Pointing at her ass, Alexei didn't move,

"Bite painful, no treatment, not dangerous." he said flatly, his voice as cold and level as could be. Soon, others would realize that it was just the way he spoke. If he wasn't mistaken, that was a fairly common snake, venomous, but pain was the usual worst outcome. And in his typical Russian thought: if he was wrong, it didn't matter, so he had done all he could either way.

Watching Troy, he kept his eyes on the important decision-maker. He watched him, because he needed to know the lead to follow.

"I watch." Alexei said, seeing Troy looking for 3 people. He could maintain watch. Wasn't a great shot, not bad but not great, but he trusted himself more than any other randoms.

The woman lay moaning softly, sweating profusely, and crying through the muscle spasms and intermittent retching and cramping. It wasn't quiet or easy to look at. Others tried to encourage her with kinds words that seemed to bounce off of her awareness like pebbles skipping across a pond.

Others were worried. Afraid of drawing the attention of the undead. Or worse, the living that may be on their trail. It was several hours until sun up, but no one seemed to want to sleep.

Pike ambled over, looking as calm as Troy had ever seen the man, and said, "You need to lay back down. Get some rest. These people look up to you. They will relax if you do."

While Troy didn't know if Pike's advice was true or not it was exactly how the river guides he had worked with in Ocoee operated. Guides were never scared or worried. It was all fun and belly laughs even when someone fell out of the boat headed into a Class 4 rapid putting both their life and the life of the guide responsible for them in danger.

"Alright."

Troy moved back to his spot and laid down, He had no idea if he could sleep but he would at least try to fake it.

Welcome back!

In twos and threes people began to settle back down. The storm, echoing how Troy and many of the others felt, suddenly took a turn for the worse and drown their little patch of woods with heavy rain, whipping winds, roaring thunder, dazzling lightning, and a damp chill.

Pike, standing a little ways off managed to get several steps towards the tarp he was sharing with his lady before the storm soaked all the way down to the hair on his toes.

"Well, shit." He was heard to have said. It didn't make Troy feel any better but it did make him laugh for moment.

Alexi was nearly comfortable again in his tree when the storm decided it was time to shake his tree like a leaf on a breeze. A moment later Alexi found himself hanging sideways, scrambling to not lose his gear, and grip a branch with his legs as the tree twisted around him in the heavy winds.

Something fell into him and slid past. It was the skeletal remains of a man he realized as the body fell to the ground. It landed head first, actually face planting so hard that the head literally broke off at the neck. The body flopped to the side into the ground with one leg smacking hard into the tree and breaking horribly mid-chin. Worse let was the big revolver in the corpse's hand that fired when the body struck the ground. The bullet went slamming deep into the earth, but the muzzle report sounded something akin to heavy magnum load used for hunting big game.

It took the camp by surprise. People cursed, called out in astonishment, screamed, and a few just jumped up and ran into the dark and wet.

Climbing to the ground from the tree, Alexei seized the revolver, and any ammunition he found on the corpse, and immediately moved to find Troy.

"Gun. Body in tree. With storm, easy to move, but if not move, we will have company." he said flatly, pointing around them in a generic arc, "Noise too loud. Bodies mean more bodies, and more bodies mean dead." he said, shrugging. He knew they needed to move, but Troy was in charge.

13:54, Today: Troy Roberts rolled 10 using 3d4+1.  Ingenuity (survival reroll if applicable).
13:54, Today: Troy Roberts rolled 6 using 3d4+1.  Ingenuity.

Jake Dodd was the first person to the scene of the body. With an astonished look he held up a massive stainless steel revolver in the light of his flashlight.

"Holy shit!" He exclaimed, it a massive pistol. "It's a Smith and Wesson five hundred!"

"It sounded like a howitzer went off." A voice said from the darkness. "Hey kid, turn that light off, would you."

As Troy made his way up to where a few others were helping Alexi out of the tree. The body was unrecognizable as anything other than a lean man in very dilapidated mechanic's coveralls. There was a belt around the sunken waist that held eleven .500 S&W magnum cartridges, a large rusty bowie knife, a flashlight, and a canteen. There were bulged in the pockets. Probably other supplies like ammo, food, etc, but it was the tiny hole in the forehead of the corpse that seemed significant.

Jake passed the pistol around, it had a ten inch long barrel and mounted a pistol scope. The term video game redneck sniper came to mind. But the bullet hole in the corpses forehead was both obvious and perplexing. Probably a .22 long rifle fired from fairly far off, the bullet didn't exit the skull. That would put it fired somewhere beyond fifty yards away most likely.

But, they were still pretty deep in the woods outside of town.

Alexei knew enough about guns to know how the man died, but didn't have a clue about the cartridge used, distance, or anything similar. Instead, he knew to look directly at Troy, expecting him to know far more than he did.

So far, he was debating his choice to join this group. It seemed like a member was considering turning on the others (Pike?), and now people were being shot, and making ungodly amounts of noise. He had to keep his head on a swivel, and decide whether or not sticking around was for him.

Troy looked up, the man had been situated in that tree and roughly facing town. He was sure that if he were to walk out in that direction he would find corpses of the undead put down among the trees. The vantage point was one that no one could escape from if a horde made underneath, so he figured the man was on rearguard and probably had a bite or several somewhere on him.

The shot to the head with the .22 had been a mercy, most likely administered when the man had started to expire. There was a small gym bag, maroon with a football logo on it from some high school. More ammo? They must have been in a hurry to have left the gear.

Troy was about to as Alexi about the body when a series of shots rang out over near the interstate exit in Rocky Face, maybe two hundred yards away at best. He sighed and thought 'I should be getting overtime'.

"Alright...get this stuff packed up and let's get back inside. If that something serious jumping off over there I don't want anyone catchin' a bullet addressed, "To Whom it may concern"."

Troy handed the ridiculously big gun back to Jake. The frikkin bullets looked like soup cans.

"Lot's of gun stores around here. Either this dude thought Dirty Harry was a limp wristed pussy or someone ended up protecting their life with somebody else's show piece. At least we're covered if we run across an undead water buffalo."

"Stick it in that gymbag Jake. You can see that shiny motherfucker from the moon."

Nodding at Troy's words, Alexei tried to follow his lead, quickly and quietly. He didn't have much else to contribute, as these were Troy's people, and not his own. Eventually, that would hopefully change, but for now he was just another tag-along.

Pike walked up, he was wearing an old camo pattern poncho and was carrying a recently obtained improvised spear, a long and sharply pointed stick. He looked at Troy and sighed.

"Whatever is going on over there has already drawn some attention. There is horde of the dead headed this way and probably using those gunshots as a dinner bell." Pike said, but his tone made it clear there was more that was worse. "Several of our little band think that those shots came from some survivalist group living here abouts and decided to go looking for them."

Troy got it, these people were grasping at straws. He knew Pike felt as he did; it was foolish to go running at trouble in the dark. But hope, no matter how foolish, had a the ability to infect desperate people.

"They seem to be headed towards the interstate seventy five overpass." Pike said. "Seems to be headed directly into trouble if you ask me, but if we headed that way, keeping to this side of the interstate maybe you and I could break off and intercept them before they get in over their collective head. Meet up with the rest near that old Waffle House. Maybe get lucky and sleep in out of the rain."

Troy made a face like he had just bitten into a shit cake with diarrhea icing.

"What the absolute fuck?"

He struggled mentally for a moment, it's not like he owned these people after all. In the end he decided he had to make the effort to get them back.

"Alright then."

He started reslinging all his gear and growled for the thirteenth time that he needed to find some better clothes for this kind of thing, the lightweight hiking gear was never made for this kind of weather...or for fighting.

"Alexei your with us. Jake I need you to get everybody to that Waffle House. We'll catch up with you there."

Course of action decided he made his way back out into the weather taking little comfort from the lever rifle on his back and maybe only slightly more from the stubby WW2 subgun.

Jake Dodd merely nodded and went around rousing people as quietly as possible and trying to get organized.

Pike watched his woman slip off into the darkness to join the others. He turned to Troy, having slung his shotgun and taken an MP5 SD3 out of his pack.

"Got this at one of those road blocks the cops put up to hold off the hordes early on. It's loaded with subsonics, I've only got this mag and half another though." He said as he switched on the hologram sight mounted on the weapon. There was a flashlight mounted to the underside of the suppressor that he switched on and check by squeezing a contact pad along the foregrip. "All set, I guess. Want to move parallel, wider field of view, and we keep your Russian medic just behind us to watch our asses?"

"Well okay but it'll be a hell of a lot more fun watching mine."

Troy took the suggestion for what it was and slung the grease gun across his chest and in it's place drew his Kel Tech CP33, making sure it's locally made Liberty "Mystic X" model suppressor was still fitted properly.

"I've got over 500 rounds for this little bitch and they're more likely to hear me thinking about shooting them than to hear it go off."

The joke was only a slight exaggeration. In this weather it would take a very observant expert, or "That one old man at the gun store" to pick out the sound of the small caliber pistol against the background noise of rain and distant gunfire.

The trio of men was barely five minutes into their rainy rescue mission when they spotted a light in the darkness.

"You don't think..." Pike began when shots suddenly rang out.

Yep, Troy did think it was those crazy ass-hats they were out to save. He just hoped they could save those people from themselves.

Alexei followed closely, still mentally clueless as to what was happening. The others spoke far too clearly for him to follow it, and they were referencing slang and things that must've happened in their past, as well as being just far enough from him that he missed half of the conversation.

Still, he knew his cost of passage, so he was ready with his big bag. Hearing shots ahead, he sighed. He didn't enjoy death, but what he hated more was carrying his bag when he felt like leaping behind trees and firing back would be the rules of the following engagement.

Running toward gunfire was not a natural act. This thought occurred to Troy every time he did it. Due to either courage or stupidity that hadn't stopped him from doing it when he needed to yet. He didn't care to think too much about which it was.

He ran, if you could call a shuffling jog running, in the direction of the light in a crouch as if he expected to be shot at at any time. The rain and overcast sky compounded the darkness.

He had to make the effort though. He had a lot of failure on his conscience but he had no intention of having to deal with the psychological consequences of being to scared to do what he needed to do. Once you did that shit you were just running constantly until you tripped and something got you.

The trio broke in the more open area of the interstate right of way about fifty yards shy of the on ramp from Rocky Face to Interstate 75. The light and the gunfire suddenly made sense.

A small group of six people were keeping low to the tall grass and weeds as they made their way east just passing a gas station on their way to the Waffle House that had previously been discussed. It was a local landmark after all. Meanwhile one person was shining a flashlight on the undead and firing, then tucking the light into their torso so they could run off a little distance in the rain, and there the person would engage the undead again.

And, it was actually working.

Sort of.

The person was working the little horde towards the overpass, but to their back was dark mass moving through the rain. It made Troy think of people running around on a beach unaware of the tsunami about to fall on them.

Pike just grunted and said, "Well, shit. That is a lot of damn walking corpses."

Alexi pulled up short, standing directly between the two other men when he realized that they had stopped moving. He checked their backtrail once more then looked out in the direction they were looking in. A person was using a flashlight to lure undead to the bridge while they shot the walking corpses. There was a group running towards the Waffle House, that he assumed was the one that the plan included. And then his scrotum tightened up like the other men's when he saw the dark wave of shaped moving through the rain.

As is on queue, lightning flashed like a strobe light for a moment. There were thousands of undead moving along the road under the overpass.

Approaching Troy, Alexei pointed unnecessarily,

"I am... have seen before. They may be luring to kill OTHER group." he said quietly, "Might not be only party involved." he said, keeping his eyes peeled.

Pike hauled several road flare out of his pack.

"We use these to lure the dead along." Pike explained. "I'm going to go up that way and see if I can that jackass to come to me. They follow. I plant the flare for them to go to. The two of us come back down here and join you."

"Do it. I'll cover you best I can from here."

"..and don't fuckin' die! We don't have enough Pikes to do without one."


The last bit was a joke but it was the kind of black humorless joke that men had been telling in deadly situations since the caveman days.

"Yeah, but I always thought of myself as a halberd." Pike said in reply. He began moving off into the night. "I'm far more versatile a weapon."

Alexei nodded. He'd said his piece, and now they were experiencing a bit of camaraderie: something they could use now and again.