LEVELING UP WIVES IN THE APOCALYPSE

`Before Mathew’s group arrived at the media building, its halls were in nearly perfect order. Outside a stray plastic cup here and a candy wrapping there, one couldn’t see a single flaw in its cleanliness.

And roughly an hour after reaching the building, Mathew’s group turned one of its main, representative hallways into a butcher’s paradise.

“How are we standing so far?” Mathew asked after plucking out yet another core from the zombie remains. He then turned around and raised his hand before wiping his forehead with his forearm, wary of spreading the blood from his hands to his face.

“Three hundred here,” Nadia reported from the corner where she counted the cores others brought to her.

“I should have about fifty more in my pile,” Daniel reported a moment later from where he kept his own pile of zombie remains.

“And about a hundred here, huh?” Mathew added, more to himself than to anyone else. He then jerked his head and looked to the side. “How about Norbert?” he asked while looking over at Daria. “Did he make any contact?”

“Not yet,” the girl shook her head. She then looked around only to purse her lips, look at Mathew and then shake her head sideways again. “Also, fifty-three cores here,” she added while raising a makeshift bag that she filled with cores plucked out of the zombie’s heads.

“Then keep watching,” Mathew summed up before turning up and tearing up a piece of cloth from one of the corpses that he took upon himself to harvest.

This sort of simple, makeshift bag already proved its value in temporarily storing the cores so there was no point in looking for an alternative. And with the cores from Mathew’s pile safely stored in his bag, he rose up to his feet before bringing them all to where Nadia continued to count every single one of them.

“He is here,” Daria added after just a short moment, right as Mathew was passing his bag to his beloved.

“Thanks,” he said before closing his eyes.

“In a moment, a friend I made will make contact with you,” Norbert’s ghost announced as soon as Mathew closed his eyes and allowed it to invade his thoughts.

“Got it,” the young man nodded her head before opening his eyes.

And just like Norbert announced, it wasn’t even a minute before someone appeared in the darkness of the further parts of the main corridor.

***

One and a half hours before

***

“I guess I’m all on my own now,” Norbert muttered to himself once everyone else left to grind down the zombies. He then looked through the window, eager to see his group-mates appearing outside.

‘I guess it won’t happen,’ Norbert thought after a moment. No matter how long he would linger by the window, he wouldn’t see others appearing.

And it was all because the place he pointed them out as the most favorable for their plans wasn’t anywhere close to being visible from his window.

“Since I’m stuck waiting, I might as well make myself useful,” Norbert muttered to himself before moving to the corner of the room where his group happened to plan their future action out.

He then took off his jacket, the only piece of his equipment left that he refused to let go. Even though it was in shambles, it was still the one last piece that allowed others to identify him as a policeman, after all.

‘In this way, I shouldn’t draw too much attention,’ Norbert thought to himself as he covered his entire, curled-up body with the jacket, making his entire self look like just a random pile of trash.

‘Now then,’ the officer thought before closing his eyes and immersing himself in his ability.

The experience of becoming a ghost was quite peculiar. It started with Norbert suddenly gaining awareness of his surroundings despite keeping his eyes closed. Then, his vision would raise to the level roughly a meter above his head, before the officer would obtain full control over moving his focus point.

Norbert couldn’t move his ghost like he would a drone or a magical camera. He changed the position of his point of view by focusing on different objects, then waiting for the image to clarify. Once this step would be done, Norbert would be free to repeat the process, pushing his ghostly apparition even further than he could previously.

‘They are getting ready, huh?’ the officer thought when he found the location of the rest of his group. Yet, rather than lingering there and watching how they decided on a formation before deploying themselves to each of their desired spots, Norbert continued to scout the insides of the building.

‘All of the lower floors are empty,’ he noticed roughly ten minutes ago.

Every change of perspective would take a few seconds at most. As such, even when adding the periodical sweeps that Norbert performed in the wide area around his body, checking every nook and cranny of the building was an easy task.

And a task that Norbert completed in less than a quarter of an hour, leaving him with just the topmost floor of the entire building.

‘I guess I can’t avoid it for much longer,’ he thought, before pushing his consciousness towards the one area that he had yet to check.

The majority of the upper floors were exactly like the rest of the building. Devoid of any human presence or any traps that Norbert could take notice of.

‘They don’t seem to have a merchant here,’ he thought when he finally brought himself to check the one room where he saw the disgusting performance before.

Yet, despite being prepared for the sorry sights inside, Norbert could barely keep his emotions in check. Yet, it wasn’t rage that filled his soul.

It was disbelief.

The ball of fat that likely called itself a woman and great warrior in the war against patriarchate and healthy diet alike, sat in a throne-like chair in the very middle of the room.

She was surrounded both by men and other women alike, all of whom eagerly tended to all her needs.

Two guys continued to fan her with a huge piece of looked like a tapestry reinforced with pieces of wood. The guy that Norbert saw licking the fatso’s feet before was currently massaging her back while two girls in the middle of their thirties massager her feet.

It was a peculiar sight, yet one that was warranted by just a single element of the picture. And it was the semi-automatic shotgun resting on the fat woman’s lap with her finger locked against the trigger.

‘Daughter of a whore,’ Norbert thought as he dived around the room, trying to look for clues that the rest of the party could use when storming the room later on.

Sadly, the woman clearly did her homework. And outside of the main door and a back door situated on the side of the room, there was no other entrance that one could take.

‘And both doors are well within both view and shooting range of hers,’ the officer thought. Yet, as he glanced through the room once again, a sudden idea popped into his mind.

“Hey,” Norbert’s ghost spoke out as soon as he saw the massaging man lower his eyelids.

The guy brought his eyelids up, looking around to answer whoever called him.

And then his face froze when he noticed not a single soul in his vincity attempted to make contact.

“What the hell are you slacking off for?!” the fatso shouted, raising the barrel of her gun and resting it against her shoulder so that the weapon was aimed in the general direction of the unlucky fellow.

“I’m sorry!” the guy instantly cried out, focusing back on the massage.

And once he closed his eyes again…

“Stay silent and don’t make even the slightest move,” Norbert said upon noticing that this time, fatso closed her eyes as well. “We don’t want our sniper to hit you by accident, don’t we?”

The fatso jerked off like a ball kicked by a soccer player.

She pushed herself forward… or rather, rolled off her chair only to end up sitting on the floor.

‘Or is she lying?’ Norbert thought, confused.

The woman was simply too fat for him to figure out whether she attempted to lay down or not.

“WHO IS THIS?!” the fatso called out, looking around and dragging the barrel of her shotgun around, ready to obliterate the one who dared to scare her like that.

“Damn it!” Norbert exclaimed, coming up with a plan right on the spot. “Can you make her move? Even a bit? This is the only spot that we don’t have an angle for,” he bullshited his way, using the timing when the woman would close her eyes to speak.

That was enough for the woman to open her eyes wide and continue flailing her shotgun around before freezing in terror.

“And now that she can’t hear me anymore, information just for you,” Norbert said as he forcefully stopped a giggle from coming out. “Find a way to get to the lower floors. Once you get there, we will figure out how to settle this situation.”