“Let’s get out of here! Follow me!”
Alvin runs ahead.
Wright slings his rifle, takes a firm grip on his pipe, and runs after Alvin.
“Hold up a bit.”
Jordan quickly gets out a swab from the medical supplies and swabs around in the mouth of one of the infected.
“Saliva sample. We need one, we’re going to want more. Alvin’s been bit. We’re going to need to test him.”
She then runs out following the other two.
You hurry out the gate and into the unknown. Ahead, the Los Angeles sky is darker than you’ve ever seen it. There are no street lights, head lights, or bright windows; the only light comes from the moon, which is full, or close to it.
The facility was built on the outskirts of the city proper, in the mountainous countryside east of the San Fernando valley. The road you took leads uphill, with a set of electric poles running alongside it. Ahead, you see the vague outline of what looks like a power plant. There’s no light coming from it.
Past the facility and heading out the main gate, a road runs downhill towards the city. Down in the valley bellow, you see a number of lights in some of the buildings. There are stretches of road filled with still-lit headlights, though none of those cars are moving.
Further to the west, you can just make out the city skyline. There’s some sort of bright orange light there, but you can’t tell if it’s an electric light source or something less controlled and more deadly.
Before you can really admire the view, you hear the voices of the mumbling Infected who followed you from the facility. Wherever you choose to go, you’ll have to decide fast.
“Let’s head to those buildings with the lights on.”
"We might find better supplies at the power plant. Plus, if anybody is still alive, not infected, and in hiding, I doubt they’re going to be leaving a large number of lights on which might draw infected like moths to flame.
“But I’m not really sold one way or the other.”
"If people are leaving lights on, it’s because they feel safer doing so that without the lights. Let’s head there.
“Exactly. Follow me.”
Alvin leads the way towards the houses with lights.
“Fair enough. Once we have a place to settle down, I’m going to look at those wounds of yours, though.”
You start heading down the road towards town. This road, you notice, is recently built; a simple two-lane blacktop that was probably made at the same time as the facility. It has all the marks of military efficiency: Very close to perfectly straight, with a single double yellow line in between the lanes. Every once in a while, you spot a vehicle of some time, usually a Humvee, stopped along the road. Though you approach them cautiously, they appear to be unoccupied.
Finally, about halfway down the hill, you make a turn and find yourself facing one of the smaller light sources. The mangled wrecks of three Humvees lie piled together. The twisted mass is on fire, and bodies litter the floor. Most of them are badly mangled and burned, and to your relief none of them are moving. You manage to loot another two clips from the wreck, although the guns here are all badly mangled.
Past the wreck, you continue down the mountain. Finally, you reach a ridge. The road evens out for a bit, giving you a good view of the terrain ahead, then dips down towards the San Fernando Valley. Ahead, the road connects to the 210, a large freeway that runs just north of the city. The freeway is littered with cars, some wrecked and others still idling with their lights on. The cars are nearly bumper to bumper, and in some cases slowly smoldering. You see a few shadows being cast by the headlights and flames, although at this distance you cannot tell if they are of men, animals, or just a trick of the light.
Beyond the freeway is what appears to be a series of residential blocks. There aren’t any lights in most of the buildings, but a small complex that appears to be a school is very well lit, with search lights pointing in seemingly random directions. A few blocks past the school you see a small airport, not much more than a runway and some hangers. It, too, seems to hold some light. But the biggest light source in the Valley appears to come from a group of medium sized buildings that you recognize as the local hospital. Multiple search lights set the night on fire, and as you watch you think you notice a helicopter landing on the roof.
"A helicopter…hmmm. Obviously something’s going on there and I don’t think any of the plague victims are capable of flying that. But the question is what the copter is doing there? It might be simply evacuating people. After all, hospitals are likely to have a high concentration of the plagued since it’s where people go when they are sick after all. My hospital had two full floors of victims by the time they evacuated us, and who knows what went on since.
"So if we want to investigate that, I suggest we be very careful. Even if there are survivors in that place, there’s a good chance we might not even be able to reach them.
“Oh, and one more thing, I’m going to dress that wound of yours now, and I’m going to need to take some blood from that and test it against this swab.”
Jordan bandages the wound and mixes some blood with the saliva on the swab.
The blood and saliva completely fail to mix, in the same way that water and oil will separate.
“The bad news is that you’re infected Alvin. However, there is an incubation phase before the plague will affect you, but you’re as good as dead at this point.”
“The question is, what do we do from here? You will turn into one of them the way things are. There is no way to avoid it. However, I was trying to find a cure for this thing before the military evacuated us. That hospital might have the supplies necessary for me to continue my work. However, it is also likely crawling with infected, and no offense, but I’d rather survive myself than save you if I have to make the choice. Also, it’s likely if anyone else finds out you’re infected, they will probably shoot you on sight. Plus, once this takes you over, you will turn on us. It’s inevitable if we can’t find a cure, or at the very least a way to keep the plague supressed.”
“I suggest we check out the hospital, but I will not take any unnecessary risks to get in there.”
DM note: HoppyFrood misunderstood something I said earlier, I sent her a PM.
Alvin says, “Yeah, let’s get the hospital and try to find a cure for me. However, if either I begin to ‘lose control’, so to speak, you can leave me behind. I feel fine now, though, so I should probably keep the weapon.”
Scratch my last post. It turns out the reaction Jordan see’s indicates something she’s never encountered before. It behaves similar to what happens when infected blood meets infected saliva, but there’s something different. However, it doesn’t change the plan, or what Alvin will likely say, so we’ll just retcon this next post to replace the previous one.
Oh, and I’m a male player, just to clear up any confusion on that.
Upon testing Alvin’s blood, Jordan informs the party:
"Well, the good news is that there’s no indication Alvin’s infected. The bad news is, there’s no indication he isn’t either. Normal blood mixed with infected saliva reacts and mixes. Infected blood mixed with infected saliva mixes but doesn’t react. His blood is completely separating from this saliva. This could indicate many things. Maybe the saliva is different, maybe his blood is different, maybe the incubation phase has a different effect, since I’ve never had a chance to test someone who only got bitten recently.
"Regardless, the first thing I’m going to do is test my own blood against the saliva sample before it completely dries. Then, I suggest we see if we can get into the hospital. It might have a lab that I can do some more experiments with.
“However, I don’t think it’s worth risking our lives over, so if the place is swarming with undead, we’ll probably want to consider moving on. And if you begin to show signs of plague, Alvin, you’re going to be on your own.”
Jordan will then take a sample of her own blood and test it against the saliva sample to see what happens.
Jordan’s blood has the Sam effect; it seperates itself from the saliva sample.
If there’s enough saliva left for a third sample, Jordan will take a sample from Maxwell and compare its reaction as well. I understand if there isn’t, though. I’ll let you make the call on that one.
"Hmmm…well that’s interesting, we know I haven’t been bitten, and yet, my blood reacts the same. This actually bodes well. It’s possible that you haven’t been infected at all, Alvin, and instead the military wasn’t just testing us for the plague, but actually using us as guinea pigs. While normally I’d be cursing them for their lack of medical ethics, it’s quite possible they just inadvertently saved your life. It’s possible they’ve invented some sort of cure. Alternately, maybe some people are just naturally resistant or immune to the disease, and that’s what they were testing us for. I was under the impression that they were just quarantining us until they determined if we were infected, but that wasn’t their purpose at all.
“At least it seems to take the urgency of our situation down a bit. I’d still like to get to the hospital to investigate further, but we shouldn’t need to worry about Alvin turning at this point.”
“Going into the hospital is probably safe enough for the two of us at this point. But Alvin might be shot out of hand. I’d certainly consider doing so if I saw that he’d been bitten, especially if he were hiding it.”
“Whew. Let’s go to the hospital, though. I’m very curious about this cure thingy we keep hearing about.”