CHAPTER TEN

“Imagine what could be accomplished if only the human race would shed its humanity.”

-World War Z

Eliza Volkov faced at least one hundred zombies, trapped by some brilliant genius inside the prison cell of the gaming shop that had turned them in the first place.

And then released by some brilliant moron: herself.

“Goddamn,” she whispered, and then drew in a deep, cleansing breath. Feeling already a little more level-headed, she shoved her pistol into its holster at her hip and yanked the rifle from her back, carefully aiming it at the zombies filing towards her, and stepping forward.

The barrier she had erected was proving to be quite functional. The rope she had tied to a bumper and to a lamp and stretched across their path was preventing them from walking in that direction and spreading across the entire street. She had only been in this new world for a matter of hours, but already Liza could tell that zombies operated somewhat like a very predatory and single-minded liquid: they basically altered their collective shape to fill the container.

The container in this case being the Fairacres high street.

So all she had to do was pick off the ones who had wandered around the sides of the barrier towards her, while making her way to the other side of the rope. Zombies were stupid. They would just keep trying to walk forward, blocked by their five dead compadres hanging over the rope barrier, for her to kill easily.

“You can do this,” she said to herself, but it didn’t sound very convincing. “You can do this!” she said again, trying her best to embody the spirit of the world’s peppiest game show host.

Weirdly it made her feel a little better.

She tried to relax, and squeezed the trigger.

Miss.

“Shit!” Her heart was pounding so hard she could barely hear. Rifles were not her favourite weapon by any stretch; she wasn’t quite as used to holding them or firing them, and she was beginning to panic as they started to spread and close the distance.

She took another breath to calm herself down all over again, and fired. A zombie was knocked back by the blow to his head — a perfect shot, right between the eyes. Liza resisted the urge to bend over double with pride and relief, and instead she tried to take in the newfound confidence and utilise it. To win.

A second shot, and then a third, and then a fourth went without a hitch. She didn’t lower her rifle even though her arm was starting to ache already, but she blinked a couple of times to take stock.

She had knocked out the four closest to her, and the rest were tangled around each other a little around the rope/corpse barrier, so Liza tossed the rifle into her left hand and shook her right arm out, at the same time launching into a full sprint so that she stood perpendicular to the shattered pane that they poured through.

Headshot COMBO! x4

80 UP

80 UP (+10)

80 UP (+20)

80 UP (+30)

380 UP

The zombies diverted their path without stopping for even a second in their tracks and began to move themselves — slowly — towards her, in the position she was now in. Three zombies managed to untangle themselves from the side of the barrier and limp towards her quick and clean, but the rest of them all got caught on the corpse blockade and tried to walk towards her in vain.

“Yes!” she hissed. “Suckers.”

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

She brought her rifle up again, newfound life in her dominant arm, and squinted down the barrel before squeezing. One glancing slice still managed to fell her target but her aim was imperfect. She recalibrated and took down the other two stragglers, feeling a lot more confident with the lightweight rifle in her hands.

But she wasn’t entirely sure how many rounds she had left in the long-range weapon and she didn’t want to run out, just in case.

So she strapped it back onto her back and pulled out the pistol again, certain it had far more bullets. She figured that she should start counting them.

Headshot COMBO! x3

80 UP

80 UP (+10)

80 UP (+20)

270 UP

Looked like changing weapons was enough to end her combo, which was a bummer.

That was probably reason enough to spend points upgrading her weapon capacity. For the combo points.

She took a couple of seconds, knowing she had them since her prey was going nowhere, to get used to the feel of her pistol in her hands again, and then she aimed from the left and smiled. Their heads were very slightly bobbing as they walked on the spot, but they were barely moving at all. It was her perfect shooting exercise.

From left to right, Liza began to clean up the row of diseased undead. She was growing to love the combination of the ‘bang’ and the visual of the monster’s head snapping backwards as it fell, or occasionally burst in a sickening display of thick black gore.

She shot until her pistol clicked three times, and tutted, slinging off her rucksack to dig around for a new magazine for her Glock.

She pulled out rifle ammo and shoved it back in, fishing around, humming and tapping her toes on the ground, when something caught her eye to the left.

The bumper had partially come loose from the car … the one that the rope was attached to. And it was straining visibly under the weight of a horde of determined undead.

Headshot COMBO! x12

80 UP

80 UP (+10)

80 UP (+20)

80 UP (+30)

80 UP (+40)

80 UP (+50)

80 UP (+60)

80 UP (+70)

80 UP (+80)

80 UP (+90)

80 UP (+100)

80 UP (+110)

x5 bonus!

100 UP

x10 bonus!

250 UP

1970 UP

Holy … shit.

“Whoa,” she said aloud, looking around as if to search for someone to share this moment with. If she had upgraded her Glock capacity she would have made hundreds of extra points. Maybe thousands.

That was reason enough for her. And to think she had thought it would be pretty useless.

Liza had to bring up her total to see how many points she had now — Celia was going to be so happy! She bit her lip just thinking of all the ways they could pimp their crappy house to turn it into some kind of kickass apocalyptic fortress…

2990 UP to her name. She had already fulfilled her quota and it kind of felt like she had only been outside for a little while. She got back to rooting around for her ammo and then a loud pop, an elastic twang, and the bizarre squishy crunching sound of zombies being smacked in the rotting ribcages by rope recoiling at the speed of light.

They weren’t slowed by these injuries, though. A couple at the front of the formation toppled onto the ground, but they were quick to begin to pull themselves forward with their arms, not minding that they were being trampled by dozens of their friends.

Liza let out a squeak of concern as she lifted her pistol instinctively and shot straight for the closest zombie’s skull, and heard that terrible hollow ‘click’ again instead.

“Mmnope,” she said, and shoved everything into her bag, grabbed the strap and took off at the fastest sprint of her life, ducking underneath the grasping arms of the nearest zombie and panting her way down the high street, to the corner, and back to the empty, quiet glass-covered road that she lived on.

The normally fifteen minute stroll took her less than five. She stopped and bent double for a second to suck in air, wondering if somebody could contract asthma in their twenties and figuring that now would just be the best possible time for that to happen if so, until finally her muscles were loose enough that she could get up and walk again.

After a quick scan around her for danger — she was definitely getting better at remembering to be on alert at all times — she opened the gate to her front door, a proud smile fixed to her face.

And then stopped dead.

The door was cracked almost in half, off its hinges, and halfway into the hallway. The lights were all still on, and no one was home.

They were all gone.