[Player Log Start!]

[Log Holder: Verity Monroe]

[Level: 1 – Boss Stage]

By the time they had made their way back to Michael, Verity still had trouble understanding what was going on.

“What do you mean Derek’s the King Zombie?” She asked, incredulously.

“Yeah, what?” Michael parroted, staring at them as they climbed up the fire escape, “How long have you known this?”

“Ran over to tell you as soon as we figured it out.” Asadullah replied, affronted, “You think we would leave you out of something so important?”

Verity didn’t respond, burning with the guilt of her secret. They didn’t know she was a Harbinger yet. It was only a matter of time before it came out and she wasn’t looking forward to that fallout.

“Why aren’t there more people here?” Jared unsubtly changed the subject, “Didn’t you hear me when I told you to start recruiting your own army?”

“Not the time for jokes, Jared.” Michael told him firmly, “We need to kill Derek, don’t we?”

Terry nodded. He looked upset, and reluctant, but at least he had come to grips with reality, because Verity refused to have a repeat of the Roiland disaster.

“And we need to kill all the rest of the zombies, too.” Jared added, hefting up the box he had managed to keep hold of, even in the chaos that had unfolded, “This should do the trick, we think, but we need Tench to come and verify it for us, because it might be a trap.”

“Throw it to a zombie.” Terry suggested. Everyone recoiled at the idea.

“Are you crazy?” Jared asked, “What if it’s some kind of stat booster, and we supercharge the damn things? We don’t even more of whatever you’ve turned Derek into.”

Terry retracted into himself, guilt pouring off him in waves. Verity took that moment to raise her initial complaint, “How exactly did you figure out that Derek is the King Zombie?”

Terry nodded, and there was a certain confidence in his shoulders that immediately made it clear that he was going to be talking a lot, which wasn’t something he did often, unless it was about a topic he cared deeply about. That boded well for them, because she knew that they would be getting the best information they had at their disposal.

“Okay, so, we know that the King Zombie was inside Hygeia before the Boss Battle commenced.” He explained, eyes shining with delight as he walked them through his reasoning, “And it is also a very high level. Basic logic tells us that Derek was the most high level zombie in Hygeia. I know. I was meant to be the one keeping an eye on which zombies were being brought in for the test subjects. But that’s not all!”

He walked them through every minutia. The fact that the supposed location of the mob was exactly where Derek had been held. The way that all the patrols and patterns these zombies were taking mirrored video games that Derek had played as a human – because, it turned out that Derek and Terry knew each other before the apocalypse – but also games that Terry had exposed Zombie-Derek to.

“You’ve won me over.” She agreed.

“And you’re ready to kill him?” Asadullah asked, “I know that you’re… attached.”

Terry’s bottom lip quivered. Verity could have strangled the guy. Now was not the time to give his doubts the time to grow and take hold.

Still, the teal-haired boy – who didn’t have much teal left in his hair – shook his head, eyes steely and guarded, “Can manage it.”

Verity nodded, reaching forward to pat him to show her appreciation. He backed away from it quickly, so she gave up the touch, simply settling on telling him, “Good. You’ve… grown.” Terry beamed, so she made sure to tack on, “Do you have any way to go wholesale murder?”

“Not sure.” He tapped his chin, “Leaf blower would help.”

“A leaf blower.” Jared repeated, looking uncertain.

“Yeah!” Michael agreed, picking up on what Terry meant, “With a little compartment built in to get the powder into the air! But it should have a more targeted jet. Lucky Paine’s designs would work perfectly for a project like this.”

“Well, she’s not here.” Asadullah replied, “We have to make it with what we have, so do we have experience on mechanics of our own?”

“…Maybe.” Michael replied, “I helped her in the assembly line, so I’m used to putting things together, but I can’t actually make things. Maybe someone whose got full experience?”

“Tench helped her make things from scratch, right?” Jared added in, “Him and Ben, after they spent that time with Lucky Paine.”

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

“We really gotta thank her somehow, because she’s the only one who knew how to handle machines.” Michael shook his head, “But anyway, someone needs to take this project back to Tench, and get him to help with it, while the rest of us work on the fight against the King Zombie.”

Terry immediately raised his hand. Everyone glanced at Jared, who scowled back.

“What? You want me to go that badly?” He asked.

“Well, I’m not saying that we want you to leave.” Asadullah replied, looking painfully chagrined, “But Michael, Vera, and I all have super high combative abilities, and you… don’t.”

“Right.” Jared nodded, too sharp to be unoffended, “Of course. I understand.” He tapped his crutches on the ground as he backed away, “You don’t want me there, I get it.”

“Jared, that’s not what this is about.” She told him, feeling his hurt, “You’ll handle the people back at the medical sector better. It’ll work out fine.”

“But you’re going to get all the rewards for killing the beast.” Jared joked, cheering up quickly, “That’s what my main concern is.”

“Don’t lie.” She told him, making sure to smile back.

“Stop flirting and get over here!” Asadullah called to her, climbing down a fire escape. Verity followed after him, mimicking the hissing sound he liked to make when he was upset. That was the last joke they were able to make, as once on the ground, they began storming right into the zombie hoard.

At the beginning, it wasn’t hard. The routes were stamped out onto the ground, and the zombie’s awareness wasn’t the best, so they were able to dodge past them and work their way deeper. When the sun was high in the sky, that was when it got dicier.

She snuck in through the twelve foot gap between guardposts that should have theoretically been out of their reach, but then one turned its hollow eyes towards her, considering her carefully. It turned its entire body towards her, slumped over like a weak bag of bones. Before it could begin closing the gap on her, she rushed forward and stabbed it through the eye. One hit kill.

Every undead around her swiveled around to look at her. For a beat, no one moved. Asadullah and Michael met her eyes, one several feet ahead of her, the other behind.

“Run.” Verity mouthed, before she reached for her guns. And the beat passed, the zombies rushing at her, baying for flesh and brains. She was already blasting, slashing at whatever was in reach, but through the madness, she was able to spot Asadullah as he melted into the shape of a black-footed cat, zipping between the masses. There was green light coming from her left, presumably from Michael.

She didn’t have time to focus on that. Right now was a time for fighting. Her vision flickered with red haze, and she shook her head as best as she could when ripping a zombie’s head off. She felt like she was so close to drowning, fighting to get her head above water even as the bloody waters filled her head and made her think it was normal.

It was not normal. She was more than a Harbinger. Verity had to remember that. She was going to be better than whatever these people wanted her to be, and this would be how she proved it.

She crouched low, ditching the guns for particularly long daggers. The zombies knelt to grab her, and she took the chance to stab out their legs, turn them against their peers as meat barriers. Soon there was a pile of writhing zombies on the ground, and she had resorted to smacking away any new opponents away with dismembered bits of more zombies.

A piece of slime landed on her face, making the painful journey down until it splatted on the ground. She took a breath, forcing down the red mist that seemed to fill her up inside.

Think about good, happy things. Marshmallows, video games, quiet nights listening to everyone breathing. That’s what she was fighting for. Not for the sake of bloodshed. Of course not.

It was that half-present haze that managed to get her through the Epicenter, until she was crammed so tight with the rest of the zombies and caked with so much undead insides that no one seemed to be able to tell that she belonged to.

Finally, she caught sight of a giant tiger springing out from one of the nearby awnings to a spot just out of reach. Showtime.

She pushed out through the firm wall of clammy bodies, and fell out into a circle of… plain ground? Sure enough, she was in a large, empty space, perfectly circular and guarded by zombies that were moving around sluggishly. In the center, there was an engorged zombie, solid and menacing, dressed in the shreds of a uniform that were still barely hanging on. Its eyes gleamed with an unearthly blue that had been absent before, but it was undeniably Derek.

She gulped, pushing herself to her feet and casting a careful look around. No exits in easy reach. Of course. Asadullah moved to stand next to her, looking equally unnerved. Maybe even more.

“You got a plan?” She hissed.

“Do you?” He replied.

Derek, who had been watching them with hollow eyes, finally opened his mouth, letting out a scream that seemed more like a foghorn. She had a bad feeling about it before the notification ever popped up.

[King Zombie Has Summoned Zombies!]

Sure enough, the undead who had been content to mill about at the edge of the ground stumbled in. Verity braced herself for the one headed in her direction, hands skimming over her coat, only to come up with no loaded pistols. Or unloaded pistols. Only her shotgun remained, and she couldn’t afford to pull it off her shoulder right now. Knives would have to suffice.

Then a green fireball hit it, blowing it up on the spot. She cursed, backing up several steps. Following the track the cannonball had taken, she found Michael standing on the top of a nearby roof. She waved her hands wildly, grinning excitedly. A sniper! Brilliant thinking!

He returned the gesture with a thumbs-up, before pointing to something on ground level in a panic. She ducked to the side, just barely sidestepped another zombie that had wandered towards her. Right, the fight had barely started, she reminded herself, grabbing the zombie and hurling it to the ground headfirst, until it broke like an egg.

“Bring it, fucker!” She challenged it, dipping into the part of her arsenal that was reserved for desperate measures. Asadullah was nearly covered by a hoard of zombies, but he was putting a valiant effort in shaking them off. So far, she couldn’t see if anything had gotten to him.

She had to time this right. A grenade was nothing to mess around with. She thought she had picked out the right time, but then a zombie came lumbering up to her, and she had to duck low to spear its brain through the fleshy part under its jaw.

Asadullah was clear to run. Everything was clear. Okay, now or never. She pulled the pin, tossing the grenade straight at the King Zombie, her aim as reliable as ever.

At the exact moment, a green comet flashed through the sky, directed right at the King Zombie, too. She watched, horrified, as the two projectiles collided. A bright light erupted, throwing everyone back.

[Player Log End!]