Zombie Apocalypse RPG

The world did not end in a single night.

It happened street by street, hospital by hospital, city by city. Emergency broadcasts became evacuation orders. Evacuation orders became static. Governments fractured, supply chains stopped, and places once packed with people became graveyards of abandoned cars and dark windows.

The infected remain.

So do the living.

Some survivors travel alone. Others build settlements behind concrete walls and welded steel. Militias control roads. Raiders hunt the vulnerable. Traders move supplies between communities. Old grudges survive beside new alliances, and every can of food, gallon of fuel, magazine of ammunition, and dose of medicine has value.

There is no chosen survivor and no predetermined story.

You may begin anywhere appropriate to the apocalypse, at any point after the outbreak. Define who you are, where you are, what you possess, and how much time has passed if you wish.

Or simply make your first move.

The world is already waiting.

The emergency alert has been repeating for seventeen minutes.

"REMAIN INDOORS. AVOID CONTACT WITH INFECTED PERSONS. AWAIT FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS."

Outside, those instructions are already meaningless.

Traffic has locked the avenue solid. Several cars have been abandoned with their doors hanging open. Sirens overlap somewhere beyond the buildings, occasionally drowned beneath shouting, breaking glass, and the distant crack of gunfire.

Across the intersection, three people hammer desperately against the locked doors of a pharmacy.

Farther down the street, something is wrong with the crowd.

People are running in one direction.

Several others are chasing them.

Power remains on for now. Cell service flickers between one bar and nothing. No one knows whether the military is coming, whether evacuation routes are still open, or whether this is happening beyond the city.

Whatever life existed yesterday is disappearing quickly.

What you do next is yours.

Three months after the outbreak, the city is quieter than it has any right to be.

Grass pushes through cracks in the pavement. Cars sit where their owners abandoned them, some with doors open, others burned down to rusting shells. Wind moves garbage through intersections that once carried thousands of people every hour.

Silence does not mean safety.

Several infected wander between the buildings ahead, separated enough to avoid for now. Somewhere deeper inside the district, an alarm begins chirping weakly before dying again.

Across the street stands a small grocery store. Most of its front windows are broken, but the security shutters are only partially raised. A pharmacy sits another block farther down. Beyond both, smoke rises lazily from somewhere behind the skyline.

Nothing here promises supplies.

Nothing here promises that somebody else hasn't arrived first.

The city waits.

The highway became a monument to the evacuation.

Vehicles stretch into the distance in both directions—sedans, buses, delivery vans, military trucks, all abandoned wherever traffic finally stopped moving. Some still contain luggage. Some contain bodies.

Wind rocks an open car door somewhere among the wreckage.

The surrounding countryside is almost completely silent.

Almost.

A few infected drift between the vehicles several hundred meters ahead. One repeatedly walks into the side of a minivan, turns, wanders away, then eventually returns.

Farther down the highway stands an overturned fuel tanker.

Beyond it, a hand-painted sign has been tied to an overpass support.

"SAFE CAMP — 8 MILES EAST."

Someone has painted another message beneath it in darker letters.

"DON'T."

There is no way to know which message came first.

The quarantine zone held for twenty-six days.

Tonight, it stops holding.

Floodlights illuminate concrete barriers, razor wire, military tents, and hundreds of abandoned belongings scattered across the ground. Automatic gunfire erupts somewhere near the eastern checkpoint, followed by screaming and a voice over the loudspeakers repeatedly ordering everyone to remain calm.

Nobody remains calm.

Soldiers rush toward the perimeter while civilians scatter between tents and temporary buildings. Somewhere inside the confusion, an alarm begins to howl.

Then the lights flicker.

Half the compound goes dark.

Through the fencing beyond the checkpoint, dozens of silhouettes press against the barricades.

More are arriving behind them.

Whatever plan existed for this place is coming apart in real time.

One year after the outbreak, survival has started becoming civilization again.

The settlement occupies an old industrial yard surrounded by shipping containers, concrete barriers, and sections of scavenged fencing. Solar panels cover two warehouse roofs. Rainwater tanks line one wall. Guards watch the approaches from improvised towers.

Inside, life continues.

Someone repairs an engine beneath a tarp. Traders argue over antibiotics. Dinner cooks over several communal fires. A handwritten board near the main gate lists jobs, missing people, supply requests, and warnings about nearby roads.

But safety has a price.

Food is rationed. Ammunition is counted. Fuel belongs to the settlement, not individuals. The council has begun arguing over whether outsiders should continue being admitted.

And this morning, one of the northern patrols failed to return.

No sirens sound. No heroic mission is announced.

People simply notice that three familiar faces are missing.

Life continues.