This is an account of my small, occasional zombie
apocalypse campaign. Some of it is solo and some will be played out with one or
more of my regular gaming opponents. We use the All Things Zombie rules. In the
game described below, Striking Out, I play George and his group and gaming bud
Mike plays a group of gang members. We start at opposite end of the board and
both groups are searching for resources.
Recap
George and Kathy are in a relationship. They are spending
a quiet weekend at his place in the little town of Midvale Ohio when the zombie
apocalypse suddenly collapses society. They try to get out of town, but they
lose their car to marauders. They escape
on foot and take refuge in a fire station in a rundown commercial district of
Midvale. There they find other survivors, a middle aged man and two elderly
women. The fire station is a solidly built, secure structure and they discover
enough food to last the five of them about a month. They decide to dig in there
and await rescue.
Striking out
After waiting for rescue for two days George and the
others are starting to think no one is coming anytime soon. They have set
containers on the roof to collect rainwater and there is enough food for a
while, but the only thing moving in their vicinity is the occasional zombie
shuffling aimlessly by. They have no radio or TV and no way of knowing when or
if help is coming. Feeling they must do ‘something’, the group agrees to leave
the two elderly women at the fire station while the rest of the group moves out
to check some of the local businesses for resources. The zombies they have seen
so far are few in number, slow and clumsy. They bring their firearms with them
but agree to shoot only as a last resort to avoid drawing attention. Across the
street there is a pedestrian square with strip mall buildings on three sides.
They decide to start their search there.
Unknown to the survivors, local ‘street entrepreneur’
Sugar Ray, his girlfriend Cheryl and his friend Trey have wandered into the
area just a few blocks away on a similar mission. They are all that is left of
the Albion Street Rangers gang that opened fire on a few zombies early in the
outbreak and found the noise drew a horde of the things. The remaining gangers
are now using stealth as their main defense, although they are well armed. The gang’s first target is a small branch
bank. They find the door locked and struggle quite a bit to get it open. When
the door finally gives way, an alarm goes off inside. Undaunted, they move in
and find the branch manager barricaded in his office. He looks a bit like Woody
Allen, but there is nothing funny about the gun he is holding. After a brief,
fruitless negotiation the gangers back out of the bank empty handed, only to
find several zombies, attracted by the alarm noise, moving slowly toward them.
Meanwhile, back at the strip mall, George and friends have
forced their way into a Greek diner only to find it abandoned and thoroughly
looted. They continue on to Office Max, where a grizzled, tough cowboy looking
guy meets them at gunpoint. They offer to let him join up, but he is only
interested in them moving on and closing the door behind them. The group moves
on, quietly dispatching the few zombies wandering in the area. They can hear
the bank alarm a couple of blocks away, but don’t know who or what has set it
off. In one store front they find a man with a rifle and an unarmed elderly
gentleman. The pair agree to join the group but their hiding place has been
picked clean. While breaking the lock on the next store front a zombie comes
out of the shadows and attacks the elderly man. The zombie is quickly put down
by the others, but the old guy has been bitten and can’t walk on his own.
The gangers take out a couple of zombies blocking their
path and move on to an insurance agency next to the bank. The only occupant is the
receptionist. She has a pistol she found in her boss’s desk and is very
interested in joining the gang. There is no usable loot in the office, so they
decide to hit the small houses on the other side of the street. As they are
leaving the insurance office a zombie attacks and bites Cheryl. She doesn’t
seem too badly hurt, but is she infected? Time will tell. The bank alarm has
stopped but there are still several zombies in the immediate vicinity that were
drawn by the noise. The gang beats down some and evades others while making
their way to the first house. They break in and find no one in residence,
living or dead. They do, however, find a good stock of food and a set of car
keys. There is no car in the driveway, but they keep the keys, hoping to find
the vehicle. Climbing out the back window to avoid several zombies in the
street out front, they make their way to the back of the second house on the
street. There is a car in the driveway, but the keys they have don’t work in
it. Before the apocalypse Cheryl had developed quite a knack for starting cars
that weren’t hers without the keys, and she was able to get this one started
without a problem. Since this foray into the commercial district has been a
little busier than they expected, and Cheryl is starting to feel not too good
because of the bite on her arm, the gang piles into the car and heads back to
the house they have been hiding in since the trouble started. Sadly, later that
night Cheryl dies from the infected bite and then gets back up. Sugar Ray deals
with it. Their new friend from the Insurance Agency has proven herself a
reliable soldier, and is welcomed into the group.
George and company have not been having a good day in the
strip mall. The elderly man who has been bitten can’t keep up, so he and his
friend move to the fountain in the center of the pedestrian square to wait
while the rest of the group breaks into the next business, The Hair Zoo, to see
what they might find. While nothing useful turns up they do encounter three
zombies inside. A bloody battle ensues, leaving all three zombies dispatched
and Jimmy, their friend from the fire station bitten and badly injured. George
and Kathy make their way to the fountain, supporting Jimmy between them. When
they arrive, they can see that the old man won’t last much longer and they fear
that when he dies he won’t stay dead. The old man and his younger friend decide
to go off on their own. George and Kathy help Jimmy back to the fire station.
Later that evening they have to shoot him. George started the day confident
that he could do what was necessary, but by the end of the day he was starting
to doubt himself.
