Scenario: Sunset AvenueScenario Type: Open
Max Players: 3
Current Players:SyrianHamster
Loot Level: Don’t get your hopes up.
Walker Density: Mild.
Bandits: Unlikely.
Members: Hannah Banks, Camellia Morgan, Woodrow Hepburn, Oskar Rennold.
Weapon Pool: M14 (1 x 20), M4A1 CQR (2 x 30), Beretta 9mm (1 x 15), Winchester Model 70 (x20)
Equipment Pool: Apache helmet, military radio, 2 x can of baked beans, box of stale bran flakes, map of Chicago, protein mix.
Location: Safe house (Far West of Street)
Woody heaved with all he had. It was just a little further to go, millimetres really. He could give in now, sure, but then he knew it wouldn’t count; no one else would, but it was never about them. Sweat poured down his face in small rivers, his lungs opened themselves to their full aching capacity, and his ageing heart smashed away at the inside of his ribs. Just a little further.
The door opened behind him, breaking his concentration.
“Fuck,” he mumbled, before falling flat on his back shuddering with exhaustion.
“Woodrow, can we talk for a sec?” came the familiar, droning voice of the group’s C-in-C: Hannah Banks.
Woody lay motionless, staring up at the ceiling as his lungs settled themselves down. He was so close to making it, so utterly close. “Sure,” he wheezed, “what ya got, chief?”
“I’m not great at being someone’s friend,” Hannah started, “so I’m going to give it to you straight: what the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Mind elaborating, my dear?” replied Woody, refusing to look at her.
Hannah sighed, and entered the room. The sound of her footsteps were near non-existent, as they always were. In a former life she flew an Apache for the U.S military, and some of the lessons she had learnt in that line of work had stayed with her. Noise discipline was paramount, first and foremost. Woody wondered how such a butch young woman moved like that, but then thinking about it, he didn’t really care.
“You’ve been awfully pissy with me ever since Camp Defiance, what’s your problem?” she asked, standing over him; forcing him to look at her. That was her way, always with the confrontation.
“I’m thinking maybe you shoulda let me die back there, Chief Warrant Officer,” he spat back, rising up onto his elbows. “I didn’t ask you to grab me out of that nightmare, I’m thinking maybe I shoulda been with my wife and son, daughter-in-law and grandson. Least that way we’d be together, and I wouldn’t be sitting around here waiting to buy the farm from some jumped up prick, or one of those shambling fucks.”
Hannah allowed him no sympathy, it was not in her programming. “You better man up you old fuck, you’re apart of my team, and you’re proving a weak link with all this ‘shoulda let me die’ bull shit. Either sort yourself out, or I’m going to fuck start your face.”
Woody clambered to his feet, his muscular form towering over the former pilot. He snarled at her, but with his big bushy white beard, and frizzy hair, he looked ridiculous. Hannah did not stand down.
“Your move, soldier,” she said, looking up at him with an unreadable expression.
“Naw,” he said, turning from her suddenly. “I don’t hit women, and I ain’t no soldier.”
“You’re right, you’re a pussy, an old bastard intent on getting us all killed. You’re right, I shoulda left you.”
Before Woody could utter any more of his irritation at her, she had gone; he never heard her leave, but he heard the door shut. Damn she was quiet, and fast. But so was he; if it ever came to heads, he had no doubt in his mind that he could take her out no problem. Sixty-nine or no, he was at his prime.
***Oskar frowned over the map of Villa Park, trying to remember where he and the group had been, and more importantly, where they hadn’t. Did they go down Sunset Avenue? Or was it Potomac Avenue? So many Avenues in this God damned city, why couldn’t the Americans ever be creative about something? Always with the sledgehammer of mediocrity.
At least, that’s what his father had always told him.
“I miss you dad,” he muttered to himself.
He looked at it again, trying to remember what he saw as they sprinted through the streets, dodging the shambling horde behind them. Their car had broken down near a brown house. Was it brown? Fuck, they all looked some shade of brown to him. Woody said it was the battery, Hannah said it was the radiator, and Camellia added her usual silence to the discussion. It didn’t matter too much in the end, the shamblers had heard them from a mile away, and by the time the car rolled to a standstill, they were waiting with eager arms.
Hannah had got them out though, as she always did. No shooting, just quick moving, watching each other’s blind spots and stopping for nothing. Oskar had to admit to himself, when it came to a crisis, she was the one you wanted at the head of anything.
“Potomac, we ran by Potomac,” he said, mentally appraising himself. “Which means we must be in Sunset.”
He crossed out four houses on the end of the block, because he and the group had run into them after putting some space between themselves and the shamblers. The structures had yielded a single tin of baked beans, and some well-by their best bran flakes. They were fucked on water, but Woody had found himself some protein mix – for what good it would do him.
“He’s a freak,” Oskar conceded to himself. “Always working out. The man’s ancient! We’re getting surrounded by the fucking dead, and he’s upstairs doing stomach crunches so’s he can reach his 80th birthday.”
He looked across the row of houses on the map, and circled the one he was fairly sure they were at. Then again, things had gone so quickly that he couldn’t be certain he was even look at the right part of the city. Chicago was a huge place. He looked up at Camellia, and found her staring back at him.
She creeped him out, with her buzzcut, the nasty scar on her face, the constant silence, but most notably, she had those ‘I’m going to skull fuck your dead face’ eyes about her. Oskar knew she’d been through a lot, and that awful things had gone her way, but then, welcome to the fucking club sweetheart. She was playing with her rifle, as she always did, dissecting it, cleaning it, putting it back together and then taking it apart again – staring at him all the while, as if she was expecting him to attack her at any given second.
“Don’t suppose you know where we are, do you Camellia?” He asked with the best English he could muster.
She didn’t reply, but at least she broke eye contact to look down at the pieces of her weapon. That in itself was a small mercy.
“What have we got, Oskar?” Asked Hannah suddenly; she had materialised behind him, and the pen dropped from his hand in a moment of terror.
“Fuck,” he said, “do you always have to do that?”
“Gotta keep on your toes, soldier,” she said, smiling slightly. “So, I’ll ask again, what we got?”
Oskar pointed to his markings on the map. “I think we’re here,” he said, “though I’m n-“
“Yes, we’re there, good job Oskar,” she said, cutting him off. “Any idea where we haven’t been?”
“Do you already know?” he asked, looking at her with plain irritation.
She nodded, “of course I do, there’s a reason you guys have stuck to me like glue for the last six weeks.”
Before the world crumbled, Oskar would have hated her for such hubris. Though in the Zulu Alpha, as she called it, a woman – a person – like Hannah was an invaluable asset. What she lacked in bed side manners, she made up for in pragmatism. She’d gotten them out of many tight spots, and he would never forget it.
“Where should we start?” He asked, scratching his head.
Hannah walked away from the table where Oskar had the map laid across, and brushed aside one of the room’s many curtains.
“There’s an ambulance with its hood popped at the end of the road; I can see a battery. If that old bastard upstairs is right, that’ll be our best bet,” she said without stopping to breathe.
“It’ll be rusted, or rotted, or whatever,” said Camellia suddenly, though she didn’t look up from her gun cleaning circus.
“Holy shit, she spoke,” snorted Oskar. “When was you gonna tell us you could speak?”
Hannah thumped him hard in the chest with a hand meatier than was fit for a member of the finer sex. “Lock that shit up, Rennold.”
Heavy footsteps on the stairs, each one creaking under a heavy weight, denoted Woodrow’s entrance into the debate. “She’s right,” he said, “the thing’ll be no good to us now.”
“But we have to try, right?” Asked Oskar, looking at Hannah pleadingly. “My family is out there somewhere, and without a car i-“
“Your family is dead, deal with it,” said Camellia.
Woodrow was quick on his feet, and had Oskar thrown up against the wall before he even knew what had happened. The river of the poor Pole’s profanity carried on for some minutes, but Camellia paid it no heed. Hannah just bumped her head slowly against the wall in frustration.
“Enough,” Woodrow said, “we’re gonna look at that battery, but I need you to be cool, you get me?”
Oskar didn’t try to arouse the old man’s anger; he was twenty years the guy’s junior, but had half the muscle mass. “Okay, I’m sorry,” he said. “But if that-“
“Save It,” hissed Woodrow. “We’re days away from killing each other, we have no food, no transport, if you don’t get your shit together son, I’m gonna start getting real worried.”
“You, worried about us?” Asked Hannah, turning to give him a huge mocking smirk. “Looks like the fuck starting of faces can wait a while.”
“Don’t get me started, you little stupid honky bitch,” snorted Woodrow.
“A racist, that’s great,” offered Camellia, as she applied oil to the M14’s dissected receiver.
Hannah was not so light hearted about matters; she allowed dissent to run amok like she allowed people to put her in danger. “Say that again, and I’ll kick your black ass out of that door for the shamblers.”
“Race war,” Camellia said, and they could all swear they heard her giggle.
“Bring it on, you aint better than me because of that shitty uniform you’re wearing. I think it’s time this comes to ahead,” said Woodrow, releasing Oskar so that he could confront Hannah.
“Guys, stop, please stop,” Oskar said, trying to get between them.
“Stay out of this, kid,” spat Woodrow, “this bitch had it coming since the moment she dragged me away from my family.”
“Yeah, let me and this old buffalo see things through to their conclusion,” said Hannah, smiling. She unclipped her Apache flight helmet, and tossed it aside. “Come on you old fuck, you want some of this honky bitch?”
There was a blast of static from over in the kitchen, and the group suddenly froze.
"We have everything you need. Food, shelter, water, people... A society. You can live in a community free from the infected. A safe haven where you can feel comfortable, knowing that you're surrounded with *********** you out there? You live in a land overtaken by abominations and murderers, thieves and rapists.
Your instincts are likely telling you that this is too good to be true. Under normal circumstances, you could hardly be blamed for heeding that frightened little voice inside your head. After all, it's kept you alive for this long. *********** is that we need you as much as you need us. We can't rebuild America without your help and that's why this signal goes out to all of you survivors struggling 24/7 just so that you can take another breath. Is *********** Chicago risky? Of course it is. But what else are *********** going to continue running, simply to exist? Or are you going to take hold of the only opportunity that will allow you to live again?
America begins anew at the Black Mountain, the tallest building in Chicago. In better times, it was known as the Sears Tower. Find us there and ***********. What other choice do you have?"Woodrow and Hannah backed away from each other, and even Camellia looked up from her obsession. Oskar just stared stupidly in the direction of the kitchen.
“We’ll I’ll be damned,” said Woodrow finally.
