The Day After Doomsday: Getting By In a Post-Apocalyptic World, Wednesday, Period 4

[raspberryturk]

When the students stepped into the Danger Shop for Reno's class today, they'd find themselves stepping into the lobby of the dormitory all over again, with a few pointed differences. There seemed to be a barricade built against the boarded-up windows, consisting of a good deal of the furniture that had clearly been dragged down from the floors above them. The power to the simulated building had been cut off completely, which meant that they were sitting in near-absolute darkness, because naturally Reno was going to be an ass and set this scenario for the dead of night.

There were cans of food lined up against one wall. There were weapons, what looked to be the entire contents of both the weapons locker and sharpened, weaponized versions of the practise fare from the Salle, laid out against the other. A sign hastily scribbled down on a piece of paper pointed deeper into the building, directing any possible injured to a first-aid station in the rec room.

Reno was sitting in the middle of the floor, grinning up at the students as they came in, legs splayed out in front of him and his elbows on his knees, Danger Shop supplied stun baton in one hand.

"Trust me," he said coolly, nodding back to the doors that closed themselves and instantly fell behind another barricade the moment the last of the students stepped in, "you don't wanna go back out there. This ain't your everyday Fandom invasion, where somethin' shows up, tapdances nasty around us all for a week, an' then gets sent packin'. This is the real friggin' deal, yo. This is your doomsday scenario, where there ain't no cure for bein' dead. Where if you get bit and infected and turn into one of them, you ain't snappin' out of it. Where the weapon that blew up the school took half of you with it, and you don't got time for so much as a head count to figure out who's left."

He leaned back, the cool metal of his baton scraping against the floor of the lobby, playing an eerie harmony to the sounds from outside, which alternated from complete silence to screams to gunfire, to the sound of something not remotely human calling out into the dark, answered by what had to be a hundred more just like it, all converging in on one point: The Dorms.

"I ain't gonna pretend there ain't heroes among you, I ain't gonna sit here and point at you one by one to tell you the likelihood of comin' back alive, either. If you're one of them who's gonna run out there, then there ain't nobody who'll be able to keep you inside. And that'll cost the island one of its first big advantages early on. Because once you guys are dead, what are the people who ain't fighters gonna do?"

And then, all at once in a flash of speed that was jarringly unnatural, Reno was on his feet, baton on his shoulder, and he was prowling back and forth in front of the students.

"What the enemy out there is don't matter in this scenario. What's out there is the predator, that thing that goes bump in the night, that sees you as prey or pest, but whatever the case is, it don't want us here, and it's lettin' us know with extreme prejudice. This is the Danger Shop, so if you go out them doors here, you'll just be steppin' out into the school again. This lesson ain't about fightin'. This is about stayin' alive. Look around. Take in what's been set up, here. Let it sink in that there isn't a single resource in this lobby that'll last even a severely reduced dorm population more'n a few weeks at best. And then, try an' figure out what the hell you're gonna do about it."

[Open! Go nuts!]

Comments

Sign In!

[raspberryturk]

Under Attack!

Re: Sign In!

[livebytherules.livejournal.com]

Will West

Lecture!

[raspberryturk]

See if you can focus on it, with all of the nondescript howling and gnashing things outside that barricade.

Re: Lecture!

[spin_kick_snap]

By the time she graduated--heck, by the time she finished this summer term!--Kathy was going to be an expert in killing zombies.

...Or whatever was howling out there. Kathy was okay with not ever getting a close enough look at them.

Look Around!

[raspberryturk]

Wander the dorms alone or in groups, and try to figure out how to make the most of what you've got at your disposal. Your resources are as follows:

- Canned food, enough to feed maybe ten people for three weeks if carefully rationed.

- One gas-powered generator, turned off to conserve precious fuel, of which there isn't nearly enough.

- Moddable weapons! Clearly not outside being used, possibly because all the fighters already ran off and got themselves killed. Possibly because the firearms have run out of ammo. Possibly because against whatever is out there, weapons just don't work.

- In the Rec Room, there is a makeshift first-aid area set up. Here is where your healers or medics are probably going to end up pushing themselves to the point of collapse, especially once the limited amount of physical first-aid supplies run out trying to save any of you would-be heroes.

- Water? There's the pool downstairs, but the water in that is chlorinated, not fit for human consumption. The power is off, and you can probably assume the tap water has been subjected to the same fate. If it hasn't, yet, then you're going to want containers, aren't you?

- And, of course, all of the assorted paraphernalia that teenagers coming to school tend to bring with them. Toothbrushes and teddy bears and pencils and erasers, in all of the dorm rooms.

- And for all of your wandering? It is safe to assume that you and your classmates are the only ones in the dorms. Who knows where everyone else went? Probably outside. That was stupid of them.

Re: Look Around!

[livebytherules.livejournal.com]

Will really, really hoped things back home were not going to get this dire. He knew it was a possibility what with the things they might face but he really hoped it wasn't going to happen.

He set out slowly around the dorms, pulling up his Grid as he did. He guessed they were alone in this place but it was always good to know where heat signatures were and where things might be hiding.

Re: Look Around!

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy tried the faucets for water and took stock of the food. After that, the medical supplies. They definitely needed more of, oh, everything.

Doing this in the dark with the noises coming from outside made this even more terrifying. She was betting on nightmares tonight.

Re: Look Around!

[pulseof_life]

Yeul wandered down halls, and into rooms, her movements unhurried and entirely unconcerned about what could happen.

While she found for herself that there wasn't enough of anything to last for all that long, Yeul wasn't worried.

Eventually she took a seat against one wall, out of the way, and contented herself with waiting it out. All things considered, that was probably the best reaction anyone could hope for with her given that she nearly felt fear nor cared enough about her survival to be anxious about their situation.

Re: Look Around!

[notaweenie.livejournal.com]

Barry went over and looked over the gas powered generator and frowned. Yeah. They could do better than that.

Barry started making a list which included:
1. Broken refrigerator
2. Vitamin C tablets
3. Glass
4. Mirror
5. Duct tape
6. Scrap wood
7. Soy sauce
8. Plastic bottles.

Re: Look Around!

[not_every_mage]

Anders tried to canvas the entire first floor, but focused most of his time on sorting through the first aid supplies in the Rec Room. It wasn't encouraging. Much of it was unfamiliar, and his best reckoning was that even with magic as a back-up, the longest he could make things last would be two or three weeks -- and that was assuming there weren't any epidemics.

Re: Look Around!

[nobloodymessiah.livejournal.com]

Eleanor took careful stock of what they had. Enough for now, but not enough for very long. And then she was going to ransack the dorm rooms looking for extra supplies.

Re: Look Around!

[dauntless-four.livejournal.com]

Four glanced around, feeling more at home in this scenario than in the real version of Fandom. This was more like Dauntless--though Dauntless would have more weapons.

Re: Look Around!

[fly-so-serious.livejournal.com]

Joker had a hand up. "Is this our dorm?" he asked. "Specifically? 'Cause if it is, I've got some useful things in my room, but like hell am I taking those stairs if this is more generic-y."

Plan Ahead!

[raspberryturk]

Now that you know what you've got, and what you've got is mostly borrowed time, what are you going to do about it? There's a garden on the roof, and if you're lucky then whatever the enemy out there is, it won't be able to get up there. Can you possibly cultivate enough food to keep your survivors fed in the long term? What about winter?

How about power? How badly do you need light at night? They'll need it to work by in the first-aid area, of course. Candles? They're a finite resource, too. Magic? Well and good, assuming you have people with powers who aren't dead yet, too.

Weapons? The blade of a sword or an axe will tarnish and get dull, but it'll last a load longer than a few rounds of ammunition or a few crossbow bolts, once things get hairy. How many experienced fighters are there left, realistically? How many people can be trained to fight, under the circumstances?

You've got to get out of here, eventually. How do you even know if there's life beyond the island, any more? Can you manage to scratch out a permanent residence here, assuming the portals are down and the Causeway has been torn apart? And if you do stay, what is there in the town that you can use, assuming you can get that far? And if you don't try to make it that far, how do you make certain that your makeshift barricade holds?

Re: Plan Ahead!

[spin_kick_snap]

"Why are we on the first floor?" Kathy asked aloud. "While I don't think that we should stay in the dorms--it's just not feasible--staying on the first floor is really stupid. Once they break in, we're toast. We'd have better luck being up a few floors and destroying the staircases to prevent them from following us."

Which left the problem of how they would get up and down, but with enough sheets, they could probably make a ladder to climb. An actual ladder, not just a knotted rope.

Re: Plan Ahead!

[notaweenie.livejournal.com]

After gathering the needed materials, Barry built a solar water kettle (http://www.instructables.com/id/Solar-Hot-Water-Kettle-From-Plastic-Bottles-and-G/) and a solar panel (http://www.thesietch.org/projects/solarthermalpanel2/index.htm) for power.

"The solar kettle will boil the water in the pool," Barry said beginning to work on the gas powered generator. "The chlorine will turn into a gas leaving the water safe to drink. The solar panel will do the same thing as well as provide power during the day for whatever we need. And as soon as I'm done with this generator, it should run off this bottle of soy sauce¹ for about five years."

He stretched his shoulders a little bit more before continuing.

"Next up is solar greenhouse which we should be able to use for food all year long and as for weapons a fucking two by four should be good enough to bash anyone's head in until I can build something better."


-----
¹ West Wing reference, yo.

Re: Plan Ahead!

[not_every_mage]

"It seems to me that staying in here is a slow death," Anders said bluntly. "Our supplies look like they'd barely hold out a few weeks, and that's at best. I want to make a run for it. Whatever's out there, I'd rather go down fighting than starve."

That was his main point, but he held up a hand to indicate he had one more thought. "Also, whatever this is worth, I have a bit of a knack for healing. Anyone else?"

Re: Plan Ahead!

[nobloodymessiah.livejournal.com]

"We can't stay here," Eleanor said firmly. "Even if the rest of the world is like this, there have to be better locations to make our stand. Ones with available food supplies, ones with better tactical defenses. We should be setting out both short-term goals -- like what Barry's doing -- and long-term ones. We need to see if there are patterns to the monsters' behavior -- times they're less likely to strike, diversions they're likely to fall for. If it turns out there's no way off this island, then we deal with that once we know, for sure."

Re: Plan Ahead!

[dauntless-four.livejournal.com]

"Why do we have to leave here?" Four asked. "Maybe there's nothing out there and all we'll do is burn up scarce resources screwing around in the maybes. We have six stories of rooms to ransack, a roof to scout from. Stay in here, let them kill each other off when they realize we're no longer stupid enough to get caught out there with them."

Re: Plan Ahead!

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy held up a map of the island that she'd found amongst the debris and squinted at it in the dim light. She still believed that their best bet was to leave the dorms, but she wasn't going anywhere without some kind of plan.

"Okay," she said aloud, swallowing back her instinctive apology and insistence she wasn't trying to be bossy or anything. "So, I think our best bet would be to head to Luke's. That giant freezer's been mentioned on the radio enough times and I guess there's a trolley system and polar bears, so there should be plenty of room and food in there. I think it runs on some kind of nuclear generator that's not hooked up to the grid, so it might still be on. It's also across the street to--I think that says the Trooper Station? Which might mean better weapons for us."

She circled the restaurant with a marker and drew a line to the dorms, following the streets.

"We've obviously got a couple of problems. We don't know what's out there--I don't think anyone's even been up to the roof yet to get an idea of what's outside. We don't know how many creatures are out there or what they can do. We don't know if Luke's is defensible or if the freezer's still working. I think that once we get in there, we can just close the freezer door, but I'm not certain. And, even if we do decide that that's the best place to go, not everyone here can run, assuming those things out there aren't faster than we are anyway."

That was a staggering amount of negatives, there. And they didn't even have a wheelbarrow or a holocaust cloak.

"My suggestion is, first and foremost, we get some information. We need to know what we're up against. I also think we should try to make this place more defensible, too. Even if we decide to ultimately leave, we can't be sure how long we'll need to get ready for that. And if it turns out leaving is the wrong option, we'll probably be glad we spent the time making this place safer and better. As for figuring out how things are in town, I think taking to the sewers is the answer. No line of sight for anything outside, the smell of, well, sewage will mask our scent if that's how they hunt, and the sewer lines should go from the dorms to the town. If they're safe, the sewers will be a good way to transport everyone and everything we need, too. That begs the question if they're safe, though."

Licking her lips, Kathy turned and asked, "Does anyone have any thoughts about this?"

[I noticed a ton of good discussions going on in separate threads, so I figured this might be a good place to consolidate them.]

Talk to the TA!

[raspberryturk]

Who no doubt has already managed to MacGyver together several solutions in his head.

Too bad his real job is just to bring Reno coffee.

Re: Talk to the TA!

[notaweenie.livejournal.com]

Yes. Barry did bring coffee. Possibly the most hideous tasting coffee ever made.

In the meantime after doing the assignment, Barry was using his tablet to try and hack into the danger room console.

What? This shit was cool!

Talk to Reno!

[raspberryturk]

Who seems right at home, here. Seriously. No big.

Re: Talk to Reno!

[notaweenie.livejournal.com]

"Here's your coffee," Barry said bringing Reno what was probably the most worst tasting coffee ever brewed in the United States. Possible the Northern hemisphere. "Given the subject matter of the class I brewed it only from items I would find in a doomsday scenario."

OOC!

[raspberryturk]

The class I crapped together four years ago out of stuff from the Zombie Survival Guide is still one of my favourites.