Code Zulu Alpha: Nerd in the Apocalypse!

The mention of a gun or any other handheld martial weapon being discovered would always make my head turn but a mention of a cache where there would at least be a few in storage would allow me to get myself kidnapped in the right circumstances. I zoomed inside the hallways of the precinct as I dragged Tatiana with me and we soon arrived at the entrance to our destination.

My eyes were already sparkling, "It's this place, right?!"

"W-Wait! It's not what you-"

The moment I opened the door, the look of excitement I had was immediately replaced by disappointment. The door leading to this place's armory had a metal, grated gate to go through before gaining unlimited access. However, I failed to notice the bulletholes on the door I opened earlier and the amount of viscous fluids by our feet. The smell was the same as the last room and it was miraculous I was almost getting used to it.

"What the-"

"I told you. The guns are there but..."

"Hmm..."

Body after body belonging to civilians and police officers was in front of us, in a state of decay numbering more than a month. Furthermore, the ones by the gate to the armory were formed like a fucked up ramp due to the way they swarmed over the entrance. It would take a while to remove every single body and it would take some manpower.

However, looking through the gaps, a figure was inside with a gaping hole in the side of its head.

On the wall right next to the figure was a splatter zone but the bits that belonged to it had already discolored and added to the theme of the whole area. It was quite difficult to see everything from the other side due to the blockage but the figure being on the opposite side of the entrance helped us piece together what happened.

'Tried to fight them off but they blocked his only exit… well… he made his own...'

We eventually got to work but after a while, Oscar and a group he brought with him caught up to us. They came in with his SUV and another pickup and a few soldiers were with them. He left the others to take care of the first batch of bodies to be burned but they will be sending a few dozers to push the bodies together to be burned into clusters later.

Oscar just told me that he got bored of the cleaning process so he brought a group to follow us here.

"What'cha got over here? Oh! I told ya there was something here!" Oscar was already being his loud self.

I shook my head as I replied, "Yeah, the ammo left is a quarter though. Well, the grenades and-"

"What?! What the fuck happened?! A quarter?! This place should be ripe for fuck's sake!"

"Yeah, a quarter. A guy holed up in the armory and started shooting everything that came through. The thing is, the armory just got packed and packed, it became impossible to push the gate the deadheads swarmed."

"B-But! The bodies there aren't enou-"

"Yep. He could've just started shooting randomly out of spite, we'll never know. The silver lining is that the guns are still intact and the hard drives were untouched. Oh, there's a handful of riot gear and body armor too so I suppose we'll load that in your vehicles or you'll give them to your team."

"Yeah, I suppose."

"Are you gonna follow us or are you gonna properly oversee the cleaning process? You know I'd leave you in the dust by using a chopper, right? You only caught up to us because we stopped for a while."

Oscar sighed as he started pinching his glabella, "Fine, fine, fine, fine... I guess I'll go back. There are still a few areas we haven't explored yet. Besides, this route wouldn't lead to Iskoh's place… wait- ah fuck! I'm doing a few things at once! Kid, just make sure to clear the area after surveying it, okay? Just call in a group and start in the outer edges."

I pushed him outside to his group and said, "Yeah, yeah, just go back and I'll tell you what we see. It could be different from what we left it last time so things could go a few ways."

After a short while of dividing the ammo and loading everything else in their vehicles, Oscar went back the same way while my group went for the love hotel we nested on last time. The place seemed to be zombie-free but the university right next to us had a few stragglers walking around.

It was because the formation of the bodies we piled up before changed over the days and weeks, some going higher and some getting lower. It allowed a few to use it as a ramp to explore the university we took over, making it another pain to clean up. However, we wouldn't visit the university anytime soon because the main concern was the figures my group was staring at below.

Lois immediately tapped me as I approached them, "Bro, can I shoot the one on the far side? I could, right? The one with the two heads hanging by its neck!"

I placed my hand over his rifle and lowered it, "We take some footage first and observe. After that, we take down everything that we could."

I gave them the controllers to our drones while Mikhail led the other three to double-check the lower floors of the love hotel. Looking at the mess below, it seemed that the artificial 'walls' we made back then should've been cleared the moment we were done with them. The ones below were actually repurposing them to turn into the ones we faced last time.

The specials with the elongated tongues we discovered hanging at the bottom of the train station have made a nest of the bodies piled on top of one another. Furthermore, a select few were walking around, 'shopping' for parts to add to themselves. However, it wasn't a short process of just picking up a body and merging parts of it to themselves.

The whole process wasn't confirmed but just by simply looking at them, they seemed to be picking parts that would best… 'suit' them.

No one in my group was speaking a word as our eyes were just glued to either our screens or to our scopes. One of the 'slurpers' as we branded them earlier had a body that got deformed or damaged, making it unable to chew anything anymore with a ripped-out jaw. Its tongue was the only one active and it was functioning through the two heads hanging by its neck.

It was the same one Lois was trying to get permission to shoot but we opted in watching it for the moment.

The moment a regular deadhead approached it, its tongue instantly forced itself to its ear, going through and coming out of the left eye socket. The deadhead immediately fell like a ragdoll before the one that attacked it knelt down, making the heads attached to it bite down for some unknown reason. However, it only took a short moment before its main tongue scooped out the chewed-out remains and shoved it inside the main body.

The feeding process continued for a while before it ripped its victim's neck off, nestling it gently between the heads that ate it.

"What the fuck..."

It didn't take long before its tongue went inside the back of the head, almost 'stitching' themselves into one being. After what was close to an hour or two, the new head was moving the same way as the other two.

A few others had almost the same thing going on but it seemed that we have seen enough.

I tapped Lois who has already got it in his sights, "Send it."

A suppressed shot followed before a small puff of darkened liquid burst from the opposite side of its head. It instantly fell with one shot and I didn't have to tell the rest of them to start shooting the ones in the immediate vicinity. It only took a few seconds but my group has already taken down almost a dozen. It was quite easy to identify which one had a long tongue and extra parts but they were located in a sea of dead bodies.

Bullets rained from the love hotel but I was still watching from the feed.

That was when I saw a few coming straight for us while a few have actually turned tongue and ran. Kaley managed to take down a few before they ran under the confines of the train station but she helped with the ones coming for us the moment they were out of sight. I raised my rifle instead of starting up the helicopter as I shot down a few that have managed to lodge their tongues in the gaps of the windows.

'At least they don't stick onto any surface… I guess their tongues are wrapped by the small gaps under the train station...'

They were hanging in place but it didn't take long before someone plunged a cork into the hole it made.

'Umm...'