Code Zulu Alpha: Nerd in the Apocalypse!

On the surface, Seb looked like an army brat trying to impress his parents but if his parents have some pull in the army with their ranks or something similar, why would he be in charge of a group of kids doing odd jobs such as this? Granted I’ll be doing the same job as them because of our deal but with my familiarity of how the world worked in these parts, he should be doing something much better.

‘We’ll see later though…’

After a short bit, Seb turned to me and said, “I think we should head down.”

“Down?”

“Yes,” he nodded.

“Why?”

“I thought you were gonna help us?”

“Not blindly. Tell me the reason for your decision because I’m going to assure you that we’d probably find more heads if we drove into Tagaytay City or even Sta. Rosa City than heading back to where we came from.”

Seb nodded pensively, “That’s true but we’re not the only group collecting heads in these parts. However, everything below this hill is open season though cadets like us couldn’t just drive down there. Except now.”

“Because of us?”

“Yeah, because of you guys.”

“Hmm.”

“I don’t know much about the deal we had with you guys but I do know we’re not allowed to venture down that hill. Unless we’re with a high-ranking officer or if we gained permission from you guys beforehand, we’d be lit up before we could try and fire back.”

I turned to Jesus, “Is that true—”

“Yeah—”

Seb cut us off, “Why would I lie to your faces?”

I chuckled as I shook my head, “You really like to cut people off, huh? You see, it’s not about you lying to us, it’s about the chance that your officers are lying to you. They could be telling you another thing about the deal you guys made while conveniently omitting parts that aren’t relevant to you. I’m asking Jesus because he’s the 7th guy in the De Leon Family.”

Seb got quiet for a moment, “I understand. But which number are you?”

“Me?” I asked as I shrugged my shoulders, “Probably number 1 or 0, if I think about it…”

He instantly frowned, “Ass. Stop lying and have a decent conversation for once.”

Jesus interjected, “He’s not lying… technically.”

Seb and his group’s ears perked up, “Hmm?” Seb asked, “Is he the new head or something?”

“Again… Technically~ yes.”

“How—”

I cut him off, “I already told you my name, right?”

“But—”

“Listen, we’re burning precious daylight here and we have more stops than you can imagine. If we double back to the places we’ve been, we’d probably get 50-60 heads from the deadheads we took down that we didn’t burn into cinders but we’d be back to your camp way past sunset.”

“That’s…”

“I’m not done. We could also try driving into the places we haven’t been yet but that’s a complete gamble. We could probably have more than enough or completely nothing, but if you tell me where KNOWN infestations are located, we’d be going back to your place in a couple of hours… plenty of time for us to head to our destination after.”

“…”

At this point, Seb just thought to himself for a bit, completely ignoring his team’s remarks but once he looked like he managed to follow someone’s order for once, we packed up and drove with their 4-wheeler dropside truck and their new-ish Hilux.

I discovered that they had three more people waiting in their vehicles—but also in the same age range—but the one that caught my attention was the way they were transporting their heads.

Like fucking coconuts, they were bundled up in 50kg sacks usually used for rice but the majority that fell and dropped to the ravine were contained in this fishing net that had a huge hole in it.

‘That’s why…’

𝑶𝒱𝗅xt.𝗇𝓔t

Putting that aside, Seb decided to lead us to the West side of Tagaytay City, way past the city’s attractions and expensive residential areas. I could already tell that these places were looted and picked apart, but there was still the presence of the dead somewhat, telling me that even though they had a large group capable of clearing hordes, they weren’t clearing them on a regular basis.

Furthermore, I thought we’d encounter some of their groups doing the same thing as them but the drive was as if everything in the lobby got disconnected.

On that note, it didn’t take long before it became blatantly obvious that Seb was leading us to the place where a large group of the undead was present because the smell was a very good indicator. Also, just the way he slowed down once we reached the street that would lead us to the local wet market was a dead giveaway.

–

*bzzt*

[We’re here. We should park our vehicles here where it’s safe and we go in to pick them off one by one. I don’t know about a couple of hours but we should take what we could and drive to a different area to get more heads.]

*bzzt*

–

*bzzt*

“I appreciate you looking out for us but I’ll take over. Just focus on collecting the heads after we’re done, yeah?”

*bzzt*

–

*bzzt*

[…]

*bzzt*

–

*bzzt*

“Seb? You hearing me? Fuck it, just don’t interfere and watch us work, alright?”

*bzzt*

–

With that said, I made my drone fly overhead the area but I also asked Jesus to drive inside with his station wagon to draw everything out in the open. It was because we don’t have the time to systematically locate each deadhead inside the wet market and I’ve been to this place before.

I’m 100% sure that with Jesus’ driving skills, he could just stroll in and get out without any issue and he did just that in under ten minutes.

I confirmed that there were around a couple of hundred deadheads in the wet market so we met up with Jesus’ station wagon after I asked him to herd them around with his last loop around.