Standing out on the landing of the sixth floor Mike looked through the rectangular window set in the door.
Behind him Sara shuffled nervously from one foot to the other.
At her side Yunah seemed unflappable. Unless one were to look down and notice her white knuckeled grip on the hilt of her sword. She was ready to draw at a moments notice. A clear sign she was just as nervous as her friend.
Mike missed the tension in the air as he counted the zombies he could see. When the group had gone up to the roof they’d bypassed the other floors leaving the zombies alone.
More recently he’d come down to the the sixth floor for a crystal. Sara had needed one to become a player.
In both trips he’d paid attention to the number of wandering zombies.
The first time there had only been a few wandering alone.
The second he’d spotted roughly seven in three groups. That included the lone zombie he killed for Sara’s crystal.
Things were different now.
The zombies had begun to find each other. They were slowly grouping up. It was becoming more and more like the movies.
From Mike’s limited vantage point he could make out a single large pack of at least ten zombies gathered together.
Ten at once was about five more than he was comfortable with soloing. They needed at least a basic plan of attack.
“They’re herding together into one big group now.” Mike said, barely above whisper. There was no sense attracting undue attention. “Any ideas?”
“Kill them faster,” Yunah said, caressing the kashira of her sword with her thumb.
Mike snorted a laugh. He quickly regained his cool. He wasn’t entirely sure she’d been joking but her answer had caught him off guard.
Hesitating a moment Sara offered. “You could borrow my shield. I’ll hang back with my bat and stay out of the way. If any get behind you I’ll get them.”
Mike nodded liking the thought.
“Let’s do that. With a twist. You hand me your shield. Then head up the stairs, out of the way, while were fighting. I don’t even want you helping clean up strays until you’re a level two. No sense taking risks. You’re just barely recovered.”
Thinking for a moment, he finished the quick plan.
“Yunah you hang behind me. I’ll open the doors and funnel them through one or two at a time. If they push me back, you step up and kill them with your mag-” he started to say ‘magic sword’ but catching Yunah’s glare, he changed mid sentence, “super sword.”
Yunah nodded. Sara, a bit reluctantly, handed over her new shield.
Mike slung it on his left arm, tight to his chest and practiced swinging his ax a half dozen times. Working the angles out so he wouldn’t stupidly hit his shield in the fight, Mike smiled grimly. This would be his first real test since killing Jeff.
“Everybody ready?” Mike asked.
Looking over his shoulder he met Yunah’s eyes. She raised one eyebrow quizzically, as if to say, ‘you have to ask?’
Mike smiled faintly. Yunah had balls. He moved his gaze upwards to catch Sara’s eyes.
She did seem nervous. Low leveled, and lacking her system given shield she still nodded her agreement. Mike had a feeling once she settled into things Sara too would become a bad ass.
Using his shield arm Mike reached out and pulled open the door. Stepping into it he made sure it caught itself in the open position before he stepped back a bit.
The door opening caused a few zombies to look in his direction but it wasn’t until Mike’s ax talked out a quick rhythm on the metal door well that the pack started to move as one.
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A shuffling, stumbling mass of moans and grasping hands, the zombies were still mostly intact.
Unlike in the movies they hadn’t been dead long enough to truly decay. Their transformations made them look and smell awful but there were no hanging jaws or dragging entrails.
Perhaps Mike had already been slightly desensitized to horror by video games, but as scary as the Zombies were, he had only one thought, ‘wait for it to cross the threshold before you swing.’
He repeated it like a mantra, using the words to calm himself. His instinct was to rush the mob berserker style. It was a suicidal impulse.
No one had confirmed the level of injury by zombie it took to be turned. A single bite or scratch becoming fatal had not been definitively proven. But Mike had no desire to be the guinea pig for that particular experiment.
It was possible be could afford the inevitable small injuries he’d receive from taking on ten zombies at once. As a player with a bloodline he was more robust than ordinary people. But a single mistake in his approach would end with him buried under a mass of biting, ripping, monsters.
As he’d already told Sara, ‘why risk it?’ There were no perceivable gains for being reckless. Only greater risks.
That wouldn’t aleays be true. Sometimes reckless risk was the right answer. But Mike had no reason to believe that was the case this time.
Mike waited till the first zombie was completely over the weatherstripping before he swung.
His one handed ax blow lacked some power compared to a two handed swing. It didn’t seem to make much difference to the zombie.
The blade sliced into its skull severing its consciousness in an instant. Using less power also caused blood and brain matter to splatter Mike’s face.
He had no time to care as the next two zombies pushed forward even before the first corpse had hit the floor.
Sickening crunches and gurgling sucking sounds added to the din of the zombie advance as Mike tore into the herd like a woodchipper.
Often killers are described as having grace to their movements.
Mike had none.
He was a graceless killing machine. Brutal. Unstoppable.
A professional evaluating his ability would be unable to deny his potential. But they would have noted his inefficient, even clumsy movements. He often made three or four strokes where one would do. That was to say nothing of his near complete disregard for defense once he lost himself in the fight.
He was fury personified, abandoning any pretense of skill.
Watching him from behind Sara covered her mouth, dropping to her knees to hold back her churning stomach.
Yunah’s reaction was quite different as she calmly waited, sword drawn, ready to step in if necessary.
Soon Mike found himself standing alone in the doorway. For several seconds he was confused as his brain strove to make sense of the disjointed mess of red tinted memories.
A hand on his shoulder and a soft voice in his ear brought understanding back to his world.
The fight was over. He’d taken the zombies apart piecemeal.
Mike looked at Yunah to thank her and found himself unsure of what to say.
He was covered in gore. She’d just watched him mindlessly butcher almost a dozen zombies. Then he’d had to struggle to come back form the battle haze, the violence.
She must be wondering what kind of monster I turned into, he thought to himself pitifully.
Yunah’s next words sent all such thoughts running.
“That was pretty f*cking awesome Mike. You didn’t even need us here. What does it feel like to be unstoppable?”
Sara, stepping back on the landing, added her opinion, “it was disgusting. Seriously gross. But you were pretty amazing.”
Mike just shrugged and smiled awkwardly.
He’d lived more than twenty years without being complimented by a good looking women. Then it happened twice – back to back. For something he felt vaguely ashamed over in the first place, no less.
He really didn’t know what to say.
So he stuck with business.
“Uh, yeah, I guess we should divide up the crystals?”
Yunah held up her hand to stiffle a giggle as a grinning Sara said, “I think its fine if you take all of these since you killed them.”
Mike argued a bit convincing Sara to get to level two for her own safety first. But he took the other eight as offered out of the eleven crystals they found in the mess.
Clearing the rest of the sixth floor was a breeze. Mike traded off and on with Yunah for breeching rooms. Even the two rooms theybfound survivors in – three total, a guy named Joe and two female cousins from Wisconsin – only took a few minutes to convince them to retreat to the roof after taking a crystal to become players.
By the second to last room Mike even managed to level up to level four. Taking a bit of consideration he put his AP into Quickness to bring him close to evenly distributed on physical stats.
Seeing his credits, a combination of zombies, mission reward and savings, Mike considered a trip to the roof after clearing the sixth floor.
Ultimately he decided against it. It wouldn’t be too late to take a break after the fifth floor and another six or seven hundred credits.
Name: Mike Tanner – Race:Human (Orc)
Occupation: None – Level: 4
STR: 1.5 / QUI: 1.4 / BOD: 1.5 / MIN: 1.1 / SPI: 1.2 [AP: 0.0]
Purse: 2140 Credits
Skills: [Brute Strength] [Sturdy] [Dark Vision] [Slow Witted]
He said as much to the girls and they agreed.
Barring any unforseen future accidents they were starting to see floor clearing more like work than a dangerous mission. Zombies were just too easy outside of big groups.
“Make sure we got all the loot. Then let’s head down a level.” Mike said, reminding the girls to check for loot boxes. The Zombies only dropped one every twenty or so deaths, but the prizes weren’t total garbage.
Already Mike had found a decent dagger with a skull pommel stone and Sara had a banded leather cuirass.
Sara’s armor was of obviously low quality, but she was happy with it. So it didn’t matter much to Mike.