Zombie Run – Session 1

We delved into our first foray with Savage Worlds.  Somethings were done wrong, some things went right, some things I’d like to do over again but my time machine isn’t working.

A small introduction to your cast going clockwise.  The characters were picked at random by the players out of 8 total possibilities -

• Sonny Payne – A homeless man on the streets of NYC.  He knows this is the work of the aliens.  He’s a survivor first and foremost.  [and his friends who'll you'll see later.]
• Melissa Montenegro, the daughter of a retired Spanish ambassador, raised in England who is in NYC to visit the birthplace of her mother.  An older woman she is in her 40′s played by Laura.
• Travis “Bubba” Howell -A good ol’ boy with a truck and runs the Howell Feed and Seed back in Barnswallow Missouri where he has a large family.  He’s been a bit reluctant to say why he was in NYC when the event occurred.
• Alok “Roj” Persaud – Roj as he’s known to his friends is a political science major from India going to NYC.

Each of these two has taken a couple of others under their wing although their allies play only a small part so far and we’ll leave them nameless except of Crazy Mary who is another homeless person that’s came with Sonny.

These four and 16 others are holed up in the Baxter building.  It’s been a month since the first reports of the infected occurred, dismissed as rioters, crazies, terrorists.  But within days the ‘rioters’ had become a global phenomenon and things swiftly went to hell in a hand-basket.  The infected are crazed mindless killing machines fueled by a adrenaline rage that gives them great strength and speed although they’re a bit spastic.   Being bitten by the infected leads to the wounded ‘turning’ within hours and joining the mindless throngs.   There is no cure.  If you’re infected you will turn.  Not every bite infects but the odds are stacked against you if you are.

Two scavenging parties that went out over the two weeks prior to today have failed to return.  The parties were both 10 men and women strong against Roj’s recommendations.  He believes the ability of the creatures to sense the uninfected is strengthened the larger the group of non-infected there are.  It was his recommendations that put them on the sixth floor of the building as that seemed to be beyond the creature’s abilities to sense mass groups.

Just last night  another group a couple of blocks down the group that was holed up on the 3rd floor of a building was swarmed by infected and presumably destroyed.

With the loss of the two scavenging parties the group lost most of its youth and the majority of its firepower although Bubba retained a MP5 he picked up off a downed S.W.A.T. officer.

Now things are looking a bit grim.  They have enough food to feed the 20 remaining survivors for perhaps a week although water isn’t a problem thanks to Melissa’s pushing to fill everything that would hold water in the early days before the power went out.

They decide that the ability to protect themselves with something more than boards with nails in them is of higher importance and trek on foot during the hottest part of day 31 of the event to the police museum about a mile away which also included a small police force.  The infected tend to retreat into the cooler parts of the buildings out of the heat during the hottest parts of the day and aren’t nearly as active or present.

Bodies in front of the museum yielded some valuable finds, a police car with the keys in it, Roj, picked up an MP5 of his own, concealed under a body although they found few other items of real value, a couple of flashlights, some MRE’s and the like.  Good stuff to be sure but not the rocket launchers they were all secretly hoping for.

The sound of engines alerted them and they retreated into the police station to watch from concealment.  Two teens on scooters went by in the street, fairly harmless looking but the group decided to let them go by without flagging them down.

The noise though woke up four infected who were slumbering further back in the station who attacked. The battle was short although furious and the two sub machine guns proved to be pretty valuable.  Bubba and Roj gong full auto decimated the infected but not before Sonny Payne was seriously bitten.  Melissa heals his wounds, and her own, using up medical supplies brought by Roj. The three of them trade secret looks as she cleans the savage bite mark on his shoulder.

As the last of the infected dropped inside the police station the growing sound of a swarm of infected pursuing the scooters swelled and then receded outside the building.

[Game Mechanic - If a non-infected takes damage from an infected of more than 1 wound then at the end of the encounter I make a secret roll to see if they've been infected themselves.  The group doesn't know the result of this roll or of subsequent rolls to see when the bitten actually turn.  Typically a bitten turns withing a few hours, fewer more often than several.

In regards to the swarm outside if the fight inside was going on with gunfire when the swarm went by then portion of that herd would peel off and enter the building but the group managed to kill the initial group fast enough that it was all quiet by the time the swarm went by.]

They pile their haul into the police car and head back to their building without further incident.  There, guns leveled at Sonny Payne they take away his new found fireaxe and lock him in the back of the police car and retreat upstairs.  They do leave him a water bottle and a MRE.

It’s not long before a single infected, following the car randomly takes the right turns to end up in the parking garage and senses Sonny where he’s cowering in the floorboards in the back seat.  It starts beating on the glass but has trouble getting through.  Sonny does a Jedi mind trick on it and manages to retreat away by kicking out the glass on the opposite side and then carefully opening the door and slinking away leaving the infected still trying to get to him by going through the window.   Sonny carefully sneaks away down the line of the group’s parked vehicles and holes up in the stairwell and blocks the door using some of the furniture the group filled the stairwell up with.

After a night of trying out MRE’s and watching Little Mermaid for the 18th time on the single DVD/TV player combo unit they have that’s running off an inverter attached to a car battery, the group comes back downstairs to check on Sonny.

Since he’s still able to speak semi-coherently they quit aiming guns at him.  Directly anyway, they’re still pointed in his general direction and discuss their next step.  Sonny, having left his MRE in the car and spending the night hungry remembers where some restaurant supply houses are and the four of them head that way.

The first one they come to is barricaded from inside and when they knock a voice yells at them to go away. They spot another man on the roof who looks over real quick and then ducks back sporting a pistol.  They offer to trade but the group inside wants only ammo and our group has none to spare.   In spite of Sonny’s uncanny ability to come up with bullets by scavenging.

They leave and move on to another place.  There they find it open although not unoccupied, Sonny’s flashlight highlights 3 infected eating various glops smashed out of cans.  They charge but not before Roj and Bubba unleash bursts on two of them turning them into rag dolls.  The third makes it to Sonny who beans it with his fireaxe on the way in and one of the others puts a bullet into its skull.

The gun fire though has roused many infected who begin to move toward the sound.  The group hurriedly moves some furniture in front of the broken door and retreats further into the building.  There they find a cornucopia, coming up with all the food they could want short term and a panel truck to haul it in.  As the infected outside wander away unable to find the source of the noises they load the truck up with food, building a barricade in the back for Roj to hang out behind while the other three are up front.

They head back to their building but not before a bullet grazes Bubba’s shoulder, shot through the window glass. A burst of automatic fire, probably assault rifle calibre rips through the top of the truck and punches holes in various cans of peaches, tomato paste and corn but doesn’t do any damage and Bubba floors it.

They head straight back to their building and park the truck on the garage with back up against a wall and retreat upstairs to enjoy some of the fuits of their labor.

[Unbeknownst to them, they were followed and another group of survivors is deploying outside their building while they sleep.]

They’re shaken awake in the early hours of the next morning by Tony who likes to listen to the radio, there’s a 6 hour loop that’s still playing from a college station and Tony does like  his rap and hip hop, strangely enough for a middle aged electrician out of the Bronx.

There is now a looping EBS message, the voice male and somehow distinguished sounding that says all many major urban centers are going to be nuked in an effort to stem the infected before they start to spread further out into the country and if you can hear this you have 24 hours to get 150 miles distance.

That puts a crimp in their plans and they go into overdrive gathering gear and rushing it downstairs to the garage levels.

They decide to take three vehicles, Bubba will be driving his Surburban as the lead car along with Melissa and six of the other survivors.  Joe, a subway employee is going to drive the Voyager with 5 of the group and Sonny is going to drive the panel truck with Roj riding shotgun.

Surprised to find themselves under fire as they exit the building the surburban takes several hits, one almost taking Bubba out and another burst doing damage to the SUV.   Everyone ducks and the truck surges ahead although leaking steam to disappear down the street.

The minivan isn’t so lucky and takes a lot of damage from a burst of automatic fire that destroys the engine and steering and it continues across the street and smashes into a building. The passengers bail out and try to surrender although a couple are gunned down as they exit the vehicle.

This distraction though proved beneficial to the panel truck and it escapes relatively unharmed although it does take a couple of hits.

The group meets up and continues toward the Brooklyn Bridge only to find it choked with cars and impassible.  There’s some discussion and then the swarm of infected following the sound of the vehicles is sighted and they all make a break for the pedestrian walkway on foot.

They’re chased but with the use of gasoline, molotovs and suppressive fire from the MP5′s they manage to put enough distance between them and the pursuit to escape.

They start looking for transportation and come up with a single car even as the infected are closing back in.  They pile 14 people, somehow, onto and in and around this car, Bubba and Melissa inside and Roj and Sonny in the truck (hood open).   The car is barely able to move but move it does.  As the swarm of infected are working closer one of the people on the roof falls off  and Sonny spots a large wound on his leg.  Whaaaa?  He leans around the trunk lid and spots Crazy Mary concealing a bloody blade.  He takes a moment to consider the situation and then another person falls off the roof, this one also with a large slash on his leg.  Roj and Sonny both start yelling “Crazy bitch on the roof is knifing people.” even as the swarm chasing them is deflected by first the one and then other of the wounded people.

[Mary's bio explains she's a survivor and she failed her spirit/guts check and saw the best way to speed the car up was to lighten the load.  Which she did.]

Bubba aims his MP5 upwards and puts a hole through the car roof and through Mary and she loses her grip and slides backwards smashing the truck lid down onto the ones in the trunk.  They push it back and then reach around and haul her body sideways off the car where it tumbles to the street.

Down to eleven the car is able to go faster and they manage to leave the pursuit.

They continue their trek out of the city, cross two more bridges, swapping cars until they manage to hit the Jersey shore.   They find a city bus that’s still operable and head west, managing to get enough diesel to keep the bus moving for several hours although due to road jams and such they have to backtrack and detour in several places.

They arrive at a small wide spot in the road, a small mall, a truck stop and a handful of buildings. They spot a sign for a gun store in the mall.  Leaving one group to oversee the re-fueling and the two older people and the pregnant girl on the bus, another group is going to head to the mall to see what they can come up with.

What will our survivors find waiting for them at the mall?  A plethora of guns and ammo or empty shelves?  Will they have to fight their way through waves of Infected or will it be eerily quiet?  Tune in next time and see.

Photo Credits