The walk back to my base was mostly safe. For the most part there were no Bleeder’s around, and none of the Sheriff’s forces tried to follow me or attack the group on their way to my home. I wasn't overly worried about the theme figuring out where it was, one of the reasons I had chosen this place was because it was nearly impossible to get up the stairs, even if there was only one man guarding it.
They’d already tried twice. The first time they stumbled across the building by accident, and saw the shiny lock on the door. So they went in to see what was going on. Only one of them walked back out.
The second time they were specifically targeting me. Again, almost none of them walked out. Out of the original team of almost twenty, two walked out. Or ran out. I didn’t see them again, so I’m not entirely sure what exactly happened to them. But whatever it was they probably deserved it.
Not only had those two men been criminals, they were the violent type. The kind who beats someone to death, and then again after their death. I’d watched them do it myself. The only reason those two men made it out was because they let the rest of the men go in as meat shields.
They were cutthroat and cowardly. And I’ll admit. I admired the first. I didn’t admire how they used their own friends to do it, but the fact that they were willing to sacrifice other people to ensure their survival, it was something I had done several times when I was part of the Sheriffs city.
I never really wanted it, I never wanted to watch people die by my hand, but it was perhaps the one thing I was still good at. Perhaps the one thing I was ever good at. And it was a skill that had carried me through the last ten years, but now… I’m starting to think that these abilities that I wielded. The abilities that marked me so different from the rest of the world, they might be more of a detriment.
I was so out of it, that by the time we reached where my home was, I was still lost in my thoughts. It wasn’t until I heard the groaning of a Bleeder, that I was looking around and paying attention again.
The Bleeders that I had trapped when I was trying to get to Olivia’s building, they had broken loose, unsurprisingly, and they were roaming around listlessly in the small area between my building, and the one next to it. There were maybe a dozen of them, and I watched as Olivia reached for her gun to shoot them, and the big man hoisted the massive automatic SCAR he’d made into his weapon.
It was a beast of a gun, more designed to kill people than Bleeders, but I had to admit, the guy had some pretty good aim with it. From about fifty yards away, he planted two bullets into the skull of one of the Bleeders before I grabbed the gun and pushed it downward. “Keep it quiet.” I hissed in his ear.
I repeated the command for the rest of the group, louder this time, then drew my pocket knife, and flipped it open. Seeing as Muramasa and I were the only ones with silent weapons, I nodded in his direction, then jerked my head towards the Bleeders. He nodded, and we both walked forward, walking about the same speed as the Bleeder’s approaching us.
“Muramasa,” I started. “I know you don’t trust me, but I want you to believe me when I tell you, that I wish you no harm. You have someone in your group that I trust, and that I genuinely thought was dead. So I want to thank you for helping her.”
Muramasa grunted, and swung his sword down onto the skull of the closest Bleeder. “Shut up.” He said as the blood from the head of the bleeder splashed upwards into his face, and coated his teeth red.
I shrugged and grabbed my knife, plunging it up, through the throat and into the Bleeder’s head. It dropped instantly, and I yanked my knife out as it fell, then thrust it into the eye of the next one.
Both Muramasa and I continued this way, making sure to not move to quickly, to keep an eye on our flanks, making sure we’re not surrounded. As even for the two of us, that could spell disaster. We made short work of the dozen or so that were left in the spot between the buildings.
Eventually, I walked up the small ramp, and opened up the door to the stairwell. The stairway lights were flickering as always, but I just put my knife back, and motioned everyone into the staircase.
Both Olivia and Zack glanced around the area and asked, “Are you sure you’re not just leading us to a death trap.”
They were presumably trying to make a joke, but in the moment, I didn’t catch it and instead I said, “Yes.”
We made it two flights up before somebody decided to mess with something. I’d made a habit of covering the windows in the doors to the hallways. All of them besides mine. These hallways were crawling with Bleeders, anywhere from twenty to fifty of them.
It was supposed to be a trap for anyone who came in here, tracking me down, if they should open the door, they most probably die. Now, admittedly I hadn’t told anyone or warned them not to open the doors, so I can only really blame myself for the big man with the SCAR, I think.
Regardless, he opened up the door, curiously, and a Bleeder head shot out, moaning and growling filling the narrow staircase. The knife I had only just put away was back in my hand, and I threw it, the blade arcing over and over, and then sinking into the skull of the Bleeder.
I took the stairs four at a time, pulling myself up by the hand rails, and bringing both of my feet up, to kick the bleeder in the chest, taking it out of the door area, allowing the big man to close the door.
I landed on my back, partially, the bottom half of my body was sitting on the top stair, but the rest of it was sort of suspended into nothingness, and if I fell, there was a fairly high chance it could end up with my neck having been broken.
And I didn’t want that. So I simply reached up, as I was falling no less, and grabbed the railing, then hauled myself up to my feet. The big man looked at me in what seemed like partial awe, and thanks.
He stuck his hand out and said, “John.”
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I took his hand and replied, “Don’t open doors around here.”
He laughed dryly, “Yeah… I can see that.”
I looked around at everybody who was watching both me and John and I said, “What? Keep walking, we’re not there yet.”
The four of them, slightly chastised, turned and kept walking, and John and I fell into the back. We walked in silence for a little while, before he asked, “Why do you still have bleeders in your building?”
“It's designed as a trap. Like if I need to make sure no one can get up to my house, I just open the doors and run. Most Bleeders don’t really have the thought process to lift a foot up and climb a staircase. So if I open it and run, just about five stairs up, then I’m safe. The people coming up, not so much.”
John nodded, appearing a little bit surprised with the blatant savagery of what I was suggesting, but I didn’t pay much attention to that. This world isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s not built for men like John. People like Olivia.
I used to know a good man. He died. There was nothing special about it, he was trying to help an animal, I think it was a dog of some sort. It was fighting off about five or six Bleeders, and my friend tried to help the dog.
And he didn’t see a Bleeder come up from behind him. Both he and the dog died. I saw him again, years later, though of course he didn’t recognize me. I ended him. Not particularly out of kindness. Just pity.
It was an existence that no one wanted, to be simply wandering forever, forced to feed on the flesh of your own kind. Or, the people that once, long ago you used to be a part of.
He was the only good man I met in this world. The only good man who really survived very long, and that was mostly because he got lucky and was paired up with a group. The Sheriff’s group.
Fortunately the rest of the way up the stairs passed with almost no incident. John tripped on one of the stairs halfway up, but I managed to catch him before he hit the ground. His SCAR however did hit the ground, and the clatter was loud enough to echo through the staircase, making me wince slightly, and causing groans and thumps of Bleeder hands all over the doors we had passed by recently.
I looked at John reprimanding, and he smiled sheepishly. Nobody said a word, and we continued up the stairs, two minutes later eventually reaching the penthouse floor. And with that, I opened the door, revealing my home.
The floor was almost all carpet, made to dampen any footsteps, and wood. The wood was mostly because I thought it looked nice, and it served as a way to see what areas of the floor were more dangerous. The wood I used was just plywood, and I had attached it to the floor in any places where it was cracking.
The majority of the apartments on this floor were used for storage, and the majority of that was food and water. And then weapons. And then after that, was general supplies. Things like the plywood I had used to repair my floor.
I had one apartment on the side dedicated to my home, where I had several dozen book cases, each filled to the brim, a somewhat functioning shower, a bed, and several targets. Most were movable, so this way I wouldn’t be able to accustom myself to any one shot. The ones that weren’t movable weren’t so much targets as boards used for making maps or plans.
And then there was one apartment I had blocked off. There were some things in there, that even I didn’t want to see.
That was about ten apartments, which left a grand total of two remaining for other things. I sometimes helped anybody who was passing through this area, so I had those two rooms dedicated to an area for people to sleep.
I had opened up the elevator doors exposing the elevator shaft, where I had made a primitive second escape route, one that led deep underground, and into a tunnel I had found down there. The tunnel came up about three blocks away from the building, directly into the mayor’s office. I don’t know why it was there, but I think it was from the time of drug dealers, and criminals.
I myself had built a ladder and put it there, and it was a last resort. I also had the walls laced with explosives. Again. Last resort.
There was only one that could be triggered from far away, and the rest were grenades, but the idea was so that the one explosive I could trigger would get all the other to explode. I had yet to test that theory. I just had to hope it would work, but so far, explosives have yet to fail me.
I’ve used grenades once or twice, and against hordes, there are very few things in this world that work as well as they do. The explosion can rip apart the bodies closest to it, and shrapnel normally hits either the spine or the brain.
And while my arrows are just as effective, if not more effective, grenades are fun to use. It gives a sort of boost to the spirit, especially when fighting a horde. They have this effect, like, I’ve seen the damage that these things can do, and now I have one. You all are dead.
And honestly, I’m all for that. It gives a rush of adrenaline too, heightening reflexes, making you stronger, making pain affect you less, though that’s not really a problem for me. I don’t feel any pain whatsoever.
Other than fire. I don’t know why, but even right after I got my injury, things like matches hurt, more than they used to, I could barely hold a lighter without feeling intense pain, and things like a campfire became effectively useless.
That’s why I made sure that all of the light I used in my house was battery operated. It was designed so that I wouldn’t have to deal with fire, and mostly everything else in the entire building was non flammable, or very carefully designed so that it wouldn’t be able to burn.
A hand on my shoulder almost immediately jolted me out of my thoughts, and I was already reaching for my knife with one hand, and pulling the other hand back to punch what I thought was a Bleeder away from me. I managed to stop my fist stopped about half an inch away from Zack’s face, and I took a deep breath. “Sorry, I thought you were something else.”
Zack didn’t respond, but I thought I saw his eyes flicker in what looked like a smile. From what I can tell, he doesn’t smile very often, he’s dark, angry. I respect it. The kid waited for about a second longer then said, “Do you have any more rooms? For my mom to set up her doctor stuff.”
I shrugged, “I mean there’s rooms downstairs. But… you probably know what’s in there.”
Before Zack could say anything though, I walked into one of the storage rooms and came back with two of my hip quivers gone, and my back quiver filled up to the brim. I turned to the group and said, “Besides Muramasa, who has a silent weapon?”
The kid who had gotten Muramasa while I was climbing the stairs, the brown haired one raised his hand. “I’ve got a knife… I’m pretty good with it too.”
“Great, you come with me.”
I was turning back to the staircase, when Muramasa stepped in front of me, and hissed, “He’s a boy. Just a boy. I’ll go.”
“No. You need to stay here.”
“Why? So you can watch more people die? You really are one sick man Robin.”
“No. I’m expecting retribution from the sheriff. If that happens, at least someone will be here who knows how to handle it.”
“So just let me go. I’ll clear the floor, you stay here. Wait for your retribution.”
“You really want to fight a horde of Bleeders, in cramped quarters, with your three and a half foot sword? You won't be able to move that thing anywhere. You’ll be a sitting duck.”
“So then why don’t you just go?”
“I’ve seen you fight, I’ve seen John fight, but I haven’t seen Zack or him fight. I need to know what kind of people I’m working with if everyones going to survive this.” I took a deep breath. “You may not like me, Muramasa, and I don’t care either way. But if you want my help, you do things my way.”