Code Zulu Alpha: Nerd in the Apocalypse!

Jared started to get hysterical when I took a step forward and his eyes were focused at my left hand. He started to back away as if I had leprosy or opened up a can of Surströmming and fear was evident in his eyes. I was laughing internally because I didn't think that what I did earlier would garner such a reaction.

What I did was I casually pulled out a condom, ripped the side to pull it out, and wore a blank face as I placed it over my left fist. I was alternating of looking at my fist and Jared and he would shudder each time we lock eyes.

"BRO?! I GET IT! I GET IT! I WON'T MENTION THAT THING TO ANYONE~!!! MESSAGE RECEIVED!!! BRO?! STOP!!! DON'T LOOK AT ME LIKE THAT!!!"

"This shit is lubricated, don't worry."

"BROOOOO?! THE FUCK I WOULDN'T WORRY ABOUT YOU LOOKING LIKE THE PROBE 2.0?! FUCK!!! BLINK ONCE, WOULD YOU?!"

"Sig P320, take it or leave it."

"YES! YES! DEAL! YOU CRAZY FUCK!!!"

"Okay, if you say so. I'll head up now."

"IF YOU SAY SO?! WHAT?!"

"Problem?"

"No… have a safe trip..."

"Oh! Thank you."

"..."

I went outside Jared's room with a grin on my face and I saw Jomarro peeking out from his door while Mikhail had just ascended the stairs. The same look was plastered on their faces when they saw my left fist with a glistening condom on it and they pretended that they didn't see anything.

However, when I was about to enter Jomarro's room to help him pack, I was fucking surprised at how he suddenly became organized. I thought Rin or I packed his bags because everything was in perfect order. He was already tucking himself in bed when I reached his door and he just waved me off aggressively telling me that he didn't require my services any longer.

I was laughing hard with Kaley and Tatiana when I told them about what happened and all that was left was to experience a few awkward moments between Jared tomorrow. Jared agreed to not tell a soul about it but that didn't mean that he would forget it the incident easily.

A few more hours had passed and we drove outside riding three vehicles in pairs.

Everything was loaded inside and I was in the lead, heading for this place's Municipal Hall. Since the Bulacan Area was not yet a city, they didn't have the City Hall where everything was stored like what we have in Valenzuela. We would have to gather everything from each barangay individually to have access to the information of the people in this area.

The only bright side was this Municipal hall and the one from Lolomboy, where the cult was located, wasn't infested with close to a thousand sprinters.

I exited my vehicle and I drew my katana after running over an elderly deadhead that tripped over the curb. I felt its head crunch when the wheels of this SUV went over its head and its brain matter spurted out to the side. There was one approaching from Kaley's door but she simply slammed it by opening the door violently and stabbing down with her wakizashi.

Kaley was slowly incorporating the use of her wakizashi before drawing her gun and she was slowly getting better and better. Still, she couldn't use it well with her left hand the same thing with how she couldn't fire her gun at the same speed with her left hand.

"Well, time is all we needed." I thought to myself.

The Municipal Hall had two entrances from the front and the back. The front entrance was two huge glass doors and windows that were currently broken into pieces while the back entrance was just a simple door that leads to the alley where the trash of the convenience store was collected.

The sun was up and we could see the rotting bodies emerging from the Municipal Hall.

They were missing parts of their bodies but it was replaced by jagged glass that sunk deep on their bodies. Dried blood was just right below it though each time a shard was touched in an angle, it would almost dug their rotten flesh out or rip right through the discolored skin that was about to fall off.

They all came at us while adding more shards to their bodies because they just all walked forward without avoiding them. A huge shard from below just sliced through what seemed to be an accountant's leg and it took out a huge chunk off. It just plopped to the ground while the darkened blood and pus were slowly coming out of it.

I wanted to kill them all with our melee weapons but the glass shards were an issue. Not only they could break accidentally and cut us, but they were also stained with the viscous fluids of the dead so one cut and you would be shot in the head.

We decided that shooting them was the best option though I made use of the reach of my katana for the final ones I put down. I didn't perform slashed and I just thrust my blade forward right where their eyesockets were located. However, I had to stab from under the chin straight up at an angle for the last one because it was wearing a thick face shield.

We started going inside and luckily we didn't have to bring home a ton of paperwork because the hard drives were still intact and still inside their server room.

Besides taking their records, we managed to acquire a fire axe, two fire extinguishers, several rims of paper, three gallons of water, an assortment of snacks, and a pump-action shotgun from the dead security guard who blew his brains out inside the bathroom. The rest of his belt included eight shells, a pepper spray, a flashlight, and handcuffs.

We were dragging the bodies outside then my radio buzzed.

-

*bzzt*

"Kid, if you don't come here in the next hour, we'll leave without you."

*bzzt*

-

*bzzt*

"Yeah, just came from the Municipal Hall to check on some things. We'll be there in a few minutes."

*bzzt*

-

*bzzt*

"Yeah? I'll get ahold of Angelica and J & E then. They asked me to contact them when you're close."

*bzzt*

-

*bzzt*

"Sure. We just need to burn the bodies here."

*bzzt*

-

*bzzt*

"See you in a few then."

*bzzt*

-

Since most of our vehicles were filled with supplies, we didn't bother checking the other places that might've contained a few more food items and the like. However, it still took a while to reach the Intercity because we had to drive around the backroads and we had to circle over a few factories.

When we drove inside, our cargo truck seemed to be full and was already parked near the exit with our military jeeps. We also had two new recruits which were vouched by our own soldiers and checked by Oscar by contacting the president alone.

"Sanchez, is Oscar and the rest still in Jomarro's store?" I rolled my window down and asked one of the soldiers with us.

"Yes, they're just waiting for you to come back." Sanchez replied.

When we reached Jomarro's store, Oscar's eyes lit up when he saw the Hummer and he started to place his hands over it to see through the tinted windows. I on the other hand looked at the stacks of rice in Jomarro's store and a large number of them which was exactly the right number of the amount you could fit inside the cargo truck and the 8-wheeler was gone.

It would take a few days or even more than a week to collect everything from this store and we also needed to find the right place to store them all.

"Kid, I thought you'd be here in a few minutes? You took more than an hour to get here." Oscar said as I handed him the keys to his SUV.

"Shit happens, are they here now?" I replied.

"Yeah, they're waiting in Jomarro's office." Oscar looked at Jomarro.

"Then let's talk with everyone. I hope I'm the one coming out with the best deal compared to those two, heh." Jomarro chuckled as we headed inside.

I saw Emily and Angelica when we opened the door and they seemed to have aged a few years compared to Jomarro who looked the same the last time I saw him. Their hairs were frazzled and the bags under their eyes were more visible. They also seemed to have lost weight because their clothes were looser than usual.

We promptly greeted each other and talked about the past a few times before we slowly slid in to talk about their proposals.

"I'll start..." Emily cleared her throat.

What Emily told us was the same as what Oscar told me yesterday night. I discovered that Oscar already explained to her our initial plan but she still asked me to make sure Oscar and I were telling the same thing to her. I made sure to assure her that her parents would be in the most comfortable place possible and all their needs would be attended to.

"I'll leave a radio here which you could use to contact them whenever but do make sure to keep that safe and the batteries charged. We'll obviously have some precautions before you get to talk to them but it's all for the best for everyone. If something like… you know… happened to them and they leave this world, we have access to a crematorium just a few miles away from our base and we could give you their ashes." I explained when she started to ask a few more questions.

"You'll cremate them?" Angelica chimed in.

"That's the way to go. I don't want any unnecessary risks and that's the best we could do. We have people before that we only managed to turn to ashes in an let's just say in an inconsiderate place because of the circumstances. However, now that we have access to a crematorium, we'd do our best to take care of our own by using that place. Is that fine with you?" I explained a few more things and I waited for her response.