A Walk In The Park - - ATZ Campaign Day 4

Prologue:
The lights of the patrol car flashed off the buildings in the gathering gloom.  Two patrol officers stood talking to a frightened man, watched by a small group of people.  "OK, OK, relax, and tell me what happened", Officer Hansen said to the wide eyed man.

"Well", he stammered, " Jimmy and I were taking the trash out like Mr. Keenan told us to.  While we were out back, these 4 bums came out of the woods.  They didn't look right, though; all bloody n stuff, you know?  Jimmy yelled at them to get lost.  Suddenly they attacked us.  One of them bit me on the arm", he continued holding up a bandaged fore arm. "I managed to get inside the store, but Jimmy couldn't get past them.  I saw him break free and run off that way", he said pointing towards the city park; which backed up against the store.  "They followed him into the woods.  A couple of minutes later we heard this, like, horrible scream.  Oh man, you think Jimmy is OK", the man said almost in tears.

"I don't know sir", Officer Gillian said.  He spoke into the radio at his collar. "Patrol 1, this is Patrol 13.  We need to search the park.  May be a victim of assault, and some violent types around.  We'll start in from the north, you start in from the east.  Keep in contact, and be careful; there's some crazy stuff going on these days, over"

"Roger that", was the reply, "Patrol 1 out."

Special Rules:

• Each tree stand represents a dense copse of woods, movement is 1/2 while moving through them; LOS is 3 inches.
• When entered, the police will roll a "What's Inside" searching the woods for the attackers.  They will search every turn while inside a copse of woods.
• On turn 5 it gets dark, with all the assorted Die roll modifications.

Setup:
The board shows the northern edge of the Lazarus Memorial City Park, which backs up against a business district.  Patrol 13 (P13) starts in the NW corner f the board, and Patrol 1 (P1) starts in the SE corner of the board.

Video stills of Patrol 13 officers Gillian and Hansen (left) and Patrol 1 officers Abbot and Bryce just before they entered the woods.

Patrol 13 searches the first woods.

Turn 1:
Patrol 1 enters the first copse of tree and searches.  They find evidence of a blood trail, but no sign of any bodies or the attackers.  Patrol 13 enters and searches the trees nearest them, with the same result.


Turn 2:
Both patrols follow blood trails to the next copse of woods and find nothing, again.






Turn 3:

Patrol 13 dispatches the first Zombie

Patrol 13 continues to move through the large woods searching again.  They are jumped by 2 zombies.  Officer Hansen is surprised, and unable to get a shot off.  Melee ensues as one of the zombies attacks him.  After a brief struggle, he bludgeons the zombie to death.  Officer Gillian manages to fire his weapon at the other attacking zombie, hitting it twice and killing it.  Patrol 1 hears the gun shots and moves in a straight line towards them.  They move towards the sound of the gunfire, ending their movement in the open, between two sets of trees.

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Movement through the first part of the up coming Turn 4. 

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Turn 4: (Humans 3, Zombies 2)

Officers Abbot and Bryce (Patrol 1) find the frightened hobo.

Zombie Reinforcements: A lone zombie rises from the low grass 10 inches away from Patrol 1 at about 5 o'clock
Human Turn:  On the alert, Patrol 1 moves to the next set of woods.  They hear movement, and ready their weapons.  A disheveled hobo stumbles out of the underbrush.  Wide eyed he points the direction of the gunshots and mutters something crazy about the undead.   Meanwhile, Patrol 13 finishes the zombie on the ground off.  They then move to meet up with Patrol 1.

Patrol 13 meets it's grizzly end.

 They exit the  woods they were in and move quickly towards another stand of trees.  As they enter, they are surprised by 3 zombies (+2D6 in Melee).  The zombies attack them, and quickly overcome both officers, knocking them OOF.
Zombie Turn: The zombies begin feasting on the downed officers for 5 turns.



Turn 5: (Zombies 4, Humans 1)

Patrol 1 stumbles across the feasting zombies

Zombie Turn: As darkness falls, the zombies that just killed Patrol 13 continue feasting, and the lone roaming zombie joins them.
Human Turn:  The hobo with Patrol 1 looks in terror when they hear the dieing screams of the fallen policemen.  He takes off running the opposite direction.  Officers Abbot and Bryce move quickly towards the screams through the brush along the edge of the woods.  Suddenly they stumble upon a writhing mass of bodies.  In the fading light Patrol 1 can tell that the attackers are tearing the bodies of their fellow officers apart and eating them.  In terror, both officers duck back (both Pass 1 on "See The Feast").  The officers move into nearby woods.  Officer Abbot is looking to hunker down (Pass 1 "Sanity Test") while Officer Bryce is on the verge of a complete breakdown (Pass 0 "Sanity Test).

Patrol 1's fate is sealed.

As they enter nearby trees, looking for cover, they are attacked by three zombies.  Surprised, neither are able to fire (both Pass 1 "Being Charged"). Officer Abbot manages to bludgeon one of the charging Zombies to death.  Officer Bryce, in his terror is unable to defend himself; his throat ripped open, before he even knows what is happening (+2 Success in Melee for the Zombie).  The third zombie falls on Officer Abbot and after a brief struggle, overpowers him, knocking him OOF.

Aftermath: Police dispatch lost contact with Patrols 1 and 13 shortly after sundown. Despite the heavy volume of calls the department was getting, they managed to dispatch a couple of additional units to check out the situation.  They arrived to find the patrol cars several blocks apart, both locked, with the lights still flashing, and no one around.  It was dark, and witnesses said they saw the missing officers go into the woods, then they heard gun shots and what sounded like screaming.  Reluctantly, and without backup, as there was none to be had on this night, they went into the woods.  Not all of them came back out of those dark woods.  The tale the surviving officers told was one that in normal times would have stood out for all the horror it held.  As it was, it was lost in the flood of stories that were written across the city of Lazarus that night and in the following weeks.

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WOW, it's been over a month since I played a campaign game!  Getting back into the swing of things, it might seem, once again,  that my having Humans as Rep 3 did them in.  That's not the case this time, believe it or not.  The Human die rolls, once the Zombies showed up, were so bad that the only way any of them would have survived was if they were a STAR.  I contemplated having Officer Bakkus (semi reoccurring character, at this point) take part in this game, but decided against it.  Good thing, too, or I would have had to start grooming another character to become a STAR, down the road.  All in all, it was a fun, quick game.