You are downtown amidst tall corporate towers, condominiums, banks, and expensive hotels. A narrow path has been cleared between hundreds of jam-packed vehicles. Personal belongings lay abandoned, irrelevant and ownerless.
Somebody has spraypainted streets are watched, buildings full of them onto a wall.
Scattered remains of early-outbreak casualties are mixed with a few more recent victims.
- You turn over what you thought were heaps of clothing, finding bones within. You pilfer through wallets, and open bags and suitcases. A pamphlet, found tucked underneath the wheel of a shopping cart, advises residents to avoid the city centre; another pamphlet warns that the city outskirts are equally dangerous, given the number of people congregating at the border.
Braving the approach to Newcombe Towers, you try to get a look inside its black interior but see little beyond the distance the sunlight reaches—small squares of light outlined by the frames of the windows. A notice reads: No admittance. All residents will remain in their rooms until this block is evacuated. Trying the front doors, you find them locked.
There is a broken window nearby; you poke your head through. You hear water trickle down from the ceiling above. You smell mould. Almost missing it, and quiet enough that you must hold your breath to listen, you hear a shuffling—a foot scrapping against carpet, silence while the body weight shifts, and then the other foot. The shuffling seems to head from the left to the right, stopping for a moment before turning back the other way. Endless, mindless, pointless pacing. Stimulus-driven listlessness. Such a creature can only thrive on the energy of another. You back away from the window.
Inventory:
- You carry only a smashed radio. It has been a long ride. Your blue jeans are shredded; the T-shirt, stretched 2 sizes larger, is more red than white, and your shoes are unaccounted for. You wear a crumpled paper party hat.
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