Cleansed
Progress was clean, cold, methodical. He knew how many zombies were in each area; there might be hundreds in the building, but by the time they reached the fifth floor, all of the ones not trapped in a single apartment had managed to find their way down the stairs; and into the sights of Guard weaponry.
He received the next level-up notice on the top floor; they had less than a dozen zombies to go, but he decided to leave it be, for now. If a crisis came up and he was about to level up, it would auto-assign the points, but he was starting to doubt he’d hit ten before going home; there might be millions of undead, but there were over ten thousand troops working this from north and south.
He closed his eyes, focusing, as he stood at the end of the last stairwell… and nodded. “There’s a few on the roof. Do we want to go up there, or I can just tell them to jump.”
Sergeant Watkins thought for a moment. “Might be some of our people… or survivors… on the street. Just tell them to freeze in place.” He looked around… and picked one of the soldiers.
“Manning. Take Alpha to the roof. There’s a few dead walking up there still; Grey has them immobilized, should just be shoot and scoot.”
He nodded. “Yessir…” The three men immediately sprinting down the hallway to the stairwell; and what was hopefully an easy access to the rooftop.
He glanced back at Watkins. “We’re finished here. Whats the next building in line?”
The sergeant sighed. “It’s… well. Its… a school.”
Grey gave a slow nod. “...That’ll be bad for morale. But at the same time… not that difficult. Kids, I can likely handle thirty at a time. So long as they aren’t all out in an open field surrounding me, I could probably deal with a few hundred on my own.”
“..You think you can handle that? I… think we could stand some of the men down, give them a break for a few., let them eat, rest. You seem to have your head together, but I’m not sure some of my people could take it, gunning down a couple hundred kids.”
“If we’re lucky, there’ll be some survivors, maybe locked in a classroom somewhere. I’d want one fireteam, and with grenades, of course, in case we get overwhelmed, and plenty of ammo. But we don’t need to put everyone through that.”
And it would help him level up a bit faster.
Watkins thought for a moment “Head downstairs, Grab an MRE and take a break yourself. Ahh….Did they have them the same when you were in the service?”
“I’ll figure it out.”
Watkins looked up at the roof, then at Grey. “And yeah. I’ll pick whoever seems the most mentally together and send them with you. Definitely nobody who has kids themselves.”
Grey gave a quick nod.. And headed for the stairs himself, walking at a steady pace.
He could eat real quick, level up, and be ready.
It seemed clear that, aside from providing an upgrade, each ability upgrade you used on the same power also improved its core traits. So he’d likely be able to summon more undead with every upgrade, and Horde was just the biggest jump.
The ‘Power’ trait also clearly had an impact; making your abilities stronger… though he wasn’t sure exactly what that did with his undead.
So. His three best options at this point… Control Awareness. Let him get a much more fine-tuned control of the undead he couldn’t actually see; and be just incredibly useful in general.
The second best option would be to take Infectious animation, but that would be for a future use case; creating another outbreak like this one, so that he could gain some rapid-fire levels without attracting unwanted anger from people around him.
If he did it right, he could even con others into helping him do it.
And of course the third option. Finally get Curse, Assassin’s Strike, and Venom up to their proper level.
For right now, Awareness was just too useful. He selected that… and decided to pump three more into Stamina. There was still quite a bit of work ahead, and he couldn’t be falling asleep or running out of mana.
Oh. He’d gone up to Expert in ranged weapons? Did that mean anything particular?
That… so. Level 9. 15%. His revolvers would get… +135% damage? And the shotgun… +90%. No wonder Golden Boy had wanted the Legendary revolvers. If it scaled with both rarity and skill level, a Legendary would help enormously at higher levels, even if it was a smaller caliber weapon.
He inhaled. Not that it would matter, for now. He didn't want those revolvers to be seen publicly in use too much; he'd stick with Cold Dead Hands. Were all of his weapons going to be hand-themed?
He leaned against the wall, eating the MRE; something that claimed to be chicken and rice. He assumed whoever labeled it either had never tasted a chicken, or had some sort of brain damage.
Or perhaps his sense of taste had been impacted, alongside his emotions?
***
As they walked through the playground, Grey studied the front doors of the school… they were made of glass, and he could see a pair of tiny zombies… no more than three feet tall, wearing bright, colorful outfits… smacking uselessly at it; they must have been trying for hours, and either lacked the strength, or the glass was reinforced somehow.
The three soldiers following him all slowed down… and when Grey reached the door, they’d all stopped about fifteen feet back. One of them coughed. “....They…. Still just look like kids…”
While the other two had their weapons raised, but looked a bit conflicted, that one looked… confused. Uncertain.
Grey looked at him for a moment. The man would be a liability for this, if he was already having problems. There were over a hundred zombies inside… mostly children. “Martinez. Head back to Sergeant Watkins. Tell him there’s over a hundred undead in the school, but they’re split into a fair number of small packs. This should take us an hour or two, but be trivial. If they want to move on to join the other group at the mall, we’re fine here.”
There was a mall a couple blocks down. Over a thousand zombies trapped inside. The units in neighboring lanes were going to converge at that location when they reached it, and tackle it together.
The man looked at Grey… then the kids… and nodded. “Yessir.” He turned, running back to the apartment building… as Grey looked at the others.
The darker-skinned man.. Corporal Johnson.. Seemed angry. Eager to shoot. The other, Private Rogers, more hesitant… but he had his weapon forward, ready to go. “You two ready for this?”
Both men nodded. “They should only take about one shot to kill. Smaller. More fragile. If I find any rooms with an adult zombie in it, I can make it destroy the smaller ones, save ammo… and save you from having to pull the trigger. Remember… head doesn’t matter. Spine. Center of mass. You ready?”
When there was another nod… he seized control of the two… and they lined up, one in front of the other, before Grey opened the door. Johnson and Rogers each put a single bullet into them, quick cracks of gunfire… and they both fell. Grey held the door as they walked in… and the bodies vanished, as he looted them… deliberately dropping the loot on the spot, rather than storing it.
He didn’t want to have any odd questions should he produce a pink unicorn backpack later.
The first classroom on his left contained about forty undead… all but two of them level 1. Two adults; probably a teacher and an assistant… and the rest children.
“...Just stand there at the door. I can handle this one.” He focused…
And assumed control of the two adults, and most of the children. He could see inside the classroom, from multiple perspectives now. It was a scene of vibrant colors and disturbing bloodshed. And with the latest control upgrade…
Starting with the Undead he wasn’t controlling, he had the two adults start destroying the child undead; each lifting the nearest weapon; a broken piece of a desk for one, a speaker for the other… and methodically crushing the tiny bodies.
Johnson seemed a bit less eager, as he heard the snarls of the zombies, and cracking of bones…. But after a few minutes, all that was left was a single adult zombie… and it was too broken to kill itself.
“I’m letting one out. You might not want to look through the door.”
He used his Loot title granted power to start making the children’s bodies vanish…. As a single undead, one arm missing, the other broken in half, wearing a pretty floral dress… walked up to the door; and simply stepped out, standing still, after Grey opened it.
Both men fired a single shot… and Rogers couldn’t help but look into the classroom. There were more backpacks. Lunchboxes. Toys. Notebooks. Blood everywhere… and a handful of scattered limbs the loot had left behind for some reason.
He was clearly shaken.. But kept his rifle raised. “Next one then, sir?”
“Next one.” As he approached the next class along that wall, and focused… he found something surprising. Only two undead… and when he seized them… there were at least ten living, but extremely frightened, children. The two zombies were both locked inside a closet.
“...You two speak spanish?”
Johnson gave a short nod.
Grey nodded back. “There’s two trapped zombies, and… a dozen kids. Survivors. They’re safe enough where they are, but scared shitless. We should kill the zombies, and tell them to stay put… but also get some of the locals here. Mind making the call?”
He exhaled… and Rogers looked relieved. When they opened the door, there were frightened shrieks… that quickly quieted down as Johnson stepped forward, saying something in a low, friendly tone…. Even as Grey and Rogers approached the closet door.
Grey glanced at the kids, then Rogers. “I’ll hold them still. Use the knife, and I’ll stand between you and the kids.”
Rogers gave a nod… inhaled… and dangled his rifle over his neck by the strap, pulling out his combat knife. “Got it, sir.”
When the closet door opened, the zombies, still under Grey’s control, didn’t make a sound… until a series of rapid jabs managed to sever the spine of first one, then the other… and they collapsed.
Grey looted both them… and a third adult, one which was clearly killed by the other two but had not yet turned… and shut the door back.
The kids didn’t want to stay in the classroom, even with the zombies gone; but listened when Johnson told them to… and watched, still afraid, as the three stepped out…. One little boy stepping up to lock the classroom door, and watch them step away through a tiny glass window.
Grey looked at the two. “Alright. Only kids in the next one. I can get them to stand still and line up, but it’d take too long to get them to destroy each other. I can control all of them, so no danger.” He quietly looted the bodies of the children who hadn’t arisen, and the teacher…. And the two men braced themselves, as Grey lifted out Cold, and opened the door.
***
For Grey, the next half-hour was steady progress towards level ten; a surprising amount of it, considering how weak the enemies were. For the two soldiers who accompanied him; it was a harrowing, horrific experience, punctuated by a few moments of joy as they rescued a few dozen children who had either been lucky, or shielded by adults who had died to save them; not a single one of the teachers, or even the janitors, had survived.
The moment Rogers had almost lost it was finding the last batch of surviving children; in a janitor’s closet that only locked from the outside. What had clearly once been a young woman was against the outside, having been turned into a zombie, but too badly broken to get up and fight… incredibly evident the woman had slipped outside just to lock the door, knowing she couldn’t get back inside after.
When the trio finished clearing the school, and reached the front door… a hispanic man in a black uniform; Grey didn’t recognize it, but it must have been Mexican law enforcement of some sort… was looking at the rescued children as they were loaded onto a bus, clearly on the verge of tears.
He turned to the three, and walked up to them… grabbing the closest two, Grey and Johnson, in a hug… and burst out, crying, saying something Grey didn’t understand; though it sounded vaguely like ‘Hero’.
The only thing that came to mind at the word was the young woman who’d died outside the closet; he knew he should’ve felt something about it. But for right now… there was still work to do.