AN: Here's your second chapter. This story will start to have more action scenes soon. We're getting things started in a lengthy process. :) I'll probably have another chapter up by the end of this weekend or by Monday. I have a few other stories to update before the new week starts, so we'll see what happens. I do plan to have this story to four chapters by the end of next week, however, as 4 chapters seems like a good starting point to show what the story is about.

Chapter 2: Dead Man Walking

It was a situation that defied all logic. Sound was known to attract zombies. Movies and novels made a lot of statements about that fact. No matter what, anyone who wished to survive a zombie apocalypse had to be silent and swift.

Scott was about as loud as anyone could be as he motored down the highway at a brisk speed that had to currently break just above the ten mile per hour mark. He could not drive forever on whatever fuel was left in the tank, but he could buy himself some time and a little distance.

He motored down the highway for a time then stopped when he saw an SUV that had been abandoned on the side of the road. The engine shut off as soon as he stood up from his seat, so he saw no reason to turn off the ignition. The lawn mower was just a short term transport after all.

The SUV had heavily tinted windows. He could not see inside to any great degree unless he made an effort to open a door. Unfortunately, after he took a moment to check, he found that they were all locked. He bashed in the window with his crow bar then he started to reach inside. A strangled moan alerted him to danger within.

Now that he could see inside, there was a hint of movement in the back seat that he could vaguely discern from between the front car seats. He leaned over further then wished that he had not. A little blue booty wiggled slightly in his field of vision. There was a baby zombie in the back seat. Normally, such a horrible sight would be heart breaking. Scott was less heartbroken than nauseas. Between the terrible scent and the disturbing childish moans, he could not help but stagger away and vomit at the front of the car.

"That... What kind of sick bastards make a place like this?" he asked briefly before another wave of nausea overcame him.

Despite the way the vehicle upset his stomach, he did make an attempt to search it through the window. He saw nothing of use, nor did he see sign of the child's parents. It was like they had simply left the poor kid there and wandered off.

The SUV was a bust. Even after breaking the back window glass he found nothing of any particular use. He mounted his mighty steed and road away at the speed of lawn care.

Another mile down the road, or so he felt, he ran across an intersection and two more abandoned cars. The reason for their abandoned nature was obvious. They had crashed into each other. After checking through the wreckage he found a few useful items. The one that made him happiest was an unopened bottle of water. It did not last long. Technically, he should have savored it, treated it like a precious existence. The truth was, he was exhausted and thirsty. He also doubted that he would see the next sun rise anyway.

He found a few other things he could use, such as a lighter, a knife and two candy bars that were probably not going to be worth eating. Scott cut some of the fabric out of the car seats and made a few crude items. He forged a pathetic poncho, a crude loin cloth, a bandana, and wrapped his feet in the material that was left over. Neither of those items required more than bits of cloth, and took little time to make ready. He checked himself out in a side mirror then snorted. "I need to find real clothes soon."

There was no handy method of siphoning the fuel from the cars, and neither of them seemed to be in any condition to drive. Still, things had improved for him slightly. It was possible that he had wasted his time cutting up the seats, but he had no idea where he was. If another opportunity presented itself, he would take it, but that did not mean that he should pass up the ones presented to him at the moment.

Before he continued his journey, he checked the fuel in his ride. A loud sigh escaped his lips as he realized that he could probably get another mile out of it at best. It had fairly decent gas mileage for a lawn mower, but it was not meant to be a vehicle. They were not made for distance travel.

On the road again, he headed off to the right. He left the main highway behind altogether in order to check out a stretch of road that might have more houses on it. Wherever he was, it was a place with a great deal of flat land and few people. If he had to guess, it would be a place like Wyoming or one of the fly-over states. He had no idea what country it was, or if it even matched with any Earth country for that matter. Still, he felt it was a similar sort of place.

His mighty steed began to buck after a few minutes. It had nearly given its all in service to his desires. Now, it wished to rest. Scott was forced to leave it behind not long after. Once again, silence reigned across the land.

On foot once more, Scott continued to travel in search of some place to hold out for the night. Even if he survived, he was going to be executed, but at least he could make it that long if he found a place to rest.

Life was never simple, however. The day had worn on as he traveled, and soon the night would be upon him. As bad as it was on the road during the day, the night would be infinitely worse. While he had not been forced to deal with roaming zombies after escaping the horde, he had still seen them staggering around well off the road.

He walked for what seemed like hours and the day dragged on. It was late afternoon by the time he saw something interesting once more. It was another intersection. This time there were a few small buildings to explore.

Scott trotted over to the closest building then performed a quick check of the surroundings. He looked down each of the roads that led away from the intersection and noted that only a single house in the far distance upset the landscape. He was literally in the only speck of civilization for what had to be several miles.

"Looks like this is the end of the road for me." said Scott softly after a moment. He guessed that he had maybe an hour or possibly two hours' worth of daylight left.

There were no zombies outside, so he opted to start checking the buildings. There was a house, a restaurant, and a convenience store. Each of them offered him something that he might find useful.

Scott immediately entered the store. Unlike the house he had stopped at before, the convenience store was unlocked. In fact, the front door was completely shattered.

Inside he discovered that most of the shelves were empty or destroyed. Very little was left behind. The place had long since been looted. He was not surprised. If he considered the few buildings that he had seen during his road trip, he was not likely to find many supplies anywhere.

After a thorough search, he managed to discover a can of beans and a twenty dollar bill. It was American currency. If nothing else, he had discovered that the world he resided in currently did have an analog of America. It probably even was America. He had no idea if he would ever find use for the money, but the can of beans had a special sort of destiny that would be upon it soon.

Most of what was left, he could not use. Moldy pseudo-meats and convenience store sandwiches that would have been dangerous to eat even if they had not been horribly destroyed by mold.

The convenience store was a bust. It could not even be used as a place to rest for the night due to the lack of doors. The restaurant did not prove to be much better. There was a freezer full of rotten meat, and a rotten fry cook in the kitchen, but otherwise there was nothing. Even the cutlery was gone. The place had been picked clean. Once again, he found a few random bits of currency that he collected. It took up no real space, and he had a suspicion that he could test out later if he somehow managed to stay his execution in the morning.

The house was much like the farmhouse from before. It did look a little sturdier, but it was still a wood building. The windows were smaller, and boarded up. At some point, someone had tried to make a go of things by staying there. No one was there at the moment, however.

Scott looked the place over and noted a few disconcerting things. The bullet holes in the bracing boards that protected the windows were one of them. No one would fire out of a house through the boards they used to keep the dead at bay. Some asshole had tried to shoot his way inside. Of course, asshole might be a strong term. For all he knew, the person on the outside was trying to reach someone who had been kidnapped.

The bullet holes told a story, but it was one he could not decipher. Scott discovered a ladder that someone had decided was not worth stealing, and used it to reach an upstairs window. The window had been broken out some time before, but he did not know how long ago it had been.

He made it into the house then began a thorough search. The likelihood of zombies infesting the place was low, since it was boarded up, but he could not be certain until he checked every nook and cranny.

The window led to a bedroom. From the stuffed animals strewn about the place he decided that it had been a little girl's bedroom, or perhaps a college age girl who liked stuffed animals. He checked the closet, the drawers, and under the bed. There was no sign of a zombie in the room. It was time to move on.

The hallway outside of the room was strewn with bits of trash and debris. A disturbing trail of long dried blood smeared along the wall caught his attention, but otherwise he saw nothing that set him on edge.

He checked the first door he came to, which was the bathroom. He felt sick at the sight of dried blood everywhere, but there was no sign of the one who had been bleeding. Someone had struck the bathroom mirror a while back as a single impact area could be seen.

The next room on the second floor was a laundry room. He found a few clothes too small to wear, and moved on. There was one more room, another bedroom. After a thorough search he found a few bits and pieces of clothing. He put on the flannel shirt that he found crumpled under the bed, but nothing else would fit.

Downstairs was little better than upstairs. There were no zombies, but there were no left over supplies of any kind either. He found a few broken plates and glasses, but nothing else of use. The place had been picked clean, probably several times over.

He hazarded the use of his voice for a moment. "You know, for a world supposedly designed just for me to explore until my death... This place seems awfully lived in."

There was no power, and no running water. He had not expected either, but one or the other would have been nice. He checked the rest of the house one more time and discovered an attic on the second floor that he had overlooked previously.

"Not bad." he said in a low whistle as he took in the most beautiful site in the world, a makeshift camp. Until recently, someone had been living here. There were a few candles, a book or two, a case of ramen noodles of all things, and several jugs of water.

Scott sat down on the stacked quilts he saw then sighed. What did he do now? It would be dark soon. He had supplies for the night, somehow, and a place to stay. What else could he do?

He thought about it for a moment then grinned. The mission briefing had claimed that he needed to secure a place to rest for the night. He should check the fortifications. But first he popped open a jug of water and had a nice drink. He used a little of it to tend to the cuts on his feet, and then bandaged them as well. In all honesty, he should have bandaged them earlier, but it felt pointless if he did not have a place to stay.

After drinking his fill and cleaning his feet, he set about his work. He wrapped some of the bits of clothing he found around the flat end of his crowbar and used it as a makeshift hammer to beat a few of the boards back into place where they had come loose. The cloth muffled the sound a bit, though it did not alleviate it altogether.

Furniture was moved as quietly as possible in order to block entrances, or to brace the window boards. The refrigerator was wedged in place between the backdoor and the short dividing wall that led into the kitchen. It would not open inward anyway.

Scott even spent a little time breaking down the beds upstairs to get at their metal frames underneath. The bed frames were useful as a brace if nothing else. Had he nails and the desire, he might have been able to build cross bars over the doors with those frames as the cross brace. Instead, he combined them with other furniture to brace the front door and the larger windows.

The sun had started to set by the time that he pulled the ladder up outside. His last night was upon him. There was no way to know if he had earned any EXP, or whatever the people running the game needed from him. All he knew was that he had done what he could.

Scott finished the water in one of the water jugs then cut the top off. It was a common one gallon water jug found at any grocery store. Once the top was off he tossed two packs of ramen noodles inside and poured some more water in before setting it aside. It would probably be a cold soggy mess when he tried to eat it, but it was better than nothing.

His knife found a new goal a moment later when he introduced his can of beans to its greater destiny. He stabbed at the lid until he broke through, then cut into the top of it until the lid was torn open. He ate the beans like a wild animal, recklessly and with little class. He tossed his head back and let them slide out of the can into his mouth.

After he fished all of the beans out of the can with his finger, he set back and allowed himself to rest. It was over. Everything was over. He had done what he could.

Scott rubbed his forehead a little. He had not so much as struck a single zombie. How could he have done so? He had been naked for most of the day, and unarmed almost as long. The only member Homo Sapiens Mortis, or whatever they should be called, that he could have killed safely was the kid in the car seat. There was no guarantee that the poor little thing would not turn out to be juicy and splatter him with its diseased body fluids. One bite, scratch, or bit of gore splattered on his naked body could have infected him. It seemed like a stupid risk for no guarantee of reward, when he could at least live till morning if he acted like someone with a modicum of common sense. The singing while riding a lawn mower did not count, as that bit of transportation had been his only salvation.

Butt naked and unarmed, the only thing he could do was run and keep running. He had snatched up whatever items he could, and survived as long as he could in doing so. That was really all there was to the situation.

The long night passed without incident. At one point Scott would have relished a zombie attack. Death by fighting on his own two feet would be better than acceptance of his coming execution. Yet, once he had made his little fortress of solitude, he had been left alone by the world.

Scott did not know when the crack of dawn occurred, but he did know that he was in the middle of taking a drink of water. He nearly choked on it when a voice spoke to him, not from the room, but inside his mind. It spoke in an annoyed tone of voice. "Congratulations on surviving the night."

A semi-transparent door of light appeared before him. A bright red number sixty appeared then began to tick down. He did not need a prompt to tell him what it meant. He had sixty seconds to leave, or he would not be leaving.

Uncertain whether or not he could take anything back, Scott snatched up as much of the stuff in the room as he could then ran through the door of light back to the safety of the room that he would probably die in shortly after.

Once he was through the door, it closed behind him and he was once again in his prison cell. In his arms he held two jugs of water, a crowbar, and a small assortment of items. Those items began to vibrate and then dissipated into motes of light.

Naked and his feet lightly injured, he glared hatefully at the spectral image of his body that hovered nearby. It was the only thing in the room to glare at, after all. He needed to take his frustration out on something. A few minutes passed and a blue screen appeared before him.

Mission Result Overview

Once you have completed a mission, you will be judged according to the nature of the mission and your completion of it. Each completion score will be ranked from F- to SSS+. The better the score, the better the rewards. A score of F- will only occur if a mission has been failed completely.

[—]

Mission Score

You have completed your first mission. Congratulations! You Jerk

Grade: A

Base Reward: 10 EXP

Grade Bonus: X4

Total: 50 EXP

Settings Bonus

Pure Survival Route: You did not engage a single zombie in combat. You did loot and scavenge for as many useable items as you could find.

Grade: A

Route Bonus: 40 EXP

Common Sense Bonus: You clearly understood that the farmhouse would be a trap and avoided falling into that trap. You found a mode of transportation and fled the horde.

Grade: B

Bonus: 20

Entertainment Bonus

You proved to be highly entertaining on at least one occasion. This reduces the annoyance of our people as they wait for your race to fail their challenges and become our property.

Entertainment Grade: B

Entertainment Bonus: 20

Fan Following: You have acquired new fans. Once you have 100 fans, you will be granted a one percent bonus to all EXP earned. Each additional 100 fans will increase your EXP by one percent as well.

Fans: (2)

Total EXP Earned: 130

[—]

Scott stared at the screen for a moment while he tried to decipher what was going on. He had expected to earn ten experience points at the most, yet the total was much higher. There had been no mention of bonuses such as the ones shown prior to dealing with the zombie apocalypse he had just rode a lawn mower through.

The blue screen disappeared. A digital clock appeared above his semi-transparent image. The hour was 22:31. He had to learn forward to read the small print that appeared beneath it. There was a smaller running clock below that showed hours, minutes and seconds. "One hour, twenty eight minutes, thirty-two seconds?"

Did that mean that he would die at midnight? He checked the math in his head and that did seem like it would be midnight. A glance at the door revealed another clock. This one showed the exact same time as the amount of time under the clock over his image.

He nodded slowly. There was no way to be certain, but it seemed possible that midnight was significant. The door timer probably related to when the door would open again. The clock above his head related to the current time, and how long he had left to live.

Scott looked at his status then tried to figure out how to buy one more day. After a few moments of declaring random words, such as "Life span increase." He poked the image before him. A blue screen popped up.

Life Span

Your life span exists as a set number of days that you purchase. Once your time runs out, you will die. In order to increase your life span, you will need to purchase additional time. The cost is 100 EXP per day.

How many days would you like to live?

Increase Life Span: [-|+=0]

[—]

Scott tapped the plus sign and the zero changed to a one. The system asked him to confirm his desire to keep living, and assured him that it was alright if he wished to die. He released a deep sigh of relief as the clock added another twenty-four hours to his current lifespan. Oh the joy of it. He would live for another twenty-five hours. He glanced to the door and the time had only changed in regards to how long it had taken for him to make his purchase. It was not linked to his lifespan.

For a moment he wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. He took another deep breath and allowed that moment to pass. He might not have amounted to much in his life, but he had never been the sort of person to sit around and moan about it.

Back on the lawn mower he had decided that he wanted to live, even if he was going to die anyway. Laughing while using a lawn mower to escape a few hundred undead assholes was as close to living as it would get for him at the time. Now that he had narrowly avoided his untimely death, for a time at least, he had to think about how to survive the next mission.

"What can I do with thirty EXP?" he asked. The first thing he did was tap on a few of his attributes. It did not take long to discover how increasing stats worked. One point of EXP increased a single stat by 0.01 points. He did not know if that was good or bad. He did not spend any of his points before checking other things. He had too few to throw them away on the first thing that he saw.

While he dicked around with the status screen, he inadvertently opened another menu. This one was related to items, powers, and feats.

A long slow whistle echoed through the room as he took in the sight of it all. Items were separated into household goods, consumables, combat items, restoration, and luxuries.

"Man all of this stuff is damned expensive." muttered Scott. The least expensive firearm was four hundred EXP, and the ammunition was sold at one round per point!

Household goods turned out to be something interesting. He could use that section to expand and outfit his room. The cost for even the least expensive thing was hideously high, so he moved on.

"Fifty points for a sports drink that heals minor wounds and restores stamina." mumbled Scott.

The restoration section allowed him his first taste of something worth purchasing. "Sweet, I can heal my injuries for one point." He accepted restoration and noticed that his EXP dropped by one point.

A sensation of warmth rose up within him and a strange light flared outward from his body. His feet itched for a few seconds, but soon the cuts and bruises disappeared altogether.

"Not bad!" he said while he wiggled his toes and reveled in the lack of pain in his feet. He felt better than he had in a while. He was still hungry, but at least he did not feel completely exhausted. Restoration would vary by the injuries that he had, but it did seem to be cost effective for minor ailments.

The luxury section provided him with something that nearly made him cry. He could buy clothes, food, and water, among other things. The prices even seemed reasonable!

Scott quickly looked through the cheapest available items. He ended up purchasing a basic set of clothes that included a white cotton shirt, a pair of blue jeans, cotton socks and underwear, thin cotton gloves, and running shoes. Each item cost less than one EXP and when totaled he spent 2.6 EXP in order to clothe his glorious nakedness.

The black backpack that he purchased set him back one entire EXP point, as did the lunch that he purchased. Scott splurged another fraction of an experience point to procure a leather jacket. Between the clothes, food, and restoration he had spent five of his precious experience points. Those few points had drastically improved his mood, however.

Scott took a moment to eat his dinner, a sumptuous feast of fried chicken mashed potatoes and collard greens, then looked over to the door. There was something that he wanted to check before he spent any more points.

He rose up and walked over to the door to inspect it. There had been no timer there before, but he noticed that when he poked things like his status menu he would receive more information.

Scott poked the timer on the door. A blue screen popped up. It informed him of something interesting. He had to take at least one mission every twenty-four hours or he would receive a penalty that prevented him from taking any missions at all for one week. Once he took a mission and completed it successfully, he could undertake any available side missions to earn extra points before the next daily mission. There was only a single side mission listed.

Mission Briefing

The undead are wreaking havoc across the land. A call has gone out for fearless zombie killers to slaughter the undead. Kill zombies and earn fabulous rewards!

Difficulty: H-1

Reward(s): Double zombie kill experience.

Acceptance Cost: 1 EXP

Time Limit: 30 minutes

[--]

Scott stepped back from the door and thought about things for a moment. Killing zombies was dangerous work, but he might be able to earn more EXP. There was also the possibility that his next mission might involve killing zombies anyway.

He went back to the shop menu and searched through the available selections. He needed a weapon, but the only thing that he could afford was the Pathetic Stick. Even at a cost of only one point, that did not feel like a good deal. A pathetic stick sounded, pathetic. He would just have to find a weapon when he got on site. For a moment he was annoyed that he had lost all of the stuff he had dragged back to the room. His knife or crowbar would have been useful.

Annoyance was put aside not long after in favor of checking his remaining possibilities. He could not afford even the least expensive feats or powers. They were all locked anyway. He needed to increase his stats in order to unlock them.

That only left the need for purchasing food that would last for a few days, and upgrading his status. He purchased enough food and water to last one person for two days with four points. He would use one point to take the side mission. That left him twenty points to spend on his status.

From what he had uncovered while screwing around with his status menu, one full point in any stat was considered to be the base average for his species. A human being with a strength rated at one, had the same strange as the common fit human on the street. He or she was not a semi-professional athlete, but they weren't lacking anywhere either. Four out of five of his stats were below that supposed average.

His only truly above average stat was concentration. "Probably all the reading and gaming that I do." he said as he stared at the concentration stat. He did not get out much other than to go to work or to hang out with his few friends. He was not the type to go running or head to the gym. In fact, if it was not for the fact that he worked as a stock boy, his strength would probably be lower.

Scott frowned at his limited choices. No matter what he increased, it would not make him superman. What would twenty-seven percent more strength than an average person really give him? If he could lift one hundred pounds overhead with one point of strength, would a strength that allowed him to lift one hundred twenty-seven pounds help him that much more?

In the end he chose to split the points between vitality and resilience. He increased vitality from 0.81 to 1.00, and he added the left over experience point to resilience to get it to ninety percent of standard. Vitality was the most important stat of all from what he could tell. It would determine how long he could run if he had to, and how quickly he could recover his stamina in order to run again.

[Name: Scott Davidson]

[Age: 20]

[Race: Earthling]

[Level: 0][20.00/1000]

[EXP: 1.00]

[Life Span: 1 Day(s)]

ATTRIBUTES

[Strength: 1.07][Resilience:0.90]

[Vitality: 1.00][Dexterity: 0.78]

[Concentration: 1.48][Charisma: 0.74]

FEATS

[None]

POWERS

[None]

[—]

Everything seemed to be in order when he checked his status, but he did notice one change. His level had added twenty points to the information next to it. "So, that's how I earn experience toward gaining a level? I spend it on my stats?"

It seemed to him that buying things with his EXP did not increase his level. It made sense in a way.

Nothing else to do, Scott rubbed his face for a moment then turned toward the door. He had no choice but to try and earn more points. He had no idea whether he could even kill a zombie, but he had to find out. Things were not going to get any easier by sitting in this room while waiting to die.