What was bothering Tala more than the zombies that were closing on them was the fact that her system was unusually quiet and was not giving her any new missions.

Certainly nothing about a mission to save this guy. Tala figured that must have been due to two possibilities.

For one, it might mean that this guy was not worth saving. Whatever system knew and saw in him made him worth less than her time. Or... it could be that saving him was just too damn difficult for her, that it would require the class that was superior to hers.

She sighed. If the first one was the case, then it would make sense to ditch this dude. But what if it the the second one?

The system always gave her good bonuses when she achieved something way more difficult than she was supposed to.

Maybe an extra level of some special ability, maybe even something I had not seen yet. Maybe even a star.

Are you thinking like that just because you find him cute... in the most... absurd way? He's fat and stupid and... What's there to like? Just because I never met anyone like him, it does not mean... nothing. Nothing at all. That's all it comes down to. One bite and he's history. So, why... even bother?

She sighed as she stared at him, now not even a speck anymore of a dark night riding on his engine beast, roaming the desolate streets with his shotgun checked on ready.

He's just a boy. Scared. Worse than Drew, she thought and sighed.

Fuck the system. I can't let it run my life! I need to have a mind of my own. Those missions are just... crazy! I didn't reach even Class 4 now. Shit!!

So... I can't leave him.

“Why don't you call your people for help?” she suddenly asked him.

The walkie-talkie he had lay all smashed up next to the bike and that gave her a good enough answer.

“I guess that's a no-go then, huh?” Tala said and reached for her own walkie-talkie and called Drew. But Drew did not answer. She insisted again. Nobody picked up. “Fuck. What the hell is going on?? Would someone, anyone, ever do what they are supposed to...?? Ever??”

“I... don't know,” Sam said through his teeth, the pain displayed in his frowning face and eyes full of sudden fear.”

“Let's go. Come on.”

“I can't. My leg is all busted,” he said and tried to pull himself up, but then shrieked in pain. “Can't even move it a bit.”

She looked at his leg. No bones were sticking out. No bleeding.

Might be broken, might be just bruised.

Might be just scared.

“I can't get up,” Sam said in a weak, pleading voice.

“Of course you can. You're just afraid to feel pain. Well...I'm always glad to help with that,” she said and smacked him on the back of his head.

“Auch!” he yelled in pain.

“Shit, and I did not even smack you that hard. See... nothing to be afraid of. So... you want to avoid feeling pain? But... It's unavoidable. All you can do is just live with it. Welcome it. Accept it. Or... you prefer that a little girl like me smack your ass?”

“I choose not to answer that,” Sam said, but then shifted his body and tried to pull himself up, leaning only on his good right leg.

“I bet when you were stuffing your belly full of doughnuts, you did not contemplate about this possibility, did you?"

“I can't say I did.”

“So, then, get up!” she ordered him, offering one hand to pull him up while the other one went in the air, ready to smack him again. “Get up! Or next time I won't be so gentle.”

"We cleaned all this area, where are they coming from?"

"Obviously, you did a lousy job cleaning.”

She helped him get up to stand on his right good leg, and he tried to put some pressure on his left leg but instantly shrieked in pain and looked to fall down. But Tala held him and let him put his hand around her shoulder and use her as a crutch.

“I think it's broken,” Sam growled through his teeth.

“Yeah, I think it is.”

“Maybe you can run to the Observation Place and get some help.”

“And how are you going to fight off the zombies? Don't you see, there are like a dozen of them coming our way?”

That made him shut up and take another step forward. But they were going too slow and zombies were coming in fast.

Tala let him lean on her and practically carried him to the sidewalk and let him rest against the wall of the building there while she ran and got hold of his shotgun.

The zombie that first came at her used to be a young businesswoman, with fancy dark pants and a blood-soaked silky blouse. Tala swang wide and hit her over the jaw with her hammer, then grabbed the shotgun and jumped back toward Sam.

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

She ripped the sleeve of her shirt and tied the shotgun over his left leg for support, then with no time to waste, turned around and jump-kicked one zombie right in the chin with her boot, then grabbed back her hammer and slapped the other zombie on the cheek, swiftly moving out of their path to finish them off from behind.

She threw Sam's arm around her and made him hop on one leg toward the darkness of a building that had a coffee and doughnut shop all smashed.

She could smell the zombie even before she saw him. And it was good she did because the zombie jumped out of the store's smashed window, but she was already ready and threw Sam right into its legs, knocking him down, and then, before the zombie could sink its teeth into Sam's shoulder, she swung the hammer from down to up and took most of its face off.

“Don't worry, I was not going to let him bite you,” she told Sam.

“Yeah, but you tossed me there...”

“Yeah, I tossed you. Could not fight him with you clinging on to me. And if I just let you stand on your feet, you'd probably fall down face-first against the pavement. Here, lean on this table. Let me look inside,” she said and let him use a nearby coffee table for support.

She moved into the cafe, thinking that maybe it would be better to fight zombies that come at her one at a time than be in the open and let them come at her from all sides.

Inside, it was dark, but she could see well, and could only see a ransacked cafe and could not smell any of them, so she went back to Sam and and helped him get inside.

“You think we'd be better off in there?” he asked.

“Can't cross the street with you like that. Can't carry you piggyback. Have to deal with them here. And then, when it's all cleared, we'll walk to the Observation Tower. It should not be that far away,” Tala talked while she threw chairs down in front of the crashed store window.

So, the first few zombies that came running inside, bumped into those chairs, tripped over them, went down, and made an easy target for Tala to just nailed them into the floor before they could get up.

“Where are all these zombies coming from?” Sam asked, seeing that there were a lot more running toward them.

“Maybe I'll need to lock you in the restroom here. Try moving backward while I deal with them,” Tala said, throwing more chairs on the ground to serve as a trap that proved very useful, moving backward.

But suddenly, there were more than a dozen of them who appeared in the store windows, and she went slamming their heads off, and soon the floor was covered in their blood, slippery as hell, giving Tala a hard time keeping her balance, sliding and almost falling down a few times.

Zombies kept on coming and the chair trapped was not functional anymore as they just piled over them now, over the dead bodies, and as much as Tala smashed them, there were more coming, and soon she felt weary.

[Warning: Your RS energy is below 20 percent.]

Feeling as if she had enough of it, she took out Sam's gun and asked him, “How many rounds do you have?”

“Twelve,” he answered.

She pointed the gun at the closest zombie and pulled the trigger, blowing his brain out. Then she did the same a few more times, her fingers slippery with blood not working too well as she missed two shots out of ten. Then she took a deep breath and leaving the last two bullets in, she went back to her hammer, its handle so sticky with blood it made it hard to hold onto.

“Move back!!” she urged Sam who moved only a few tables down. “We need to...”

Tala stopped in half the sentence as she saw a long blade strike outside the store, chopping one of the zombies' head off. Then the blade made a sound again, and another head rolled. And another.

Tala jumped forward and the zombies that suddenly were undecided where to move met her hammer. She jumped on the table, knocking them down, and saw a guy who looked awfully familiar swing a long katana outside the store, chopping another head off, and then driving it into the head of another zombie.

Tala jumped on another table and hit another zombie over his temple, sending his whole body out of the store.

And then she sighed with relief, seeing that the guy waving his sword around had cut the last of the zombies that were there.

She was still breathing heavily, not moving, waiting for her energy to slowly start going up when the sword guy climbed over all the dead bodies toward her. And could not believe it when she saw who it was.

”Drew? What the hell are you doing here?”

“Saving your ass, of course,” he said.

“Shit. Where did you learn to handle the sword like that?”

“I've been practicing. You know, in a dojo, on Thirty-First Floor?”

“When?”

“Wherever I have free time. Every day. For hours. I love it!”

“Damn. I did not know about that,” she said, offering him her hand to help her get down.

“Well, I wanted to be more useful,” he said as he took her hand to steady her jumping off the table on the floor and the pools of blood there.

“Yeah, you really helped me there.”

“Well, I think you could have handled them all, but since I was here."

"And why were you here?"

"I needed to find you and you were not answering your walkie-talkie...” he said, suddenly a worry in his voice.

“Why? What's going on?” tala said and looked in her backpack to find her walkie-talkie all smashed up.

“It seems there was a problem. Frank said how too many zombies appeared inside the Observation Post, so they moved to another building that is supposed to have better security.”

“Shit,” Tala cursed.

“So, I thought I'd come and let you know. Then... I saw all the zombies, and I figured you could use my help. At least a little bit.” Drew said, almost apologizing for helping her out. Then he looked toward Sam and asked, “And... who is he?”

Tala shrugged her shoulders and just uttered, “He's helpless.”

“Hi,” Sam said and waved toward Drew. “I'm Sam.”

“Yeah, he was supposed to drive all the zombies away. And, obviously, a great job he did.”

“I do not know what happened there,” Sam said, “We ran our bikes through here, and picked all of them up not even an hour ago.”

“Yeah. He does not know,” Tala scoffed. “I'll shoot my shotgun and then I'll be surprised when all the fucken' zombies come running at me.”

“I... I...” Sam wanted to explain but Tala cut him off. “Well, Drew, it's actually good that you're here, because someone will have to carry him. He's fat and useless and he's wailing worse than a spoiled brat who skipped too many of his sleep hours.”

“I...I...” Sam started to speak but found no adequate words.

“Don't worry,” Drew said as he approached Sam to help him out, a little smile resting on his lips. “She is actually being polite to you.”

They moved out per Tala's instructions. Tala moved up front, wiping her bloody hammer off the dead zombie's clothes while Drew carried Sam on his back.

Outside the streets were almost all empty, and they ended up running into only three zombies along. Tala carried Drew's sword and used it to slice into zombies' heads, trying not to make any sounds, killing them fast and silently.

They were a hundred yards away from the building when she saw something strange. Three dark SUVs parked next to each other with the brake lights on the last of them suddenly being turned off. Tala stopped instantly, then told Drew to move silently to a sidewalk and stand in the darkness of a nearby tree.

She pressed Sam's mouth shut before he could utter a sound of pain as Drew dropped him down to lean against the tree trunk. And watched.

The doors of SUVs were suddenly opened and dark figures, wearing body armor, started to come out. On their heads were night-vision goggles, in their hands were deadly rifles with laser scopes. Tala watched as they silently, without uttering a single word, moved to spread out and set a parameter around the entrance of the training building.

“Are these old friends of ours?” Drew whispered to her.

“Yeah, I guess so,” Tala said through her clenched teeth as a wave of anger suddenly overpowered her, regretting she only left two bullets in Sam's gun.