THE DEAD TIMES
DEAD ARE COMING...
Episode 2 - Fists don't need reloading
© Screenshot from PC game "Survivalist"
I slept solidly for way longer than I probably should, I'll need to work on that - sleeping for shorter periods to maximise daylight. Speaking of daylight, the sun was still out when I went to bed last night so I've no idea if the day has actually changed from yesterday - there are no windows in the bunker, probably an oversight on my part but I never thought I'd need them. With the world gone, the civilised parts of it anyway, who cares about time anymore - it could be Christmas morning for all I know. All I know is that I was in this damn hole for 364 days, and with my excursions yesterday, I'm going to call this New Year's Day. The old world, the one I knew of money, bankers, drugs and bling (as well as the occasional hooker) is gone - I need to change my life, my behaviour, the way I did things. What better day to change than the first in a new year.
The agenda for me today is to explore some of the surrounding area - see if more people survived the end of the world. Judging from what I saw yesterday, it's a long shot but I figure, even if I don't find anyone left living, it'll be good to have some knowledge of the wasteland around our camp. I'll have to wake Alice. Seems a shame but I'm not going out there alone with those things running around.
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Me and Alice are back now - Gunman (I found out his real name is Isham but I like Gunman better) just walks back and forth to the hardware store, bagging some wood and lugging the heavy material back to base. It's going super slow - says he won't start building defences until he has what he needs. Bastard won't even tell me what he plans to build with all that wood. He also stole my friggin' backpack - the small kids bunny rabbit one I found yesterday. I could really use some more carry space but no luck finding another pack - pretty valuable kit it seems - so the only way to get one is to trade.
I found a bunch of other people - 3 different groups! Didn't go that far away from base either. I guess the apocalyptic wasteland we are living in is not so apocalyptic after all. The first two groups of people seem okay. The third group threatened to kill us (me and Alice) and take all our gold - the only resource worth a damn now money is worthless - but I didn't back down to their threats, telling them that I would kill them first. It was a complete bluff really. Both me and Alice had run out of ammo earlier, shooting the Zombies that chased us futilely. We forgot to stock up on bullets before we headed out this morning - stupid mistake. Luckily, there weren't many of them out today - probably drew most of the ugly sods out of the woodwork yesterday. Even if we did have lots of ammo, we are both terrible shots so would have ended up wasting most of it. Who could have guessed that a hedge fund manager would have to rely on accurate head-shots. Alice even has the shotgun - how can she miss with that boomstick?! Never fired one myself but with the amount of lead that comes out of the dangerous end, I'm surprised anyone could miss their target.
All groups will trade and the group to the north (or wherever, geography was never my strong point) has the backpack I need. That's the good news. The bad news is that they want gold for it and won't take anything else. All the cash I amassed during my life is worthless to them. It's okay though. This is America - everybody loves to flaunt their bling and I've even seen some of the shiny stuff on the fetid corpses walking around. A few of the ones I gunned down had rings, necklaces and so forth on them too - ripe for the taking. That's going to be great fun - oh, yes. I love nothing better than rummaging around in stinking corpses that are often missing whole friggin' limbs! Jesus Christ - just the thought of it makes me gag.
© Tom Clark | Screenshot from PC game "Survivalist"
Still, I learned a valuable tactic today that may keep us from ending up like those undead bastards. Hand-to-hand combat is the best way to take 'em out. It sounds crazy I know - who would want to put their hands anywhere near the teeth of one of those things? However, if you think about it (and are a little mad), it makes sense. Kind of…
The dead are animals - ambush predators. They run at you full force and then dive, rugby tackling you to the ground, disabling their prey and using their body weight to pin the helpless victim to the ground while they bite. This is key - if you can dodge that initial charge, they get a face-full of dirt. If you can't, make sure you have someone around to kick the undead asshole off you - they may not react much but a solid boot to the kidneys should disorientate them for a while, allowing the pinned victim to struggle free. Then, when the fetid Zombie is on the deck, worming around like some mindless beetle trying to right itself, punch, kick, bash it with a rock, whatever you can - just keep pounding that pus-filled body until it stops moving. It's bloody work and it's not as fast as a gun but it saves on ammo. Also, fists don't need reloading.
DIARY:
Survivalist
DIARY WRITTEN BY:
ENTRY DESCRIPTION:
This episode marks the start of a whole new year - at least in our hero's mind anyway. The old life, one of comfort and elegance is gone, replaced with a hostile world where the dead don't stay dead, rising up to feast upon any living soul they come across. One must have friends in this world, and after having found (and reluctantly recruited) Alice and Gunman last episode, Joe now scouts the area for survivors willing to trade supplies. With the ruins of civilisation all around, can anyone be left alive?
DATE ENTRY UPLOADED:
31/05/2015