The Restless Dead Want YOU To Fight Necromancy

You reload, and go hunting. With your next three zombie kills, you manage to shoot through the zombie out the window and, thankfully, avoid hitting any passersby. You hit a glass knickknack and get broken glass all over the floor, which is not great for your imaginary human companions. Shooting the third goes high – this would be so much easier if they stopped moving – but at least taking its head off means it just scrabbles at you, bleeding, and can't bite.

Maybe there's something to be said for this headshot thing, rather than aiming for a tiny target in the neck. It's easy to hit with magic, but there's something about your stance, the gun's recoil, and moving targets that is throwing you off. Your night vision is usually fine for most purposes, but maybe you should have brought a light? There's no heat or warmth or minds to sense, which is disconcerting.

Also, maybe you shouldn't have tried to shoot them from across the room. The new distance prevented melee but made your accuracy even worse. You didn't think that was possible.

You are, you decide, done playing. The next room, at a swift glance, has four zombies. It also has the stairs, you seem to have circled back around somehow. Your goal at the moment is two-fold. Increase your own accuracy with the gun, and increase the accuracy of the advice you can offer the humans, so that you can prevent a disaster like today's shopping trip from happening again. You're not close to the Hendersons, yet, but there's something egregious about getting their mother eaten by zombies before you have a chance to have a real conversation with half of them.

Also, it would be quite nice if Bruce and Claudia didn't die in the next few days.

You slide into the room, taking care to avoid startling the zombies, three college boys and a girl, scattered around the lounge room. You set up on the stairs, where you can avoid them interrupting while having a nice clean shot on each of them. You aim one-handed, and pause. You aim with a careful two-handed grip at the head of the closest zombie.

One down.

Two down.

Three not down, three still has half its head. Three down on the second shot.

Four down.

As ever, you are reminded that patience and preparation goes a long way – and that trying to do something too complicated before your skills are there is a recipe for disaster. One-handed shooting of a quarter-sized target while barely aiming would be very nice, but you need to practice first. You keep being worried that if you hold the gun any more strongly it'll break.

You can hear one zombie upstairs, and that's all. Time to clean up. You check each zombie for lingering traces of animation – a few of the headshots are still technically animate, if deaf, dumb, and blind. You take care of them, and check the upstairs rooms. You find two lone zombies and each is shot handily from a prepared spot at a medium distance. Nine zombies, ten bullets. That's much better.

"That almost took my head off," a male voice yelps, and your senses unfold into a new room that had been hidden from you. Oops. A young man and two young women, none of them with the pain and fear of a bite in their minds.

You knock on the solid wooden door, right next to the bullet hole. Apparently that was why the last zombie was lurking in this corridor.

"Come in?"

You holster your gun, check yourself for blood – clean, good – open the door and step inside. The young man looks like a scholar, while the two girls look like ladies of the night. That is, however, the modern fashion, so you move on. There is a candle set in the middle of the floor, where the young man was kneeling, surrounded by distinctive runes. Sorcery.

A spell of concealment shouldn't work that well on you… oh. Of course. A spell of concealment from the undead.

This is going to become annoying quickly, you are certain.

"Thanks for the rescue, man," says the young man, standing up.

"Not a man. A vampire."

"A vampire?" yells the white girl with curled dyed-red hair.

"No, it's cool," hastens the young man, "Vampires can be okay, nothing like zombies. There are a couple on campus, they're nice."

Other vampires in your town? That's something for later.

"I'm Morgan, I'm sorry to startle you. Are you three alright?"

"Not even a little," says the black girl wearing what amounts to two tiny scraps of fabric. That can't be very supportive. "I'm ready to call the police and go home."

She heads for the door to the hallway.

[]Stop them. Take them down out the window. There's far too much death down there.
[]Escort them down through the house.
[]Write-in

And then what?

[]Take them home with you. You may be out of beds, but you're not out of couches.
[]Escort them back to their own homes. A sacrifice of time, but that's where at least one of them wants to go.
[]Call the police and let them sort it out. Assuming the phones are working.
[]Leave the young people here to sort themselves out.
[]Write-in