OPTIONS:
WAKING UP
You wake up in a studio in an apartment building that's got windows all boarded up. You remember being sick, you remember dying, and you probably can't believe this is the afterlife. If you head out into the hall you'll see that others are heading out too, looking just as confused as you are. All of you died, most of you of the same thing. If you head down to the front office, you'll meet a native resident who will explain in brief that you're in Aqora, a settlement living among the undead and that people like you show up every so often. You'll be given an informational pamphlet, a shitty cell phone, and a walkie. Then you'll be expected to figure it out. No one has time to hold your hand.
EXPLORING
Miscellaneous things here: shops and restaurants turned into places to live, apartments full of people living day to day, the main focus (the library) being the hub where people come to learn and children go to school. Because school never ends, even in the apocalypse. Feel free to buddy up with other newcomers to figure out what the hell is going on.
OR, say you've been here a while. It's time to figure out how to get more supplies! Let's go on a supply run. You'll just be heading out past the barricades to start, and you'll have to dig through buildings to try and find things. If you're lucky, maybe you'll hit a cache. If you're unlucky, you'll find too many undead to fight. No one goes out alone though, so hopefully your partner can help.
"NETWORK"
Someone has set up a rudimentary network using the nearest cell towers. You can communicate with others in the area but only via voice and text. Anything further out is voice only via walkies. You can have a username or leave it blank.
Have fun, campers. |
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thebreathing2017-06-15 05:10 pm
Georgia Mason | Newsflesh Trilogy
[Georgia isn't nearly as bothered by the zombies as other people are. Honestly, the fact that it seems like it's supposed to be a surprise is weirder than anything else about it. But there's an alarming lack of infrastructure, far worse than it ever got even during the worst years of the Rising, and an even more alarming lack of internet. She hasn't gone this long without checking her email ever.
But she's supposed to be dead, so she supposes there's gonna be a whole lot longer.
Still, she's clearly pissed off, and happy to tell anyone who comes close enough exactly why.]
I don't know what fucking morality system judged me bad enough in my former life to condemn me to Los Angeles. Fuck that.
exploring
Georgia's not gonna let a little thing like death stop her from doing her job. She's a journalist, and if she knows anything about the Rising, and she knows a lot, it's that this is a story that needs to be told. She needs to write everything down if there's going to be any hope at a future. Humans can learn to live with zombies. She knows that from her own life experience. But first they have to know enough to allow them to survive.
When she approaches, her expression exudes serious professionalism under the sunglasses that hide her eyes. "Excuse me? Georgia Mason, after the End Times." She flashes the press pass she still has with her, the one that was on her when she died. "Do you have time to answer a few questions?"
network
People ask me sometimes, why do I bother? Why do I continue to write things down when there's no one besides us to read it? No one denies the importance of emergency broadcasts, of course, but why do I continue to write op-eds? Why do I do research and ask questions and chase down stories that aren't necessary for our survival? Aren't there better things I could be doing with my time?
Of course, the assumption being made here is that the greatest danger we face is the zombies. That assumption is false. Zombies are easy if you know what you're doing. If you want to know the real danger we face, look in the mirror. Zombies are straightforward. People are creative and clever and vindictive. Zombies just want to eat you. People want to make you suffer.
I continue to write down the news because I know that the world will never actually change that much. People still lie. People still make choices and then try to avoid the consequences. People still need to be held accountable. They don't get to hide behind zombies and apocalypses.
I've spent my entire life telling people the truths they didn't want to hear. I'm not about to stop now.
exploring / as discussed
Depressing. These days he tries not to get too hung up about it.
R keeps himself busy. He shuffles from Point A to Point B, then back to Point A, and if he's lucky, he doesn't slouch into too many walls or slam into other zombies. Sometimes he gets sidetracked if he scents that lavender-electric sent of life, feels it fill his mouth, circle around his gray throat and guts like a leash. Then it's a feeding frenzy with strangers with no names - sometimes with no faces, just jaws - and R stumbles away with a beard of blood and the brief, sated feeling of a corpse who's gorged to the point where his maggot-ridden stomach distends.
He feels a little guilty, then. His stomach and rotting body, don't though, and they're insatiable.
So yeah. Days either either mind-numbing boredom or he's caught up in a corpse pack, playing follow the leader until...
Well. Good news is this isn't one of those days, or Georgia would've been red paste and bones not long after R stumbled upon her. What stops him is the sound coming from the other side of the apartment door: it doesn't rise and fall like a corpse. There are...patterns. Purpose. Rise and pitch that wants to make his dead lump of a heart quiver. A woman's voice. There's a question mark, a rise in tone he's never heard from others like him.
R dredges up a memory from the gray cobwebs of his skull. Wills muscle memory to do its thing. He lifts a stiff hand and he knocks.
"Hugh...hello?" He forces it out in a low, uncertain grunt. "Can I...come...in?"
no subject
The door is, of course, locked from the inside. She glares at it, gun pointed down for the moment. "Oh yes, I love letting strangers into rooms with me when I'm alone. It's up there with splitting up in a haunted house in top ten great ideas I'll never have. Who the fuck are you?"
no subject
"I'm....R," he says and he's actually relieved he not only can remember his name today, he can get it out it one shot. Barely any groaning. Go him. "Heard...talk...ing. Curious."
And this probably won't help, but he's pretty full from the zombie buffet last night - while he had time to scrub his face clean of gore in a street puddle, it hasn't been long enough where his permanently dry mouth starts leaking black fluid instead of spit. For a corpse he figures he's presentable. Hopefully conversation-decent if the door opens. Can't even remember when he had one of those.
no subject
"Why haven't we met before?" The settlement only has so many people. It's not impossible there's someone with a single letter name that she hasn't run into before, but he sounds like she'd remember him. Slurred speech is a sign of amplification, at least where she's from, so it's something she'd pay attention to. Unless it's new, and that's even more worrying.
Goddamn, does she ever miss blood tests.
no subject
R suddenly has the vague inkling that this probably isn't the brightest idea he's ever had. He knows he doesn't have it in him to lie - numbed lips that struggle around words don't help - and he's afraid of telling her the truth, that he's pretty much homeless and his gainful employment is basically shuffling, murder and cannibalism. If he had working blood vessels, they'd be turning his face a bright shade of red.
He could shuffle away. Or he could hang onto her voice, the ups and downs, the way she actually seems interested in anything at all.
"You're...new...?" R tries to stall as he waffles between what to do. His gray, mottled lips purse into a line. "Not...from camp."
There.
no subject
"What do you mean, not from camp?" She frowns. "Have you been bitten?"
Obviously not a zombie doesn't rule out in the process of becoming one. If that's the case, she might open the door. Wouldn't be her first mercy kill.
no subject
This is the part where R probably should've done the proper zombie thing: either bust down the door and gone for the jugular or shuffled off, head hanging.
Beats his lame attempt at a groaning lie.
no subject
Usually it's not a question. It sounds like a lie, though she knows the usual tells aren't always reliable, especially when you get scared.
"If you are, I can help you." By shooting him, of course, but what other help is there?
network;
network;
Either way, pretty fucked.
Re: network;
network.
I understand what you mean. Knowing what's going on is important.
network.
Anyone who disagrees is probably part of the problem, honestly.
TDM INVITE