Act 1 – Funeral for a Friend ( “On the road again” )
Our story opens with the party of adventurers standing around Ben’s lifeless corpse.
MARCUS: “What do we do with him?”
WIL: “Let’s put him in the wrecked dune buggy, cover him with gasoline, and light him on fire.”
THANN: “Sounds good to me!”
Ben’s body is doused in gasoline, and set in the smashed up dune buggy. Wil makes a torch from a gasoline-soaked cloth wrapped around a tire-iron, and lobs it at his former companion. The dune buggy erupts in flame. They stand in the early evening gloom, watching the flames climb into the sky. After several minutes, they turn away from the flames and walk back onto the tarmac of Interstate 10.
Marcus and Wil hop into the remaining dune buggy, a metallic purple number with a black skull painted on the hood. Marcus takes the wheel, and Wil stands in back, manning the tripod-mounted machine gun. With the van in the lead, the tiny caravan of two vehicles resumes the eastward trek. Behind them, the setting sun seems to light the landscape on fire…the illusion of burning accentuated by the rising column of smoke from the funeral pyre of a brave traveler. It is with no small amount of dread that the party moves on, for with the loss of their engineer, they have lost their best chance of adapting the primitive rocket systems they expect to find at their mysterious destination.
The dune buggy, as it turns out has no headlights, and they are forced to navigate by following the dim taillights of the van. Occasionally, Marcus would see the van swerve to avoid an obvious road hazard, and attempt to blindly duplicate the maneuver. Inevitably, his luck at swerving out of the way of unseen obstacles begins to wear thin, and several times Wil is almost thrown from the buggy by the sharp jolt of a pothole or rock. Just outside of Las Cruces, New Mexico, they halted just long enough to take down the machine-gun. They refueled both vehicles and continued on. Within an hour, they had reached the outskirts of El Paso, Texas. Shortly after they hit the bypass to skirt the city, a pair of Texas State Troopers pulled onto the highway and began to pace the caravan.
THANN: “Oh great, we’re going to have to deal with that stolen van thing again.”
For the next ten minutes, the patrol cars followed them…all the way to the city limits. Once the caravan passed across the city border, the troopers pulled off the road again. SaraLynn and Thann continued to switch off driving the van, but Marcus remained behind the wheel of the dune buggy all night.
Act 2 – Wayside ( “Hello, Stranger” )
The long night of traveling continues across the west Texas wilderness. The land is very flat, and they can see fairly clearly by the light of the moon, that there is very little vegetation around them. Most of the plant life appears to be small dried out scrub. As the hours pass by however, the character of the vegetation appears to change. Mile after mile, the average height of the weeds increase. Soon they are passing plants that are over two feet in height, and taking on dark and twisted shapes. Not only are the plants growing taller, but they are also growing closer and closer to the road. The branches and trunks of the plants line both sides of the highway, creating the illusion of traveling along the base of a ravine or river bed. SaraLynn and Wil are both fighting back very strong urges to panic. SaraLynn senses something horrible emanating from the forest…not the trees themselves. Almost as if the very ground is poisoned with evil. Wil puts on his goggles and checks the undergrowth along the road for I/R traces. He is astonished to discover that they are surrounded by small heat traces, very low to the ground. Thousands of them, bounding through the underbrush along the roadside. As Thann drives the van, he sees the plants are now growing up through cracks in the roadbed. The sounds of plant stalks slapping the drive-train of the van become prevalent. Eventually the branches from the sides close in overhead to form a living tunnel. Suddenly the creatures emerge from the underbrush, and begin bounding across the road from both directions.
THANN: “Whoa! Carnivores! Small!”
Indeed, hoards of what appear to be short, elongated mammals are sprinting back and forth within the narrow beam of focus of the van headlights. Thann leans on the horn, and the little guys scatter again.
Throwing caution to the wind, Thann jumps on the accelerator and leads the dune buggy into a headlong race onward. The two vehicles press on through the dark tunnel, until suddenly the ceiling overhead breaks open, revealing silvery, moonlit clouds overhead. The density of the plants decreases, and soon they are passing plants only a few feet tall. The plant border retreats from the side of the road, and soon resumes the look of scrub. Thann reduces speed as they crest a small hill. Before them, they can see a small collection of buildings on either side of the road. They pass a small blue sign: Wayside.
To the right, there is a building that at first looks like an oversized convenience store gas station, and restaurant all rolled into one. The sign over it’s pale yellow-orange rooftop says “Stuckey’s”. Across the street from the restaurant, on the north side of Interstate 10, there is a two-story white frame house. The house is badly in need of a coat of paint, and seems to be leaning a little to the left. There are a few smaller out-buildings scattered around the house, all of which display the same condition of wear as the house. The small caravan pulls up to the row of gas pumps and comes to a halt. One by one, the party members drag themselves out of the van.
SaraLynn goes into the shop…her head throbbing with pain. The passage through the dark forest had so assaulted her mind, that now her empathic abilities burned in her brain like an open wound doused in lemon juice. There is a man wearing a white T-shirt, apron and hat standing behind the counter. Her senses, already raw and abused detect that he is very worried about someone, and his face reflects the haggard appearance of a man sick with worry.
SARALYNN: “We’ve been driving all night. We need gas, and some food.”
PROPRIETOR: “Have a seat anywhere in the restaurant, little lady.”
Apart from the proprietor, there is one man sitting by himself at one of the booths. The booth he is sitting at, is one of the kind that can fold out to include adjacent tables, and as such, is the only table in the place capable of holding the entire party. She walks over to the booth. The man is quite well built, and is hunched over a cup of coffee, his mind a fog of confusion.
[Introducing Jay Novachek…]
SARALYNN: “Um, excuse me…”
The stranger turns his angular features toward her, and gives her a strained smile. SaraLynn immediately experiences a faint feeling of revulsion. When the stranger smiled, his cheeks darkened to a deep charcoal gray, as if there was a sheet of black material sliding beneath his skin.
SARALYNN: “On my…”
Upon seeing her reaction, his smile retreats and is replaced by a grim frown. She feels his anger flare briefly, and then it is replaced by an even deeper feeling of self pity.
JAY: “What do you want?”
SARALYNN: “Well…I was going to ask if you would mind switching tables, but now… Would you mind if my friends and I joined you?”
The stranger seems very disoriented. He pushes aside a stack of Time magazine back issues he had been flipping through and gestures for SaraLynn to sit down. A short time later, the rest of the party members enter and join them. Throughout the course of the meal, he relates to them his story:
JAY: “I’m a newspaper reporter. My last assignment was to cover the Kansas State high-school basketball championship. I arrived late to the game, and found the gymnasium completely deserted…except for one little girl sleeping in the stands. It was so eerie…the scoreboard was still ticking away…but there were no people! I guess I got spooked and tried to leave town.” He pauses at this point and his forehead creases, as if he is fighting to remember details. “Something happened. There was a bright light, and my car stalled…the next thing I remember was waking up in the desert two days ago. I hiked across the desert until I came to the interstate and then I followed it here.”
SARALYNN: “State championships? There haven’t been any of those in the midwest for about five years.”
JAY: Gestures to the stack of magazines in front of him. “That basketball game was fifteen years ago. I’ve gone missing for fifteen years, and have no idea what happened to me during that time. These magazines are full of names I’ve never heard. The whole country has gone to hell, and forgotten to take me with it!”
MEEHO: “If it’s any consolation, we don’t exactly belong here either…at least you’re from this world.”
JAY: “To tell you the truth, I’m not so sure that’s true anymore.” Jay grasps his right wrist and squeezes it. There is a small, mechanical *click*, and his hand drops neatly onto the table.
Thann examines the mechanical hand for several minutes. The technology used to create it is far more advanced than that used to create Marcus’s prosthetic hand in their own universe…let alone this backwater nightmare world! There are two small holes in the web of skin between the thumb and forefinger that resemble the bite of a Reptile…Small.
THANN: “Forgive me for being indelicate, but…does anything else come off?”
JAY: “No!”
SARALYNN: “It’s just that…your skin…it looks artificial.”
JAY: “The skin is mine. It’s what’s underneath the skin that scares the shit out of me…I’m totally covered with it!”
ENISE: “Mind if I take a look?”
Jay stretches his arm out to her. Just beneath the surface of his skin, she feels a hard, interlocking mesh. This built-in body armor is less flexible than his own skin, and occasionally his skin stretches enough to let the meshwork show through.
Jay next asks the party if they can give him a lift to the town of Ft. Stockton, Texas. He says his hometown bank has a branch office there, where he can get access to his savings account. Thann’s ears perk up at the mention of stockpiles of cash just waiting to be tapped into.
THANN: “Sure, you can come with us!”
As they are leaving, the proprietor takes SaraLynn aside and asks if the party could keep an eye out for his wife and daughter. It seems that they left for Ft. Stockton yesterday afternoon, and he is worried that he hasn’t heard from them yet. The party promises watch for any sign of his family, and agrees to call him when they reach Ft. Stockton. With that, the caravan pulls out of the Wayside, and continues eastward.
Act 3 – “I think that I shall never see, a thing as deadly as a tree…”
A few miles from Wayside, the scrub brush resumes it’s aberrant behavior, and once again begins to encroach on the roadway. Once again SaraLynn and Wil feel uneasy, and within an hour and a half, they spot a car on the side of the road. The car is off in the ditch, surrounded by twisted shrubbery. The driver’s side door is open, and the back of the car is hoisted up on a jack, making it a simple matter to identify the flat rear tire. They party pulls the van off to the side, and gets out to investigate. To their chagrin, they see that the license plate number matches the one given them by the Wayside proprietor.
Thann, Jay and Marcus move down to investigate the car. There is nobody in the car, but the wife’s purse and a small doll are still in the back seat. The dense underbrush around the car comes up to their knees, and as they walk around the car, they leave a faint trail in the plants. Thann calls out the wife’s name several times, hoping for a response but only hears the monotonous rustle of leaves rustling in the steady breeze. Eventually, Jay notices a faint trail in the undergrowth, heading away from the road and into the thick twisted forest. He stands at the edge of the forest and calls out their names again. And then, very faintly rising above the sound of the wind in the trees, he hears a woman cry out.
JAY: “I think I heard one of them scream!”
MARCUS: “Let’s get in there and help!”
THANN: “Enise, you should come too, they might be hurt.”
ENISE: “Okay, I’ll get my bag.”
SaraLynn is leaning heavily against the side of the van. Her headache has resumed full-force.
SARALYNN: “Wait for me! I’m coming too.”
ENISE: “You can hardly stand up! How do you expect to make it in there?”
SARALYNN: “Something in these woods is hurting me. Up until now I’ve been cowering in fear…letting it happen. Maybe it will help to face it.”
With that, the five adventurers walk single file into the forest, leaving their companions behind to guard the vehicles.
Their marching order, puts Thann in front and Jay in the rear. SaraLynn, in the middle of the line can sense something horrible all around them, but succeeds in fighting down the urge to flee back to the van. Ten yards into the undergrowth, the trampled weeds curve off to the left and they turn to follow. The sound of the wind rustling the leaves around them is very loud, but not loud enough to obscure the obvious wail of agony from in front of them. Thann picks up the pace a little, and the five of them continue at a slow trot into the dark forest. Another wail issues forth, this one from a little to their left. At this point, Thann decides to leave the beaten path they were following, and heads directly toward the sounds. Another twenty yards further, and another cry is heard…this one coming from directly behind them! Jay whirls around, trying to track any movement at all…he sees nothing but tree branches waving in the breeze. Another cry comes from a short distance to the right.
THANN: “Wait a minute, that can’t be right.”
MARCUS: “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
They turn, and begin approaching the sound of the last cry. Thann is so busy looking for the person who made the scream, that he almost doesn’t notice the tree in front of him reaching out to him! One long branchlette curls around, and wraps it’s “fingers” around his left arm.
THANN: “Holy shit! This tree is moving! It’s got me!”
Jay sprints forward, and before anyone realizes it, he is standing at Thann’s side, tearing at the branch holding Thann.
JAY: “The rest of you get out of here! I’ll get him loose!”
Enise turns to run and trips over something soft. She looks down and sees a very small person in a small red skirt.
ENISE: “Wait! I found the little girl!”
Marcus and Enise bend down over the small body, face down in the brush and slowly turn her over. The body is unusually light, and very cold. The body is shriveled, as if all the fluid had been sucked out of it!
ENISE: “Oh god…”
MARCUS: “Let’s get out of here Enise, we can’t help her.”
SaraLynn, who continued to run, is suddenly snatched from her right by a long tree branch.
SARALYNN: “Aeeeeiiiiii!”
Thann is emptying his gun into the body of the tree that has hold of him, and Jay is busy trying to break the branches loose.
Thann feels something digging into his skin.
THANN: “Ouch! It’s biting me!”
With a final burst of effort, Jay breaks Thann free, and the two of them begin to fall back after the others. They can see SaraLynn struggling to free her arm from the grasp of a tree. The tree is wailing with the same sound that had lured them into the woods. Marcus and Enise are disappearing into the woods ahead of them, running at top speed.
Jay and Thann shoot at the tree holding SaraLynn, and it falls to the ground, releasing her as it drops.
THANN: “Run!”
They can see that there are other trees moving around them, screaming one after another as they lunge forward. Somehow, they manage to outrun the flank attack, and moments later are all standing next to the van.
Before they leave, Wil sticks a rag down the gas tank of the abandoned car, and lights the “fuse”. Everyone piles into the van and dune-buggy and are soon on their way again, leaving in their wake, yet another funeral pyre… There is an explosion behind them as the car goes up, spreading burning gasoline in a 200 foot circle. The amount of smoke that persists behind them as they travel on would indicate that they have started a pretty major forest fire.
Two hours later, the party reaches Ft. Stockton. They locate Jay’s bank is no time, and soon he is in possession of a $2000 wire-transfer from his old Kansas City bank. While Jay is negotiating with the bank manager, SaraLynn and Marcus call the Stuckey’s owner from Wayside…
PROPRIETOR: “Hello?”
Wolfgang: “Tell him we found his wife and daughter.”
SARALYNN: “We found your wife and daughter.”
PROPRIETOR: “Oh, thank goodness…where are they?”
Wolfgang: “Tell him they’re dead.”
SARALYNN: “They ran into a little car trouble.”
PROPRIETOR: “Oh, is that all…I was so worried…”
Wolfgang: “Tell him they’re dead!”
SARALYNN: “They had a flat tire…”
PROPRIETOR: “I see…”
Wolfgang: “Tell him they got out of the car, went into the woods, and were killed by trees.”
SARALYNN: “…and they had to stop in the woods…”
PROPRIETOR: “My wife always hated those trees.”
Wolfgang: “Tell him the feeling was mutual.”
SARALYNN: “…and I’m afraid they’re both dead.”
PROPRIETOR: ” “
Wolfgang: “Had the life sucked right out of them.”
SARALYNN: “I’m so sorry.”
PROPRIETOR: “They’re dead?”
SARALYNN: “Yes sir…there was nothing anyone could do.”
PROPRIETOR: “Well, I’m sure you tried…I think I should go now…Um…Just tell me where the car is, and I’ll go pick it up.”
Neal: “Ooops!”
Act 4 – “Nice weather we’re having…” ( Not! )
Up until that point, the weather had been stifling, humid and HOT, with highs reaching somewhere between 100 and 113 F. They traveled the rest of the afternoon, trying to find some way to combat the oppressive heat. The AC in the van was unable to cope with that kind of heat, and leaving the windows open just resulted in blasts of hot air. The radio weather service happily reported another day of record breaking heat, and eventually reported a freak weather pattern moving into the San Antonio area. As they got closer to San Antonio, the temperature outside dipped below 100. The radio station reported temperatures already in the 70’s downtown.
The break in the heat was a welcome change, but it didn’t stop dropping at 70…or 60…or 50. Over the next few hours, the temperature continued to drop into the 20’s. The sky was becoming increasingly covered in clouds, all apparently moving in from the direction of the Gulf of Mexico. Amazingly enough, at about 8 p.m., it started to snow. People were outside their houses, playing in the snow wearing nothing but T-shirts and jeans. The freak weather was a curiosity at the moment…soon it became a problem. The snow was accumulating on the sides of the road…and eventually starting sticking to the road itself. The players had long since rolled up the van’s windows…those in the dune buggy were less fortunate. As the roads became more and more icy, they were forced to reduce speed. This continued for about an hour before Thann lost control of the van and wound up in a ditch.
While pushing out the van, they spot the headlights of a small car approaching from the east. The car hits an ice patch and goes into a skid. It flips over and into the ditch directly across from them. Everyone runs over to help. The driver of the car, Albert Vincent is dazed, but fine. He thanks the adventurers for their help and asks them for a lift to his house. In return, he offers to let them stay the night. While everyone is standing in the growing blizzard, Baboon spots a tall figure standing on a hilltop overlooking the accident scene. The person appears to be wearing a long white fur coat, and standing next to him is a large white dog. They watch as the figure and his dog, framed against the backdrop of steel-gray clouds, turn around and disappear down the back side of the hill. That was when they noticed the cloud movement. Several miles to the south, in the direction that the strange person had walked, they can see the canopy of clouds rotating in a slow-motion vortex.
With Albert as guide, the party turns the van and dune-buggy back to the west for two miles, then they turn south on a small side road. The snow is now about six inches deep, and the outside temperature is approaching zero. Without warning, the front end of the van plunged into a snow drift, and the back end swung around the now stationary nose. Seconds later, the dune buggy slammed into the nose of the van, and both vehicles slid into the ditch. The party members got out to survey the damage. To their dismay, they see that the front bumper of the dune buggy is tightly wedged in the front grill of the van. They give a half-hearted attempt to separate the vehicles, but the temperature and blizzard conditions are making that impossible.
Act 5 – Stand of the White Wolves ( another one bites the dust )
ALBERT: “We’re still too far from my house, and the heater in the van won’t work as long as the engine isn’t running…but a friend of mine has a trailer about a quarter mile up the road. If we get moving, we might just avoid frostbite!”
The party begins the slow trek through the snow. From the hills to the east, they can hear the baying of a wolf. Seconds later another wolf joins the first, and then an entire chorus begins. As Albert points out the mobile home ahead, Enise spots a pair of wolves on a nearby hilltop. The wolves are watching them.
Albert’s friend is not at home, but he knows where the spare key is. In a short while, the party finds themselves indoors, and trying to light some space-heaters. The decision is made to try to get some sleep, and everyone grabs some floor. The baying of wolves continues all night, insuring that nobody gets a really good night’s sleep. The next morning, the storm has let up, but the low temperatures and clouds persist. They can still make out the cloud vortex, focused somewhere to the east of them. The snow appears to be at least a foot deep, and there are fresh wolf tracks in the snow drifts all around the trailer. All of the tracks appear to have headed off to the east. After following the wolf tracks a short way, they spot the wolves themselves, all heading toward the cloud disturbance.
Donning some warmer clothing they find in the trailer, Marcus, Jay and Meeho hike back to the van, and retrieve the big machine-gun. They build a small travois for it, and drag it back to the trailer. Then, fully armed and dressed in whatever warm clothing they can find, they hike east after the wolves.
The snow is at least a foot deep, and the air is still frigid. The storm “center” is still ahead of them, it’s clouds slowly rotating above. The hike takes a very long time, the only break in the monotony of the trek comes either from the occasional chorus of howls from the wolves ahead of them, or from the travois getting hung up in the underbrush and dumping the big gun in the snowdrifts. Presently, they crest a small hill overlooking a small valley. The valley drops about one-hundred feet before leveling off again, and is about one kilometer across. In the center of the valley, is a huge hill. It is a titanic mound of snow and ice, rising one-hundred and twenty feet up from the valley floor. At the very top of this hill, in the center of the rotating clouds. As they descend to the valley floor, the temperature seems to drop even lower. Standing in the valley is a very eerie experience. If one looks up to the hilltop, they get the impression that it is the ground and not the sky that is spinning. Suddenly the wolves break out in a fresh chorus of howls…a chilling sound made even more so by the fact that the calls are no longer coming from just ahead of the party, but from all around them!
There are a number of stands of trees in the area, both in and above the valley. From these trees, at least sixteen wolves emerge and begin slowly circling the party. Thann, Marcus, Wil and Baboon draw their weapons. Meeho dives for the travois and begins setting up the machine-gun tripod. Jay is standing there, his head turning rapidly from side to side as if he is cataloging the location of each and every wolf. SaraLynn and Enise cry out and point as Albert Vincent panics and bolts back up the hill. Four wolves break from the circling pattern and chase Albert. They have no trouble catching him in the deep snow. Albert Vincent begins to scream.
Thann, Marcus and Baboon concentrate their fire on the wolves attacking Albert. He is being torn apart by the wolves, his screams echoing through the valley…
Ben: “Well Becky, looks like another one you won’t be able to save.”
Becky: “Shut up Ben, I’m getting sick of taking this shit from you…it was a critical head wound…I’m sorry you died.”
Ben: “Medical 10 indeed!”
Becky: “That’s it. I drop my gun and run toward the wolves.”
GM: “You what?”
Becky: “You heard me, I’m committing suicide.”
The doctor, finding herself and the party she watches over in yet another life-threatening situation, panics and tries to run. Three of the wolves break off and run toward her. Wil, in a supreme act of heroism, ignores the wolf bearing down on him, and fires at the wolves moving in on Enise.
ENISE: “Stop it!”
WIL: “Shut up, I’m rescuing you.”
With virtually all of their fire-power devoted to trying to save the doctor and Albert, the party ends up allowing the other wolves to move in on their flanks. After the wolves on Albert and Enise are taken down, the remaining wolves are too close for the party members using rifles to attack them effectively. Meeho manages to finish assembling the machine-gun, and realizes that he is now in the center of two concentric circles…one made up of the party members, and the other made up of the wolves.
The wolf closest to Marcus takes a running leap at him. Marcus manages to swing the barrel of his assault rifle around and fires a burst of fire into the wolf’s chest. The now-limp wolf slams into Marcus, knocking his gun from his hands, and flattening Marcus against the ground. Marcus is now effectively lying prone beneath a pile of motionless wolf…allowing Meeho a clear shot at several of the other wolves that, seeing Marcus laying down, are moving in toward the relatively vulnerable target. Meeho takes down those wolves, and then, seeing another gap in the inner circle, swings the big gun around and fires at a few more wolves on the fringes of the circle. In general, everyone else is doing pretty well against the pack. Marcus manages to push the inert wolf off of him and gets to his feet. He looks a little dazed from the blow as he walks over to pick up his gun. As Marcus’s fingers close around the gun stock, the low rumbling growl from behind, alerts him to the fact that the wolf is not yet dead. He turns in time to see the wolf leaping at him again!
Just prior to the leap of the not-dead wolf, there were only two or three wolves still standing…one next to Ben, one by Thann and one by Wil. Meeho was feeling a little dejected…the machine-gun was just getting warmed up, and he was already running out of targets! So, when Meeho sees the wolf next to Marcus get back up, he reacts with lightning reflexes. He swings the machine-gun back around and squeezes the trigger starting a strafing run of bullets tracking toward the leaping wolf. Marcus raises his gun like a club, trying to fend off the leaping wolf. The arcing path of the bullets, defined by little explosions of snow, is advancing toward the commander and the wolf. Marcus takes an instinctive step backward, unwittingly placing himself in the line of fire! One of the bullets blasts into the back of Marcus’s skull, the exit wound disintegrating his face! The commander in chief is taken down by the lone gunman on the snowy knoll.
Ben: “Wolf – Gang … Wolfgang … what’s the difference?”
To be continued…
This adventure originally took place on March 13, 1993.