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This time, we did not spawn in a nice, safe service tunnel. We spawned in the arcade, probably near the movie theater based on the last couple of grisly deaths. There's already a couple zombies aware of our presence.



It occurs to me, I've never tried tazing a zombie. I just assumed it wouldn't work. In fact, I've never tazed anything.




Unfortunately, it turns out that using the normal (f)ire command for firearms does not work. So this isn't a "tazer" so much as it's actually a "stungun".



The things you learn if you check the item description. Incensed, I fling the tazer at my foe and switch to the baton and finish off these two enemies. I take the time to butcher the corpses because without a mod, zombies in CDDA will re-reanimate forever if you do not somehow disassemble the body. Funny story, fire does not actually disassemble a zombie body, so they can act as infinite fuel. We will probably not survive long enough to demonstrate that.




I head north and the theater is blessedly free of enemies... for about five turns. I decide to start running and book it out the side exit, then through the service tunnel to the outside.




Town is reasonably close, and just on the edge of my known territory is an evac shelter. I like evac shelters for multiple reasons: They're easy to secure. They have a basement that might have useful stuff in it, and even if it doesn't, it's even easier to secure in a last-ditch emergency. They tend to be a safe distance away from town, which lets you shake pursuit. Finally, most games start in an evac shelter, so I'm comfortable with them.



So we're going to try to get there. On the way, we forage through underbrush while trying to avoid being dead.



We are not wholly successful.



I run full-bore to the road northwest. Apparently, the new stamina stat is barely even a consideration. Just before reaching the road, my stamina was almost completely depleted (one pipe, the gauges are identical to wounds). But maybe 12-18 steps along the road while walking, I'm almost entirely restored. Unfortunately, I have an infected bite. It doesn't show yet, but it's coming. We also need food and water, so we're going to chance breaking into a house on the way to the shelter.





While I'm traveling, I get accosted by a zombie child. I pick up a nearby heavy stick, run some distance away, and use my zero crafting skills to turn that stick into a cudgel. Cudgels are great early weapons - way better than the baton we had. They're cheap to make, fast as fuck, stunlock, and randomly do a whole bunch of special attacks. I throw my baton at the child and miss, presumably because she's so small and cute and boo hoo we feel bad about assaulting Sophia. Then we bash her head in, but not before she gets a couple bites in. Then, we're at the house. The door's locked, of course, and we lack a crowbar or key, so we're going in through the window.



We smash the window. Windows can cut you if you don't go to the construction menu (*) and clean them. For some reason, this takes an idiotic amount of time, but it's better than getting cut, especially since we're already hurt and have no first aid. In the house, there's a basement! In the context of houses, basements are usually either really great, or really fucking murderous. Let's find out which one this is!



So far, not great, but not immediately lethal. Some basements contain hordes of creatures way worse than zombies.



I figured I'd just put a little space between me and these two, to better kill them. Because CDDA is a dick, a lot more zombies suddenly appeared for reasons I don't actually understand, and I died three steps later.





Cataclysm!