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[Vikarion]

Prologue

If this were a movie, there would be creepy music, while a narrator - soft, concerned, female - spoke, telling the viewer how the world got this way, and why the main character was now stuck fighting for his life in the aftermath. But this isn't a movie. It's the end of the world, and we don't know why.

What we do know - well, what I know - is that the infection started somewhere in southeast Asia. It has a long incubation time, and it seems to be spread by physical contact - sometimes just by skin-to-skin - and by sneezing, coughing, and bodily fluids. Like a cold, except without the symptoms, for six days. Which is how it spread all over the world before anyone noticed. For six days.

Because, on the seventh day, you die and rise again. Or if you are killed, you rise again - a walking corpse, a shambling killer during the day. And at night, a racing, running thing, hunting down the uninfected to bite, claw, and chew at them. To spread the infection.

The infection can be cured. It's actually quite easy - all you need is a certain species of bread mold. I know, that sounds ridiculously easy, until you remember that penicillin was pretty much obtained the same way. But the world came apart at the seams before anyone could mass-produce it. The world came apart in less than two weeks. Governments nuked their own cities. People boarded up their houses and died when their dead neighbors tore through feeble plywood and glass. People fled the zombies, not knowing that they themselves were infected, fanning out through countries as they spread the silent disease in their haste to escape what they carried inside their own bodies.

There are only a few safe havens left, at least that I know of. The U.S. Floating Fleet - all those navy ships are now a small city. Long Island, Hawaii. The U.S. Virgin Islands. I heard that there are some European and Asian holdouts, South American too, but there's no more news on the radio, just communications between the holdouts.

The last thing that came over the radio intended for the ears of survivors was this: no one was coming for us. The risk of infecting the holdouts was too high.

I was holed up in a house just a few hours ago. A horde found me - I don't know how. I had seconds to jump in my car and go. I've got nothing but my underwear. I drove for hours, down back roads, through burned towns, until I ran out of gas. Now I'm running down a road in the middle of nowhere, the sun finally just peeking above the horizon. The zombies are slow now - I may just have a chance. Just.

Nightfall will come soon. Sooner than I can hope. I need to find a way to survive it, and a way to create my own stockpile of the cure, in this new world where it only takes 7 days to die.

[Vikarion]

Rules:

I'm playing the basic SP survival game. I'm with slightly modified settings, with zombie spawning set to "low", and airdrops set to "off". Zombies are pretty common even on the 75% setting, and there are locations where you just can't clear them out anyway. Airdrops are "off" because I want the player to have been pretty much abandoned. I also put looting and crafting timers to "fast", because I don't find staring at the screen doing nothing to be fun. Loot quantity is turned up a bit to make up for it being a random gen world, and also because this is only the second time I'm really making a go at this, and for the same reason, difficulty is "Scavenger".

Here we go!

[Vikarion]

Day 1

Journal,
I've been up for more than 24 hours straight.

My car ran out of gas in the middle of some ruined city. If I had to guess, I'd say it was bombed in an attempt to stop the infected. Doesn't matter. It wasn't a good place to stay. Fortunately, the devastation ended at the edge of a forest.

I was running along the road when an infected lurched towards me. I suppose I should have just run away. Instead, in my panic, I just punched it, as hard as I could, in the face. Stupid, stupid, risking infecting myself like that. The man went down, though. I stripped off his shirt quickly, since it looked to be in goo condition, and then decided I had better arm myself with something.

It took me a half hour, but after gathering a bit, I had some vine, a good strong green-wood stick, and a sharp rock, which I fashioned into a very crude axe. And that survival class I took as a teen had made it seem so easy.

I would have tried again, but I saw one of the stalking forms heading towards me through the trees. That sent me down the road again, which was lucky, because I ran into an intact suburb of the wasted city I'd just left, complete with a gas station and a hardware store!

The gas station didn't have much in it. There were a couple of rotting biters hanging around it, but that was all, and they went down to a couple of judicious smacks to the back of the head when I caught them off guard. I grabbed some old beer, whatever convenience food was in there, and crossed the street to the hardware store.

That was a big mistake. Every zombie in the little town seemed to spot me as I sprinted from the gas station to the front of the hardware store. The door was locked and boarded up, but the previous occupants hadn't been able to board up the large display window. I broke in that way, and seconds later, the biters outside were trying to follow me in.

I got lucky, again. More than a few of the fuckers had spotted me, but certainly not all in the town. Those that did had the good grace to come through the window nearly one at a time, save for one which spent his time trying to claw through the back of the store. This gave me the opportunity to use the window, my improvised stone axe, and whatever weapons were available in the store to dispatch my fellow shoppers. I killed one of them by slashing her across the knee with my stone axe and then slamming her face down onto a large shard of glass as she came through the window. It was only then that I noticed that she must have been a candy-striper at a local hospital - she was still wearing her uniform. Another biter was in the store before I could stop him, so I snuck around a display case, smacked him in the head, and then rammed his skull into a metal shelf until it cracked.

The skull, not the shelf.

That gave me enough of a breather to loot the store. There were a couple shovels, a pick, some lumber, and a few books, including one on forging and repairing tools. "Forge Ahead", haha. And - I can't believe this - even a small chainsaw, and a metal door kit. I fit what I could under my pack, grabbed the rest, and ran for an unoccupied building on the outskirts, practically bowed under the weight.

I went through a couple of garages along the way, considering them as possible shelters. No go. Everything in town seemed to be made of plywood, and I know from very recent experience that plywood is about as effective as tissue paper once they find you. Still, holing up in an abandoned building let me catch my breath and decide what to do next.

I certainly couldn't stay in town. The two buildings not made of plywood were the gas station and hardware store, which had huge open windows that I myself had already used to get in. Also, towns seem to be magnets for biters.

I headed east out of town, and had my third stroke of luck: a small lake - a pond, really - shallow with a small peninsula extending from a small cliff-side. The only way to get to it is to wade through the water - inconvenient, but it would slow any biter down. I waded out and dropped my stuff, and then dug a bit into the cliff side and installed the metal door kit I'd lugged out over the hole. The pick from the store was in rather bad condition, so I ventured another trip into town, but couldn't find anything, and it was early afternoon by that point.

Returning, I tried reading the "Forge Ahead" book. It had instructions for building a forge, a relatively simple one, and I cobbled one together out of stone, some clay from a nearby bank, and a metal pipe. Shoving some lumber into it, I managed to melt down a few pistol slides I'd found in one of the garages, and slowly lengthened the tip of the pick by applying the molten metal to it.

It was convenient that I had a nearby lake to quench in. I'm not kidding anyone with this fix, though. The pick will still wear out fast, and I'm certainly no master blacksmith. Still, it seemed to be a workable solution.

I don't know why I was so fixated on the pick. Probably my nerves. After escaping from my last hideout, running through city and woods, killing zombies by hand, and escaping again, I think I just wanted something to concentrate on. And then I looked up and saw that the sun was setting.

If there's anything any survivor learns, it's not to be out after dark. I started digging frantically.

I've been digging all night, creating a ramp down into the earth. I didn't mean to go that far - it's just...all I could think about was getting away from those things. I would dig, listen, dig, then hide, nearly crying, but silent, as a horde would go by.

Oh god, I hate those moans.

At least I had a torch with me.

It's deep into the ground now, this hole. Not very deep, though I'll probably hit bedrock eventually. The soft, broken limestone has been relatively easy to break through, but I doubt going much deeper is worth anything anyway. And any zombies coming down this ramp will have to attack one-by-one.

Perhaps I could turn this into a base of operations for a time. Loot the town, survive on the supplies there for a while, then move on. We'll see. I should get a couple hours of rest before the sun comes up.

[Ollie]

I killed one of them by slashing her across the knee with my stone axe and then slamming her face down onto a large shard of glass as she came through the window. It was only then that I noticed that she must have been a candy-striper at a local hospital - she was still wearing her uniform.

Zombieland Kill Of The Week so far.

[Vikarion]

Day 2

I woke up later than I wanted to. Ugh. My head hurts. Too little sleep and too much adrenaline will do that to you. I couldn't describe what this is like to anyone. There's no one to rely on, I'm always on edge...

Well, that's why I started this journal, isn't it? Only a few weeks after the outbreak, and I'm already having trouble staying sane. Writing helps. At least, I think it does. But I digress.

I decided to finish looting the town this morning. I took the small chainsaw I found, the axe, and some food and water. I'm glad I decided to go back, because I'd missed a freaking "Borns and Noble" bookstore. Just a small one, but still. I hit the "survival and outdoor" living section first. Man, so many books. Books on how to build guns, books on how to survive in the outdoors, books on making your own crossbow and snares, even a book on how to make functional armor from scrap metal - although I think that was originally for Steampunk enthusiasts. Oh, and a beverage cooler which still had bottled water. Score!

As I was leaving, I went around to the back, and noticed a service ladder on the top of the building. Making it up, I found a body and some remaining supplies. Looked like the guy had holed up there until he ran out of water. The zombies never found him, he just died of thirst, I guess. That's my best bet, anyway. I also disemboweled the air conditioner for parts for my small attempt at a forge.

It was when I was looting another building - a house, if I recall correctly - that I discovered why the chainsaw is of limited utility in this new world. I came across a pretty good barricade, and decided to make things easy. Firing up the chainsaw, I was through in seconds. And then I heard the moans.

Well, turns out that chainsaws make a lot of noise. Biters pay attention to noise. Fortunately, the only ones left around were a few half-rotted, lurching examples that I managed to bash over the head with my stone axe, which is starting to look pretty gross. The axe, that is, their heads were pretty gross before I bashed them in.

I'm starting to get better at killing them. You can't take on more than one at once, but if you're quick, you can dart in, hit one hard, and have him down before he swings back or grabs you. You have to be fast, though.

I think I'm going to build that crossbow.

I discovered another dead "former survivor" holed up in a basement with a gun safe. Only gun parts inside. The former occupant of the room had blown his brains out, which had the unfortunate effect of getting blood all over the gun, which, so far as I could tell, had then spent a couple weeks rusting in the dank basement. Ruined. Oh well.

My adventure on top of the bookstore had convinced me to look for some other rooftop hideouts - maybe I'd find someone alive - which nearly got me killed. I got up on top of one of the gas stations in town (turns out there are two), and found partially eaten body and a rotten duffle-bag. That gave me a start, I admit. It means zombies can climb. Really rather glad I decided to dig down rather than try to wall off a second floor last night. Fuck. That gives me the creeps. I could have been asleep, just lying there, and had one of those things come in through a broken window, not even glass to warn me.

Anyway, as I was getting back off the roof, I slipped, and fell. I landed on my feet, but heavily, and I think my ankle is sprained. Not badly, as I can walk on it, but I won't be winning any land speed records any time soon.

Well, I figured that was pushing my luck enough, so I headed back "home" to my hole in the ground. It's nearly night, now, and I've spent the rest of the day hollowing out some living space. The tunnel is pretty long - if I weren't so freaked out, I might think I overreacted last night. But I don't think that. Every time I look back up the tunnel, I imagine a horde of those things trying to press their way down the tunnel.

I think I am probably safe, though, for the moment. I still get a bit of fresh air down here, and the metal door should keep intruders out. I'll need to make a vertical vent, eventually, or see if I can find a fan (I doubt it). Still, enough room for a sleeping roll I cobbled together out of salvaged items, and I even have a bit of light from some cobbled together torches. I'll have to put them out for now, though. Don't need carbon monoxide poisoning while I sleep.

Hopefully, tomorrow will go as well as today did, minus spraining anything.

[Vikarion]

Author note: BTW, have I mentioned that this game freaks me out? In general, games don't freak me out. The Fear series? Meh - fun but not scary. Silent Hill? ZZzzzzzz. Dead Space? Booooring. S.T.A.L.K.E.R.? Fascinating, yes, scary, no.

But this game - there's something about the desolation, and the isolation, that is just incredibly fucking creepy. It's not at all like Minecraft. Minecraft has villagers, and cute blocks, and even if you're playing alone, it's pretty easy to get to "near-god-mode" and who cares about a skeleton then, right? But in 7 Days, you're constantly in fear for your life, even if there isn't a zombie in sight. Anything you do can attract them - or maybe not. I've noticed trends - like, making a lot of noise - but no pure causality.

And the game punishes you for being/going rambo very harshly, especially at night. A horde is very, very difficult to stop without firearms...which make a lot of noise, drawing more zombies. And all the time, your hunger and thirst is increasing, which means you have to go out there and risk your life for supplies.

Yeah, this game is incredibly creepy. I love it. 

[Vikarion]

Day 3

I. Love. Painkillers.

I don't know if they were issued "en masse" during or before the outbreak. I don't know if it is just that that many people were on them. I just know that they kept me going today.

As the sun came up, I decided to follow a road south to see if there was anything useful I might find. There wasn't, unless you call "scattered biters" anything close to "useful". I don't. I followed it for a while, and then took a south-eastern route out of the forest upon an adjacent road, leading into the ruined city I'd sped through before running out of gas, three days ago.

On the way there, I had trouble. Typically, it's easy to avoid most of the biters during the day, but somehow, I ran right into one of them - a very large, fat one. When he hit me, we toppled over, him struggling to bite me, me going for my stone axe. He was on top of me, and it was all I could do to shove my fingers into his rotted double chins, holding his teeth away, while I bashed away at his skull with a feeble little bound stone.

Eventually, I got him. I guess. He stopped moving, which was good enough. I squeezed out from under his smelly corpse, stumbled a couple feet, and vomited. I couldn't help it. I know food is precious, but he was so rank, and on top of me...

Well. At any rate, I checked him out. I was pretty scraped up, so when I found some Norca on him, I took it.

Man, that made a difference. All that pain, all that disgust? Gone. Took maybe...5 minutes? How come we weren't all taking this? This stuff is awesome!

I downed a cold can of chili to refresh myself after that, then started north through the ruined city. There were a few spots of interest, but what was best was that I found a gun store!

I couldn't get in - it had been well-boarded-up - but next to it was a hardware store, in which I found some more supplies, a sledgehammer, which is perfect for killing biters, and an AUGER! Seriously, an AUGER! I bet I can use this thing to make a freaking wonderful underground base! It'll be just like minecraft, but all the creepers will be overhead! I'm writing this from inside the store! More later!

...

Well. This should teach me only to ever write in here while completely sober. Taking that many painkillers while on the road was pretty stupid. I'm lucky I didn't get very dead.

What I failed to notice while under the "influence", so to speak, was that my rambling through the hardware store had not gone unnoticed. In fact, I had a few of the damn chompers beating their way through the walls even as I finished my last entry. Fortunately, it was a couple of half-decayed ones, or my enthusiasm over the discovery of a sledgehammer might well have been misplaced.

As it was, the sight of several zombies breaking through the back door of the hardware store started me. Gripping my sledgehammer, I waited until the first made it through, and advanced on me. With sweaty palms, I lifted the hammer, and, moving forward, brought it down, FAST, crushing the skull. The biter dropped, and the one behind him came up. Repeating the maneuver a couple times, I bought myself time to run.

I zipped out of the hardware store, and headed for "home". I used a few small ponds...well, perhaps one was a lake...to throw off the zombies on my trail. The last lake was my own, and I popped down into my tunnel with a great feeling of relief.

I can't believe I was stupid enough to use drugs while on the crawl. I can't believe I survived. But I did, and drugged-me has a point: I have an auger now. I'll need gas, but this will make hollowing out a place to live...well...much easier. Perhaps I should make this a longer term proposition.

Good afternoon, diary. And good luck, me.

[Vikarion]

Day 4

Not much to write about today. I spent it using the auger to dig out more space. The auger works really well, but it drinks gas as if it had a V8 engine in there. I've gone through all the gas I managed to scrounge from the local gas stations.

On the plus side, I've created a rather large area to live in, about 9 feet high (3 meters), and supported by pillars of natural stone I've left about every three meters (9 feet) on the horizontal. That should be more than enough to prevent a cave-in. I've also built an adjoining room with some forges - these are a bit better since I experimented with my first one. Oh, and I built a frame around the tunnel down to the room, and put a metal door on that, too, so there are two doors between me and those things.

I'm starting to run low on food. On my trip yesterday, I managed to kill a pig when it got caught in the mud of a lake's bank, but I think I need to seriously consider making a crossbow, like that book describes. Hunting will become a necessity. Perhaps farming, too - I found some potatoes, and some corn. I could eat them, but if I'm going to be here for a while, perhaps planting them is a wiser choice. I also need to create a vent for this place.

Wow. I just yawned the biggest yawn I've had in weeks. I'm tired. Time to get some sleep. See you later, diary.

[Vikarion]

Day 5

I went scavenging today. It was a long day. Good thing I'm in shape.

I decided to go north. Stupid decision. The city degenerates into a burned-out forest in the north, and there was precious little to scavenge, save from a few ruined houses. But, because I'm stubborn as all hell, I kept just going north.

I caught a couple of pigs in some underbrush, and killed them with the sledgehammer I looted from the hardware store yesterday. I also brought along my collection of beer from looting, which kept me going. I knew that being buzzed all day could be bad, but I was out of food, and needed something to keep my energy up.

Eventually, I made it out of the burned area and back into a forest. This one was a bit snowy, as I'd been climbing, elevation-wise, and this answered another question for me: do zombies freeze? Well, they do, and it means jack shit anyway.

At this point, I had to have something to eat, so I simply built a campfire in the middle of the road and roasted some pork on a stick. Charred, but filling. At that point, I turned west, and wandered along a road for a bit before going south, and then east again.

In essence, I ran a huge rectangle, without finding anything of interest other than a few cans of chicken and some scrap iron. Oh well. I think that tomorrow I will try to explore the bombed city to the south east again.

Oh, I almost forgot! I found one of those old "instant-photo" cameras. Going to see if I can make it work, maybe put a few photos here.

More later, diary. Wishing for a radio.

[Vikarion]

Day 6.

Oh god. Today was horrible.

I decided to loot the abandoned city to the east and south. Horrible decision. The place is a pit of zombies. Including vicious biter dogs. I didn't know dogs could get infected. But they can.

I did some mild looting on the outskirts. I was doing ok, picked up a nail gun, some gas, and a few other sundry items, and decided to move deeper into the city. My first big target was a parking garage, which was largely empty, and then a tall tenement. It, too, had relatively slim pickings - mostly empty jars, which I crammed into my pack anyway. Empty jars are still useful after all.

It was when I left the tenement and went further in towards the city that I got in trouble. I went around a corner and ran smack into a bloated zombie that must have been a police officer in a former life. In a panic, I pulled out my new nail gun and tried filling him full of nails. And he exploded, showering me with bile and pus.

I don't remember how I wound up at the river. I must have run back, or dragged myself back. I'd dropped my tool belt, and I shakily stood to go retrieve it. As I did, I sneezed. Twice. And I was out of breath.

I'm infected.

Stupidly, I then drank water from the river, trying to recover my stamina. That didn't sit well with my stomach. But I had to get my belt - it had my axe, my only pistol, and precious food. So, in short rushes, I returned to where I'd encountered the police zombie. It stank. I picked up my belt, and slowly made my way back, dodging zombies where I could, killing them with laborious blows of my sledgehammer or shots from my pistol when they could not be avoided. A few times, I simply walked away, losing the biters further off by weaving through buildings.

If there was any possible help for me, it was that I'd collected a few samples of the mold - on bread, no less - needed to create the special antibiotic. I took a few vitamins to help my stomach, and looked around for a way to distill the drug. Nothing. A mason jar wouldn't do. Perhaps someone in the small town to the west had a chemistry set or something? But I had already looted the place. Perhaps I'd overlooked something. I was in a panic. As much as I could, being out of breath, I raced out of my hideout and towards the town.

I ransacked the houses and garages in the village a second time. Nothing. I had done a fairly thorough job a few days before, and little was left. But, as I neared the very last garage to re-search, I discovered that it was still boarded up. I tore through the boards with my fire axe, hoping against hope. And, inside, in a long-unused box, was a set of some beakers and tubes. Not ideal, but it would do.

Right now, as I write this, I'm hunched over a small fire in my base. The smoke is oily and smelly as it curls up from the flames which are distilling the extract of mold I've combined with some potassium nitrate - hopefully in the same way they described on the news in those final days of civilization. By tomorrow, we'll know if it worked, or if I'm a dead man, quite literally, walking.

[Vikarion]

Day 7

It worked. I'm feeling better now.

When this all started, the Biter Flu was nearly undetectable, but I could feel the fatigue when I caught it. I wonder if it's become more potent, or if it's just more noticeable, now that all of our little convenient gadgets for making life easy are, well, gone.

No more smartphones, no more air-conditioning - especially after I rip out the parts out of an AC for scrap, and no more cars, even. It's not even the gas - you can still find gas. It's the blocked roads, no parts, and flat tires that stop that cross-country trip you always wanted to take. Oh, and the occasional horde of biters on the road. That too.

I had plenty of time to think last night, and this morning. I finally built a crossbow with directions from a book I found at Borns and Noble on the first day I arrived. It works, at least if I take the time to make the bolts for it with care.

When morning came, I went on a quick trip to the city and broke into a gun store. I stayed on the outskirts, for the most part. I did find a sniper rifle, ammo, and enough shotgun parts to put together a pump shotgun. My crossbow works reasonably well on the zombies, at least if you hit them in the head, but it's slow to reload and not the best weapon when you have a lot of them coming at you. Still, I made it in and out in one piece.

After that, I decided to remedy my food situation. I went hunting. I snagged 2 small-ish deer, and two or three pigs...I don't remember exactly, as I just butchered them on the spot and ran. The smell of fresh meat seems to attract zombies. I made it back from that excursion as well.

I've come to the conclusion that I got over-confident, and lazy, yesterday. I can't depend on looting for all my needs. I need to build a sustainable and defensible space for myself here, and that means taking charge of my situation and gathering materials for use or recycling. And I need to consider a renewable food source, such as farming.

More tomorrow. I'm tired. Goodnight, diary.

[Honourblade3]

Awesome diary entries! Can't wait for day 8 of "7 Days to die" haha!

[Vikarion]

Awesome diary entries! Can't wait for day 8 of "7 Days to die" haha!

Heh, thanks. Yeah, comments in these really are encouraging. It's nice to know that people are reading and enjoying them.

[Honourblade3]

Haha! Good to know, i commented originally and then read your give away post and thought it meant comments only on that one, haha! Silly me, but yeah man, it's awesome! Can't wait for the next installment!

[Vikarion]

Day 8

Today, well, today was hard work. I spent it felling trees, cutting them up, and dragging them back to base.

Glad I did it, though. It was a ton of work, but I have fuel and material now.

More later.