Chapter 77 - Loot Run

Kara slipped into the mall through one of the regular doors, flashing a grin at the skeleton dog following close behind her. Leave it to Selena to send a guardian angel to watch over her! It was a nice thought, although she hoped the dog would be okay. Kara was confident that she could get out of this place in one piece, even if things went badly. But Selena really cared about that dog, so she didn’t want anything bad to happen to the pup either.

It had taken a while, but the flood of zombies had finally slowed enough that she could get inside. For a bit, she’d wondered if the flow of undead was ever going to let up, but eventually it had.

She wasn’t sure whether that was because all available zombies had already been deployed, or if there was a reserve somewhere deeper within the building. Based on the number of cars they’d seen outside, odds were on the latter, so she intended to be extra cautious. Another rush like the last one at the wrong moment and she’d be in a shit ton of trouble.

The rotten thing was, she was actually a fan of zombie movies. She’d seen most of them. These zombies weren’t even as bad as some of the ones in films. After all, a single bite didn’t turn you into one, like you saw in so many versions of the story. Alfred was living proof of that; he’d taken a zombie bite day one and was still kicking.

You only turned if they killed you. That was excellent news, and made the whole thing a lot easier to handle.

That said, it still sucked. Zombie movies were cool. Real world zombies were decidedly not cool. They stank, for one thing. If anything, zombie flambé smelled even worse than the original, and the store was full of that smoky smell, faintly reminiscent of overcooked bacon that had also somehow gone bad.

She slipped from shadow to shadow as she danced her way through the store. Without power, there were plenty of shadows to hide in, and even at tier two, Shadow Walk made her close to invisible inside a shadow. Against humans, on their guard, Kara figured she would still have issues. But these zombies were not especially bright.

A steady trickle continued moving from the doors to the deeper parts of the mall, down a few aisles, and then out through the south doors, but it was nothing like it had been. That allowed Kara to make her way over to the center of the store where the escalators were, and from there toward where Sue had blown up a bunch of the things. Hope was nowhere to be seen. The dog was still around; Kara felt sure of that. But wherever she was keeping watch, she was as good at being invisible as Kara.

The ones too close to the mall’s interior would have to wait, for now. While there were still zombies coming through, she couldn’t get that close to their path. But there were still plenty of other zombie bodies to tap for crystals. She started with the ones nearest the escalator, then moved from there to the shattered glass Sue had used for entrance and exit from the place. There were a stack of dead zombies there, and it was far enough from the doors she had no trouble looting them.

Her pocket jingling faintly with the rattle of two dozen new crystals, she made her way deeper into Target, heading for the piles of dead nearest the mall entrance. That’s where most of the ones she’d personally slain were, along with the ones Selena’s archer zombies had taken out, too.

Another batch of three undead came from the mall, stalking their way down the aisle. Kara ducked for cover, barely avoiding being spotted. The undead continued on their way…and no more followed. Was that really the end of the horde?

She almost felt disappointed. They’d figured there might be a thousand of the things in this place. A thousand undead was a heaping ton of crystals, more than enough to catapult both of them to some serious power levels. How many had come out this way? Counting a moving mass of bodies like that wasn’t easy, but she was guessing somewhere north of two hundred, but less than four hundred.

Now that the coast seemed to be clear, Kara moved closer to the mall doors, where the slain undead were thickest. Zombies riddled with arrows lay everywhere, alongside burned and blasted undead. One after another, Kara touched them as quickly as she could, collecting a new crystal from each. Most of them were tier one, but she was delighted to find a fair number of tier two crystals in the mix as well. Every little bit helped!

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

She reached down and pulled one of her arrows from a zombie body, examining the shaft. It was in pretty decent shape. Certainly still usable. Most of those arrows probably were, so she started collecting those at the same time, sliding each arrow back into her mostly empty quiver.

Having extra arrows was never going to be a bad thing.

Kara moved quickly from body to body, tapping each gross, rotting corpse in turn. Seriously, she was glad Selena had insisted on splitting the loot fifty-fifty now, because this was truly disgusting. She pulled yet another arrow from a body with a shlorping noise that made her wince. Totally gross.

She’d been doing a pretty good job developing her spell collection, but Kara knew she had a long way to go if she wanted to catch up with Selena and truly be an equal partner. This mission might be the one that did it, though. Most of her crystals were black and clear, same as Selena, and that was all these undead seemed to drop.

Kara: Magical Stones

Point 1: Black Stone (Tier 3) - NightVision

Point 2: Clear Stone (Tier 4) - Agility

Point 3: Black Stone (Tier 2) - Shadow Walk

Point 4: Clear Stone (Tier 2) - Stamina

Point 5:

She had a few spare stones, too, including one Darkness spell that she really wanted to socket. With the combination of Darkness and Shadow Walk, plus NightVision, she could create pockets of shadow, which in turn made her invisible, but she’d still be able to see. The synergy was incredible!

Selena’s synergy was excellent, too. It was like the black crystals had two well-defined paths to tread. You could be a necromancer, animating and controlling undead, casting various attack spells at a distance—or you could become like a shadow assassin, stealthy and hidden, striking from the darkness.

The latter appealed to Kara way more than the former.

There were a few final zombies to loot, just outside the doors, deeper into the mall. Kara slipped up to the big glass doors, trying her best to keep herself hidden, and peered ahead. There was no movement. Nothing so much as twitched out there in the shadowy space beyond.

The mall was big. A handful of scattered skylights above let some sunlight in, but not much. It was a single story mall, so there was no upper deck above, but the ceilings in the main hall were still close to twenty feet tall. The net effect made the entire place feel like a massive, empty cavern.

Beyond that, Kara had an instant sense of something powerful and wrong waiting out there. It knew she and Selena were there. Whatever it was, it was awake, aware of them, and actively fighting them.

“Well, shit,” Kara murmured, her voice barely audible.

Those four zombie bodies lying out there in the open, ready to loot, suddenly felt more like a trap than an opportunity. Kara turned and left them alone, heading back the way she’d come.

When she reached the escalators, though, she remembered Selena saying something about toilet paper. They had some, but it would be good to grab a little more while she could. The chances to do so might become a lot more rare before too long. Kara dashed up the steps, reaching the top floor and scanning around for a moment before she found what she was looking for—one bag of toilet paper rolls and one box of the other hygiene product she figured they’d both be missing before long.

Then she headed back to the escalator, but noise from below made her freeze before she descended. Exercising maximum caution, Kara slipped up to the edge of the steps and peered over.

The zombies were back, and in force! They were pouring through the doors and the shattered window, scores of them. It was like a reverse of the initial flood, only this time they were all rushing to get back into the mall, instead of leaving it. For a terrible moment Kara worried that something bad had happened to Selena, that she’d been overrun, hurt, or even killed.

But then something poked her from behind.

Kara almost screamed at the shock. She whirled in place—to see Hope sitting there, doggy face tilted at a little angle like she was curious what Kara was up to.

“You are going to give me a heart attack!” Kara hissed softly.

Hope flashed her a doggy grin.

Seeing Hope was good news, though. If Selena was dead, the spell controlling Hope would have faded, and the dog would have reverted to being a monster again. Since Hope was still on her side, watching out for her, that meant Selena was okay, too.

Escape was still going to be an issue, though. The flood of zombies filled half the store downstairs, now. Worse yet, their numbers were so high that they were pushing their right flank closer to the escalators. As Kara watched, the zombies furthest on the right were pushed over by the sheer mass of undead so far that one of them actually stepped up onto the escalator.

Once he was moving up the steps, he kept moving.

Once one zombie started going up the stairs, the one behind it followed, and the one after that, and the one after them…

In moments, the dangerous situation had turned deadly. Instead of being trapped on the upper floor while zombies went past below, now she had a single-file stream of zombies heading up the steps directly toward her.

Once they reached the top, she’d have to fight them hide and hope they somehow missed her. And if she fought, it would only attract the attention of the other zombies, sending even more of them after her. Kara knew she could take down a good number of them, but not hundreds!