Alex begins to examine people’s blood to perform more extensive first aid on the injured. Alister and Jenny have sex post-fight; B objects to the noise the two lovers make. Despite Angel’s successes in the fight, Angel discovered his magic was not as effective as he thought it would be. Angel remembers the words of the man in his dreams, and his suggestion that Angel seek his true name, so Angel calls home.

Vincent was reading the Bible backwards, to which Alister responds by saying that Vincent is freaking everyone out. Alister then adds that Vincent smells good. Vincent sneaks away. Eli urges Alister to fuck Vincent, and Alister goes outside to smoke.

Angel’s mom and dad are safe in the protected zone. Angel asks his mom if he has a different or “true” name. She then confesses that Angel was adopted: his true mother is named Julie Sinclair. Angel calls his lawyer. The firm has still not found the identity of the man who left the two chapters of Revelations in Angel’s safety deposit box. Angel has them switch gears; he has them search for Julie Sinclair, who had been in Portland, Oregon, 28 years ago.

On the way to the church run by Father Mahoney, Vincent asks for a run-down of what the group has been up to. He gets a summary from most of the group. Vincent complains that their search for the letters is crazy. Angel defends Vincent because Vincent has been out a long time and may need time to acclamate to his new surroundings.

The group arrives at Father Mahoney’s church, All Saints Catholic Church. There are a few zombies shambling in the yard. A blond priest invites them into the church and gets Father Mahoney for them. Mahoney demands to know what they’re doing traveling through the wilderness. He says churches are no longer safe, although they had been in the past. Sol asks for the letter, which Mahoney has in a glass case, protected for two millennia.

Alex begins to examine the letter. Mahoney’s faith had been waning, but the group’s arrival revives it. Johann, the blond priest, cooks for the group. During small talk, Alex suggests that Johann is a demon, since he was the last refugee the church took in before the church lost its holy protection. Alister suggests that Cassidy killed Vincent and is now playing his part. Angel is intrigued by the first suggestion but skeptical of the second. Angel interrogates but finds no reason to distrust him.

Alex tries to translate the letter, which is in Latin. Turns out, Alex doesn’t know Latin, so he uses Babelfish to translate the letter. The attempt is unsuccessful, but they are now hours away from All Saints. The group therefore decides to head to the small town in South Carolina where Alister’s church is: Smyrna. The drive to Smyrna takes 15 hours.

Alister wonders why it is that the churches are losing their protection. There are a number of competing theories as to the cause. Alex attempts to scry for Cassidy with Cassidy’s candy. Meanwhile, Jenny tries to figure out what everyone’s talking about. Vincent tells all, including about Eli, to Alister’s chagrin. Sol recommends that Alister come clean. Alister describes Eli as a spirit of God, which makes Vincent and Sol crack up.

Alex’s scry spell only creates a mirror into the van. Angel tries searching through Alex’s mind to find Cassidy, but to no avail. Alister sniffs Vincent again, and Vincent quickly says that he has to pee. Sol stops the car, and Angel suggests that Alex scry for Cassidy while Vincent is away. Alex’s spell fails. Vincent calls Alister out for sniffing and staring at him.

Alister admits that he and Eli want to eat Vincent because Vincent looks like a ghost. He apologizes for his urges. Angel offers to help as best he can but defends Alister’s ability to keep himself in check. Vincent demands to sit shotgun and that Alister sit in the back seat before he agrees to return to the car.

Before Sol switches out with someone else, the group has to decide whether to continue driving or to stop and break for the night. Angel suggests that they should keep driving, but many in the group want a bed. Jenny suggests that she wants a shower, and Angel realizes he wants to be clean too. They decide to stop at a roadside motel for the night.

3 xp awarded.

Zombies crash through the slowly-melting stained glass windows of King’s Mercy and start killing the members of the congregation. Many of the zombies are holding weapons, and one has metal armor bolted to his chest.

Alister rushes one of the zombies with his plasma-infused gun. Sol and B move forward to ready their firearms. Alex runs behind a pew to get a handle on his surroundings. As the group readies itself to fight, Angel buffs the team. Cassidy/Vincent awakes in a stupor. He asks Jenny who she is, to which Jenny replies, “What?” With all the chaos, Cassidy/Vincent searches for a weapon. Angel reminds him of the gun under his cot. Cassidy/Vincent grabs it and rushes into the battle.

Angel’s buffs make Alister and Sol practically invinsible. Everyone fights bravely while Cherry helps civilians escape and Jenny cowers. The civilians who are still alive successfully leave the church through the back door. Meanwhile, the group is wildly shooting zombies left and right. Eventually, the group defeats the zombies. Alister goes around killing the people who have been fatally injured.

Once the fight ends, the group helps the members of the congregation to heal the injured and barricade the church from future attacks. Angel, Alex, and Cherry move to stabilize the injured. Alister finds Jenny and hugs her. Then he notices Cassidy/Vincent is more Vincent than Cassidy. The others begin to notice the difference too.

Alex urges Angel to go into Vincent’s mind and try to find Cassidy. Angel immediately breaks into Vincent’s mind and is unable to find Cassidy. Cassidy is entirely gone. Immediately, Alex and Vincent start blaming each other for the loss of Cassidy. Angel tries to smooth things over, which weirds Vincent out.

The group flies from Nebraska, where they met Zeta, and gets ready to land in Philly. Irvine asks them how long they will need him. Alister tells him that eventually they’ll need him to take them to Turkey. Irvine laughs. As for getting up and down the east coast, Irvine will be reachable by cell phone.

After getting dropped off, the group commandeers a station wagon and a truck. They stop off at an abandoned convenience store and take what they can. They get a map, but to Alister and Sol’s chagrin there are no cigarettes or bottled water. They then look for a church that may lead them in the right direction. In the phone book, they find the name of a church called King’s Mercy.

The truck and the station wagon are now at 1/8th of a tank. Alister leads them toward a hardware store to find a hose for syphoning gas from a car. They find a Lowe’s, but there are four zombies in the parking lot. The people in the station wagon distract the zombies while the people in the truck run into the store to get what they need and get out. Inside, a zombie surprises them, but Sol dispatches it quickly. On their way out with the hose, two other zombies block their path. Alister kills one quickly, and Sol gets the other. Three shots, three zombies. Then they run out and meet up with the others, then they all go back out on the road.

When the group finds the church, they find a large number of cars around a building with some silhouettes moving around inside. The group is greeted by two people who tell them the congregation cannot take anymore people. Angel asks to speak to the one in charge. Sol and Alister both offer to be honest. Alister takes off his shirt to show off his scar, which has now grown into a 877421—his prison number. The priest asks which one of them is the Prince. B raises his hand and adds, “But not anymore.”

The priest tells the group that he will give them anything they want, if they get food for the King’s Mercy community. In return, they get gas to half-fill their cars. Angel casts a spell that makes them more likely to find food safely, leading them to a neighborhood market where they will stock up.

Before they go, Angel sees a zombie walk up to the fence, rub its hand against the fence, and then walk off. Angel reads the zombie’s mind. All he’s thinking is, “Can’t get in.” Alister posits that this place’s holy energies must keep the zombies at bay.

When they return from the store, the priest tells them to speak with the deacon of a nearby church: Father Mahoney. Mahoney has the letter, the original letter, sent to their church. The priest knew them just by seeing their faces.

On their way back out, the same guy who tried to keep them out pushes back a stranger who was trying to get into the church. The stranger falls down the stairs and hurts himself. Alister grabs the pseudo-bouncer and confronts him. The guy says there’s not enough food and he has to make sure his son doesn’t starve to death.

The priest offers the group a night’s rest on their cots. They agree, but Cassidy’s a concern. He’s a demon, and being on a church ground makes him feel sick. Eventually, they convince him to come inside. Alex gives him painkillers.

In the middle of the night, the group wakes up to the sound of crashing glass. Angel looks out the door to see what’s going on. A large number of zombies have broken through the stained glass windows and are filing into the main hall.

Jenny found Alister by looking through his rolodex and talking to some of Alister’s friends. She told everyone that she was Alister’s fiancee. She seems a little crazy. She had been driving the car with all the letters when a zombie ran out in front of her and caused an accident. Sol confronts Jenny about her interest in Alister. She loved Alister’s picture, and the bio that Angel wrote about Alister impressed her. She fell in love at first sight. Alister admits that he has obsession for her too.

The group starts running low on fuel. Irvine calls down on the radio but he doesn’t get a response. They land on a dirt landing strip on a farm. On the ground, Irvine and Sol try to find Irvine’s friend John, but he’s gone. The rest of the group gets out of the plane to stretch their legs.

Alex goes off to find a place to pee. Cassidy goes with him “to help.” Angel tries to pet and cheer Cherry up because she seems sad.

There is not enough fuel for getting the plane to Philly. Therefore, they fill the plane as much as they can. Irvine mentions that there is a military base nearby that they can go to in order to find more fuel. When they arrive at the military base, there is no reply through the radio, and the base looks abandoned. It’s quiet. Too quiet.

Alister, Sol, and B go to find fuel. Angel, Cherry, Alex, and Cassidy go to talk to the people who may or may not be hiding out in a bunker. Jenny and Irvine stay by the plane. Angel knocks on the hangar door, but there is no response. Then, slowly, the door handle turns and the door opens. There is a woman standing at the threshold with blood all over her face and apron.

Angel tries to read the woman’s mind, but he can’t get in. The woman leaves the door open invitingly, but Angel suggests that they back off for their own safety. Sol calls Angel to find out what they’re doing. He explains that they probably won’t be hostile, but they should be careful and hurry.

As night falls, all the lights in all the bunkers start coming on. The group wants to go past a gate to get gas. They hit an intercom and are greeted by a laconic voice. Sol says they’re distressed civilians in need of help. The gate opens without further conversation.

Alister gets the tanker truck ready. A soldier on this side of the gate starts coming towards them. Sol tries to ask him what he wants for the gas the group needs. Sol shines his gun at the soldier and sees that he has his throat torn out. Sol urges Alister to hurry and shoots the soldier in the heart.

Sol takes the soldier’s weapon. Meanwhile, outside, all the bunker doors open. Someone over the intercom says to Sol, “What’re you doing?” Sol asks if he’s talking to a real person. The voice asks him if Sol just shot one of his men. Sol says, “I guess not,” and ignores the voice thereafter.

Outside, soldiers clumsily walk out from the bunkers and start pointing their weapons at the plane. They surround the airplane and the fuel hangar. The soldiers stand in formation around the plane—15 of them, with more coming.

Then a man walks up. He’s in his 20s or 30s and looks dishevelled. Sol admits to shooting the zombie and says that he doesn’t regret it. Alister says that it was him who shot the zombie soldier. Angel suggests that they kill Alister and leave the body with Angel. The sergeant suggests that instead they have dinner with him. Meatloaf. The group is forced to go in exchange for fuel and freedom. The sergeant tells the zombies to stand down, and they do.

Sergeant Zeta takes the group to the Officers’ Lounge. The sergeant won’t hear trash talk about God and refuses to admit that his men are dead. He has a woman named Bonnie serve them all tea. Bonnie is a zombie but responds to Angel’s gratitude with a nod. Only Alister and Cassidy drink it. Then Bonnie returns with food. It’s meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and corn.

Zeta really wants them to eat his wife Bonnie’s food. Bonnie sits with them with a raw steak and eats. Sol glares at her.

Zeta asks about Alister and Jenny. Jenny says that they’re engaged. Alister says he just hasn’t gotten a ring because of the Apocalypse. Zeta suggests that they have a chaplain. Jenny becomes very excited.

Zeta was in a coma during the outbreak. Before that, he was told to “take care of yourself.” Before Alister can ask any further info, Zeta changes the subject. Pie follows the main course. Alister and Angel have a small conversation in his mind regarding behaving while they’re stuck in this base with a horde of subservient zombies.

Alex and Cassidy eventually go to the bathroom. Cassidy comes back, but Alex doesn’t. Zeta asks about him, and Alister goes to find him. Alex doesn’t want to come back, and Alister terrifies Alex out of frustration. Alex returns while Angel lauds Zeta for his hospitality.

Angel argues that they should head out now so that they can get to the east coast by morning. They manage to convince Zeta to sell them fuel for money ($500). Angel uses mind on Zeta and notices that Zeta’s aura looks strange over his heart. The group gets ready to fly off, with the sergeant leading them to their plane. And they get away without any casualties.

General: 7 xp.
Practical/Arcane: 1 xp.

Every letter in Revelations Ch 2 and 3 refers to one of the characters. The Letter to Pergamon refers to Angel. The Letter to Smyrna refers to Alister. The Letter to Thyatira refers to Alex. Alex thinks the Letter to Laodicea refers to Sol.

Cassidy states that he thinks this is the Rapture. Angel explains the basics of the Tribulation. Angel proceeds to compare God to Hitler.

The first church they will go to is B’s in Philadelphia, PA. Cambridge, MA and Cornell, NY contain archeological sites for the city of Lydia which connects to Vincent’s letter. White Castle, SC is the location of Alex’s letter. The group decides they will fly rather than drive there.

Sol takes the group out and teaches Alex and Cassidy how to fire a gun. Sol then teaches everyone how to perform maintenance on them.

The following day, the group goes to the library in the Unprotected Area to find a map of Philadelphia. Angel suggests that Alex brush up on his neuroscience. Afterwards, the group stops for 10 lbs of salt to help with a toxic mess Alex left in the backyard.

After some discussion, all the group but Alister, Cherry, and Sol go to observe the zombies at the brothel. Angel kills the zombie torso flopping around. Then they examine three of the zombies. Angel reads their minds and finds human thoughts in two of them. One of the zombies actually manages to slur, “Not sorry.”

Angel and Alex want to biopsy their brains. Cassidy convinces Angel to talk to Cherry about it. He calls her, and they have an argument about biopsing the zombies. Alister doesn’t want to listen and thinks zombies should just be murdered. Sol is willing to consider not killing zombies whose appetite has been supressed. Angel asks Alex to make a zombie appetite supressant. Alex says he’ll try, but he’s pessimistic about it.

During the group conversation about the issue, the group discusses their MO regarding zombies. They agree that zombies posing an immediate threat should be wiped out. Zombies that can be fixed should be.

Alister asks Alex to help him scry for Jenny. In Alex’s vision, Jenny is talking to some cops. After the vision fades, Alister appears to abandon hope of finding Jenny.

Cat finally gets everyone their IDs. The group goes to the airport and meets Irvine, Alister’s pilot buddy, played by Danny Trejo. They strap in and…

“Wait! Don’t leave yet!” A woman runs toward them dressed like Ingrid Bergman from Casablanca. It’s Jenny. She embraces Alister. She tries to explain how she broke into Alister’s safe, took his money and his father’s gun, and found him. Alister interrupts her to kiss him. Jenny joins the group on their flight, with some hesitation from the others.

Cassidy wakes Angel up to apologize for having given him bad dreams. Angel didn’t want to hear about it and wanted only to go back to bed. Sol, meanwhile, snores like an engine. Cassidy worriedly tells him that he has a bear in his mouth.

In the morning the group heads to Jenny’s house in the suburbs of Portland. Alister breaks into the house through the side door and skulks around. Jenny, unfortunately, was not home. Alister drops the letter he wrote for Jenny off at the house before returning to the car. Alister then tries calling the phone number she left on the pictures. The number goes straight to voicemail.

The group has lunch, then Angel gets Cat Rogers’s address. The address leads the group into a suburban area in unprotected territory. Angel negotiates how much heroin Cat will get for their fake IDs. It is decided that one-third of Angel’s heroin will go to Cat. It will take a while for Cat to make the IDs, so Cat tells the group about a local brothel run by a man named Billy. Alister has been wanting sex since prison, so the party goes to see what the place is all about.

Billy, however, has a secret. He is keeping zombies as prostitutes. Sol is outraged by this and suggests to the group that Billy may have killed girls to make them into prostitutes. Cherry agrees and decides, along with Sol, that they need to investigate further. Angel concedes, hesitantly. The group returns to Cat’s house to plan—and some of them, to get high.

Angel and Cherry offer to go in first and interrogate a zombie using Angel’s mind powers. They go inside and tell Billy that they want to share some kinky fun with one of his zombies. Once they are in a room with the zombie, Angel bores into her head and discovers terrible, incoherent thoughts tormenting her. After some discussion, Angel sneaks his way downstairs to get lube, all the while getting into Billy’s head. He discovers that they have been poisoning girls to make them into zombies.

As they discuss what to do with the zombies, Cherry is appalled by Angel’s suggestion that they put the zombie out of its misery. She yells at him, attracting the attention of the bouncers. One of them breaks through the door with a shotgun, ready to execute Angel and Cherry.

The group passes a sign that says “Unprotected Area for the Next 50 Miles.” Despite the ominous warning, the group continues to drive until they are blocked on the expressway by a wreck. Angel uses his magic to protect B, Alister, and Sol, who go out to investigate the wreck and move the cars. In one of the vehicles, Alister finds a number of letters marked “Return to Sender.” The letters were written by a girl named Jenny, a correspondent who became enamored with Alister through the mail-a-felon program Alister had joined for “pussy.”

The group finally reenters Protected Area as it approaches Portland. They spend the night at a motel before heading to Angel’s bank. During the night, Alex is finally able to cure Cassidy/Vincent’s AIDS, but he is still unable to cure himself.

They go to the bank where Angel and his lawyer have stowed away $5,000 in a safety deposit box under a different name: “Seth Marsh.” In the box, however, there is also the torn out pages of Revelations 2 and 3. According to the bank’s logs, the pages were left by someone named Casey Jones, a 5’8" man with a thin build wearing a suit and hat. On the security cameras, Jones’s face warps the tape around it, causing his identity to remain a mystery. Furthermore, he has nothing to do with the bank or the law firm that services Angel.

Angel works on getting IDs for everybody in the group from a guy who likes to be paid in drugs. Fortunately, Angel has more than enough heroin on him to foot the bill. Everyone spends the night at a motel while Angel makes some calls. Sol goes on to show everyone his welt; it has started to heal, leaving the number “6” plainly visible on his back. Vincent’s scar also takes the form of a six, while Angel’s is appearing to take the form of two sixes.

Alex uses the same methods he used on Cassidy to cure his own AIDS. Then, he begins to work on translating the torn chapters of Revelations found in Angel’s safety deposit box.

The escapees now try to decide what they’re going to do next. In the guard’s Nissan, they’re a threat. They go into a suburb in order to replace their car with a minivan. Angel jacks the van while Sol plays watch. A kid watches the group steal their minivan from his window and calls out to his parents as the group hurries out of the neighborhood toward Eagle Point Cemetery.

Sol’s parents left the keys to his storage unit in the cemetery. The group drives into the cemetery and heads straight for the keys while Alister wanders off and gets himself attacked by a zombie who bites into him and then…runs away. The group then decide that they should spend the night at a campsite, since they are being pursued and, per a radio announcement, the authorities are now aware that they have switched vehicles.

At the campsite, the group sleeps in shifts. Angel and Alex have the first shift, and over the course of the night they bond. Cherry and Cassidy spend the second shift together, and Alister and Sol the third.

In the morning, the group drives to a shopping center with a dollar store, a thrift store, and an auto parts store. Sol, who has donned a guard’s uniform but has dropped the jacket in favor of a white T-shirt, goes into the store to buy the group new clothes. While there, a clerk shows concern for blood on the back of his shirt. He changes shirts in the dressing room, discovering a bleeding welt on his back that he had hitherto been unaware of. When Sol returns to the minivan, the group changes into the new clothes, each noticing that they all have the welts on their backs, although most of theirs are not bleeding the way Sol’s is.

The group goes to a mall. Sol takes the minivan and drops it off elsewhere while Angel jacks a car from the mall. He picks up the rest of the group, and they continue north towards Springfield to access Sol’s storage unit. There, the group picks up more clothes, money, and weapons. Cassidy gets a bat, Alex gets a shotgun, and Angel, Sol, and Alister each get pistols. Sol’s is the coolest, but that’s all right because this is his place.

The group eats and siphons gas from a parked car before moving on towards Portland.

Angel spends their second-to-last day at yard putting all of his resources in heroin form, so as to allow him to take them with him easily. After yard, Angel meets with Papa. Papa is disappointed with Angel for choosing to run away from what he considers a good thing. This place is safe from the zombies, and Papa has plans for it; he intends to fortify the prison from the outside world and make it self-sufficient. Angel says that he intends to leave anyway, but he may be back someday. They express their pleasure at having known each other.

The prison is in White City. Saul’s storage unit keys are in Eagle Point. Angel’s apartment is in Portland proper. In order to escape, the group has to break their way into Prisoner Intake, then out the lobby, past the courtyard, and to the parking lot where they can hijack a car. The guards should be less of a problem since they’ve been mentally conditioned by Angel to be sympathetic to their escape.

Monday night, Alex grabs some last-minute supplies: vinyl gloves for everybody and syringes for Alex’s brand new fast-acting LSD. After lights out, Alister plans to make his way into the guard’s dressing room in order to steal some uniforms. Once he has done all the work to get to the dressing room, he asks Eli for his suggestion. Eli blithely admits that he thinks this whole thing is a bad idea, since a missing uniform or two would be likely to tip off the guards.

At yard on Tuesday, Alister plays card with Lewis, who knows that he’s planning to escape. Alex tries to get an audience with Papa. Angel has sex with Cherry once more before the big escape plan unfolds. That night, Angel goes to work and drugs Cherry’s cellmates’ and the sentry guards’ dinner.

At lights out, it all begins. Alister goes into the shadows to collect Cherry from Cell Block B. Alex melts the cell door so that it will open. Once he has finished, the others get out of the cell after Angel uses his magic to improve their luck and to make them more difficult to notice. Saul uses the LSD to knock out a hallway guard, then steals his uniform and keys. Alex melts open the door to Prisoner Intake, and Saul and Angel each walk in and disable a guard.

Meanwhile, Alister gets Cherry out of her cell but is spotted by an inmate (a Norteño), who he terrifies in order to keep the latter from talking. Alister and Cherry make it to Intake soon enough to discover something terribly wrong; the guards aren’t guards. They’re zombies: specifically, Otelo and Orlando. Otelo has a gun and shoots Angel in the gut. B disarms him, knocks him down, and Alister crushes his chest with a sledgehammer. Angel opens the front gate, allowing everyone to run outside while Saul, B, and Alister take on the other zombie. Orlando tazers Alister, but Alister crushes his chest in too. Saul pulls out the tazer, and they all run to the gate. Saul uses the hallway guard’s keys to open the front gate and to steal the guard’s Nissan Sentra.

And the group drives away into the sunset…

It’s Sunday. The group prepares for their daring escape. All their plans are beginning to come to fruition. The group (with the exception of Alex and Cassidy) go to the chapel. The priest is particularly uplifting today, which is a little strange. Meanwhile, Alex and Cassidy have sex in the cell.

During yard time, Angel explained to Cherry the specifics of the plan. He warned her not to eat the food that gets delivered to her room on Tuesday because it will knock out her cellmates. The rest just hang out for the most part. Alister goes into the shadows that night while Cassidy and Alex have sex. Alister collects some necessary supplies and returns just in time to see Alex and Cassidy doing it.

Monday morning, Angel goes to work and switches shifts with one of his coworkers. During yard time, Alex explains to Cassidy that he doesn’t think his AIDS is cured because now Alex thinks he has it too.