***

Back in the past, five fighters stayed in a tent at the boot camp. Those five fighters are the younger version of Shi Huang's squad members. Back then, Li Kay didn't have a short beard, long hair tied in a bean form, and was a bit fatter. Most characters differed in these three months after training in the boot camp for future missions. The whole group gathered in the tent because this would be their last day in the boot camp, and they would be sent on their first mission.

"So," says Xin Yan, sitting on the bunk bed. Is anyone feeling nervous?"

"A bi," says Li Kay, sitting on the other bunk bed near Ahmed.

"Same as well," Ahmed responds, whose left leg moves uncontrollably.

"I know it must be hard," says Ri Ku. "But we can do this. This mission isn't hard. All we have is to clean a beach in India."

"What was the name of the beach again?" asks Xin Yan to Ri Ku, who is holding the folder on the chair at the tent's entrance.

"Called Juhu Beach by the name of the file. There was a signal from a group of survivors."

"They've managed to survive there?" asks Yu Tong. "Heard India was in real trouble."

"Code Black," says Ahmed. "Heard in a report a while ago. India together with Russia, China, most of Europe, and a bit of Africa."

"Things are getting intense over there," says Li Kay. "Glad I ain't out there anymore."

"But now you're going back in," says Yu Tong.

"But this time, I'm prepared," says Li Kay, showing her a shotgun without bullets and pointing with the other hand at the anti-biting armor he's wearing. Now, no zombie would be a threat to us."

"Right," says Ahmed, smiling.

"Ready to go?" asked Ri K, rising from the chair after he saw their commander waving at them from a distance.

"Before we go," Xin Yan tells the group, rising from the bunk bed and pulling up a camera. "Can we take a photo together? T-To as a memory for this day."

"Our very first mission, eh?" asks Yu Tong with a smile. "I like it."

"I want one before and after," says Li Kay.

"Sure, sure," says Ri Ku with a smile. Let's take a big selfie before we leave. We'll ask Hugo if he can print it when we return."

The five fighters gathered in a circle and let Yu Tong take a selfie with this digital camera from the 2010s she found in training outside the walls of a retro market. It doesn't matter much about the camera, but it's still working, and it snapped a good picture of the five members of the Shih Huang Squad. When the selfie was taken, the four people left the end smiling and feeling a bit nervous. Yu Tong left the last because she had to put the digital camera in a safe spot.

***

Back in the present, at the entrance of a store called Bistro Café, Li Kay opens the door and lets the two fighters get in first after he tells them.

"Ladies, first."

"How gentleman of you." jokes Xin Yan to Li Kay.

The three fighters enter the building, and the moment they've entered, they see the door of a room getting wide open and a woman with a knife running at them. She stabbed Li Kay's armor, but the knife couldn't go through the armor. This has made a woman look scared at the one she was trying to stab, lean back, then trip on something and fall on the back of the ground. The frightened woman looks worried at Li Kay, the person she is trying to stab, but she doesn't know it's a man because of the thick armor and the hard helmet that covers the entire face of Li Kay.

"Don't be afraid, " Xin Yan tells the frightened woman in English. We are Fighters."

"Fighters?" asks the woman, rising slowly, shocked. "A-A… When? How? And what happened to the base?"

"Ma'am," says Li Kay to the woman. "You may have stabbed me. But I am not going to attack you."

Li Kay takes off the digital thermometer that looks like a gun and points it at the forehead of the woman, who is now more confused than frightened. After Li Kay sees that the woman has a normal body temperature, he puts away the thermometer and looks at her. He sees that she has no bites or scars from a zombie.

"You are clean."

"How did you get here?" asks Yu Tong to the woman.

"I… I ran here. After the invasion at the… um… What's the word, please? English not good."

"Outpost?"

"Yes, yes. Outpost."

"So you were a member of the outpost?" asks Li Kay.

"Y-Yeah. I was. But then… The attacks came… And fled with other people, in these buildings."

"Are there more?" asks Yu Tong.

"Two more," she says, sounding happy. Then, she leads them to the basement to show them the two other survivors.

The three fighters were feeling a little off about this. Just in case it turns out like what happened in that one Elementary school, Yu Tong is hiding the pistol under her sleeves to shoot the woman. The noise may attract the zombies from outside and wake up the slumber zombies from inside, but the three can get out safely thanks to their armor. Arriving on the basement, the three fighters are not surrounded with guns, the two see two injured people, laying in their beds, on the brink of dying.

One of the men has his entire left limb damaged from a fire by the looks of it. And the second person has a leg that was cut off, his left foot, more specifically, bandaged and barely able to breathe. The three fighters approached the two survivors, looking carefully at them. They see and realize the person with a missing leg is a goner, while the one with the burned arm can still move and recover.

"What happened?" Xin Yan to the frightened woman.

"I found them like this yesterday… In the nearby house…" says the frightened woman, who seems calm.

"Do you speak English?" asks Yu Tong to the man who looks better than the other.

"Yes." says the man, breathing heavily. "I've been sent here yesterday… As areconn squad."

"Reckon squad?" asks Yu Tong. "Which squad do you belong to?"

"The Rabbit's Legs." says the man with a left limb. "My mate is also from the same squad. We are the only survivors."

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

"Are there more?"

"None, ma'am… Only the two of us have made it."

"What happened? Can you remember?"

"I… Everything happened too fast, ma'am."

Everyone has gathered around the beds of that man with the damaged limb, the one with a goner leg is about to die due to blood loss and the infection being too dangerous to his life.

"We were sent to inspect the airport before your squad came to the airport… You are from the ten squads The Organization has sent, right?"

"Yes," responds Li Kay instead of Yu Tong. "What happened there?"

"We encountered a class F zombie, none like the others."

"What do you mean?" asks Yu Tong.

"They… Were able to dodge our attacks."

"What do you mean by that?" asks Yu Tong, confused. "You shoot them?"

"Yes. We almost emptied all of our magazines just to kill that creature who the moment saw us… pointing the gun… He fled and ducked away…"

"Was an undead?" asks Xin Yan to everyone, who turns around.

"An undead," says Li Kay. "Being able to be a Class F… That's something I don't want to see."

"What if we can control him?" asks Xin Yan.

"Controlling an undead is hard. Once they get a taste of zombies, humans, or any other meat, they become savages. Like drug addicts." says that person with the burned limb, coughing a few times. "Other than that. H-Have you took the outpost."

"The golf course 2," says Yu Tong. "We did."

"Thank Heavens." says the injured person with a smile. "Now. I want you to take us there."

"Are you sure?" asks the woman to the injured man. "Are you sure of this, Tim?"

"Yes," responds the injured soldier named Tim. "I am sure." he looks over at his friend. "But my mate, Theodor… He needs to be killed."

Their friend Tim looks over at him, breathing heavily, and his skin starts to change into a darker white with green like most of the regular zombies seen so far. While Theodor was looking at Tim, he shook his head in approval, holding his tears. He cannot talk, but he accepts his fate by this gesture. Soon, Li Kay was the one who did the dirt work and stabbed the brain of Theodor with his knife before they all left the place and moved Tim on a stretcher to the outpost that was located not too far from them.

***

The following day, the forty-nine people in the outpost are awakened by the sounds of zombies that encircle the perimeter. A horde just came at them from the northeast direction, probably from a big city that hadn't been bombed in the first days. The military tried their best but ran out of ammo and decided to retreat to the outpost. With twenty soldiers, this outpost has enough power to keep a horde like this from invading their home again.

In this outpost, sixty-seven personnel can fight. The horde of zombies has grown smaller with each shot from their highly destructive weapons. In this group of people, the Shi Huang Squad helped the group repel the attack in about ten to fifteen minutes. They also managed to kill three Class F zombies in that horde. This fight was hard, but the horde was quickly taken down thanks to the fighters' help. Minutes later, a group of fighters left the perimeter to check the area of dead zombies, ensuring all of them were dead. Now, they cannot make entire zombies into huge piles and burn them because there are about hundreds of zombies, plus burning hundreds of zombies requires gas they'll need for tomorrow's mission. Instead of doing all of this tiring work, they are going to check if the bodies are dead or alive.

The Shi Huang squad members stay inside the outpost, where they all clean the weapons and check the stockpiles this outpost poses. While looking through the crates, they realize they are running short on the available ammunition for tomorrow.

"After today's attack, it was obvious," says Yu Tong after she looked through the rifle ammunition crate.

"You are righ," Li Kay tells Yu Tong after he finishes inspecting the magazine of the weapons he used in this battle. "And what are we going to do tomorrow?"

"We'll do it with melee tactics," says Ahmed to Li Kay. "What other choice do we have?"

"There's got to be another way," says Li Kay to Ahmed.

"I think there is one," says Ri Ku to the squad, then he looks at his people confidently. "Cars."

"What?"

"Cars. We can use cars in our favor."

"Explain, please," says Xin Yan.

"First thing first, we'll need working cars. Second, we need loud music, deafening music, and third but not least, explosives."

"I see," says Li Kay. "We create a booby trap for zombies?"

"Bingo," says Ri Ku to Li Kay.

"That may work," says Yu Tong. "But how do we get cars?"

"Look at our surroundings," says Ri Ku. There are vehicles everywhere. All we need to do is find workable ones. If not, we take what is essential to us—discs, sticks, batteries, everything we need for this plan to work."

"Doesn't this one sound too much?" says Xin Yan. "Do you think our commanders would let us do this?"

"Go for it." says a fighter commander walking on the scene, who overheard everything. "I allow you."

"Thanks," Ri Ku says to the commander, then looks at Xin Yan. See, we got approval."

***

Two hours later, three kilometers from the outpost, the squad of five fighters entered what appeared to be an auto-repair shop where they saw a car inside a garage, and the group of fighters approached that car. Before Li Kayiss is about to open the door of the car, he sees inside the vehicle a zombie who smashes his face into the window, looking dead at Li Kay, grasping and sizzling. Upon closer inspection, the zombie seemed malnourished, with scars on his face and without teeth. Li Kay also notices the windshield is broken.

"How did this get in here?" asks Li Kay.

"No idea," says Ri Ku. "But I am more worried about how he did not try to climb from the windshield."

Li Kay looks closer at the zombie leaning his face on the window; he notices that the zombie is wearing a seatbelt in the driver's seat, which can show why the zombie did not try to escape from the car. But what about the teeth? However, the group doesn't question this much. Ri Ku pushes Li Kay back, opens the door, and stabs the zombie with his knife. He unbuttons the seat belt from the zombie and drags him down from the car to let Yu Tong inspect the vehicle, as they did to many others an hour ago.

"Found something," says Yu Tong after she finishes checking under the seat.

"What?" asks Ri Ku.

"Is a pape, says Yu Tong to Ri Ku, handing the paper to him.

"Say something good?" asks Li Kay to Ri Ku.

"Don't know," says RI, who doesn't return the paper, returning Yu Tong's papers. g else?"

"Is there anything," says Yu Tong. "But it looks jammed."

"It is jammed," says Ri Ku, inspecting the gun more closely and throwing it to the ground.

"We searched for an hour and barely found something," says Li Kay. "Just a USB stick."

"Keep looking," says Ri Ku, leaving the garage with his group. He points at a house not far from them. Let's check the house over there."

The whole group walks for a bit toward the house their squad leader has pointed out. The front of this house looks like a typical residential blown BangkThailand'surban area. The squad of entering the blonde see five zombies standing up and staring at them. The first zombie moves toward the group, but he is quickly taken out like the other zombies' wishotsots from their guns.

The group of five looks back and sees a few zombies from outside getting up and walking toward them. Ri Ku and Ahmed quickly lock the doors of this place, and then they all walk upstairs to the rooftop. While running toward the rooftop, the group had to put down three zombies on their way with their backs to their weapons rather than shooting to avoid attracting too much attention.

Arriving at the rooftop, the group of five people are looking around, there they see a plank bridge connecting with the other block. The group doesn't question this because they see a zombie that crawls from a tent. Ri Ku puts the zombie down with his gun, and his group continues to move.—The whole group's trolley on that improvised bridge holds everyone individually after they go. When Yu Tong, the last person to cross this improvised bridge, manages to get on the other side, Ri Ku kicks the bridge down, falling tens of feet into the jammed streets.

"Now what?" asks Ahmed.

"We leave," says Ri K, heading toward heading that gives to the building.

Ri Ku observed the door was locked, so he and his friends broke the door by smashing the back of the guns to destroy this door. After the door is destroyed, the group walks silently down the stairs without encountering zombies. The whole group of five walked for a good two minutes in this five-story residential block without hearing any zombies hiss, growl, scream, , oranything strange. Arriving at the main door, the group notices the zombies from outside are entering the residential building they were in before.

"They think we are still there," says Ri Ku.

"We go on the other side?" asks Li Kay.

"Yeah," says Ri Ku, leading to another exit.

This other exit consisted of breaking into an apartment, killing a zombie who was lying on the bed for God knows how long, then looking for a window, opening the window, and escaping through the window. When all five of them have escaped, they are checking their surroundings and spot a van parked in the parking lot of this residential building.

"Nice," Li Kay walking to the van and approaching the door.

"Li!" says Ri Ku to Kay before he was about to open the door.

But it is too late. Li Kay opens the vehicle door, and the alarm goes off. The remaining four members of the group groan and look disappointed at Li Kay, who couldn't wait a bit. Li Kay quickly gets in the driver's seat and observes that the key is in contact. He also notices that this vehicle has gas as he looks at the gauge.

"This van has gas!"

"We'll take it, then!" says Ri Ku to Li Kay.

"Here they come!" Xin Yan yells to the group as she spots nine zombies running toward the source of the commotion.

The whole group of five people entered the van in a hurry. When they all got in there, the driver, Li Kay, drove the van; after he turned on the engine and put it on reverse, away from the parking lot, then he made a 180 degrees rotation, put on forward, and drove forward to the outpost while running over three zombies who were in his way. While driving, a big group of zombies goes after the van slowly and quickly, But it would be useless since the truck is more rapid than ever.