Gary slumped back against the wall, feeling defeated.

He’d thought he could help the people who were being attacked, using his undead immunity to his advantage. It could have worked. It should have worked, he told himself.

But he had relied on everyone else acting rationally. Clearly, that wasn’t something Gary could count on. People were scared, injured, out of their minds, and who could blame them?

The undead nearby paid him no attention. Within five minutes, those that had finished the Claire-feast stood up and shuffled back toward the church.

More victims to be eaten, Gary thought glumly. And not a damn thing I can do about it.

He remembered his own parents and fished out his mobile phone. It had taken a few knocks, but despite a cracked screen it was functioning.

The screen still read No Signal, however.

Gary stared at the horde shuffling back towards the church with despair. He knew the people inside would be killed and eaten. But his attempts to save anyone had ended in failure and death.

I can’t help, he thought, there’s nothing I can do.

His despair, however, was short-lived and was replaced by determination. Okay, he hadn’t saved Brian, Hayleigh and Claire, but they had been dead the second they stepped out of the temporary safety of the church. The problem was not that he’d tried to help. It was that there were too many of the dead focused on killing the survivors.

But Gary still had the same advantage as before: the dead were ignoring him. And since now he didn’t have to worry about anyone living in the immediate vicinity being bait, there was a solution.

There was something he could do, no matter how crazy it might sound.

He could take out the undead one-by-one until they weren’t a threat to the people inside the church.

I’ve just got to grind my way through it, he thought.

The zombies and skeletons wouldn’t fight back. They hadn’t done so far. There was no risk to him. If he could clear the church grounds, then the people inside would have a chance. The question was whether he could do that before the doors broke under the weight of the undead.

The doors had looked pretty sturdy, and assuming there were people pushing back on the other side, he might finish the task in time.

Okay, he psyched himself up, let’s do this.

He estimated that there were maybe three hundred and fifty to four hundred of the dead shuffling and clicking towards the church. He quick-shambled to the nearest one, which had just finished chewing on Claire’s bloody remains. The zombie seemed to stare at Gary as he approached. But if it could see Gary through its milk-white eyes, it gave no sign. It turned away, blood dripping from its mouth and chin.

Gary screamed and swung the shovel as hard as he could, smacking it into the zombie’s neck. The zombie stumbled for six points of damage but ignored him and continued shuffling towards the church.

Gary screamed again and hit the zombie three more times before the head separated from the body and the whole mess fell down.

You killed a Level 1 Zombie (Herder)

There was no gushing of blood as the creature fell. Its insides had long since dried up in the grave. Instead, there was a cloud of dust that exploded out from its neck, some of it getting in Gary’s eyes and mouth. He spat, gagged at the thought that he was breathing in dead dust, but kept going.

One down, four hundred to go, he thought.

*

The next hour passed in a blur of shovel swings and falling corpses and skeletons. Gary lost count after he’d taken down fifty of the things.

At first he’d concentrated on the lone stragglers who were still making their way to the church, knocking them down one at a time in an obscene version of Whack-a-mole.

“That one’s for Claire,” he shouted as he shattered the skull of a skeleton, “That one’s for Hayleigh!” as he broke the spine of one zombie, “This one’s for Brian!” as he attacked at the legs of one of the undead, swiping under it so that it fell, and then burying the shovel deep in its chest.

Every time he killed a zombie or skeleton, a notification flashed up, informing him of such.

Gary noticed it wasn’t necessary to behead the undead to kill them. Most of them had between 15 and 25 hit points. As long as he did damage equal to that with the shovel, headshot or not, the creature went down.

He passed several chewed-up bodies on the way back to the church. The remnants of the ill-fated attempt to escape from the church. He tried not to look at the blood and guts and torn flesh strewn around their fallen bodies. The dead were messy eaters, it seemed. Also, they weren’t big on finishing their meals. The corpses that Gary saw, glancing sideways with a grimace, were only about a third eaten. It looked like the benefit the dead gained from eating the recently deceased dropped off a few minutes after their prey had died.

It made sense. If the dead gained a benefit from eating the dead, they’d turn on each other. Which would be a helpful solution to the problem, but it didn’t look like it was going to happen.

Gary remembered with a shudder that he gained a health bonus from eating both the living and the dead. Not something he planned on ever having to do again, if he could avoid it.

He had also noticed that as he got near the church, the same impulse that he’d felt earlier had returned. It was a low level of hunger in his stomach, a desire for the flesh of the living. It wasn’t just that he knew there were people inside the church. He could feel it, and part of him craved getting closer so he could feed.

The realisation that he had been given this craving nauseated him. Fortunately, they were distant and weak enough for him to ignore and overcome.

For now, at least.

He swung and stabbed with his shovel again and again. As he got closer to the main mass, it became easier for him to measure his swings so that he could hit two or three of the dead with a single swing.

By the end of the hour, he’d cleared off all the stragglers from the church grounds. All that remained were those clumped up against the church itself.

There were two groups, one pressing up against the main church doors on the west side. Then there was a smaller group, perhaps a hundred, pressing up against the south side door next to the cars. If Gary could take out all of this group, then the people inside could escape. Getting to the main road on foot wouldn’t be a problem. The undead were still slower than the living.

Still, Gary hesitated as he rested. His shoulders and forearms were on fire from all the relentless swinging. Taking out the side door zombies was the most obvious thing to do, but that still left the much larger mob at the main doors.

It wouldn’t take them long to realise that the living had run out of the church and chase after them. And sure, the living were faster, but that was assuming everyone was going to behave rationally and just run.

Gary had already seen what a mistake that assumption was.

“They’ve all got to go,” he muttered to himself, “all of them. I can’t risk helping people get out only for them to be killed because I left half the zombies on the field.”

He sighed, picked up Simon, and went back to work.

He focussed on the smaller group in front of the side door first. He had no way of knowing if either group was in danger of breaking through, but clearing this exit first seemed the sensible thing to do. After that, he could work on the larger group at the main doors. In case the undead broke through the main doors, however, there would be an escape route for those trapped inside.

Gary went back to work.

For another hour, he hacked, slashed and smashed at the moaning bodies pushing towards the side door.

It was slower going than his initial rally. This was partly because he was getting tired. His muscles had already been aching after digging the grave. A couple more hours of swinging and smashing were taking its toll.

The slowdown was also because he’d reached the main mass of the smaller group. Although the undead being clumped together made it easier to hit them, often they didn’t fall when they died for the second time. Instead, they slumped forward onto the bodies in front of them, forcing Gary to keep dragging them off and pulling them away from the group.

After another hour had passed, he estimated that he’d taken out another forty undead, with maybe the same to go before he cleared the route to the door. The solid door was still intact.

Behind him, the bodies of the dead zombies were strewn about. Gary was covered in the dust that was released every time he took a swing. It caked his arms and face, getting in his nose and eyes, mixing in with his sweat, leaving dirty grey and black smears as he tried to wipe it off. It clung to the patches of blood that he hadn’t cleared off.

He ignored it and pressed on.

This is like having a video game cheat, he noted, just being able to kill your enemies without them fighting back. Except, I’d be earning experience for every kill if I was still categorised as living.

Many thoughts had crossed Gary’s mind in the meantime, as the actions of grinding away had become automatic. Aside from the obvious one of what the actual hell was going on, there were a lot of other things to consider. What would the people inside the church do once they got out was a big question.

Assuming this was happening all over the England, then even if Gary could get them out of there, there were going to be zombies everywhere.

Gary knew there was a Royal Air Force base not too far away in Brize Norton – perhaps that would provide some refuge? Based on what he knew from zombie films and tv shows, military bases were temporary refuges, but it was the best that he could think of.

He smashed another zombie in the skull, receiving a notification that it had been a critical hit and caused 12 points of damage.

Nearly there, he thought.

He smacked another zombie on the back of the head. The next notification took him by surprise.

You attacked Level 2 Zombie (Heavy). 3 points of damage.

This was the first time that Gary had seen a notification for a Level 2 zombie. He guessed it must have killed or helped to kill several of the survivors and so levelled up.

What surprised Gary even more was: As soon as he hit the Level 2 zombie, it turned around to glare at him.