The Land of the Walking Dead

Ethan sprinted from the airport, luggage in hand. What the hell happened back there? The plane landed, he got this luggage... looked down to check if everything was there and then there it was. Some sort of monster tearing people apart like it didn't even care. He stopped for a second to catch his breath, and glanced to his newly acquired walkie-talkie. At least that police officer was there, he thought. One of the first to go down due to all the noise of that gun. Glad that he managed to grab it, he checked the ammo of his new M1911. 5 Shots. It'd have to do for now. He placed his gun-case and luggage on the ground, rummaging through the latter to find everything needed for survival. He'd already killed one man, and had been living on the streets in hiding for the past few weeks, he wasn't going to let anything get the jump on him this time. He ditched most of his spare clothes, slipping on a camouflaged hoodie over his t-shirt. He pulled out a black-rag, fashioned a make-shift mask out of it and threw it on, throwing the rest of the luggage into the bushes. He didn't want to become one of those.. things, and in-case it was airborne he wasn't taking any chances. Next was the important part; his guncase. He ripped it open, pulled out his CZ and the 10 shots he managed to find in his apartment. He made sure both of his guns were on safety before moving on.

Although no more of those.. things, were found, he did manage to find something. A rather large, black hiking bag, sitting at an abandon camping site. Even had a pocket on the strap he could put something in, so he decided to slip the walkie-talkie in, and stuffed the CZ into it as well. He checked through the pockets of the bag to find some food, water, and even a hunting knife. It wasn't long before a radio crackle was heard. Some sort of message from the Sheriff by the looks of it. Studying his surroundings, Ethan headed in the direction he thought this Sheriff was. A sign read "Police station, 1 mile ahead", leaving Ethan to only hope.

Danny took a swig from the bottle of Jack Daniels he had stolen, and kept walking. He was a few years out of practice, and marching all day with a rifle in his hands was tiring him out, he was just glad he didn't have his old body-armour and fatigues on, or he wouldn't have lasted the morning.

The streets around him were strangely empty...and yet full of life. Dead bodies buzzed with insects as they decomposed. Screams of fear and pain mixed in with the groans of walkers. He could make out the shapes of looters in a convenience store, muffled crashes and laughter drifted through the broken door.

His mind kept going back to his parents; clothes torn ,covered in blood. Their skin had gone a light grey, and flies had crawled all over their skin. His father had a chunk out of his meaty shoulder, and his mother was limping heavily on the bleeding stump where her left foot used to be.

Danny stepped carefully over an infected's bloody torso, and was disgusted to find it still alive, flailing feebly at his shins. Danny pulled the Machete from his belt, and stuck the blade as far as he could get it into the creatures eye, it finally went still.

Danny shook his head, took another swig, and kept walking.

He'd been standing on the small balcony of his second-floor apartment, looking over the street with a cigarette in his hand when it all went down. Somehow Corbin knew he'd never forget that sight: half a dozen people running away from twenty-five, all of them limping, crawling, shambling. He'd immediately recognized it for what it was, though. A nightmare, an opportunity, a sign that he needed to go stock up on food and ammunition quick while he could - because a bow, two dozen arrows, and a recently-acquired handgun--bought, admittedly, for more its appearance and uniqueness than convenience--that fired what amounted to the least common pistol rounds in the States wasn't going to last him through the apocalypse, and that was all he had.

So he'd stashed his valuables, locked his door just for good measure. Six arrows, thirty rounds, a compound bow, and a pistol were all he took on his trip to the store just a couple of blocks down the street. Corbin managed to fire nine rounds into a group of three of the shambling, mumbling crazies he found in the store before he realized that body shots weren't doing anything besides punching holes. Eight shots later, he'd taken down all three and put two more rounds into a human who'd run towards the gunshots, and whom Corbin had instinctively assumed was with the walkers.

That was also when he'd learned that dead humans would come back from the dead - and, once he'd finished his little supply run and grabbed some dry camping food, a couple of water bottles, a hatchet, and a survival knife, that gunshots attracted the walking corpses just as nicely as movement did. He'd used the rest of his ammunition and four arrows running back for his apartment complex. A cannibalized wooden bookshelf, a cannibalized wooden bed frame, and some nails made a decent door barricade to allow Corbin to lay low for most of the people, and hopefully the dead, to leave town.

He didn't leave his apartment--didn't really sleep much--for a week, spent most of that period obsessively staring out the shuttered window before he was satisfied with the lack of humans running for their lives and his grip on the undead's movement patterns. After that, a couple more scavenging runs climbing up and down the balcony got him a few more essential pieces like a radio and another gun or two, both looked over after a gun store had been ransacked. It was pretty touch and go for the first few weeks until he figured out what he was doing and how to do it, and before he knew it six months had passed.

It was Corbin's fiftieth climb down from the balcony today, as the numbers he'd scratched into the banister indicated, and today he'd resolved to finally go out and seek the police who'd been broadcasting messages over the radio for some time now instead of clinging to the messages to maintain his sanity. Hell, he hadn't even spoken since he stubbed his toe walking restlessly through his apartment a couple of weeks ago, and even that was just a profanity-laden string of unconnected words. Lack of social contact aside, Corbin was just bored: he'd whiled away much of his free time in the last few months reading a lot of thought-heavy material, and while Camus and Sartre kept his brain working they didn't exactly keep him entertained all the time. Especially not now that he was out of books, too.

Just outside of town, he remembered them saying. He'd been living in NYC long enough to know approximately where that was, so he geared up. Bow, all six remaining and intact arrows, all three pistols, a couple of magazines where he had them in a pocket. His knife found its way to his hip, his backpack loaded up with all manner of extra bullets. He threw in some beef jerky and a couple of candy bars, too - lightweight stuff that kept you going. Corbin had run out of cigarettes, Coke, and Trident Spearmint - the first two vices of his, the latter simply what distracted him from those when he ran out - a few days ago, so the stick of Juicyfruit he tossed into his mouth wasn't exactly his first choice, but it served somewhat to distract from the almost unbearably itchy veins, headache, and general irritability that came with nicotine and caffeine withdrawal.

Then he clambered down, dropping the nine or ten feet to the ground. A quiet landing, a quick look around, and he was off, making for the police station he hoped was responsible for the periodic broadcasts.

"Hm. Thanks for the offer, but..."
Ethan slipped his backpack off, showing it to the Sheriff.
"I've got enough food and water to keep me going for now. I was really more interested in a safe place to stay, even just for a few days."
Ethan awaited a response, taking in his new surroundings.

Danny had walked all day, slept badly in a shitty motel, and walked all morning. But he did it. He was out of the city, ad hopefully out of the hell. Of course not.

The highway was maze of wrecked cars, truck, buses and vans. It looked as if every person with a car had tried to escape the city at the same time. Danny finished the can of Mountain Dew he had been sipping, and threw it to the side. Hefting his SMG, he started to carefully wind his way through maze of destroyed vehicles, alert and ready.

At least he thought so, suddenly, a zombie burst from the side widow of a car, and latched itself onto Danny's arm. Danny cried out in surprise, thrashing his arm around so the creature couldn't latch onto him. Danny dropped his gun and groped for his revolver, he finally ripped it from it's holster and brought he grip down as hard as he could onto the walker's head. It stunned him enough to let go, but took three more whacks to actually kill him.

Danny cleaned his revolver on the patch of the zombie's coat that wasn't covered in blood. He retrieved his SMG, and walked over to side if the road, he hopped the metal barrier a walked on the grass next to the road. Better safe than sorry. After a while, he saw a road sign 'Queen 2miles' Danny sent a quick prayer to his parents, and kept walking.

Corbin crouched briefly in an overgrown basketball court as he noted the gum in his mouth starting to lose its flavor. He reached one hand into a pocket to grab another stick of Juicyfruit, held the bow and nocked arrow together in the other. It was a rather ungainly movement of fingers that pried the gum free of the wrapper, but eventually he got it into his mouth and pocketed the wrapper. No sense littering, he supposed; laws regarding the subject may have been more or less ignored for the last couple of months, but he still just didn't feel right leaving his trash wherever he pleased.

He glanced around, halfway unnerved that he still hadn't seen any movement. No walkers, no humans, no... nothing, beyond the occasional insect. It wasn't usually nearly this quiet, unless all the undead were off chasing something else.

A noise sounded behind him. Corbin turned, stood, drew, and aimed simultaneously - only to relax his bow when he realized it was a car in the distance, maybe a crash - amplified perhaps by the buildings around him and the utter lack of sound anywhere else. He was way too on edge if something like that was making him jump, but then Corbin knew well that not having smoked anything in awhile was liable to make him all jumpy. He was going to have to find something with nicotine in it before he went crazy. Maybe it would've been a good idea to stock up on some dip.

Either way, that engine noise meant human - and meant he should probably try and meet up with them, see if that was a crash, see if there were any survivors. It wasn't long before he noted a man running for an apartment, realized he had been away from humans far too long if he was as tempted to start shooting at anything that moved as he was. "Hey!" he called hoarsely, hopefully loudly enough that the runner heard but quietly enough to avoid attracting too much unwanted attention. "You okay? Heard a car crash just a minute ago."

(OOC: Sorry Scg, can't let you do that. Don't let it happen again.)