4.2

It took approximately five minutes for Ira to kill all of the zombies. At the end of it all, when he was standing in what was basically a pool of blood and guts and corpses, Ira breathed erratically, his new body not used to such strenuous activities.

Swallowing back the crazed laughter that wanted to erupt between his teeth, Ira swayed a little on his feet before he got back his balance. He dragged one of his hands through his hair, pushing it out of his eyes and spreading zombie blood all over himself. To be fair, he was already covered in it so it didn't really make a difference.

Silence settled over the street ones more.

It was interrupted by the sound of footsteps stepping around an overturned car. The soldier that met Ira's sight looked like all stereotypical soldier's in a zombie apocalypse.

Like he was one wrong step away from shooting his own troops.

Ira rose a bloodied eyebrow at the man and said, "Wonderful weather, isn't it?"

He got a machine-gun pointed at himself in response.

"Who are you?" the soldier asked harshly, his every body part exuding suspicion.

Ira shrugged his shoulder, ignored the gun and vented back into the convenience store to get his backpack. While putting it on, he answered a vague, "Nobody special."

Well, this body wasn't.

"Don't mess with me!" the soldier suddenly yelled out, the gun waving with his unsteady hands. "Tell me the truth! How did you do that?!"

Ira exited the store and shrugged his shoulder again. Like he actually kept track of every single one of his abilities. Yes, sure, there was an automatically updated index in his data mass about himself that was updated whenever he leaned something new, but he didn't actually check it out or anything. He just let it grow on its own. He had even turned off the notifications from it, because it was really annoying.

Every other minute, there would be a beep and a note he had learned a new skill or fact or rumor. Seriously, who wanted to hear that all of the time?

No-one sane.

There were even notifications for jokes.

It was enough to drive the sanest System mad.

Thankfully, Ira was no longer tormented by its vicious actions. Letting his eyes drift over all of the soldiers surrounding him and pointing their weapons at him, Ira narrowed his eyes.

He wanted a gun, too.

A machine-gun would be even better, but he did know the meaning of the word moderation, unlike a lot of his Hosts.

Should he kill them and take their weapons? Or take their weapons and leave them to their deaths? Maybe he should knock them out and take their weapons? Regardless, he really wanted those weapons.

He was going to get them, one way or another.

"If I joined your group, would I get a machine-gun?" Ira asked, deciding to risk it. If it was a no, he would just take one by force. He couldn't really cart more than one around, after all. He had gotten ahead of himself in his eagerness.

It was another soldier that asked, "With those skills, why would you need one?"

Ira blinked, confused. "Because I want to shoot things. It's fun."

For some reason, the soldiers had looks of exasperation on their faces. Ira didn't get it. What other reason could there possibly be to get a machine-gun? Obviously, it was because it was fun and amusing to shoot at people. Preferably when they were already running around. Zombies made ideal targets, especially as they evolved.

The unsteady soldier with the machine-gun was the one that stated, "You're insane."

"No." Ira said. "You are."

He really looked like he was. He had that wild look in his eyes that said he was breaking from the things he was seeing and experiencing. Possibly, he had been a good soldier before the outbreak — after all, the others seemed to look up to him — but right now, he was a ticking time-bomb.

Ira really wanted to see him blow.

"So?" Ira asked. "Can I join? And get a machine-gun? I'm willing to settle for a rifle if I must, but I absolutely want a gun."

This time, a female soldier answered, "You know what, yes. We can always use the help."

"Wait! We can't trust him! You saw what he did to those zombies! How do we know he won't kill us in our sleep?!" it was the ticking time-bomb that burst out with a whole slew of irrational objections.

Her eyes glowing with determination, the female soldier answered harshly, "That's exactly why we need him! Captain, we're dying here!" her voice lowered as she continued in a somber tone. "We've already lost a third of our troop. We can't keep going like this. Somebody with his skills, who is not dependent on a limited amount of ammunition and doesn't freeze up when faced with human-looking zombies, it's vital right now. If we want to survive, we need his help."

Ira wished he had popcorn right now. It felt like he was in a cinema, watching a movie. Perhaps he should see if there was any in the convenience store?

The ticking time-bomb asked, "More than you need me?"

"Of course not." the woman reassured him quickly. "But, Captain, we want to live. And we need more than one egg in the basket to manage it."

"Fine!" the man bit out between clenched teeth. "But don't say I didn't warn you when he throws you to the zombies!"

"We won't." the woman stated and turned around to smile at him, her short hair fluttering like a dark curtain around her face from the wind. "What's your name?"

"Ira." he saw no reason to use the original body's name when nobody even knew who he was.

And if anybody called bullshit, he'd just claim it was a nickname. It was, after all, true. Only new System still used their designations these days. It was going wildly out of style.

Nothing like when he was young and everybody used them.

Time really flew on by, didn't it?

"Before we leave," Ira said and pointed behind himself. "I'm going to get some popcorn. You just wait here. It won't take long."

Nobody answered him.

Ignoring the weird looks and silence, Ira entered back into the store and searched the shelves until he found what he was looking for. Smiling and feeling pleased with himself, he grabbed a couple of boxes and shoved them down into the already full backpack. It now looked like it was on the edge of bursting at the seams. Ira hoped it wouldn't, because then he would have find another one, and he was feeling lazy after all of that killing.

He exited the store with the pack hanging over one of his shoulders and gave the soldiers waiting for him a hard look. "Where's my machine-gun?"

"Here." the woman held out a rifle to him. "We only have one machine-gun, so you can't have it, but you said this would be alright too, didn't you?"

Ira nodded and took the gun with reverent hands.

This was awesome.

He smiled, unable to contain his excitement, and said, "Thank you!"

When people voluntarily gave you weapons capable of mass-murder, you said thank you. It was simple manners.

Ira kept a hold of the gun and brought it up, testing the aim and feeling the weight of it. This was just the best. Ira should have dragged his Hosts to zombie worlds earlier. He wondered, could he find another zombie world after this one? There were so many variations of it, so many different causes, that there should be plenty of them out there. He would just have to adjust the parameters when searching for new worlds to enter and it should be easy.

Ah, he couldn't wait. He was feeling so exited now.

Ira swung the rifle over his shoulder, the way he had seen plenty of people do with swords and asked, "So, do you have a camp or something? Or were you just running blindly."

There were, now that he bothered to actually count them, seven of them standing around him in a loose circle. One woman and six men, all of them clearly trained professionals in the art of killing, and all of them looking tuff and on edge. Most of them were tanned too, making him think they spent a lot of time outside.

"There are more of us at camp, we're just the scouting squad. We were supposed to find necessities." the woman answered easily.

Ira nodded in understanding and then followed behind them as they followed the same way back that they had come. At least they knew it was relatively clear, considering that the zombies who could had followed after them from there.

Even when they jogged at a fairly high speed, it still took them about half-an-hour to get to the camp.

It was located just outside of the small city, hidden from any roads in a forest clearing, and at the camp was waiting three more people, all of them male. Ira was starting to see a pattern of discrimination, which made no sense, because the female soldier was the only one he trusted to have actual skills at this point.

She was the only that didn't look like she was one sudden move away from shooting him.

The men rose from they had been sitting at different positions at the camp when they arrived, and then guns was pointed at him again. This was becoming a routine, huh.

It was the man furthest back from the scouting squad that asked, "Who's he?"

"This is Ira." said the woman and pointed her gun back at them. "He'll be staying with us from now. Don't worry, he will be very helpful."

"Are you serious?" another man asked, still pointing his gun. Sadly, it was not a machine.gun nor a rifle, so Ira wasn't very interested in it. "What, are we taking in strays now? We don't have the resources to look after more people, and you know it, Judy!"

"He's no idiot." she snapped back. "He can get his own resources and we've already seen him kill multiple zombies in minutes without a gun. He'll have to work to earn food and shelter, just like the rest of us."

At that, they finally settled down, and the guns were, sadly, pointed elsewhere. Ira took that as his cue to approach the camp and sit down next to the fire-pit.

He took out a pack of popcorn from a box, calculated how warm the fire was and how the distance, and then he grabbed one of those grabbing-sticks and held it over the fire until his timer dinged and he pulled it back. Opening it, he was assaulted by the smell of popcorn, and without any further ado, he grabbed a handful of them and stuffed them in his mouth.

They were still warm.

Sighing in pleasure, he chewed and swallowed, only to repeat the procedure.

Someone clearing their throat obnoxiously loudly got his attention and he directed his sight to the man now standing next to him. In his pleasure, he hadn't payed any attention and hadn't noticed him. It was the unsteady guy with the machine-gun, though he was no longer carrying it.

What a pity. If Ira had a machine-gun, he would never let it go.

"What do you think you are doing?" the man asked harshly, his dark eyes glaring with distaste.

Ira swallowed his latest handful and answered, "Eating popcorn."

"This is, this is the middle of a fucking zombie apocalypse like out of stupid horror movie, and you're eating popcorn! What the hell is wrong with you?!" the man burst out, his voice echoing over the clearing.

He was immediately hushed by his comrades.

Ira blinked a little at the suddenness of the yelling. "I like popcorn." he defended himself.

It was a perfectly reasonable reason, wasn't it? He liked popcorn, so when he could eat it for free, why wouldn't he?

Really, these people. They had no common sense.