Chapter 4 - The Town

As they prepared themselves, the Ham-Hams were getting ready for the next part of the adventure, this time they were going into Riverside. Stan looked around and saw the words "Better safe than sorry" written on the wall several times over. Stan snorted "PEH! What an asshole that Church Guy was, why couldn't I have kicked his ass when he was alone?" But unfornately no one heard him.

But as they begin to leave, Hamtaro saw a list of the names of Survivors and their dates of death that are written on the wall outside the Safe Room. Hamtaro looked and read them, he begins to felt sorry for them and began to wrote down on the wall with a black sharpy saying "Rest in Peace" and went outside.

"I hate Small Towns" Stan grunted as he moved out of the church and into Riverside before tackling a Boomer with her shotgun. "Pop the can in it's ass." he gleamed. Then he carried on into through Riverside.

The Ham-Hams continued behind Stan into Riverside.

"Well, here we are. The 'historic' town of Riverside," Stan said sullenly. He was in a bad mood as usual.

'Probably because Boss woke us all up too early,' Hamtaro thought, shaking his head.

The four Ham-Ham survivors made their way into the dreary town of Riverside and found themselves amid a scene of devastation. A mixture of abandoned and wrecked cars was scattered throughout the streets, among piles of rubble and dead bodies. Some were riddled with bullet-holes, while others had been clawed to death. The stench was terrible. This once vibrant Pennsylvania town was now a wasteland since the Military pulled out of Riverside, after the town had been overrun by the infection.

"You know, for once, it'd be nice to visit a city without dead bodies everywhere," Hamtaro deadpanned, crinkling his nose.

"Get used to it," Boss said crisply as he lit up a cigarette. As he exhaled, he noticed that there were a number of APCs (armoured personnel carriers, he clarified for the others) and various other military trucks amid the civilian vehicles. "Looks like the army was here at some point."

Indeed, there was infected army officers amongst the crowds of infected civilians, Stan sneered. "The Army! What a fat lot of help they've been to us!" and he blasted them with his Shotgun.

"So where are they now?" Panda pointed out.

"Maybe they're further inside the town." The muscle Ham-Human flicked the cigarette to the road and lifted his sniper rifle. "Only one way to find out."

With that, the team made its way carefully through the silent streets. They cautiously kept watch for any signs of danger, but the area was dead quiet. The town was disturbingly empty; there was not a living soul in sight.

"Where the hell is everyone?" Panda muttered.

"If I had to guess, I'd say that most of the infected ones came to the party at the church last night," Boss grunted. "That nut you called the 'Church Guy' sure invited a lot of 'em."

"But where is the army?"

Boss did not respond. From his experience, if there were not any soldiers out on patrol in the open, then the area was not secure. There could be hostiles watching them right now. He maintained a vigilant grip on his rifle.

"The main street should be around the corner," Panda said after a while, breaking the silence that had fallen over the group. "Hopefully there's a-" His words died in her throat as they came to the centre of Riverside.

The scene of destruction was heart-rending. Countless bodies, many of them in military fatigues, were strewn all over the street, expressions of pain and desperation frozen on the ones that still had faces. Craters, pot-holes and scorch marks attested to the abundance of explosives that had been deployed. In the middle of the street stood some sort of command centre, made up of several vehicles, all reduced to burnt-out shells. The command centre was completely encircled by a ring of corpses, military and infected alike. It was clear that the army made a stand here, but had failed to hold the line.

"My god..." Panda muttered.

Hamtaro hoped that some of the poor bastards had been able to fall back and escape from the town with their lives.

Panda gazed over the devastating scene of the failed stand against the Infected and sighed heavily. "I guess Riverside couldn't hold out anything. The Infected must have come in through the same sewers that we used."

Boss grunted, as though recalling a bad memory. "Don't remind me. Little bastards had a whole damn network of tunnels throughout the countryside to pop up right under our feet."

"Now what do we do?"

The older Ham-Human was looking northward. "We're gonna die if we stay in Riverside. If we get to the river, maybe we can find a boat."

"Sounds good to me," Hamtaro replied, glad to have a plan again. "Let's do it."

"Hold yer horses, kiddo," Bill said, sitting down atop a small pile of rubble. "We need to stock up on supplies first. We're completely out of food and running low on ammunition. We should take the opportunity here to scavenge what we can."

And so, they went to the supermarket to get more food and other supplies and begins to move on ahead. But then Stan had a surprise attack by a Smoker who pulled him away and a Boomer who puked on him to attract the Horde. Hamtaro quickly came over to the situation, killing both the Smoker and Boomer but unlucky enough to get covered in bile as well! "AWWW SHIT!" he yelled as the horde came towards him. Panda and Boss worked to keep the infected away from the 2 of them and once they had both been cleared of the bile effect, they carried on.

Hamtaro stopped as he heard the sound of a Tank. "Everyone," he said "there is a Tank! In the name of that is good, PUNISH THE TAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANK!" and he threw a Molotov onto the Tank that raged towards them. "Back off you stupid giant motherfucker!" snarled Stan as he opened fire at the Tank.

The Tank was dead in no time at all, and the Ham-Hams turned their attention to the barricade that the Military left when they pulled out of Riverside. "Now that is a big ass machine gun!" exclaimed Hamtaro as he saw the mounted gun that the Military had left behind. There was a forklift truck there that had lifted up the walkway in a vague attempt to stop the infection.

"We need to lower that forklift and fast!" said Panda.

"I got this!" Boss said as he got on the job and the fork lift truck lowered down the walkway. It fell down with a crash setting off a car alarm nearby.

"Aw hell!" groaned Hamtaro as he hurried off to the Safe Room.

"Let's get the hell outta here!" Stan yelled as he and the other Ham-Boys ran away.

The horde came in it's furor, and the Ham-Hams struggled on to the Safe Room. Almost Tripping up on a Witch and startling her, they reached the Safe Room. Boss closed the door. "Whew! Thank god!" he said.

"Heh. We're safe... for now." Hamtaro replied.

Author's Note: Alright, so I did some of this but this all I got. So yeah. Enjoy it while you can. See ya later!