Chapter 114: Dead Man's Fall
I stared at the horrifying creatures before me. For a while, I was too terrified to even think about looking at their tropes on the red wallpaper. When I did, I was in for a shock. Usually, when I looked at the tropes of a high-level enemy, there were some that I couldn’t see. Trope Master was a Savvy-based ability, after all. Most strong enemies have enough Savvy to block the ability to some extent.
With the Avenging Dead, that wasn’t the case at all. I could see every single trope they had, which meant one thing: they had little to no Savvy.
They were zombies after all. Even spiritual avenging zombies didn’t need Savvy or Moxy or Hustle. That meant that the horde’s entire 52 points of Plot Armor was devoted to some combination of Grit and Mettle. That was terrifying.
As I scanned through the tropes, I found that their lack of Savvy, Moxy, and Mettle was countered by abilities that circumvented those weaknesses. Something I had learned from the Vets was that as storylines scaled in recommended Plot Armor, the difficulty in completing them scaled faster.
At level 20, fighting a level 20 enemy is difficult but not impossible. At level 50, fighting a level 50 enemy was a nightmare. Thinking back on it, I was lucky that the Grotesques had a readily accessible weakness.
This could illustrate that. Enemies who could completely circumvent stat differences with a single trope were in a league of their own. When an enemy suddenly no longer has to worry about a stat, it can devote those points to another one.
The Avenging Dead
Plot Armor: 52
__________
Tropes
Fungible Enemy
This enemy is composed of countless largely interchangeable units whose numbers will not diminish until the scene is concluded. There always seems to be more to come.
Death Finds a Way
This enemy will have a heightened chance of finding the victims it seeks regardless of how likely that scenario may be on paper. Determined by a comparison of Effective Plot Armor.
Inescapable Death Sequence
Once this killer has initiated its kill sequence, the victim is doomed unless counteracted by a trope or a saving throw. Even though logically, the victim should be able to escape or fight back, they will fail.
Hive Mind
This creature's mind is linked to that of similar creatures.
Soft Magic is Confusing
The enemy’s lore is vague and broad and offers little insight into the specifics of how the enemy operates.
Mindfully Mindless
Despite having little to no intelligence, this enemy will somehow manage to thwart the well-laid plans of very intelligent adversaries. Buffs Savvy saving throws.
Fate Doesn’t Run
This enemy will not run after their victim, yet they are never far behind in a chase scene. Buffs Hustle saving throws.
Join Us
This enemy has some means of increasing its numbers through conversion.
The Unseen Hand
This enemy is guided by a greater force. This guidance may be a part of the lore or the meta.
Confess!
The presence of this enemy will compel those nearby to ponder their morality, grievances, and outlook on death.
Your Blood Runs Cold
Seeing this enemy will cause great mental distress. Debuffs Moxie and Savvy.
Strength In Numbers
The enemy is at its strongest in groups. Singling its members out will weaken them substantially.
Territorial
This killer will punish those who harm its domain.
Whispers in the Dark
This creature can sense a player or NPC's vulnerabilities and manipulate them via impulsive thoughts, perceived as whispers.
Cloaked in Atmosphere
When this enemy enters a scene, it will change lighting and sound design, and possibly have other noticeable effects.
Convenient Spirituality
Does this enemy have powers beyond its physical body? It must, even if it doesn’t often show them.
Keep You On Your Toes
This enemy has a heightened chance of finding and subduing victims who are not paying attention.
I explained their tropes to everyone as quickly as I could. Then we made our plan. Soon, it was time to execute it.
On-Screen.
Immediately, the wandering spirits outside started back in with their zombie moans. It was overwhelming. The sound of their cries set my mind in a frenzy.
“What the hell is going on?” I screamed.
“I told you!” Samantha said. “Those men defiled the graves at the cemetery in the forest across the field and now the dead are here to take their revenge.”
She was being comforted by the two dogs she had let into the house when we came in. The dogs were clearly disturbed and would occasionally let out a haunting howl as if communicating with the other dogs outside.
“Defiled the graves… grave robbing?” I asked. “The men were covered in dirt. Is that what you’re talking about?”
She nodded.
Bobby decided to chime in. “After they had sold all of my tools and valuables that I had at the hotel, they started looking for another source of quick cash. Even threatened to sell my dogs. One of them came up with the idea of stealing jewelry right out of the graves at the cemetery. I don’t know exactly where it started but it keeps most of them out of the house, so their leader lets them do it.”
“But they didn’t stop there,” Samantha said through tears. “That one, Bradley, he has done far worse. He brutalized the corpses. Defiled them. The spirits couldn’t rest after what he did to them. They cried out, begging for help.”
“Wait,” I said in my best panicky, terrified voice. “If they are after the grave robbers, then maybe they won’t bother us. They’re avenging spirits, right? We didn’t do anything to them. Nothing to avenge.”
Cinema Seer was set up.
Antoine looked skeptical. “You can try that. One of those things gets near me and I’m not going to just stand there.”
Downstairs, the dead continued to try to break into the house. Their attempts were met with gratuitous gunfire.
The men must have realized that was fruitless because soon, I could hear the sound of them pounding their way up the stairs.
“Let us up!” Merritt screamed. “Please. We won’t hurt you.”
They started pounding on the stack of furniture we had piled up. Unlike before, they were making progress. I imagined they had the bigger fellow, Tank, doing a lot of the heavy lifting.
“We can’t let them in here,” I said.
The four of us put all of our strength into pushing back against the furniture, hoping to prevent the men from pushing their way past.
But Tank was strong and desperate.
He shoved against us with all his might and managed to push the bookshelf and all of the other furniture back toward us enough to make an opening.
Even though it was only open for a moment, it was enough time for Bradley to slip through.
“Get back!” he yelled, holding out his gun. “Let them through. Now.”
He wasn’t messing around like he had been earlier that night. He was angry and scared. For the first time, I thought I saw his true face.
What could we do? It wasn’t Second Blood yet. If he shot one of us, we would die for nothing.
We backed away and let Tank push the shelving back so that Merritt and the other grave robber, who had not made much of an impression so far, Tim, through. In the original version of the story, I think players were supposed to try to convince Tim to help them. He was quiet but clearly uncomfortable with the things his group was doing. In this version of events, that didn’t seem as important yet.
After everyone had slid through, Tank himself tried to squeeze in, but as he did, a look of terror overcame his face and he fell to the ground. He was kicking at something on the staircase. He tried to crawl forward.
Behind him, the moans of the dead were louder. Strangely, I could barely hear their footsteps.
“Help him!” Merritt screamed. “And don’t you let go!”
The men grabbed onto Tanks arms and pulled against the zombies on the other side.
They wouldn’t succeed. They couldn’t. The Avenging Dead had the Inescapable Death Sequence ability that made it impossible to escape them once they had started your death sequence even if it seemed you should be able to. Tank’s death sequence was underway. They had him in their grasp.
I could see Antoine contemplating attacking our captors while they were distracted.
It wasn't a bad idea. He could easily shove them forward so that they were all within reach of the zombie horde. It was possible that the zombies could take each and every one of them out right at that moment. I could understand his urge.
But there were risks in attacking them here.
Right then, the story was about the tables being turned on a group of evil men. If those men died before the Finale, then the story would have to be about something else. Carousel would make sure of that. Either it would ensure that Antoine's attack failed, or it would raise the stakes for the Finale. We didn’t want that.
We had heard stories of players trying to defeat the enemy prematurely. Carousel would always get creative.
We could, of course, pick them off one at a time but we still had to wait for the moment to be right.
Soon, it became clear that Tank was a lost cause as his screams of fear turned into screams of pain. We could hear his bones breaking as the dead pulled at his legs and tore his flesh.
As the zombies pulled, eventually they succeeded, and Tank was dragged back down the stairs behind the bookcase.
With him out of the way, we rushed to push the case back, closing off the staircase.
The dead still cried out behind the bookshelf, but they didn’t have the pure explosive power that Tank had, so the bookshelf held firm. That could change at any moment.
“Don’t you dare stop pushing on that shelf,” Merritt said.
“What the hell is going on?” Bradley screamed. He paced around the landing, waving his gun around.
“You know what’s happening!” young Tim screamed. He crying and shaking from fear. “They don’t like what we did to them. That we dug ‘em up. Hung ‘em. Shot ‘em. Now they’re gonna drag us to hell.”
Bradley was enraged. “They aren’t going to do shit to me!” he screamed. “I am not dying here. You got that?”
He pointed his gun at Tim, but only for a moment. Then, in frustration, he tore off to some other part of the second story as Tank's screams faded into the distance.
For a while, that was how time passed. The dead were making all kinds of ruckus, but they were not able to make it past the barricade. I knew that they would eventually. Their tropes made it clear that they would be able to get to their targets even if it didn't make sense. Soon, we would need to find a way to push the story forward, or else the story would go forward on its own in a way that was unpredictable and not to our advantage.
“You know, it’s funny,” Merritt said, “You guys wasted all our bullets using their bodies as target practice and now they’re up and walking around, trying to kill us, and we don’t have any ammo.”
No one laughed but him. The cracks were beginning to show in his authoritative demeanor.
We were in and out of being On-Screen. My best explanation was that Dina was out doing something worth watching, but I wasn’t sure what.
Eventually, we were On-Screen for good.
With the speed that the storyline was moving, it was almost Second Blood and the Final Battle wouldn’t be far behind it.
Bradley came back to the landing waving his gun around.
He then trained it on me.
“Come here,” he commanded.
I had been helping hold the bookcase against the stair opening. I was hesitant to stop.
“Don’t you dare move away from that bookcase,” Merritt said, pulling his own gun on me. “What do you need him for?”
Bradley pointed back in the direction he had come from.
“There’s a ledge out there,” he said. “He’s gonna take the keys to the cruiser and bring it around so that we can drop down on it and get out of here.”
“How is he supposed to get down to the cruiser? If the fall doesn’t kill him, the dead will,” Merritt said.
Bradley shook his head.
“We gotta try something. There’s a part of the house over here where there are no windows or doors on the first floor. There are barely any of those things over there to worry about. We drop him down. He gets the car and brings it around next to the house for us to climb down on. Then we drive away. I already threw a mattress out on the ground for him to land on. And if it doesn’t work, who cares?”
Their Desperation trope made them more dangerous as their situation got worse. It also lowered their Savvy. Not unlike real life. I was picked for this little project because of my low effective Plot Armor, no doubt.
“I’m not jumping off the roof,” I said. Carousel was having fun with me. I had just suggested the same thing as filler for Antoine and my fake argument. “You know how far down that is?”
“You’re going to do whatever I say,” Bradley screamed. He grabbed ahold of my hair and put the gun against the side of my head. He was strong. Too strong for me to do anything about.
He pulled me away from the bookcase and dragged me down the hallway toward a room on the other side of the bed and breakfast.
He shoved me through the door and I saw that he had already broken out one of the windows to make extra room for the mattress he threw down on the ground.
There was a small ledge outside the window.
“Get out there,” he said. He thrust the keys into my hand.
“I can’t do this,” I said.
He practically shoved me out the window. I crawled out on the small section of roofing on my hands and knees.
“Jump,” he said.
I refused. If I was going to die, it would be on my terms.
“Get down there right now or I’ll push you off,” he screamed.
I moved to the edge of the roof, as far away from him as I could.
He had to lean all of the way out the window to get to me, but even then, only the tips of his fingers could reach.
“I’m not going. You’ll have to shoot me,” I said.
I looked down at the ground and saw the mattress. I could barely see it through the fog. He had thrown it about ten feet from the house. I would have to jump to get to it.
While it was true that there were fewer dead around this part of the house, there were still plenty nearby. Jumping was a death sentence.
“Get off the roof this minute you pussy,” he screamed.
He pointed the gun at me but never pulled the trigger. We both knew why. The idiot had wasted his bullets already on the zombies. If he had ammo he would have shot me by now. I had to pretend my character hadn't thought of that yet.
He tucked the gun in his waistband and leaned out further onto the roof. In the background, Merritt watched cautiously.
Bradley leaned out to me. I was barely able to avoid his grasp.
Eventually, he gave up. His Desperation grew too great. He climbed up out of the window and moved closer to me.
“Get over there,” he screamed.
A little closer.
The funny part was, his plan might have worked. Who knows. I didn’t want it to. I had plans of my own.
As he got closer, my heart beat so fast I worried it might explode. It was now or never. Second Blood was upon us.
He reached out to try and push me, to urge me to jump out onto the mattress. His left hand reached toward me. The other held onto the window frame.
I tossed the keys up at his right side. His instincts were sharp. He reached out to grab them with his right hand. Caught them right out of the air. Without those keys, his plan would fail. His escape would be ruined.
As he let go of the window frame, I grabbed his left hand and pulled with all my might. I may not have that much Mettle, but I did have some weight to throw around. I grabbed onto him and pushed off the ledge with my legs. I wanted to push him off and climb back inside. That is what my character would try to do. That was a pipe dream, though. There was no way I could avoid falling.
In an ordinary matchup, he would beat me ten times out of ten. But this wasn’t a physical matchup. This was a battle of the wits and he was out of bullets.
He was unable to grab hold of anything to save himself.
We fell off the roof together. We didn’t get anywhere near the mattress. I hit the ground first. There was something hard there, under the fog. A cement block retaining wall if I was to guess.
Something broke inside me. I couldn’t say what, but as I lay in shock trying to evaluate my pain, I realized that there was very little. I had broken my back, perhaps. I couldn’t move my legs very well. My arms still worked, though moving them was difficult.
My Grit jumped up ten points. My Dead Man Walking trope had triggered. It was ironic. I couldn’t walk at all. Still, the moment of my death was now stretched out. I was bleeding from the back of my head and I could taste blood in my mouth.
It was enough for Second Blood to trigger. It was possible the camera would never look at me again. I might as well be dead.
“Get back!” I heard Bradley yelling.
Through great pain, I managed to turn my head to see him. He was barely injured. The dead surrounded him though. For a moment, he even tried to point his gun at them, as if they could be intimidated.
He tried backing away from them, but then something ran up to him and latched onto his arm with its teeth.
It was a dog, but not an ordinary one. This dog had crossed to the other side. It was the one that Bradley himself had killed. I could see its deadly wound. It's strange that zombie animals seem to move at normal speed but human zombies are usually slow. Maybe it's because we walk upright.
That’s when I saw her.
She was stumbling forward from the horde.
Kimberly.
She had risen from the dead.
Her skin was pale and her clothes bloody. She shuffled forward, a large hole in the back of her head. One hand on her stomach, as if out of habit.
On the red wallpaper, she was Dead and Infected, though this wasn’t a typical zombie infection.
She approached Bradley and grabbed him as he turned to look at her.
“No!” he screamed. He cursed at her and threatened her with acts of violence and depravity, but none of that mattered now.
She grabbed him, and soon others did too.
They started dragging him back toward the cemetery.
For a moment, I thought I saw Kimberly look at me, as if she was still there, still in control, but that moment passed, and she continued to drag Bradley away while his brother screamed from upstairs.t
It would have been better for the story if Antoine had killed Bradley out of revenge. I just couldn't pass up the opportunity.
I lay there and wondered how long I would be kept alive, dead in all ways but my last ounce of consciousness.
I stared up at the nearby zombies and waited to see if they would take me as they had Bradley. They didn’t seem to care that I existed at all.
Either way, I would be joining them soon.
Whatever the case, the Finale was here, and it would soon be over. I just hoped Antoine and Bobby could figure it out.
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