Late April we continued our search for Drew's Mountain Man bearing the wooden (X) sign (we have got to find a nickname for this guy). I'll just call him Davey since Drew compared him to Davey Crockett.
Early May Josh, Elijah, and Stephanie also became haunted. By this point on the parts of Drew, Jared, and myself, it had gotten bad enough that he actually started Moving us. So the three of us decided to do some short term Running by way of the hotels in the local towns, but staying the same area as before.
May 10th, slim attacks Jared's family. They survive, but Jared sends them off on a extensive cruise (according to Jared, his family hasn't seen it since) ad Jared officially went on the Run.
On May 7th, Josh, Elijah, and Stephanie joined us and we used a public library as a hub of sorts during our meetings from thr 11th on, which were held only during the day. We tried a night meeting once...once, on the 8th. That night was our first encounter with agents and proxies. We were in Drew's dining room when we received a knock at the door. Drew did not answer. He instead just hollered the question of who it was out.
The answer was Chuck, a local gamer who was in our DnD group. Drew opened the door and took the butt of a shotgun to the face when he did.
Chuck declared himself willingly in the services of the "Great Man" and ordered us outside where a bunch of maskies waited. Unfortunately for him, Elijah was also armed and put a slug in Chuck. Honestly, Elijah's gun was out and ready the instant the door was knocked on. Well, Chuck always was an arrogant one.
Jared, who was not far away from Drew, slammed and locked the door while Josh and I dragged the dazed the latter away as the proxies began viciously attacking the front of the house.
On Elijah: Elijah was Drew's friend and cousin. Also a born hunter, basketball player, and all around fitness nut on levels which the EverymanHYBRID guys will never be.
On Josh: all around weirdo who not only enbraced his strangeness, he absolutely bathed in its glory.
On Stephanie: nice girl. Never said much and never harmed anybody else. Did not deserve to be turned into a mindless drone. We had no idea there were ways to fend off the Hallowing effect when she attacked us. To our knowledge at the time, only a well placed bullet in the brain was the way out, so Drew administered the blow himself because only his and Elijah's hands were already dirty by that point.
Anyway, we tried to go out the back, but slimjim was ready and waiting for us so we retreated and went out the front way where we fought about ten proxies to our seven Hunted, with Drew already being wounded. This is why Elijah's athletic nature and good aim were such a blessing back then. If anyone can take credit for how we got past them and reached Josh's pick-up before slim could stop us, it all goes to Elijah that night. Stubborn, bull-headed, short-fused, abrasive, and damn good at what he did.
Elijah downed three the instant we burst through the front door with his six-shooter, Drew downed one with a fireplace poker he snagged on the way out, and the rest of just rammed or tackled our way through because the proxies were dumb enough to be standing right there and we had the advantage of momentum since Elijah got ahead of us enough that we didn't have to stop when he opened the front door and dashed out guns blazing. Then in our wake Elijah kicked and punched the shit out of a few more before hopping into the back on the pick up as Josh drove us away. I think one proxy was left standing in our wake. The others were either dead or wishing they were because I know I heard bones break when the one I pushed over hit uneven ground and landed in an ackward position.
We escaped to a hotel where we took up a couple of spare rooms. Stephanie got one to herself and one guy ended up on a floor while two beds shared two guys each (not fun). I almost envy Jared for getting the floor. Drew tends to kick in his sleep. This was the 8th,
A couple of days later the attack came on Jared's parents, who were fortunately quick in fleeing their burning home. They saw it and Jared was able to convince them to just get the hell out of dodge and went on the Run before any of us could talk him out of it.
From the on, it was just Josh, Elijah, Drew, Jared, Stephanie, and myself. Because Elijah was highly dubious of the hunt for Davey, and we weren't able to convince him to help us, we had to drop the search for the time being and justed focused on trying to stay alive and perhaps shake the damn thing. In this time, we decided no one was going to be live alone (we all did prior to this, which is probably why slim targeted us over others).
May 10th-20th was a chore. More agents and proxies started hassling us. Let me lay out the outline:
May 11th. Josh and Elijah were at Stephanie's house. Two agents and nine proxies show up and lay siege to them. The trio managed to keep them out long enough for Drew to show up the following day and run over any proxies who got in his way. He then gave the trio a lift to safety.
Oh yeah, I should probably mention that we were disposing of their bodies by way of trash burning. Its a regular practice around where we lived. We'd just drop the body at the bottom of the fensed in area where we actually do the burning and then pile the trash on top of the corpse which we'd then light. It seriously reduced the chances of the cops ever finding them since they wouldn't actually be buried somewhere on our property. We made the decision since we knew the cops would never believe the story about slimjim and we'd be facing some hefty charges if they ever caught wind of our confrontations with its pawns.
May 13th, slimfast sightings, but no hostile activity to speak of. Oddly, our lucky day.
May 14th, one proxy attacks Drew in his house, but ended up with her head smashed in with a pan.
May 15th, no proxy or agent activity, but about six kids disappeared from a park shortly after I left it.
May 16th, I was Moved from Stephanie's house to my own. Stephanie disappeared for the first time that day.
May 17th-24th, search goes for Stephanie with no luck until one of the police also investigating her disappearance disappred herself. Where she vanished was the dead giveaway and we pursued the avenue which led to an abandoned shed (why does it always have to be one of those).
We found Stephanie, and...what was left of the poor police officer. Stephanie....was not herself, but just enough was left that she didn't attack us and willingly fled with us once it appeared and chased us through the shed. The shed was only big enough for one room, but when we exited the front door we somehow ended up in a series of underground tunnels pursued by it at every step of the way.
May 24th-28th. We did not leave the dark and cold place it sent us to in that time. We did find an upper leve with windows, but it was four days of night before we were allowed to leave in which time the effects started to get to us.
Stephanie was speaking broken words and writing the standard madness on some disgarded papers she found. (X) signs, pictures of him. You know the deal.
Elijah became increasingly aggressive to the point where he almost strangled Josh during a shouting match. At one point he grabbed his gun and knife and rushed head long after it. It ended as well ass you could imagine. Once he actually reached slim, we couldn't even perceive what it did to him. Just that Elijah ended up unconscious.
The effects it ws on Josh were minimal. In fact, he was the sanest of us by the time it let us go.
Drew became increasingly paranoid and wouldn't even sleep when it was his turn.
I kind of fell somewhere between Drew and Elijah. I became more aggressive and angry, but not so much that I actually attacked one of my own, but I was also feeling it everywhere I went. On top of that, I just kept hearing this screaming sound like a lost child. I didn't want to know and still don't.
On the fourth day, a door opened with light streaming out from it. Now, the windows clearly showed a night sky outside, but sunlight was streaming through that one door. I can't make shit like that up. We walked out and found ourselves back in the woods. We turned around and saw the front door of the shed we entered to go find Stephanie. We ended up held at gunpoint by the angry and confused partner of the officer who was killed in there who had apparently just been in the small shed and had exited right before we did. Yeah, we had fun trying to come up with an explanation for that.
Things went unsettlingly quiet outside of it staring in our windows for the remainder of May. It only maddened us more and Stephanie wasn't getting any better, but we weren't willing to do away with her just yet.
That's all I've got for now.
EDIT: Oh hey, look, I haven't gone off in any slimjim fueled proxy-tangents. That's a good sign.
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