Jay ran right past Tom without stopping. He was supposed to continue running west toward where Stormcrusher's headquarters were. If possible they should disappear so they can't be followed. That was where Tom came into play. He began to pull his team back so they could get in a better position to take on the zombies coming now and give Kiera time to get set up in her second position.
If everything went according to plan, Tom should seem like he is out and about when they run into the zombies. That way they could keep them from attacking their base and still lay the blame squarely on Shandra's shoulders. Jay had been moving so fast, it took almost a minute for the first zombies to appear around the corner. They began looking in all directions and Tom's team was the only one they saw.
Groaning louder now that they had a target, the zombies began to shuffle toward them.
"Hold your positions! Get ready for a good fight! Kiera will have our backs shortly!" Tom called out to his team.
"Finally! Time for some action!" Michael said next to Tom, hefting both of his axes and bearing a sinister grin on his face as the bloodlust filled him.
Tom summoned Bron and Shadow, as well as a Dretch for some AOE fart attacks, hoping these zombies could be poisoned. Just before the first wave hit the party, a massive bolt of lightning shot from the sky hitting most of the front line and leaving a charred hole in the ground where it hit.
"Holy fucking shit! What the damn hell was that?!" Tom cried out in surprise.
"Sorry, that was me," Came a weak female voice from the back.
Turning, Tom saw Briana waving and smiling at him so big her eyes were almost closed.
"I learned some new spells and this felt like the time to use it," Briana explained, holding her staff with both hands now.
"Damn! Keep it up! That was amazing!" Tom said and turned back to the zombies.
The already unstable creatures had all fallen over or been stunned except those at the epicenter of the strike which had been completely blown apart or disintegrated. Beginning to shake off the effects, they continued their advance.
"First blood is ours, now take the fight to them!" Tom called out and everyone charged at once.
War cries and bellows of rage were let out as they met the zombies head-on. Tom's team had charged at them with such force that many of the zombies were bowled over and some began to be trampled as they clawed at the fighter's legs to try to get back up. They were all met with armor though, so their attacks had little effect.
Bron with his huge elephantine feet, simply continued walking around while swinging his giant axe, pounding his feet with every step as though he was crushing grapes in a winery. Tom had spent time almost every day with Bron during the time leading up to the plan's execution, training in how to use his choice of weapon more efficiently. He had learned so much in that short time that his attacks mowed down anything around him. Activating his sword's Dark Inferno ability and was lighting every zombie on fire as he struck them.
James was pissed. His typical strategy of dickshot to disarm them and then a headshot to kill them was completely out the window at this point.
"Fuck this shit! I wanna go back to fighting live opponents!" James complained loudly as he continued to shoot zombies in the head from behind Derek and his shield.
"Oh come on you big baby. Just pretend that they have dicks on their faces and headshots are just zombie dickshots." Derek said smiling at James' sour mood.
James paused at this, "You know, that's not a bad idea! Hey, dickface! How about some lunch?" With that, he began in earnest to fire shot after shot into the heads of zombies.
Squirrel had grown to the size of an SUV and had jumped into the fray biting and clawing at the zombies as they tried to climb up his fur. When they began to bog him down, he shook violently like a dog in a bath and the zombies were sent flying from his fur, some leaving behind limbs that were ripped off from the force.
Bobby and Clay were standing back to back as they cut down zombies left and right. Zach and Isaac had teamed up to fight off a group that had come after them and Isaac used his shield to defend them as Zach leaped over him to hit them with his attacks in a deadly game of leapfrog. Kedron had made his way near Bron for some relief, as it appeared he had already received a wound on his left arm. Briana was there to heal him though and he rotated the arm, testing how it felt, and jumped back into the fight. Even Jerky was getting in on the action, throwing up shields to protect Tom's back and jumping onto one of the zombie's faces, biting and clawing with a ferocity Tom had never seen from him before.
Suddenly about half of the remaining zombies broke off from the fight and began running west. It looked like the plan was working! They would be no match for Shandra's forces, but if they attacked her that would likely start a fire under her to retaliate. He just hoped he could help those enslaved during the conflict before Shandra wiped them all out. Something about this nagged at Tom though. The Master couldn't be playing all of his cards yet and would likely be able to put up a better fight when her warriors started attacking. At least he hoped that was the case.
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With the forces breaking off from the group, the cleanup became a breeze and he had to stop some of them, including Squirrel, from chasing after the others.
"We have to let them attack Shandra or she won't be drawn into the fight! If we just kill them all nothing will change! Hold your positions!" Tom called to the group, and everyone obeyed, if somewhat reluctantly. "We need to move back to the guild building so we don't seem like aggressors. Too bad Kiera missed out on the fun here."
With that order, the team retreated toward the Trammel Crow Center.
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Kiera was pissed. She and her team had run into another set of goblins on the way down the stairs delaying them even further. To make matters worse, when they did make it to the street level and began sprinting for the second building to aid Tom, they had to fight their way through a set of monsters that looked like a blob of jello that the System called Pseudo-Morphs that seemed to be mostly unaffected by their bullets.
Dale found out that they were able to be destroyed with physical weapons, but only if you hit their cores, which they seemed to be able to move around their amorphous bodies at will. Their most successful tactic was to strike at them with the physical weapons and let Janice hit their cores with her whip.
One of them jumped and landed on Tina's arm and she immediately began to shriek in pain as it appeared to burn her arm where it touched her. When they got the creature off of her it looked like acid had been eating away at her skin where it touched her.
Finally reaching the top of the building, Kiera saw they were too late, and half of the zombies had split off from the main group heading west while Tom and his team had mopped up the rest and were beginning to move back toward their base.
"Fucking monsters slowing us down! We missed out on the action. Though at least it looks like they didn't need too much help." Kiera swore loudly and slammed her fist on the edge of the building.
"Should we take out the others splitting off?" Scott asked, looking at them through the scope of his rifle.
"No. We do nothing from here but meet up back at headquarters. Those zombies are headed to Shandra's door. I hope they fuck up her day." Kiera replied. "If we attack them they will know we laid a trap rather than just happening upon Tom's team. So let's move out!"
With that, Kiera's team all went back down to the ground level and made their way back to the Trammel Crow Center.
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Jay sprinted west as fast as his body could take him. The remaining members of his team followed closely behind. He felt a pang of guilt for Steve being lost in the fight, but he couldn't take the time to mourn now. There would be time for that later. The plan still hinged on his team leading at least some of the zombies west for as long as possible. When they got close to Shandra's base of operations, they would vanish and make for the guild building.
"Are they still behind us?" Jay called out to his team.
The person in the rear, Charlie, looked briefly over his shoulder and saw the zombies engaged with Tom and his team.
"Looks like they stopped and are fighting with Tom," Charlie called up to him.
Jay stopped short and turned to see what was happening. Sure enough, they were busy fighting the others.
"Dammit! We can't let them stop with us. We have to lure some away." Jay swore and began jogging back some.
When he was within range, he threw several shuriken at the zombies hitting them in the backs. When they turned to see who had attacked them, they saw his team, and half of their number broke off to pursue.
"That's right, you undead fucks. Follow Daddy." Jay said smiling evilly at their advance.
When they got closer, Jay took off again with his team, leading them further west. As they ran, the zombies seemed to become more and more frenzied and moved quicker to try to catch them. Unfortunately, their decomposing bodies made that difficult and twice one of them fell due to losing a leg and tripped several others behind them. Jay just facepalmed at the pathetic attempt and kept moving.
Periodically he and his team would throw more shuriken at them to pretend that they were toying with them, but all the strikes were non-lethal to try to keep as many as possible alive for when they reached Stormcrusher's guild base. Jay couldn't believe their luck that the plan was holding together as well as it was.
Just as he thought this though, the foremost zombie stopped in its tracks and let out a shriek, the others halting and beginning to do the same. They then began to form together into an amalgamation of parts as they almost melted together forming one giant zombie that seemed to be made up of all the parts of the others.
"Oh, shit," Jay said suddenly as they stopped running to stare in horror at the beast forming before them. "Tha's one big fucking zombie."
The creature was now about three stories tall with huge arms and short legs that made it look like someone had turned King Kong inside out. Its skin had stitches running down it in crisscrossed patterns that gave it a Frankenstein's monster feel with patchwork skin and it had huge wicked-looking bone claws at the ends of its hands. It opened its mouth far wider than Jay had first thought possible and let out a tremendous roar of anger at the rogues.
"Get moving you fucktards! We don't want to be caught by that thing! When you see the base vanish!" Jay called out and then took off at a sprint again as the beast lumbered toward them.
This time it was able to keep up with their frantic pace with ease as its stride was much larger than before. It swung its massive arms at them and they had to dodge by flipping or rolling out of the way of the horizontal strikes. When they came in sight of the Stormcrusher building Jay breathed a sigh of relief and yelled at the guards posted on duty.
"Scatter!" Jay called after getting the guards' attention, and his team split off and vanished into the shadows.
The giant zombie monster tried to follow several of them at once and stopped in confusion when the prey it had been chasing vanished from sight. The guards began blowing whistles to alert the others that a monster was approaching and the zombie monster saw them and began to lumber toward Reunion Tower, a roar of pleasure and anger ringing out as it saw more things to kill.
Jay watched for a moment from the shadows of a building as the monster attacked and impaled one of the men on a bone claw. The other screamed as he fell backward onto the ground. Soon others poured out of the building to begin attacking.
"And that's our cue. Good job, boys. We can head back home now. Make sure you stay hidden. We don't want anyone seeing us." Jay said to his team and they slipped away quietly to the yells and screams of pain of the members of Stormcrusher ringing out behind them.