Day 4, Year of the Catastrophe – Tuesday, 3rd of May, 2020.

07:30 am – Courthouse of Lady Allyna Saprobic – rooftop –

Daniel impacted on the neighboring flat rooftop hard. It was only a jump of about 1 and a half meters height, yet the air was pressed out of his lungs without mercy. He should have gone for a roll after landing. It was probably a harder impact because he jumped about four to five meters far as well. Coughing a bit, he looked around. Since the roof was empty, he had no way to get inside the house directly. He sat down at one side of the roof looking down at the balcony puzzling on how to get down there in the most reliable way possible. The sun still felt quite nice outside. It would get really hot today, that much was certain.

Meanwhile his other body knocked his axe a few times against the heavy steel door. Immediately he heard knocking on the other side. Yep, the cellar was flooded with them. Shrugging, Daniel sat down and started going at the food supplies again. He had been unusually hungry ever since he woke up.

He had eaten six whole bars chocolate, and was currently munching his way through a second can of chips. But it was not doing much. His stomach still demanded more. Was this a side effect of this crystal? Like getting the munchies from weed? Oddly enough his second body was not effected at all, but still had the benefits of feeling great.

Rather than thinking about this all day, he would just continue eating. If he was feeling this hungry it was even more delicious and he had nothing better to do anyway. Worst case scenario he would have to go and loot the local markets later. If he was the only one alive nobody would beat him to it anyway. It was a funny thought, but borrowing a truck and just hauling stuff back home would probably be possible for him eventually. He hoped at least, that this was the case. Oh well, one small food binge couldn’t possibly be that bad.

While his second body was slowly working its way down the side of the house-next-door to reach a balcony, his main body focused itself on long-term planning. His notebook and battery powered bunker light gave him everything he needed. From what he had seen so far, aside from Red Claw mutants, none of the undead were able to force themselves through solid walls, and even that Red Claw would probably have problems with that. So the first concern after food, security, depended largely on walls. In the city this would probably an easy feat to achieve, but there one would run out of food sooner or later not to mention that escaping a skyscraper filled with undead was borderline impossible. Normal houses gave a lot more leeway out in the open. Not to mention hundreds and hundreds of fields, where one could grow crops in the near future.

The future… Daniel was unsure if there even was such a thing. If he did not find any survivors… There might not be. If he had to list his long term goals, they would probably be to find a cute girl and rescue her from zombies. A very selfish goal. Though, he might need a second one now. After all he could just bullshit them and pretend that his second body was a twin. Hehe. Benefits.

But aside from that… he wanted to build a place where one could feel secure of the undead at all times. A fortress of sorts. But looking at the surrounding area, there wasn’t really an ideal place. After all this was a town in a relatively flat area, there was no such thing as a mountain fortress. The most logical solution would be to just fortify a few buildings together and then work expanding outwards. After all even with a few people it would be downright impossible to get a wall around the whole city. Slowly but surely Daniel put a plan together on how exactly wall off and secure the three houses.

In the meantime his other body had finally managed to fix the rope on the rooftop in a secure way, so that he could descent and ascent in quick fashion. Sadly this was not all that great. Immediately he spotted a undead lurking behind the balcony door. He knew it too. The old lady that had lived here. Luckily she was not wounded or appeared to be bitten. She had barricaded her door somewhat and still turned due to the virus. Daniel eyed the balcony. Not a lot of space to fight. Not to mention he had only a wooden sword. There was no guarantee that he would smash her head in immediately. The protection on the balcony was also not low enough to just send her flying when she came charging out. Daniel needed better weapons. A spear would be neat. Or a gun, but that was wishful thinking. There was also no way to open the door from the outside, and Daniel wanted to avoid breaking the valuable window in that door. Come winter, that house would need all the isolation it could get. If there was someone living inside that is.

But since he was already planning to include this building and the next one over in his fortress plan, he really didn’t want to destroy it just because it was convenient. There had to be another way.

Sighing he climbed up to the roof again. Quite some time had passed since he started and the heat made him thirsty. He grabbed a drink from a bottle of water that he had thrown over before jumping over the roof and sat down. Thinking about the summer heat made him remember winter as well. Would the dead just freeze and that would be the end of it? A virus couldn’t possibly stay alive through very low temperatures right? For a while he mused about that, then he rebuilt his rope structure on another side of the building. He did so mainly because he wanted to have a way to retreat, than anything else. Below there was a garage and the height difference wasn’t really that much. The building was really hard to get into. So far he had not really found any weak spots.

He might have to go for the front door or try and clear out the dead. But that would take hours, or even days. There were just too many here right now. Not to mention especially because he was climbing around above their heads. Their growling had swelled up and attracted even more.

Maybe it would be best to just wait it out a bit? Unsure about what to do he spotted a small window on the side of the garage. It would probably be big enough to fit him, all things considered. And the window in the garage was not all that important right? It was already tilted open, so Daniel did away with it from above with a bit of violence and forced himself inside. Daniel lacked the climbing skills to this gracefully, so naturally he clashed right into the side of the car with his upper body.

The pain that followed did not want to subside quickly and he had trouble breathing. What was far worse, the sound had attracted some uninvited visitors. The door that connected the hallway of the house with the garage, flung open. Daniel grabbed his katana harder and climbed on the car. Uh, oh. This wasn’t going great. One… two.. four. Daniel hit the first one that arrived hard against the side of its head. It got knocked against the wall for a brief moment before it recovered. Well, that wasn’t good. All four of them were rather slim males around 170cm tall. This would be tough. Daniel tried to lure them to the left while repeatedly striking one’s head. It was immediately clear. He would lose this. The wooden katana just did little to no damage on their skulls.

Desperate he ran back to the other side of the car, avoiding their hands narrowly and hit the last one with a devastating and hard strike. He toppled over and Daniel used the few seconds wisely to escape. He jumped through the now open door and closed it behind him. A key was in the keyhole. Immediately he turned it. Ha! Locked you fools in!

That was dangerous. He was so confident in himself ever since he used that crystal, that he really underestimated this possibility. He wiped some sweat of his forehead. Then he turned around.

At the end of the hallway, there stood a very familiar zombie. It turned its head and stared at Daniel with dark, black eyes. Well shit.