S1. Day 2, A bit too careless.

If the first day was rewarding, the second so far has been turning out to be the opposite.

I crawled out of the bush I had been hiding in and immediately began to move along to those structures I targeted the day before. Going left from the trees, I had came across a service road that was heading in its direction. Growth had been placed along both sides of it, so I figured it would be a safer path to take than an open field. Almost immediately, I had spotted a zombie shambling up the road in my direction. Deciding it'd be a chance to see how well that rifle I picked up worked. I took a shot. The thing startled and ran a couple feet forward before falling down on the road, dead. There weren't any noises after that, so it was safe to assume I didn't have much other company lingering about.

The run up to the compound was so far uneventful. I had come across a highway that lead to Cherno and briefly did a binocular scan before crossing. Spotting a settlement down the road, I figured I'd head that way after clearing out these buildings before me. With that in mind, I headed up the hill, keeping low as to not attract any attention. The groaning and shambling through the tall grass was a telltale sign as to what lurked in the area ahead.

Drawing my M1911, the building I assumed to be a machine shop was actually a rather elongated stable for livestock. Inside there were little supplies. I had found some Pepsi, a couple bandages and some ammunition I couldn't use. The bandages I took, but the rest I didn't really care for. The raid from yesterday left me with a couple canteens of water I could refill, which are a bit more ideal to leave in my inventory than what I had discovered.

I went along the stable checking stalls to see if there was much else for supplies. As expected, there wasn't much else that would benefit me. As I approached the door at the end of the stable, a couple zombies lingered outside. The M1911 made short work of the lot as I proceeded to the few smaller buildings that remained in the compound. While the yield of loot was next to nothing, I was able to come out with a few bandages and a shiny new hunting knife for the inventory. Feeling I had wasted a bit too much on the place, I returned to where I had entered and headed towards that roadside settlement within the forest.

I kept within the treeline yet again. Stories of bored bandits looking for target practice had made me effectively more paranoid than I was to begin with. Every now and then I would pause next to a tree to scan an area ahead of me. Zombies seemed more or less an inconvenience to what other scum lurked around the place. Yet again, the trip to was uneventful.

The roadside settlement I approached was lightly 'populated'. A few shamblers hung out along the highway and a couple within the town itself. I kept to the right of the road and approached carefully. Or at least tried to. As I approached I caught the attention of a few runners and tried to take aim as they bounded towards me, firing off a couple rounds.

M1911's are great for their amazing stopping power. Generally getting a shot off on the torso will drop a Zombie or Survivor at close range. However, the magazine only holds seven rounds per. When you have some not-quite-dead monster hurling itself at you, you simply get an itch to pull that trigger until the fucker stops moving. In the case of multiple zombies that seven round capacity makes things very inconvenient. I dumped the magazines contents into two of them, and the third had caught me in the middle of a reload. After a round chambered, I finished off the last and recuperated for a moment. Well, until I noticed I was bleeding.

Bleeding sucks, I'll tell you that right now. The game gives you a hefty number of '12,000' for your blood count. This is the equivalent of a health bar for the game. But as you start taking damage that number really doesn't seem all that significant as each blow takes it down 1000 or more at a time. And if you're real lucky, you'll also begin to bleed. Bleeding out doesn't take much time to kill you once it starts. You'll hit the lower 1000's and begin to lose consciousness and eventually die.

I carry a lot of bandages, I try and keep my inventory full of them as I move from place to place. I'll get smacked by a zombie, bleed a bit, bandage up and be good to go. And if some asshole decides to blow my brains out, he'll have quite the smorgasbord of healing supplies at his disposal. Though I honestly have no intention on giving them out in such a manner.

Having patched up, I was lucky enough to discover one of the homes had a bandage and a few other things inside. I took those and decided to head on out, the settlement didn't have much for me and I had wasted too many bullets for the effort. I had only a couple magazines to start out with, and I left the settlement battered and left with a few rounds in that handguns magazine. Not really worth it in the end.

However, as I exited the place I was lucky enough to stumble across a pond. With water present, I drank a canteen and refilled it right after. Keeping hydrated is as important as anything else. Its just one other factor out there that will probably kill you should you neglect it. (I mean its just like real life, right? Right?)

Anyway. I continued down the road and noticed it starting to become dark. A quick glance up told me that it was starting to become overcast, potentially rain or a thunderstorm if I'm 'lucky'. Just what I need, another excuse to get a cold. With that potential threat literally looming overhead I picked up my pace down the road. Having looked on maps online of the Cherno area, there should be a pretty hefty town up along this road. While probably zombie infested, it would honestly be a better alternative than sitting out in the cold.
It didn't take long for me to come across that other town I expected. The first building I came across appeared to be some sort of electrical station, occupied by dozen or more zombies lingering about. Just as I was about to set out to investigate it, a fucking zombie had managed to sneak up on me.

I was startled and let off a round prematurely, I missed the fucker at first, but the follow up shot got him in the head. This wasn't good, chances are I've caught the attention of more zombies and things weren't going to be very pleasant in the moments to come. I quickly headed off to the building and gunned down a few more of them, keeping an eye out to the bunch that were still shambling out on the top of the hill. More ran, more got shot and the more I felt like I should really be turning around and getting the hell out of here. I was running low on ammunition at this point, most of my M1911 magazines were out. And I've gone through nearly all of the 15 rounds I had in the Winchester. Now pretty much defenceless I figured I might as well play my chances here and see if I could find anything in the building.

Well, looks like my luck turned out for the better. In both rooms of the building there were break-barrel shotguns. Which were honestly better than nothing at this point. I picked one up, thankfully loaded and blasted the last two zombies that pursued me. Having reloaded and settled into a corner, I eyed the doors for any further guests and found myself to be alone for now.

Close, way too close.

Turns out in the scramble I had gotten beaten up a bit, I was down to 7800 or so for my blood count and the colours of the screen were becoming more desaturated. I'll probably need to find, and trust another player with a blood pack sometime down the line if things got drastic, otherwise I'm potentially screwed. I gathered up what other supplies I could find in the building and headed on out. I figured this town would be a real bad idea to pick apart. Perhaps for another time.

Bad idea man, bad idea.

Like the other places before, I simply continued on, following the direction of the road in hopes for a more simple looting. Until I could source better weaponry, taking a group of zombies that large would prove to be too difficult to really bother with. I kept within the bush next to the road for now. The path lead uphill for a bit, leaving me with a view of the town I was just going to attempt.

Anyway, This post has been pretty drawn out so far so I'll summarize the rest right up until the good part. It didn't rain, I spent a good hour passing through yet another small town. Found a church, got nothing out of it. Found a townhouse, got nothing out of it. Got beat up by a couple zombies next to a farmhouse, wasted more ammunition. Then proceeded to crawl through a town infested by a horde of zombies. As I was exiting the last town, I wasn't really thinking at this point since its been relatively quiet for the past while, so I went out in open ground. I heard a dull thud, it was quiet, so I kind of just brushed it off for the games unnerving ambiance. Once I felt at a comfortable distance away from the town, I got up, then began to run ahead.

Hey look, my guy has glasses now!

Left of the road was a small pond in which I used to refill my water bottle, having eaten and drank a couple times up until this point. I stopped and simply watched for a bit since that noise had bothered me a little. Having seen, nor heard nothing. I figured it would be safe enough to get up and start moving. There was a forest nearby, and they've been my best bet for safety so far.

Until I started getting shot at.

Yeah. It was a pleasant jog until someone figured I looked like a succulent, vulnerable and rather exposed idiot... I counted 5 shots, and I'm going to assume whoever was after me had some sort of bolt action rifle. The CZ I think. Either way, that very moment I wasn't really concerned with what kind of gun was shooting at me, I just made like a coward and ran like a swerving idiot into the treeline. The guy popped more rounds at me, missing (thankfully) and I was able to put enough distance into that bush to find a nice place to hide.

I'll admit, I'm a coward. I took this opportunity to plant my sorry ass into a tree and log off. My heart was racing and this survivor of mine was way too young to die...

I mean fuck, I'm just on day two here.

So, that's all folks. Seeyou tomorrow.