As the zombie horde drew closer, Stu began to see ICON system designations popping up over their heads: Level 1 Zombie, Level 3 Zombie, Level 1 Rager, Level 2 Jumbo, Level 1 Shaker, Level 6 Zombie. Soon there were so many messages, crowded all together, that they became an almost-unreadable jumble. Stu grit his teeth.
"That's a lot of zombies," Lucky murmured.
"Don't waste your ammo!" Charger shouted at her men, and at the handful of recruits from Georgetown who had volunteered to fight. They had arranged themselves along the blockade they had constructed in the street, and were fidgeting nervously. "Wait until we've triggered the bombs. And don't forget to aim! We need headshots, people!"
The zombies, apparently sensing the presence of uninfected people further down the street, started to pick up their pace, rolling down the canyon-like avenue like a flood. They screamed and snarled, and some of the more desiccated zombies stumbled and fell, only to be trampled on by their fellows in their mad rush down the street. It was a terrifying scene.
When the mass of zombies was about a block away, Charger's men started setting off the bombs. The first explosion produced such a shockwave that it nearly knocked Lucky and Luna off their feet; Stu had to grab on to them to keep them upright. The explosion completely obliterated twenty or thirty zombies, and blew the limbs off of dozens more; for a moment the air was full of blood and body parts. But the remaining zombies were unbothered by the explosion, and the undead wave kept rolling down the hill.
The first explosion was followed by two more, which killed even more zombies, but which also produced a great deal of smoke, confusion, and chaos; it was so close to Stu and the others that it rattled their eardrums and shook the resolve of the Georgetown recruits. How many zombies had they managed to kill with that blast? It was impossible to tell.
With the zombies now closing in, and with the street full of white smoke and with the tangy smell of the explosives hanging in the air, the defenders began to open fire. One of Charger's men had a flamethrower, which was very effective -- standing out in the open, defying the horde almost all by himself, he waved the barrel from one side of the street to the other, incinerating the zombies by the dozens. The flames stopped some of them in their tracks, but others just kept staggering forward, undeterred.
It was about then that the first irregulars emerged from the zombies' ranks -- a Level 2 Speedy suddenly shot forward, vaulting over the blockade and immediately attacking a group of Georgetown recruits. They stumbled away from it, surprised and terrified; one man shot it and missed.
But this kind of close-quarters combat was Stu's specialty. Clutching his aluminum baseball bat, he leapt over the blockade himself and attacked the speedy. It turned to face him, and swung an arm at him, but Stu, with his newly enhanced speed, was now faster than these low-level speedies -- to him, the speedy was moving no faster than an ordinary person. He swatted the arm away with the bat and delivered a hammer-blow to the speedy's chest, slamming it against one of the trucks. Then, while it was stunned, he swung for its head, cracking its skull and scrambling its brains.
Level 2 Speedy defeated!Critical Bonus! Gained 1 SP!
The recruits stared at him in awe, which was the last thing he wanted. "There's more coming!" he shouted at them, pointing at the horde. "Let 'em have it!"
The men and women of Georgetown resumed firing. A pair of low-level ragers had emerged from the crowd of zombies now as well; they rushed the barricades, trying to scramble over the downed utility poles. Stu moved to intercept them, but before he could get to them one the rager's heads exploded, and it fell down, dead. It took him a moment to realize that it was Rico who had killed the rager, with his sniper rifle; he looked up just in time to see a puff of gun smoke emerge from the broken window where the man had positioned himself.
The second rager, however, succeeded in reaching Stu. He swung for its head, but it leaned away from the blow and tried to tackle him while he was off balance. Fortunately the rager was shorter than Stu, and half of its arm had been torn off; Stu muscled the zombie away before it could sink his teeth into him and was able to knock it down with a second blow. Lucky finished it off, hacking into its spine with his hatchet.
The battle continued. Stu, in the thick of it, killed zombie after zombie, focusing on the irregulars, and quickly lost track of how many he had killed. He lost track of his skill points, too; he wasn't sure how many he might have racked up by now, and he was too busy fighting to open up the menu and find out.
Lucky and Luna fought valiantly as well. Lucky blasted one zombie, a Level 5, with his Elephant revolver, knocking it down and giving Stu the opportunity to finish it off, while Luna killed two Level 3's with her rifle. It was a gory tableau; the dry, dusty street was spattered with silver-tinted blood and blobs of unidentifiable organs. A half-a-zombie, still alive after being blown up by one of the bombs, crawled forward using its arms, and was dispatched by one of Charger's men. A huge jumbo, standing almost seven feet tall and weighing at least four hundred pounds, slammed into the barricades and managed to kill one of the Georgetown group before being brought down. Sniper fire continued to rain down from above, sometimes hitting the zombies, but sometimes missing and striking the asphalt.
Stu's Zombie Radar was a constant buzz in his brain. There were so many zombies around that he couldn't get a fix on any particular one, which made him jumpy.
"Bomber!" someone shouted, and Stu, who was in the middle of killing a female Level 3, turned just in time to see a shirtless zombie with a grossly distended stomach waddling up to the front line. According to its ICON designation, it was a Level 4.
"Shit," Stu muttered. Using his speed, which caused the world to slow down by a couple of degrees, he grabbed Lucky and Luna and pulled them down, seconds before the bomber exploded. It produced a huge concussive impact, and for a moment the air was full of flying debris, because it had exploded right next to the barricades, splintering the utility poles and shattering the windows of Rico's van. Some of Charger's men must have been killed in the blast, although the front line -- such as it was -- was such a mess now that Stu couldn't tell the dead zombies from the deceased defenders. The smell was horrific.
Aware that the gases from a bomber-blast could lead to infection, Stu dragged Lucky and Luna away from the area, well behind the front line -- which was, in any case, rapidly disintegrating. There were simply too many zombies. Charger and her guards were still putting up a fight, and Rico was presumably still up in his sniper's nest, but most of the men and women from Georgetown were either dead or retreating.
"We're losing," Luna observed, waving her hand in front of her face. There was smoke everywhere; the man with the flamethrower had just been overwhelmed, and the tank on his back had exploded.
"I don't think winning was ever an option," Lucky pointed out grimly.
She started to respond to that, but before she could open her mouth, a Level 8 Zombie -- a fat and bloated female, wearing a bloodstained red sweater -- suddenly staggered out of the smoke and lunged for her. It attacked her from behind; she didn't see it coming.
Stu did see it coming, and darted forward to stop it. Before he could push Luna out of the way, however, another zombie -- a Level 4 Speedy -- came rushing at him from the left. It came at him so fast that he had no choice but to confront it -- he hit in the ribcage with Excalibur, stopping it in its tracks, then backhanded it in the face with his bare fist, just to get it off of him for a moment. Whirling around, he took two steps toward Luna, but he wasn't fast enough.
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He saw it happen in slow motion. The Level 8 Zombie seized Luna's wrist, pulled it straight, and bit into her forearm.
A fraction of a second later, Stu caught it with Excalibur, jamming the end of the bat into her face and kicking her in the chest, sending her flying. The blow shattered her teeth and left her face bloodied, but it wasn't enough to kill her; it was Lucky who finished her off with a shot to the head.
"Damn," Luna muttered, looking at her arm. "She got me."
Lucky was horrified. "No, no, no. Oh God, no."
Stu quickly took Luna by the hand, which activated his Protector skill. The healing power flowed out of him and into her, causing the bite-wound on her arm to disappear almost instantly...but Regeneration, as he understood it, could only repair the physical damage; it couldn't rid her of the zombie infection, once it was introduced to her body. It hadn't been able to save Virge from the poisonous mutate; he doubted it would be able to save her from the infection.
He swore. This was a worst-case scenario, but there was hardly time to think about it; the zombies were now pouring over the barricades, and they had to run. Charger, who now had blood covering one side of her face, was screaming at them all: "Back to the mall! Go!"
They started to run down the street, with the zombies in hot pursuit. Stu could run faster than any of them, of course, but he kept to the rear, encouraging Lucky and Luna and occasionally stopping to kill the zombies that got too close. He was in the middle of battering a Level 3 when he suddenly heard a tremendous, reverberating sound, something like an earthquake, coming from somewhere behind them. Then he heard it again, and again, in a regular rhythm. Footsteps?
Having dispatched the Level 3, he looked up the street, and saw that a huge, slug-like creature, at least forty or fifty feet long, was now advancing with the zombie horde. It had an ICON designation: Level 49 Mutate.
It was the biggest mutate he had ever seen, even bigger than the Living Hell. The giant creature had lost whatever human features it might have once had; it didn't have arms or legs, but maneuvered itself forward like an elephant seal, flopping and rolling from one side to the other on weird flipper-like appendages. It was this flopping, this heaving of its massive, blubbery bulk, that was causing the earthquake-like shaking. The damn thing must have weighed fifty tons. Its slimy, broken flesh was a mottled yellow and brown, and its face consisted merely of a mouth slit and two bulbous, fishlike eyes on either side of its head. It was absolutely monstrous.
"This just keeps getting better and better," Luna said, wincing.
"I don't think we can fight that thing," Lucky added. "Let's get out of here!"
Stu nodded, and the three of them, along with Charger and a few others, continued down the street. "How are you feeling, Luna?"
"Fine, for now," she said, though her voice trembled a bit. "It takes a while for the infection to set in."
"How much time do we have?"
"A few hours, maybe?"
"Dr. Snowe was almost finished with the cure," Lucky said hopefully. "If we can get her back to the mall, and hold off these zombies for just a little while longer..."
"Do you want me to carry you?" Stu asked her.
"I told you, I'm fine for now."
Stu swore again. Some "Paladin" he was. He shouldn't have allowed her to be bitten; he should have been paying better attention. What good were these powers if he couldn't use them to protect the people closest to him?
They soon arrived at the edge of the parking lot surrounding the mall, where the electric shell had been set up. Though a few speedy stragglers had managed to catch up, they had managed to outdistance the zombies by a minute or two. But there were only about a dozen of them left now, including Stu, Lucky, and Luna -- Charger was there, with three of her men, along with some Georgetown people he didn't recognize, but that was it. There was no sign of Rico.
They regrouped near a couple of broken-down cars. "What's the plan?" one of Charger's soldiers asked.
"We can't let that mutate near the electric shell," she told them, wiping the blood from her face. "It's big enough to short it out."
"How the hell are we supposed to stop something that big?" the soldier complained.
"Fire?" someone suggested.
"It won't burn," she said, shaking her head. "Not quickly enough to kill it before it gets here, anyway. It's covered in that slime."
"I have one package left," another soldier said, setting his backpack down and pulling a wired-up explosive out of it. "But I don't have a remote detonator."
Charger nodded. "I'll take it."
The men were uncertain. "Are you sure, boss?"
"We don't have a choice. We have to stop it. We have to give them more time." She took the bomb from the soldier. "But you're going to have to clear a path for me."
It was only then that Stu realized that Charger intended to sacrifice herself. "Maybe I can kill it," he offered. "I've killed big mutates before."
"How?"
"Well...I killed one with a Centurion rifle..."
"We don't have a Centurion rifle."
Stu grimaced. Could he kill the mutate by himself? He might be able to rip it open with his chainsaw, if he could get close to it, but he wasn't sure the blade would cut deep enough to reach anything vital; the mutate was mostly blubber. Its skull, meanwhile, was thicker than an elephant's, which meant rifle fire was unlikely to penetrate it. Could he hit in the eye with Dead Aim or Marksman?
But Charger and her men had already decided on their course of action. Tucking the bomb under her arm, and with her men flanking her, she started back up the street, just as the zombie horde -- and the huge mutate -- flooded into view. The men formed a line and started blasting the zombies with the last of their ammo, while Charger, dodging the undead, made her way up to the mutate. The street sloped downward, which allowed the mutate to slide down it comparatively quickly; it continued throwing its weight from one side to the other, producing these huge, shuddering impacts, and leaving a trail of festering slime in its wake. Meanwhile other zombies swarmed around it, snarling and stumbling forward on their rotting limbs, and sometimes even being crushed beneath the monster as it rolled from side to side. The mutate began to pick up speed; it was now less than a hundred feet from the perimeter of the mall parking lot.
Charger approached the behemoth without hesitation; Stu had never seen such incredible bravery. He could only watch, dismayed, as she ran up to the beast, just as it was in the middle of a roll, and detonated the bomb. There was a flash of yellow and a burst of white, sulfurous smoke, and she disappeared.
Stu couldn't see what had happened to the mutate, because of all the smoke, but the shaking had stopped, which meant that it was, at a minimum, no longer moving. Charger's riflemen, unable to see what they were shooting at, paused for a moment.
"Did she get it?" Lucky asked.
The smoke cleared, revealing the body of the mutate. There was a gigantic, cavernous hole in one side of its blubbery body, dripping blood and gore, which was at least ten feet across. Bones could be seen within it, and chunks of it were lying all over the street; it looked something like the carcass of a beached whale. It wasn't moving.
"She got it," Luna said, relieved.
But then, to their shock, the mutate started making a horrible gasping sound, and Stu could actually see its lungs reinflate through the huge, gaping wound in its side. It spat out a gallon of blood, which continued to dribble out of its mouth-slit, and started inching its way forward, towards the parking lot.
It wasn't dead. Though gravely wounded, its organs were regenerating.
Charger's men shouted curses. Desperate to stop the monster before it could reach the electric shell, they ran up to it, heedless, some of them hacking at it with their edged weapons, others opening fire on it, at point-blank range. It shuddered, but continued creeping forward, and the zombies attacked the men who were trying to stop it.
Stu readied his chainsaw. He could probably kill the thing if he could drive the blade into its head -- if it could cut through the hull of an alien ship, surely it could cut through a mutate's thickened skull. He started for it...but was intercepted by a group of zombies, which had broken free of the larger horde. One of them was a Level 2 Rager.
He cut down the zombies in his way, with Lucky and Luna at his side. But there were too many blocking his path; he couldn't get to the mutate. Charger's soldiers continued hammering away at it, but the monster, it seemed, was determined to drag itself over the finish line. It crushed one of the men with its flippers and shook another one of them off, and then, heaving itself forward in one final effort, it threw its massive body into the border between the street and the mall parking lot, where Dr. Snowe's invisible electric shield had been placed.
There was a flash of light, a shower of sparks, and a sudden crackling sound, something like a transformer exploding. Thousands of volts raced through the mutate's body, causing it to jerk and shudder, and sputtering flames began to ignite all along the surface of its slimy body. The smell was horrendous, like some kind of grotesque barbecue.
The mutate stopped moving. It was dead.
But it had succeeded in its purpose; it had shorted out the electric shell. Zombies began to surge past the perimeter. The last of Charger's men disappeared in the tidal wave of rotting flesh.
Stu cut down one more zombie with his chainsaw and spun on his heel. "Into the mall!" he shouted at Lucky and Luna. "Move! Move!"