“I guess this is my way out,” Daniel muttered as he threw a glance towards the narrowing side of the corridor.
There was no way for him to reach the central point of the school. And as great as it would be to start there from a tactical point of view, such a daunting task simply laid outside of the scope of Daniel’s ability.
Yet, that single quick look turned into a prolonged stare as the officer looked for any signs of survivors.
‘I wasn’t the only one who fell. I wasn’t the only one who killed the zombie early on,’ Daniel thought as he scanned every last detail of his immediate surroundings. ‘That means I can’t be the only one left alive from those who fell!’
The officer refused to accept such a random development.
The floor crumbling beneath his feat? He could accept that. In reality, it wasn’t the first time Daniel to gone through an experience like this. Back during his deployment, he went through a far worse shit.
Yet, the same could be said of most of the fellow soldiers and officers that fell along with him. And yet, he couldn’t spot a single soul left alive.
‘Maybe they ended up on the surface, not hidden by anything, so they already became zombie’s feast?’ Daniel attempted to figure out any logic behind the situation.
And just as he was about to give up on his hope, a small stone rolled down a pile of ruins.
Seemingly, with no force causing it to fall down.
‘Someone’s there!’ Daniel thought, instantly rushing in the direction he noticed the weird movement from.
But he wasn’t the only one that took notice of the small detail.
Or rather, the second his movements became energetic and quick, the zombies that formerly ignored his presence now became attracted to it.
‘I don’t have much time,’ Daniel thought, watching how the already massive horde of zombies filling the corridor all started to move towards him.
Daniel kicked the zombie that attempted to uncover whoever hid underneath the rubble. He then proceeded to wrestle with the next few of them.
‘It’s surprisingly hard without a gun,’ he thought, his weapon lost somewhere amidst the rubble.
Any attempts at recovering it now could only succeed when all the rubble and bodies would get cleared out. Right now, looking for it amidst the ruins would be even harder than trying to find a needle in a haystack.
Then, the officer froze.
‘I might not have a gun, but didn’t I somehow receive a weapon just as powerful as a firearm?’
Daniel raised his eyes at the few nearest approaching zombies. And just like before, he started to sing the tune of one of his favorite rock songs.
And soon, his fists turned into rocks that stoned down the approaching zombies to the rhythm of the song Daniel hummed.
“Heck,” the officer uttered a small cry of astonishment when he finally stopped fighting, already ten meters away from the potential survivor’s site.
Lost in the power of music that used to be a major part of his life in the past, Daniel didn’t even realize the results of his rampage.
‘No, stop, I need to get them out,’ he thought, turning around on his heel and tracking back his steps through the devastated area.
The zombies that he faced weren’t just killed. He didn’t offer them the mercy of final and hopefully absolute death. What Daniel offered, though, was his army training mixed with the power that he knew close to nothing about nor how to control it.
‘This looks worse than the stuff at the siege of Tarnow,’ he thought, recalling the unpleasant memories from the war.
It was a battle that devastated nearly half of the once prosperous city. Yet, surprisingly enough, the other half remained perfectly fine, with only an occasional bullet marking the wall of the antique buildings.
Even though the modern half of the city turned into the greatest bloodbath that history has seen in its course, both sides ended up respecting the legacy of the legendary family that turned this once small village into a local powerhouse, both within the country and on the international scene.
Daniel looked down at the fruits of his labor only to swallow a gulp of his saliva.
‘To think that I would find something even worse than the tunnels,’ Daniel thought, clenching his teeth and tensing up the muscles around his throat to stop himself from vomiting.
One could hardly recognize the corpses as what they were after Daniel’s rampage.
His attacks bore far more strength than he expected his fists to hold.
An attack that would normally knock someone unconscious at best in the past was now well more than enough to blast a human skull and brain into smithereens.
“This system is really powerful,” Daniel muttered under his breath before shaking his head and focusing back on what was truly important right now.
“Hey, can you hear me?!” the officer put his mouth by one of the many gaps left within the pile of ruins. “Make a double sound or something if you can!”
‘There is a chance he can’t speak or move all that much,’ he thought… only for a blueish mist to suddenly start oozing out of the pile of rubble.
‘What the hell is this?’ Daniel thought, leaping to the back.
He then cast a quick glance deeper into the corner, only to realize that the zombie had already recovered half of the ground that he fought so had to clear.
And then, the blue mist suddenly all converged into a single point… only to take the shape of a human.
‘Ghost?!’ Daniel’s eyes widened as he started at the unexpected apparition.
Yet, before he could as much as swallow his saliva, he recognized the face of the ghost.
“Norbert?” Daniel asked out, slowly approaching the blueish, half-transparent being.
“Daniel?” the ghost raised its face, only for it to explode in smiles. “I knew you would get to survive it!” it rejoices, executing a strange dance right before the officer’s eyes.
“Are you real?” Daniel asked, suddenly acknowledging the other possibility. And judging from his experiences back before the floor of the school collapsed,
“As real as it gets, man,” the ghost replied, a wry smile appearing on its lips. “But for now, could you take care of those?” Norbert’s ghost asked before pointing at the mass of zombies already reaching the foothold of the pile on which Daniel stood.
“Sure thing,” Daniel nodded his head.
Whether this ghost was real or not, whether it was really the ghost of his teammate or a malicious scheme aimed at somehow forcing him to the open?
Yet, for now, killing the approaching horde of zombies was of absolute importance. After all, it was the only immediate threat that Daniel had to face!
‘I wonder if those kids survived,’ the officer thought before shaking his hands up and down and pushing forward, right into the hungry embrace of the zombies’ horde.