Exploration

Jack spent the first 30 minutes of his wait for the dryer doing something he had done a lot in life: watching internet videos. He found a few different survival and engineering ones which might be useful. The most interesting centered on remolding HDPE plastics into recycled projects. Bottle caps, milk jugs, basically anything marked with a "2" in the recycling logo.

By melting these in an oven or repurposed panini press, you could make anything you wanted. Apparently, that included... Armor plates?? If you wrapped one alongside a sheet of metal in fiberglass, it could even stop up to a certain caliber of rifle round! Watching a former influencer proving that with a live demonstration, Jack felt his passion for the project rise.

Jack didn't have the materials or time for armor, but he did have an old heated grill press and some wax paper in the kitchen. He'd need some silicon oven mitts to mold, and maybe some wood to press the plastic into form, but those were around somewhere. He was itching to try a plastic project AND the tape holding the lenses on the plastic mask had come loose during his decontamination process. So he had an excuse.

Jack began by scraping all the tape from the mask and lenses and going through a thorough scrub to remove the tape residue. From there he spent a solid 10-15 minutes finding and preparing relevant tools, including some bottle caps to repurpose. He had just retrieved the grill and mitts when he stopped, the revelry of a new project colliding with cold reality. Damn it. He had a better option.

Dejected Jack opened his junk drawer and pulled out super glue. Sticking a lens where he wanted it on the mask, he lined its rim with a layer of the rapidly hardening solution. He alternated between lenses until he was certain they would hold under duress.

Leaving modification to finish congealing, he checked the dryer and found it had completed its cycle. The leather jacket had a few new cracks, the material clearly not meant for machine wash, but he put it on anyway without beating himself up. The gloves held up better, the boots outside were still soggy, and his trusty shotgun still had quite a few splatter marks on it. However, Jack suited up all the same.

Reloading the shotgun and the automatic pistol, he strapped the former around his shoulder. The bandoleer had 8 rounds left in it, so he removed them and put them into the pockets of the jacket. Finally, he taped a new cotton filter into the mouth of the mask and wore the mask on his forehead. He was finally ready for the dangerventure!

...Or was he?

Jack took a moment to check his trope-sense. He'd wander out and... probably get ambushed and lose all his weapons somehow.

There... weren't many solutions to that. Jack went inside and grabbed a pan lid. He'd try to use it as a shield and lose that first. Stupid solutions to stupid problems.

And so, he set out to try and explore his surrounding neighborhood. His first goal would be to get a visual of blocks up and down the curves of his street. Then he'd try and figure out a way to get around faster, but wanted to do some actual exploration before dwelling on vehicle options. If this was a story, he'd have just spent a LOT of time in his house, which was boring and therefore another clear death flag.

Exiting his home, pan lid raised defensively, Jack once again saw the vacant street in front of his home. The sun was shining and birds were chirping. Everything was normal... too normal. His house was in the center of a cluster of homes and the street curved east at a 90 degree angle to the north and south. He could see five houses north of him, three to the left and two to the right, and four houses to the south, two and two on both sides. After standing still for a few moments, and ensuring that he couldn't see motion on either side, Jack set off to the south.

He tried to shamble a little in his gait and stayed to the middle of the road, hoping that he could maintain a balance of awareness and camouflage. These things clearly weren't smart and didn't attack each other, so it couldn't be that hard to trick them. The virus might eventually enhance their senses to detect prey, but they had only turned today and so probably couldn't see in infrared or smell him from miles off... yet. They also were a bit more grey than normal people, but not to the extent were it would give him away at a distance. So, on his adventure he would take on the role of a wandering zed! He wasn't a great actor but had time to practice. He let out a groaning moan, true to the trope, but it felt like that was 'too much' for his intended audience.

Shuffling forward, Jack finally reached the curve of the road. Reaching the edge of the curve, he did not like what he saw. Five or six blocks of pure suburbia, cookie cutter houses as far as the eye could see. A few oak trees similar to the one in Jack's backyard providing sections of shade to the corridor. Perfectly maintained yards of bluegrass and scant shrubbery within the confines dictated by the evil overlord of all such neighborhoods, the Home Owner's Association. Jack was prepared for, if marginally disgusted by, all of that. He was not prepared for the multiple roaming hordes. There had to be at least 40 former people lazily patrolling the sprawl in groups of three to five. Former family and strangers alike had been attracted to each other as they thumped and bumbled around. Jack saw children for the first time. He was not ready to face this, on multiple levels. He made a U-turn and shambled at a slightly-above-walking pace out of their line of sight.

Panting, Jack walked about a house-length into his "safe" little section of street. Then, he tossed his pan-lid into a nearby lawn and readied his shotgun. He stood stock still for about 10 minutes, facing the curve in the road and waiting for any pursuers to round the corner. He had been foolish to check the southern stretch of road first. He knew the suburb in which he lived, and that was the main street to an exit road on the far side. It was the closest to the 'center' of the lumpy oval shape in which the cluster of houses were built, and therefore the area with the highest population density, so he could have expected the zombies to attract each other in that direction. He had been VERY lucky that none had identified him. If a few started rushing at him they could have caused a chain reaction, bringing every zombie on that street and maybe the neighborhood down on him. Thinking this, and seeing that nothing had followed him back, he re-strapped the shotgun, picked up the pan lid, and shuffled to the northern curve of the road.

At his current pace it took him a bit to get there, but Jack didn't trust the seemingly vacant houses or the gaps between them. His recent encounter put him on edge, and he was feeling paranoid, not wanting to give up the advantage his "Zombie Shuffle" might give him. He did however, start to iterate on its movements, fixing the gait to be more comfortable while pushing the boundaries of what he considered to be a reasonable speed. He also tried to work on keeping his muscles loose and dangly, like the other walkers seemed to do. Jack got a bit lost in that, and wondered if he could earn achievements by blending into zombie society. However, he eventually reached the northern bend of the street. He internally tensed up, sharpening his awareness to its maximum capacity as he rounded the bend.

What he encountered was different, at least. Only about three blocks of orthodox houses, trees, and streets. One giant crater replacing the third house to the north, starting where it had existed in his memory and traveling out of sight to the north/northeast. Only a few zombies were on the street proper, most not looking in his direction. There was, however, a little girl, maybe 9 or 10 years old, only a few feet away. She had naturally bronzed skin with frizzy brown hair that tangled below her shoulders. The individual strands defied gravity, lazy curls reaching out in any direction but down. Her face was somewhat heart shaped, with pinchable cheeks and a slightly pronounced point to her chin. She was wearing jeans and a felt coat, torn in multiple places and covered in blood. Lots of blood. She turned toward him, her dark eyes focusing on Jack with almost a hint of surprise.

She stared at him, just as he stared at her, neither of them moving. Both unsure of what the other was or would do.