Day: 3

Zombies killed: 1

Okay then, we still had more or less, hm... 69.999 zombies to kill! There was no time to waste, and so, my twin sister and I were, 100% serious facing the door to outside.

“Let’s do it”, I turned the door’s handle after checking the outsides thru the window.

“So… Where do we go now?”, Morgaine had her club by her waist and was holding the net she had made. Each one of us had a plastic bag containing supplies tied to ourselves by the same material that the net was made of.

“Even if the zombies are dumb and slow, by this point there’s so many of them that it’s just suicide to adventure inside the town, or even a small district around it. We should start from individual lost zombies or small groups, gain some experience first. So I think we should follow down the river: impossible to get lost, the water make a lot of noise and will mask the sound we make, and we shouldn’t see any old human settlement filled with the brain-eaters”.

Well, they didn’t really try to eat us, just infect us, and ended up bite off some bits by accident, but it was just another more convenient way to refer to the zombies.

“When you talk about experience, I don’t know if you’re being a nerd or, like, realistic.”

“What are you talking about, it’s obvious: ...I’m being both. And the correct term is ‘gamer’.”

We did as I suggested and followed the stream. Without alarms anymore, we ended up waking up at noon, and we took our time to eat and use the bathroom too, so when we finally went to “hunt”, Morgaine discovered it was already 13:30 using a trick to know the hours just by the sun position that she learned reading something.

And, still about alarms, I asked myself if there wouldn’t be a lot of zombies attacking the devices every morning until they break it or the battery ended…? Maybe attack when people would be waking up to go to their jobs would be an easy way to farm undead heads.

In any case, it didn’t take us too much time to find our first enemies: five zombies trying to reach for a corpse stuck in a car that was carried by the river until there; all with water by their thighs, one was a small woman with a hokey mask, and the other four men with an average constitution, all in casual clothes.

“Now what, ‘gamer’?”, my twin sister asked while we observed our prey from behind a rock by the river’s side.

“Call them pussies for walking in such a large group and that they should come 1x1 if they have some balls.”

“I don’t think this will work, bro…”

Nor did I, but, like when we fought the undead last night, I was scared. No, even more scared this time: to be precise, five times more scared.

“And I bet one of them has some kind of special skill, like, being tougher and able to control the others?”

I didn’t need that kind of comment at the moment…

In any case, Morgaine’s net could stop one creature, but even then we would have to fight four at the same time, more than enough to encircle us.

Of course we had made plans before left the fishing shop, but very rough plans once that we couldn’t really foresee every possible situation (big zombie group = run; single zombie = net, encircle and beat to death; buildings = avoid; etc...)

Then and there, though, even if I put some distance between Morgaine and me, there was no guarantee that the zombies would divide themselves equally or at all, the worst-case scenario in this plan being 3x1. But we couldn’t just go back too: not only we would have to kill every undead son of a bitch in that city in one year and couldn’t keep pushing this plan forward forever, but there was also the possibility of the zombies follow us to our base and surround it…

“Okay: we come closer to the forest, you keep the net prepared and I throw rocks at the zombies. When they come closer enough, you throw the net in one of them, then we go all the way around and climb the car they’re bashing into right now. From there we smash their heads while they idiotically try to get us. What do you think?”, I recycle and mesh together Morgaine’s ideas; we had the resources and stoning the first zombie worked.

“Seems good to me”, though Morgaine was smiling, I saw streams of sweat running from her forehead and dripping from her chin.

I decided to toughen up too.

And so, we both sneaked to the right point and, while I kept my club prepared by my side, I grabbed a stone from the ground. When I looked to my twin sister, she nodded and I started my attack: the first rock hit the water, and the zombies didn’t notice. And the second one too. I didn’t look to my twin sister, but I knew she was staring my with disappointment... My third throw, however, found it’s way straight to one of the undead’s back, the woman with hokey mask, and it turned, slowly, to us. For a moment I had hopes that, maybe, we could attract one by one that way and exterminate them without problems, but this hope soon died when all the other zombies followed the hit one when this came, growling and howling, at my direction.

“Oh, fuck!”, Morgaine screamed.

“What?!”, my heart almost stopped and I looked all around, scared: were we being encircled?!

“Why didn’t I thought about making a slingshot?! It would be so useful!”

“By fuck’s sake, sis, now it’s not the time!”, I crouched and started to strafe rocks at the creatures that were, actually, horribly fast when coming straight at you. If they were still alive, it would hurt, but they weren’t, and so my rock-throwing skills didn’t really have any effect. “When will you throw this net?!”

“Fuck, when I am sure that I will get at least one of them! Like… now!”

The intertwined lines covered one of the creatures, it tripped and fell to the ground, failing in freeing itself from the net, the tool working exceptionally well: we run, like planned, ass soon as Morgaine wasn’t holding the net anymore.

Though none of us displayed enviable physique, we dashed as if we were competing for the gold medal at the Olympics (and I have even my doubts if we, actually, hadn’t a real chance of winning the real thing the way we were then), and made a big arc around the zombies and to the car. Reaching the broken vehicle, I let Morgaine climb it first, looking over my shoulders and to the zombies that, once again, were still coming.

Finally over the car’s ceiling, I grabbed my club like a baseball bat and prepared to smash some skulls.

Like the first time, though, I just couldn’t ignore the hands stretched at our direction, the claws that were just a few centimeters from actually touching my and my twin sister’s legs, and I started to attack their limbs first again. With the ceiling of the car under the zombies' arms, it was easier to break their bones, but by the other side, the splashed water from the river made the surface we were on at that moment slippery and neither I nor Morgaine could use all of our already lacking strength.

After who knows how long and how many bashes, though, to my surprise, I discovered that it was possible to tear of an arm just by striking it repeatedly. Well, to be honest, I doubted it would be able to do that if not for the car’s roof under the already not so firm zombie’s limb. Still, I looked to Morgaine with excitement.

We moved our aims to their heads only when the undead just couldn’t move their arms anymore or completely lost the limbs.

And again to my surprise, though the attacks produced a loud “thuck!” sound, they didn’t really bother the zombies nor the parasite inside their brain too much. A skull was more resilient than I originally thought; especially the hokey mask one’s.

My twin sister and I, then, decided to focus on one zombie at time, to take turns in striking their skulls nonstop: she hit, retreat her weapon, and while prepared to another strike, I attacked, this way we giving more or less two bashes a second. It was super effective. Still, however, it took ages to kill the hokey mask; whose face revealed strange composition, filled with scar-like tissues, as if it had suffered much damage in its head.

Then, and only after confirming the zombies' deaths by pushing their bodies to deeper in the river with our clubs and letting their corpses be carried away by the stream, we jumped off the car’s ceiling and approached our last victim.

“Don’t relax now: it’s always when the people get at ease that the worst happens”, Morgaine pointed, going to the back of the completely entangled undead.

“I know, I know… Actually, I’m so aware of this, that I’m starting to hate these short sticks.”

We were both already really tired of the attack; my arms pathetically having trouble to lift even that small club; and I was fearing the approach of any more enemies, so I checked the surroundings again: there was something strange. I thought I could hear growls that didn’t come from the creature on the ground. Having found no other zombie in the woods, I turned to my twin sister, who was using her club as a cane and resting, and give the signal to start to strike the brain eater’s head again. It turned out that it was way easier to break open their skulls when they were against the ground, but, still, it took us a lot of strikes.

Like I feared, though, even after the thing wasn‘t moving anymore, I continued to listen to the snarl. I turned to my twin sister, and by the look on her face, she was listening to it too.

We lifted or weapons, touched our backs on one another, and spun slowly. I thought the creature(s) could be coming from the river once that Morgaine also didn’t found anything by the woods. But the last zombie was way closer than I imagined.

“There: inside the car”, I pointed, have finally localized the fucker scratching against the windshield. By one side, he was locked, by the other… “How will we kill him? We can’t just open the door or break the windows, it will jump straight onto our faces.”

“Hm… we could push the car into the river and let it be carried away… but the, you know, we will never know if we really killed the thing. Hell, there’s even the possibility that we may end up freeing it, and then, instead of one zombie less, we will have one more zombie!”

“It makes sense, but the way you’re talking… I think I may not like where you’re taking this to, sis.”

I felt Morgaine’s hand on my shoulder before she continued, lifting one thumb up with the other hand:

“Lend me the lighter, bro!”

I tried t think why she wanted the tool, but in the end, I wasn’t the most creative guy, and so I saw myself forced to ask, searching for the thing inside the plastic bag:

“What are you planning to do with this?”

“I’ll fucking explode that car”, my twin sister said, looking straight into my eyes.

That was hella cool. I thought about the implications first, though, like: wouldn’t the sound attract a horde? No, the river would mask the burst. About the smoke? Part of the forest was still burning, there was smoke covering half of the city. Plus, that was hella cool, and this was important for my character.

I handed my twin sister he lighter and lifted my free thumb back.

I had no idea how she planned to explode the car, and so I observed: she took one of the plastic lines from inside her own plastic bag and walked to the vehicle, where she beat the gas tank lid until it opened. Morgaine checked if it was too humid, and confirm it wasn’t somehow, she pushed the line inside the tank. It was made of plastic, so it burned well and fast…

Wait, it was already burning?!

“Fuck, at least warn me before you start, you idiot!”, I started to run away and at the direction of our base, followed close by a laughing Morgaine.

“You have to strike the dystopian government when it less expects!”

We hadn’t got too away from the car when it exploded: a flash of light, a blasting sound, a shockwave that I could feel in each cell of my body. My ears still heard only a buzzing when I looked behind and saw a pile of burning metal at the base of a pillar of smoke that ended up being just a bit bigger than I thought it would be… like everything in that explosion. Fuck, it was a just single car, but it detonated like a fucking nuke.

I turned to my twin sister; she had lost her balance with the explosion and was still seated on the ground. I tried to tell her that we should get out of there, but it was useless: even I couldn’t hear my own voice; so I tapped her on the shoulder and we went back home.

That sure ended up being a bit unexpectedly stronger than I thought, but my original line of thought was still valid. There still was no way the zombies would be smart enough to differentiate that explosion from any other. It was only common sense.