Apocalyptica

A cinematic episodic campaign with zombies. And guns.

Setup

It's fifty years in the future in the USA.

In the late 2030s, technicians in the Defense Intelligence Agency finally cracked one of the mysteries of materials found at the 1947 Roswell crash site. The material, found in hypodermic injection devices, was used by the aliens to shut down their metabolisms on centuries-long journeys. The agency used this discovery to develop a genetic-manipulation serum with the goal of creating the perfect soldier: completely obedient, needing no food or sleep, nearly indestructible, and possessing powerful combat capabilities.

The first human experiments were the beginning of the end. Four Yemeni would-be suicide bombers were detained in 'black ops' facility in Egypt for two years, before being flown to an underground lab at CIA headquarters in Virginia, sedated, and then injected with the serum. What happened next, nobody knows, but the end result was that one week later, the entire CIA complex was evacuated and a state of emergency declared. Apparently employees were killing and eating one another's flesh by the thousand.

Six thousand Marines surrounded the facility and ended up shooting everyone who came out. After multiple warnings over a loud speaker and the failure of various non-lethal tactics, the Marines killed each and every one of the 12,704 employees who wandered out, slavering and murmuring according to exclusive FOX Satellite video.

Any sense of relief was short-lived, because within hours of the massacre, the Marines started killing and eating each other's slain bodies. The affliction was an airborne contagion.

A nationwide curfew was declared, all flights grounded, and the United Nations issued a Security Directive prohibiting any nation from allowing an American entry until the epidemic was under control.

Fast forward ten years:

• A now-defunct American government has detonated nuclear weapons in several major cities along the eastern seaboard in order to exterminate the tens of millions of wandering "zombies" (as what remained of the public began calling them).
• The UN Security Directive stands. Americans, and now Canadians, are not welcome in any other country.
• A serum-based "vaccine" has been introduced into the water supply nationwide, virtually eliminating the airborne contagion, but it still may be transmitted through wounds that break the skin.
• Zombies are by far the primary bipedal inhabitants of the North American continent.
• Aggressive abatement in Europe and Asia has the problem partially contained. In South America and Africa, zombies are spreading fast.
• Zombies don't sleep and need no water or food, but crave fresh human flesh, which they can somehow sense from up to 100 yards away.
• Zombies die a 'natural' death after their flesh and internal organs rot completely from their bones, which takes up to a decade. They are most dangerous and hungry and vigorous for their first year after being converted.
• Zombies may be killed through complete bodily annihilation, decapitation, or doing substantial brain damage.
• Zombies don't seem to have any recollection or recognition of their previous lives, and are driven by purely animal impulses. They have no reason and no mercy.
• The remaining unafflicted humans in America seem to have formed tribes of 5-500 people in barricaded fortresses (sometimes in old mini-malls or elementary schools), and make perilous excursions out to find food, water, and fuel, hunted by slavering zombies.
• Traditional media are dead, and most internet connections and cell networks, unmaintained for years, are inoperable, infected by malware. Some old-timers communicate via short-wave radio.
• Gasoline is essentially gone. Cars and trucks and trains and planes rust where ever they ran dry. There are no imports. The solar-vehicle industry was only just getting started as a niche market when society crumbled.

Characters

• Jingles, played by Niki
• Billy Ray Kingdusky, played by Brant
• Charlene Johnson, played by Mel