Code Zulu Alpha: Nerd in the Apocalypse!

I could already see from the corner of my eye Ruben and Brian several feet behind me, pulling the decapitated bodies to the sidewalk, but this fucking deadhead running on all fours took advantage of it to try to catch me off guard. But to its surprise, my boot had already made contact with its head the moment it tried to use its arms and legs to spring up from its lowered position, and it just had the craziest reverse whiplash it ever experienced.

The force it used to propel itself toward me was enough to topple a grown man but even bullets traveling in high velocity could deviate and miss its target just by making brief contact with a leaf or a branch.

Breaking its neck didn't kill it outright but it made sinking the tip of my blade right in its eye socket way~ easier.

It looked like a transformer that stopped transforming halfway but instead of vehicle parts, its body was made up of rotting flesh with deep lacerations due to the way it was moving further than it was supposed to.

But after pulling out and then flicking the blood off my blade, a bullet whizzed in front of me and took down another feral waiting for the perfect opportunity, so I just pulled the pin from one of my grenades and threw it straight through the little bakeshop they come from.

I would've turned my back against it and posed at the right moment before the explosion, but we weren't here to mess around since I stepped back at the appropriate distance and aimed for the ones that weren't caught by the explosion. Six bodies were confirmed and whatever the fuck was left inside that bakeshop but I simply holstered my TX22 before rushing in once again.

Ignoring the broken glass and scattered debris with my boots, I opened my way into a cluster without Kaley's help by Sparta-kicking a lone wanderer straight through this clump of congealed flesh. Right after that, I moved to their side and alternated between swinging on each of their heads like using a golf club and a normal horizontal swing for the party crashers.

My blade path became goofy as I tried to make it follow the swing arc of a different sport but I went back to the same style right when Tatiana came into view.

She was now equipped with her bastard sword because Kuzma had taken ownership of her injector axe and hadn't had the chance to get it replaced yet, but the tip of her sword was still finding its way to violently inject itself straight through a deadhead's skull without the help of CO2 gas to widen the wound channel.

But yeah, there were just some times when she needed to get a little barbaric with her attacks because as she stepped back to wipe her blade of the grime, she just had to grip her sword on the shard side with her bloody rag before swinging it on a biter's head and breaking its skull with the crossguard.

"Murderstroking, really? Just use your scabbard!"

"Did you forget that mine's made with leather, not wood? Yours even had a metal part just for that!"

"Whatever! Still uses too much energy! And look what you did!"

At this moment, Tatiana's sword got stuck in this deadhead's skull cavity and it just looked way~ worse compared to when she first wiped it. Another step backward could've saved her a bit of time to hold her sword properly but now the handle was also covered with the dead's nasty bits.

We had to pull out our sidearms to clear a small radius so she could pull her sword out safely, but she just left it there because she ran out of clean cloth. Furthermore, wiping our blades haphazardly was okay in a pinch but it was a huge no-no when it comes to our handles.

Even with gloves, blood still had the chance to sip in and get into our callused or overworked hands, due to working out mostly, which could put us out of commission forever.

So yeah, Tatiana went old school and used the pistol and knife combo as I continued to just use my katana, but it has been a while since we heard a gunshot from Artem's side. I know that I did remind them to not waste our bullets but it was a totally different thing to not fire them at all.

I was just about to check in on them when I saw their ride come out of the street I instructed them to loop over, but it seemed like they came across one of Jessica's clearing group who decided to help us as well.

"We'll take care of this—"

"We'll all do it—"

"No, no— We have a quota and we're training newcomers. We had to do it, no sweat."

Hearing their explanation to take over, the rest of us just decided to sheathe our blades and holster our guns before putting on our thick gloves to move the dead-dead onto a large pile for a campfire later. But compared to our new blood, their new recruits seemed to be from the camps further north that joined in with them and it just meant that their number had probably exceeded 300 long ago.

It could be twice or thrice right now if they were just taking in people left and right like me, but I kept my gun and my blade really~ close because that just meant we were working with people we technically had no relations with.

Granted it was true that they now belong in Jessica's camp, but they don't know us as much as we don't know them so keeping our guards up wouldn't hurt in the long run. But yeah, the pair we spoke to noticed the little tension in the air but they just let out a sigh and a chuckle before they offered to finish up:

"Listen… I know it's a little weird right now but we got this, okay? Besides, Jessica's already waiting for y'all… That's one of the reasons we came here. It won't even be a 10-minute ride…"