Day Six
We debate a while before entering the railyard. Julia doesn’t like the idea of the wide-open spaces, but this is a good thing, in my opinion. It would be very hard to become completely trapped in the open.
“And,” I added, “walkers may have trouble crossing the tracks.” That was what we’d taken to calling them: walkers. Those on the highway, obviously, were runners. Simple, neutral words that glossed over the fact that both walkers and runners were dead people. I tried my hardest to avoid that line of thinking, because of where it led, but my encounter with my wife had forced me to consider the awful possibility that my departed loved ones roamed the earth again, violent and inconsolable. But the possibility of meeting someone else I’d once known drove me away from the city. I wasn’t certain I could face that again.
“Maybe,” Julia said. “But I still think we should find a gun shop somewhere. We’ll just find a phone book, and look one up.” I smiled ruefully at that.
“When was the last time you saw a phonebook on a public phone?” I asked. For the last few years, the few remaining public phones had featured cords attached to tattered bindings, and usually the phone cords themselves led to little more than wires or broken plastic receivers. Thinking back, it seemed like the signs of a collapse had been all around us.
We started out, taking our bags of food with us. The strengthening sun promised a day of unrelenting heat. Bad for tempers, I thought. Bad for attention to details. Dangerous weather. As we’d crossed onto the tracks, and walked along them into the wide expanse of the switching yard, a distant ringtone could be heard, jarring in the stillness. We didn’t try to find the phone though, and continued walking.
As we’d traveled the last few days, we’d found dozens of abandoned cell phones, laying in the streets. We’d wondered at that, until we’d heard the insistent ringing of one, a cheerful tune that brought walkers to investigate within seconds. So, that decided that. Cell phones were too dangerous to use, and too dangerous to answer.
“We need more bullets,” Julia insisted. “Maybe another gun or two. With some weapons, we’d be a lot safer.”
“We need more people with us,” I answered. “Everyone’s going to be heading out of the cities.”
“Where will we go?” she asked. “The countryside has graveyards, too.”
“True.” We walked in silence, then, each lost in their thoughts, trying to keep alert, but, privately, I admitted I wasn’t doing a very good job of it. The rail yard was huge, silent expanses of track-laid dirt and gravel, with seemingly endless miles of boxcars and freight containers.
“Well,” Julia said as we sat for a rest and a bag of chips. “We’ve made it six days. Only ninety four more to go.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. She smiled softly.
“It’s just something I tell myself,” she said. “One hundred days. Just get through one hundred days, and everything will be fine.”
I nodded, thinking about it. It meant nothing, of course, but saying it had an appeal. With all we’d been through in just the past six, surely the world would heal itself in a hundred? I’d always, on some level, imagined that whatever was happening could end at any time, but this gave me nothing to look forward to except surviving the day.
Her way was better.
The shuddering screech of the boxcar door made me drop my soda, scrambling for the gun, with its single bullet. Behind me, less than thirty feet away, the door slide on its tracks, helped along by the pale hands of those within. Packed from end to end, the car was jammed with the dead, and as the light of day hit them, they took their first steps toward us.
Without any thought to danger, they stepped out into thin air, to drop face-first onto the gravel, or onto those before them. They poured from the car, shifting patterns of sunlight through the slats revealing those that still marched forward from the depths. As the mound began to right itself, Julia and I were already on our feet, abandoning the bags of food as the cars all around us heaved open, each dumping out onto the ground a legion of the dead.
We ran between the heaps of bodies, brushing dangerously close to clutching hands, and bared teeth. As far as we could see, the boxcars opened, disgorging the legion that had packed itself within. We didn’t slow, and didn’t speak.
One hundred days, I told myself, just survive one hundred days.
With an ocean of the dead advancing behind us, we left the city behind.
Weapon balancing continues, and I've gained enough confidence to begin fleshing out the character development a bit, including the skill lists and equipment available during campaigns.
The characters will be developed through a process of determining who they were before , in their normal life. This will provide them with skills and attitudes, as well as personality traits that dictate much of how they interact with their fellow survivors. Not all survivors are friends, regardless of the circumstances, and some are bonded in ways that may hinder maximum efficiency.
These strengths and weaknesses are the core human traits the player must manage. A group must be led with care to take all of these factors into account. As incidents (game scenarios) are played out, the characters will be interacting in a variety of ways, and these interactions will not always be put on hold because of possible undead attack, or growing danger. The emotions of the characters rule them, and the player must deal with this.
I'll have more concrete rules soon. On the seventh day, though, I'm taking a rest, and allowing our story's characters to do the same.
