Re: Compiling ideas for Zombie fluff.

Posted by messyart on May 28, 2011; 4:22am
URL: http://the-lost-and-the-damned.71.s1.nabble.com/Compiling-ideas-for-Zombie-fluff-tp6409892p6413293.html

Mere hours had passed since the first report of an outbreak, and the streets of London were all abandoned. A spree of looting had been cut short by terror as bloodied people had been seen mobbing those too slow to escape them.
"Zombies" they were branded. A name most wish would hold more accuracy. It conjured images of rotting hulks of former humans, shambling inellegantly through shopping centres.
Sadly, the reality was something all over more worrying. Many of these victims were far from shambling monsters. They ran, chased and caught any who tried to outrun them.
They showed a limited mortality, falling easily to gunfire, but their numbers soon grew far too great for the military to hold against them, and they were left within a now-cordoned London. Every main road out had quickly erected checkpoints, every outlaying field had scouts.
Any infected individual caught out in the open was met with a hail of fire, but all survivors within the cordon were on their own.
A "shoot to kill" directive was set, and the soldiers watching out over the city were killing as many civilians as they were zombies.
News stationed dubbed them murderers, families called them monsters, but those managing to make it through the checkpoints cared not for the dead.

Sadly, all of those still within the city were without outside contact. Radio signals were slowly all fading away, and escape plans were always met with numbers of zombies too great for even the best plans to last.

But within this new hell grew new types of determination.
Small groups of survivors had begun to accept this new state of existence, and sought to make the most of the hand they had been dealt, setting up patrolled and protected safe zones and compounds within any defendable lot of land.
Many had begun tearing up concrete to create patches to farm, some had even come to wander between all of the "safe" areas of the city. Many of which being traders, others being desperadoes, hell bent on cleaning the streets of as many undead as they could before falling amongst them.

In this new society, a man is only as grand as his reputation, and traders and abandoned soldiers alike only cohort with those who have proven themselves beyond worthy amongst the beaten and the damned.
Good weaponry is hard to come by, and many of the bravest [or most insane] survivors wield simple constructions of fence posts and nails in their deep-city insertions.
Many of the old "reliable" methods of weapon-aquisition are rendered pointless as every tool-shop, gun store and DIY emporium are stripped of all of any use.
Admit it, no matter how quickly you dreamt up the idea of grabbing a chainsaw, if you weren't there in the first batches of looting, you missed out. Now those weapons once freely available are rare finds. Occasionally on the bodies of the recently deceased, sometimes carried by traders.

Amongst the living, some have become akin to legends, their names echoed in every street in the hopes of their presence.
These are the Slayers. Men and women whose reputations proceed them.
Many try to reach their level of fame, specialising in certain aspects of zombie warfare to best outlast competition and apocalypse.
You could say that they hold a.. "Class" of their own.
Such experience comes from many excursions with their favoured weapons, and naturally, not many succeed for long.

Amongst the dead.. Unfortunate mutations have formed.
The alien infection holds badly misunderstood reactions to certain people, be it chromosone levels or blood types, no-one knows.
Strange growths are commonplace, be it bulging spare limbs, or gnarled, twisted limbs.
A rarer and far more concerning set of mutations are being dubbed "special infections".
They hold a great degree of variety, some even seeming almost human in essence.
Others, far beyond.
Again, causes are utterly unknown, as most survivors are unwilling to gain samples of the creatures when encountered.

Beasts like the Leaper, an agile and powerful ambush predator, creep through back alleys and across roof-tops, waiting for perfect moments to suprise their prey, and unlike many other victims of the infection, they keep a patient distance until they decide to strike.
This worrying intelligence leaves Survivors constantly on-guard, slowing them as they progress through city-streets and parks.

Other, far more obvious creatures like the Behemoth [Sometimes dubbed the Brute, or Tank] are terrifying monsters simply be design, for while a Leaper is lithe, but fragile, the Behemoth is immense and seemingly bullet-proof.
Thick wads of muscles allow it to tear down telephone poles, throw cars and debris as if toys, and more devastatingly, turn survivors inside out with little more than a twist of the wrist.

One other worrying twist in the infection that has grown far more worrying to the military surrounding London is the spread of infection into wildlife, for it seems indiscriminate between life-forms.
Its' affects are more debilitating to animals than humans, leaving them in twisting, writhing piles of slowly decomposing flesh.
But the infection holds a more disturbing grip on insects and various creepy-crawlies. The hold vast mutations all of their own, often expanding and growing far larger than could ever be natural.
Ants stalk the deepest streets, once insignificant, now capable of tearing men in half with a single crushing bite of their mandibles.

[This is growing steadily more unbearable to read back on >.>;]