Surviving Malton

The zombies overtook me — again. I must have been among the undead for weeks this time. I got revived in Pimbank. I found a small group of survivors in a nearby building. They spared a couple first aid kits and fixed me up. They told me that a giant surge of zombies had recently overrun almost all of Malton. They are, in fact, still rampaging in other parts of the city right now, although the larger groups have left the Pimbank area.

They left behind a completely demolished city, suburb by suburb. There are almost no human surviors at all — Just a few lucky (or unlucky?) ones remain to pick up the pieces. And the buildings are completely ransacked — no generators, no radios, no barricades, doors left open to the elements, etc. There is no safe haven. If you stay alive overnight, it’s just as much luck as it is preparation.

I can’t pick up any signals on my hand-held radio, either It’s eerily silent.

The group told me they are heading east, over to Lerwill Heights suburb. The few remaining survivors in Malton seem to be gathering in the souteast quadrant of the city. Might as well start rebuilding there.

Most of them went ahead without me, but gave me a rendevous location. I had to rest more before I left.

I almost ran out of luck that same day. I woke up and saw that the flimsy barricades we had setup were gone, and zombies had broken through — mauling survivors inside the building.

I had no bullets and very little energy left — the only thing I could do was run, so I ran. East.

From building to building I crept. I avoided the zombies I saw — and there were lots of them, out on the street and inside most of the buildings. I saw lone, isolated survivors — like myself — getting overpowered by zombies in several buildings.

There was nothing I could do. I couldn’t save them. I may not be able to save myself.

At the moment, I’m hiding in a building in Shore Hills, probably a days travel from the rendevous point. All I can do is hope luck is with me.

Today, I took a break from my regular patrols and went deep into Ridleybank, dogdging and ignoring all the zeds I passed until I made it to Moggridge Place Police Station all the way on the other side of Ridleybank.

I tagged the outside of the station with a warning to zeds in the area:

Ridleybank is for survivors! Zeds get out!

A symbolic gesture, I know, but it still felt good. There was a single zombie outside the station that I plugged with a shotgun shell and a few bullets. I didn’t finish him off, though. Too bad. I was in such a hurry to get back to Stanbury Village that I didn’t think to look inside the building.

In my journey toward and from Moggridge, I noticed small groups of survivors in a number of buildings in the souteast corner. Could we be gaining a foothold in Ridleybank?

Tomorrow, I’ll go back on my regular patrol.

It’s been a couple weeks since I last wrote. I’ve been busy during that time. I made it across the middle of town to Nichols Mall in Stanbury Village. There isn’t as many people here as were in the Caiger or Ackland malls, but it’s a hardy bunch.

Nichols is very close to the zombie stronghold of Ridleybank. I may be foolish, but I’ve been making some sporadic forays into Ridleybank and have managed to take out a few zeds on their own turf.

In the meantime, I’ve learned a lot more about Malton. I figured out how to operate the radio transmitters. I’m pretty good a spraying grafitti messages to other survivors. I can build barricades with Malton’s best.

I’ve also been hired by a company called Necrotech. They seem to be shady bunch, and I’m not sure how much I should be trusting them, but they sure do seem interested in the zombie menace.

These are the guys that somehow know to revive zombies — that is, turn them back into humans. It’s a bizzare thing to see. You’ve got to inject a zombie with a big vial of some flourescent green liquid. This kills the zombie, just as if I had blew thier brains out with a shotgun, but they eventually wake up as a human, fully restored to life.

They tell me that even I was revived at least once, back when I first showed up in Malton.

I’m not very comfortable with that thought: Me, a zombie.

In any case, they have some nice gadgets and sensors for me to play with, so it’s either a good thing or a devil’s bargain. I’m not sure which it is just yet.

Lastly, I did something I never thought I would do. I was forced to kill another survivor inside the mall this evening. It turns out that not all revived zombies are glad to be humans again. It’s completely beyond my understanding, but some small percentage of people prefer to be in the undead world. Some of these people will kill themselves by jumping out office buildings.

Others will hide among survivors for a while, gathering information numbers and movements and various tactics before reporting back to a zombie horde somewhere and voluntarily offering themselves up for zombie consumption, and then becoming a zombie again. (Exactly how smart are these zombie hordes??)

These are the zombie spies. I killed one of them tonight in the Nichols Mall and dumped his lifeless body out on the street. Everyone present seemed to understand.

I’m not sure how long I plan to stay here. Nichols seems to have lots of supplies, but it’s a little nervewracking being so close Ridleybank, even if I do choose to cross that border myself. I don’t think I want to be here long-term.

I may stay here a short while before heading further east. There are twenty malls in Malton, and I’ve been to three so far. Listening to radio broadcasts on various frequencies, it seems like there are survivor outposts in almost every mall. Maybe I’ll visit them all eventually. The closest mall from here is Hildebrand Mall in the Roftwood suburb, which borders Stanbury Village immediately to the east.