“I take it this is the part where we run?” Panda asked, raising his arms like a toddler wanting a piggyback ride.

“It is,” I replied, lifting him up and placing him on my back.

His furry arms wrapped around my neck and, with one last glance in the direction of the swarming hoard, I ran for my life.

Cobbles were not the easiest surface to run on and, if not for my stats taking the strain, I’d likely have twisted my ankle after a few sprinting steps.

As luck would have it, my agility and strength skills seemed to kick in. My running speed would have been world record breaking back on Earth as my legs pounded the floor in a practiced rhythm. My strides were long and I was incredibly sure footed.

All of that was extremely helpful, but the zombies had the advantage.

With no brain power to tell them they were tired, or in pain, or, in the case of one undead, severely leg disabled, they sprinted with wild and reckless abandon.

The sound of hundreds of decrepit, but speedy, zombies chasing after me was horrifying. The incessant groaning did not help.

Yet still, I ran as fast as my legs would carry me in the direction of the beach.

Without warning, a new notification filled my vision:

New Quest:

Escape From Zombie Island

No this is not a Scooby Doo episode; this is real life. So you can either run or die.

Objectives:

Escape Asquith Town 0/1

Reward: Continuing to live.

Thankful that it was a short quest message, I mentally swatted it off screen and dove into the chat function.

Kaleb: Sally, how long until the ship can sail?

This chat has been muted by: Sally.

“God damn it!” I yelled, pumping my arms as I deftly turned a corner.

SPLAT.

The first wave of undead on my tail didn’t react in time and smashed into the brick walls of the pub whose alley I’d just taken.

“How is that one still running?” Panda shouted in my ear, “its foot is facing backwards.”

I couldn’t risk looking behind me, but from what I’d seen in the cathedral, I was not surprised by this.

“Panda, get Sally to unmute me,” I huffed as my lungs fought against me with every step.

Maybe I should add some more cardio training into my regimen. I thought for a short moment before remembering how much I hated cardio. Leg day? No thanks.

“Done,” Panda said as I rounded yet another corner and made a beeline for the large hotel which marked the start of the beach.

Sally: anchors up in five, how close are you?

Kaleb: Coming up on the hotel now, we should just make it. Is Bell with you? Also, never mute me again.

Sally: No?

Where the hell was she? I had assumed that she’d gone on ahead when I ran into Panda alone outside the cathedral, but now I was worried that we’d somehow left her behind.

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

“Where’s Bell?” I asked Panda through heavy breaths as the stomping zombies continued to chase me like a dog with a tennis ball.

Before he could reply, a volley of fireballs lit up the evening sky above me, crashing behind me and causing a deafening sound like a howitzer.

“Never mind,” I said.

The heat seared my back as I was pelted with bits of flesh and viscera from the chasing zombies. Looking around wildly, I managed to spot a tiny silhouette on top of the large hotel complex.

“Fire in the hole!” She shouted, raising her palms as a dozen little fireballs manifested in the air.

Throwing her hands down in a mockery of prayer, the fireballs released and catapulted through the air throwing dust, cobbles and… was that a ribcage? Over my head and into the street in front of me.

Whatever her plan had been, it seemed to be working at buying me a precious few seconds to get ahead of the closing hoard.

“When did she learn to do that?” I asked as I rounded the hotel’s outer wall and headed onto the beach.

If I thought running on cobbles was difficult, the beach was hell mode. With every movement my feet sunk into the sand. It was slippery, it was slow, and mostly, it caused my quads to burn like they’d just received a heavy dose of Bell’s fireballs.

Kaleb: Thanks for the covering fire, now get down from there and meet us at the ship. It’s about to leave and I for one don’t wanna be stranded on zombie island when we miss it.

Bell: As luck would have it, I just unlocked the perfect skill for that. See you on board.

Kaleb: Unlocked? Where are all these new skills coming from?

Bell: Remember the shop with all the magic scrolls?

Kaleb: Yes…

Bell: I may have looted them all.

Why didn’t I think of that? I thought, damn how I wish I had mana!

My thoughts were sadly cut short.

Seconds after closing the chat, a brilliant fire erupted from the roof of the building and something with the visage of a phoenix glided over my head and towards the ship.

“Was that Bell?” I asked incredulously as I enviously watched the beautiful display of gliding fire.

“Huh,” Panda said from my back, “she kinda reminds me of that Molotov Cockatiel we saw that time.”

I didn’t have time to contemplate that as a loud groaning started to tickle my left ear.

Turning slightly, I saw the culprit.

It was the reanimated corpse of the little girl I’d tried to help earlier on in the day. Her guts were hanging out and she was covered with thick, golden sand that clung to congealed blood covering her tiny torso.

“Ew, sand zombie!” Panda screamed, patting me on the top of my head urgently. “Kill it! Kill it now!”

Had I stopped to contemplate the fuckery that was slaughtering a child only to desecrate her corpse with my acid knife, I might have hesitated.

However, when one sees a sand zombie, one does not question.

They slash.

With barely a thought, I summoned my dagger into my left hand and slashed out at the undead child. The dagger sliced through her small frame like butter as it fell in two. The pair of legs continued chasing me and the torso began to crawl after them, though at a much slower pace.

Clive’s powers are messed up, I thought, wanting to shake my head but preventing myself from doing so for fear of forcing myself off balance.

The ship lay ahead, no longer on its side.

It sat in the water just offshore; its sails were up and the large crack that had almost split the vessel in two was now a patchwork of mismatched woods and hurriedly welded metal.

It wasn’t the nicest looking ship I’d ever seen. Hell, it didn’t even look fit to sail, but, in that moment, it may as well have been a Ferrari.

I needed to get on that ship.

Mustering the last of the power I had left, I sprinted into the water, splashing like a child at a holiday camp. For a split second I’d wondered if I could run across the water like some kind of ninja, sadly I couldn’t.

However, I could wade through it faster than a normal human.

Salty water sprayed my face, half choking me as I forced myself to breathe through it.

“Come on Gonads!” Sally shouted from up on the deck, “if you don’t hurry up I’m leaving without you.”

“Hoist the anchor!” I screamed back.

“Ay, matey!” Panda growled from my back.

I jumped out of the water and grabbed the rigging. My stamina was running low and I hammered on a potion to fix that.

Luckily, I hadn’t sustained any damage during the chase. After eating the seed I was unable to heal for an hour, though that was now more like fifty minutes.

Thankfully, stamina potions were not blocked. Though I wouldn’t be able to take another for at least an hour anyway due to the restrictions on effective potion consumption in this screwed up world.

The potion rejuvenated my muscles. I felt fresh all of a sudden and began climbing with renewed vigour as the ship began to move with the wind.

Something grabbed my leg and I looked down to see a fat zombie trying to drag me down.

How had it kept up during the chase? Surely a fat zombie would be slower than an athletic zombie?

Either way, I kicked it in the face and its head fell off. I was fortunate that most of the zombies had suffered either acid or fire damage when they originally died, otherwise, fighting a fresh cadaver would likely have been much more challenging.

As I reached the top, Sally grabbed my forearm with her meaty hand and hoisted me on board.

We had made it!

“Hey Kaleb,” Bell said, nudging me in the ribs as I turned to watch the hoard of zombies diving into the sea in a vain attempt to follow us. “what’s a pirate’s favourite letter?”

“R?” I asked absent mindedly as I finally got to catch my breath from our mad sprint through the town.

“No,” she replied with a terrible pirate accent, “you would think it’d be the R, but a pirates first love will always be the C.”

Zoning out her chattering, as I often found myself doing these days, I reopened the quest I’d received.

There was no way the undead could catch us now, the ship was picking up a head wind and soon we’d be way too far out to sea for them to reach us.

The quest hadn’t changed at all.

Objectives:

Escape Asquith Town 0/1

“That’s odd,” I mumbled to myself, “usually there’s no lag with quest completion.”

That was when a sickeningly bright green star rose from behind the hotel, casting an eerie light on the dark night.

Clive.

“You will not escape me!” He said, his voice blasting out over the cold night air like he was using a megaphone.

That has to be a skill, I thought.

“Be… REBORN!” He shouted and the green light blasted from him, disappearing into the ocean ahead of us.

“What’s he planning to do?” Bell asked, folding her arms, “attack us with fish?”

A huge wave crashed from the front of the ship, causing me to lose my footing as our vessel bobbed and swayed violently in the choppy ocean.

As the waves died down, a huge, beat-up monster appeared blocking our escape.

“Not again,” I groaned, as a kraken with a missing tentacle and rotted flesh bore down on us.