Jacob, The Haven Broadcast
"Helloooooooo wasteland! Jacob Crownley here, coming at you live from the Big Easy, in the heart of New Orleans! I have one job, and one job only, and that is to inform you of the Gatekeepers while playing some sweet tunes. Unfortunately, I've failed at one of those tasks. I haven't been bringing you news about the Providence Chapter. For all I know, they could be in the digestive tracts of a group of Lakelurks or something, because it's pretty difficult to communicate, besides floating a bottle down the Mississippi. Anyone who wants to help fight the vampire scourge, head on down to the Haven of St. Louis down in New Orleans and enlist. I'll try to bring you up to speed on what's been going on ever since Jeremiah and the others
went up the Mississippi doing the Riverboat Shuffle.Senior Knight Matthias, St. Joseph Cathedral
Matthias threw the match, and the flame trailed towards the stone monolith of a building. The shishkebabs that had been drained of fuel, those that belonged to those now dead, formed a sizable pile nearby the building. As he did this, his fellow Gatekeepers stood and watched solemnly from the
Natchez. Samuel had not returned from his excursion to the Mayor's Office, and now it was time to burn their bridges, so to speak. The sun was at the precipice of night, and was now retreating beneath the horizon. No one spoke as the slowly dwindling armor-clad soldiers and the rag-tag band of refugees that were the citizens of the Gatekeepers.
"Where do we go now?" inquired Sarah, breaking the deafening silence.
"Where can we go?" responded Abraham, the eldest of the Senior Knights.
"I suppose we can follow the river north. I for one am not going to come crawling back to the hellhole that Rat City's become." Matthias told the others.
Sarah thought of saying something along the lines of
Become? That's a laugh., but decided that it wasn't the time of sarcasm. "I agree. Whatever's up there must be better than this place." she spoke, ignorant of just how wrong that statement was.
Most of the other Gatekeepers offered grave nods, and some murmured in agreement. Several looked as though they were going to object, although none of them actually spoke out.
"Then we're in agreement." Matthias affirmed, and as he did this, the band of outcasts began to board the
Natchez. Matthias awaited the hum of the engine, and when it came, he steered the boat as Jeremiah had before. He tossed Jeremiah's last pack of cigarettes over the side of the riverboat. As the carton became waterlogged, and the Mississippi swallowed up the word "Morley", it seemed to say something about the Gatekeepers' actions.
General Isaac, Harrah's Casino
Isaac blacked out almost immediately after he was carried through the gaping hole in the foundation of Harrah's Casino. Knight Dawson impaled the offending gutter that had practically torn off Isaac's leg with his shishkebab, which he was unable to retrieve from the gutter's corpse. Dawson then fired his laser rifle almost to the point of over-heating, and collapsed a large portion of the ceiling onto the tunnel opening, crushing several vampires in the process. This collapse took a chunk out of the exterior wall, giving the Gatekeepers a viable escape route. Half a dozen Knights and Inquisitors had been killed by the frenzy of the ghouls and Gatekeepers to escape the threat of the gutters, simply by being trampled to death.
"Up there, we can jump through that hole in the second story wall! The swamped ground will probably cushion our fall!" exclaimed Dawson, as he and Knight Theo scrambled up the rubble, Isaac in tow. Knight Dawson was half-right. The ground had cushioned his fall, but Theo had the misfortune to land on a surviving slab of concrete, breaking or at least severely straining his right ankle.
"Agh, my god!" he screamed, toppling over onto the pavement. The "H" of Harrah's cam unhinged, landing inches away from Theo. Both of them momentarily forgot about Isaac, who had begun to sink into the swampland.
"Theo, the General... he's... he's sinking!" Dawson cried out, in an almost comically inept manner. Each knight grabbed one of Isaac's arms, and freed him from the marsh's icy depths. They returned to the Haven of St. Louis shortly afterward, with an uneventful journey.
Matt Shaw, Barksdale Air Force Base
Matt had tuned into another radio station, sighing as he expected to find another signal. The Enclave communication channels had been abnormally quiet in the past week. He looked out his window, at the ruins of Shreveport. It was then that a wave of nostalgia hit him, that day 3 years ago, when black smoke billowed from those ruins. He was fully aware of the settlement that had been there. He had walked nearby it that day he came upon the ruins of Shreveport, when he was 15 years old. Matt had in fact regularly visited the village up until that day in 2274 when it went up in flames. The very people that were most likely responsible for him not losing his ability to speak English, or degenerate some other way into some near-primal creature. The fire had sent him into hysterics, flashbacks to his youth, that day... the panic, the chaos... That was probably the closest thing he had ever experienced to a panic attack, although it was probably far worse than most.
After that day, he began killing all those who trespassed on the Air Force Base without good reason, the common bandits and garbage, the likes of which had probably burned the small settlement of... Oxru, he believed, named after something on a sign. They had used working vehicles, dwarves compared to the wrecked cars, but still transportation nonetheless. The citizens of Oxru had fought off attackers with steel clubs, some of them splintering and yet impaling the enemies regardless. But that was all in the past now, Oxru was just burnt rubble. If he had been there, he would have chained the assailant to one of the vehicles of Oxru, and dragged him along the long stretches of gravel, eventually unchaining him and forcefeeding him one of the clubs of Oxru. That was a fantasy for him, his way of stopping injustice. The injustice of Alexander, of the anonymous man, of the raider who's head now had a large steel point exiting it... All of them. Once the United States was returned to its former glory, these things would become a reality... common criminals no more, since they wouldn't be so common. This was what Matt hoped, anyway. He sighed once more, and pulled down the blinds.