Hi, this is Boo Radley and this is my story, such as it is. See I'm not much for putting pen to paper but I figgered I would do it now in case people want to know what happened to me.
See after escaping the dinosaurs we was hiding out in that cave and I kinda shut down, like Doc Tweak had done before. I seen and heard everything, I just couldn't respond or act, except walk. It was kinda like that PTSD stuff we was all told about after Gulf War 2.
So they was looking around in the cave, doing some digging for a way out, cause one of them dino's made itself at home right outside the cave. And then Red Shirt told us he fund a crack, and they could smell and feel fresh air coming out of it, just like some movie. Of course it was too small to see anything of course. We didn't have nothing to dig with either. Then Sparks got the bright idea of breaking up the grenades and turning them into an explosive. No one else had any better ideas ('cept me thinking why don't we just blow up them dino's, but I couldn't say nothing). So she went at it, all McGyver like. Took her a while but she put something together that blew a real good hole in the wall. Big enough for Doc Tweak to crawl through.
So we all followed him, crawled for a while actually. Then Doc freaks out when the tunnel opens up into a big room. Looking around the room was kinda funky shaped, with lots of writing on the walls. And there was this big stone in the middle with a dead guy laying on it, like some Indiana Jones movie tomb. They was all trying to figger out what to do next when the door opens and some shrimpy little guy ran in, closing the door after him. He was a funny looking guy, with green skin and pointy ears like Hudson, and he didn't speak english. But he sure babbled a lot in what Doc said was Latin.
Then something started banging on the door, clawing at it, eventually wriggling the door knob. They all took up ambush positions so when the door opened they wuz ready for action. Well they woulda been if it hadn't turned out to be fucking zombies! Crazy! Zombies, just like in the movies, they wuz real scary, freaked out Zim big time. But it turned out you can take 'em down the same as in movies: head shots. After the team cleared out the zombies the little guy, called hisself Caliban, led us to his peeps.
Turns out there was a bunch of them little guys, and they been fighting these zombies in what they called the Stronghold for a while. Tough fighting, cuz if you get hurt by one of 'em that it, you turn into a zombie too. Well he took us to this guy called the Prator, who took us to their Oracle. The Oracle laid out his story:
"Greeting strangers, welcome to our world. You are what we call Randoms, creatures or people from another land, space or time that have been popping up in our world for the past 50 years or so. Some are unaffected by their arrival, others change, such as your friend the elf or the mage there.
"Let me start at the beginning of the tale. I wasn't always the creature you see before you. I once was human like yourselves, about 12 years of age, about to begin my apprenticeship. Like most I didn't read or disbelieved the stories on the wire and video, stories of strange babies. People changing overnight, going to sleep sick and waking up transformed. I didn't believe such things could happen until it happened to me.
"By the end of that year the Awakening had transformed the face of the planet. Chaos threatened as the people pf the new races flocked together, flouting provincial and national boundaries. The Senate issued a proclamation stating the Awakened races were equal to humans, but it was too late in some cases. Fear and persecution led some groups to band together and flee for the outer provinces. Centurion Tiberius and I led this group to these mountains and built this stronghold. There were more of us in those days...
"It was a few years after the Awakening that the first reports of the Undead Scourge surfaced. It was almost too much to bear for our people. Some just gave up, killing themselves first or just allowing the zombies to take them. There was a lot of despair.
"The war itself was short really. The zombies were an unstoppable force, overrunning every city they came to. The Senate promoted the Emperor, who did all he could. Including making some frightful decisions about who should be saved and pulled into fortified headquarters. And in the end it was the seasons that saved us all. It turns out the Zombies do not like cold, and deprived of new food became dormant.
"Over that winter season the Emperor and other world leaders crafted new strategies, and trained new legions with new equipment. When the spring broke the Legions marched out of the north and their mountain fortresses, sweeping the zombies from their path. Using magic, and the new strategies and equipment the offensive successfully cleared the land of the zombies. In that war the so called Goblin races: Orks, Trolls and Goblins like us proved out worth in the new forms of combat.
"Now the land is reclaimed, but at a terrible cost. Most estimates placed the casualties at 60 to 70 percent of the worlds population gone. It's a new world, the great cities are mostly shells. Only those in the far north and the easily defensible ones survived mostly intact. The Emperor has opened the empty lands to settlers and homesteaders, hoping to repopulate the empty lands as quickly as possible.
"We had come here shortly before the panic began. The Centurion taught us to fight and defend ourselves. He helped us defend the stronghold and seal it off. So we have lived here for a generation, feeling safe. Until recently, when new attacks came from the depths, the newest parts of the stronghold. We were ready to defend ourselves from outside attack, but not from within.
"I prayed for answers: where did these attackers come from? Why were they different, seemingly guided to attack us at our most vulnerable points and times. Not anything like the mindless zombies from before. Then the answer came to me, these creatures were somehow brought here from the land of Aztlan. They were brought here by an evil dark magic, summoned initially, and guided by warlocks from that land. I can only assume our stronghold is a test of their capabilities before a full scale invasion.
"We have lost our access to the wire and all ability to communicate with the outside world. We barely have enough people to defend what we have, and most of our trained fighters have fallen. We need you strangers to take our message and tale to the outside world. I have recorded all that we know about these warlocks and their servants on this datacube. Take it to Bermuda City and give it to the Legion Commander. The Praetor will provide you with maps and directions out and to Bermuda City. Be wary of the Warlocks on y0ur way out, try to avoid any fights with him so you can escape safely without detection.
"Good luck and Gods speed."
After that we had no choice but to take the data cube, get some supplies and make this run for it. It was kinda crazy. Most of the time we double timed it when we could, jogging as much as we could. The zombies did find us eventually. We slipped one of their attacks once, but we did have to fight eventually. The first fight was pretty simple, them zombies are slow, and by now the team knew how to take 'em down. But after that fight, even when we started trying to double time it we still ran into 'em at the exit.
At first it looked like we could just take 'em down. But Zim realized that they weren't stopping this time, it wasn't just a small group like the other attacks. So we had to shoot our way past 'em. Which we did, and managed to get out to the sun and close the door behind us. So here we are, back in the sun, in a real dry place. And all we got to do is follow this 20 year old road atlas with funny latin names on it to this Bermuda City, and give the boss man this little cube.
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