[Player Log Start!]

[Log Holder: Terry Glasgow]

[Level: 1 – Boss Stage]

The Boss Battle had started. And Terry was stuck in a closet, listening to the carnage raining outside. Because Verity had left them behind.

He couldn’t fight the zombies. His body was too weak, and training was abysmal. He would not be walking through this. So, he would resort to his normal ways of survival. Sitting and hunkering down into the most isolated place he could find.

But there was a problem with that plan this time around. He wasn’t lucky enough to be in a supermarket. This was a closet with no food, supplies, water, or even good air. He would starve here. There was nothing for them to rework here.

He gulped, trying to get his panicked thoughts under control. He couldn’t go out like this. There was an Apocalypse they needed to solve. That they had figured out how to solve. This wasn’t going to be the end of his story.

Fingers scraped across the flimsy wooden door that was keeping him safe from the monsters beyond. It was dangerous to go outside. They were waiting, right outside the door, to rip him apart.

What was he supposed to do?

He took a deep breath, taking stock of the limited items at his disposal. There were mops, brooms, buckets, cleaning agents, about everything you would expect from a maintenance closet. Oh, and the permanently dead body of a zombie.

Maybe the chemical cleaning agents could be mixed together to create some sort of potent murder gas. He was sure that that was a thing at some point. But he wasn’t sure what the chemistry behind it was, so he left that on the table. Desperate for more options, he began riffling through the pockets on his coat.

There were the vials of fungi samples he carried around shoved into every available pocket. That, and the thin packet of antibiotic tablets that he had brought to test on the zombies. Why hadn’t he brought his mason jar with the man-eating mold? It would be really useful right now.

But no, he had left it two floors down, at the back of their fungi cultivation room, which had climate control abilities.

Which meant that it couldn’t be accessed by zombies, which didn’t have the dexterity to open the finicky door handle. The jar might still be intact.

Okay, plan formed. He was going to fight his way through this hoard of zombies, get to the ground floor, break into the fungi cultivation room, and find his mason jar to unlock the secret weapon he had been brewing for the past week. It was the perfect plan. Now… how was he supposed to fight through them?

He picked up the longest mop he could find, giving the strong metal rod a considering look. Use garden shears to cut off the mop head on top, attach a spike to it instead, and he might have something there. Where to find the spike, though?

This was a maintenance closet. There were tools around. He found a nasty looking spoke meant to be stuck into the ground as a tent peg placed on a high shelf. It took an embarrassing amount of time to reach it, but he managed to reuse the rope strands of the mop to tie the spoke to the handle, tight enough to make sure it didn’t get displaced. Then, holding it in front of him, he pulled out his garden shears just in case something got the jump on him.

Keep a close-range weapon and a long-range one. Verity had given him that advice. When she hadn’t gotten that vicious look in her eye that had made her leave him behind. Terry knows that it was weird to blame a look, but he had no other way to describe it. It was just. A look that did not belong on her, even with how prone to violence she was. He hoped that she was doing alright.

Pushing all thoughts of her aside, juggling two immensely sharp objects in their hands, Terry braced himself against the door, straining to hear for just the right moment, when the least zombies were outside. The footsteps died for a second, and the blurry, red-soaked image through the window suddenly had far less shadow than they remembered.

Now was the time.

They threw the door open, luckily nailing a passing zombie right in the head with such force that the victorious panel popped up immediately.

[You Have Killed the Zombie (Lv. 2)]

[You Have-]

He walked right past the panel, already running. There weren’t many zombies in this area, but the ones that were weren’t of a high level. They were slow, and not as aggressive, and their durability was jack. But in a tight, cramped hallway, they could still be a problem if he let them overtake him. So, running. Shoving zombies out from in front of him with the makeshift spear, he bolted down the stairs, nearly slipping on the piles of viscera left behind. A couple of zombies had seemed to have done the hard work for him, and slipped down the stairs, cracking their skulls open on the smooth linoleum floors.

Getting down the stairs was a breeze. The real nightmare was happening outside.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

He tried not to listen to the screams. To pay attention to the wave of uncountable dead creatures, risen once more to march in that rhythmic thump that sounded far too organized to be from the true undead. It would only cast him into further despair, and he couldn’t allow that to happen.

Take deep breaths, keep barreling through. He could do this.

They had to do this.

On the ground floor, so close to the cultivation room, another zombie got the drop on Terry. They missed where they hit the zombie this time, lodging the spike into the side of their neck, allowing them to slide forward along the shaft, biting greedily in anticipation.

They put the shears through the top of its head, where it was exposed and unprotected. The head burst like an overripe grapefruit, sending clotted blood and discolored grey matter over his hands. They wanted to throw up. They wanted to scrub the skin off their hands.

They needed to knock the dead zombie to the side and heft open the door to the cultivation room.

And they did, putting all his energy into shouldering it open, slipping inside and slamming door in the face of an approaching zombie, with hands outstretched.

He sighed, slumping down behind the door. It was hot in here, making them sweat even more as he tried to catch his breath.

There were shelves crammed with fungi-covered petri dishes lining all through the room, lit up by artificial yellow sunlight. Somewhere in here was the mason jar he had hidden in the very back. Hoping that no one had taken it and disposed of it. They wouldn’t put it past these people.

Once he had gathered his nerves again, he began looking around. One shelf, two shelf, back shelves, all clear of his mangled glove, so where was-

Something shifted beside him. They snapped over to the sound, heart rate ratcheting up in excitement as he pulled out his shoddy spear. From behind the shelves, the person he had heard froze, gripping onto the shelf between them, nearly taking it down in their fright.

“Uh… won’t kill you?” He asked, shrinking into himself nervously as speech became necessary.

“Right. Of course. Terence?” The person asked, pulling themself out of the darkness, “What’re you doing here? Is that spear? Where did you get that?”

“Built it using stuff in the closet on the third floor.” Terry told her simply. They recognized her immediately as Lily, one of the lab techs in the program. She was always quiet and introverted, but had a good head on her shoulders and was good at making connections. Most of her background was in microbiology and epidemiology, but she had been able to make the shift to mycology easily.

She also was not suited for a zombie free-for-all. It was a miracle that she had gotten to a safe space in time, otherwise Terry was certain that she would have died immediately. Already she looked drawn and panicked at their statement.

“Oh, alright.” She whispered, “That makes sense.”

“Have you seen a mason jar?” Terry moved on, continuing to inspect the shelves.

“Yes…” She muttered, holding up the exact jar he was looking for. Disregarding her immediately, they rushed past to grab it, checking it for any damage. Not a single crack was visible, and the green spores roiled around joyfully at his touch.

“Thanks!” He cried, hugging it close to his chest, “It’s needed.”

Tucking it securely under his arm, he began moving to the workspace at the front of the room, searching through the drawers for anti-contamination gear. He wanted the elbow-long gloves made of hazmat-proof rubber. He pulled them on gingerly, tucking the edges of their sleeves into the thick gloves, making sure that there was no exposed skin all the way up to his shoulders. Once that was dealt with, he slowly uncapped the jar with a soft pop.

A slight green haze lifted up into the disturbed air, spreading light spores everywhere. Terry wrinkled his nose, waving his hands as he activated [Nature Affinity] soundlessly guiding the spores back into the jar. Lily watched the motion, mesmerized.

Terry reached in, pulling the moldy glove he had put inside it around his newly wrapped left hand. The fungus writhed over it but remained rooted on the original glove. Terry smiled to themself, flexing the hand slowly and watching the rippling green fungus move along with him.

“What’re you going to do with that?” Lily asked nervously.

Terry raised his left hand, shoving it forward. The fungus jumped out, slamming into the wooden shelf on the wall in the form of an arm of non-Newtonian fluid, before retracting quickly, leaving a hole eaten straight into the wood.

Lily squeaked, staring at it as if it was a demon come to life. Maybe it was. Terry hadn’t realized how scary it would be once he had constructed the thing.

[Fungal Glove Gained!]

[+5 on Attack!]

He grinned to himself, which seemed to scare Lily even more. She was edging away from him. Oh well, they weren’t going to be spending any time with her much longer. They had procured his weapon, and they needed to leave now.

They headed to the door, holding one hand away from their body as they tried to one-handedly wrestle the door open. It slipped open carefully, but the creak of the hinges was enough to catch the attention of the zombies still stumbling through the hallways.

“Where are you going?” Lily asked, watching him carefully.

“To meet up with my friends.” Terry replied, sparing her a glance, “You coming?”

She hesitated, thinking it over, “No.” She decided, “It is safer here.”

He wished that he could make that same choice. But right now, there was no other choice for him to pick. He could not in good conscience allow Jared and Michael to die. And especially not Asadullah.

He ventured into the mayhem once more, battling his way out of the building. There was so much blood. So much screaming. A man who worked at the food ration area was being ripped apart by two zombies, who had latched onto either of his arms. Terry forced himself to walk past it.

The most obvious to them were the vanishing Mobs. People he remembered spending time with for weeks and weeks, were now disappearing in front of him, narrowly avoiding being killed along with the unwitting people they had lured here.

Embracing the spirit of the Boss Battle, they made sure to take out as many zombies as they could manage, until they finally swiped one away from his face to reveal a tiger standing behind it, standing over a pile of slaughtered zombies.

Terry brightened up, waving over to him. Asadullah shrunk into a more human form, breaking into an excited smile. Jared was right behind him, as was Michael, surrounded by bright green fire.

“Terry, where’s Vera?” He asked, taking a second to bash another rotter’s head open.

“Not with you?” They signed.

Jared’s face darkened. That… wasn’t good.

Behind them, a bloody torpedo went past. Not bloody in a swear sense. Bloody as in covered with bloody. And wearing a jacket that was undoubtedly Verity’s.

“Ah, shit, I gotta grab her.” He announced, hurrying after her.

[Player Log End!]