EPTI originally posted in the WarZ forums but it seems like very few people actually read it, and only one guy commented, so I guess that means I have things to improve on... It's A LOT of fun to write this stuff since I'm basically reliving the highlights of our day when we play the game hehe. But at the same time I wanted some nice constructional criticism since I don't have any experience in actual writing so help me out guys!
“What we did, was it wrong?”
Crouching down on the gritty sidewalk along a wooden fence, I peek out slowly with my pair of binoculars.
“Good the coast is clear” I thought to myself.
Before I could continue my train a thought, a shrill cry came from behind me around the corner.
“Ahhh! Melee man, get over here and take care of this fucker for me!” cried Sandy, one of my two friends whom I have bonded with since my teenage years. The other is Larry, and with these two by my side I feel like we can survive anything. Every waking moment I have in my life I am thankful for these two from the bottom of my heart.
Picking myself up from my crouching position, I quickly threw my binoculars to the side and unholstered my rusty handy-dandy “hammah of thundah”. An ordinary person would view my hammer as your typical rusty neglected forever alone hammer, but in my eyes I was wielding the “Mjölnir”, Thor’s hammer, the hammer of the gods. Quickly I rushed over to Sandy’s aid in a sprint, cutting the zombie off from its attack. Raising my hammer to the sky I struck the zombie squarely in head three times before it fell over in a bloody mess.
“Why can’t you just whack it with your baseball bat?” I asked, exasperatedly looking at Sandy.
“Hell no, that would mean that I would have to put my pistol away!”
“But wouldn’t it be better if you just kept your baseball bat out and switch to your pistol when we actually need it?” I replied as I rolled my eyes.
“Bitch please, I only work with bullets” she says after a short pause.
As this little ordeal was going on, Larry was busy diligently scavenging the area for any extra supplies. I had not met with Larry until most recently; he had been scouring the region solo for a few weeks now, thus gaining a formidable amount of survival experience. Before then he had been traveling with a group of tight knit friends, Elvis, Johnson, and Cheech. I once asked Larry about what happened to them. All he would tell me was that Cheech somehow got his hands on a bottle of Vodka, chugged the entire bottle by himself and shot Elvis and Johnson with his pistol as they were coming in to check on the guy. Apparently he unloaded an entire clip on the two before realizing what he had done, and as a result he attracted a horde of zombies. He ran in panic, tripped over their dead bodies and the three musketeers ended up on the dinner menu of the undead. Needless to say I could only bury my face in my palm and shake my head.
“Hey guys I found some food and ammo” yelled Larry.
This was great; we rarely ever stumble upon ammunition on our scavenging expeditions. In fact now that I think about it we find more weapons than ammo…
“Sweet, this looks like shotgun ammo, I’ll bag it if no one else wants it.” I gleefully said.
Unfortunately for me it looked like my faithful companions had already claimed the goods for themselves.
The day went on, and soon nightfall came. It was quite a nice haul that we brought in. By the end of our escapade we gathered a considerable amount of water, a nice stash of food, three mossberg shotguns, and a handful of ammo. With this amount of supplies we had scavenged I was sure that we would be able to last another solid week even with confrontations.
Perched up on the side of the fence next to dumpster, Sandy brandished her new weapons. “Mmm yeah, this is nice, gonna pop some bitches with this.”
“Oh yeah? You sure about that? I think I want that gun for myself”
Sandy looked up to Larry who had been leering at her the entire time as she snuggled with the gun in tow. “Bitch don’t look at me funny” she raised her gun and took aim right at Larry’s face. I chuckled and continued on sorting out all of our loot. Hurriedly I stuff my share of the food and water into my bag. Being in the city, it was not very safe, in fact it was one of the most dangerous places to be in the region. This was only a day and night operation for us, after we’re done here we had to leave immediately. Unfortunately for us our worst fears had come to fruition this night.
“Hello?”
All three of us froze and stopped whatever we were doing. I looked up at Larry and then Sandy. They both glanced back at me and simultaneously understood that we were indeed not alone in the area. What we had heard was a feminine voice, not too far away from our position, possibly from an elevated spot. The three of us picked up our loot and got our kit ready to go, with guns out in tow. Slowly we crouched down and creeped along to a fence near the source of the voice. In this unforgiving world, you never know who friend or foe is. Only the tight bond that the three of us had nurtured was enough to suffice for the trust we had in one another. Other than that, it’s anarchy, liars, bandits, and stone cold killers are all that’s left.
“Hey is anyone out there? I thought I heard some chattering. I’m not hostile, I’m willing to share my loot,” yelled the voice.
With that we confirmed the general location of this voice. It seemed to have emanated from the direction of the multi-level apartment building in the center of the city. Unsure whether or not it truly came from the building, we needed to go there regardless in order to get a better view of the city for our own safety. It’s not that we wanted to hunt down other survivors for their supplies, we’re just doing it for our own sake, it’s kill first or be killed; a cruel fact of life now that we must follow.
I took out my binoculars and scoped out the windows of the buildings just in-case I could catch a glimpse of the girl. “Alright we can’t just be walking into the building guns blazing through the front entrance. Going into a building like this is like a deathtrap around each corner if we aren’t careful.”
Larry and Sandy nodded in agreement. We crept towards the side of the building down a dank alleyway where the moonlight did not shine. After a few minutes of examining the area, I pointed to an open window just above a gritty green dumpster. Upon climbing up the dumpster I took point and slowly entered the building. No matter how stealthy we thought we were there was always a possibility of a zombie or a bandit lying in wait without us possibly knowing. It was a terrifying ordeal entering the apartment. The tiles on the ground had deteriorated due to neglect, the paint on the walls were flaking off, leaving brown spots and mold in the corners of the room. Newspapers, illegible documents, trash, and even bloodstains were all over the place. This was not a place you’d want to spend a night in. Slowly we continued to creep into the building. I held my fist up to signal my friends to a halt.
...
bup-bup-bup.. thump.. thump...
...
I looked back at Larry. “She’s right above us I think,” he said in a whisper. I nodded and continued on outside of the room. The three of us quickly scanned the areas quietly. Every corner, every nook and cranny. The condition of the main foyer was in no better condition than the room we had just exited. Although it may have provided shelter from zombies, I would cringe at the thought of making this my home.
After several minutes Sandy began to feel restless. She had her gun now, fully loaded and ready to go, and she wanted to make good use of it. While Larry and I were still looking around, Sandy took the initiative and peeked up the dark stairway. It was dark, horribly dark, as if you were staring into an abyss that would devour your soul if you stared for too long. But still Sandy looked on. There was something there. She could feel it, her intuition wouldn’t agree otherwise.
Two white pupils. Glaring, blank, void of the humanity that we were all once accustomed to. There was fear in her eyes, so much fear. Sandy was taken aback, she fumbled a bit as she brought her gun up to her sights. Trying to find the words to alert her comrades, she could only gasp and mouth the words silently.
“There!” she finally cried and opened fire. Immediately Larry and I swung around from our silent patrol and shot up the stairway along with Sandy. I don’t know how long the entire ordeal lasted, but it felt like each second, each shot we fired lasted an eternity, begging to see if the job was done.
Larry climbed up the stairs first “I think we got her guys.” He scratched his head. “... yeah we definitely got her.”
“Shit, that bitch.” Sandy let her arms drop and swung her rifle behind her. “Mother fucker had me scared for a sec.”
I made my way up along with Sandy, and examined the mess we had made. Indeed what a mess it was. Having the three of us gunning her down simultaneously was a bit overkill. There were gunshot wounds all over her body. I bet if I held her up to the moonlight, light would shine through the same way it shines through a slice of swiss cheese.
“Fuck yeah, look at all this loot, wow she even had a shotgun on her”
Upon hearing this from Sandy, I was shocked. Why didn’t she fire back at us... Now that I think about it this girl didn’t have a single bullet empty out of her clip. I crouched down and took a closer look at her face. She was young. Too young to have died in such a way. She was of Asian descent. Her hair was tied up into a ponytail, face dirty, clothes tattered and now smothered with blood.
“Aight, I say we hole up here and take turns keeping watch,” said Larry as Sandy emptied our victim’s kit.
“Yeah...”
I was confused. This... this didn’t feel right. We had plenty of loot. Our haul in for today was a plentiful one. Did we really need to shoot and kill her before she had a chance to say anything? She must’ve known that we were around and take more precaution given the situation. What kind of bandit would cry out in the middle of the night?
“Ooo her name was... Michelle.” Sandy said while examining her driver’s license. “Well thanks for the goods Michelle it was nice knowin’ ya.”
“Oh c’mon man we don’t need that,” I felt disgusted. I grabbed the license out of her hand and took a good look at it. She looked healthy, and happy, with a smile, which is a rarity in the world we now live in.
Larry was on watch, and Sandy went over to her own room to sleep. With a sigh I went to look for the most suitable room to get some shut eye. I crouched down under a window sill and wrapped myself tightly my coat. It was a full moon tonight, it gave the city a nice glimmer. Besides the occasional moan of a zombie, it was a quiet night, not as peaceful as I would’ve wanted it to be, but at least it was quiet.
I couldn’t sleep. The face of the now deceased “Michelle” was stuck in my mind. She was all alone... the fear she must’ve felt when she heard the three of us creeping up. When was the last time she had encountered another human being? With death and despair all around her, what kind of thoughts ran through her mind when the possibility of teaming up with another survivor came about? Anxiety, hope, fear, despair. Humanity. At one point of another she probably looked up at the moon the same way I did and questioned it. Really, what we did... was it wrong?
