[Player Log Start!]

[Log Holder: Verity Monroe]

[Level: 1 – Boss Stage]

A hoard had broken through the wall. There was no warning, no meandering. Just a giant wave of undead bodies marching forward with purpose, ploughing the great barrier down without even flinching.

She darted through the mess, guns mowing down anything before it got close enough to do damage, and then slashing away at anything than managed to get into hand range. There were screams all around her, and she reveled in the chaos. A person was standing twenty feet away from her, holding a fire extinguisher desperately between them and a zombie, who was scrabbling uselessly at them.

They looked up excitedly when they noticed Verity staring, and their eyes lit up, “Hey! Please! I need some help-” The extinguisher slipped from their hands at the distraction, and the zombie lunged forward, going for their neck.

Verity watched dispassionately as they crumbled to the ground. Then she raised her shotgun and fired into the zombie. Went up closer to aim the gun at the newly bitten person, who looked up at her blearily.

“Please.” He whispered in a faraway voice, “Don’t… there’s a cure, right? You can’t do this to me…”

Verity sighed and tilted the barrel up, killing another zombie that was attempting to sneak up on them. The person flinched at the resulting gunshot, looking at their hands as if they expected to find them splattered with their own brains.

She leaned up close to them, making sure to meet their pinprick eyes, “Survive.” She instructed him, a low growl rattling in her chest. The sound of her own voice nearly scared her. It was unnatural. Why did she sound like this? Why was she leaving this person behind? She didn’t know. All she could feel was the sensation of turning around, letting red haze cover her eyes all over again.

There was a presence coming from right behind her. She could feel it.

[Applying Killer Instinct…]

She swung around, burying her knife hilt deep into the head of the zombie behind her. More decaying brain matter sprayed onto her already caked hand. This one came with maggots, though. So, she took the time to wipe her hands free before continuing with the carnage.

This was a hotbed of destruction. The testing buildings had fallen from the inside. The streets were taken over, and zombies had swarmed the domestic areas. Tents crumpled and bent under their unrelented marching, trampling the people inside under it, too. The gates were swinging open, and the lookouts stationed above it had been knocked loose. One of them was holding onto the edge for dear life, while the other wasn’t in sight. Must have fallen already.

Verity put him out of his misery. It was for his overall good.

She killed so much that green panels filled her vision, but she paid no mind. The red silhouettes marking out her targets were the only things that she cared about. And blacking out those red targets.

She broke a femur under her fingers, relishing the sweet sound of breaking bone, right after she kicked a whole into a sternum. Whether the sternum and the femur were connected, she wasn’t sure. Blood and gore surrounded every surface, so she was having trouble telling what was what.

Her gun clicked. Empty.

She strapped it to her back, pulling out a smaller pistol and continuing with the barrage.

When that gun ran out, she tossed it. Who knows if the bullets shooting out into the bloody haze even hit anything. It was just the satisfaction that came with pulling the trigger and hearing the shot. It was about the sensation of flesh under her fingernails, soft and pliable, moreso than human flesh was.

Someone was trying to talk to her. She couldn’t make out the words. Her hand twisted around, colliding with something in her blind spot. Was it considered a blind spot if she knew if something was there? The words were still washing over her. Speech that she didn’t bother to assimilate.

[Jared Caliber Has Used Compulsion!]

“-Vera, listen!” The words finally broke through her awareness.

She froze, the blood pumping through her veins froze to a standstill. They were surrounded by blood. Gore. Carpeting the ground, the walls, her skin. How hadn’t she noticed how sticky and grimy she was? Her hair was all fused into one big lump with thick blood and viscera.

She and Jared were alone. It was quiet. Zombies were fallen at her feet, but no one else was there. But sounds of violence were still echoing from… outside? Where was the outside? She was outside.

Except they weren’t. They were in a building. When had she gone inside?

Jared was looking at her carefully, as if he was afraid that she would go berserk all over again. He waved a hand in front of her eyes, “Are you with me now?” He asked, voice calm and careful.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

Verity nodded, not trusting herself to speak. She carefully put the knife in her hands back inside her coat. It was slick with shreds of muscle and blood, but the inside was equally grimy, so it didn’t matter. Jared was still watching her, his guard up as he waited for the next move. She opened her arms wide, head hanging low.

Jared rushed into the hug, paying no mind to the viscera covering her from head to toe. She grimaced, feeling tears trickle down from her eyes. She shouldn’t be crying right now. Why was she crying?

Something wet and warm hit the corner of her neck, not as thick as blood, but instead more like water. Jared sniffled under his breath. He was crying too.

“What happened?” She asked, the words still sounding disconnected from her. As if she had told a different person to say the words for her, instead of it coming direct from her mouth.

“The Boss Fight started.” Jared explained, “You left Terry behind, remember? Had one of your fits.”

“Shit, Terry.” She whispered, moving away from him, “Is he okay?”

“Yeah.” Jared agreed, letting her deflate with relief, “He fought through it and regrouped with the rest of us on the roof of one of the four-story buildings.”

“Good.” She sighed, relaxing just a little. She couldn’t believe she’d left him behind. What was she thinking?

“Hey, no guilt tripping.” Jared nudged her with his shoulder, “I can see your thoughts.”

“No, you can’t.” Verity laughed, shoving him away, “You can just control their thoughts. And, by the way, don’t do that again.” She told him, feeling like she was finally taking in air for the first time in ages.

“You knew?” Jared asked, looking at her with new light in his eyes. A scared light, “How did you know that I was Compelling you?”

Verity shrugged, feeling the attention prickling across her skin. This wasn’t how she usually felt around Jared’s probing. What had changed?

“Maybe because you were being so forceful about it.” She suggested, “If you were being more subtle with your other victims, or maybe because they didn’t know you well, then that could have changed how the popups appeared.”

Jared nodded carefully, “Be more subtle, then.” He surmised, “I can do that.”

“Be as subtle as you like, I know you too well for you to get your little claws in.” Verity teased him. He colored, and stuck his tongue out at her. She took that moment to zero in on a zombie that was heading in their direction, right above Jared’s ear.

She lifted her gun and fired, not even concerned about missing. She wouldn’t miss a shot that easy. The zombie fell, just as expected, but Jared was left a quivering mess.

“You thought I was gonna kill you?” She teased him. He shook his head, but couldn’t seem to bring out the words to dismiss that fear entirely. Even her oldest friend knew what a monster Verity was. Good. At least his survival instincts were still intact. They would need those in the coming months. Or years. Or however long it took to do this.

“The panels mentioned a King Zombie.” She continued, letting the brief moment of levity pass by.

“Oh, yeah, I saw that same message.” Jared confirmed, falling into step to let her cover his flank as they moved through the chaos in a tight formation perfected years ago. They hadn’t had the chance to make use of it recently, due to all the people they had picked up, but good to see that they still had it.

“You see any sign of this thing?”

“Unsure. But, then again, we’ve been keeping to the edges.” Jared replied, “Didn’t want to risk getting separated even more than we already were.”

“Prudent.” She replied, trying not to fixate on the fact that it was her running off that had made them resort to such measures. If only she could prioritize for once, this whole thing could have been avoided, “So, you think that the King Zombie is in the thick of things?”

“Most definitely.” He agreed, “But we can’t go off chasing after him now. We need to regroup first.”

“Why can’t we?” She asked crossly, “We’ve got the main firepower of the group right here, don’t we?”

“Our other members are a part-time tiger, a wizard, and a guy who has a mushroom glove. We are not the main firepower here, Vera.” Jared told her, ducking out of the way of a lunging zombie, and ramming its head into a wall with a fluidity that made it seem like he had been doing this all his life, and not for two and a half months.

“I’m sorry, say that last part again?” Verity asked, “What’s this about a guy who has a mushroom glove? I mean, the others I get, but what can Terry do with that-”

She was cut off by a wall of fluffy, green matter, swirling through the air and wrapping itself around a zombie she had been planning to shoot. When the green stuff shrunk back, she found that the zombie had been reduced to bones and some trace ligaments, with the rest being swallowed up by the matter in an instant.

The tendrils receded to their main place, around the hand of Terry Glasgow, who was looking at her reproachfully.

“Hey, Terry!” She smiled, trying not to show how nervous she was. She must have looked a sight, caked in blood and gore, grinning like a madwoman. Terry didn’t deign her with a response, simply looking at her with condemnation, which, hey, she could understand. It was a shitty thing for her to do.

“What happened?” Michael asked, following after them, surrounded by a wreath of green flames. Looked like that Sorcery was coming handy, finally. He made a beeline for her, reaching forward for a second, before rethinking that, and merely asking, “Why did you do that?”

“I don’t know.” Verity whispered, for lack of a better answer to offer.

“We gotta figure that out, right?” Asadullah commented, popping up behind her, “Because that is not normal. Is this the first time that’s happened?”

She shook her head, cringing slightly as the Deception bar appeared in the corner of her vision. It was necessary, though. If they found out, they wouldn’t let her stay. And if she didn’t stay here, then where the hell else was she supposed to go?

“None of that is important.” Jared insisted, covering for her, “We gotta get started on catching that King Zombie, now.”

“What’s this about a King Zombie?” A gruff, older voice sounded out from the barrage of wordless violence. Everyone turned around to look at the interloper. Not an interloper as it turned out, because standing there, holding a zombie head skewered onto a pike, stood Gideon Tench.

He was so fresh off from the Tracklands that he still had the gas mask wrapped around his face. All the better to not have to inhale the blood that had saturated the air.

Someone opened their mouth to say something, but then Terry pointed hysterically out of a window overlooking the border. Another wave of zombies was coming.

“That direction was where Ben was supposed to go.” Verity realized in a panic.

“Don’t worry, she got into the Sub-Level.” Tench rushed to assure her, “Focus on surviving this.”

Right. Because that was all the could do at the moment. Focus on surviving.

Something screamed in the distance. An inhuman wail that carried through the air.

She knew without being told that it was the King Zombie.

[Player Log End!]