Jump 175: Highschool of the Dead

Jump 175: Highschool of the Dead

Location: A High School
Age: 22
Identity: The Expert (Drop-In)
Drawbacks: [+100] The Zed Word

[100/1100]  Finesse
[300/1100]  Fashion
[400/1100]  Hard Target
[600/1100]  The Gunshow
[650/1100]  Improvised Weapon Mastery
[950/1100]  This Is Reality
[1000/1100] Silk Everything
[1100/1100] Arsenal
[Free]      Them Survival Guide

A zombie apocalypse is a curious thing.

Such an infestation can have any number of sources, but the one thing that tends to be highlighted over all others is how rapidly it spreads. A few take days. Some, hours or minutes. This world, unfortunately, leans toward the much less generous end. The worse the bite, the faster the turning. And as luck would have it, even Air Force One wasn't immune from it - one of Them got on board as the infection had only just started spreading around the world, and bit a person. Soon enough the interior of the jet was a charnel house, painted crimson, and the President was parachuting his way out of the jet.

Landing atop a high school.

It was fortunate that he was on a diplomatic visit to Japan, and as such he landed atop a school with the most unlikely group of survivors of the burgeoning apocalypse. Students, for the most part, with one or two competent adults. Also fortunate, that he had a sidearm with him - after all, he'd had to make his way from the jet's secure room to an exit, and the only way out was through several ravenous undead. At first he didn't tell the survivors quite who he was, wanting to ensure that things were somewhat stable, but that quickly faded when he informed them that yes, he was the American President. And yes, he might look a little young but he wasn't any less the commander in chief because of it.

The gravity of the situation set in not terribly long afterward, however. And that's when things began to get a bit ... strange. A few news channels were still on the air, and they reported sightings of shooting stars landing around the world, and what seemed to be massive men in power armor moving like the wind and cutting through Them as if they were no more than chaff before the reaper's scythe with explosive projectiles. Other reports indicated soldiers in armor and cloaks acting in concert to round up groups of Them, only to destroy them with some sort of energy weapon. And announcements about them began to be broadcast across the airwaves in assorted languages.

When the group that the President was working with made their way to a local mall, they were able to see the source of the armies that were now fighting the undead around the world - a massive starship that looked to have parked itself almost directly overhead in geostationary orbit, which still was dispatching shooting stars across the world... no, drop pods, each filled with a squad of soldiers. And not long after they'd made their way to the mall, a full dozen pods landed close to the mall, the otherworldly soldiers serving to create a perimeter and use the mall as a safe haven for other survivors as they began to filter through the city and eliminate Them.

It was rapidly noticed, too, that the soldiers deferred to the President and took his orders. He was silent initially, but after a time shrugged and smiled. "America is more than a place, it is an ideal," he told the students and civilians, who were beginning to realize that the pressure of the horrors around them was easing up. "It cannot belong to merely one person or a group of people, but to all people around the world. In fact it stretches beyond this world, to others throughout time and space. And some of them have followed that ideal here, to defend others and give them freedom. Freedom from fear and these horrors."

Most of them looked at him as though he were more than a bit unhinged, but as the hours turned into days and the days into weeks, the global infestation of undead was eradicated. America and Russia had apparently had a limited nuclear exchange with another nation in the early hours of the crisis, one where the infection seemed had started to spread from, but of course it had been much too late to stop it. But most governments had been eviscerated, and so the soldiers turned from containment to aid, ensuring that every person had food, water, and safe haven.

It's little surprise that the surviving fifth of humanity agreed to have their world become a part of the United Systems of America after that.