User:Systemshocked/superbreak

Super Breakout

“This is Alpha Dog, we are hovering above Fort Perryn. Nobody left, over.” Pilot Travis Meltzer basically yelled over the noise of his chopper and the loudspeakers. All radio contact with the outside had stopped a few weeks ago, after a tirade of pleas for help. The last one was a garbled message with a single yell of pain and some moaning before it cut off. A few days later standard flare check-ins had stopped as well. It was Travis and his crew’s job to pump the message “If there are still people alive in Malton, please signal any ways you can.” Over and over using stereo systems jury rigged to the sides of the aircraft. More then a dozen others were doing the same, with a grand total of 39 rescues since the operation started three days before. Travis had seen some sporadic gunfire a few times, and more then once a blood-curdling yell had overshadowed the stereos and the helicopter blades. Malton seemed to be completely overrun by the Undead.

Near the end of their rounds, the crew of Alpha Dog were about to head back for decon and debrief when a flare blasted into the dimming sky. A quick look down revealed what looked like a massive fight was going on around and on top of the roof of a shopping mall. Sparse flashes of light and lots of shambling movement highlighted this, as a team of survivors spray painted a white “H” on the largest piece of flat surface the top of the building offered. Kicking it into high gear, Travis quickly lowered the chopper in for a closer look and turned off the speakers. No reason to attack more attention then the chopper’s blades and the flare didn’t cause. Hovering above, the gunner of the helicopter threw down a rope ladder, a fairly zombie-proof means of ascension. One after one, survivors climbed the ladder to freedom as a ravenous horde clawed and stumbled up a maintenance staircase whose door had fallen off its hinges. The first human, a regular looking guy with an axe slung on his back, collapsed in a heap on one of the chopper’s seats. The second was a police officer, and he was followed by a guy in a lab coat, and finally a guy who looked like he’d been through hell, coated in shredded rags and covered in bloody cuts and bruises. He was placed under the watchful eye of the radio operator’s 9mm pistol. The rope ladder was pulled up and the aircraft began a slow climb up just as the zombie horde covered the hastily spray painted H.

“Ricky, tell HQ we got another boatload, with a ossiblepay fectedinay.” The helicopter spent around five minutes headed towards base in total silence before the police officer spoke up. “Thanks for the save,” He began, rubbing an aching shoulder “We thought we could hold them at the ‘cades. The zeds…they seem to have been attracted to flair shots. That’s why we stopped.” He paused to cough and take a breather while the doctor looking fellow, sitting awkwardly far away from Tattered Rags Man, continued. “Then some dumb…people went out to look for more people. They found people all right. All the neighbouring safe houses were ravaged; bodies everywhere. One guy, a former clerk at a Cybershack, was poking through the remains when one of the “bodies” took a chunk out of his arm. More of the corpses got a second life and rezzed all around them. One guy made it back, told us the whole story before he got peckish and ate my best bud‘s calf. Shiatsu sort of hit the fan after that, and now it‘s just us.”

The chopper landed back outside the base and all of the occupants went through Decon. Turns out Ragman was indeed infected, and got a 9mm migraine for the trouble. The rest were clean, and were sent to the base’s psychiatrist and hypnotherapist. Then they’ll be dropped in a random North American city with no memory of their life in Malton, $4000 bucks in their pockets, and a formal apology note from Necrotech. Ah well, no one really needs to know about this anyways. Approaching his barracks, he gave a high-five to some of his friends and settled down on his bunk with a nice 50’s sci-fi magazine. Suddenly, Travis head a yell coming from the direction of Med/Sci, the base Necrotech had built to study a few of the cases of Zedness it classified as “Unique“. He grabbed his sidearm from his pocket and raced to the scene. A pile of zombies had, well, piled on top of each other and escaped the containment cages again. Some of the sentries were already dead, some wounded, soon to be dead, and others were putting up one hell of a fight. All across the massive concrete wall that surrounded the city of Malton, which stood a crazy thirty feet high, zeds were climbing on mountains of their brethren and coming towards the military base. Apporaching the nearest pile, Travis emptied his magazine into as many zombie heads he could see in the mass of necrotic moving tissue.

More soldiers rushed from their bunks and into the fray, making short work of the first wave. And yet, more and more kept poring over the wall. Grabbing a fallen trooper’s SPAS-12, Travis started laying the hammer down to the next wave, until his boomstick clicked empty. Officially giving up, he threw the piece o’ junk into the masses, taking at least one Zed out with a good solid Sclurch! Before racing to his crew’s barracks, only to find it on fire. A mad man who once ran the officer’s mess was hurling Molotov Cocktails through the windows of the building, on a mad quest to rid it of evil he didn’t even know was still in there. So, Travis said a quick goodbye to his comrades, and headed for the Chopper Pads. Most were blown up when a stray spark from Thor knows where ignited a fuel tank and spread to the fuel pumps. Only one was left that hadn’t taken off, and it’s blades were already spinning. He raced to he chopper, managed to pull himself in just as it lifted off into the black sky. The city of Malton had fallen, and so had the quarantine around it. Mass evacuations of the surrounding townships would take days, and they didn’t even have hours. God help us all.