Post by Rock114 on May 24, 2014 17:46:19 GMT
Well, here's that story I said I was saving for today. This story is the most recent one, taking place after everything, including my shootout with the bandits in the other thread. Also, something I'm a little proud of, everything that happened since I accidentally shot Nate was all on the same character, so this guy is one badass survivor. He's fought bandits and zombies and all that, but he hasn't been stopped... yet, at least... Also, this story is pretty long, but it's also one of my favorites.
Anyways, I'd been playing for months by this point. I still had my AK and my revolver and my good gear. After the firefight in Zelenogorsk that I'd survived by the skin of my teeth and more luck than I'd care to admit, I'd managed to salvage just enough gear off of the bodies to give Nate and I a head start on our newest (and first successful) expedition to the North. We gathered our food, maps, GPS trackers, and even got our hands on the parts to fix an ATV. We took the ATV about 30 feet before Nate crashed it, forcing us to walk to our destination. It was a relatively quiet journey to the Northwest Airfield. We didn't encounter many zombies or other players, staying to the woods the entire time and navigating using solely our maps. We found a crashed helicopter and looted some badly needed medical supplies. Oh how those blood packs, morphine, and epi-pens would come in handy later...
It was dusk by the time we reached the outskirts of the airfield and even that small amount of light was rapidly disappearing below the horizon. Soon we would be unable to see anything without a light source of our own. But we weren't the only ones at the airfield.
Another player was on the runway and Nate sighted in on him. We had split up to find entrances and Nate found his first. He began a tense standoff with the other survivor, asking me over Skype for permission to take the shot. I told him to hold off but I could hear the impatience in his voice rising by the time I finally made it to the standoff. Fortunately we managed to come to an agreement, and this player (let's call him "Rick" for simplicity's sake) was new. He hadn't yet decided to shoot anyone he saw in fear of his supplies, so the three of us decided to team up and loot the airfield. I was already remembering my first day with Danny and the other guy we met, and how we teamed up only to be swarmed a few minutes afterward. But now I was more heavily geared and there was tons of loot around for the taking. Things should be okay, right? We could handle whatever came at us this time. Right?
For about an hour we scavenged around the airfield. Our desperate search for a set of NVGs only provided us with about three more clips for my Glock. (During this time Nate and I had grown careless and were screwing around. He fired a round off next to me as a joke about friendly fire. I didn't get the joke, thought he was actually trying to shoot me, then kneecapped him with my Glock to show him who was in charge. after that he proceeded to chase me around the airstrip firing his pistol at me until Rick managed to calm us down). We went back to our looting in the pitch blackness of night, but our welcome was worn out. The dead never liked houseguests and we were about to get the metaphorical boot up our asses from them.
Rick and I were scavenging near the control tower when we heard Nate call for help. He started firing his own assault rifle and to us it sounded like World War III was beginning. Over all of the shooting and screaming we dashed to where Nate was, but it was too dark to see anything. The shooting had died down but I could still hear about a dozen of those undead assholes around us, so I asked Rick to pop a road flare while I swept the area with my AK. Red light washed over the area and revealed a gruesome scene. Zombie corpses were scattered over the ground, but the majority of the group had cornered Nate in a storage shack and swarmed him. He was on the ground, out cold, but still alive. He was screaming as they dug into him, eating and ripping and tearing. I hosed them all down with lead and rushed over to Nate. I gave him morphine, a blood pack and brought him back to the world of the living with an epi-pen while Rick provided covering fire from the zombies that had noticed the little scuffle Nate had been in and decided to invite themselves over. I got Nate on his feet and told him to run for the fire station next to the airstrip and the control tower while Rick and I followed, giving him covering fire.
Then Rick went down. A zombie came from the side and knocked him out, causing him to begin bleeding. Nate was already gone and preparing to meet us in the fire station so it was just me and the new guy. I'd been here before: A friend of mine was unconscious and bleeding as zombies closed in from all sides, preparing to trap me. I had a choice to make: Leave Rick behind and save my own ass, or stay here and do what I could for him. Leaving people behind wasn't something new for me. I'd been forced to leave Nate behind in Zelenogorsk in order to survive the bandit attack and the zombie swarm so I knew I was perfectly capable of it.
But could I live with that? Another life was in my hands, another choice. Nate yelled for us and wanted to know what was happening as I tossed the decision around in my mind.
I remember what I said to Nate very clearly. "Fuck my life man, I'm staying out here! Rick's down!" I sent the last of my bullets out to the approaching zombies and without even stopping to reload began to treat Rick. I jabbed an epi-pen into him and the only thing I could think of was how fucking stupid I was for staying here to help this newbie when I knew how long the odds of my survival was. The epi-pen got Rick back on his feet but as soon as he started thanking me I told him to shut up and haul ass into the fire station. There hadn't been time to bandage him or give him a transfusion.
Halfway to the doors Rick passed out from the blood loss. Nate managed to get his hands on an LMG inside the fire station and I could hear that thing going off like there was no tomorrow. The louder noise of the LMG would draw the zombies here from as far as Vybor, I thought. Rick's earlier flare had died by this point plunging me into utter darkness again as I could here the furious growls of the zombies coming for me as Nate's LMG continued to thunder. I hadn't risked my ass just to let Rick die here, so with the horde a few seconds away I picked Rick up and carried him into the fire station with a good six of them on my tail. I set Rick down in the middle of the floor and ordered Nate to cover me while I went to work. He popped a flare so I could see and the red glow gave the inside of the building a demonic appearance which was oddly appropriate. I blood packed him then bandaged him, then a zombie hit him again and he started bleeding a second time. I dragged Rick further back while Nate continued to guard us. I patched Rick up again and zombies drew within a good five feet of us even with Nate dutifully putting himself between us and them. By this point, their sheer numbers and relentlessness were beginning to wear us down. We'd all taken hits and were all pretty shaky, but we still had our guns.
Finally Rick came around. I told him to grab a rifle I had seen in the fire station tower and to get ready to help us shoot our way out. Nate's LMG had run dry so he took out his AK74-u and prepared himself. Once again I remembered an earlier experience, of standing in another fire station with both a friend and a stranger and preparing for another zombie swarm. Hopefully this time would be different. Locked and loaded, we opened fire.
With all three of us shooting the zombies inside the building didn't stand a chance. Our mad dash for escape took us out the rear entrance. Rick and Nate carved a path forward while I covered our six. A few sneaky ones managed to get inside our formation and tear us up, but Rick and Nate dispatched them before any of us went down again. Battered and bleeding we emerged from the airfield at the northeastern perimeter. I fired a few final shots into the base to discourage pursuit, or so I told myself. We were away from any light sources and I was paranoid about one sneaking up on me so close to freedom. We'd used up half, or maybe even more, of our ammo since the beginning of the fight and all of our medical supplies were gone. What little food we had before the attack had been used up to restore as much of our blood as possible. Rain began to fall on us as we fled to the north, low on ammo with no food, meds, or shelter. But we were alive. We'd survived by the skin of our teeth, Rick included, and no one had been left behind. Surviving is nice, but being a hero is better.
Anyways, I'd been playing for months by this point. I still had my AK and my revolver and my good gear. After the firefight in Zelenogorsk that I'd survived by the skin of my teeth and more luck than I'd care to admit, I'd managed to salvage just enough gear off of the bodies to give Nate and I a head start on our newest (and first successful) expedition to the North. We gathered our food, maps, GPS trackers, and even got our hands on the parts to fix an ATV. We took the ATV about 30 feet before Nate crashed it, forcing us to walk to our destination. It was a relatively quiet journey to the Northwest Airfield. We didn't encounter many zombies or other players, staying to the woods the entire time and navigating using solely our maps. We found a crashed helicopter and looted some badly needed medical supplies. Oh how those blood packs, morphine, and epi-pens would come in handy later...
It was dusk by the time we reached the outskirts of the airfield and even that small amount of light was rapidly disappearing below the horizon. Soon we would be unable to see anything without a light source of our own. But we weren't the only ones at the airfield.
Another player was on the runway and Nate sighted in on him. We had split up to find entrances and Nate found his first. He began a tense standoff with the other survivor, asking me over Skype for permission to take the shot. I told him to hold off but I could hear the impatience in his voice rising by the time I finally made it to the standoff. Fortunately we managed to come to an agreement, and this player (let's call him "Rick" for simplicity's sake) was new. He hadn't yet decided to shoot anyone he saw in fear of his supplies, so the three of us decided to team up and loot the airfield. I was already remembering my first day with Danny and the other guy we met, and how we teamed up only to be swarmed a few minutes afterward. But now I was more heavily geared and there was tons of loot around for the taking. Things should be okay, right? We could handle whatever came at us this time. Right?
For about an hour we scavenged around the airfield. Our desperate search for a set of NVGs only provided us with about three more clips for my Glock. (During this time Nate and I had grown careless and were screwing around. He fired a round off next to me as a joke about friendly fire. I didn't get the joke, thought he was actually trying to shoot me, then kneecapped him with my Glock to show him who was in charge. after that he proceeded to chase me around the airstrip firing his pistol at me until Rick managed to calm us down). We went back to our looting in the pitch blackness of night, but our welcome was worn out. The dead never liked houseguests and we were about to get the metaphorical boot up our asses from them.
Rick and I were scavenging near the control tower when we heard Nate call for help. He started firing his own assault rifle and to us it sounded like World War III was beginning. Over all of the shooting and screaming we dashed to where Nate was, but it was too dark to see anything. The shooting had died down but I could still hear about a dozen of those undead assholes around us, so I asked Rick to pop a road flare while I swept the area with my AK. Red light washed over the area and revealed a gruesome scene. Zombie corpses were scattered over the ground, but the majority of the group had cornered Nate in a storage shack and swarmed him. He was on the ground, out cold, but still alive. He was screaming as they dug into him, eating and ripping and tearing. I hosed them all down with lead and rushed over to Nate. I gave him morphine, a blood pack and brought him back to the world of the living with an epi-pen while Rick provided covering fire from the zombies that had noticed the little scuffle Nate had been in and decided to invite themselves over. I got Nate on his feet and told him to run for the fire station next to the airstrip and the control tower while Rick and I followed, giving him covering fire.
Then Rick went down. A zombie came from the side and knocked him out, causing him to begin bleeding. Nate was already gone and preparing to meet us in the fire station so it was just me and the new guy. I'd been here before: A friend of mine was unconscious and bleeding as zombies closed in from all sides, preparing to trap me. I had a choice to make: Leave Rick behind and save my own ass, or stay here and do what I could for him. Leaving people behind wasn't something new for me. I'd been forced to leave Nate behind in Zelenogorsk in order to survive the bandit attack and the zombie swarm so I knew I was perfectly capable of it.
But could I live with that? Another life was in my hands, another choice. Nate yelled for us and wanted to know what was happening as I tossed the decision around in my mind.
I remember what I said to Nate very clearly. "Fuck my life man, I'm staying out here! Rick's down!" I sent the last of my bullets out to the approaching zombies and without even stopping to reload began to treat Rick. I jabbed an epi-pen into him and the only thing I could think of was how fucking stupid I was for staying here to help this newbie when I knew how long the odds of my survival was. The epi-pen got Rick back on his feet but as soon as he started thanking me I told him to shut up and haul ass into the fire station. There hadn't been time to bandage him or give him a transfusion.
Halfway to the doors Rick passed out from the blood loss. Nate managed to get his hands on an LMG inside the fire station and I could hear that thing going off like there was no tomorrow. The louder noise of the LMG would draw the zombies here from as far as Vybor, I thought. Rick's earlier flare had died by this point plunging me into utter darkness again as I could here the furious growls of the zombies coming for me as Nate's LMG continued to thunder. I hadn't risked my ass just to let Rick die here, so with the horde a few seconds away I picked Rick up and carried him into the fire station with a good six of them on my tail. I set Rick down in the middle of the floor and ordered Nate to cover me while I went to work. He popped a flare so I could see and the red glow gave the inside of the building a demonic appearance which was oddly appropriate. I blood packed him then bandaged him, then a zombie hit him again and he started bleeding a second time. I dragged Rick further back while Nate continued to guard us. I patched Rick up again and zombies drew within a good five feet of us even with Nate dutifully putting himself between us and them. By this point, their sheer numbers and relentlessness were beginning to wear us down. We'd all taken hits and were all pretty shaky, but we still had our guns.
Finally Rick came around. I told him to grab a rifle I had seen in the fire station tower and to get ready to help us shoot our way out. Nate's LMG had run dry so he took out his AK74-u and prepared himself. Once again I remembered an earlier experience, of standing in another fire station with both a friend and a stranger and preparing for another zombie swarm. Hopefully this time would be different. Locked and loaded, we opened fire.
With all three of us shooting the zombies inside the building didn't stand a chance. Our mad dash for escape took us out the rear entrance. Rick and Nate carved a path forward while I covered our six. A few sneaky ones managed to get inside our formation and tear us up, but Rick and Nate dispatched them before any of us went down again. Battered and bleeding we emerged from the airfield at the northeastern perimeter. I fired a few final shots into the base to discourage pursuit, or so I told myself. We were away from any light sources and I was paranoid about one sneaking up on me so close to freedom. We'd used up half, or maybe even more, of our ammo since the beginning of the fight and all of our medical supplies were gone. What little food we had before the attack had been used up to restore as much of our blood as possible. Rain began to fall on us as we fled to the north, low on ammo with no food, meds, or shelter. But we were alive. We'd survived by the skin of our teeth, Rick included, and no one had been left behind. Surviving is nice, but being a hero is better.