Chapter 7

Chapter 7 - My Bad Luck Is Even Scarier

When the glow faded Harley was...standing right where she had been with a slightly dazed look on her face.  So, normal for her.  Physically she looked the same.  I started towards her again to see if she was alright but didn't make it two steps before a dry rasping howl sounded from outside.

Through the windows I could see that we had burned most of the daylight hours between stealthing our way through the town, searching the Pokecenter, and looting this store.  Against the growing darkness that flash must have turned the storefront into a beacon visible up and down the entire length of Main Street.  Whatever had swallowed this town, it was safe to say it knew we were here.

I quickly triggered the return on Harley's new pokeball.  I could figure out what she'd done later.

"Seren, go high and invisible," I called to her, glad she'd at least learned her name despite the previous language barrier as we had no time for planning.  "Scarlet and Friday, stay close to me."  I really wished we'd had time for some combat training right now, but between the practical necessities of survival, travel, and language gaps it just hadn't been possible.

I headed for the front doors with my harem in tow but was stopped in my tracks by the sight of a grey-skinned woman slamming into them.  There were gashes on her arms and her chest was shredded but she wasn't bleeding.  The doors swung inward but the restraints held.  

In a moment of clarity I suddenly recognized that low sound I heard on the wind earlier.  I'd heard it in Resident Evil.  It was the rustling made by old dry zombies in the distance.  I was looking at a Zombabe pressed up against the glass.  There was a low growl outside getting slowly louder and I realized that a crowd of them must be coming.  I jumped as another Zombabe hit the front window.  She looked very human and so likely wasn't strong enough to break the laminate, but behind her I saw a rock type crossing the street.  We had moments before there were Zombabes in the building and I had a neophyte harem full of low-level close and mid-range combatants.

I knew seconds counted and I scoured the area behind the counters looking for a back exit as the pounding on the windows increased and I heard the doors creak on their hinges (the hinges being weaker than the taming restraints).  There was a back room that seemed to be a combination storage area and break room for the employees but I saw no other doors.  As I quickly moved through the area I stumbled on a chair someone left too far from the lunch table and knocked over a stack of boxes labeled Snorlax Fancier.  (I couldn't tell if those boxes contained fetish porn or a pet owner magazine and was in too much of a rush to open one.)  There behind the stack was a door!

The door opened onto a set of stairs leading down.  I sent Friday and Seren ahead and had Scarlet reposition the boxes against the door to hide it leaving just enough space to open the door a sliver so I could retrieve her with her pokeball.  The stairs led down to a basement which, it turned out, had been set up as a studio of sorts with a bed in the middle.  Fetish porn for the win, I guess.

Seren was glowing to provide light and I dug out my emergency light for further illumination.  There weren't any windows in the basement and the walls were lined with eggshell foam for soundproofing.  I thought I heard the faint tinkle of glass shattering, but it was hard to tell.  Most of the noise from the Zombabes had cut off as soon as I closed the door.  

Mostly what we heard now was the whole building shuddering under the stomping and slamming of untold numbers on the walls, floors, and sidewalks outside.  Whoever did their soundproofing knew his stuff.  On the upside, Pokemarts are built to endure the heaviest of pokegirls whose tamers have credits to burn.  I wasn't too worried about the upper level floor collapsing.

The others spread out as we searched for another exit.  I found a door in the back corner, but when I started to open it I heard a dry moan from inside.  I slammed the door and almost immediately something started pounding on it from the inside.  It was a weak interior door.  A pokegirl would have plowed right through it, but even a Zombabe human, weakened from rot, would tear it down in minutes.  She wasn't smart enough to turn and pull on the handle so I stepped away and continued my search to a soundtrack of pounding fists and occasionally cracking wood.

I found a crawlspace entrance and called the girls over.  It wasn't going to get much better than this.  I balled all three of them, took a deep breath, and entered the crawl space.  Have I mentioned I hate small spaces.  It's not exactly claustrophobia.  I don't panic or hyperventilate in them, but I really don't like them.  

The crawl space only had room for me to lie flat and shift my arms and legs around me to move.  I couldn't really bend my knees except to the sides.  Being big was really coming back to bite me here.  I managed to turn myself around enough to close the crawl space door.  It kind of reminded me of a hobbit door.  Wait, this was no time for random thoughts.  

I knew Zombabes could sense life.  I was hoping I was far enough below them or that there was enough building material between us to block this sense, but I rather doubted it.  I had to get clear of this building and get out of this town.  Using my flashlight for guidance I crawled through the cramped space for what felt like hours.  I aimed toward where I thought the back wall of the building was and then headed along it looking for a way out.

The Pokemart was part of a connected string of storefronts along this street and I was hoping I could get into one further down.  What I hadn't counted on was that they connected to the buildings around the corner on the next block as well and that the entire thing was one big L-shaped complex with an employee parking lot in the back.  Much of the town was sturdy old preSukebe construction that survived the war.

I crawled and crawled and crawled as the dry growls and moans faded behind me along with the sounds of destruction as the building was trashed.  My flashlight dimmed and died so I brought both hands ahead of me, turned it off, and began cranking to generate power.  As my eyes adjusted to the dark I began to see a dim light along the building's back wall.

I couldn't make out what it was so I tried to mentally mark the location before I turned the light back on.  Then I continued crawling toward where I thought it was.  It turned out to be a grate that let out into a small metal cage containing a bank of gas meters for the stores.

I tried to open it but had no leverage with my arms at this angle.  With few options remaining I spun around and, laying partially on my side, drew my foot back and kicked while praying that the noise didn't draw nearby Zombabes.  I thought I felt some give and heard a small scrape of stone on the first kick so I hauled back and did it again.

On the third kick the grate scraped free and fell over onto the concrete with a clang of crashing metal.  With no time to waste I scrambled out of the opening.  Now I just had to get out of the meter cage.  As I examined the lock the first Zombabe rounded the corner of the complex two hundred feet away.

The flashlight was pretty obvious even at that distance and with a raspy moan she shuffled my way.  Thinking fast I released Scarlet.

"We need an exit through the top of the cage and a lift to the roof, now," I said.

She didn't even hesitate but wrapped her silks around the bars above and sent sparks flying as her Spincut attack turned the strands into continuous chain saws.  The Zombabes were fast approaching and I was afraid they'd be in range to use their Mega-zombie Poison attack before we could escape.  Scarlet was already ahead of me though.  The cutting didn't take much of her attention so she threaded several tendrils through the bars and began firing needle sprays from them, something that in my rising panic I had forgotten she could do.  We really needed to do some combat training.

The sprays did mostly superficial damage at this range but each spray was like a blast of buckshot.  She quickly blinded the leading zombabes who stumbled across the uneven asphalt but kept advancing, if more slowly.

With the leading edge retarded but more coming around the corner Scarlet used the tendrils outside the bars to begin cutting sections out of the wall of the building behind us.  It was only concrete up to a foot or so above the ground and her buzzing hair sliced through the wood with relative ease.  The tendrils then grabbed the pieces of wall and hurled them into the growing crowd of the undead.  

The Zombabes weren't seriously hurt by the plank-sized sections of framing and siding but they were bowled over and every second they spent untangling themselves and getting back up was one less spent advancing into their poison breath range.  

With a resounding clang a square of cage ceiling clattered to the ground and I realized I had missed the pings as she severed each bar among all the other noise and distraction.  Scarlet used her tendrils to lift me up and onto the top of the cage and then quickly followed.  From there we clambered onto the roof of the shopping complex and momentary safety.

"Seren, we need a way off this roof," I said as I released the FaerieCute.  "Stay well away from the ground and any Zombabes, they can breathe poison, but find us a path."

"I got it," she said as she sped away across the rooftop.  I blessed the man who created those language T2s as I shuddered to think how hard this would be without the ability to communicate with my girls.  A few moments later she came zipping back.  

"There's a way down," she said, "but you're not going to like it."

As it turned out, some Acrobabe had made the level rooftop part of her parkour training course.  There were ramps and rope swings and other things built up here, but what interested us was the plank laid across from one end of the building to the roof of the next house over.  The problem was this roof wasn't high enough to move us out of the life sensing range of the zombabes below meaning the only ones we were losing as we moved around were the ones who made it inside the building and ran into interior walls when they tried to follow us.  If we crossed the plank the Zombabes would just swarm the next building.

With a moment's thought I had an idea.  Scarlet and I would walk down near the plank and get the attention of the zombabes below.  We would each then slowly moved along opposite roof edges, Scarlet along the storefronts and myself along the parking lot, toward the other end of the building, gathering the crowds below us as we went.  There were several hundred zombabes on both sides of the building by now.  

Two thirds of the way down the length of the building Scarlet would walk away from the front over to my side of the building removing her from the life sense range of the zombabes out front.  We would then draw the zombabes from the parking lot down around the end of the building until they collided with the swarm out front near the front corner.  After that I would have Seren hover about thirty feet up from that corner to hold their attention while Scarlet and I moved along the crowd at the front down past the point where the crowd at the back ended.

All we had to do at that point was walk from the front to the back removing us from their senses and boom.  We had a clear walk along the back edge of the building to the plank bridge while Seren kept the zombabes attention at the other end of the building.  Once we had safely crossed the bridge and moved out of sight Seren was to fly straight up and turn invisible, then come find us without dropping within thirty feet of the ground.  I told her if she couldn't find us she could circle overhead looking but if nothing else we should meet at our last campsite around dawn.

Well, the plan worked...mostly.  I failed to account for those who made it inside the building from the back and wandered back out as we passed or for those who got in from the front and busted out the back through doors or windows.  Still, compared to the hundreds out front only a handful were following us down the back side of the building and they were hampered by Needle Sprays which took out their eyes causing them to bump into and trip over the various clutter in the old lot.  Once they were blind and fell far enough back that we were beyond the reach of their life sense they completely lost us and began wandering around.

We managed to cross the board with only three still following us.  It was more than I wanted, but less than I'd feared.  The plank bridge continued from house to house down the street until it finally ended at one which I assumed to be the Acrobabe's home since there was another miniature parkour course on the roof.  The second house on the route had three stories, however, and a quick climb to the peak would take us too high for the zombabes' life sensing.  Scarlet took 30 seconds to blind all three with Needle Sprays and then we made our escape.  

Once the zombabes could no longer sense or see us they started banging on the walls of the house.  Scarlet spun a zipline from the eaves of the tall house and, using her enhanced speed and strength, leaped to the next rooftop where she secured it.  I took the sling loop she had made in hand and skimmed down the line to the other roof.  My arms were shaking from hanging forty feet off the ground by the time I reached the other end and I botched the landing.  I stumbled and fell and would have rolled off the roof if Scarlet hadn't caught me.

From there we quietly hoofed it to the Acrobabe house and, rather than chance being trapped by going through the house, Scarlet quickly wove a rope ladder we could let down the side.  We scurried to ground level and began once again sneaking our way out of the town.  Seren spotted us easily before we dropped to the ground and proceeded to provide scouting for us as we advanced.  

It seemed most of the zombabes in town were being drawn to the noise and commotion at the shopping complex.  We had only one more close call with a Zombabe Chimera that almost spotted us, but in the end we were very lucky.  I'd seen several species among the zombabes who would have had enhanced senses of smell or flight, which would have made escape difficult if not impossible, but the outbreak had happened long enough ago for their bodies to decay to the point that they were losing some functionality.  That also concerned me.  The leagues would usually have put up a quarantine and moved to eliminate the threat long before this point.  They might have just burned the village if it were small enough not to warrant a full shield and recovery effort, but the lack of a military response team here was troubling.

By midnight we'd made it out of the village and I released Friday as her nose would be a good zombabe detector to have out right now.  I made the decision we weren't stopping before we put some distance between us and this zombabe berg so, chugging one of my new Stamina Plus drinks while trying to ignore the erection it gave me, I soldiered on into the night leading my merry band.