Chapter 26 - Surviving the Dark

Garrett swept his flashlight in his left hand around while his right hand held his energy pistol in a ready to fire mode. He was sweeping alongside Mboto and Tomoe who had switched to their heavy combat desert eagle pistols for sure kills. Shiva had her light on her assault rifle ready and sweeping. Meanwhile Betty, Hicks, and Marina had their heavier guns with lights illuminating the spots that had yet to be checked thoroughly as they brought up the rear of the squad.

They had only found 10 regular zombies so far. Which is unusual given the nature of a dark floor. It had gotten so dark it felt like they had stepped into a different time zone all together all of the sudden.

A quick shuffle sound echoes around them and makes them swing around their lights. They scan every angle for any signs of life. Hicks then says, "Well no other signs of life... or rather.... unlife..." Hicks gets smacked for that one by Marina. Betty gives her a thumbs up and Shiva clicks her tongue in annoyance.

With a questioning look from Mboto, Tomoe, and Garrett, Shiva clarifies, "If he didn't get hit for that one, I would have smacked him myself. But in my culture, since another female has smacked him I can't smack him. It's the right of first come first serve when it comes to teaching someone their thoughts or comments were truly idiotic. Especially when it comes to potential mates."

Marina and Hicks turns crimson at that and Marina stutters to deny it. Hicks is currently stunned in his thought process as he has always seen Marina as a sister, not a girlfriend type. Betty is giggling at that while Tomoe rolls her eyes and keeps her ears peeled as the giggles from Shiva and Betty.

Garrett and Mboto both look around as the situation is just awkward for them to comment on as this isn't the first time this conversation has happened from a third party noticing their teammates closeness.

As the chuckles die down and Betty and Shiva give their apologies as they admit they were teasing Marina and Hicks. Marina pouts while threatening to beat them up in a spar later. And Hicks just laughs a bit as he breathes a sigh of relief at that turning out to be just teasing.

While they began to return to their sweep they heard it. A lot of running feet began to rush towards them. They pointed their guns at the front and the back of the hall as they hear the incoming feet pounding towards them. Swinging their lights and tracking the feet they see incoming from both ends of the hall, are about 50 Speedsters. 25 in front and 25 in back.

Garrett looks at both ends and says, "Check your fire! And light them up!" He begins to blast rapid fire with his Doom pistol doing only head shots. No time to help their members grind stats. Shiva and Betty do short controlled bursts to explode the upper chest and heads of each target. While Tomoe and Mboto are shooting their heads and any that reach them they stab through their skulls with their combat knives.

Hicks and Marina are ensuring no speedsters that survive the bursts from Betty's gun are getting too close to their position. They finish them off after seeing their heads are intact. They finish them off and in a few minutes of the rushed combat, no zombies are left.

They double check and look around again, taking turns to reload as Betty ensures her belt isn't jammed and Garrett makes sure his pistol is recharging. Once everyone reloads Tomoe speaks up, "Okay, as much as I appreciate the team bonding, let's keep our interactions to a minimum to ensure we don't get ambushed/rushed again. Understood?"

With nods and grunts of agreement from everyone they continue on. They get to a junction and look around to figure out where the center of the building is for the stairs to the next floor. Shiva says, "Well if we can't figure it out from this junction, I say we go section by section and do a clean sweep and see if we stumble upon them."

With shrugs as no one makes any better plans they head off in search of the remaining floor zombies and the stairs.

Each room they come to is a basic formation of 4-6 regular zombies and 2 mutants. Thanks to the amount of conference rooms and large offices there were quite a few to go through. By the time they had finally found a path to the stairs they were panting a bit from carrying their weapons for so long and from all the walking.

Hicks gasps a bit, "How... Come... *Gasp* We are tired... and panting... while you three! Are completely fine!"

It was a bit of an exaggeration, Shiva, Betty, and Garrett were indeed not hunched over and panting, but they still had a light sheen of sweat and were breathing slightly harder than normal. But compared to the four soldiers currently trying to take a break... Yeah they looked to be the picture of health and fitness right now. Shiva looked at herself then Betty and finally Garrett before shrugging and saying, "Better stats and shape compared to you guys."

Hicks cried tears of blood at that in desperation to become stronger.

Tomoe sighs in a humorous light, Marina simply giggled at that while recovering, Mboto kept up a guard but also enjoyed that interaction with a short chuckle.

Soon they had recovered and made to go up the stairs but Betty's ears perked up at a sound she heard. She goes, "Hold it! Defensive formation! I hear something coming!"

The soldiers got into formation with Betty deploying her defense wall and they got into positions around it pointing their weapons and lights up the stairs. Marina and Hicks were watching their flanks to ensure this wasn't a misdirect by a smarter Variant or Mutant.

There is little to no noise from the stairs for a few seconds. But thankfully no one lowers their guard as Betty's ears remain swiveling to track the sound. As they begin to hyper focus, they hear it, a weird clicking sound. As the sounds of clicking grow in strength the group tenses up further and strain their eyes further to see anything. Then Shiva suddenly yells out and fires up the stairs with her gun blazing.

Garrett backs away a step at the suddenness of the shots and looks to where she is firing.

The group waits a solid 25 seconds before she finishes and pants hard. They hear a loud and wet splat of something falling to the ground then the *thump thump thump* of a body falling down the steps.

The group flinches as a loud wet splurch graces their ears and they see a new mutant. It looks like a pair of zombies had fused, twin heads, a larger torso, 4 arms, and 4 legs, all tipped with worn down bone claws for the tips, and the body has tears in the front torso where its rips have formed a kind of open maw where it can eat people using a series of bone shards as teeth.

The group shudders as Shiva is going a bit pale and going, "Oh great! I hate spiders!"

The group sweat drops at this as they hear more clicking coming from the stairs and some wet growls and gurgles coming.

Garrett grabs out his shotgun and cocks it and says, "Welp, perfect time to get over the phobia. Light them up!"

And the group fires at them all. With Shiva screaming bloody murder for the spiders zombies deaths.

Current stats of Garret Grimsborne (Super Human):

Str- 536

Agi- 523

Sta- 508

Int- 284

Sense- 286

Store points - 220,570 + 7,890 for group hunting points = 228,460

Companions:

Shiva Orc Captain

Betty Minotaur Sergeant

Upgrades to base:

Training room lvl 2: For every two hours spent training inside you gain +2 str and Sta to a maximum of 4 points in each stat daily. Maximum stat affected is up to 100. Once user has exceeded 100 then the stat will no longer grow in that room. For next Max stat please purchase to level 3. Cost for upgrade: 200k

Shooting range = Agility

Medical room = intelligence and Sense

(Please see authors note for voting details)