Code Zulu Alpha: Nerd in the Apocalypse!

Before anything else, I think I’m a good guy—well, I try to be most of the time, but in this case, even if those people blocking us were victims and being used as bait, the risk of trying to find out and resolve things like sensible adults was just too fucking much, the only choice we had for them except for moving out the way was get hit by our cars or get shot.

Even if they didn’t have evil intentions, they should’ve replied to our announcement, because they have communications equipment, and/or they should’ve just minded their own business, but they chose neither.

Since Quinn was driving my Raptor, it wasn’t a question of whether she’d follow with Jesus and his crew but I did have to radio into whoever’s driving the Raycolt to floor the gas pedal.

They weren’t even the ones that would make direct contact, but it was all so that they wouldn’t get left behind.

And in a matter of seconds, bodies just flew up several feet before landing somewhere close by, but since I was outside with some of my people, we heard that horrifying crunch that signified bones breaking into several places and pieces and that dull thud that followed after they hit the ground.

At this point, my eyes were scanning around the general vicinity for pursuers and whatnot but what confused me was that we never heard a cry or scream from these people and there weren’t any vehicles that followed us right after we ran over a bunch of people.

‘The ones we didn’t hit kept standing like it’s nothing too…’

The next few minutes were still pretty tense but as we got further and further, we got more confused than guarded because of the whole situation.

I’ve killed people before, we all did, but in this case, the reason for it was a little muddier than what I expected because every single time I pull the trigger or flick my wrist with the intent to kill, the reason for going through with it was clear as day.

Sure, there were already a lot of warning signs in going through this road but standing over there just to get killed didn’t make a lot of sense either.

It was like they called the suicide hotline and we were the service that did it for them.

But after driving a couple of miles after leaving that particular town, we drove by this coffee shop of sorts that was right next to a building that offered notaries and custom-made cupcakes. Its parking space was enough to fit all of our vehicles so we could check the ones that made contact with those certain roadblocks for damages.

We had just turned off our engines when dozens of deadheads poured out from the notary public, and I was shocked to fuck that they would come out of there instead of the coffee shop or the cupcake factory.

Even so, Kuzma was the first one to jump down and make quick work of the ones in front before everyone else either joined him or widened the perimeter.

He had this certain way of using “Fatality” as if he heard the words “Finish Him” in his head because more often than not, I’d see him swing more than twice—or even more than thrice on a single deadhead even though it wasn’t already moving or he already lopped its head off.

I kind of assumed he had encounters with the stitchers/slurpers before but digging his axe into the dead’s torso wouldn’t do shit unless there was an undead baby moving its dead mother from the womb.

In our case, our go-to was always to separate its limbs for good measure because his way of double-tapping them wasn’t supposed to work on those fuckers.

What he’s doing didn’t technically cause any problems but since he’s the newer guy and he had this fighting style, almost all eyes were on him except for the ones cleaning the blood off their vehicles.

“Something wrong?” Kuzma asked as he noticed some of us staring at him.

“N-No?” 𝑜𝚟𝑳xt.𝗇𝓔t

“N-Nuthin’…”

*immediately looks away*

“Nope!”

“…”

I had to ask for the cadets, “Actually, we’re just curious as to why—”

He cut me off as he pointed to some of the bodies with our spare machete, “Oh. About those ones?”

I nodded, “Yeah. Why the extra steps?”

He looked like he didn’t know the answer for a moment, “Ah, I’m sorry. It’s been a while since I’ve held a sharp blade. Completely forgot the feeling.”

I chuckled, “I see. So a few months in Jonathan’s care, huh?”

“Yeah… Right— Before I forget, I wanna say thank you for getting me out and u-umm… *points to the gear he’s wearing* and for this… Also, I’m sorry for blowing up—”

I waved him off, “Don’t worry about that one, it’s just instincts kicking in.”

“Right… So…”

“Hmm?”

“Tatiana said I’m the last one from our group because they found Alexander before.”

“That’s true.”

“And she also said you beat everyone else, including Ilya and Artem…”

“Yeah, since that’s what everyone else meant. Sure…”

“So, you think you can beat me too?”

I finally got where this conversation was going, “We’ll never know until we try.”

He chuckled, “You’re up for it?”

“Yeah, if we have a much safer space… Ask me anytime…”

“I see. But I must warn you, I’m totally different from everyone.”

“How so?”

“Umm~ I can’t explain exactly but I can beat them now if we ever fight again because I’m different now.”

“Don’t be too confident though…”

“What did you say?”

“All of them had grown too. Sure, they may not be fighting to the death every step of the way as you do, but you’ll see a stark difference compared to—well, I can’t say for sure what you know about them but in my case, they’re completely different compared to when I first fought them.”

He let out a faint smile, “That’s good… That’s good… Can’t wait to meet them—”

“Yeah, in two weeks or so—”

“Two weeks?! Why?!”

“Dude, it’s just two weeks. If we didn’t have our chance meet up, you could’ve been in the same place sporting more cuts than last time.”

He shook his head, “I get it, I get it. But those cuts and this most recent is because we needed to get hit at the same time because that’s what fighting cocks do as Jonathan says…”

“Oh~ That’s why…”

With that said, after Jesus and his crew did a thorough check on their vehicles, they discovered that there were only a few dents and scratches that could be easily fixed though they most definitely were the ones most confused about what happened earlier.

In any case, I assumed that they’ve run people over in the past but I doubt they ran over people that stood still and didn’t even react to shit.

They were like sentries in a sense, but wearing human skin, but Jesus and the rest weren’t even sure if they were staring at them for some reason because they focused on the spot that had fewer people.

Furthermore, they’d probably have more things they were looking at instead of their eyes, but we’d probably know more, hopefully, if we checked the cameras on our vehicles once we arrived at the Rivas Family’s territory.

And on that note, we were nearing the address Sal left for me, and it became pretty obvious that we were once again driving in a rural area rather than an urban one. It depends on the route we were taking but around this region, we’d drive on farmland, suburban areas, townships, and city-like areas alternately.

We can possibly see a ransacked 7-Eleven in some places and there could be areas where there was just farmland for miles.

But yeah, Sal’s territory was in between a vast farmland in the plains and a foot of a mountain—probably the biggest land any family head has owned—but ever since the world ended, their control over it shrunk—more so with their lack of farmhands or just people, though very recently, they had several recruits from Mr. Cuervo’s last event.

In any case, I was excited to see Edith and Sal once again, but I was looking forward to Quinn and Mauro squaring off because of the incident in their generator room powered by deadheads.

But yeah, I couldn’t help but feel bad for the guy because it was still technically his honeymoon with Elsa.

Other than that, I’d like to have some samples of Sal’s very own line of Ethanol because if it is as good as Quinn made it out to be and if Quinn’s engine could run them without issue, it would be something that’ll get us places in the future in case we run out of gas or diesel.

However, we were just safely driving for an hour before we came across another armed convoy with a couple of trucks carrying what seemed to be fresh produce and other stuff.