291 At the top of the... building
Getting to the building was the easy part of the job. Getting to its top without alerting all the zombies nearby, however, was an entirely different thing.
Right after the group bashed the doors open and rushed inside, they had to face a group of seven different zombies. From the marks on the inner side of the doors and the walls all around the entrance, those zombies were desperately trying to get out to the street, making it impossible to avoid them.
Yet…
Just like the zombies back at the mall, those ones have yet to go through the first upgrade, something that all the zombies in the vicinity of Mathew’s school and the media building he conquered have gone through already.
As such, after three quick slashes of Mathew’s doing and two more by each of his wives, the first group in the building fell.
“Barricade the doors, Leila, stay with them just in case, then follow us up!” Mathew called out, not stopping even for a second.
Barricading the door was the obvious countermeasure against having zombies enter this place once they would all go upstairs. And yet, their hastiness when it came to breaking the entrance open made it quite the challenge to block said entrance again!
“On it, keep on going!” Leila reported, saluting her saber to her forehead in some weird, anime-like move, before she stopped in her tracks, turned around, and ran back to the broken entrance.
“Stay on me,” Mathew called out just in case, ignoring all the corridors and doors leading to separate apartments, focusing on conquering the stairs instead.
There were no zombies on the first three floors. The broken windows at the end of each of the corridors were the likely culprit behind it. Yet, the situation on the fourth floor was slightly different.
‘So many of them,’ Mathew thought, changing his course from the next flight of stairs to the corridor of the level.
There were about eleven zombies all gathered at a single point in place, all scraping and knocking at a single, reinforced door.
‘Someone’s likely inside,’ Mathew took notice, sliding on the bloodied floor of the corridor as he ran Nadia’s saber across four different necks in a single move.
“Die!” Nadia whispered, properly holding her voice back when she leaped right into the gap Mathew opened and started to cut and slash like some sort of madman.
‘Damn,’ Mathew thought, taken aback by the sight while he busied himself with the two zombies furthest away in the corridor. ‘She’s really a sight to behold when she gets serious,’ he thought as two more heads fell down by his feet.
“Let’s keep going,” Nadia urged, breaking Mathew out of his state of awe as she turned right around as soon as her machete plunged into the skull of the last zombie. She pulled it out while taking a step back towards the stairs, not even looking at the fruits of her labor.
The next two floors turned out to be empty as well. All the zombies that ended up there most likely either fell out of the building windows or ended up massacred by that lone door on the fourth floor.
The seventh and the last floor weren’t all that different either. With only three zombies to jumpscare Mathew and his girl, it ended up secured properly with just a passing swing from each of the partners.
“Now, to the roof,” Mathew muttered once he reached the very top of the staircase and placed his hand on the metal bar that acted like the door’s handle. “Are you ready?” he then asked, taking a short pause to look at Nadia.
“Let’s go!” Nadia happily replied, raising her left elbow before using her clothing on its outer part to wipe the blood off her machete.
Mathew pushed the door open, ready for any kind of challenge that could await them at the top.
The young man had an inner feeling that reaching the very top of the building would force them to face some sort of a tougher enemy. Maybe an evolved zombie or two. A twice-evolved zombie lingered at the back of Mathew’s head as a remote possibility.
Yet, contrary to all the game mechanics that Mathew discovered about this world of apocalypse… the boss awaiting in the last part of the location didn’t appear to be implemented. And save for some birds that first looked at the newcomers in the doorway only to then get scared and fly away… the rooftop was completely deserted.
“Well,” Mathew muttered as he straightened his back and took yet another glance at the roof. “That’s quite anticlimactic,” he added as he lowered his weapon.
“I’m here!” Leila then called out, bursting right through the doors only to stop when she noticed Mathew and Nadia simply standing and doing nothing. “Fuck!” she cursed. “I’m late?”
“There wasn’t much to do in the first place,” Mathew replied only to take a look over the girl’s shoulder and back into the staircase. “Where’s Norbert?”
“Coming right… up!” the man replied himself, although, from the sound of his voice, it was quite clear he was quickly reaching the limits of his stamina.
‘Right, he hardly gained any levels so he isn’t that different from your average human,’ Mathew thought, biting down on his lips. ‘How could I forget? Even if he is a former police officer, that doesn’t mean he has the same kind of stamina that we do!’
“Get up here and take a moment for rest, then try to gather all the information about the horde below,” Mathew ordered, turning his eyes away from the door and then moving towards the edge of the roof.
‘Strange,’ he thought when he stood right at the edge, staring down at the ground quite a distance. ‘Before the apocalypse, just taking a glimpse from this kind of height would make me light-headed,’ he thought.
The young man raised his sight, moving it through the streets and alleys below, all perfectly visible from his vantage point.
And there it was, a horde like many others Mathew’s team already brought down.
It appeared to be about a thousand zombies strong and sprawling all over what looked like a car mechanic shop.
‘Some are banging on the garage doors, others are trying to force their way through the main entrance,’ Mathew quickly took some observations on his own.
“Mathew, come back,” Norbert then called.
He was resting his hands on his knees while breathing quite heavily. Fat drops of sweat poured down from his forehead. His hair was sticky with all the sweat and dirt it absorbed.
The eyes of the two men meet up.
“I think I located where both of the evolved leaders are,” he announced.
“Double evolved? Triple?” Mathew asked, perfectly aware this was unlikely to be the case.
p-A- n-d-A-n-0-v-e-1、(c)om Or, in other words, he simply wanted to know whether the horde two streets ahead would be a challenge or a walk in the park for the three combatants of their group.
“I told you before, I can’t really confirm it,” Norbert sighed. “But they don’t appear to be that much stronger than the zombies around them,” he pointed out. “So I guess, there are only two once-evolved zombies that oversee this entire horde?”
Mathew smiled. A hint of red flashed in Nadia’s eyes. Leila lazily swung her saber before resting its dull end on her shoulder.
“I only need to know one more thing, then,” Mathew announced right as his two guests from the other group finally managed to climb up the stairs and get to the roof. “Where are they?”