Chapter 10 - Just A Puppy That Needs Cuddling

"How was she still standing?" Spencer asked in bewilderment.

"Bitch isn't standing now," Rain said in a gruff tone, not intimidating at all due to her height which could be considered borderline dwarfism.

Flashing around a nearby corridor, Zeel, Alice, and Kaplan came running into the Dining Hall.

"What was all the shooting?" Kaplan asked since the Red Queen's last words were constantly on replay in his mind.

Right now, he was borderline crazy with 'Get out! Get out!' being the only thing on his mind.

"We found a survivor," Rain grunted out as she bandaged the wound on her neck.

Zeel, seeing this, took a couple of steps away.

With his nanites on the verge of awakening, Zeel could not afford to be thrust into battle. The dizziness of hibernation was ebbing away at his consciousness even now.

Still, even as his consciousness waned, he could feel his technology-control returning once more. His first act was to access what limited data remained on the fried servers inside The Hive.

The data extracted was far too fragmented to truly decipher, but it was a promising start nonetheless.

"And you shot him?" Alice asked a bit in disappointment.

"She was crazed. She bit me," Rain justified since she liked Alice the most in the group "Wanted me to serve myself up on a plate for her, huh?"

Zeel butted into the tense conversation with an observation "Guess you're not as good as a shot as you thought you were since the person you shot left,"

Zeel's sentence caused a long pause in the conversation as Rain and Spencer simultaneously voiced out their concerns "But she was dead,"

"How could she be dead if she crawled away, here look at the … blood," Kaplan went strong until he neared the end of his statement, looking at the blood for a while and not being able to say anything.

Matt peaked over his shoulder and voiced the discovery.

"The blood has coagulated," Matt said with a raised eyebrow.

"And, fuck does that have to do with us?" Rain yelled, nursing her bite mark.

This entire situation was turning out to be more trouble than she was being paid for.

Matt sighed at the musclehead of a woman "That doesn't happen until after you die for a couple of hours. That means whatever you shot was not living,"

"We should leave!" said Kaplan, not waiting for a reply and instead opting to dash at the console near the door.

"We can't leave till James gets here," Rain justified.

"There's no one else coming. James got fucked by the Red Queen," Alice answered in Zeel's place.

The group went silent for a couple of seconds, allowing everyone to hear the encroaching footsteps that seem to be heading in their general direction.

"So think that the chick you shot earlier went to get her friends?" Matt asked as he nudged at Zeel as if asking him to remove the cuffs.

Seeing no need to refuse, Zeel snapped the cuffs off with just his strength alone. Matt would probably die anyway, so why wouldn't he just use the extra bait that was presented to himself.

Slowly, a group of funny walking employees became visible, they walked as if walking itself used only the feet and none of the muscles in the feet.

They had dead eyes. Zeel's first instinct was like Spencer's, fire first and ask questions later but the de facto leader Kaplan had yet to say anything.

Then the group trained their eyes on a specific person walking towards them. This one confirmed their suspicions as a huge chunk of the neck was missing from the person, but he was seemingly still alive.

Zeel whispered just enough so everyone can hear him "Earlier I asked if you had a subspecies of Zombie in this world, but you didn't answer clearly,"

Not waiting for anyone to process the logic behind his statement, Zeel used the knives from around his waist.

The knives began flying towards the Zombie horde with practiced ease. Rain and the others also snapped out of their daze and began mowing down the incoming horde.

Suddenly, a gun, knife, grenade fight broke out on epic proportions with explosions happening all around.

"They're all around us. Let's go. Let's go now!" Rain said while firing shots and backing up at the same time.

Though if her rough breathing was any indication, everyone could tell she was getting sick.

*Boom*

*Boom*

"Fuck explosions are not cool like the movies. These mf hurts a lot, like someone throwing steel balls at you!" Zeel complained, feeling the shockwaves from the explosion.

Matt got a hold of some grenades and began tossing them around without an inkling of how far to throw them.

Each shot of Alice's brought down a zombie, she held the training of an expert marksman and flexibility that would make any mind crazy, but she suddenly paused near a Zombie as a flash of memory flickered through her conscious mind.

In a graveyard near the mansion, she recalled meeting someone near it.

∞∞∞

"I can help you get the virus. I have access to security codes, surveillance plans, the works," Alice said to a mystery woman.

∞∞∞

Zeel, who saw Alice about to get attacked by a zombie, used a self-damaging technique, accelerating to her side, grabbing her in his arms while simultaneously kicking in the head of the zombie.

The force of the impact was strong enough to propel them both to safety. Alice jumped out of Zeel's arms as Kaplan yelled for everyone to follow him.

Earlier Kaplan had been trying to open the door but as he could hear groans coming from the other side, and nursing severe trauma from this mission, he opted to find an alternate route instead of risking it.

Rain and Kaplan attempted to lead everyone to safety but along the way, everyone got separated with Zeel and Alice ending up in a different corridor from everyone else.

"I guess this is faith, huh?" Zeel asked jokingly.

"God must hate me then for pairing me up with someone who kills the moment he is given a reason to," Alice replied coldly.

"Why scared of me?"

"No, I feel strangely connected to you since you walked into the mansion, you reminded me of a puppy looking for cuddling," Alice replied trying to describe the feeling in her heart.

For some unknown reason, she felt that Zeel was an incredibly pitiable individual.

Zeel paused and laughed briefly since it was fun being considered as such. When has a Homo-Superior, the strongest race in Universe 0, ever been considered a puppy?

∞∞∞

In another corridor.

"What were those things?" Spencer asked.

"I don't know, what are they?" Kaplan returned the question since Spencer was assigned to guard the mansion.

"It's pretty obvious what they are. Lab coats, badges. Those people used to work here! All the people working here are dead," Rain said pouring cold water onto Kaplan's hopeful fire "And you released them the moment you shut off the Red Queen who was keeping them contained,"