In reply to GM (msg # 988):

"MOVE!" Rod yelled, trying to get people out. Fortunately the dead where slow. The shambling horde had to make it across the parking lot to get to the survivors headed for the breach. While a lead was good, slowing down that mob would be better...but his mind went blank. If only he had those explosives before they all went up with the other truck.

ooc-11:57, Today: Rodrigo Rod Duma rolled 6 using 3d4+1.  Plan to slow down mob
This message was last edited by the player at 15:59, Sat 29 May 2021.

With the minivan, it looked like they were going to have enough vehicles to get everyone clear.  She wanted to wait for Rod and her husband, but someone had to lead the way back out.

"Follow me in the Subaru!" she shouted at the truck.  She wouldn't go too far, just get them going in the right direction.  Rod could jump into his truck and catch up with the rear guard.  Once they were clear with some open space around them as a buffer they could pull over and get reorganized.

Walking around the car, she shut all the doors and climbed into the drivers seat to backtrack they way they'd come in order to get back onto their proposed route south.

"Keep an eye out for trouble," she told the two teens in the back.  "And someone make sure your Dad makes it out."

It went surprisingly well. Everyone made it out. The little convoy soon made its way up onto the interstate.

Stopping in a clear spot with plenty of sighting distance they disembarked and everyone found their family, friends, or traveling companions. Roberta and her husband had a tearful reunion as their children watched from the car.

Rod was shaking hands with people, their names and thanks coming so fast that it seemed like everyone was named Harvey, they owned a kid named buddy, and sure did appreciatedeverythingyoudidforusyoungman. Rod just smiled and kept shaking hands.

A tall man walked up holding a leaflet, "So, what is this farm. And just how close is it."

The plane shot by overhead and waggled its wings, "I'm heading back to the barn amigos, i'm getting pretty low of push-water for the machine that winds the rubber bands in this thing. I should be back in less than an hour. Keep an ear to you radio."

In reply to GM (msg # 991):

Rod called the Subaru via the radio from the truck. "Ok, Roberta. Now I think it's safe to say you HAVE to come with me to the boat. I am sure your husband and kids could accept the idea of living on an island paradise. Whatta think?"
This message was last edited by the player at 03:00, Wed 02 June 2021.

"Yes, we'll check out the boat with you," Roberta replied over the handset to Rod before replying to Roy.

"Thanks a bunch, Roy.  We'll probably get organized here and then keep heading south along the planned route."

Dropping the handset back in through the window where she'd reached in to grab it when she'd heard the radio, Roberta straightened up to face her husband, again.

"The plan is to head south to the naval ship docked in Alabama.  You've probably already heard of it as you've been traveling with the guys from the farm that were headed that way.  I spotted you driving them from one of their aerial surveillance photos.

"So is the house a radioactive hole right now?"

It was the only reason she could think of to explain why they'd left home.


OOC: She'll let Rod handle explaining the farm and finding the 6 guys that were headed for the cruiser.

"Yeah, um, babe. Well, hell there is no other way to say. No else made it." He said. He watched her face and tried to keep his voice calm. "Our folks, my brothers and sisters, the neighbors. No one. I had the kids in the car over in Cochituate when the bombs fell. FEMA had a camp there. I volunteered to get us all inside. But, it too late. I was too late."

"The people there, well, lets just say its was good that they were horrible. It made me leave to save the kids. It's how we wound up meeting you here and now." He said. "The ship, that one of the coast of Alabama is in trouble. We were there. Something about an issue with the last upgrade of the software controlling the ship. They were having trouble getting it up running. Sounds like you could really help."

"No one else made it out?" Roberta asked, thinking of her parents and other family members.  Her neighbors, friends from work.

"Didn't they warn anyone?" she asked, recalling the picture of Boston she'd seen.  What had they done?

"Most of them died to those dead cannibals. Sorry to tell you, hon." He seemed sad that he had to be the one to deliver the news to her.

(OOC: from this point on the husband and children will be yours to work with. you can post for them as you see fit. You are welcome to make up a starting character for the role of the husband if you wish. The children will be dependents without character sheets. Congratulations.)

Rod does a headcount of each of the survivors. He made sure to get names, and then relayed those names via the radio to the plane. If any of the missing where among those numbers, the pilots would know.

"Don't call them cannibals, please," Roberta said to her husband as she reached her arms around to hug him.  "Those people didn't choose to eat other people, they're infected."

After a long moment, she let go and returned to business mode.  She wanted to know everything, but they were on a schedule.

"We were heading for the ship anyway, but now it doesn't sound like it's going anywhere until I get there, maybe.  If it's not broke, DON'T UPDATE."

It was frustrating when people updated software for no other reason than whether an update was available.  Working in software, she knew new bugs and incompatibilities were potentially introduced with every fix and feature the developers added in.  Her grandfather always used to say, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."  The same applied to software.

Internal tirade completed, she continued, "I've never worked with military software before, but if they don't have an expert on hand, I'll see what I can do.

"If someone that knows the way wants to ride up front with Rod, they can lead the way.  He's gotten me this far and definitely a better driver than I am.  I'll introduce you when we make camp."

OOC: We'll leave John without a character sheet as I don't want to run more than one character.  However, Roberta will periodically inform him of what he should be doing.

A quick decision was made. A little over half of the new survivors chose to go to the farm while the others chose to head south with team Subaru. A couple of men went along the edge of the interstate checking cars until they found two more that would run.

One was cutesy pink VW Beetle convertible. With the top down the survivors were able to keep six kids and two adults in the little car. The other was an old Nissan hard-body pick up truck that dated back to the early 90s at least, if not older. But its little four cylinder engine purred light a new one. The little truck accommodated the other four adults and the gear they had with them.

Doing a quick check of their supplies, Rod wasn't sure that the little convoy to could make it all the way to the coast with both of the pickup trucks, but it would be very damned close if not. At least they had a few more people to help with chores, security, and to share the driving now.

"Heya guys." The plane shot past overhead. "Want me to take the others to the farm or run ahead of you? If you run west under the interstate you can hide out at Big Daddy's Pawn and Gun. It looks pretty well empty from about forty feet. It'll take a little time to get these folks close to farm. I'll call for a ground escort to. GO hide, I should be back within an hour or so. I can still lead you south for quite a ways."

"That's ah...10-4? I think? It sounds like trucker talk...but yes, do that." He did a head count, and made sure the trees and bushes covered the vechiles while they waited for the plane to return.

Hearing the directions over the radio, Roberta loaded her family into the Subaru and lined up to go west to the pawn shop to take cover.  She didn't want to know what Rod was doing in the bushes, but figured it wouldn't take him too long to conclude his business and get on the road.

It took a little over an hour before they heard the drone of the plane again. Almost at the same time there was a crackle of static and then, "Hello folks, listen there is a storm running hard from the east. If you get onto highway 75 again I think we can make a quick run south for about ten more miles and then get onto highway 59 west just across the Georgia state line."

The plane passed by overhead. The children waved. In response Roy waggled the planes wings up and down.

"Head southwest on 59 for about ten miles." Roy continued. "There is a big traffic jam there but I will try to navigate you past it. If we can make it that far before dark I think we can keep out ahead of this storm."

The plane was just circling back around when the engine sputtered and cut out. As they all watched in morbid fascination the little aircraft just sort of fell out if the air and went tumbling end over end across the ground. The wings flew off and came apart. The tail broke loose and flopped up along side the fuselage. The plane flipped over onto its top, crushing the cabin in, and skidded for several hundred feet before it smashed into a thicket of pine trees with a crash.

In reply to GM (msg # 1002):

"Oh...shit!" Rod said, and turned the steering wheel. He started headed for the crash sight. "Roberta, get everyone else out of here!" Rod radioed. He needed to see what brought the plane down. If there where people on the ground with anti-aircraft weaponry..., well, that complicated things. Of course, he would like there to be survivors-but given such a crash it seemed unlikely.

Roberta was aghast at how quickly the plane had failed.  Luckily Rod had given her something to do and she took the lead and tried to follow Roy's final directions.

"Are there any doctors in the group that came with us?" she asked her husband.  She tried to focus on the road and not what had just happened to a new friend.

Rod and several of the other raced to the plane. It was a mess. Parts and pieces were everywhere. Roy was dead. There was a no way to know how many bones were broken, but Rods guess was most of them was close to the truth. There was smoke coming from the engine bay. Another man opened it as another person pulled the little extinguisher from the cockpit. They doused the engine with foam. It was bang up too, almost broken completely loose from all six mounts.

Rod and watched as another man pointed to something. He realized what the problem had been in a instant. The engine was an old piston pusher, from the 1970s at least. On the backside of the fuel injector body there was a missing fuel line. It appeared to have broken lose just behind the threaded nut that held it in place. Less than a quarter inch separated the line and the injector body. The interior of the engine bay stank of fuel. It was a miracle a fire hadn't led to an explosion.

Rod sighed. It was a tough loss.

Roberta was walking up with a woman named Neva Varaji. She was a pleasant woman, thirtysomethig, and a British-educated Indian woman who had only just moved to America to work in her new husband's practice in Boston when the dead began to rise. Roberta could sympathize with the woman who's entire family was either in England or India. And her husband had died. Roberta just cringed at hearing the details from the others as they walked to the plane.

The wreck was terrible. Roy was broken so horribly no one could bear to look upon his body. The plane had fallen due to a faulty fuel line, or was suspected of such. And now, another good person had died.

In reply to GM (msg # 1005):

Rod felt sick, but he was getting used to horrible sights. It was a different thing when you knew the body in question. At least Roy would not be getting up and attacking people. While his brother and mother's death had been horrible to see, it was worse when they had risen and tried to get him to join them.

He staggered back to the car. "Roberta come in. Got bad news..." He says. He told her what happened, but kept the details loose. They had learned the hard way you never knew who else was listening.

She wanted to bury him properly, but there just wasn't time.

"We should see if there's anything important to salvage from the plane and take anything he may have been carrying for his family," she suggested.  "Then light the plane on fire to send him off."

She didn't know if they'd ever be able to get any personal effects back to the farm or even if he had any family at all, but it was all she could think of.

"Can't." An older man said. "No offense, ma'am, but the fuel in the plane has been leaking out. Vaporizing. The vapors will go up with a boon and set the rest off. A blast like that would be loud. Draw the dead right here to us."

A woman looking away from the wreckage blanched and added, "Nothing to salvage here either. That poor guys was mashed up pretty bad. I think part of his insides were forced out his anus. Seen it before when I was working in the ER."

She pointed a finger at the group at large and stated firmly, "I was a admin specialist. All I did was go from patient to patient and gather info for forms, filings, and billing. I am not a nurse. Nor do I want to be one. That shit was bad enough, now that everywhere you look you can see something terribly gross just walking around I especially don't want to do any of that stuff."

"Rig it." A boy called from the back. He looked to be all fourteen or fifteen. "Set off hen we leave. Make a diversion. He's dead. And he was a good person. He'd be ok with it."

"Yeesh...next time lie to me about what happened. I am gonna have nightmares about that for weeks." Rod replied. As there was nothing more any of them could do, he got back into the truck and headed out to meet up with Roberta and the others.

"I'm OK with blowing it up," Roberta replied, looking back at the teenager.  "Do we have what we need to do it safely?"

She didn't want to lose anyone else today.

"Si, Amiga." A man called from the back. "We have all that is needed."

The man who spoke and the man next to him held up a small tool kit. The one who spoke gave her a weak smile as the other gave her a thumbs up.

As the people went back to their vehicles the two men quickly set about rigging a means to ignite the fuel. People repacked themselves and their gear. Rod thought about the time he and a friend cut class and slipped into a parking garage to boost a Farari F40. It took his mind of what happened to Roy's insides.

Roberta gave her children a reassuring hug as her husband checked the map and pointed to a state highway up the back side of one the mountains ahead. It was low, only 800 feet, and was called Sand Mountain.

"We should cut back on this state route, cross the mountain and keep further east of the trouble area in northern Alabama until we get about eighty miles further south, at least." He told her. "It's bad over in central Alabama. Their must have been a lot of refugees there."

Everything was about ready to go when a young woman screamed and pointed, "Look, they're here! They're here!"

A small horde, leading more undead drawn by the recent fighting, fell upon the wreck. One of the men was smothered under a wave of undead, at least twenty of the things, as he fired on them. His sacrifice gave the other man the time he needed to pull a lighter from his pocket.

"Go!" The man screamed, then he struck the lighter. The explosion wasn't one of those fancy movie fireballs. It was sort a whoosh, pop, then boom. The fireball was smallish and slowly rolled skyward. Parts flew out in lazy arcs of flames and smoke. But, it was still terrifying to witness.

"How did they get so close so fast?" Roberta said as she watched more men needlessly die.  She didn't even know their names.

Without any time to spare, she climbed back into the Subaru and took the lead as she reached for the radio.

"Rod," she said into the mic, "we'll take the lead.  John knows where we need to go."

Rod's gun was out when the fireball went up, for all the good it would do against so many. They had approached undetected, which was bad. It meant those things could be quiet, and the wind had made sure the smell did not give them away. They all had to leave, pronto.

Hearing Roberta's message, he replied. "I will be on his tail!" He said, revving the truck and making sure as many people where in it as possible.