Code Zulu Alpha: Nerd in the Apocalypse!

"Tongues?" the rest of the group said at the same time.

"Well, a tongue is an organ mainly used for swallowing or manipulating food for mastication." I replied.

"Did you just fucking Leslie Nielsen all of us?" Jared said as he chuckled while everyone was shaking their heads.

"Heh, joking aside, I think Kaley's right. Judging from the features it has while disregarding how long and discolored it is, it seems to be a collective of tongues from… from that thing. It's differently textured on each side and there's also a left and right side separated by a vertical tissue that looks like the groove between our tongues on the 'front' surface. It appears to be a human-like tongue but I don't know how it got to that… that stage." I replied.

"H-Hey… l-look at the other ones..." Kaley pointed to the screen once more.

The whole body of the creature or the creatures we were seeing was stuck at the bottom of the station and we couldn't make its features out properly. However, the thing Kaley wanted us to see wasn't just the tongues that appeared but the ones that were throwing out bodies after they were seemingly 'done' with them.

The tongues she was pointing to were now dripping with a black, viscous substance that we have seen multiple times in place of what was supposed to be in someone's skull.

'Hmm… Could it be? It is, right?' I thought to myself.

Despite more questions popping in my head, I was grateful for the decision of heading to this area directly because if we didn't it would take us a few weeks or even months if we did it the methodical way.

From what we witnessed after a body gets pulled up, the tongue that brought it up will retract or disappear with it. However, a tongue bringing one down or throwing a body back violently could mean that it had brought one up previously. It seemed to be in the same spot earlier so the idea of them being able to appear on other places of its main body was impossible.

Everyone had the suspicion that they were the ones making the hollow ones and it was backed up when we saw the one they threw down move. They weren't moving after they were thrown down but the first one we saw that crashed onto a car slowly twitched and got up like it was nothing.

We still needed to confirm it by cracking its head open but most of the evidence was already pointing to the congealed mass stuck on the elevated platforms. Aside from that, it wasn't moving with the crowd because it seemed that it had its own agenda to follow.

"They're making them but how can they make them move? That's the final question I have on my mind." I muttered.

"How did they reach our place though?" Jared asked.

"It could be that there are other things like that or the ones it turned eventually reached our place by using the backroads. Because if they walked or were guided near the Barangay of Karuhatan, they would've been cleared by the group not wanting to do anything with us." I explained.

"So, the things we did on the corpses on the chapel is useless now?" Ibarra added.

"Not exactly. We don't know the full extent of what they could make them do or even if they were in control of it. We should leave it there for now and we'll see if they would do anything else. We're now 100% confirmed on this so we still need to think of other possibilities." I explained.

"Can you move it a bit closer? I want to confirm if they're feeding on the brains of the ones they're bringing up and how they're doing it." Tatiana said.

Everyone seemed to be in agreement with that suggestion so I slowly drove the drone closer.

"Okay, it's a little clo- fuck. Now you owe a drone. An expensive one to boot..." I said with a deadpan expression but I was completely joking.

"I-I'll find one in a future run..." Tatiana muttered while the others didn't know whether to cry or laugh.

What happened was as soon as I entered their range, one of them whipped the drone violently, causing it to crash down, unable to fly. I think I could maybe repair it if I got my hands on it but I wouldn't fucking enter that area unless I came in an attack helicopter with several hundred gallons of napalm.

The only saving grace from the boneheaded mistake was that the footage right before it was destroyed was saved.

The only problem now was how to deal with it.

Before we thought of what we could do, I decided to review the footage. The congealed pieces were only located right under the station and nothing else. They covered the whole underbelly of it but not under the elevated rails which were much thinner.

In this country, there were three main train lines that were above ground which were named LRT-1, LRT-2, and MRT-3. The only difference between the three was the company that owned them and the location of the stations that they were driving on. Each line had more than a dozen stations and it led me to think that these dangling bits had its brethren in the other stations present as well or close to any other place where the hollow ones were roaming around.

The problem with that was the train lines and their stations were situated into cities we weren't even close to exploring yet. This first station which was also called Monumento was the first among many and we have a lot to go through and we needed to go deeper each time if the same creature was located on the other stations.

"What should we do now, bro?" Jared asked.

"We could take care of them by using different methods but as much as possible, I don't want to damage the railways even if there might be more of them in the other train stations. Our best course of action, for now, is to clear the walls they created and approach that area from the side, not from the front. I don't want to upset the current system of the group making use of that makeshift funnel. We couldn't pick them off from afar but we could do that with the ones roaming around. We just have to make sure we shoot the ones away from the train cars on the monument." I explained.

"How do we do that? Our guns even suppressed could still make a lot of noise, right? Once we start shooting, more and more would approach the train cars and they might push them apart due to the sheer amount of bodies held against them." Ibarra stated his case.

"Hmm, I have a better idea now. We could start by choosing where to park." I replied.

"Where to park?" Ibarra scrunched his eyebrows.

"Yep. The helicopter, I mean." I chuckled.

"I don't follow..." Ibarra scratched his head.

"We're doing the same thing when we cleared the place you were in. It's shitty for them but all we need to choose is where to park between that mall, that other mall, that bank, or that love hotel. If we're going by tradition we should pick the love hotel." I continued while chuckling.

"Raise your hand for the love hotel!" Jared interjected and the rest shook their heads in amusement.

"Heh, that's solidarity for you. Last time, we had to use a lot of people just to make a perimeter once we started piling bodies one after the other. This time, we only need a few that would fit the helicopter plus a fuck ton of ammo but mostly .22 LRs. It worked before so it should work the same thing next time we do it." I continued.

"Wait a sec, I have a question. This place is another city, right?" Mikhail interjected.

"Yes, why do you ask?" I replied.

"And this city is much, let's say, developed, right? Just judging from the taller buildings and such." Mikhail continued.

"Where are you going at, big guy?" Tatiana asked.

"I just got to thinking where the DDR Camps here are located. Shouldn't we clear those places as well?" Mikhail explained.

"Yes, we should." I replied.

"Hey, shouldn't we do that first? Considering the ammo we would be using again?" Kaley added.

"Yeah, you guys didn't let me finish." I chuckled.

"Then what are you trying to say?" Tatiana asked.

"I did say it's tradition to park on the love hotel but I already decided on it beforehand. Well, we still need to check and secure the place though. Aside from that, we would be using fewer people as I said earlier so-" I was about to continue but Kaley interrupted me.

"Wait, don't tell me the soldiers built a DDR Camp on a love hotel?!" Kaley exclaimed.