text: You open your eyes and see the sun out of the open window. You watch it for a second trying to feel its heat on your body but after a moment you give up. Its winter and its perpetually cold here anyway. You get up and wander over to take in the view, you've been staying in this room for a while now. Your not sure exactly how long but it feels like around 5 months, long enough to become used to it at least.
  
  You lean out through the window and take in the sights, There are still some skyscrapers to the east looking in good condition, the stadium to the North isn't doing so well though, the roof has caved in and taken a small part of the wall down with it. Looking around you get a sense of general decay, between the points of interest are just fields of broken buildings and rubble. You know the couple of decades since the infection couldn't have done it alone so you decided it was the military. They had actually held out for years with relatively few casualties before it became airborne, after that it was chaos for a time until a 'vaccine' was found and sent world wide in an attempt to end the spread of the infection.
  
  You take one last look around then head for the door. You picked this room since it not only had a working lock on the door but actually had glass in the window, seemed like a nice touch of normality. Sadly the food has run out and you've scavenged the entire surrounding area until nothing is left, you have to move on. At least now you have a destination. Just last week you had found a decrepit old survivor mumbling to themselves in a fever and learned that somewhere to the far east past the skyscrapers there is a thriving colony, THOUSANDS of people actually living and forming a good community. The dying old man didn't have much of value but at least you got enough food to keep you full until now.
  > Down the Stairs
  You head down the stairs to check on your trap. Its a simple pitfall at the base of the stairs but it's sometimes good enough to catch a wild animal or two. Sadly no such luck today. Seems like the dead have finally managed to make the city free from even rats now.
  
  You start heading for the door when you hear a small sound outside, just a piece of wood being disturbed but your senses are attuned to listening for these things. Your now stuck, there is a back door but you don't keep it or the alleyways back there clear so just about anything could have moved in, however your pretty sure there is something out the front doors.
  > The Front Door
  You sling your pack over your shoulder and take out your metal baseball bat before edging slowly closer to the door, you need to know what's out there. It could just be a shambler who is about as dangeous as a child unless they are in a large pack. Then again it could be one of the other types. The Fast types are tricky to handle if not too smart. The mutant types, animals who got directly infected, are very dangerous. The Crazies, humans who got the vaccine too late or were bitten after getting it, they retain some semblance of intelligence but only that of a stupid  flesh craved psychopath. Then theres the 'Heralds' or 'Harbingers', Nicknamed as the 'Harbingers of the apocalypse', they look nearly completely human but the infection somehow bonded with them making them stronger and faster than normal humans while retaining all of their intelligence, of course they still feed on living and partly decayed flesh, you avoid them at all costs.
  
  Once you get close you very slowly open the door a crack and peek out. Nothing immediately visible, your going to have to open it and look properly.
  > outside
  You slowly open the door until its wide enough for you to fit through the gap, you have your bat ready and slip out into the sun. You carefully look around as you creep into the street, still nothing...
  
  'CRACK'
  
  You hear the noise from behind you and whirl around to see something stepping out of a pile of rubbish very close to the door you just came out of.
  
  You panic for a moment and consider just running away as fast as you can... when you see it more clearly.
  
  It wasn't hiding to ambush you, it's just a shambler. The slowest and least dangerous of all the undead. It was probably lying in that heap for days and only moved because of you walking nearby. You walk up to it and even take the time to do a little impression of a pro-hitter before a single clean strike caves its skull right in and it crumples into a heap on the ground. You briefly reminisce about when the outbreak first happened and it would take several hits to the head to stop them, but now you're a lot stronger and faster than an average human and sport a physique that would have belonged to a professional athlete... if there were any left alive in this messed up world.
  
  You wipe your bat clean then begin walking East to the cross-roads a couple hundred yards away, your kill-count on shamblers must be over a hundred by now but you lost count somewhere in the fifties.
  
  You now face the choice of which way to go.
  
  You intend to reach the far east side of the city and investigate if the survivors are real  however the skyscraper district was the most inhabited before the plague hit, which means it still is, only with less welcoming residents. To the North you could head up to the area around the stadium, some people tried to make a stand there and thinned out the undead but there isn't much in the way of food there since they were overwhelmed leaving the area stripped clean. South could probably take you along the highway to the suburbs which has a mixed chance of food and dangerous monsters.
  
  Deciding on the North as the safest choice for now you go that way.
  > heading North
  You jog a couple of blocks North before finding a large blockade of crashed rusted cars, you know the area fairly well and slip into a side alley to bypass it, cutting North again through the first intersecting alley.
  
  You quickly make it out onto a main road again when you realize something is moving pretty close by to the east, you carefully edge up to a car and climb it to get a clear view. There's one of the wandering hordes that frequent the area working its way down the road. They look like mostly shamblers, but you never know.
  
  The other directions look clear leaving you the choice of heading into another ally North, heading down the road West and trying to loop around on a different road or fighting your way through the mob to the east, looks like 6 of them spread out on the road.
  > north, back into the alleyways
  You're already heading North so why not continue and see what the old stadium district has to offer? The alleyways always have a chance of hiding a lurking undead but at least you're not out in the open and visible to anyone who wants to look.
  
  You easily slip through several alleyways before hearing a noise behind a closed door. Listening closely you hear some mumbling. mumbling can be very good or very bad. It means it isn't a full undead, so you've either located a survivor or a crazy, theres always a small chance its a harbinger but you highly doubt one would be hiding out in a dingy alley in this area.
  
  Of course you could just bypass it and not take the risk, keeping nice and quiet you can easily slip past and maybe even make the stadium district by nightfall. Then again finding an actual survivor is never to be passed up.
  > take it Slow and Careful as you Open the Door
  You carefully test the door and almost have it open enough to slip inside when the hinges squeak, this also causes the mumbling to suddenly stop. Well its took late to go back so you quickly open the door the rest of the way and duck in, moving quickly to the side incase of gunshots.
  
  Nothing happens and you aren't hearing movement so whatever was in here is now hiding. You edge forward and take in you surroundings. A dingy small damp room with equipment caged all along the far wall and piles of trash and random looking objects strewn everywhere. Some sort of access room for the air-con of the building behind it you think to yourself as you ready your bat.
  
  You decide that the careful friendly approach might work best since you can't see anyone in the room "Is someone there?" you softly call out. Theres silence for a few moments before you hear a quiet chuckle from the pile of trah nearest your left side.
  
  "Thats just great, its a crazy after all." you think to yourself. You ready your bat and carefully walk forward until your just past the pile when they jump out at you, bursting into a loud gleeful cackle as they swing their pipe at your head. Luckily this is just what you were counting on and as they jump you spin  and land a solid blow to their ribs, sending them crashing to the floor.
  
  You move to check if they were really a crazy or just a traumatized survivor but you see dried blood around their mouth and they are still trying to get up to attack with shattered ribs so either way they just need to be put down.
  
  You're kind and finish it quickly and cleanly before checking the room and body, packing some food for later and heading back out. "Only a crazy but hey, I have more food in my pack now than I did before so I count a win." you think to yourself as you head further North.
  > night in the Northern Alleys
  You travel until dusk is well underway before trying to locate a good place to rest, the ground is dangerous as the monster types are more active during the dark hours this close to the city centre but its difficult to find secure high up rooms since they are usually magnets for the walkers and crazies.
  
  Theres a nice building up ahead though, maybe an old hotel. You can se the fire escape is still standing and could use it to get into an upper room or you could see about the basement and lock yourself into a secure area there since basements usually have nice heavy doors and solid walls.
  > hotel basement for the Night
  The basement is closer and a solid door should hold off anything that comes by, you can always rely on the stupidity of shamblers so even if they follow you, they can't tell the difference between a door and a wall if you keep quiet.
  
  You force the lock on the entrance door and head down a short flight of stairs and through another door at the bottom  to find yourself in a small square room with the buildings power and heating equipment in it. nothing is working so you wont have to worry about the noise at least.
  
  You close both doors then use the two wooden pallets you find to lightly barricade the inner door. looking around you find the rest of the room completely empty so lay down your sheet and begin to rest for the night.
  
  Its not too long before you hear the howling some distance off and reach for your bat. Howling means mutant types and most likely dogs, your really don't want to fight a dog pack again. Last time you did that nearly nearly left you ripped into pieces and eaten.
  
  You hold your breath but when the howl is heard again its much closer, close enough to be on your scent. You swear and jump to your feet, you can make a mad dash outside and try and get somewhere up high where they can't follow or you hope they pass you by/the doors hold out.
  > run for higher ground
  You grab your things and wrench the flimsy barricade away from the door before sprinting outside, the howling is loud enough now that you're certain they are after you. Seeing a lumbering mass of teeth and muscle turn into the alleyway from the South just confirms your fears as you sprint up the fire escape, pulling the bottom section up after you. You know that the virus has made the dogs stronger faster and much much more dangerous than they were before so you keep sprinting up the fire escape only pausing briefly to see what is coming after you.
  
  Its hard to see in the dark but theres defiantly 3 or 4 smaller shadows following the larger one and they are moving at speed now towards the building. You resume sprinting until you close to the roof which you find is a single ladder to the top. You scramble up then lean over the edge to see what is going on below.
  
  You see a lot of movement punctuated by barks and yelps when you think you make out one of the dogs leaping off a dumpster onto the fire escape, it creaks lower under its weight allowing more to jump on and within seconds its on the ground with the dogs surging up after you.
  
  You stand and ready your bat. You assume the big one is the alpha and wont be able to jump high enough to reach you due to all the muscle it carries, you think it must weigh as much a a small car. The smaller ones however could probably get up to you if they were persistent so you going to have to fend them off.
  
  You glance round the rest of the roof and see no movement so prepare for the attack.
  
  The first dog to reach the top it pretty lithe compared to the others meaning it still looks like a Doberman on steroids and makes a jump at you, scrabbling at the ladder to try and get purchase. its head lines up nicely at your waist height and you meet it with a solid blow to the skull crashing it down onto its companions as they arrive. They ignore it and all start jumping at you keeping you fully occupied taking swings at them as they start to get purchase on the roof but not landing any more definitive hits.
  
  Your starting to get concerned when you hear glass smashing and see several windows are being broken out by undead inside. the dogs quickly loose interest in you in favor of the easier option of readily available food and launch into an all out attack on the shamblers trying to get out towards the noise.
  
  You take the opportunity to rest and watch the fight unfold. The Shamblers are clearly just trying to reach the source of the noise while the dogs are actively attacking and trying to rip them apart. The shamblers only seem to fight back after an attack is aimed at them specifically, ignoring the others being taken down.
  
  The mutants do easily the most damage at first, tearing several undead completely apart before they get too frenzied and start lashing out in all directions. One leaps in through the window and you hear lots of barking and growling before finally growing quiet and a shambler missing its left arm drags itself through the window. "One got itself overwhelmed" you think to yourself. You see another getting its rear leg bitten into by a shambler on the ground and hear the snap of the bone breaking before it pulled it away but it stays up and fighting until the huge muscled mutant and last smaller one tore the last of the shamblers apart.
  
  You watch the three surviving dogs feast on the shamblers before heading back down the fire escape and disappearing South again out of the alleyway.
  
  You finally relax and rest until first light when you head down into the alley again and start off North, you've got to be within a few hours of the stadium district now.
  > into the stadium district
  You can tell by the changing architecture that you are nearing the stadium, just a few hours walking at most before you'll reach it. You aren't too confident about finding food and supplies there but between the holdouts and the military trying to keep the stadium safe, as a refuge you think there shouldn't be many dead up here. They do wander, though but you get the odd impression that they never wander too far from where they died, circling endlessly for months before their flesh gives up and they become prey for the others.
  
  As you get closer you begin to see the signs of battle everywhere, buildings collapsed, old craters, and burnt out cars. They had lasted a really long time in that stadium. You never went too close yourself but you occasionally saw the lights and the signs from tall buildings or when you were scavenging nearby.
  
  Over-confidence had been their end, just as you had predicted. Their regimented daily armored patrols, scavenging squads and clearance teams had, over the years, given way to weekly lightly armed excursions and missed guard duties. Their initial efforts probably cleared 95% of the infected in the area so they rarely if ever spotted one.
  
  You heard from a few survivors you ran into right after what had happened.
  
  "The patrols were just for show and guards rarely bothered to turn up to their shifts by the end. One patrol team went out to do a mix of scavenging and clearing but they were all young had no idea what the early days were like. They went right inside some store on the outskirts of their territory without even checking for infected. A couple got bit when they found a shambler in a locked office. One turned right away and took two more down because they weren't ready to kill their friends. The two survivors finished the rest off and headed back to the stadium with their tails between their legs and covered with gore. Of course they immediately brought back all the old rules and regulations about ensuring the guard was always there and sending out veterans with the new kids but it was too late, one of the survivors had ingested some splattered blood during the fight and turned a few days later, sadly into a fast bugger. Went on a rampage biting everyone it saw. The people panicked and ran for the roof but it had been neglected for years and a strut failed, bringing the entire thing down, including part of the wall. Between the panic, the dead and the spreading infected inside it was all over and the survivors scattered and ran. No idea where they came from but a large number of dead swarmed them, as if they had been hiding and waiting all that time just to appear at the worst moment. Most probably died in the first few days to the infected or mutants."
  
  You keep going as far as you can but the alleys become tighter and clogged with debris, you can keep to the alleys and clamber through them carefully to keep a low profile or you can head out to the main streets and move quickly.
  > keep to the Alleys and move carefully
  Keep to the alleys and clamber through them carefully to keep a low profile
  
  You don't want to risk getting fully exposed right now and decide to risk the alley ways. You make difficult progress at first and have to slow your pace a lot. The alleys are half blocked with trash and even the occasional human remains. Finally you start to find entire alleys blocked by rubble from collapsed buildings and have to climb over it all. It's not as if you find this level of exercise difficult or anything but the more you climb and clamber over rubble and trash, the more chance of you stumbling right into infected.
  
  Unfortunately this is exactly what happens as you climb over a rubble pile a few minutes later. you just reach the top of the pile which is roughly level with the first floor of the buildings either side when a shambler lurches out from the building to the side and tries to grab you.
  
  You manage to shove it away and avoid its bite but now you aren't in the best position.
  > bash it with a bat then continue, it's just one shambler afterall
  Bash its head in then continue, one shambler won't even slow you down.
  
  You sling your bat out of your belt loop and dispatch the shambler with a brutal efficiency, no time for playing around right now. You quickly wipe your bat off on its shirt and continue climbing down the rubble pile on the other side.
  
  "Got to pick up the pace a little." You think to yourself as you climb the next rubble pile, trying to be more prepared of surprises. You are however getting the impression that the rubble is too regular to be an accident. "Must have been the holdouts trying to block the infected and funnel them" you decide as you continue.
  
  It's only a short time later when climbing a particularly steep pile that the fast type makes an appearance. Normally you can outpace a single one, but halfway up the rubble it comes leaping down at you from above and manages to latch onto your arm before your punches knock it free and you finish it with several good blows with the bat.
  
  "Gorram thing ripped my arm open!" you complain to the air, and indeed you now have an obvious bite wound to the flesh of your left arm which needs binding up.
  
  You pause there to bandage it quickly with strips of cloth. It's not nearly the worst wound you've had and so long as you keep eating enough you heal fast. After a brief pause you continue without further incident until you climb the last rubble pile and see the Stadium ahead of you.
  > approaching the stadium
  "Now what?" you mumble to yourself as you look around. The streets behind you are either completely clear or blocked entirely by rubble. "Probably the hold outs work." you think. The area in front has barricades and ditches leading up the stadium seemingly to prevent groups or vehicles from getting close.
  
  "Guess forward is the best option if I want to get inside that ruin, all the buildings around here are rubble so not much else around." You decide that your only choices are to try and get inside the stadium or bypass it North, either way you're going to have to cross some barricades so you might as well take a closer look
  
  Scout out the stadium carefully
  > scout the area out
  You begin slowly approaching the stadium, checking every ditch and barricade before crossing them, just incase there are any more surprises lurking there. You make relatively quick progress and are halfway through the blockades when you hear something ahead.
  
  You quickly pause and hunker down, taking your time to look ahead to try and locate source of the noise. If your hearing wasn't so good and you weren't being so careful you know you would have missed it entirely.
  
  There doesn't seem to be anything close by and the area right in front of the stadium doors is flat and cleared so nothing there. You are about to put the noise up to your own paranoia when you catch a glimpse of movement on a balcony over the door. There's a man lying on it, watching you through a rifle scope.
  
  "Gorramit, this place isn't deserted and now they have me scoped before I can find out what's happening." You mumble to yourself. The man with the gun however has clearly realized he was spotted and stands up, along with 2 others to call out to you.
  
  "We know you spotted us so you may as well come out now. Move slowly into the open area in front of the stadium and show us that you aren't an infected and there will be no problems."
  
  You've been through this drill before, you show you aren't an infected and they lower the guns. You get inside with the survivors.
  > might as well go along with it again since they haven't fired yet and your currently goal is to find survivors after all.
  You know the drill so you may as well go along with it and get inside with the survivors to scout it out at least.
  
  You carefully finish getting through the barricades as they assure you that there are no infected ahead and reach the open ground below them. "Right, drop the weapon and show us your skin!" They call down. You lay the bat and your pack down and even start undoing your shirt before remembering that you have a large bite wound on your arm that really isn't going to go over well with the men holding the guns. You have little choice left now and finish taking off the shirt revealing your skin and the rough bandage on your left arm to the men above.
  
  Quite predictably you hear the guns being cocked above you. "What's the bandage for friend?" You hear called down in a distinctly unfriendly tone.
  > can lie about it and just say it was a cut. You arenÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢t showing any other signs to make them suspicious after all
  You lie about it and claim you cut it climbing the debris in the alleyways, no point in telling them about the infected biting you. "When I was climbing through the alleyways back there I lost my footing and injured it on some old broken pipe. So I bound it up, as you can see I can still talk normally and show no symptoms! I've taken the vaccine after all!"
  
  They quietly confer and lower their guns slightly, so far so good. "Alright, the rest of your skins clear and the right color and you can talk normally. The vaccine doesn't always protect from direct exposure so can't be too careful. Just show the wound then we can let you inside."
  
  You pause and try and think of a way out of showing it but there isn't much option here. You slip your shirt back on and roll the sleeve up before taking the bandage off. You try and think quickly about what to say if they challenge your story but you are suddenly stopped short.
  
  You hear the loud crack at the same moment as you feel your clavicle disintegrate as if hit by a professional boxer, unfortunately you feel the damage continuing inside, finding when you try to breath, blood comes out of your mouth instead.
  
  You collapse back and vaguely hear the man arguing before everything turns black.
  
  "He lied; it's a bite, look at it!"
  
  "He has no symptoms you idiot, he's probably immune and was just wor... "