DayZ Novelization Excerpt

[MattTheMont 46]

The cool night time breeze swept across the fields and trees, it was a fairly bright evening and the moon was full providing an unusual amount of vision for this time of night. The two men now huddled on opposite sides of the fire, tucked away into the dense forest. They had set up camp for the evening along a ridge that overlooked the hills to the east, their fire just out of view. The soldier looked at Tim, in his worn out jeans, blue plaid shirt and brown worn cap. He is a man of strong build, broad shoulders and a solid weight, even though he clearly had not been eating enough recently. Their gear was leaned up against a tree facing the fire, packed with canned food and soda, ammo for Tim's hunting rifle and other survival gear Tim had found along his on-going migration.

Tim looked at the fire, eyes glossy "Where were we supposed to go, back to the evacuation points? Those were cleared out weeks ago, the army left behind eveything at their sites. Everything from guns, packs, ammo and supplies, hell even some vehicles got left behind, ones they couldn't air-lift out of there. No there was nothing to do post-evacuation except survive, there was nowhere to go, nobody to help us anymore; you were completely on your own, abandoned. The government wanted to contain it, that was priority number one, keep the fucking virus within Chernarus and everthing else fell behind that. No more emergency air drops for food and water (at that time we didn't know the virus wasn't in the water supply) no more patrols in the streets except along the borders, and there was certaintly no more broadcasts from the mountain, one day we woke up and everything was quiet, no more radio chatter, no more emergency broadcast on the television, just total isolation; we had been cut off.

You know back when it started nobody knew what it was, you didnt hear about people being attacked until much later and by then, if you weren't on a helicopter or a jet out of there, you were fucked man. No chance. We all heard rumors of course, there wasn't much to go off though, the army was always testing some new jet, or firing some new high-tec gun they just poured three billion dollars into -hell there are three fuckin' military airfields within 250km of each other."

[He strokes the fire with a stick and piles on another log to the contained fire]

"Well i'm sure you remember those first few weeks when people tried juming the quarantined zones, must have been 40 or 50 people shot dead, right there on the spot, poor bastards. They were just trying to get the fuck out of there, most of them probably weren't even infected, but who knows?"

Marcus: [Where were you from, originally i mean.]

"Gorka, i was lucky i got reports of the infections along the southern coast before it hit the smaller towns to the north, there really wasn't much of a forward notice though, i think i heard about it spreading a day before it hit Polana, not far from where i was, you heard of the Polana outbreak right?"

[Marcus nods, scanning the area slowly with his cold eyes.]

"Jesus man, can you imagine? They say it was the evacuee's fleeing Electro, hundreds of 'em. They flooded the town looking for aid at around midnight, unfortunately they didn't realize that behind them was the masses of infected they were running from. How could they know? The army's blockade back in the city had failed, the infected had overrun the men in uniform and were now pouring out into the countryside, right after their food. Around 2 am the first packs arrived from the south, by sunrise nobody was left. Four-thousand civillians infected or eaten that night, fucking christ man."

Marcus: "Did you... did you have any family here before?]"

"No-" Tim pauses, as if he has heard something "My neighbor-"

[The soldier motions for Tim to be quiet holding up his hand, and getting lower to the ground. The surrounding bushes and foliage are sufficient enough to hide the dim light from the fire to passersby, but Tim quickly pours dirt all over it, vanquishing the flame instantaneously. Over the hillside the two men lay low looking through the bushes, rifles drawn.]

Tim using his scope on the old hunting rifle: "Group of three, or four maybe. 300 metres ahead, just below the tree-line. They're heading for the stream i think, they might have a sniper, they seem organized."

[The men now talked in a low whisper, barely audible even to eachother watching as the group of three men moved quickly across the clearing. They were fanned out, at least five yards apart from eachother but clearly in formation. The man in the front thrust his hand into the air balled up into a fist. The other two men stopped at once, crouched aiming their weapons.]

"Uh-oh" said Tim "they spotted something."

[The man in the front held two fingers from his right hand in the hair, resembling a peace sign, then with his pointer finger he pointed to the left, immediately after he pointed to the right. The two men behind him moved quickly forward on either side of him, into the tall grass encroaching before the stream ahead]

"This isn't good man" said Tim as he looked through his makeshift scope taped to his hunting rifle "there's a man down there, a fourth."

"With them? With that group?" asked marcus.

"No, he has his hands up in the air, i can make out some of his words -i think he's begging. Those bastards!"

[The elderly man with his hands up began weeping, looking into his killer's eyes, Tim could make out a few words 'please-this-just-water-kids- a shot rang out. It echoed through the hills past Tim and Marcus, as the elderly man slumped forward first to his knees then face first into the muddy ground beneath him, the blood from the bullethole in his forehead streaming into the water and dirt.]

"Damn it" said Tim as he lowered his rifle and crawled back behind the foliage to the now extinguished fire pit "just once i would like to see that play out differently."

Marcus looked terrified, staring at Tim as if he had just witnessed an alien abduction. "Wait a goddamn second here, that- that right there, you've seen that before? Like, people just-"

"Look soldier boy, this isn't fucking training camp anymore! You thought you were gonna parachute down here and only have to deal with the infected you left behind? Newsflash kid, you left about ten thousand healthy people here when everything went dark, of that let's assume that 90 -no no, 95 percent of those people are now dead or infected. That still leaves roughly five hundred souls, scared shitless, starving and looking to do nothing but stay alive, what you just saw sums up pretty much the daily routine here; kill or be killed."

Marcus looked down at his shoulder patch with their country's emblem sewn on, he couldn't help but feel like this wasn't home anymore. "So i guess they were right about renaming this place huh? Sector-Z."

"Welcome to Chernarus."

END SCENE.

Edited August 24, 2012 by MattTheMont

[MIIKEUPSB 15]

bumping 4 awesomeness.

[puppetworx 474]

Centred text: did not read.

[josan22 0]

Centred text: did not read.

Could you sound more pathetic?

[puppetworx 474]

Could you sound more pathetic?

It's called feedback. Deal with it.

[deathstrike616 32]

Could you sound more pathetic?

Could you sound more insolent? Even trollbiscuits treat people with courtesy.

Edited August 24, 2012 by Deathstrike616