Wastelands ~ The Game's afoot

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Sydney glared at the radio speaker where the Colonel's voice had emanated. Didn't he know any better than to disturb him when he was working?

DUN-DUN-DUN-DUN....DUN-DUN-DUN-DUN....

The drums.... They were coming back....

He swigged the Coca Cola from the glass he had nearby. That helped quietened them...

He hoped that Colonel Salamander (he had no inclination to dignify him with his real name unless he had to, or was feeling extremely charitable) used that decontaminating spray well. Or had he even brought it with him? That'd be right, forgetting the most important thing on an expedition out into the radioactive unknown besides your hazard suit. Probably took a weapon instead.

He clicked the fresh battery of the multiscanner home. It trilled, and the readout started showing various parameters.

Heh. It works.

He pulled the backpack onto his back, grabbed the scanner, and moved out. He was going to test the device by using it in the garden....

((Sorry guys, couldn't resist putting a bit of madness in...))

Alan was busy repairing one of the bunker's computers. As he tried repairing the computer he heard a faint sound. It was the sound of the blast doors opening up. "Why are the blast doors opening?" He thought to himself. Then he saw one of the meters that was fed information by sensors on the exterior of the bunker, the meter that displayed the radiation levels outside to be exact. "Looks like we may be leaving this bunker soon. Whoever is being sent topside to see what it's like will probably encounter some sort of problem. Things like that usually happen."

As Alan said this the computer he was working on froze and all the progess Alan made was lost.
"Dammit! I've been working on this computer for half a week! All that progress lost! I almost had it fixed too! Stupid computer! Right when we really need it too!" *sigh* He pressed a button that was by the messed up computer and spoke to Sydney, "Hey Sydney. Uhhh I won't be able to finish the computer on schedule sooooo we do not have the ability to use the visual equipment at this moment. However, I have the situation under control and I shall have this fixed as soon as possible." Alan released his finger off of the button and while muttering profanities to himself started to work on the computer again.

Virgil woke up with a mild headache. His eyes still barely open he spied the containment light blinking red and suddenly snapped awake. "Damn military meathead went alone!" Grumbling he checked his Mauser Broomhandle (A weapon handed down from his grandfather, that still worked despite it's age) and began to suit up. "Bastard better not let himself get killed first time he's out there - I will fracking beat the crap outta his corpse." Slapping the intercom button a little to hard he barked into the screen "Sydeny! Alan! Get up here! That fool went up without me and he is bound to get himself in trouble with that gun of his!"

Sydney cursed to himself as he heard the communication as he walked out of his lab. Alan was the only guy he truly liked in the bunker (after all, they enjoyed quite a lot of science-fiction and were good techies), though his agnosticism sometimes clashed with Alan's religion. He'd in fact relied on Alan's hacking skills to get prototype plans for a multiscanner from military databses that had survived the EMPs from the nuclear blasts. The data had been corrupted, but Alan had pulled as much useful info as possible. Sydney was good with computers, but only to know what to do in generalities. He was no programmer, and couldn't hack worth a damn. Computer programming didn't seem to fit very well with his memory palace.

He was more of someone who could see how things worked at lashed them together to make them work in a different, more unique manner. The decontamination spray was one of these. A unique combination of a special polymer and abrasive (amongst other things), it was good at decontaminating any object that had been impregnated with radioactive material. Not enough to get rid of all radiation, but enough to make it a safe level, providing it was a low-enough level to begin with. It could be used on humans, but tended to cause extreme dermatitis in tests.

((continuing on from this post))

"Damn!"

Sydney ran, no mean feat with the multiscanner on his back, only to find Virgil suiting up, and Alan currently absent ((I'm keeping Godplaying to a minimum)).

"Hey, what're you doing? If you're going up there to check on the colonel, have this with you!"

He pulled out a pump-spray bottle of the decontamination fluid out of a nearby shelf and rolled it along the floor to Virgil. He then thought of the irony: Virgil going into hell to find the Colonel, his Dante Aligheri, and guide him back from hell back here.

((Couldn't resist a Divine Comedy reference))

"Crap I got myself lost again!" said Alan as he was trying to find his way to the control room of the bunker...again. After all this time in the bunker I still get lost, Alan thought to himself. Alan continued to run throughout the bunker as he tried to find the room for the next few minutes. Then he finally found the room.

"Sorry I'm late!" He said as he tried to regain his breath. "I got lost while coming up here. So how come we were called here Virgil?"

Alan also saw Virgil suiting up to check up on the Colonel and said, "You should probably take an extra weapon, just in case you lose your pistol. Here, you can use my knife." He then handed his Bowie knife to Virgil.

"Son, My hands are only good with tools in them. Keep the knife since I'm more likely to cut myself then cut a mutated plant open." Slipping the can of anti-radiation spray into a pocket on the outside of his suit he slipped on the gasmask. Oddly, he liked being in these suits - the privacy was pleasant and the suit was the only place he felt safe in. "Sydney, you lead. Your the only here besides the Colonel who has actually fired a gun." Checking his suit once again he flipped the door switch again. "Stay frosty guys, we have no idea if anything is out there. For all we know all we meet is a two headed cow that would make a great nightlight but we might end up meeting Smokey the bear with a serious case radiation poisoning induced madness."

The warehouse was dull and in a state of disrepair when Saldana slowly made his way around the large, ruined building, pieces of equipment sprawled everywhere and huge chunks missing from the walls and roof. The wrist mounted temperature sensors read -15 degrees centigrade, and all water had frozen, frost covered surfaces. The vehicles were still there, an armoured motorhome, 2 Land Rovers, and a rusty station wagon that had seen better times. They had survived the worst of the heavy snowstorms.
The 10ft high warehouse doors were still intact, just about. It would be much easier to get out via one of the holes in the wall.

Saldana checked his geiger counter. Gamma radiation, the most penetrating form of radiation to be expected, was at safe levels in the cover of the warehouse, though it could be different in the open. Little of the fallout would have blown here, but there was still the potential for a lot of dangerous gamma radiation pockets.

"Virgil, come in. The warehouse is clear, and the vehicles are intact. The temperature is -15 degrees centigrade, and radiation levels are safe. All good to come up, though the view is nothing spectacular." Saldana ended the communication.

Saldana moved through a gap in the brick wall, holding his geiger counter out all the way. Safe levels outside, too. It was just as cold in the open, inch thick snow covered the ground. To be out of that bunker for once was a huge relief. Col Saldana looked up at the murky sky, and stared briefly. 'Maybe it is quite a view,' he thought. That was when he heard a shuffling noise. He very quickly crouched behind a rock, and activated the integrated infrared vision on the helmet visor...

Last edited by Anubis on 15 Aug 2007, 8:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.

OOC: This was meant to be posted before Anubis posted.

"I guess I should suit up then," Alan said. He took off his backpack and suited up.

Once he got into his suit he dug through his backpack until he found his pistol (already loaded) and two extra clips of ammo. He put them in the pockets in his suit and put is knife in a place that could be easily reached and that when he did a lot of movement the knife wouldn't harm him

Then he said to Virgil, "I've shot a weapon before too ya' know."

"f**k I'm not waitng for Syndey to suit up - I need to see the world!" Walking out into the warehouse he tried his best to remain calm but was still a little disturbed. The world seemed dead and hollow, he barely noticed how well his vehicles had survived (Under any other circumstance he would be gloating about his superior techanical skills) Spotting the Colonel he hopped through the hole in the brick wall. The vista was chilling - the city was a collection of burned out wreckage covered in snow and ash. The sky was a hazy brown that made obvious the fact the nuclear winter still had a hold on Earth. "My gods, this isn't our Earth anymore."

A bright red quadrupedal animal was visible, some sort of large canine creature, roughly 20 ft away. It growled ferociously, and ran at Saldana across the snow covered ground, huge teeth bared.

The colonel switched to burst fire mode, and fired at the creature in two simultaneous bursts. Both hit, but what should have killed the beast only made it limp. Strange. Saldana fired again twice, making it limp even more. It wasn't enough to stop it from jumping on him, and knocking him down, even with all the armour. He kicked at the infrared coloured fiend, which was now growling even more rabidly, and kicked it in the head before it could jump again, and this time it fell, with a loud whimper and final dying wheeze. "And stay dead!! !" Saldana shouted at the carcass, and shot it once more. He turned off the infrared, to be shocked by the canine's features. It was some sort of black labrador, but with three eyes and large fleshy growths on various areas of its skin. Something more out of horror than real life, before. But whoa, this was freaky...

The blast doors opened again, and Saldana headed back to the entrance slowly.

Virgil just stood there in raw shock as the Lassie mutant tried to rip off the Colonel's face. When he finally killed it Virgil found himself fighting the urge to vomit. "What the hell?! It's been two years and these things are still alive? s**t man, we'd better hope nothing in the local zoo survived. I don't wanna end up croc lunch." Virgil checked over the colonel and made sure he had no wounds. "Lucky that f****r didn't bite you anywhere or I don't think we could have saved you. Little s**thead is going to glow like a nightlight when the sun goes down."

Saldana checked for any cracks in his armour, but it was fine.
"No bites, but it would have been nasty, that's granted," Saldana stared at the carcass nervously,"whatever that thing was, it was monstrous. I fired at least nine rounds into it, no misses, and it still kept on coming. So, the surface isn't exactly safe."
He walked back outside, to drag the carcass in for examination. "Sydney's going to love this," He chuckled.

Sydney didn't mind, he hated those hazard suits. As Virgil and Alan ventured out into the warehouse, he went to his multiscanner and looked it over.

DUN DUN DUN DUN! DUN DUN DUN DUN! DUN DUN DUN DUN!

The drums came back, and with them, pain. He screamed as his head felt like it had been split with an ax.

"Arrrrggggghhhhh!! !! !!"

He collapsed, only to hear the beeping of the communications system. No-one else in the bunker knew about the drums. He had to get to the communications console. He staggered to it and activated it.

"Sydney here. What's wrong Virgil?"

He could not hide all the pain in his voice, but he had to hope that the radio distortion hid anything else....

"Hell yeah, gonna spend the rest of the night picking the thing apart." Virgil admitted in beginning he'd been the one most opposed to the Colonel but over the course of the two years in the bunker he'd come to like the guy (Though he still used insulting terms to describe him from time to time, he did that to everyone though) his own paranoid edge was point to good use with him around. "The thing's thyroid and pituary probably mutated to cause the muscle growth at that level - betcha when his skull is cut open it explodes in Sydney's face due to the internal pressures from the oversized areas of the brain."

"A little help here, please?" Saldana couldn't lift the canine beast easily, after all, it was pretty big. He heaved at the carcass, dragging it slowly through the snow.
Virgil had mostly held a grudge against him, for his methods and disciplined nature, now that grudge had just about faded away. At least he was being a little more cooperative.
"It's going to be one heck of an autopsy," Saldana jested.