"Alright," he whispered. "Let’s dance."
He threw the door open.
Three zombies were in the hallway now—two sluggish girls in tattered uniforms and a tall boy with his jaw hanging at an unnatural angle. Their cloudy eyes locked onto him instantly. Their moans rose into howls.
Three quick shots to the chest of the tall one, then one more to the head. The zombie collapsed like a folding chair.
The other two charged at him, arms swinging.
One fell. The second lunged.
He sidestepped and pivoted, slamming the stock of his MP5 into her temple. She stumbled sideways, just enough for him to deliver a front kick to her chest. She crashed into a locker with a metallic clang. Riku stepped in and drove the tomahawk into her skull with a sickening crack. She dropped instantly.
"That’s three," he muttered. He didn’t have time to gloat.
More shuffling footsteps approached from the other end of the hallway—five, no—six of them. They rounded the corner, jaws slack, arms raised. Their uniforms were soaked with blood and torn in odd places. Riku ducked behind a row of lockers and peeked through a gap.
"Way too many..." he muttered.
But backing down wasn’t an option now. He had accepted the mission. And the stairwell was at the other end of the hallway.
He popped out of cover and went full auto.
Five-round burst, then another. The MP5 barked thunder in the hallway, shell casings clinking across the floor.
Two zombies fell instantly. One caught a bullet in the throat, staggering but not dropping. Riku dropped low, rolled forward, and fired upwards while kneeling.
He kept moving while reloading, sprinting past the fallen bodies. Another came from a classroom on the right. Riku fired on reflex—Tak!—the head blew open in a mist.
He reached the next classroom door. It was half-open.
Riku shoulder-rammed it to the side and burst in.
Four this time, one of them hunched over a corpse. It turned its head slowly, gore dripping from its jaw.
Riku’s next movements were instinctive—enhanced by the system.
He dashed in a zigzag pattern to throw off their approach, leapt onto a desk, and jumped down between two of them. His tomahawk sliced across the first one’s face. Before the second could grab him, he spun on his heel and elbowed it in the throat, breaking through its windpipe.
Another tried to pounce.
He ducked low, grabbed its leg, and yanked—slamming its skull into the floor. With the same motion, he pivoted and drove the tomahawk down into its neck.
"How many are on this damn floor?!" he growled.
He checked his mag—almost empty.
He swapped magazines in a blink—Clack!—and continued the rampage.
Back in the hallway now, another crowd had emerged. The gunshots had called them.
They were coming from every classroom.
Riku backpedaled fast, emptying his MP5 in controlled bursts. Blood sprayed the walls. A zombie lunged from his blind side. He stepped forward, ducked under its arms, and delivered a powerful palm strike to its chin, sending it stumbling back. He finished it with a tomahawk strike to the back of the neck.
Another grabbed his arm. He twisted out of the grip, hooked its leg, and slammed it to the floor—then stomped on its head with a sickening crack.
Another clawed at his back.
Riku whipped out the Glock 17 and fired point-blank. Tak! Tak! The zombie collapsed backward, leaking brain matter across the floor.
But his MP5 was dry. His Glock was halfway through its mag. Blood smeared his sleeves, his tomahawk dripped gore, and the hallway looked like a horror film.
Ten. Maybe twelve zombies remained—and more were on the way from the stairwell.
Riku was panting now.
He gritted his teeth, raised the MP5, and squeezed the trigger.
Two went down. One crawled forward despite missing a leg.
"Persistent bastard—" Tak!
Its head popped like a melon.
Riku didn’t stop. He kept firing. Another mag gone in seconds.
He dropped the mag, slapped the final one in, and pulled the charging handle.
They kept coming. Four more now—two girls, one in a torn gym jacket, the other with only half a jaw. Behind them, a male zombie in a blazer limped forward, dragging a broken leg.
Headshot. Chest shot. Headshot. Neck shot.
But there were more behind them. Always more.
Tak-tak! Tak-tak-tak!
"Shit!" Riku barked, slinging it behind him. He yanked the Glock from his waistband.
A zombie sprinted at him—a faster one.
Miss. Then hit. It staggered but didn’t drop.
Another crawled out from a side room, hand reaching.
It slumped with a whimper.
Two more closed in. Riku stepped to the side, breathing steady.
Both heads jerked, skulls ruptured. They collapsed in unison.
Only one bullet left.
A girl zombie—barefoot, glass in her hair—lunged at him with a shriek.
Her head snapped back mid-jump. She crumpled.
"Out of ammo!" Riku growled. "Damn it!"
He turned and sprinted down the hall, sidestepping a dead body, ducking under a collapsed ceiling light.
One classroom—near the stairwell—stood open.
He dashed in, slammed the door shut, and yanked a metal filing cabinet against it with every ounce of strength he had left. He threw a nearby desk in front of it for good measure.
The door jolted as zombies slammed against it.
He fell to his knees, sweat dripping from his face, arms coated in blood that wasn’t all his. He dropped the empty Glock on the floor and sat back against the chalkboard.
"Made it..." he muttered. "Barely."
He looked down at his gear. Two empty firearms. One bloodstained tomahawk. Torn uniform. An aching body.
[Total SP and XP gained.
Experience Points: 1,200/2,000
He tried opening his Armory Shop to attempt to purchase more ammunition and continue but there was a problem.
[Notice: Armory Shop can’t be accessed during combat!]
As expected, it worked like that in the game. He must stay out of combat from zombies before he could access the shop. And there are ways to do that.
First is by simply not engaging any zombies for five minutes. Meaning he has to stare at the zombies who are desperately trying to enter the classroom. Good thing, the classroom door was a sliding one or else they would have barged in already.
He assessed his situation first. Firstly, the zombies are moving like those zombies in the movie and series such as World War Z and All of Us Are Dead. And if his memory served him right, there were mutated zombies that are far stronger than those zombies chasing him. Heck, he remembered during playing the game that there was a giant zombie as tall as buildings and it was too hard to kill.
Fortunately, they wouldn’t appear in this earlier stage of the apocalypse.
The second issue he had faced was the inefficient reloading because he’ll have to take the mags out from the backpack. That problem can be solved by purchasing a modular tactical vest where he could stow the magazines.
The third issue is the amount of zombies in this school. He recalled the numbers of the enrollees this school year, and it was around 1,200. If all of them turned into zombies, which is probably not the case as there might be survivors hiding in one of the classrooms, then his MP5 wouldn’t be able to do the job.
The fourth and probably the last issue was the noise generated by his weapons. Guns are one of the effective weapons one must have in a zombie apocalypse, but its drawback of using so is the noise. However, that can be fixed by buying suppressors. Albeit still loud, it’s going to make a difference.
But he doesn’t have to kill them all, all he needed was to escape this school. He could do that by purchasing more magazines from the system and when these circumstances happened again. ʀᴇᴀᴅ ʟᴀᴛᴇsᴛ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs ᴀᴛ 𝓷𝓸𝓿𝓮𝓵✶𝓯𝓲𝓻𝓮✶𝓷𝓮𝓽
"Okay, five minutes break," Riku exhaled.