Urban Dead: Endgame
An unofficial ending for Urban Dead
So, game is over. Servers are down, but no «grand finale» provided for us.
Urban Dead just ceased to exist… but hey, everything just can’t end like this!
So here is a fan-made comix – a conclusion of Malton’s story.
Pictures are AI-generated, so some painting errors may occur.
Click on picture to open a fancy fullscreen viewer.
March 15, 2025. The city of Malton was erased from the map, consumed by the fiery kiss of a nuclear flame. Fire rained from the heavens, a cleansing force that swept the blood-soaked streets clean. Houses, once havens for the fleeting lives of men, were torn asunder, collapsing into dust and ash, obliterated by the ravenous, all-consuming blaze.
But let's tell about the final days of Malton from the beginning.
Commander Kevan turned away from the rain-soaked vista beyond his panoramic window, his gaze falling upon the visitor. A quiet sadness clung to him, mirroring the downpour outside. After a long moment, he spoke, his voice a low rumble: "We've lost this fight. The government is tightening its grip upon us, insisting that our project be subjected to an absurd level of transparency. A cage built of rules and regulations... It's a burden too heavy to bear".
The visitor, weary and etched with a profound sadness, finally spoke: "So, you intend to shut it all down? Despite the years of coma, it still breathes, still lives. What began as our experiment... has evolved into something far more complex over the past 20 years. What of the city? The people? You can't simply excise the lives of thousands, erasing their experiences, their struggles, and their triumphs as if they never existed. You can't simply erase lives, as if they were lines of code to be deleted".
Kevan answered: "Perhaps we could have fought on, but the truth is, my friend, I'm exhausted. Twenty years have taken their toll, and we've both grown old. The project, once a beacon of innovation, has reached a terminal impasse. We concluded our experiments a decade ago, and now it's merely a matter of drawing the curtain. I'm ordering you to initiate the shutdown sequence... a bitter pill to swallow, but one that must be taken nonetheless".
The Gomorrah protocol - a catastrophic sequence of events, was poised to unfold, leaving only one futile gesture: a warning to the unsuspecting citizens of Malton, a city already condemned to oblivion.
In an endless cycle of life and death, Malton persisted for years.
Factions of humanity waged a relentless war against the organized hordes of the undead. The living barricaded themselves within the remains of houses. If one fell, they too would rise, transformed into a living dead, only to be returned to the world of the living by a rare and precious serum.
Life of Malton hinged on the ebb and flow of the survivors and the undead, locked in a perpetual struggle, a dance of destruction and rebirth.
When life is naught but a whisper, and death a revolving door, and nothing is really permanent... what remains? A friendship, a quest for power, and the endless dance of strife.
But in this city of perpetual rebirth, the news of a final end – a nuclear dawn – shattered the fragile order. City boiled.
The city, a boiling cauldron. Some forgave, some sought vengeance to settle old scores. Groups once fragmented now reinforced their ranks. Long forgotten hermits, drawn by a newfound sense of purpose, emerged from the shadows. Chaos erupted, and amidst the storm, some raged, others stood defiant, among both the living and the dead.
Kempsterbank, The Whitenoll Building. Stronghold of the Knight Templars. About 100 survivours. Land of the living.
Ridleybank, The Blackmore Building. Attack of Ridleybank Resistance Front, about 70 zombies. Land of the dead.
And Whittenside, Fort Perryn. Lots of both. Land of constant fights.
Order is clear: the city must be destroyed. Yet, a glimmer of hope remained – a permanent antivirus serum, crafted by scientists a decade ago. A testament to ten years of tireless work, lay in wait, sufficient to break all the remaining citizens from endless circle of rebirth. Yet experimental... but better than nothing.
The last NT scan found 3840 survivors and 2247 zombies fighting, living and dying on a streets, plus some number of bodies ready to rise... A mere fraction, perhaps, of the 2.39 million souls who once called this city home... yet a worth number.
But this alone was insufficient to set the evacuation in motion. The army's intervention always require a lawful pretext, a legitimizing event that would serve as a clarion call to action. A sanction to breach the city's doomed borders.
That night, the Fort Perryn Defence Force (FPDF) plotted their final, desperate gambit. Fort Perryn, a fortress that had fallen to the undead countless times, had always been a symbolic place. Now long in a hands of a dead. It always was a matter of principle, a burning need: to reclaim the fort, to keep it in the hands of the living!
It was a question of pride, of prestige, of a reputation for a last standing humans. And so, the FPDF resolved to make their final stand – to die on their feet, guns blazing, in a gesture of futile, glorious courage against the encroaching darkness.
They made their move with the first rays of the last day. The undead within Fort Perryn's walls were caught off guard, their numbers shattered by a swift and merciless assault. The FPDF reclaimed their fortress for the last time.
But the zombies, relentless and unyielding, regrouped with alarming rapidity, their numbers swelling to a crushing tide. Yet the defenders held fast, their grip unyielding. Zombies required time to wear FPDF troops down and to crush the defence lines... But time, that most precious of commodities, was a luxury the city could no longer afford.
You are standing on a cemetery.
The grass between the headstones seems smooth and undisturbed.
You spray: "Back where it all began. Urban Dead".
You drink the wine.
Exausted, you can go no further.
The connection to server was lost.
"You search and found nothing", eh?
Melancholy claimed some of citizens in a final hours... madness others. Time of the city ended, and with it, purpose. Tomorrow was a ghost. Supplies, defenses, routine – all meaningless. Even some of the dead paused their chase, sensing the finality.
Zombies killed half of Fort Perryn's defenders. The gates hung crookedly, a grim testament to the devastation, and gatehouse was full of dead. Yet, amidst the ruin, courage remained. The humans knew, in that moment, that the fort was theirs, once and forever. They've finally won, at last. And in a final, desperate moment, the armory crew sent a signal to the city, a beacon of glory and will.
"You have detected... what? A flare from a Perryn military base?! Along with massive gunfire?! Have you recorded it?"
"Yes, general, sir!"
"We got to immediately send help to our troops trapped it Fort! Not much time left before bombs goes down!"
"But general... there could not be any army units... after twenty years..."
"Do you think I'm an idiot?! Of course NOT! But now we do have a legal right to intervene and evacuate every person we find. Go and send the copters to the city, now!"
First helicopter emerged above Malton about the same time phosphorous bombs began to plummet onto the city streets, heralding the initiation of the Gomorrah protocol. This apocalyptic plan was deceptively simple: to unleash a colossal firestorm, a maelstrom of flames that would ravage and purify the metropolis.
The protocol's first phase involved raining down incendiary bombs upon the city, while the second phase would unleash nuclear ordnance, transforming scattered blazes into a raging inferno that would engulf the city in a torrent of high-temperature flames, scorching the land clean of the virus.
Helicopters touched down in designated zones, their rotors whipping up whirlwinds of debris as they awaited the desperate survivors who stumbled towards them through the ravaged streets.
In a gesture of mercy, the most presentable zombies (those that appeared most intelligent) were invited to board... but the majority were met with a hail of bullets from the machine gunners stationed on the helicopters, their twisted bodies crumpling to the ground as the aircraft lifted off, leaving behind a trail of death.
The helicopters, like metallic angels of mercy, scoured the ravaged city, plucking survivors from the most unlikely of places: from the flickering embers of burning buildings, from the shadowed depths of makeshift shelters, from the hallowed halls of crumbling churches, and from the dizzying heights of shattered skyscrapers.
As helicopters descended upon Fort Perryn, the air was ablaze with the fury of clashing forces. Gunners laid down a withering field of fire, bolstering the human defenders, yet the zombie hordes proved an unyielding tide, their numbers too great to be stemmed. With the situation spiraling out of control and time running out, the FPDF forces were compelled to quickly retreat.
FPDF abandoned the fort to the merciless artillery that reduced it to a blazing inferno, entombing their undead enemies within. As they fled, they cast a final, poignant glance at the stronghold they had fought so hard to hold. In that moment, they saluted their last goodbye to Fort Perryn, a bastion that had been their refuge, their sanctuary, and their home.
Large, cohesive groups of survivors were swiftly evacuated, their organization and unity facilitating a relatively seamless escape. In stark contrast, establishments like the Burchell Arms, which had become magnets for lone individuals, brought some problems. But most of them evacuated on time.
The city was already ablaze when the evacuation helicopters began their desperate ascent. Then, from a sky choked with ash, tactical nukes rained down, annihilating entire city blocks in a maelstrom of fire and steel.
Inhabitants of Holloms Auto Repair near the ravaged Caiger Mall met their helicopter.
The Emergency Operations Center's antiquated protocols dictated an evacuation point at Bird Boulevard. Final, desperate rendezvous. In a last-ditch bid for survival, the CORAM operatives assembled at the designated coordinates, surrounded by a ravenous horde of zombies. And in the end, like a miracle, the helicopters descended, their rotors whipping the air into a frenzy as they bore the survivors away from the abyss, leaving the shattered city to its unquiet dead.
Evacuation of the last Fort Creedy survivors was a living hell.
The zombies froze, necks craned skyward. For the truly lost, the savage, those who embraced the undead existence, evacuation was a meaningless word. Even if they were to be restored to their former human state, their existence would be a bleak and hollow shell, a mere parody of life, stripped of purpose and significance.
And then they met their final death.
As the last helicopter fled the doomed place, a monstrous thermonuclear charge fell upon the city like the wrath of God. The true nature of this apocalyptic weapon remained shrouded in mystery, but its consequences were all too terrifyingly clear.
No one knew what it was, but it didn't matter. Colors bled, the sky fractured. A colossal shockwave, accompanied by a torrent of ionizing radiation, burst forth from the epicenter of the cataclysmic explosion, leaving in its wake a trail of desolation.
A tidal wave of radiation swept across the city, scorching the earth and purging the zombie virus from the land. The mushroom bloomed, and the city was cleansed, sterilized.
And in the end, a blast of unforgiving heat and energy, a fiery reckoning, reduced everything to smoldering ashes, erasing all remnants of life and unlife alike, leaving naught but a desolate, smoldering tomb. Heat and fire consumed Malton, leaving only ash.
In death, the city rests.
The evacuated zombies were finally revived, once and for all.
All from Malton received an antiviral serum that destroyed the last samples of the virus in their bodies. No one will rise again after death.
On the ashes of Malton a quarantine zone was created. No virus has been detected there anymore.
Everyone was relocated to New Malton, a town that began construction 20 years ago nearby when the outbreak began. It's a beautiful place. This shimmering oasis, with its lush verdure and towering skyscrapers, beckoned with promise and joy, as people rediscovered the simple pleasures of life. The air was alive with the sweet scent of blooming flowers and the soft hum of possibility.
With gentle guidance and help, the survivors were encouraged to shed the scars of their past and embark on a journey of healing and renewal, their footsteps quiet on the paved streets as they slowly began to reclaim their lives.
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Ivan Klenov aka NavY LiK, 2025.
Over and out.