Code Zulu Alpha: Nerd in the Apocalypse!

After a few hours, all of us were gathered in the pool area for our meeting. We now have representatives from Woodlands and the DDR Camp in our place. They always come in groups of five and they share their own reports from running their own place. On our outpost outside which is my old high school, they would just tell their report in a call instead of coming here every night. It was the same case for Iskoh and Rod. Oscar was in charge of communicating with them after each meeting to relay what happened on our parts and for them to relay what happened on theirs. We started on this arrangement after we came back here from the City of Manila. Communication with each other was one of the keys to survive this thing.

I discovered that most of the soldiers from the Meycauayan DDR camps have moved on to my old high school. Only a few dozen would remain just to watch the road and clear a few deadheads while in the hospital. Their group planned on hitting SM Marilao for everything that the place could offer because it was still full of supplies and the people on the rooftops were found dead and just roaming aimlessly on the roof. Oscar gave them the go and they would be executing it tomorrow.

On our side, the clearing groups were starting to encroach Coloong, another barangay next to ours. That place was as big as ours and the difference between that place and ours was that Malanday, our barangay, had one-third of its whole territory on the other side of the highway while Coloong was whole. That barangay owns more fishing areas compared to our place but they don't have land to plant their crops.

"Are there people living over there?" I asked.

"Well, from the looks of it when we came there last time, seems to be none. We reached those huge fish ponds at the end that were also connected to the canal system. Everything else was neglected but there's a lot of zombies still inside the houses." Mark replied.

"How about the other barangays next to them? Have you taken a look yet?" I asked.

"Well, my group went for a quick look there but it seemed the same until Pulo." Jay replied.

"Okay, here's what you'll do to be a little efficient. There are four entrances in total including the bridge which connects us to Pulo that I want you to look at. There are many entrances that connect us to the other barangays via the road. There are small ones and big ones but if you'd look at our map here, these four entrances is the key. If we block them all for the moment, unless those deadheads managed to learn to jump over houses, we're good." I started.

"But those areas are twice as big as this barangay." Dong chimed.

"Well, I'm not telling you to clear everything in one go. After you're done with Coloong, block the road leading to that place as well then continue to Bisig, Tagalag, Mabolo, Isla, and so on… Just start with Coloong first because it's the biggest one before reaching the bridge to Pulo. We'll just start with that side of the road first because we need to make sure the canal system is clear from those other points before we even try going out with our boats." I explained.

We continued the meeting and what followed was Rin's reports on the whole upkeep of our whole place. Supplies were still holding up and the places I've pointed to that might contain valuable equipment and lots of food were spot on. Sweeping each and every house would almost always give supplies but surgically scavenging high-value and low-profile places would give the best yields because high-value and high-profile places were either looted already or crawling with biters.

The places I'm talking about were houses being made into storage areas, houses of people with carry permits or involved with law enforcement, apartments with people with doctoral or engineering degrees, etc., or even houses whose people used to live in were paying high amounts of tax. Those were bound to contain valuables. I made use of the files from the City Hall we hit before and they were fucking accurate. However, I would still make them sweep each house because we would never know what we may find randomly.

We ended that part of the meeting and I formally introduced Cynthia to everyone present. We left it to Cynthia if she would tell them of her brother's real identity but we already made an agreement beforehand that I would tell Oscar everything. I showed the group the pictures I took from the place we stayed for a few days and boy oh boy we got a fucking situation on our hands.

Oscar was stunned when he saw Irene. He was like me every time Kaley would smile brightly.

"Kid, who was that? The one on the plaid shirt? Kid!" Oscar called out to me.

"Uh, that's Irene. She's the leader of that place Ilya was staying at." I replied.

"Ah, wait. Who's that fucking grumpy looking asshole with a cigar?! That's not her lover isn't he?!" Oscar exclaimed.

"Oh, that's Irene's brother Arturo. He's their resident doctor." I replied with a hidden smirk.

"Ah, I must've been seeing things. They both look good especially her and that must be coming from good genes eh? That's right, that's right. He's a doctor too eh? I need to learn more of him too." Oscar nodded though everyone already knew what's about to happen in the future.

"Right, any more questions before Darelle presents his report? That would be the last, right?" I looked at everyone.

"Yeah! I got a question kid!" Oscar raised his hand with a jolly look on his face.

"I'll introduce you later, don't worry." I was shaking my head the same with everyone.

"Yes! AH- I mean- I'm just gonna make sure you tell them about everything to make their p-place hold. I saw the pictures of some of their fences and it was t-terrible. I'm ah- just gonna introduce myself and tell her about a few improvements. That's right, i-improvements." Oscar was fidgeting.

"Yeah, sure. Darelle, they said you have something to show me?" I looked at him and Trisha and they were wearing difficult expressions.

"Yeah, umm, to those who are squeamish and have kids here. Please leave this meeting now and take your kids back home. This is uh… something else. I haven't shown this to everybody though a few already saw it." Darelle said with a solemn expression.

A few people left with their kids and my curiosity grew wilder.

Darelle passed me a memory card and I plugged it in the card reader for my laptop. He pointed to the file I was supposed to watch with everyone and he told me the time to skip it in.

The moment it played, my eyes never left the screen.

I remembered the place those fuckers mentioned the father was staying at and it was a beautiful church.

It was inspired by Korean and European architecture and it was built for the first Korean Catholic priest who studied and sought refuge in the Bulacan Area. It was made quite cleanly and the design of it was spectacular yet minimalist. The colors were mostly white but the roofs were black and there were a few motifs of gold. Even the landscape was amazing but it was different now.

Fucking different.

Darelle and the others managed to record footage of that place from far away. There was also footage from a drone but it was just a quick run-through because their location might be discovered when it flew back. They left the place the moment the drone was taken to make sure no one would have the chance to follow them. They even picked it up in another block, making sure no one followed the drone as well. The video was almost blurry but I could only imagine how that group of people managed to make that place abhorrent even from afar.

The whole church was made of flesh.

From the first floor and its majestic and white pillars up to the roofs which were made with black clay tiles were now covered by people or parts of them. The once beautiful church was defaced by a group of people that had let go of their humanity long ago.

On the pillars were bodies of children who were either dead or alive, slowly coiling up to the other end. Their hands and feet were nailed together and their insides were spilling out. I could only imagine the cries they were producing being placed in that sorry state. The walls had people nailed in a praying position and dismembered torsos were occupying the gaps but their heads were still intact. Even their plot of land where lush trees were supposed to be growing was replaced by figures which were flayed and struck by a pole in their abdomen, buried in the ground.

The funny thing is that some of them were still moving albeit roughly.

The bodies were made sure to cover each and every surface even up to the higher floors and the roof. Even the gate has several bodies kneeling but their heads were removed and placed on the spikes on top of the gate.

The clay tiles on the roof were also paired with a huge number of heads facing up and some were in the state of undeath. The view was like a fucked up version of corn on the cob and they were tightly packed and their heads were even shaved but some of them were missing their scalp. Blood was trickling down in some areas but most of them were already congealed and had darkened.

Internal parts were scattered on the grass area which was once green but now was dark and red. The only thing the same was the walkway made of rock that led inside the doors of the church in which hands were nailed into the door representing wings.

I tried to replay the footage a couple of times to see everything more clearly but I can't even get a glimpse of what was inside.

The whole pool area was quiet and no one made a sound. There was a mix of disgust, fear, anger, and repulsion in the expression of everybody present.

"Darelle, have you ever seen their 'father' at least?" I asked.

"No, but we stayed in that place for a while and we've seen a lot of them coming in at random intervals, bringing different kinds of supplies, even more people for... you know… their decorations. The church's bell would ring every 6:00 AM, 12:00 PM, and 6:00 PM. We don't know why yet but they do and something seems to be happening inside. We just can't get too close because we might get discovered." Darelle replied.

"No, finding their location is good enough. Don't come back to the same spot because they might be there the next time you- Well, it won't matter now. You guys were searching for them for a while and you found them. Only one thing left to do for those motherfuckers. We'll kill them all." I said with a dark expression.