All Flesh Must Be Eaten: 12th December 2012
There has been a bit of a break from our usual adventures in Ravengro recently due to a variety of real-life commitments affecting some or all of the players over the last few weeks. Tonight, three of us turned up anyway to play a game put on by another DM who had a few places available at his table. This is a one-off adventure based in the modern day - a zombie apocalypse game I have not played before. The game plays well and is both fast moving and highly exciting. Trying to play to as many cliches as possible, we all had a load of fun with this one. Thanks go out to Gary for putting this on for us.
The Survivors
Cpl. Masterton – Soldier from out of town
Officer Gabriel – Local law enforcement officer
Harry – Local detective
Tom – Video store clerk
Dawn – Out of town reporter
The Doctor – English scientist abroad
Norman – Computer Hacker
‘Mad Dog’ – Local biker and garage owner
Riverside, WA,
USA
(Wednesday 12th December, 6:03am)
Click
“… urther news from upstate Washington
on this cold and icy morning. It seems that there has been an influx of wolves
into the town of Riverside
over the last few weeks. Professor Romero of Seattle
State University
has put this down to the sudden cold snap descending upon their usual hunting
grounds and forcing them to scavenge further afield. The army has been called
in to take care of the situation but all has gone quiet over the last few days.
We have been assured that local residents have nothing to worry about. We have
sent in roving reporter Dawn Haven to investigate. We have heard nothing back
from her just yet, but she should have arrived in town late last night and we
should get our first live broadcast, weather permitting, later on this morning.
Now it is over to Stuart for the weather. It is due to
remain cold but clear tod …”
Click
“Goldarn it”, cursed Tom, the video store clerk as he rolled
over in his warm, cosy bed and switched off the alarm clock radio. “I just knew
those soldiers were here for a reason.”
He crawled out from under his duvet and sprinted to the
shower, his breath trailing as small puffs of heat as he huffed in the coldness
of his room.
The shower warmed him through thoroughly but he spent too
long in there and found that he would be late for work if he did not get his
skates on. He grabbed a few mouthfuls of last night’s lukewarm coffee that was
still on the percolator and got his scarf on before making his way out of the
door towards George’s Pancake House for breakfast.
Lower 3rd
Street, 7:12am
Making his way to the pancake house, Tom heard a bit of a
ruckus going on. He noticed that the local law enforcer, Officer Gabriel, was
in a heated row with one of the soldiers mentioned in the news story and the
local troublemaker Mad-Dog. As he approached the scene of the argument he
noticed that a few more of the local citizens had come out of their homes to
see what was going on. As he got closer he began to see why things were
becoming heated; the ground all around them was covered in blood. The lawman
insisted everyone should stay calm and return to their homes, but the soldier,
a Corporal Masterton insisted that everyone, including the officer, needed to
leave the scene for their own safety and security. Mad-Dog was just there for
the fight.
A crowd of about eight people were milling around just as
the local scientist known by Tom as The Doctor (after his own love of the
British Sci-fi series Doctor Who) picked up what looked like a severed human
hand from under a parked vehicle. It was at this point that Tom decided it best
if he started to shoot this on his camcorder as it looked like things were
starting to turn interesting. Everyone had started to talk at once and the argument
became more heated until Officer Gabriel let off two shots that shut everyone
up pretty quickly.
The Doctor looked at the hand, aided by his two friends Tom
and Norman (the guys he played D&D with every Wednesday evening over a few
beers) and came to the conclusion that it was indeed a human hand that had been
ripped from an arm by a fearsome force and then worried at by teeth that did
not look like they belonged to a wolf as everyone was suspecting; in fact they
looked decidedly too similar to human bite marks! This set everyone panicking
again and Tom started quoting zombie lore from all of the films he had been
watching recently (working at the video store meant he could watch as many as
he wanted whenever he wanted, and boy did he watch videos).
Officer Gabriel requested that Cpl. Masterton inform his
superior officer about the situation whilst he tried to call in backup from out
of town. Cpl. Masterton ambled off in search of his colleagues just up the road
and the lawman went to his patrol car. He tried the police radio but only
encountered static. He then tried his mobile, but could get no signal. Finally,
he decided to rejoin the small party back at the crime scene, but only after
retrieving his shotgun and spare ammunition from the trunk of the car.
Corporal Masterton returned to inform everyone that his
entire squad were missing from their tents and there was blood everywhere
around the camp. Everyone started to shout all at once, many in fear of what
was happening and others in trying to find out what the authorities were going
to do about it.
The sound of the old World War Two siren by the Town Hall
pierced the morning air, causing everyone to quieten down quickly. Officer
Gabriel told everyone to return to their homes immediately whilst he went to
investigate what the meaning was. He hadn’t taken two steps before everyone
else had joined the huddle behind him and followed directly in his tracks.
The Town Hall, 7:37am
The group of townsfolk arrived at the Town Hall only to find
the front doors swung wide open. It was dark inside but faint scratching noises
could be heard coming from deep within. Corporal Masterton, taking control of
the situation un-shouldered his assault rifle, primed it for action and
switched on the torch over slung on the barrel. Tom, still filming the scene,
followed closely behind him to get the best shots possible. The rest of the
troop followed on in a gaggle.
A trail of blood led from the door, past the benches dimly
illuminated on either side of the main hall, to a pile of intestines in the
middle of the floor. With a yowl, a fluffy white cat ran from under the benches
and through one of the back doors leading off the back of the room. Detective
Harry yelled for someone to grab the cat as it was the main lead in a case he
was trying to crack. No-one took any notice and let the cat go. Footprints,
most likely those from a large canine, could be seen within the vicinity of the
viscera leading off to the other one of the end rooms of the building.
After spending several minutes trying to piece together the
clues given up by the body parts, Corporal Masterton took the lead and
re-settled his assault rifle into the crook of his shoulder. Tom and Mad-Dog advanced
close behind, loosely followed by the rest of the crowd. The sounds of
snuffling and scrabbling became louder until the door was nudged open by the
toe of the soldier’s boot. The bark of the assault rifle was loud in the small
room, and the panic caused by the sudden shock caused both Tom and Mad-Dog to
open fire with their handgun and shotgun respectively. All three shots hit but
the wolf just turned towards the shooters with a snarl on its half-rotted face
illuminated by the half-light of the open window and leapt out of it in a
single bound. The sight of the half-eaten corpse of the mayor on the floor
caused a riot and everyone started to scream in fear and shock.
After a few seconds of pandemonium, Mad-Dog yelled for
everyone to be quiet. The volume was cut immediately and in the silence
scrabbling noises could be heard coming from upstairs. Officer Gabriel decided
to take charge again and suggested some people should investigate the noises
upstairs whilst others tried to find a light switch to get the place
illuminated. After seeing the monstrosity that had leapt out of the window,
Cpl. Masterton took it upon himself to start closing any windows on the ground
floor that were still open, starting with the one in the back room. After they
were closed he then started to rather inexpertly try to barricade them too.
One up, one down (8:11am)
Mad-Dog, Tom, Dawn and private detective Harry, in the hope
he may come across the cat again, headed up the stairs to investigate the
scrabbling noises. They entered a landing area with a locked door at each end.
The scrabbling sound came from behind the door closest to the head of the
stairs. Mad-Dog barged the door open and levelled his 12-gauge at 7 year-old
Sarah from down East 17th. Dawn shouted not to shoot the girl that
was cowering behind the overturned filing cabinet and went forward to comfort
her. With a snarl the girl lunged for her, her hanging entrails leading to the
puppet-master’s clutches; a heavily decayed corpse with its hands within the
child’s eviscerated body. Dawn just managed to leap backwards in time to avoid the
shot from Mad-Dog’s shotgun. Blood and bone flew everywhere. The cadaver behind
the filing cabinet rose to its full height but it too was blown away by the
combined might of Mad-Dog’s shotgun, and Tom and Harry’s handguns.
Meanwhile, downstairs, The Doctor and Norman had headed down
the wooden ladder to the switch room. They slowly descended into the darkness
when suddenly Norman slipped on the
bottom rung, snapping it in two. The Doctor made his way down carefully after
asking if Norman was OK. The noise
though had disturbed the silence down in the room. Sparks
started to erupt from the breaker board and a faint scrabbling could be heard
in the darkest corner. Frightened but unperturbed, the two intrepid adventurers
proceeded towards the fuse box, when suddenly shots could be heard coming from
upstairs. A hand lunged out of the darkness. Without thinking Norm levelled his
handgun and opened fire. The Doctor, whose only weapon was a flare pistol he
had in his coat pocket from the fishing trip he took a few weeks previously,
also let loose, setting the rotting corpse’s clothes on fire. The corpse
started to spin around rapidly, bumping into the walls and filing boxes, upturning
them all and setting them alight. The fire spread rapidly through the room and
forced the two townsfolk back up the ladder
Officer Gabriel, now left on his own, decided to follow the
party that headed upstairs, his authority well and truly undermined. Gunshots
sounded from above and a few seconds later from below. Confused, he stuck to
his first thoughts and went where the most noise was. He needed to get the peace
back into some sort of order. He couldn’t have townsfolk going off and shooting
at every shadow.
Corporal Masterton was still busy trying to barricade the
windows when he heard a clubbing and scratching at the main doors of the Town
Hall. He decided to chance a look out of one of the front windows. He pushed
the sash window up and slowly pushed open the external shutters. A clawed hand
try to grab him, but he quickly pulled away from it. Outside he could see a sea
of walking corpses trying to break their way into the Town Hall. He rapidly
pulled the shutters to, slammed the sash window down and re-barricaded the
potential entrance.
The Town Hall secured, 8:25am
After they had checked over the two corpses in the upstairs
office, Officer Gabriel suggested they checked the rest of the rooms. An empty
board room led onto the mayor’s office, which also proved to be empty. Upon
hearing the shouts of alarm from Corporal Masterton downstairs, they all looked
out of the upstairs window and noticed that there were dozens of slowly moving
corpses gathered by the front door of the Town Hall. A quick look to either
side of the building showed that they were totally surrounded by these slow
moving horrors, but they were also accompanied by no less than a few faster
moving zombie-wolves. They returned to the room at the top of the stairs where
they realised that the fire started in the fuse room was still burning
uncontrollably and belching black smoke that made it difficult to breathe.
Things were looking bleak for them as they realised that the
fire needed to be put out before anything else happened. More than half of the
Town Hall had been proven to now be empty; there was only one last wing
upstairs that needed exploring. Luckily it was behind a heavy closed door.
Officer Gabriel gathered everyone together at the top of the
stairs and explained the situation. The phone lines were down, mobiles had no
signal, the electricity was cut and there was a fire in the basement. Worst of
all, there was a whole town full of walking dead surrounding the very building
that they were now stood in.
Delegating as best he could, he assigned a few people to
fight the fire downstairs. Fire extinguishers and fire blankets were found and
The Doctor, Mad-Dog and Norman
returned to the place of danger to attempt to put it out. The flames and smoke
forced Norman back, but The Doctor and
Mad-Dog struggled on bravely to reduce the flames.
Tom, Dawn, Harry and Officer Gabriel returned upstairs to
explore and make safe the last few rooms upstairs. Corporal Masterton set
himself to watch over the walking corpses in case they tried something whilst
the others were busy trying to make safe the building. Guard duty was what he
was good at.
The Phone Call, 09:07am
Dawn, the reporter, listened at the locked door and swore
she could hear muffled voices beyond. This made everyone more wary, but the
sound of a small petrol engine starting up made them all look round. The
detective had pulled a mini-chainsaw from his rucksack. It was to get the cat
out of a tree he explained. The little petrol engine exploded into life and the
last locked door on the landing was cut open in the blink of an eye. The room
beyond came as a shock to all those on the landing. After expecting undead to
jump out at them, they saw that the room beyond was just an empty kitchen.
Norman, who had now rejoined the main party, as had Mad-Dog, noticed the loft
door and pulled it open so they could climb up to investigate if there were any
ways out of their predicament. Whilst Officer Gabriel, Dawn and detective Harry
went on to investigate further rooms, Tom decided to look through the kitchen
cupboards. He had seen all the zombie movies and knew that food and water would
be important in the days to come. He stuffed his backpack with all of the food
that was left in the cupboards. Just as he was finishing he heard the chainsaw
rev up once more and then the shattering of glass. Those on the upper storey
could now shout down to those in the main vestibule of the ground floor below
where Cpl. Masterton was continuing on his rounds.
Mad-Dog and Norman
broke through to the roof and then called for buckets. As many as could be
found in the kitchen area were passed up to them; they were then handed back
down full of snow. Chain-gang style, the buckets made their way down to the
basement and the flames were finally put out.
Reconvening on the landing at the top of the stairs, the
survivors tried to think what to do next. Dawn, feeling that she should call in
to her office, dug the satellite phone from her bag; she had a signal… just.
Officer Gabriel commandeered the phone and passed it to Cpl. Masterton to call
his commanding officer for backup. He did as he was asked, and after several
attempts at getting past the desk jockey he finally spoke to his captain.
Promising to put him on a charge for being drunk, he said he would send down a
couple of MPs to arrest him. They would be there in about three hours.
The Hacker’s Escape, 09:48am
Hearing this, Norman cracked and decided that it was all
becoming too much for him, so he would get out whilst he could. He returned to
Sarah’s room, where he had earlier spotted the main electricity and ‘phone
cables just outside the window. He removed his belt, slung it over the thicker
of the two cables, shouted “Geronimo” and leapt out of the window before anyone
could stop him. He slid about halfway along the cable before grinding to a
halt, hovering directly above a side-alley half-full with zombies. He tried to
wriggle to get the belt moving again but all that helped to achieve was a
shorter amount of time he could hang on. A few seconds later, the nerd’s
strength gave out and he fell to the street below. He twisted his left ankle
badly but was able to jump up and make his way towards the video store where he
used to hang out in saner times with The Doctor and his pal Tom, the video
store clerk.
Upon seeing their companion make his desperate leap and
subsequent fall, they rushed to the window to see how they could help him.
Despite his twisted ankle, he could still outpace the zombies, but the noise
had attracted no less than five of the zombie-wolves, who closed in on him
rapidly, drawn by his yelling for help and screams of agony.
Tom shovelled body parts from Sarah and the puppet-master
zombie out of the window whilst Officer Gabriel and Harry the great cat
detective started shooting at the zombies from the upper floor. Corporal
Masterton heard the commotion and popped open a lower window, shooting at
anything that moved before spotting Norman
on the other side of the alleyway.
The survivors shouted at him to get into the video store
whilst they held the zombies off. The soldier’s assault rifle and the law
officer’s shotgun made short work of the zombie-wolves that were attacking Norman,
but not before one of them bit his swollen ankle. Those that were attracted by
the meat feast below the window gave Norman
just enough time to smash his way into the shop. Using the butt of the gun
proved impossible against the tempered glass (made to stop thieves), but his
last but one bullet shattered the door lock. He was saving the last bullet for
himself. He got into the shop and through the internal door in the wink of an
eye, and proceeded up to Tom’s apartment where he barricaded himself in and set
about logging into Tom’s computer to hack into the military servers.
As the commotion began to die down, the fluffy white cat
came out from hiding. The detective made a grab for it and said that the cat
needed saving too. Tom would have none of it – he had seen all the movies after
all: anyone who tried to rescue the cat died. He promptly grabbed the feline off
of the detective, blew out its brains and threw it out of the window.
The Hacker, 09:59am
Feeling a little worse for wear, but still carrying on, Norman
managed to power up the PC and hack his way into the military site. He was able
to amend the order to send just two MPs to send a platoon of soldiers instead,
and at a high priority. He then made his way back out to tell the others what
he had done.
Meanwhile, the rest of the survivors noticed that all the
gun fire had attracted dozens of other zombies to the vicinity. Now numbering
well over a hundred walking cadavers outside, this was starting to become a
little onerous for even the most stout hearted. Making as much noise as
possible they attracted the zombies away from the video store towards the Town
Hall again. When the majority of the zombies were clustered together in one
place, the survivors let loose with everything they had on them. Corporal
Masterton’s assault rifle let off a constant barrage of shots, everyone who had
a handgun or shotgun pumped bullets into the undead crowd and even the mayor’s
liquor cabinet was raided to make Molotovs. A few well thrown grenades cleared
a large path through the walking corpses and Norm saw his chance to run up the
street away from the hostilities.
Running as fast as his swollen ankle would carry him he got
to the army checkpoint and leaped into the truck there. The keys were still in
the ignition, so he gunned the engine. It was at this point he realised he
could not drive a truck. Undeterred, he managed to slam it into first gear and
drive it lurching into the side-street beside the Town Hall. The survivors all
jumped into the back of the truck except for Mad-Dog, who could drive the
truck. Gunning the engine and slamming the vehicle into reverse, he drove over
several walking corpses, their guts spilling out at the impact. When on the
main road, he slammed it into first and accelerated away up the street heading
north out of town; the sound of sirens approaching from ahead of them spurred
them to greater courage and determination.
The Cavalry arrive, 10:23am
Those in the back cheered as they heard the sirens and saw
the corpses rapidly dwindling with distance behind them, but Mad-Dog howled in
agony as Norman’s teeth sunk
themselves into his neck. Not able to shift the grip of the newly formed
zombie, he yelled for someone to help him. Tom leant out to try to get a view
into the can via the wing mirror and was just able to yell “Zombies” before he
was flung from the back of the truck, still filming as he fell. Officer Gabriel
and The Doctor didn’t like the sound of that and made a jump for it. Dawn
followed suit, and in suitably gymnastic style landed neatly on her feet,
leaving Harry and Cpl. Masterton in the back.
The fight in the cab would soon be over the biker, so
Mad-Dog decided to end it in his favour. He rammed the truck into a tree. It
crashed and turned over, throwing the pair of them through the windshield and
onto the side of the hood. The two passengers in the back were flung around
like rag dolls, but got away with just minor cuts and bruises.
The newly created Norman zombie started to rise whilst
Mad-Dog clutched a shattered leg. He called to Officer Gabriel to end it for
him – he didn’t want to end up a zombie like Norm. Officer Gabriel took aim
with the flare pistol on the fuel tank and BOOOM! The whole truck went up; Cpl.
Masterton, detective Harry, Mad-Dog and all.
The survivors sat dazed by the kerb as the military arrived
to the tinkling and clattering of truck parts falling about them.
