Chapter 1-8: These Feet Are Not Made for Walking (2/2)

Damn, I wanted Monk Levels really bad right now...

Anyways, there were a lot of cars rusting on the road. Most had their windows caved in. It actually wasn’t hard to spot the way to go, as the road was clear enough to drive, as the cars had been shoved aside.

Their designs were all very old. I didn’t remember any model names or numbers, but they looked vaguely like something from the 40’s? The style of the art moldering on some of the billboards and posters here and there backed it all up.

That was a long time ago. The undead had been around that long? What would that do to the world?

I didn’t have multiple thoughtstreams to keep devolving into what-if scenarios, and had to willfully Focus on the task at hand, and getting as far as I could before I had to sit down, Meditate for two hours, hit Renewal, and wait out the night somewhere.

Getting on Route 25 wasn’t that hard. I wound my way between nearly a hundred cars piled up on the first corner, crashed and with burned scars, but no signs of bodies, surprise, surprise. The asphalt of the road seemed to have held up well.

It wasn’t a true highway, just an enlarged road, fairly typical of the time period. That meant side streets directly connected into it, and there were buildings lining it.

I was effectively moving right through the heart of a fallen town in the middle of the day. I could only grimace and keep my pace up, feeling the eyes on me from the shadows inside the homes and buildings lining the route.

I had plenty of caloric energy, didn’t need food or water, but just plain muscle fatigue was going to be a thing, and I didn’t have any way to get rid of it. I wasn’t in shape to travel twenty miles in a day, but I could only grit my teeth and go as far as I could.

Tonight... was going to be interesting. I was definitely going to have some undead following me and trying to find me. Whether or not that would include incorps was going to be a thing. That meant I was going to have to be damn sure that I got some oomph to my spells tonight...

I had a pretty good idea what I was going to be taking.

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It was a long day, with a lot of eyes watching me trotting and strolling by.

I rested once, around noon, massaging my aching feet, cursing that I couldn’t have been stuck into a jogger, at least, and then started my journey again.

The tracking of my Visual File said I’d gone about eight miles, trying to keep as easterly a direction as possible as I moved along the streets. The map didn’t seem to indicate any bridges or anything that might be blown or taken down, which could really suck. Undead in the water were no joke, either.

There was more green as I pulled away from New York City behind me, but the houses and buildings were still tightly clustered along the road. Cars did thin out, as if there had been less killing and more running away (or no running away...), and the houses didn’t look as broken into... or out of? It was hard to tell.

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At 4 PM, and with fourteen or some miles behind me, I called it quits. I could definitely see the wall in the distance, maybe another ten miles... but there was no way I was going to make it today, so I started casting about for a place to stay, while my feet throbbed badly and my guts were telling me to sit down and relax a good long time.

Using Prestidigitation for the last half hour to totally neutralize my scent, I picked out a fairly narrow townhouse whose doors were open, but intact... and which could be blocked.

There were no undead inside when I scanned it thoroughly, including looking for spirits and haunts. That didn’t mean there wouldn’t be any manifesting come sundown, but at least I wasn’t going to be surprised as I explored the place.

The furniture was rotting, the main window in front was busted, and there was mild weathering and decay of things. But the negative energy in the air had prevented the normal bugs from getting anywhere, and the place looked abandoned, not overgrown... no spiderwebs to speak of, for instance.

There were pots and pans, some decayed food and even curdled milk in a very old refrigerator, with tools and cutlery. The photos on the walls or in stands were all black and white, in old-fashioned garb that indicated a life WW I’ish or thereabouts, with primitive automobiles in two of the backgrounds, and coal trains here and there.

The beds upstairs were actually still made, and actually viable, if dusty now. No bugs even meant they were relatively clean.

I found a jackknife up in a sheath in the closet, slipped that onto my belt, wishing it was a Bowie. The closets and drawers were a mess, as if things had been taken from them in a hurry, the rest left where it was strewn.

The underwear was very out of style, but given how I was chafing, I didn’t really care.

I located the trapdoor to the attic, and lowered it down. Barring incorps, I was pretty sure I could hold that entry point pretty much forever, unless something really powerful destroyed the floor, or came through the roof.

I used Prestidigitation to clean off the very small windows up there, giving me some visibility, just in case, and cleaned up the floors so I wouldn’t have to worry about footing. There were old washers and things in the basement, and the detached garage didn’t have a car in it, but it did have some old gardening tools, lawn mower, oil, cleaning chemicals, and other things.

If I was an Alchemist, I could have done something with them. Alas!...

I did find a hammer and nails, which I used to pound up a cloth over the front window. This wasn’t to actually block it, which was meaningless, but more to stop those outside from seeing what was happening inside... although if I attracted a horde of the things, they’d just attract more, so what could I do about it?

I locked the front and back doors, and dragged some chairs in to further stop them from opening into the halls, anything to buy me time and slow them down in case something happened.

I assessed the yard, possible flight paths (which I doubted would save me at night, but you never know), alternative ways in and out (windows again), and reflected I couldn’t do much better, given the surroundings.

I sat down in the front room with two hours to go to dusk, and Meditated to regain full Valences... and see what happened at Renewal.