Code Zulu Alpha: Nerd in the Apocalypse!

Unc Zardon lifted up the leather hand rest of the central compartment and then right as he was about to jab his knife in between the little lines where it was all snapped in, I stopped him.

"Umm, let me do that part Unc. I have better tools for… finessing these kinds of things." I said as I pulled out my lockpicking tools.

I retrieved a couple of very thin and flat pieces of metal. I inserted them into the edges as I slowly applied pressure.

The central compartment snapped up and then Unc and I gave each other a devilish smile. I forgot we were taking a bit of time and we saw Tatiana picking up the AKM and inspecting it.

"I'm taking this outside, the magazines too..." Tatiana asked for permission but Unc Zardon and I were too busy to even care. We just gave her a thumbs up and we were met with another problem.

"Hmm… now how about that..." Unc Zardon started rubbing his chin.

"A fucking safe… Unc, just go for now and we'll deal with this later. We still got a lot of ground to cover and I want to see the road towards Malabon before it gets dark." I replied, snapping back the plastic part of the central compartment.

We walked out of the Raptor and everyone was ready. Matthew gave Kaley a bag of food and water for us who would keep on exploring because everything was inside the 8-wheeler.

Matthew and Unc Zardon drove first and we followed behind them. Tatiana was driving her HUMVEE while Mikhail was driving the Raptor. We would just break off when we reached Pulo. While we were in transit, I pulled my radio out and contacted Borris.

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*bzzt*

"Hey, if you two need a boat to travel the little river behind your house, there are several in Tawiran ripe for the taking. There are about 8-9 wooden ones powered by motors so if you happen to pass by, it's all yours."

*bzzt*

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*bzzt*

"Sure, that's pretty far though. We'll see if we have time."

*bzzt*

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*bzzt*

"Go there as early as you could because the presence of the dead there lessened quite a bit because of us. We blocked the bridge so most of the dead would be coming from our side, Malabon, or Navotas."

*bzzt*

-

*bzzt*

"Okay, I'll keep that in mind."

*bzzt*

-

We encountered trickles of the dead going back to Pulo and Lois and Lawrence made sure to pick them off one by one. It got noisy on the way to Tawiran earlier because of the two so Kaley decided to ride the HUMVEE with Tatiana. Jared, Lois, Lawrence, Mikhail, and I were the only ones in the Raptor following behind them all. Jared was ignoring all of Lois' remarks because he was focused on watching out for potential threats. I on the other hand was busy updating my internal map inside my head.

We received a honk from the 8-wheeler, telling us that they were about to broke off. Tatiana and Mikhail returned the same reply and Tatiana started to drive slower compared to earlier. It was because we were now driving into new territory and we were surveying the road and we needed to be extra careful.

Lois was reloading the 25-round magazine of the Ruger 10/22s while Lawrence was picking the little casings off the Raptor's bed.

"Bro, how much .22 LRs did you bring over? I still see a lot of them in this ammo can. What size is this?" Lois said, looking at me.

"Hmm? That's the one I use for plinking so I just dump my .22 LRs there and bring it somewhere so I'm not sure. Well, what's the record now?" I replied.

"87-98. I'm on the lead." Lawrence replied with a cheeky smile while Lois' eyebrow was twitching.

"You just got lucky there's a lot on the corner earlier..." Lois muttered.

"Then you've killed 215 if we include Jared's share. That's an ammo can for .50 caliber cartridges so there's probably 3,000 more, give or take. I didn't fill it to the brim but if I did, it could fit around 6,500 .22 LRs." I said, glancing at the space occupied by the cartridges.

"Aren't we splurging a bit on ammo?" Lawrence commented.

"What? You're killing those fuckers with those little rounds. One of them dead by a low caliber round is one of the greatest things that could happen. We'd use less gunpowder for reloading and a smaller projectile to make it with. Just pick up as many casings as possible and we're golden." I replied and Lawrence nodded a few times.

"He's calling it splurging, heh. If he knew how much we have..." I laughed inwardly.

The road to the City of Malabon was pretty much the same towards the road to Tawiran but the number of ways we could drive in and turn to different spots was more than double. There were two main roads we could take and we took the one where we could see over the other fishing areas. Going down this road would also let us hug the road which was much nearer to the place where Cyrill mentioned he saw a few of his old dealers.

Now that we were using vehicles that have less storage space, we would only stop and take a look around a place if what's inside were high-value and high-priority items. Not to mention, we were prioritizing items that wouldn't take as much space.

We took a left turn after driving for 15 minutes and we passed by a looted gas station. We saw a few zombies stuck inside the store while a few were prone and with a nasty injury on the head. We surmised that people have looted this place but this was not what we were aiming for when we took a turn.

We conversed briefly on the radio and Tatiana accelerated and moved down roamers past the looted water station. Crushed and dismembered bodies were left from her wake and she stopped when she reached a non-descript home.

"This the place, correct?" Tatiana said as they vacated the HUMVEE.

"Yeah, we're just here to take the seed packets from this place so we could grow a lot more vegetables." I replied.

We entered the house that was broken into but the seed packets I was looking for were still present.

"People always opt for the instant stuff…" I thought to myself after filling up a bag.

Kaley and I went outside the home and we saw Mikhail swinging a huge fire axe with one hand easily. The rest were busy piling the bodies and Tatiana was checking them first before burning them.

"I may need to upgrade Mikhail's loadout." I thought to myself.

While we continued with our drive to survey the road, we noticed something quite peculiar. Even Tatiana slowed down even more and then we went to a full stop. We saw a few things pass by quickly to another corner.

-

*bzzt*

"You guys saw that, correct?"

*bzzt*

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*bzzt*

"Yeah, eyes open for now but we'll use the drones to be sure."

*bzzt*

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*bzzt*

"Okay."

*bzzt*

-

Lois and I drove the drones a couple of blocks forward to check on those things we saw skitter erratically. The drones weren't even halfway before another mass of those things followed. They must've gotten attracted to the noise of the drones and they switched routes. Lois and I drove them back and we were seeing a mass of them heading to our direction.

"The fuck..." Jared muttered, looking at his scope.

-

*bzzt*

"Get ready. We'll kill them all while reversing slowly. We'll use the roads as a runway and we'll go the way we came from so there's little to no surprise. Tatiana, drive by the side of us so we could fire freely and avoid grazing your HUMVEE because our aim would be lower."

*bzzt*

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*bzzt*

"Understood. Who the fuck did that though?"

*bzzt*

-

*bzzt*

"No time to worry about it. A few are quicker than the rest, fire at will."

*bzzt*

-

What we saw was a mass of the dead approaching us in a… different way… and form…

A gathering of the dead which were roughly 3 feet in height were approaching us with varying degrees of speed. It was not because of rot or anything but all of their bodies were cut or dismembered in half. Their lower bodies were missing but they were still in a mission to infect each and every one of us.

The ones in front were walking while using their hands as their feet. However, they were dragging their internal organs and their spinal cord was scraping off the pavement making their movements erratic. Some of them weren't even perfectly cut and their bodies were folded near the hips. Their skin from their palms was almost gone because a few were moving too fast and because they were using their bare hands to traverse the road littered with obstacles.

Some were even using their forearms and stumps as they were slowly getting left behind. Despite that, they were following the herd and they were trying their best to keep in line. They were all covered in bite marks and a few tools from what I guess from the victims who were too slow to get away from them.

A huge gust of wind blew towards our direction and the smell coming from them was horrid. Lois almost barfed from the smell as he covered his nose with his hands. We were all wearing masks but it was still making our eyes water.

The ones in the back were almost swimming in the pavement as they were making way with a breaststroke on land. A few erratic and weird ones were doing the butterfly motion as both of their arms were dragging their torso forwards and hitting their heads in the process. I bet there were more forms but if these things managed to reach our place or even Borris' it would be trouble.

The baffling thing was the number of them present occupying the road was too much. I wonder who got that time to saw their bodies in half. We would need to clear them all so we could safely traverse and reach our destination. I calculated the bullets we would be using and we would splurge this time.

"Jared, just keep watch for anything and everything around." I said as I slung my BCM on my shoulders.

"Wait, what are you doing bro?" Jared looked back at me.

"I need to make sure that none surprises us from behind. Just make Tatiana and Mikhail follow behind me so we'll have a safe route." I explained as I jumped down.

I ran to the nearest intersection while my rifle was raised. There were a few stragglers far away so I decided to just drag the corpses on the ground to the side. I suddenly saw the HUMVEE's door opening and Kaley came outside to help me. She was now the one tasked to watch from behind while I made the road clear for the guys reversing the vehicle. Jared jumped on the roof of the HUMVEE while Lois opened up the ammo cans.

"Mags!" Lois shouted.

"This kid." I thought to myself.

Lois started reloading Lawrence and Jared's magazines if they went empty so the two could focus on shooting the ones upfront.

It was going well but if things could go wrong, they would.

We heard a loud and hoarse bellow from the intersection where the other road would connect the two. We saw a huge towering figure making its way toward us but its huge abdomen was getting ripped apart. We can't see quite clearly as to why that was happening but it was followed by few more like it and in the same condition as well.

"KROOOOHH!!!"

"KROH!"

"GROOOOOOOHHHH!!!"

Their shouts were ringing one after the other and another wave of those 3 feet abominations poured out from their side.

"Fuck." Kaley and I muttered.