it scared him down to his very soul. The roar resounded again, incredible, malevolent. Yet now, it did not seem directed at him.
A blinding white light suddenly enveloped Carl, two shining figures descended to him, travelling great distances with every step. One was huge and glowing, the other smaller, yet infinitely brighter. Together they cleaved a path straight through the darkness to where Carl lay, prone and helpless.
The brighter figure stooped down to Carl, and whispered something in his ear. Carl could not see it's face, the glaring light was far too strong to look at directly. But he felt it's reassuring presence, and some of the terror ebb from him. The being layed a soothing hand on Carl's sweating forehead, and murmured more placations. The darkness seemed afraid of touching the glorious creature...

***

Carl jerked awake, sweat pouring from him. He looked around with harried, frenzied eyes. But his fears were quickly allayed. He let loose a shuddering sigh, and pulled himself up on the metal fence. How much time had he spent sleeping? Twenty minutes? Half an hour? In any case, the men had attached the gun to the Jeep, and were in the process of stripping out the essentials from the vehicle. Darkman, Dean and Kelvin were still nowhere to be seen.
Carl strode over to the men working on the car.
"We have to leave. Now."
"What?" someone queried, "Hold on, we're almost finished on this thing. Why the hurry?"
Carl turned to look at the horizon behind him. He could see nothing. Nothing but a speck, a blur. He strained, squinted, and made it out.
"Because of that." He replied to the man, pointing.

And even as they watched it, the dust-cloud generated by a thousand running feet grew slowly, ever so slowly larger...

Edited by Fire Ze Missiles!, 06 March 2008 - 08:24 PM.

[Paladin58]

"Holy shit. Dammit, we need more guns... Doe. Let's find the biggest things you guys had at the base. Everybody else, keep watch, make sure they don't bumrush us when we're not ready. If they get close before me, Doe, and Darkman, you're coming too, before we get back, then just hightail it. I saw a Humvee in the motor pool, it looked like it was in good shape, we'll use that," said Titus, his mind starting to race, thinking of what would be good crowd-control weaponry that he could find here.
"Hey, John Doe, you you know if there's any large, industrial-size lawnmowers on-base, possibly not destroyed? You know, looks like a tractor, with wing-like apparatuses hanging from the sides? I have an idea on something that could provide crowd control, if you guys have one or two somewhere, to tend the grounds with."

[southsidediablo]

John thought for a moment, "Yeah, we should have one around here. Last I remember it was in the left building in the motorpool. But don't take that as a promise, it's been a while." John looked towards the massive horde again, and started to run towards the motorpool.

[some_weirdGuy]

Kelvin was sitting, his attention on the complex coding running past his eyes, they had found a computer box that wasn't completely destroyed, and kelvin had hacked it, he was getting the last bits of information from it now...

Darkman and Dean were standing around, looking sorta lost, dean looked back over at kelvin, kelvin was so absorbed in this last piece that he did not notice. he walked over to dark man, who was standing at the door looking out,
"how much longer you think he'll take?"
"i dont know... Come on Kelvin, get a move on! i want to get back to the group..." called Darkman
"Yeah yeah yeah, im nearly done, one more second" Kelvin did not take his eyes from his small screen
"just hurry up man, i want to get back too" called Dean

after another minute Kelvin got up, letting out a triumphant little "yes!"
"there we go, got everything we set out for, and then some..." Kelvin disconnected and jumped over to the door
"can we go now then?" said Dean
"ready when you are" replied Kelvin, grabbing his bag and petting Boo
"ok then, lets go" said darkman, and they walked out the ruined doorway, to re-joined the group.

((Cheshire Fox, i hope you don't mind me god modding your character, if you don't like this i will edit my post, it just made it flow better if i included darkmans dialog, then if i just ignored his company completely, so yeah, like i said, I'll edit if you want to, if not then thanks))

[Copaman]

"I'll keep working on this. If nothing else, a .50cal can mow down a horde of those things. And I think you underestimate my experience with a torch, Titus. I was a jack-of-all-trades before the outbreak, and my shop had an auto repair section to it."

He had finished tacking the Browning onto the bed of the van, and quickly picked up his plasma cutter. Time was of the essence. As he cut through the thin siding of the van's body, he punched out every section he could, as fast as he could without regard to the quality of the job. He had opened up three sides of the van in the span of minutes. And so he switched back to the welder and finished his job on the gun, making sure it was in securely. "Alrighty! Gunvan is up and running!" He struggeled with the giant crate of ammo, and eventually stuck it next to the gun inside the roofed 'gunflat' (for lack of a better term). He also loaded up the first ammo box into the gun and made sure the gun worked by lobbing a shot up into the air.

"WOOHOO! Let's roll!"

[Pastinator]

Jamie was at a loss what to do. Cutting, running, a big bang, then a big rush away afterwards were his forte. He had no truck with stand off battles of attrition. He needed a distraction, something he could do. Maybe a trap he could set, maybe a bomb he could deliver, just something that would allow him to make use of his skills. In the urban jungle he was king, but now he was out of his habitat he needed instructions in what to do, and fast.

[war_angel]

"dude no way are you taking this .50 cal," he looked a Ryn "I'm going over there to find a machine gun i can carry, and when i get back, i expect that gun goddammit!!"
Silva strode off purposefully, hoping that when he returned witha more long ranged weapon Ryn would offer him the .50 cal. it had be too long since he used one of those babies, and he was not going to pass up on this chance.

[Paladin58]

"Hey, Silva. If you want to SHOOT the damn thing, then it's staying on the turret. If I couldn't use that thing while standing, then neither could you," said Titus, his strength having been shown multiple times, though he has a smaller-looking frame than what he could carry. He started off in the direction that Doe had gone off in, starting off in a jog, building up to his signature sprint.
He reached the motorpool a few seconds after Doe did, and looked at first the Humvee he mentioned earlier, and secondly the closed door, which might hold the imprisoned mecha-slayer 'o zombies.

Edited by Nology5890, 07 March 2008 - 10:06 PM.

[southsidediablo]

John turned to see one of the other people running towards him. "If I'm right, it should be behind this door." John walked over and tested the door. It creaked open and there sitting inside was the lawnmower. John walked over to it checking the gas and oil. "Looks to be good. Let's get it over to the others."

[Fire Ze Missiles!]

The hacking team strode back towards the camp hurriedly - on hearing the gunshot, they had looked at each other worriedly, and begun to high-tail it back to the group. And it was just as well they did so, for even as they arrived, they found the place in turmoil. Everyone was running around, grabbing guns, ammo, food, anything. They soon discovered the source of the commotion, and found that they too were possessed by a sudden need to find more guns...
The horde was now well past the horizon, although it continued to spill infected like a putrid wound over the skyline. They were close enough now to make out the general shape of the mass - it appeared to be a sprinter pack, but larger, much larger than anything the survivors had previously come across.
Darkman knew what that had to mean. The creatures never gathered in these numbers by themselves. Something had them under it's heel...

[some_weirdGuy]

"my god... they just keep coming out of the wood work... i swear that must be every infected with-in a ten mile radius..." ok, he might have been exaggerating, but that was a lot of infected
"lets just grab every gun and ammunition we can and chuck it into one car or another, before high tailing it outta here..." Kelvin grabbed out his computer and called up a map
"there is a medical bay down that way, if we need more medical supplies.." he pointed to a half wrecked building ".. a kitchen was that way, but i dont think we can get in now, and a second ammunition dump is on the other side of the base, if we want to have more guns..." Kelvin then jumped over, helping the load up, befor running off after the medical bay, which was only around the corner luckily...

[Paladin58]

"Let's see here... The last time I used one of these was back in high school... Yeah, one time, the janitor got piss-drunk. He dropped the keys near the shed where they had one of these, and I happened to be walking nearby after football practice one day. I saw the glint, and a few hours later, a teacher's prized rosebushes looked like someone took a chainsaw to 'em. Of course, I got caught, but I just got suspended for a couple weeks, and the coach benched me for the rest of my sophomore year. Okay, enough reminiscing. Let's fire her up!"

Titus turned the keys, and heard a whinny. He tried again, and a roar comparable to ten lawnmowers shook the motorpool. He started moving the beast out the door, onto the tarmac. Then he turned it off.

"Hey, why'd you turn it off?" asked Doe, quizzically.

"I need to do something. The sprinters can just run onto the cab with the blade protectors on. They need to come off," Titus answered, while pulling a gator wrench out of his pocket. With around thirty seconds of work, both bladeguards were off, both lightening the mower, thus making it faster and more agile; and turning it into the perfect ground-borne undead killing machine.

"There. Stand clear! This is one lawnmower where you actually want to listen to the warning label!"

[Pastinator]

"Ok guys, I've got an idea. I'm gonna go and pick myself that Barret over there, and hopefully somehow we'll have a barricade up before they reach us. I suggest sticking cars around us in a really big circle. Then, I'll stay close to the back, and pick off key infected, trying to get over the top, while you mow the rest down. Sounds ok? Any suggestions."
Impatiently Jamie ran, almost scampered over to an unused car, and started driving it to form a circle.

[Paladin58]

Over the whirring, Titus looked at Jamie driving the deserted sedan around, waiting for others to move their vehicles into a circle.

"Hey, Jamie, if you're driving that car, I suggest you keep it in drive! With numbers that large, we need to move, or they'll overrun us. Now! All of you, back to the cars! One drives, everybody else shoots for each carload!" yelled Titus. His voice, though booming, barely made it through the whirring lawnmower blades. He hoped that people got the message just through the size of the group, that they would do one of two things: run or die.

[some_weirdGuy]

Kelvin dumped the armful of medical supplies he had into a car, jumping into the back..
"hey, maybe some of these can help deans friend, she's still out cold isn't she?" he called over the noise, as he did so he pulled out a sturdy looking rifle from the stash and loaded it...

[Pastinator]

It looked like Jamie's plan had gone down the shitter. The sheer bulk of these creatures had failed to register with him, and now he better had find something else, a sedan wouldn't last long. In the civilian car park Jamie entered into an SUV. Usually this would be rubbish in fighting the infected, poor MPG, loud noises, but now all he wanted it for was the high height off the ground, and the raised loading area, that people could shoot from.
"I need a few guys in here! A few to shoot, and a couple to knock off any that grasp onto the side." Jamie raised his voice above the din. "SOMEONE CAN BORROW MY CROWBAR IF THEY NEED IT!"

((OOC: In all posts for this encounter now on, assume I'm driving this SUV, and any-one else is welcome to get on it with me, in fact thats preffable. If not, then I'll use some NPCs ok?"

[Fire Ze Missiles!]

Titus was right, and Carl knew it. He had seen the power of the darkness, and he knew very damn well that if they stayed to fight it they were fucked to hell.
"C'mon guys! Let's get the hell outta here!"
All around him, panic had taken hold of the group, and he was barely an exception. Everyone seemed to gravitate towards the few oases of calm in the confusion, looking for instruction. Darkman, Titus and John soon found themselves bossing everyone into various vehicles in all kinds of places.
As if in contrast to Carl's dream, the noise was becoming deafening. Engines roared, people yelled, a few sporadic blasts of gunfire sounded. And all to the continuous pounding of untold feet sprinting towards them.

((OOC: On the subject of dreams, I had one about a Nuclear Apocalypse of the world last night. It was fucking terrifying...Guess I've been playing a bit too much World In Conflict ^^))