CYOA Page 13
Sep. 15th, 2013 01:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lumy12You tell Joel about the infected and that you'd like to avoid them by giving the area a wide berth. He doesn't object. You're not sure which way would be the best to get past them; Joel suggests that south would probably be the shorter route, even though it means backtracking a little, thanks to the mountain. Following the mountain does seem like the best way to avoid detection, too, since it's this huge rock barrier in between you and them. The other way would mean having to sneak the horses quietly past them... and you're still far enough away that you could probably do it, providing that neither horse got a whiff of infected and freaked out or something, but why take the risk?
You follow the mountain until you're quite certain that you're waaaaay beyond that stretch of infected-infested road. The rocks are steep enough here that you can't simply run up the hill and back to check... but it's a moot point anyway because you haven't found a passage through the mountain to get back to the highway (or whatever that road was; it was probably connected).
Joel stops you after a while... 45 minutes? An hour?... and checks the map. "Damnit," he mutters.
Uh-oh... "What is it?"
"This map. It ain't very good. I can't tell if these squiggly things here are just trees or if they're mountains or what." He frowns at the thing.
You pull your horse up alongside his and lean over to take a look. He holds out the paper and draws a circle with his finger around the offensive squiggles. You frown at them, too. "Oh, yeah, I see what you mean. I thought Ian was looking at a real map when he drew this for us?"
"He was. It's fine for the highways an' rivers an' such, but this..."
"You should've just ripped that page out."
"You think so? What about the next person who needs to go to the hospital? The actual xeroxed copies are gone. An' we don't know when or if we're gonna be able to fix that thing to make--"
"Yeah yeah," you cut him off, impatient for the mini-lecture to end since you've got it already. "What's the big deal? Are you saying we're lost?" You don't feel like you're lost...
"No, but it would be nice to know if we can get back through here to the highway, 'cause now we're goin' in the wrong direction."
"It's not that wrong..."
"Maybe not for the moment, but see that up ahead? Our direction is about to get wrong-er."
You look where he's pointing, and it's true; there's only mountain ahead where ideally there would be a clear horizon. It looks like it's just going to push you farther south if you keep following it.
"Well... whatever, there has to be like a hole somewhere that we can go through it? Another road cutting through it maybe?"
"No roads on this map that do. 'Course, he mighta just left one off of it, thinkin' we wouldn't be goin' that way? I don' know." He tucks the map back in his pocket. "Let's go a little bit farther, an' if we can't get through, maybe think about turnin' back. That all right with you?"
"Okay." It won't be a huge amount of time wasted if you have to turn back, after all. And you're not on a schedule.
The little mountain does wind around quite a bit to the south... but you're still moving west as well, which is good...
The longer you keep going, though, the more discouraged you feel; there's just no way through, and who knows how long you'll be going south to get around the fucking thing? When Joel stops again, the look he gives you says he's feeling it, too. "Well, boss, what do you think?" he asks you.
If you turn back, turn to page 26.
If you keep following the mountain, turn to page 29.
Carlos
Date: 2020-11-25 05:25 am (UTC)RE: Carlos
Date: 2020-11-25 02:00 pm (UTC)Carlos
Date: 2020-11-30 04:38 am (UTC)RE: Carlos
Date: 2020-11-30 04:42 am (UTC)There's no rush, obviously!