The Cardinal Directive: Mission Log #24

A rock and a hard place

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>> Now playing Mission Log #24

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It’s night in Piket Rock once again.

The town is quiet, with only a few Ebonhand patrols still roaming the streets. They chat and banter idly in soft tones, well aware of how loud even that is against the silence.

Most of the Hand’s members are asleep in the tavern. They’ve repurposed several rooms in order to set up their sleeping bags and hold their supplies.

Townspeople huddle in the various homes, locked in with jammers. Only a few of them are still awake, swapping hushed words the camera can’t discern. Most are asleep. At some point since they’ve been forced in, they’ve coordinated to pull blankets out of cupboards and off of beds — enough for most people to sleep warm tonight.

On the outskirts of town sits Piket Rock’s dragon barn — a small structure compared to others. Most of the dragons are sleeping outside tonight in the corrals, some alone and others in haphazard piles. Medusa wakes and patrols the grounds every few hours, checking on each of the dragons. Bundles of dragontack have been neatly organized and labeled on a tarp just outside the barn doors, where two Ebonhand guards sit and play cards by candlelight.

Outside the biodome, shadows move on shadows, shambling figures in the darkness of the desert. Their mission earlier changed the consistency of the horde outside — though it continues to circle, not all the zombies are moving in the same direction anymore. The area of highest density changes as the dead move and stumble into each other, creating two shifting walls of undead with large gaps between them.

The world is quiet. Not at peace, but quiet.

Until just past midnight, when an alarm begins to wail.

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