Working as Intended

I suddenly woke up one morning in the corner of a blasted out house, having absolutely no idea who I was or, frankly, how I got here. After checking the adjacent corners of the room, with as little effort as humanly possible, to make sure no alcohol or ladies of the evening were lying about, I unfortunately had to rule out the possibility of suffering the aftereffects of the world's most bitchin' party. After a few minutes of trying really hard to remember the night beforehand, and then wondering maybe it's for the best that I don't, I begrudgingly stood up and wandered outside the house via a convenient lack of wall.

The small village I was in didn't seem to fare any better than my humble abode, assuming of course it was even mine to begin with. The neighbours were just walking about in a daze, almost as if they too had no idea what the flying arse was going on. I was about to just drop the matter altogether and collapse back in my rubble when I noticed everyone in town had these disgusting pustules all over their bodies. After politely excusing myself and screaming over the nearest hill, I stumbled across a man in a bunker who looked like he had been hit with an entire forest full of exceptionally ugly trees.

The man, who refused to give his name because I'm just going to assume he forgot it like everyone else, began to explain that he found me in the wreckage of a truck coming from a place called "the Zone", which I'm just going to delude myself into thinking is the name of a rockin' nightclub where I had just breakdanced the night away! He also informed me that I was mumbling something about needing to find/kill someone in particular, and that I should probably get right on that. I'm not sure, since the fact that I was apparently found in the ruins of an exploded truck and suffering from amnesia is a pretty fucking good indication that that's not what we'd call a smart move.

While I took my time to get my noggin' jump-started again, Mr. Exposition kindly suggested that I help out the local factions, as that would get me in good standing with them and provide me with some moolah for the road. He also asked if I could find him some Artifacts, and, naturally, not knowing what those are, I promised I'd find him as many as I could.




As the Sun pounced on the town in the morning much in the same way a cat's claws does to someone's face, I finally got the brilliant idea of checking what exactly I had on my person. I was rather dismayed to find that all I was carrying was a sleeping bag, a pistol, a health-kit, a few measly ammo rounds and a GPS PDA. I was going to say that I don't recall purchasing any of these, but that would be a incredibly stupid remark.

Saying goodbye, at least for now, to the decrepit little podunk I awoke in, I traveled down the nearby road on my way to find... honestly, I had no idea. I just assumed if I walked far enough that something magical and wondrous might occur. Such as a teleporter that took me to the exact opposite location in the Universe. Sadly I didn't find any wonderful space/time temporal anomalies, but instead came across a few soldiers who were trying to recover a flash-drive that a buddy of theirs was holding before he got kidnapped by a local rival group of upstanding citizens. Seeing as how that would require me not being a massive coward, I instead took off down the road screaming bloody murder. Though this may have also been due to the rabid hound that was now devouring my leg.

After the canine got bored and went to find less pathetic morsels, I patched up what remained of my leg with the sole health-kit in my possession and headed on my way again to Whereverthefuck. Despite not knowing where I was, I could clearly see that it wasn't exactly the friendliest neighbourhood to wake up in. Between the roves of dogs that prowled the fields next to me to the ominous sirens in the distant and shadowy figures darting to and from the nearby flora, this place was starting to majorly weird me out.

Shortly further down the road I came across a group of black-hooded soldiers who replied to my asking for directions with several bullets in my torso. Finding this to be a rather unfortunate set of circumstances, I was about to retreat into the fields and just drop when the group of soldiers from before came charging past me and triggered a rather heated exchange between the two groups of armed maniacs. I tried to take a few potshots with my pistol, but I soon discovered that reliably aiming with it was not unlike trying to aim precisely with a refrigerator.

After a few heated minutes of gunfire, the surviving soldiers who had thankfully saved my arse found the small corner in a nearby factor that I had been cowering in and suggested I rest to recover my lost strength. Hopefully sleeping also removes the handful of AK-47 rounds that are currently making friendly with the inside of my torso, otherwise this is going to be a very awkward situation shortly.




I awoke three hours later to discover my newly found friends had been afflicted with an unfortunate case of dead. Not wanting to anger the gods of perplexing terminal illnesses, I quickly got up and bolted outside, where I was greeted by an ominous rumbling in the sky. Using my newly discovered binoculars which didn't look at all suspiciously like those one of the soldiers was carrying before, I noticed a helicopter taking off in the distance as sirens and growling, angry yelling began to pour out of every loudspeaker in the vicinity. At least I assumed it was angry. It's hard to tell when all you can make out of the speech is complete gibberish.

In any case, the sun had now reached the highest point in the sky and was starting to descend slowly into it's nightly chamber, or something, so I picked up what little I owned and set off through the now soldier-absent outpost beneath some train lines. I have absolutely no idea if that's worth noting, but if I suddenly remember that the world's fate hangs entirely on one particular bridge I guess I'll have my bases covered.

As my PDA informed me with a no doubt smugly superior beeping noise that the nearest group of people who weren't trying to kill me was still a few hours of travel away, I decided to try and investigate the local wildlife, as they too seemed to be subject to disgusting pustules and malformed shapes like the citizens of the little podunk this morning. The only animal I could reliably observe were the hounds, of which I learnt three vitally important things.

1) They're normally docile, except when you decide to sprint right past them.
2) When you decide to sprint, there will always bee three of the fuckers waiting in the bushes next to you.
3) Their favorite food appears to be my flesh.

Having patched myself up with what I could find after painfully learning #3, my stomach decided to demand that if I could get some fucking food in it in the immediate future then that'd be just super. Sadly, my stomach was not appealed by the idea of digesting some handgun rounds, so I had to try and find some way of making something remotely edible. My first thought was to kill the hounds and eat them, from a position of irony, but seeing their bodies deformed and pustulating quickly shot that idea down.

There appeared to be a small government checkpoint just up the road, so throwing all previous examples of encountering people with scary guns into the winds, I made my way towards the structures in the distance. Along the way, I got the strangest feeling I was being watched, and not from the sniper that was no doubt in the the checkpoint tower ahead and thought my head was looking pretty darn inviting for a bullet scramble right about now.

I couldn't get a good look at what was following me, but whatever it was, I was just glad it was doing so from a distance.




After a mad fleeing spritely jog up the road, I came across the checkpoint at last. However, it seemed that one the soldiers I was on somewhat friendly terms with before had woken up before me, ran up the road and started madly firing at the first proper target he came across. As we are all known to do from time to time. Normally, this wouldn't have bothered me, outside of the possibility of being hit in the brain and dying, but the enemy soldiers apparently perceived my walking up and asking for a sandwich as an act of war, since they disengaged from my 'friend' and started wildly shooting and hollering in my direction. Or at least where I was a few moments before screaming like a child and flinging myself into the back of a nearby truck.

Inside my newly discovered bunker I came across a shotgun. My laughs of soon-to-be bloody glory were instantly dashed when I quickly stumbled across that crazy notion that projectile weaponry often needs actual projectiles in 'em to be reliably effective outside of a makeshift club.

I managed to eventually finish off the hostile soldiers with the age-old strategy of hiding in the corner sobbing and wildly firing at anything that walks into my immediate view. I'm sure the plan doesn't usually involve fear-induced urinating, but I'm nothing if not a pioneer for new thinking. After ransacking the corpses for anything useful (a machine gun (!), and some ammo) I noticed my soldier friend from before walking out from behind a corner, nodding to me, and then just taking off up the road, whistling an amusing ditty.

Then he suddenly hit the ground screaming but five seconds later. After making sure that my gun hadn't accidentally fired and broken all tradition by actually hitting someone for once, I quickly ran over to him. All he would say was that he demanded a health-kit. Having none on my person after several cases of dogs biting my limbs off, I assured him I would find something to help him and quickly ran off up the road. My PDA informed me that I was heading towards a location known as the Garbage, which, given everywhere else I've encountered so far on my first day, seemed a little redundant.

During my travels to and from locations full of things that instantly developed irrational hatred for all things myself, I still couldn't remember a single damned thing about my life before this morning. The only thing I really knew was that it had to be better than my current standing, seeing as how I obviously hadn't killed myself yet. Then it hit me!... Then again! Sadly, it turned out the pangs against my noggin' weren't ideas, but instead incoming fire from enemy soldiers. No doubt the backup for the checkpoint just before.

One solid dispatching of soldiers later, followed by immediate patching up because I honestly have the survival skills of a blueberry scone, I made my way further into the Garbage, and discovered a nearby outpost full of, surprise, people who didn't want to kill me for once! I was about run up and start kissing them for not immediately inflicting dire harm on me when they surrounded me and demanded I help them fight off the incoming enemy battalion that was about to bare down on them like the first of an angry god.

Well.... fuck.




Yet again the clashing of battle surrounded me. If I was going to make it in this land where nothing can possibly go right with my organs not punctured by bullet fire, friendly or otherwise, I'd have to learn how to shoot. Funnily enough, surviving a gun battle doesn't involve making a lot of noise climbing into the wreckage of a nearby bus and alerting every guard in the nearby vicinity to your presence. Much screaming and firing of the gun was made, and I swear that I managed to clip someone in the leg once! Or that might have been a nearby dog. It was hard to tell with all of 300 yards and a mountain of scrap separating us.

After the enemy had been soundly defeated by everyone who wasn't myself, the captain of the nearby squad thanked me for my help. I guess my cowering must've provided a solid decoy for everyone else. With stomach still furiously barking for some motherfucking intake, damn it, I made the rounds and swiped whatever health-kits and ammo I could find off the enemy corpses. It was just now that, frankly, my absolutely stunning brain remembered that my soldier friend from before needed a health-pack. I picked up whatever I could that seemed useful and took off back down the road using the transportation method I believe the ancients used to refer to as running like a maniacal ponce.

Several hours later, just as the sun was beginning to give off its final farewells beyond the distant hills, I sheepishly returned to camp with the soldiers for the night, artfully dodging any questions about what happened to the soldier I was going to save. It having absolutely nothing to do with the idea that I forgot about him for hours and found him long dead and being feasted upon by rabid dogs.

In any case, I found a bottle of vodka on him and some diet sausage. I find the quality of meat found in the jacket of a dead and highly diseased soldier to be rather suspect, but my stomach found it to be more suspect why I hadn't shut the hell up already and fed it. So I did.

Today has been... different, to say the least.

As I gathered around the campfire for the night, making I was as close to other people who could protect me from enemy soldiers and my own rampant stupidity as much as humanly possible, a few of them were discussing going to a nearby research facility in the morning, hoping for supplies. Having nothing else better to do with my probably increasingly short life, I agreed I'd come with.

Tomorrow would be a better day, surely?

I comforted myself with these words and was about to lull myself to sleep when a dog leapt out from the shadows and began devouring an unhealthy chunk of my face. All the nearby soldiers could do was continue sleeping or pull out a guitar and begin a calming campfire song.

Tomorrow would be better...