The Rescue Team
An Opportunity Missed, Or A Disaster Averted?
Two-Paw emits an electronic warbling sound and turns away from the alley, marching down the wide, well lit avenue towards your mission's target.
Marcus
The noises that appeared to be coming from the alley turn to silence, and you wonder if you heard anything in the first place.
You continue down the avenue, passing by old surf shops and multiple pileups of cars. You are forced to the sidewalk as the center of the street becomes filled with burnt out hulls of cars. Some old blood is splattered on the insides and outsides of the husks, and puncture holes the size of a telephone pole perforate many of them. Concrete slabs jut out of the traffic jam at odd angles, and a few sun bleached skeletons lie in the light on top of them. Many of the bones look human-like, but horns and growths apparently grown from the skeleton itself make you think differently.
After a few blocks of this, you reach the beach. The sound of lapping waves and the setting sun make for an almost picaresque scene before you. The sun refracting off the water paints beautiful lights onto the buildings behind you, that change and wiggle with the water. The beach in front of you is rather bare, and you cannot see any wreckage out at sea, but a little ways down you see some debris on the beach.
The Survivors
The Apartment
Vae looks around the lobby, unimpressed. "You uh, you live here? Seriously?" She doesn't seem to like the whole post-apocalyptic design theme that was more than present in the apartment. The apartment lobby is just how you left it, guard's chair right next to the reception counter, boarded windows barricaded and without any new damage. The old tile on the floor has seen better days, but otherwise it's holding together pretty well.
Aaron
You head upstairs to check on the food supplies, which you keep in the apartment's kitchen in neat, well organized stacks. You enter the apartment, opening and closing the front door behind you. The familiar sight of the apartment's living room greets you, but you notice something. The couch has been moved at a haphazard angle, the coffee table is on its side, and the television stand is now a foot away from the wall. The books that were once stacked on the bookshelf are now littered across the floor, lying among some torn out pages and loose papers. Looking around even further, you see the window's been left open, with direct access to the fire escape. Waylon's MAS Rifle is lying on the floor underneath the window. Somebody, or something, has been through here.
You press further, and check the kitchen. It's a mess. Cans, boxes, tins, all thrown across the room or left in haphazard piles. All the cabinets are thrown open, and empty, their contents apparently spilled onto the kitchen floor. From your first rough estimate, nothing looks to be missing, but somebody's definitely been through here.
On the bright side, you see that anything that could possibly be canned is somewhere in that pile. You'd just have to do some sifting.
Its coming its coming its coming its coming
You walk to your right, and look down the isle. The light is shining into your eyes, you can't see what's at the center of the warehouse, but you know, you can feel it, you can almost taste it, the thing you've been looking for all this time is finally here and it's perfectly ripe for your taking!
You walk into the light.
You bump into something. The floodlight that was shining down the isle teeters on its legs and falls to the ground. It's bright bulbs shatter with the fall and you can see again.
At the center of the warehouse sits a solitary metal desk, covered in papers, pens, and decorated by a single desk lamp. A fluorescent light overhead buzzes softly, and the sound is further reinforced by the concrete floor and seemingly infinite number of isles extending into the dark warehouse. An old office chair spins slowly next to the desk, and you notice a bunch of power cords, likely supplying power to the two lamps, go through an inch thick seam in the floor that runs in a square shape around the entire setup.
Unfortunately, there is no cheese here. Even more unfortunately, a person dressed in a huge labcoat, thick rubber gloves, and an imposing military gas mask is pointing a gun at you from across the desk. They aren't doing anything but standing there, both hands on the gun, and the gun's barrel quivering in the air. The silence is palpable, and in this silence you remember one critical error in your cheese fueled journey: You never picked up your rifle.