Others

Tall and densely packed trees on either side of the road keeps Leo paranoid that someone was watching him. He feels too open—too exposed as he walks down the barren highway.

Every once in a while he'll come across an abandoned vehicle to loot for supplies, but Leo hasn't found anything too worthwhile yet. A majority of the vehicles he's checked seemed to have already been picked clean by someone else. Either that, or the owners grabbed whatever they could carry when they ran out of fuel.

Whether it was lucky or unlucky, he hasn't encountered any undead since the campground. While he doesn't necessarily want to be fighting walkers all day, the experience points they offered has him itching for a fight. He could easily see himself getting addicted to the grind and rewards that it offered.

Eventually, Leo notices a large sign on the side of the road. "Flintrose, twelve miles," He reads aloud, stepping up to the dirty sign to get a better look. Above the faded and dirty lettering was a cartoony looking lumberjack.

'Must be the town mascot,' He muses, adjusting the straps of his backpack and continuing down the quiet road with a quickened pace. The town could easily be full of undead or have a group of survivors within, but finding shelter was top priority.

Considering the surrounding forest and mascot, he presumes that the town was home to hunters and loggers. What that means, is that with any luck, he could hopefully come across some firearms. If anything, he needs more ammunition for the revolver he picked up back at the RV.

After several hours of walking, Leo spots a few mailboxes on the side of the highway. Next to them, was a gravel road leading up a hill. If it weren't for the mailboxes, he could have easily missed it. The narrow road was shrouded by trees, completely concealing the properties it leads up to.

Alongside the gravel road, just barely jutting out from the thick branches was a small white sign. Bear Ridge Rd. The sign reads, making Leo pause in thought. 'If the undead weren't enough, now I gotta watch for bears too?' He shakes his head lightly, rubbing his forehead with a small sarcastic smile on his lips.

A few dozen meters away, he quickly spots another set of mailboxes, signifying that there were more houses further down the highway. Figuring that he must be pretty close to town by now, he wants to loot the outlying properties nearby to make sure he's prepared for anything he may encounter in a more densely populated area. 

Even if scavenging took longer than he wanted and it got dark, he reasons that he'll just rest in a house for the night and head into town in the morning. Taking a cautious glance behind him, he begins to walk up the curving gravel road.

It isn't long before he comes across the first house on Bear Ridge Rd. The small white house is single story with faded blue shutters and an attached garage. Parked in front of the garage is an old red pickup truck covered in leaves that looked like it hadn't run in over a decade.

Making his way onto the front porch, Leo places his crowbar against the wall of the house and cups his hands around his eyes as he looks into one of the dusty windows. The house is dark, very dark, but he swears that he sees something move within. Either that, or his eyes are playing tricks on him.

Grabbing his crowbar back up, he goes to the front door and tries the knob. Thankfully, it's unlocked, and the door swings open with a loud creak.

Light streams past his shoulders as he steps over the threshold, his form casting long shadows across the dark living room. Hearing a snarl to his right, he barely has enough time to react as a large man barrels into him from out of the darkness.

Raising his crowbar up to defend himself from the sudden attack, Leo falls to the ground with the undead man on top of him. "Shit!" He shouts, narrowly avoiding the bloody mouth snapping mere centimeters from his face.

While the zombie was easily larger than Leo, the points that he put into Strength comes in handy. With a heave, he manages to shove the undead off of him and quickly clambers to his feet.

Being in the light, Leo gets a good look at the tall figure attacking him. The man's face is torn apart with the front of his white shirt blanketed in blood. Meeting the zombie's gaze, a dull pair of milky dead eyes stare back at him with a feral hunger.

Not wanting to give the zombie a chance to fully recover, Leo swings his crowbar with all the strength he can muster. With a woosh, the metal bar connects with the man's head eliciting a vicious thwack, the impact snapping his head sideways, sending him tumbling onto his back.

Raising his crowbar over his head, Leo brings it down onto the undead man's face with a heavy swing, collapsing his skull with a sickening crunch.

[+1 Level in Melee Weapons]

[+3 Exp]

The notifications made him sigh in relief, signifying the defeat of the dead man. "That could have ended badly," He says quietly with an awkward chuckle, wiping his forehead with his sleeve.

After seeing something move within the shadows when looking through the window, he should have trusted his gut and took more caution. A simple careless mistake nearly cost him his life so early on into his adventure. The deadly encounter was a wakeup call for him, he'll have to be much more careful in the future when entering new areas.

Leo looks at his bloody crowbar with a frown adorning his face. The zombie's mouth was so close to him that he could smell his rotting breath. Having only taken place in less than thirty seconds from beginning to end, the short bout took him completely by surprise.

Finding the light switch near the door, he lets out a sigh as he flicks it and nothing happens. "Of course it doesn't work, I don't even know why I tried it." He mumbles quietly, moving into the dark living room as his eyes adjust.

Taking the flashlight he scavenged earlier from the campground out of his backpack, he turns it on, the bright beam lighting up the dark room. Moving over to the fireplace on one side of the room, he pockets a small blue lighter that caught his eye sitting innocently on the mantle.

Sweeping the light across the room, nothing else of interest stands out to him. There is a shelf filled with movies against one wall, but he has no use for those. If there were any survival books, he'd be much more intrigued.

Walking out of the living room and into the connecting kitchen, Leo begins to search the drawers and cabinets. He already has plenty of food and water in the two backpacks in his inventory to last him a month, but he makes sure to make a mental note of what is stocked in case he returns at a later date.

One of the drawers has a few packs of different types of batteries he quickly stuffs into his backpack, some of them being for his flashlight. If he finds a portable radio or something equally useful that ran on batteries, he'd have a way to power them.

Opening up a cabinet in the corner, Leo grins ear to ear at what was inside. "Jackpot," He says appreciatively, gazing at the many bottles of alcohol. While he doesn't want to use it for drinking, the alcohol would be great for disinfectant and Molotov cocktails.

Wanting to be able to carry as much as he can, he leaves the kitchen and begins to search the rest of the house for another bag or container that he could throw in his inventory. Since he only has twenty slots, he didn't want to fill them up with individual items, preferring to instead store the stuff he finds in bulk.

There are plenty of windows in the house, but because of the high trees and it being later in the day, the house is dimly lit at best.

Stepping into a dark hallway, Leo eyes three closed doors in front of him with a tense caution. The last two doors that he opened had zombies behind them. Understandably, he is feeling rather nervous moving forward.

He clenches his crowbar and flashlight tightly in his hands—swallowing hard as he walks towards the closest door. The man at the front of the house didn't look like he had died of natural causes. Leo didn't think about it at the time; but now, he is worried there could be another undead somewhere within the house.

Getting an idea, he firmly knocks on the wall with his makeshift weapon with four resounding strikes. No sooner than he finishes, he hears a low groaning growl coming from a door further down the hall; followed by several dull thuds. It sounds as if whatever is behind the door has knocked over a chair or something similar.

Taking calming breaths, he slowly creeps towards the room that the animalistic growling is coming from.

Standing in front of the closed door, Leo puts his ear against the wood to try and get a better picture of what he's about to go up against. He can hear that whatever is growling, was also shuffling around inside. When he knocked on the wall a bit ago, the zombie must have become more active.

From the movement, it sounds like there was only one, so Leo is pretty confident that he could come out on top relatively easily. The only reason he struggled with the last zombie, was that it had the jump on him.

Not this time though, now he is ready and much more alert. He won't be taken by surprise by the undead again.

Clenching his jaw, Leo takes a deep breath and releasing it through his nose before stepping back and kicking the door near the handle with as much force as he could. The frame splinters as the door swings open with the sound of shattering wood.

Charging in, it only takes him half a second to spot a pudgy undead woman standing in the middle of the room. Her speed is sluggish as she lurches towards the intruder, however the ambling corpse wasn't able to get more than a couple steps before Leo's crowbar caves in her head with a crack.

[+3 Exp]

The Exp notification dings following the weapon's deft impact, signifying the zombie's quick demise.

"Easy peasy," He utters quietly, gazing around the bedroom. The room wasn't too large, but it was able to easily fit a king size bed and a fairly large wardrobe in one corner. On the other side of the room holds a dresser and a small desk that has a bunch of paperwork on top.

Moving over to the desk, Leo begins to rifle through the drawers in hopes of finding something useful. Most of what he finds is more paperwork, but he does manage to find some sewing needles and thread that he promptly throws into his backpack.

You never know if you'll need to repair your clothes. Heck, he may even get a skill for sewing or something similar.

Throwing all the clothes out of the wardrobe, he luckily is able to find an old duffel bag at the bottom. Returning to the kitchen, Leo places all the alcohol bottles into the bag and tosses it into his inventory with a grin. There are ten bottles in total: all of them being moonshine. 'Must be a distillery around here or something,' He concludes.

He is already getting ideas of how he could light groups of undead on fire if need be. Molotov cocktails will be excellent for clearing areas. However, he will need to be careful to not light any buildings on fire—unless that is his goal of course.

Returning to the hallway, Leo begins to search the other rooms of the house without any issues. The only things of use that he ends up finding other than the alcohol were a couple more lighters and a sixteen centimeter long knife with a sheath that'd surely come in handy.

It'll be slightly more dangerous, but he figures stabbing the undead through the brain will be quieter than clocking them in the head with a metal bar.

Just as he finished strapping the knife to his hip and stepping outside, he hears five loud rapid gunshots relatively close to his position.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

Following the gunshots, the sound of a vehicle can be heard coming down from further up the road. Not wanting to test his luck on whether they were friend or foe, Leo hurriedly goes back inside and shuts the door behind him.

Peeking out of the living room window, he watches as a large blue pickup truck speeds past the house he's hiding in. From what he can see, he was right to hide when he did.

There are four men in the vehicle in total: two in the front, and two sitting in the bed of the truck. If the large rifles they are carrying isn't enough to dissuade anyone to not to mess with them, the dead dead body tied to the hood definitely is.