"Zeke's scared of fire huh? More brains than I gave him credit for but damn good news if you ask me."

"We got a gas station and a waffle house here. Good chance we can put together something that'll burn."

"Fear Fire?" Alexei was surprised by this, "Fire not hard create. Can make torch: scout protected?" he was curious how afraid of fire they were. If he held  torch, could he just walk amongst them?

Troy grinned like he had thought of something really funny and then looked at Alexei and said,

"Molotov Cocktails Comrade?", in a terrible Boris and Natasha accent.

He noted that Florence was deep in thought but decided to let her come to whatever she was thinking in her own time.

(OOC: because of the abrupt nature of the apocalypse and the generally high level of danger from being in settled areas for very long the Waffle House has only been scrounged in passing for quick and easy grabs. There is a lot of low-melt shortening in sealed containers. as well as plenty of good cookware, flatware, and utensils. not to mention a lot of sharp steak knives. Plus napkins, toilet paper, paper towels, detergents, and the gas tank out back has gauge in the store room that reads 3/4 full.)

It might take her a second to figure out the fire issue, she'd built a flamethrower before with her boyfriend for some 'inventors under 30' competition, it took place in the ballroom of a Meriott. No surprise they set off all the sprinklers and were told never to come back. She chuckled to herself , she tried not to think too much of her old life but Florence wasn't too upset about this one.

However, she knew how dangerous it was to be this many people in one place and there was other stuff she could do to help the early detection system. She could easily rog up a bottle-0n-a- string noise maker around the perimeter with stuff from the kitchen she assumed.Not like she was sleeping soon anyways, her brain was wired from the adrenaline.

Alexi wondered over to where Jake knelt changing the dressing on a woman's hand. She had fallen in the rush and confusion of recent hours and cut her hand on an axe that strapped to her pack. Alexi knelt down as well.

The cut was deep, but they had done a good job of keeping it clean and wrapped tightly to keep the wound closed and limit bleeding. Alexi pulled his medical bag out of his pack and quickly set to cleaning away the clotting and disinfecting the wound afresh. Staunching what little blood flow that trickled from the wound he then began carefully suturing the wound. All the while he profusely apologized for a lack anesthetics.

Troy was standing looking at shelf full of low-melt, Styrofoam clam-shells, and sealed plastic tubs of sugar. An idea for some redneck napalm cogitating in his gray matter.

Florence recalled the fact that there was gas station about fifty yards away. More wheels turned in a brain to active to sleep. She looked at the cars outside, one was actually a Mac semi-truck without a trailer. Bobtail, she recalled the word, a semi running without a trailer was said to be running bobtail. Airlines, those trucks used highly compressed air for braking.

She could build a flamethrower.

"What's that smell?" Someone asked in the shadows.

"Blood." Another person said. "From that cut on Connie's hand."

Troy turned, following the conversation. After a thought, Florence realized she could smell the blood as well.

"Hey, we should do something about that." Another person said. "The rain is slowing down, with these winds that scent might carry."

"Bound to be some cleaning supplies in here. This place hasn't been completely looted."

He began searching through the cabinets and bins for something appropriate, also keeping an eye out for containers that would make effective incendiary delivery systems.

(OOC: there are several gallons each of bleach, alcohol disinfectant, and muriatic acid based concrete cleaner. There are several food grade five gallon buckets of powdered waffle mix. The buckets could be used to mix in.)

Oh snap! The parts were all here within spitting distance practically. Little bit from here and little bit from there. The parts were similar to how she'd made one before  so she was sure she'd have no problem whipping it together. She'd wait till she had some sort of working prototype before she offered it up, all that mattered in the end-of-times was results. Don't tell me you can get me a ham sandwich, serve that biotch on a plate.

She'd rig up the perimeter alarm real fast then immediately get to working on the flamethrower. She stood up silently and rushed to the kitchen to get to work. It wasnt that she was ignoring people but you can't stop the innovation train once it leaves the station.

The sun rose on a humid morning. The rains had finally passed but left everything drenched and the air so wet that they were all sweaty and sticky before the sun was fully up in the east.

Troy had set to work on his redneck napalm with a small crew of others to keyed or scared to sleep. They had mixed four buckets, about half full or a little more, with a foul smelling mixture that was probably going to cause them all to die of lung cancer by age sixty. If they lived that long.

(OOC: Please make an Ingenuity roll to develop a delivery system.)

Florence had used wire, a light bulb, a 12 volt battery, and a bunch of forks all scavenged from the Waffle House to make a simple circuit nearly a hundred meters long. It gave the restaurant a buffer of about twenty yards on each side. Using the forks as stakes, she ran the wire, attached the light bulb, and used the battery to power it. It anything tripped the line it would pull the connection lose and the light bulb would go out. A silent warning. The flamethrower proved to be harder. Well, heavier really.

(OOC: please make an Ingenuity roll to see how well the flamethrower comes together.)

01:23, Today: Troy Roberts rolled 6 using 3d4+1.  Ingenuity.

Troy put a crew together cleaning up the blood and other things that might attract Zeke, made sure there were sentries watching for the approach of the dead or the living, and left the new girl alone as she worked on what was either a bug sprayer or, and he was betting on this one, a flame thrower.

"We'll be moving further from the interstate as soon as we're ready. Too many dead on it."

He went through his fucking heavy load of gear with a hikers eye and shook his head.

"Anybody that can shoot who doesn't have a gun?"

12:41, Today: Florence Whitley rolled 9 using 3d4+3.  Ingenuity.

Troy sat pondering a good method of employing his newly enriched mayhem mixture. But, it was proving a problematic; so far he was sure that they could dump the mixture onto the undead and set it ablaze or they could set the buckets alight use something akin to a redneck catapult to fling the flaming, napalm filled buckets at a horde.

He would have to outsource this problem while he took a nap.


Florence was busily slapping together everything for her flamethrower. It worked well, the tank pressure was too high, but it worked. It worked so well that it launched the entire gallon and a half of gasoline she had scavenged from an abandoned Ford in around three seconds. She would either need to start over with a new deign and incorporate some sort of fuel condenser or she would simply have to a denser fuel for her fire. Otherwise, her flamethrower would take a lot of refilling or be connected to a fuel drum.

The alarm system Florence was happy with, every little bit of extra safety was welcomed. When. She did end up sleeping that would certainly help allow herself to let her guard a pinch down. She wasn't one who needed the praise of others, Florence just got her jobs done and moved on, survival didn't hinge on whether people got their egos petted, other than in some specific and dangerous situations.

The Flamethrower while functional technically didn't work as well as she needed it to. Luckily it wouldn't be too hard to strip it down and rebuild it to have more fuel efficiency, couldn't have it burning up its load that fast with fuel scarcity being what it was. She would take it apart and see what she could do to fix the issue.

Sleepy Troy Sat down near Florence.

"I got four buckets of Hillbilly Napalm, uncle Winston's recipe. Styrofoam and gasoline and a couple of proprietary family secrets."

"I bet if you pump it through that badass fire gun you built it will slow things down to just about the right flow, or at least I'm willing to bet you can figure it out."

He glanced around at the senttries he could see from here and then pulled his cap down over his eyes.

"I got to catch a little sleep before we head out again..."

Florence was running numbers, concepts, and ideas through her mind when she nodded off sitting in the bench seat she and several others had removed from a truck to pull up rubber matting to make o-rings and washers. Someone slipped a poncho liner over her while she slept, when she got nice and toasty she simply collapsed onto her side with the woman sleeping next to her. They both slept so hard they never noticed the finally rage of the storm before it blew eastward.

Troy had settled in to catch a nap, say several hours worth, even told others to have the sentries wake him. But once he stretched out in his hammock, hung between a shelf and a doorjamb, he did two things that discouraged any attempt to wake him; he snored like a Harley Davidson with a bad exhaust leak and clutched his lever action rifle to his chest in his sleep.

They were tired. All of them. Taking turns on watch for just an hour at a time. It had been a trying day. The overrun of Ringgold. The ambush. The trek through the woods. Running into the Crows. Scrambling cross country. They storm and the horde moving through it. Gunfire waking everyone. The run to waffle house as the battle raged on the highway nearby. The machine guns again. Sleepless fear until just after dawn.

They were beat. It almost got them killed.

A sentry noticed the noise, the sound of ATVs not far off. He went to take a peak. Coming down the road from the other side of the interstate was a short column of six ATVs and around twenty people on foot. The last of the kids and their new allies. The sentry was standing at the edge of the Citgo parking lot hiding in a ditch when they started under the overpass Florence had hid under during the night.

The shots took a moment to register. In the meantime the other sentries began shouting and shooting as well. It was a hell of a wake up call. Troy was on his feet and staring out the backdoor into the woods beyond before he realized he was awake an that there was firefight going on out front.

Florence shot upright, took two strides, and dove under a steel prep table before she was good and awake. So had two others who were piled in with her. It was turning out to be a day to match the night she had been through.

"If you don't have a gun get out the back door into the woods! Watch your asses! Zeke don't give a fuck if we got other problems!"

"If you got a gun get in cover and get ready to cover them 'til they get clear! And keep your heads down!"

He looked for Pike and Jake as he headed out the front door of the Waffle House, using the cars in the lot for cover, to support his sentries.

He scanned for the shooters with the intent of engaging them with some suppressed .30-30 rounds.

Jake was the first person Troy spotted. He was laid out on his back next to one of the sentries, an older woman name of Bess, and both bore gunshot wounds to their torsos. By the look of the wounds Troy figured they had been moving to cover when they were shot. Other sentries were firing on the attackers and leaving a fair number of bodies on the ground.

There were four quadrunner ATVs that had .30 machine guns, old Browning 1919A3 models, set upon tripods that had been secured to the rear rack of each. Turning sideways to their opponents this the machine guns at a comfortable height that made using them very intuitive. And extremely deadly. There were already seven dead or dying among the little party of survivors from Ringgold.

He sighed.

Alexi was frantic, working to save the lives of a young boy and twenty-something woman almost at the same time. The boy took a bullet, most likely a ricochet, that shattered his tibia and severed an artery. The woman had been returning fire from a window until a bullet passed through her neck just under her chin.

Florence was beside herself. Who ever the attackers were we really going all out. Taking a chance to glance at the scene she was shocked to see what amounted a group of teens and a handful of adults bearing down on these people.

Florence was getting real sick of gunshots waking her up, but it didn't seem like that would be changing anytime soon. Hell of a rude awakening yet again and her body jumped into automatic. Before her brain was even fully conscious she was on the ground under a table as traded gunshots rang out all around them. People were obviously attacking. Effin first day, couldn't just let her have a good first day.

Florence had seen some of this before but mostly from afar, she had been as smart as could be about avoiding drama between people since the apocalypse. So much for a perfect record.

She found herself not terrified but really annoyed and angry, people attacking other people was the single most idiotic thing in the middle of the God Damn apocalypse. Everyone was already being hunted and eaten alive by the living dead and still human beings found a way to be petty and cruel towards each other.

She'd grab her ar-15 and load it, all while crawling flat as possible, she was not about to catch a bullet for just wanting to be around people again, course fate was sort of a dick like that so she'd just have to be as careful as she could. As Florencee crawled her way to under an open window where she could cover those escaping into the woods. Florence took a couple deep breaths . She had to fight, even if she wasn't John Rambo. She wasn't a fan of violence, but if it came down to it almost everyone nowadays had lost their filter to prevent themselves from violence in the name of self protection. If there was another solution sure, but when someone shows up shooting, they didn't come to bargain.

She

(OOC: Good job guys, heroic with be murderhobos. it would make a good scene in TWD. Please make a roll for combativeness and a roll for perception please. Once I have the rolls I will andvance the scene and offer some options so you both die in very creative and Cthuhlu-ish ways. Muahahahaha!)

Ooc- lol I'm not trying to be a murder hobo, someone had to at least try and cover the escape for the Squishies.

22:21, Today: Florence Whitley rolled 11 using 3d4+1.  Perception.

22:20, Today: Florence Whitley rolled 9 using 3d4.  Combativeness.

12:28, Today: Troy Roberts rolled 9 using 3d4+1.  Perception(reroll).

12:28, Today: Troy Roberts rolled 7 using 3d4+1.  Perception.

12:27, Today: Troy Roberts rolled 12 using 3d4+2.  Combativeness.

Flo:

Ooc- lol I'm not trying to be a murder hobo, someone had to at least try and cover the escape for the Squishies.

ooc: You have no idea how cool it is to see you say that.

Florence scampered over to a vantage point that offered everything; cover behind cinder blocks, low to the ground, good field of fire, direct line of sight to the enemies avenue of approach, and support from nearby allies. However, it also let he see that the tail end of that horde from the night hadn't quite moved on. What looked like a few hundred, possibly a few thousand of the undead were shuffling through back towards the over pass with gunfire acting like a dinner bell.

Several bullet slammed into the wall just to her right as one of the machine gunners cut loose with a burst at the Waffle House. The bullets chewed up the outside quickly and sent a trio of bullets whizzing into the Waffle House. No one screamed or called out as Florence regained her composure and aligned her rifles sights.

She hoped that meant that no one just died.

Exhaling like she was taught by others who were no longer among the living, she took up the tension on the trigger. Not only did the trigger squeeze take by surprise but she was amazed to see the five spent casings laying along the base of the wall. Wow, she thought, that was too easy.

Looking up at her intended target, an man firing on the machine guns around a hundred yards away she was oddly glad to see that a camouflage clad teen was dragging him back out of the way. The man was clutching his arm where a bullet had struck and yelling and pointing at the gun. She assumed he was ordering someone else to take over.

Florence was lucky her ass hadnt already been shot. It was just that after so much bullshit from the world bravery didn't seem that hard. What was he worst hat could happen? Death? Well death loses alot of its gusto when it becomes such a common occurrence and expectation. Not to say Florence didn't get scared, hell no matter how common death is there's still some effed up part of you that still wants to live.

It comes down to focus and a little bit of luck. Florence wasn't the type to sit through a whole firefight if she had to. If everyone could get away was all that mattered,more dead people did nothing to help humanity thrive.

She would try to shoot at the engine blocks of their vehicles. The only way to guarantee they couldn't chase you in vehicles was to take said vehicles out of commission. They could have the damn waffle house it was people she was trying to protect. Once she broke their toys they could easily retreat and regroup with minimal bloodshed.