22.05.202X - Operation: Range Day

 00:00 22/05/202X 15C

 

Donated blood, went to bed. Woke up at midnight.

I'm thinking a range day would be in order for Izzy and Rufus.
Feeling a bit down, though. Prozac and coffee it is.

No sign of the fog anymore, and I can hear crickets chirping.
Is it a targeted thing? Chemical weapons? Going to have to think about this some more.

15:20 22/05/202X 19°C

Operation: Range Day was a resounding success.

We headed west just after midnight, me, Rufus and Izzy.
Rufus refused the NVGs I offered, deciding instead to stick to his trusty wind-up flashlight and .38 revolver.

Izzy had a bit of trouble setting hers up, but got them figured out eventually.
Also gave her some better clothing, a rig and a hood like my own.

Despite me rolling through there once before, there were more than enough rotters to put down.
Me and Izzy took the sneaky route, NVGs on, trailing behind Rufus who was hooting and hollering the entire way. 

Kind of suspected him of being drunk, but I couldn't smell anything on him in the car (apart from the usual) so there was no point in pressing it.

Maybe he's just used to playing the part of the village idiot, now that I think about it.

Izzy seemed a bit shaky still, but definitely a lot more confident than before, Mossberg in hand.
Might have to teach her something about silent movement, but I think the girl will pick it up on her own in due time.

Anyway, what Rufus didn't manage to attract Izzy's shotgun definitely did, and soon we had half the town coming for us.

For me, personally, it was a pretty calm experience. Mostly just ensuring that our escape route stayed clear and that none of the bastards got too close to the other two.
Covering while reloading, so on.

We had an incident that could have turned pretty nasty, though.
Might have been the fighter jet flying overhead that distracted Rufus, but all of a sudden he had three rotters going for his neck.

Thankfully, yours truly was there, and I put them down before he came to harm, sans losing his hat. I'll get to that in a moment.

Say what you will about the .38 round, Rufus definitely knew how to use his revolver.
Izzy did a fine job as well, shooting and scooting all over the place.

Around 5 AM I did a quick supply run back to the truck, grabbed some water bottles and some more ammo for the two.

Turned off my NVGs at the same time, since it was getting very bright and my retinas felt burned out.

Anyway, at that point I figured I might as well drive a bit closer (damn near flipped the APC in the process) since the horde was decimated several times over, and we thought we only had stragglers to deal with.

Well, after fetching some ammo and hydration for both of them, I noticed Rufus was gone.

Me and Izzy got ambushed at the car while eating, and (Christ this is painful to write down) I almost killed Izzy.

Gunned down several all around, saw some movement in the corner of my eye, fired.

Turned out to be Izzy. Luckily my aim was most definitely off, and I managed to pull the bullet out of her shin after pouring liberal amounts of hemostatic powder on her wounds.
The bullet had entered and exited the left thigh, and then lodged itself in her right shin. 

Flesh wounds only, thank god. 

She had lost a lot of blood, though, so after checking the coast was clear, I decided to give her some of my blood.

Filled up a fresh bag with an IV catheter, then dumped it into her while I kept her covered.

Couldn't have another Pansy situation on my hands.
After a shot of morphine she was looking right as rain (or as right as you could look with blood all over your pants and two conspicuous bullet holes going through the pant legs), and we continued along the road, slowly, keeping our eyes peeled.

While all that was going on, it seemed Rufus had finally snapped from losing his favorite hat.

I know that feeling all too well, buddy.

Rufus stood in the middle of the street howling with fury, buck naked sans a billboard reading "REPENT" in large, scrawled on letters, and a torn-up Spiffo costume head perched atop his graying hair, firing his revolver blindly into the oncoming horde, a wine bottle in his hand, almost like some kind of modern parody of the Viking warriors of old.

I didn't know whether I should laugh or start running, so I figured I might as well cover him and Izzy as best I could.

We made short work of the horde, and the sun rose in the clear sky, the heat of summer making itself more than apparent.

Not much happened after that.

 

Rufus found his old dusty hat and seemed to calm down quite a bit, going so far as to put his clothes back on and stuff the wine bottle back into his backpack.

We broke into the infirmary that I couldn't get into last time I visited and found quite a lot of useful medication.

I also patched Rufus up since he'd sustained a bite earlier in the fighting. Didn't really pay Izzy any mind then, maybe I should have. 

The girl seemed worried.

After the infirmary raid, Rufus decided he'd had enough, and headed back to Muldraugh in my old car.

Me and Izzy, after some deliberation, decided to head west, towards the lake.
According to our maps there might have been some kind of police station or similar there, and while the initial drive there seemed promising, with a bar in the way and everything, we soon noticed that we weren't the only ones curious about the area.
There was a horde of over a hundred blocking access to the buildings.

I still had ammo to spare, and Izzy still had a box or two of shells, so we (foolishly) started firing.
The gunfire attracted an even larger horde, and we almost got cornered before jumping a fence and repositioning.

Eventually, however, we managed to thin the flood of rotters into what was barely a trickle, and set about investigating the possible loot.

We found JACK FUCKING SHIT.

 
The "police station" (as I had called it earlier) was apparently just some kind of tourism advisory building, since the lake was a popular spot for campers before the outbreak hit.
The larger building marked on the map turned out to just be a separated-gender restroom.

At least Izzy found herself a nifty kukri knife and some more experience in handling the hordes.

On the drive back, however, she suddenly had what I can only describe as a panic attack.

She'd been scratched in the fighting. No big deal to me, but..
I reassured her that we were all immune, that there's no way we could get infected, but she seemed unconvinced.

I didn't want to pry, but I might have to sit down and talk to her later, ask some questions. As it was, I just gave her a Valium and told her to sleep once we get back to base.
I was too tired from the transfusion and fighting to do much more than that, either.

We're in Fort Muldraugh now, Izzy's gone to bed, Rufus is cleaning his revolver, and I'm sitting by the fire writing this.

I think axe guy and punk chick went off to Rosewood already to establish an outpost.

Harris is manning the walls, as always. He painted three white stripes on his helmet and visor, I'm going to have to ask him more about that.

Still waiting for Jenny and Ems to return. Hoping they didn't run off, or worse.

-Sayori Takahashi, tired but proud

 

 

 

"Two more in the yard - they're down now. Good shooting."