Day Three
Julia and I rarely speak. We walk in near silence, each looking for signs of trouble. The streets are empty, and the day passes without event.
“Maybe it’s over,” she says at one point, as dusk begins to fall. We’ve been walking toward the highway for hours, and I hoped to get some rest once we’re on an overpass, with long views in both directions. Now, however, I consider that this long, dark incident could have already ended. Maybe whatever terrible event had brought the dead from their graves had run its course.
I nodded, thinking how good it would feel to sit down, my back against the cool concrete barrier along the median. Over or not, civilization had yet to return, and we’d be spending another night outdoors. “Maybe you’re right,” I allowed.
We continued. The gun was heavy in my waistband, but I’d grown tired of holding it. The dense bullets rattled in my pocket as I walked. I’d spent an hour around noon dangerously engrossed in learning the weapon, and how to properly handle it. Julia had shown me the safety first, and then how to free the cylinder in order to reload. How to clear the weapon, to make certain it wasn’t loaded, assuming there came a time I wouldn’t want it loaded. For now, the idea was strange. An unloaded gun…
I must have checked the safety a hundred times, until she’d told me to stop.
The gun had been her father’s, and he’d taught her to respect the weapon, and to handle it, should there be need. When that time had come, of course, she'd been unable to use it, even on someone who was already dead. Julia didn’t elaborate on what had happened to her parents, and I didn’t ask.
The highway loomed ahead of us, a straight road out of the city, suspended fifty or sixty feet off the ground on thick concrete pylons. The entry ramp was deserted, and we expected the roadway to be likewise. We were right. We walked another hour before stopping to rest, and saw no one, not even in the streets that spread below us. We stopped to rest.
In the silence, faint commotion could still be heard. Gunshots. The occasional scream. The low rumble of a civilization in collapse. I handed the gun to Julia, and closed my eyes, ignoring the grumbling of my empty stomach.
“Wake me up in a couple of hours,” I said. “If anything comes up onto the road, wake me up sooner than that.”
I assumed she agreed, but was asleep before I heard her.
This game just won't stop!
Yesterday, movement rules, sneaking, scouting, they all just jumped into the game.
Now I'm running mock scenarios, trying to get a feel for how durable characters are. so far, they look like they stand up pretty well, until things go wrong. A volley of gunfire doesn't stop a zombie, forcing a reload under pressure. An area thought to be clear of the living dead suddenly turns out to be dangerous. A fumbled weapon, or a stumble when moving in haste. All of these things endanger the confidence of the character. After that, a single person is very vulnerable, which is the way I want it. The characters must work as a group, to succeed, and shoring up each other's confidence is a big part of that.
I'm also trying to attend to practical matters, such as how much ammo the players go through, and how long each player's game turn takes. I'm considering adding a timer, for so-called stress mode play, where players have 30 seconds, plus 30 more seconds for each character they control. Whatever you can't get done, doesn't happen. We'll see how it goes...
