“I don’ get it!” Travis whined as we pulled up out of the building. He didn’t move fast enough. “Why’d you think they’re gonna go for the firehouse? They don’t know where the others are!”

“It’s a trap,” I told him impatiently as we waited for Cloridan to sound the all-clear. We couldn’t get sloppy just because we were in a hurry. “Axel knows where you are, he put you there. So there will be some reason those variants head there.”

If only there were some way we could warn them… oh right. I pulled out my phone and called Kyle.

“I don’t get how those work,” Travis complained. “There ain’t no signal!”

“Magic,” I told him, and then Kyle picked up.

“Kandis?”

“Listen, there are a bunch of variant zombies coming your way,” I said. “They move fast, they’re threat thirty-two, and they climb as fast as they run.”

“We’ll fall back to the stairwell, then,” he said. “You’re on your way back?”

“Yeah. Only thing that’s slowing us is checking for an ambush on the way.”

“We’ll see you when you get back then.” He hung up.

“There’s one,” Cloridan said. “Stuck to the facade.”

So… the worst possibility, then. When we’d made it out of the building, there were no zombies in sight. Even the regular scientist-zombie had gone. He must have jumped off the edge and made it to cover in record time, for a zombie.

I thought it a bit weird—which is to say, part of Axel’s plans—that the zombies had taken off instead of hanging around the building. Sure, regular zombies might not have been able to make it up to our entrance point, but the climbing ones could. Why hadn’t they swarmed up and tried to get in the door?

The obvious answer was that they were on a mission from Axel, but now I suspected the answer was slightly worse. They were ambush predators, and they were planning an ambush.

Zombies that could plan were bad news, however you looked at it. The only good news was that the team here, with the exception of Travis, were very well-practised in detecting and countering ambushes.

“Only one? How do you want to handle it?” I asked.

Cloridan grinned. “With just one, we want to get the measure of it, see how it ranks against the usual ones,” he said.

“Makes sense,” I said. “But you’d normally need Kyle for that.”

Kyles's defences made for a good way to tie a creature down so that the others could analyse its attacks.

“We came up with an alternative,” he said. “If you’d be so good as to climb down at that spot, m’lady.” He pointed at a particular spot on the facade wall.

I gave him a very unimpressed look. “You want me to be bait?”

He bowed. “I promise we won’t let it hurt a hair on your lovely head.”

I made a disapproving noise, but I did trust him. And with the zombies mostly immune to my illusions there wasn’t much I could contribute.

“Fine,” I said. There wasn’t any time to waste, so I started climbing. I didn’t have to wait long.

There was a snarl, the sound of an impact and a shadow flashed past me, going down. A moment later, I caught sight of Cloridan joining Borys on the street, having jumped right past me.

They’d finished it off by the time I made it down. I could have jumped, but I was in no hurry to get down there until it was dead. Travis dropped the rope down at about the same time as I hit the pavement. I hadn’t bothered using it; going down was a lot easier than going up.

“It's faster,” Cloridan said thoughtfully. “Not stronger or tougher, though.”

“What about smarter?” I asked.

“Not sure,” Borys said. “If Axel told it where to lurk, then it might not be any smarter than a regular zombie. Hard to say if it came up with the plan on its own.”

“And there’s no sign of the regular zombie?”

“It is strange,” Cloridan said looking around. “I wouldn’t have thought it would get so far as to not be drawn to the sound of fighting. But.”

“But,” I agreed. “It’s not here. First priority is the Firehouse, but keep an eye out for it.”

I looked to where Travis was still struggling to climb down the rope. “Once he’s down, one of you is going to have to climb up and untie the rope,” I said.

Borys sighed.

----------------------------------------

The next ambush was about halfway to the firehouse and consisted of three climbers. Not that they were using their climbing for anything except hiding under the awnings of the building we passed. We didn’t spot them, but we were expecting something like it. Keeping our defensive formation meant Cloridan had to face his alone, but it meant Borys was well placed to intercept two more from the other direction.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

I managed to stick a Phantasmal box on the head of one of them, and it delayed it enough to count as a contribution.

“Oh,” Cloridan said when we were done. “That was enough. I’ve made Level Six.”

“Welcome to the club,” Borys said.

“First level without Ability Points to spend,” Cloridan said.

Borys grunted. “Welcome to that club as well.”

We pressed on, and it wasn’t long before we saw the carpet of zombie bodies that surrounded our building. Sarothiel had eaten a few, but he hadn’t really made a dent.

They would be a problem if we didn’t leave in a few days, but right now we were worried about the live—that is, active—zombies. I could see one, prying or gnawing at the second-story window that we used for an entrance. It was barricaded at the moment, but the zombie must have sensed some vulnerability there.

“It should be safe to use our guns, right?” Borys said. “Place has been cleared.”

“I’ll keep an eye out,” I said. “You might even attract our scientist friend.”

He unlimbered one of the German guns and took careful aim. That gun was capable of automatic fire, but he took it slow, making every shot count.

It took five shots for the zombie to fall.

“What now?” Cloridan asked.

“That’s five out of eight,” I said. “If the other three went for the roof entrance, Kyle should have been able to hold them off. It might be dangerous to climb to the roof—they might go for us while we’re vulnerable.”

There was a sudden movement from the second-floor window.

“Or, the people inside might have heard the shots, and have opened the window for us,” I said. “Let’s run before we get any other zombies.”

----------------------------------------

“Well this is a mess,” I said, surveying the ruins of the roof. Specifically, the ruins of the shack that covered the rooftop entrance.

“Yeah, I started holding at the door, but it wasn’t as sturdy as the rest of the building,” Kyle said. “By the time I dropped one, there was enough room to get past me, and I had to fall back further. Making a stand on the stairs wouldn’t have been a good idea. If I’d needed to get back further, the others would have had to form the front line.”

I didn’t comment on how much of a bloodbath that would have been. Our shots had distracted the single climbing zombie that had survived. It had been enough for Kyle to finish it.

“I never thought it would hold if they got up here,” Even said in hushed tones. “But now… it won’t be any protection at all.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” I said confidently. “I don’t think we’ll be here too much longer.”

“All we have to do is find one zombie in a city with… I don’t know how many,” Cloridan said wryly.

“Most of them are lying dead around this building,” I said. “I think our efforts should be divided between searching for the scientist, looking for records back at that facility, and clearing out the bodies.”

“I can help with that,” Sarothiel said, popping up.

“That’d be great,” I said, managing to keep myself from jumping out of my skin.

----------------------------------------

“How can something so tense be so boring?” I complained rhetorically.

“It’s better than dragging bodies,” Felicia pointed out.

We’d left that task to the NPCs. With Sarotheil there for protection, they should be good dragging the bodies somewhere further away from the base. Axel would reclaim them once we left, but we still didn’t know how long we were going to be here, and the NPCs still thought of the firehouse as home.

The boys had helped us secure this building, which turned out to have no other threats—aside from the electric current running through the ground floor door. They were now hunting scientist-zombie, while Felicia and I went through the records that had been left.

Thus far, we’d found a whole lot of nothing. A bunch of personnel records, and logs of the experiments they were doing here. Since we didn’t want to recreate the climber zombies, it wasn’t much use to us.

There were memos from headquarters, but they had all been received electronically, with no indication of where headquarters had been. Communication had ceased a little while before the records had stopped. A note suggested that the Internet had failed, rather than headquarters themselves. The last note said that the majority of the team was leaving to get instruction from headquarters directly.

Absent from any of the records was what the hell they had been thinking. I wasn’t sure if that was deliberate obfuscation on Axel’s part or if he just hadn’t thought it was necessary.

“It’s a pretty common theme in zombie movies,” I told Felicia. “The zombies are a plague that man releases into the world because of their own hubris.”

“Was there ever a danger of that happening?” Felicia asked.

“It’s pretty remote,” I said. “Designing plagues was within our capacity, but making one do all that this one does is pushing the boundaries of biological possibility. It’s more a warning of the worst possible thing that could happen. A punishment from God for transgressing on his domain.”

“Pretty twisted punishment, if you ask me,” Felicia said. “Our gods are much more direct with their displeasure, when they care to show it.”

“On the whole, I prefer subtle to lightning bolts,” I said. “Much as I dislike being a part of this game they’ve got going, I have to admit that it’s better than the alternative.”

My phone rang. I looked askance at it, wondering if Fyskel had decided to toy with me some more, but it was Cloridan.

“We’ve found him,” he said. “Can you open the front door?”

Disarming the electric current and unlocking the door was child’s play, from the inside. I just had to push two buttons. When the door opened, Cloridan and Borys were outside, with a trussed-up zombie in tow.

“Nice,” I said. “He give you much trouble?”

“Not too much,” Borys said wearily. “He was trying to get into the sewers though, so we caught him just in time.”

There was enough room on the first floor to lie him down, so we had Felicia treat him right there.

“He’s in pretty good condition,” she noted. “It shouldn’t take quite as much mana as before.”

She did her thing. This time, I used [Improved Blind] to stop the screaming.

“That’s much better,” Felicia said. With the disease cured, she started pouring general healing magic into him. Finally, she stopped.

“I think it’s done,” she said. “You can take off the gag now.”

I did so, and examined our captive.

[Identification]: - Tobias Braston - Threat: 10 - Properties: None

I gave him a gentle pat on the cheek. “Wake up, Toby.”

“Huh? What? What’s going on?” he said groggily. I nodded with satisfaction.

“Good enough,” I said. “Let’s get him back to the firehouse before we start asking questions.”

“Should we untie him?” Borys asked.

I thought about it for a second. “It will probably be faster if we carry him,” I pointed out. “And this way we don’t take a risk on him running.”

“You mean it will be faster if I carry him,” Borys said.

“Hey! Do I get a say in this?” Toby protested.

“No,” we all said together.