The next day dawned bright and clear. The two flying novas had harnesses rigged up to allow them to carry the others and enough ammo to do what might need to be done. The flight was cold but not so bad since spring was starting to set in. Except for seeing a few groups of wandering zombies, there wasn't much of interest during the flight. It was about 50 miles from the compound to the military dictatorship to the north over what used to be farm and ranch land. It was amazing how wild the land looked after only one season of not being cared for.

After about an hour and a half the group finally topped the rise and looked down on an ugly scene. What used to be a strong enclave with several hundred survivors looks like a war zone. It is obvious that bombs have gone off and heavy artillery has been used inside the base. Dozens of zombies can been seen shuffling about at random at first inspection. There are no obvious survivors and no gunfire happening, but perhaps if you took a closer look?

James says,

"Find a tall building with a flat roof and let me off."

Fox cautiously swoops down to the top of one of the guard towers that has lost it's roof and sets down his hot air balloon basket that the passengers are riding in. "Here you go." Once he takes off the harness he stretches and everyone on the tower top hears audible pops and creaks. He smiles, "That's better. You guys aren't too heavy, but an hour and a half of that isn't all that fun."

James looks out over the railing and comments quietly,

"Bombs? Heavy Weapons? Was this overkill or something else?"

"In at least a few of these buildings you'd think someone was smart enough to make a fall back. Knock out the stairs, use a ladder for getting to the 2nd floor, pull it up if the dead crew comes a hording."

James pulls out an air horn and says,

"Anyone feel like sneaking around or should I loudly announce we're here and looking for people?"

Rachel steps towards the railing to join James in examining their surroundings. She closes her eyes to concentrate on listening to her surroundings when James pulls out his air horn.

"Anyone feel like sneaking around or should I loudly announce we're here and looking for people?"

"That doesn't seem like a bad idea to me. I doubt any survivors will come running out, but any reaction will give me something to listen for.'

James points the horn towards the base, out from his head, and goes,

"3... 2... 1..."
Hooooonnnnnk!!!!

Zombies all over the base look up at the sound and begin lifelessly shuffling toward the tower. There is no way that they will be able to get up to where you are. You have plenty of time to look around and take in the view which is pretty good from here. The settlement was nestled in a valley between two hills and roads lead out of the valley at either end. The settlement had a wall surrounding the complex, but it is in shambles. The zombies should not have been able to breach the wall. It was made of stout timber with sections of concrete 10 feet high. Those sections also had walkways built behind them so that people could stand there and fire at whatever came at them. Some kind of disaster must have occurred to allow the zombies through the gates. The place is very defensible and should never have fallen to mindless zombies.

Seeing the zombies turn and approach their building causes Rachel to back away from the edge, if only for a moment. It's clear that the zombies could never climb up to them, and she quickly steels her nerves and moves back to the egde.

She takes a careful hold of the rail as she leans slighly forward and closes her eyes. She listens carefully for any sounds that could be human.

(Hyperenhanced Hearing activated)

There is nothing to hear but the moaning of the zombies and the wind. There are faint noises of metal on metal or of wood creaking, but these could easily be just random noises. After standing on the tower surveying the scene for a few minutes something odd becomes apparent. There are no signs of destruction outside the gates. No bomb craters, not scorch marks, and for those with enhanced perception, not even any the marks from bullets that have been fired at an approaching zombie horde. Add that to the fact that there is no way the zombies could have forced their way in here and something is definitely not right.

James says,

"The Wall fell before the hoard came in. Anyone tell if it blew up or what?"

James looks at the rubble and tries to see if it was because of an explosion, and which side of the wall it was (i.e. blast pattern).

"I don't hear anything that would indicate survivors. I don't know enough about such things to judge what happened, but Fox said this was a large dictatorship, and didn't think much of them," says Rachel, "Wouldn't that mean they were either stupid enough to blow themselves up, or were attacked, and the zombies just cleaned up the mess?"

James frowns and replies,

"All the debris is inside the compound. I think that means the wall was blown from the outside."

James leans over and looks from the outside,

"And there's multiple impact craters."

"So... Raiding party? Hmm... Zombies eat corpses, but not clothes." James looks for signs that multiple people were killed first and eaten afterwards.

You do see signs that a large number of people were killed first. Also given the size of this community it had to be more than a simple raiding party. If it were just raiders there would be signs of many vehicles for slaves to have been taken away in, and there would likely be some survivor holed up in one of the more defensible buildings. So far you don't see any signs that that is the case.

James comments,

"Huge raiding party... that didn't bring vehicles?"

James continues,

"OK, I'm going to leap to that building over there..."

James points,

"And take a look from the top down. It looks like a good spot to take cover during a break in. It *should* be functioning as a final hiding place with doors shut and people shut in on the upper levels."

"What I think I'll find it the doors ripped off their hinges. The real question is whether or not we'll find the sort of stuff a raider would take, I think we will."

Obviously bothered, he taps a finger on the railing for a moment before leaping and says,

"You know who could do this sort of thing? We could. Break down the wall, bring in zombies as 'backup', knock down any defenses that show up."

Looking around you all discover things that are very odd. There are tire prints in the soil outside the gates, but they are followed and partially obscured by the footprints of a small horde of zombies. It looks very much like the zombies were led up to the holes in the walls by the vehicle and that the holes were blown into the walls from without.

The damage inside the compound is similar. It seems to have been inflicted by outside forces possibly airborne weapon systems, ie planes or helicopters.

Inside the buildings you don't find evidence of much looting. It does look like the base was ransacked though, more like the attackers were searching for something than stealing things. You find far more dead bodies than you should if this had been zombies or raiders.

As Rachel moves around the compound, she does hear breathing from under a pile of rubble. There are a small group of zombies around the rubble that are not wandering aimlessly.

"Well, there he goes...", Violet watched James leap to the other side and sighed.

"I guess I'll be waiting here... and... and scream real loud if something happens?", she looked around, disgusted by the Zombies which were closing in. Then she stretched more out of the routine to rouse attention but quickly realized that there was no one around to impress with her assets. Fainting a yawn she leaned on the railing and looked around and watched Rachel doing her thing which bored her quickly. Then she looked around to see what the Captain was doing.

As James moved from room to room it was a constant temptation to stop and scavage, or at least move the better stuff to a higher room in prep for a future visit. Working his way down he stopped when he started dealing with the hoard as a whole and not individual zombies, James' retreated a room or two and set up a barricade to bar them from the upper levels. Then he moved back to the roof, and got out a can of spray paint and marked the building with a circle indicating he should come back. Much later, if he came back and finished off the place, he'd "X" out the circle indicating he was done.

Walking to the side of the roof he yells out,

"Looks like raiders after something specific, not novas or super zombies. Anyone know where the leader's place was, maybe he had records or something?"

Flying near, Fox calls out, "That building over there as far as I know. I only visited once because the guy was a real prick." He points to a completely demolished structure then looks thoughtful, "You know, that was a pretty hardened building, reinforced" concrete. It shouldn't be in that condition unless someone did that on purpose."

Violet got nervous by the minute as she saw how more and more zombies tried to reach her position. Stepping backwards from the railing she yelled, "Chief... I got a baaaad feeling about this. Can we, like... hurry?!", she was addressing James.

James replies with a wink,

"Hurry? Now there's a request I don't usually get from Women."

He continues more seriously,

"I could move you to this roof?"

Fox starts clearing rubble around the demolished building seeing if there is anything underneath. Most of the buildings in this area should have basements after all.

"This is not funny, Chief!", she exaggerated her panic trying to make him hurry.

"I'd feel much more comfortable near you and then we can talk about what women usually tell you to do.", she smiled a little mischieviously laying out a plan to seduce the chief once they returned to the base.

James puts his sword away and leaps back to the guard tower... which creaks a bit ominously at his impact. He says with a wink,

"There we go. Now where were we?"

Violets locks her arms around James' neck and smiles at him while she pushes her body gently to his.

"My saviour!", she says melodramatic and jumps up forcing him to carry her.

James enjoys Violet's attentions almost too much. This isn't the time or the place for it but there's definately an interest.

James catches her with an ease and strength that is litterally superhuman and responds playfully in an old English accent,

"My lady!".

Stepping out above the zombie horde he gives a little hop and the two of them float dozens of meters over to the building's roof. On the way down it's like a rollar coaster ride but more so, there's definately a moment of zero gravity.

Violet enjoys James' playing along and rests her head on his chest while he prepares to jump. Just as they reach the jumps peak and the short moment of zero gravity Violet cannot help but almost squeal with glee.

Once they landed she released herself from his hold and smiled at him. "How can I show my gratitude for saving me, oh my valiant knight?"

James gives Violet a wink and a smile and says,

"Oh I can think of many things..." his voice changes to one of mock regret, "...but that would be neither valiant nor knightly."

Somewhat more seriously, "And alas, reality doth beckon."

Fox looks over to the building where James and Violet just landed and raises his voice. "Hey, come give me a hand with this rubble. I think there is something to this. This building was deliberately destroyed."

Violet pouts at James but then sighes and says, "I suppose you're right. It looks like there may be survivors down there.", she nodded with her head towards the Captain.

"Lets help him... and when we're back I'd like to delve into your not so valiant or nightly thoughts...", she gave him a seductive smile.

James sends back a half leer and wink and then picks her up and jumps over to where Fox is. Putting her down he picks up and tosses aside a massive rock and comments quietly,

"Sooner or later the hoard will find us. We might be better off setting up a kill zone and spending a few hours taking them out."

Fox nods but says, "That's not a bad idea, but I'm a little nervous about hanging around here long. Someone attacked these people and destroyed this building on purpose. They might not take kindly to people prying into what they've done, and what worries me is they may send people to check on this place or even have someone watching somehow. We can defend ourselves pretty well, but these folks had defenses too and it didn't help them."

"A few hours!?!", Violet almost screamed. "What am I supposed to do? Can't we just try to see if there are any survivors and then just evacuate them?"

Violet looked desperately at both men.

Fox looked puzzled, "Sure, you could help out Rachel, she's looking for survivors I think. The fact that they went to such trouble destroying a hardened building like this makes me awfully curious as to why. I think we can afford a few hours."

James says,

"This was a hardened survivors home with lots of resources, and someone came in and killed everyone... as far as I can tell without looting it. I see plenty of stuff I wouldn't mind taking back but that's the work of days, not hours."

"Right now I want to know who could take out a place like this, and who would do it without bothering to take the resources."

"Sounds complicated.", said Violet looking around and trying to appear as if she knew what she was looking for.

"So you're basically saying that someone - not Zeds - attacked the base and then what? Let the Zeds finish them off. How much sense does that make unless you wanted to create a diversion or something?", she shrugged.

"Maybe the boss here stepped on someones toes...?"

"Entirely possible he pissed someone off, he was a prick. But someone went to some effort to bring zombies here to make it look like they were over run. That alone makes me want to find out who and why."

James nods and one hands a basketball sized piece of rubble saying,

"The scary part is this place was pretty well defended. Whoever did this might have his sights on our places, and I'd like some kind of heads up."

Fox nods. "You might be right. That's one of the reasons I'm determined to find out what happened here and why. If we are going to be the next targets, I want to know about it. Did I mention, that I think the damage was caused by flying vehicles. Most likely an attack helicopter."