Editing The Tale of Reginald "Ragin' Reggie" Dempsey (section)

=== Part 2 ===

The zombies were attempting to close in on us, so Mike, Jim, and Luke hurried off. Reggie followed after taking a moment to pull the ramp off its hinges so the zombies couldn't make their way up it and into the stronghold.

That was a rough night. Everyone was moderately wounded, but Reggie was seriously hurt. His life point max was almost twice as high as anyone in the party, but at the moment he had the fewest.

So of course wretched fate would pick that time to throw a crap-ton of brutes at us on our way back to the fire station. We hadn't witnessed any smarts corralling the brutes like on the south side of the river, so we just assumed this was a chance thing or perhaps the smell of blood drew them.

We did get back to the station - by that time we were all in the low teens on our life points - and barricaded the hell out of the place. After that we just took a week to rest, recover, and decide what the hell to do next. It had been about two weeks since we'd first found those people stuck in the river, and protecting them had really driven our actions so we didn't exactly know what to do with ourselves now.

Reggie took the deaths of the four Manilow had shot really hard, and this was the first time his alcoholism reared its ugly head. We didn't have any booze on us, and we were all too tired and hurt to go looting to get him some. However, thanks to his sky-high Willpower and the fact the first few tests were made as Simple (double Willpower) tests, Reggie actually managed to resist his urges quite well and by the time we were ready to move on his alcoholism had dropped to a -3 penalty. Mike's high First Aid skill and the fact we'd stocked a lot of food in the station after the bridge fight meant we all recovered way faster than normal, though Reggie still wasn't quite at max life yet.

We set out on a Saturday (maybe) morning with two goals. First, we would spy on the people remaining in Manilow's stronghold to make sure some semblence of order had returned to the place. Mike was sure people would freak out if they saw us again so soon after we murdered a couple dozen of their people and smeared their leader all over the wall, so the idea of trying to rejoin them was out of the question. We felt bad about killing so many of their innocent able-bodied fighters in what was, really, in hind-sight, a pretty petty and rash act of revenge. We just wanted to know we hadn't condemned five hundred people to death.

Luckily, through our binoculers everything looked to be running smoothly. We saw they'd dug graves and buried their dead, they were still sending out looting parties (we noticed they were pretty heavily armed), and there weren't any signs of further violence since we'd left. To us, that was good enough. We started off South and never saw Manilow's stronghold, or the remaining four people we'd saved, ever again.

The second goal, and to Mike the most important thing we could possibly do for the forseeable future, was to find a place we could fortify and turn into a similar stronghold. Everyone was sick and tired of going to bed in a seemingly safe place and waking up in the middle of a fucking swarm. We made up a list of ideal traits for our stronghold and decided on three major things: someplace that could not be broken into by zombies, someplace comprised of many small rooms and narrow corridors so we could hold off a maximum number of zombies with minimal effort if they DID break in, and someplace near water so we could make a last-ditch escape and swim the fuck away if the worst case scenario happened.

The first leg of our quest would be to cross the river again and work our way back to the school to pick up all the supplies we'd stockpiled there. Things went well enough at first. Following our city map, we made our way to the nearest bridge. We didn't encounter any zombies on the way, and assumed that all of them in the area were being drawn to Manilow's stronghold.

Until we reached the bridge, that is.

The bridge, which luckily hadn't collapsed during the bombing, was about a hundred feet across and covered in broken and abandoned cars. And about a hundred zombies. And five humans.

The humans were holding ground on top of a mack truck's trailer and firing down into the horde. They weren't in any immediate danger, but we knew if any brutes showed up they'd be fucked so we decided to help out. We shouted out to get their attention and told them we'd start killing the ones on one side and they could keep working their way through the ones on the other side.

Mike, Jim, and Luke took up position on tops of cars and started sniping zombies while Reggie charged right in punching. It didn't take long, and Reggie alone ended up killing more zombies than all five of the survivors on the truck.

After the last zombie fell the survivors on the truck climbed down and Reggie moved in to shake hands and say hello.

That was when they all pointed their guns at Reggie and shouted for Mike, Jim, and Luke to throw down their weapons.

Following a quick round of "What the fuck, bro?" and much threatening, it came out that the guys who had been stuck on the truck were intent to make it out of the city together, didn't want anyone else tagging along, and needed all the guns and ammo they could get. They'd come too far and fought too hard, and they were willing to kill us to get what they wanted. To emphasize this, all but one of them aimed their guns at Mike, Jim, and Luke.

They had exactly three rounds of combat to realize what a bad idea it was not to keep all their weapons trained on a pissed-off, alcohol-deprived Reggie standing five feet away.

That was our first encounter with the ZM's new Tough Survivors™. The one still aiming at Reggie died from the power of the axe-hand. Surprised, the others fired their weapons at Jim, Mike, and Luke, who easily dodged out of the way behind cars. So far, so good, regular combat just like we all knew and loved.

Then the second one Reggie punched wasn't automatically reduced to a chunky blood-puddle on the ground. We assumed it was a random fluke, and Reggie finished him off with a neck-snapping kick. Then another guy PARRIED one of Reggie's attacks. Our jaws dropped. Granted, Reggie was suffering a -1 from alcohol withdrawel and an extra -4 for multiple attacks in one turn, but this was utterly unprecidented. When the three of them attacked Reggie with knives and the butts of their guns and landed three or four hits we realized our ZM wasn't fucking around.

Mike, Luke, and Jim got back into sniping positions and took out two of the survivors. On his next turn Reggie, still not fully recovered from Manilow's attack and sporting fresh wounds, decided the fight needed to end immediately. So he threw the remaining survivor across the bridge and into the river. Just four humans, using melee attacks, had dropped Reggie back down to roughly half his maximum life points.

Suddenly the city seemed a lot more dangerous.

We stripped the survivors of their ammo and beat a hasty retreat south-west, back towards the school. Along the way we looted a little mall (empty of zombies, surprisingly enough) for some flashlight batteries, some medical supplies to patch up Reggie, and a new leather jacket and a bottle of booze. While I would've liked to have Reggie keep fighting his alcoholism, I knew (and was pretty sure Reggie would feel) that having a clear mind and functioning body was more important right then than his long term well-being.

The sun was setting as we started to recognize a few buildings, and we knew the school wasn't far. That was when we slowed down and really started to worry. Three weeks ago there had been ten thousand zombies wandering this area, but now it seemed almost deserted. Jim, who had the highest Perception and the Situational Awareness Quality, kept a constant eye on the windows and rooftops, but he didn't see a single watch-smart.

The whole situation rankled our nerves, but when we reached the school and still hadn't seen a zombie we decided to take it as a blessing. We gathered all the supplies we'd stockpiled into one place, pushed a crap-ton of lockers in front of a couple doors for barricades, and searched every nook and cranny of every room we hadn't closed off with barricades down to the air vents, and with that went to sleep.

The next day, things were still clear outside. We decided that making a push to find a stronghold of our very own would require thorough planning, and that we all needed to be at full strength, so we held tight a few more days. Mike kept working to patch up and heal Reggie's wounds, Jim rigged up some simple traps to make noise and alert us if any zombies approached the school, Luke raided the janitor's closets to put together some acid bombs and bathtub explosives, and Reggie just kind of stewed.

Reggie was still upset over and blamed himself for the Manilow incident.

''And now I must tell you a bit about Reggie's backstory, else nothing that follows will seem wondrous''

Reggie hadn't had a horrible childhood growing up in the slums, like you might expect. His mother and father were both decent people, hard-working and kind to their children. Neither Reggie nor anyone in his family got involved with gangs (unlike Mike) or drugs (unlike Jim). Reggie hadn't suffered any abuse or tragic loss as a child. You would never say that Reggie came from a "broken" home.

What he did come from, however, was a poor home. A VERY poor home. Several poor homes, in fact, as his family had to keep moving from place to place when they couldn't pay the rent. The kind of poor home where a good boy might skip his meals so there's enough for his little sister to not go hungry. The kind of poor home where a boy never really knows if he's going to be out on the streets in a week, and grows up developing a sense of helplessness and hopelessness and self-loathing anger at himself for feeling the first two.

Reggie dropped out of school when he was twelve to start working jobs. He started fighting in back-alley boxing matches when he was fourteen, and wonder of wonders was good enough at it that he earned his family some steady money and they didn't have to be afraid of being kicked out on the streets any more.

Punching things was how Reggie made the fear go away.

Finally we were ready to set out. We'd asked our ZM for a short-list of locations to check out that fit our criteria, and he gave us three: a river-side hotel, a police station, and a block of old warehouses. All of them lay west of us, up-river.

Gathering up all our supplies, the gunmen had enough ammo to start a small war, and with a good leather jacket and his wounds all healed Reggie was ready to punch some dudes.

We set out shorty after dawn and came to an abrupt halt when we saw a zombie standing on the sidewalk across the street from us. Just staring. Our ZM had us roll Perception and Jim and Mike noticed right away that the things head was oddly bloated, the skin over its skull split and the skull itself cracked to reveal its pulsing, purpling brains. We decided to kill it, and rushed at it.

Then it started hooting at us like a goddamned baboon. Reggie reached it first and shut it up with one good punched, and the ZM made a point of mentioning it hadn't even tried to attack Reggie in turn.

Then we started to hear the hooting and howling coming from all around us and, to our horror, saw the undead start to pour out of the buildings all around us. Many were normal, but throughout their ranks we saw more of the ones with bloated heads.

And that's how we met our first super-smart zombies, though we really didn't realize anything was different about them until one threw a brick at Jim. They were similar to the smarts, but +1. They had a rudimentary knowledge of tools, and from the way they quickly penned us in were obviously quite good at commanding the regular smarts.

And as a dozen screaming, clawing terrors dropped from the rooftops to surround Jim, Mike, and Luke as Reggie was busy clearing a path, we realized they had actual control over the brutes as well.

Well, Reggie had taken a good swig of booze before setting out, so his head was clear and he was ready to punch ALL the dudes. The brutes fell to a few quick rounds of being punched and shotgun'd, and we made a break north towards the river.

They obviously weren't entirely prepared for us, because after about five blocks we'd left them all in the dust and couldn't see any more zombies anywhere.

Mike had an idea, though, and asked Jim to listen at the doors of one of the buildings. When he did, he heard a crap-ton of very faint moans coming from within. Listening around the block, we quickly realized that every building was full of zombies.

The zombies were lying in wait to ambush anyone trying to take refuge.

We booked it for the river, then took a hard left and followed it towards the hotel on our map. We all felt chills when we passed the mounds of dead zombies we'd created rescuing the people from the river. It was just weird being back there again after so much had happened. Before finding them the zombie apocalypse had been a merry jaunt for the party, then shit had to go and get real on us.

We got to the hotel around ten. Along the way we'd seen a few more of the super-smarts, but oddly they hadn't made any sound to alert their fellows. Mike figured they must be using the ones outdoors as bait, tricking people into attacking the lone zombie so the rest could surround them. Which only made us groan when we saw a single, bloated zombie standing out front of the hotel.

The hotel was a ten-storey luxury affair straddling the river. It really was the most ideal place for us; in the event of a full-scale zombie attack all it would take to escape is jump out a low window and we'd be half a mile downriver before the zombies knew what the fuck happened.

We had a quick huddle to figure out if it was worth checking the place out, and in the end we decided we'd try approaching the lone zombie and getting it to call out its fellows. Then we could judge their numbers and act accordingly.

That's when the zombie's freaking head exploded.

We stood there a bit dumbfounded for a moment then heard a voice calling out to us and we looked up.

The hotel was already occupied. Nearly a thousand people, in fact, were living in the place and they'd already made it into a sweet set-up. They had set up rain-catchers along every window, torn out the first-floor staircases (they used rope ladders to get up and down), and even had a decent garden set up on the roof. Like at Manilow's stronghold, they sent out regular looting parties and by this point had rooms packed full of weapons and canned food and medical supplies.

They didn't really have a "leader," as such, but we felt uneasy walking into their company without knowing their rules. So we cleared out a few zombies stumbling around the ground floor for them, told them our intentions to move further upriver, they bade us farewell, and we continued on our way.

Our next stop was the 6th Street Police Station. The station sat two blocks away from the river, which was an inconvenience if we needed to make a quick escape, but had the advantage of being built in what had been a particularly bad part of town and was therefore basically a small fortress.

Again we saw super-smarts standing around staring at us blankly, but this time there was no sign of human life so we decided to go with our other plan and get the super-smarts to draw out the hordes. We approached it, and it started hooting and hollering and the undead began pouring out of the station and buildings, surrounding us.

So there we were, up to our taints in about five hundred zombies. Reggie charged the nearest dense mob and punched off heads left and right. As the bodies started piling up, we employed a tried-and-true strategy of stacking corpses to give Jim, Luke, and Mike a safe firing position, while Reggie continued dashing around punching zombies to make space and keep their attention away from the others.

The combat lasted an entire session, but when more than half the zombies had fallen the super-smarts started hooting again. The zombies started leaving. Not all at once, though; about thirty of them kept shambling towards us while the rest fled back to the buildings. They were making a goddamned tactical retreat.

We finished off the sacrificial zombies, then piled up as many as we could in front of the police station doors so they made a barrier against us. Then we tried to go into the station.

The zombies had locked the goddamned doors behind them as they fled inside.

At this point we were all wearing WTF-faces, but Mike picked the lock and we worked our way through the station with grim efficiency. There were only about twenty zombies in the station so it didn't take long, and after we tossed their corpses outside we took a little time and explored the station.

Thankfully, it didn't seem like many looters had been through this place so we were pretty much swimming in guns and ammo. We also found some sweet, sweet riot gear and augmented our defenses with Class II armor. Now hostile survivors wouldn't be as deadly, though any bullets that didn't target our torsos would be just as deadly as ever.

We tidied up the place, stock-piled all our weapons and supplies in a main room, then prepared to go to bed. Every window on the building was barred and the doors were heavy-duty stuff and locked, so we felt safe sleeping.

Around midnight, we were woken up by what sounded like a hundred super-smarts hooting outside. We put on our armor and took up our weapons and took a look outside. The power had been out for months, but luckily it was clear outside so we could see what was going on.

Lined up across the street from us were dozens and dozens of zombies with bloated heads. They just stood there hooting at us.

Then, five feet away from where we were standing, the wall of the police station caved in and an eight-feet-tall hulking brute charged us.

The ZM made us all take a fear test, which only Reggie and Jim passed, and Mike and Luke fled to the next room. Reggie did the first thing that came to mind and charged the giant zombie. His axe-fist hit the zombie square in the chest and did enough damage to kill two men.

The zombie just roared and punched Reggie hard enough to send him flying through an inner wall.

And thus we met our first Super Brute. An eight feet tall, three hundred fifty pounds, a Strength 7, super-fast, damage resistant, regenerating brawler who could reliably hit Reggie even when the guy was parrying. Our ZM had created a Reggie-zombie.

All that, and it had NO WEAK SPOT. As Jim unloaded both barrels of a shotgun into the freak's head and blew it clean off, it just kept coming without any visible loss of function. Mike and Luke got their shit together and rushed back in to help Jim as Reggie regained his feet, brushed himself off, and moved in to wreck shit. After a few more rounds of combat the thing had rampaged through the station, knocked down half the walls, and the building was beginning to collapse on us, and we realized this thing couldn't be killed through regular means. So Reggie punched off both its arms, Jim and Luke shot off its legs, and we quickly gathered up as many supplies as we could and beat a hasty retreat out of the ruined building. By that time more zombies and regular brutes had shown up, so we had another tense midnight flight across the city.

Working our way block-by-block, stopping every now and then to kill brutes, we worked our way steadily west. More zombies kept pouring out of buildings as we went, and before long we had a thousands-strong horde chained behind and around us as the super-smarts called ahead so their fellows could pen us in.

It was probably around four in the morning when we saw the light of torch fire filtering through the streets. We beat our way through yet another line of zombies and turned a corner and found ourselves on a street blocked off on one end with cargo crates. A small mob of zombies stood pushing at the crates, but couldn't budge them. Atop the crates were a few men with guns and torches.

We ran at them, shouting, and they got to see the delightful sight of four dudes leading a freaking swarm towards them. They weren't exactly happy about it, but they took a few pot-shots at the zombies pushing at their barricades then threw a rope ladder down as we beat our way through.

We climbed up to a general greeting of "ARE YOU GUYS FUCKING RETARDED?!" but then we all saw that, wonder of wonders, the giant horde that had been chasing us was dispersing. They apparently realized they couldn't get at us any more.

So one of the sentries took us inside, and that's when we saw that we'd reached our third destination; the warehouse district.

Unlike Manilow's stronghold, the warehouse district had been secured by sweat and brawn rather than chance. When shit went down, the workers did what they could to block off all the streets with cargo crates and heavy machinery, then converted many of the warehouses to shelters for people to live in. Like the hotel survivors, they'd rigged up plenty of systems to gather water and farm.

We were a little shocked by how many there were. According to Big John, a union guy who helped run the place, they had more than ten thousand survivors jammed into the district, of course that was including a couple hundred out on raiding parties and other things. They didn't have a lot in the way of weapons and medical supplies, so we gave them a few spare guns we'd grabbed in our dash from the police station.

We were still pretty wary, but John and the other guys who ran things seemed like good ol' salt of the earth types, so we felt safe enough to stick around for a few days and help out.

It was in our third day that the zombies launched a major offensive from the north. A large bridge crossed the river right in the middle of the district, and it was a difficult area for them to block off so zombie attacks from that direction were almost constant. They couldn't raise the bridge because the electricity was off, and they didn't want to destroy it because a lot of raiding parties used it to get in and out whenever the zombies fled.

Apparently many attempts had been made to reach the dam upriver and get the power running again, but none who went returned.

By that point the group was feeling antsy. We were still more accustomed to being on our own rather than surrounded by people, and Reggie was out of booze again, so we volunteered to go check out the dam and see what was up. We found a liquor store along the way and Reggie took a bottle, figuring that'd be enough to last the journey there and back without weighing him down.

It took us two days to reach the outskirts of town (encountering a few tough survivor groups along the way that we had to kill), and then another day in the "country" (Jim laughed at that) to reach the dam.

From a distance Mike could tell that the dam was closed off; no water was getting through. Plenty was going OVER it, however, and we could see that the thing seemed to be starting to crack. Suddenly our mission seemed a good deal more urgent. If the dam broke, it could flood out everything along the river through the city.

We got into the dam through a side door. There was a good foot of standing water throughout the interior of the dam, and Mike and Jim took point so they could figure a safe way for us to get through. The inside of the dam was completely dark, but thankfully we still had plenty of batteries for our flashlights.

We managed to make it down to a lower level (waist-deep water, here) and eventually found the emergency valves for the place (I'm pretty sure our ZM was just making shit up, I doubt he had any real knowledge of how a hydroelectric dam works, but none of us really knew either).

Mike deduced that we could use the valves to open up the flow of water and maybe get the turbines spinning again. Reggie put his 7 strength to use and turned all those fuckers. Slowly, they opened up and water started pouring through the dam again rather than over it. The dam groaned, but held, and we all breathed a sigh of relief. The lights were still off, so we worked our way back up through the dam.

When we reached the top, we found the control room for the place (again, we were running on survival horror videogame logic for much of this). What we found inside was a blood-bath. It looked like twenty men had been killed, ground up into mush, then smeared around on the walls.

Mike and Luke had brief panic attacks, but eventually calmed down enough that they could take a look at the controls and figure out what needed to be done. It was all incomprehensible to Reggie, but eventually they Did Stuff and the lights came on.

And a blood-curdling roar sounded from within the dam.

Our ZM told us quite plainly that we recognized it as the roar of a Super Brute like what we'd encountered at the police station. After Jim made a perception check, we realized there was more than one.

We fucking ran for it.

We worked our way downstairs and towards the way we'd come in. All the while those terrible howls shook the walls, but we just kept running. When we reached the final corridor leading out of the place, we saw the fucker. FuckerS. Two of them, standing between us and the door, eight feet tall and rippling with muscle, howling and beating their fists and heads against the wall in unfocused rage.

Mike, Luke, and even Jim immediately fell victim to fear tests and started shaking like made. Reggie knew they wouldn't be much help in a fight, so he did the only thing he could.

Reggie pushed them into a side-room, shut the door, shouted at the Super Brutes to get their attention, then turned and ran back into the dam.

One frantic, terrified dash later, Reggie managed to get a closed door between himself and the Super Brutes. That gave him about a ten second lead before they broke through, but by that time Reggie was rushing up a staircase. Hoping that the halls doubled back, he turned as he came out upstairs and narrowly dodged a punch from a third Super Brute.

Even someone as reckless and fearless as Reggie knew this situation was FUBAR, so he just kept running without even trying to fight. Asking the ZM what the fuck my surroundings were, I found out there was a thick steel door open up ahead.

I leaped through, slamming the door shut behind me and securing it with the heavy steel latch on it.

That's when I looked around and saw, to my absolute dismay, that I'd just locked myself in a small closet with nothing but some electrical components. Split from the party, alone, with nothing but half a bottle of whiskey and a flashlight, Reginald Dempsey sat down and put his head in his hands as the sound of three Super Brutes banging on a thick steel door filled his world.

For the next five days, Reggie sat in darkness drinking stagnant water pooled in the closet. His small supply of food ran out on the third day. His booze ran out half-way through the second day.

Outside, the Super Brutes didn't let up, they just banged on the door and roared, day and night, unable to break through but too fucking angry not to keep trying. Eventually Reggie managed to fall asleep sitting in two feet of water, the cacophony splitting into his dreams and nightmares.

By the beginning of the fourth day Reggie was half mad with hunger, sickness, alcohol-deprivation, and from the banging. He hoped and hoped that soon the others would arrive and somehow save him. What Reggie didn't know was that Mike, Jim, and Luke had fled after recovering from their fear, and were combing the countryside. They thought Reggie had gotten out somehow.

No one knew where Reggie was.

By the fifth day Reggie was a wreck. And then he failed yet another Willpower test to resist the effects of his alcoholism, and like a hay-maker to the face it hit him that he was going to die. Either from starving in the closet or by the Super Brutes breaking through, Reggie was going to die.

For the first time, Reggie took a fear test. And he failed.

Reggie's body started shaking, he screamed impotently at the Super Brutes outside, he probably pissed himself, and finally he passed out, utterly exhausted and mentally broken from his ordeal.

And then he began to dream. He was a little boy again, crying in bed and clutching at his aching stomach. Then a young teenager lying crying in the middle of the street, knocked down and beat in his first boxing match. Then a young man crying at his parents' funeral. Then himself, now, locked in this dank closet and crying.

Helpless. Hopeless.

And as his nightmare took hold of him, Reggie saw someone else there with him. The person looked a lot like him, but with cruel intelligence in his eyes where Reggie's were always filled with good-natured dopiness. And Reggie knew it was him, his fear, the part of him that was always afraid deep down. The reason he fought, the reason he drank, the reason he always went out of his way to help people. To forget for just a while those old feelings of helplessness.

And then it started to taunt him, laughing at his weakness, and I started to get angry. So I looked the ZM square in the eyes and said, "I want to roll Willpower."

"Well, you're gonna be at a -3."

"I don't care. I want to roll willpower."

I wish I could tell you that I rolled a straight 10, and earned Reggie an epic success. But perfect luck was something lesser men needed to get by.

Ragin' Reggie Dempsey only needed a 6.

"You succeed at your Willpower test, and regain some sense of yourself within your dream."

"I punch him."

"Who?"

"The other me, whatever it is."

"It's basically a manifestation of Reggie's fear and alcoholism."

"Fine then. I punch alcoholism."

After a round of laughter from everyone else I look the ZM straight in the eyes and say, "I am dead serious."

"Dude, it's a psychological manifestation, you can't punch it, that's stupid."

I held up my character sheet for everyone to see and said, "Intelligence 1, Willpower 6. I'm dumb enough and confident enough to believe I can do it. I punch alcoholism."

After looking at me critically for a second, the ZM says he allows it and that Reggie's Alcoholism is now a stat'd character, a mirror of Reggie.

And then Reggie, in the grip of a fevered nightmare, fought all the fear and hopelessness in his mind and soul. And through sheer, monumental luck (and perhaps even a touch of ZM fiat), Reggie won.

Reggie awoke, head truly clear for the first time in years. Reggie always punched things to make his fear go away, and now for the first time it was gone. Reggie stood up, walked to the door, and roared right back at the Super Brutes as he twisted the door latch and kicked the door open.

Half a ton of zombie berserker awaited Reggie on the other side.

But only one could fit through the door at a time.

Reggie's first axe-fist punch tore the beast's head from its neck. Reggie then grabbed it and threw it back into the hallway. The second Super Brute charged headlong into the room, but Reggie was having none of that shit. Another axe-fist took its head off as well, and then Reggie picked the freak up and slammed it into the ground at his feet just in time to dodge back as the third threw a punch that would've taken the head off a lesser man.

Reggie waited for the third to charge him again, then rolled under the freak's arm and leapt over the one recovering from being bodyslammed. Reggie made it out into the hall just in time to kick the first Super so hard both its goddamned legs snapped off. The headless Super was hardly phased, though, and from the ground pushed itself up off the ground and punched Reggie so hard he went tumbling down the hall. By this time the other two Supers, one headless but the other functioning perfectly, had recovered and burst out into the hall just in time to trample over their fellow.

For a moment Reggie considered fleeing, leading the Supers on a chase through the place where he could wear them down, but at that moment he never wanted to run from anything again.

Reggie charged the Super Brutes, roaring and laughing joyfully as he traded blows with the beasts. Before long two of them were nothing but twitching and grasping limbs and torsos in the water, but the third one was still going strong and wholly uninjured.

The Super Brute got another good punch in on Reggie and sent the man flying back once more. And, of course, the ZM would choose that moment to declare that Reggie's axe-fist fell off his hand. At that point, though, Reggie was too high on life, fighting, and the burning spirit of his Willpower to care as he charged down the hall at the Super Brute once more. What followed can only be described as a beatdown. Reggie stopped even trying to dodge and parry, he just traded blows with the Brute, knocking a limb off each round then pounding the beast in the chest. The Super kept trying to knock Reggie back, but every time Reggie's opposed strength beat it.

When Reggie was done with the Super Brute, the dimly lit hall was painting in blood, both Reggie's and that of the Supers. Their twitching corpses, technically immortal but too badly ripped apart to regenerate, lay scattered about the room in a grim mirror of the bodies of those men killed in the control room, likely by these same Super Brutes.

With that, Reggie found his axe-fist, found his way back out into the sunlight, and made his way back to the city. Along the way he found Jim, Mike, and Luke. The apologized for leaving him behind, but Reggie was fine. The dam was working again, men from the warehouse stronghold could be sent out to repair it and ensure the city continued to receive power, and for once the future didn't look so bleak. Together, the four of them made their way back towards the ruined city.