Yeah, I'm gonna need to find another way out of this apartment since the stairs are no longer a viable option, but first let's get that Green Flu issue resolved.
The zombie threat wasn't entirely resolved, but the stairs were completely blocked with stacks of dead bodies, meaning the infected were a nonissue for the meantime. So with his safety pretty much assured, John backtracked to the kitchen and packed his big stick mag for his Glock 20 with 30 rounds of FMJ before putting one in the chamber and loading the extended magazine into the sidearm. Once he had a ranged option loaded, he called up the store and navigated to the drugs and medicine section and found the Green Flu vaccine.
[ Store ]
Gold Coins: 231
( Search Bar: _______________ )
( Drugs & Medicine )
Green Flu Vaccine - 100
Green Flu Resistance - 500
Green Flu Immunity - 1,000
T-Viru-
...
I'm a bit better off than I was before but not so much that I can afford the actual cure from this virus, unfortunately… Well, that's just more motivation to kill the infected, I suppose. Now let's see how effective this vaccine is.
Unable to buy the real solution to the Green Flu, he purchased the vaccine for it, and the following instant a tiny white cardboard box fell into his awaiting hands. The moment he had the little, mostly white box in his hands, he examined the front of it before flipping it and reading the back of the contents, which were extremely simple given its effects.
Hmm, so this will last me a week before I need to buy another… Well, that won't be necessary because I will have gathered enough coin to purchase the actual cure.
Fully confident in his ability to gather the funds necessary to purchase immunity to the Green Flu, John opened the box, and out came a small vial and a syringe ready to pump the vaccine. He could fill the syringe straight from the vial now and pump the contents of it straight into his arm this second if he wanted to, but he wasn't exactly the cleanest right now so that wasn't advisable... And man would it suck to trade one infection for another.
I can't afford to get sick, so let's see if that bathroom has any rubbing alcohol or iodine, perhaps.
Unwilling to just go ahead and inject it straight up without cleaning the area first, he began disassembling a portion of his barricade so he could reach the bathroom on the other side. It took more than a handful of minutes, but he nevertheless cleared a path, and right as he did; he sped into the bathroom and checked the medical cabinet and under the sink for anything that could help.
Phew, they have it.
With the rubbing alcohol located, he washed his hands real quick in the sink, ran some water over his delt, which would be the site of the injection, and dried it off with a hand towel from the cabinet drawer. From there, he grabbed a few cotton balls and the rubbing alcohol from under the sink and withdrew the contents of the small vial the second he got the cap off.
Alright, I hope this works; otherwise; I am fucked.
Eager to have some sort of resistance to the Green Flu, John brought the sharp needle to his shoulder and lined it up with his delt and stuck it in at an angle so the solution would inject into the muscle. The second it penetrated his flesh deep enough, he pressed down on the syringe's plunger and dumped the contents into his musculature.
That should do it. Now where are the band-aids?
Although he had just resolved his Green Flu issue for the next week, he was rather paranoid about other infections, so he gathered what he could from the bathroom, applied the bandaid, and wrapped it up with a bit of gauze and returned to the kitchen. Once he got there, he rifled through the cabinets and the drawers and located some Ziplock bags.
Bingo, I can keep the small amount of medical supplies I found in these and toss em in the pack.
John couldn't predict the future, so it was best to prepare while he could before something happens and he has to deal with a situation he might not have the tools for.
Okay, now that we've put a band-aid on the Green Flu situation and secured a few medical supplies, I can direct my entire focus to kitting up and getting the fuck out of here. I mean, I don't recall this world's US military launching nukes to stop the infection since it was already far too late for that to be effective unless they wanted to turn this world into something straight out of Fallout. But it's not a good idea to hunker down in a city filled to the brim with walking undead if I can help it… Though it would be incredibly lucrative.
My greedy thoughts aside, it would be wiser to get to the outskirts and operate from there than stay here and try to survive the hordes. Alternatively, I could follow the survivors' trail of destruction through the city to Mercy Hospital and attempt to join up with them. The problem with that, however, is I'm just in this world till I survive a year or manage to slaughter 100,000 infected. So, joining up with them and going on a wild adventure across the states, although interesting and a hell of a time, isn't exactly my best path forward given my mission objectives.
John thought about what he wanted to do long term while the sounds of the infected on the lower levels slowly calmed due to their target of ire being out of sight. And after giving it a decent bit of thought, he eventually made his decision about whether to help this world overcome its crisis or just meet his goals and get the fuck out before things really went to shit.
I have no clue if I'll ever be able to return to my old world and out of the worlds I was able to choose from this is probably the closest of the three to my own, though a bit dated compared to the one I came from. So if I was to turn any of them into a homeworld of sorts this might be the best one to do that with, meaning I should help keep this world from completely turning and eliminate the infection before humanity succumbs to it completely and collapses… But that's a hell of a lot easier said than done.
I mean I'm not some useless nobody now that I have a system and access to a store, which I can buy pretty much anything my little heart desires… As long as I have the coin of course. However, at this juncture, I'm little more than an above-average human in regards to capability, and trying to save humanity from an extinction-level event with just those capabilities is simply impossible. Hence, I'm gonna need some help if I wish to truly change the path this world is speeding towards, and who better to help out with this endeavour than the US military.
That said, they're not without their issues because from what I can recall, they were acting quite strangely throughout the series, like supplying evac centers and the national guard with inferior equipment and pretty much using them as bait to delay the infected. I don't know the exact reason or reasons for those extreme and ruthless actions but my best guess is it was probably to delay the infected hordes just long enough, so they could preserve their top tier fire power and use it to lockdown the westside of the United States and cut off the infected east coast from the west coast.
I understand doing things for the greater good and all that, and I may have made a similar decision if it was between complete and total infection or cutting off the infected area before it could get to the rest of the US population. But I'm sure they could've done a bit more if they truly wanted to stop things from really going to shit. I mean, it's the goddamn US military. How could they not stop the infected if they wished to?
Unable to truly understand their motives and why certain actions were taken, John continued his contemplation.
Yeah, I can't come up with a definitive motive when they could have thrown the full weight of their air superiority against the undead and bombed huge portions of the infected hordes to oblivion and wiped whatever else remained with god knows what else they got hiding in their arsenal. Hence, I'm gonna have to be careful interacting with them since they're not exactly the most trustworthy bunch if they're willing to condemn millions of their own comrades to death… Mm, being extremely cautious of them would be smart otherwise I may find myself departing for the afterlife not by infected hands but by human ones.
The dangers and risks were quite obvious to anyone with even half a functioning brain so John kept actively thinking about what sort of shit could go south while he transitioned to coming up with a viable plan of actually bringing the human race back from the potential brink of extinction.
Moving on from that to how I can actually save this world, my only real way would be to either eliminate all infected, which is probably a near impossible job unless a major portion of the United States is nuked. And that's not even considering whether any other parts of the world are infected with the Green Flu, which can just reinfect parts that were previously cleared if things weren't absolutely locked down and kept that way until the infection had been entirely eliminated. So if we add the rest of the world being infected on top, and I imagine it is if the US military is willing to abandon half the country, then that means this isn't gonna work.
Therefore, I'm basically left with trying to come up with a cure or some way to immunize the population that has yet to turn. That could be a real way forward if I utilize my shop and hand off the medicine to a team of researchers who can reproduce it and send it off for mass production. But the only real player I know of who would possess the ability to make such a thing in these trying times would be the US military. Other than them, I can't come up with any others who would be capable of such a feat when the world has literally gone to hell and a handbasket.
So let's say I convince them somehow and secure their assistance and they're willing to work with me, some random nobody, I'm going to have to wait for who knows how long for the eggheads to do their thing and research the medicine I give them, that I have no idea how advanced is. And whilst they're busy doing that I'll be out there slaughtering the undead till there are no more since they'll still be a problem even after a cure has long been found and disseminated amongst the remaining population… Yeah, this plan relies on a ton of ifs but that's all I got for now so I'll run with this for the time being.
As for how I should go about getting in contact with them, the internet could've been an option, but I don't know how long that infrastructure is going to last… I guess that means radio would be my best bet. But for now I got more urgent matters to attend to, like surviving the next week and finding where I'm going to put my head tonight, so I'll figure out that whole mess when I secure a decent, safe house for myself and have wracked up a ton of gold coins.
Although John could sit here and keep laying out plans practically all day, the time to move was now.
Moving on from what I would like to accomplish in the longer term, what should I spend these coins on… Well, my goal is to escape the urban sprawl and move to the outskirts since it won't be as densely populated and will be far, far safer in both the short term and the long term. Though to do that I'm gonna need several things, one, at least one drum mag for my AK-47 to handle the undead hordes, preferably the 100 round kind, plus a few 30 round magazines and a couple more big sticks for the Glock. Two, some sort of waterproof clothing to keep all the blood and gore off me when I'm out and about exterminating zeds, and a new set of clothes since these are well... Beyond tainted.
At the same time that thought crossed his mind, he found himself looking down at the aftermath that accumulated on his t-shirt and pants and wanted to puke his guts out.
Yeah, we're gonna have to do something about this… The sooner the better.
Disgusted with the smelly, bloodstained and gore-splattered clothing, that had specks of brain matter here and there, John removed every article of clothing he was wearing, tossed them aside, and headed for the bathroom where he hopped in the shower to wash off. Once he cleaned his short buzzed light blonde hair and removed every last particle of filth from his athletic frame, the very one he built with blood, sweat, and tears in the army, he hopped on out and dried off before purchasing a new set of clothes for the cheap, cheap price of 1 gold coin.
"Ahh, it's nice to not be covered in blood and guts again." John exclaimed as he buckled his new black cargos around his waist and wore his crimson red tank top.
Feeling more than refreshed with the shower and the new threads, he wandered back to the mostly clean kitchen and returned to deciding how to best use his limited funds that were quickly dwindling to zero with each new purchase.
Now where was I… Ahh, I remember, besides waterproof clothing I'm gonna need a way off this roof. I don't exactly want to take my chances of dropping off a three-story roof whilst being weighed down with a bunch of guns, ammo, and weapons, plus whatever bit of kit I'm able to scrape together and bring with me.
Well, the options are rather limited given my funds, but repelling is an option, though it's been a while since I've last done some. That said, it would be an easy and most importantly a cheap way off this apartment building… Yeah, I can't really come up with anything else on the spot other than a rope ladder, so I'll go with repelling since it's the cheaper of the two.
After selecting just about everything he needed… Or what he could afford at the moment, he found a good chest rig for his magazines to sit in amongst the gear category and selected purchase at the same time he blinked. And the next time he opened his eyes, a jet-black hazmat suit appeared before his very eyes along with the assortment of goods he selected from the system store.
I couldn't get absolutely everything I wanted, but this will probably be enough to keep me safe till I get to the outskirts. Now I just need to buy some ammo and pack my mags, and I'll be ready to get the fuck out of this apartment building and set off into the dangerous unknown.
With very few preparations remaining, John bought a couple kinds of ammunition, specifically FMJ and its subsonic counterpart, and packed a single one of his 30 rounder AK mags with the subsonic stuff. As for the drum and what remained of the 30-rounders, he packed those guys with straight full metal jackets.
After that, he got his Glock mags packed with a mix of FMJ and a partial load of subsonic ammo since that was all he could afford before putting the magazines in the pouches he had attached to his chest rig and war belt. And once he was finished with that, he placed the rest of his supplies away in the backpack he found in the bedroom, got in his hazmat suit, wore the rest of his equipment, and headed for the rooftop with both his rifle and his sidearm locked and loaded.
Now that I'm thinking of it, what direction is the outskirts in… I'm sure if I head in the opposite direction of the Mercy Hospital I'll eventually end up there but having a map of the area would be hella useful for finding a safe spot to operate from and loot supplies, so where am I going to get it. I know the survivor safe houses will have maps for sure, so I could head for the first safe house I know of, pick up what I can there, and head off to an area of the city that looks like it would be the safest and most lucrative zone. Mmm, that would require me to fight through God knows how many zeds, but it'd certainly be more effective than wandering and exploring the city with next to zero intel.
Although John didn't want to venture further into the city of Fairfield due to obvious reasons, the prospects of finding a map at the first survivor safe house of the No Mercy campaign was worth wading through the dangers of the city in his eyes, so he set up his repelling rope on a large, sturdy air conditioning unit that was bolted down to the roof and approached the half walls that ran the entire length of the rooftop's edge.
Looks like we got some stragglers left… This should be quick.
Having spotted a number of infected wandering the back alley, he took his suppressed Glock 20 and started taking heads. Quiet cracks rang out in the alley and the surrounding area, drawing a couple handful of infected, but they were swiftly dealt with by a quick shot to the dome by yours truly. The moment the zone was clear, John purchased a suppressor for his Kalashnikov, removed the stock muzzle device, and threaded on the new beefy suppressor.
This will help with staying quiet and unnoticed by the infected, especially when I combine it with all the subsonic FMJs I bought.
As soon as the last of his preparations were taken care of, he tossed the length of rope off the building and watched it drop and pile up on the ground below before attaching himself to it and beginning his descent off the roof.
I'm gonna make out of this, and no brainless zeds are going to stop me.