Code Zulu Alpha: Nerd in the Apocalypse!

As we continued our drive, Tatiana started to look through the bag of random items we brought over, and even Kaley’s interest was piqued. The first one they took out was the leather whip Quinn found for herself but they soon lost interest when they continuously pulled out assorted collectibles like toys, board games, miniatures, comic books, vinyl records, etc. that weren’t in my possession.

Tatiana remarked, “It took you guys that long for this?”

I chuckled, “Hey! That’s all for free and we weren’t the ones who took all of our time, Logan did. But yeah, they’re probably useless to you but to me—more so now, they’re as valuable as ever. Priceless even.”

“Ah— I didn’t mean it that way, I did love playing D&D last time… I just never had the chance to pursue hobbies that are of this nature…”

“Don’t worry about it. I didn’t have that much money growing up—and even when I caught a windfall or earned some for things like these, I tried to keep a balance of what’s useful and what could make me remember the times I so wanted to have them. Besides, I can’t play all of them even when I have the time because most of it’s just nostalgia…”

Quinn interjected, “Eh~ I loved cars ever since and it just somehow turned into job…”

Kaley turned around with a smirk, “Really?”

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Nothing… I just had a mental image of you playing with dolls and whatnot—not like there’s something wrong with them—because I grew up with dolls back then, Olivia, my sister, too but y’know—”

Tatiana chuckled, “We have different kinds of dolls back home but they’re not as fun when they kept going on and on and on~”

“What— Oh! I get it, I get it~”

Quinn was looking away for a moment before she had a thought, “Hmm~ Oh! I didn’t have a doll per se but I remember my dad make me something like that from the shop rag and I fucking hated it and just stuck it down a muffler. Heh, I got into so much trouble from that…”

I joined in, “So… Did you take from your dad or from your mom?”

lightsΝοvεl ƈοm “Hmm?”

“Where did you get that—”

“Ah! I get what you meant. A little bit of both, actually. Both gearheads and tall as fuck, but I definitely outgrew both of them…”

“Are they…”

“I have no fucking idea.”

Kaley interjected, “You don’t know where they are?”

Quinn shrugged her shoulders, “Left home after graduating high school. I thought I could be something else other than them but look where it got me? A little funny, right? But yeah, didn’t care as much as the years went by but chances are, they’re already dead.”

“You don’t miss them or anything?”

“It’s a love-hate relationship, mostly hate before I left home because I’m in my rebel years but they’d probably be against what I’m doing right now.”

I couldn’t believe my ears as I cut in, “Why? You’re making custom engines and living as you are, what’s wrong with that?”

“Shut it. You know what I was referring to. Can’t we just fuck our brains out instead of talking like this?”

Kaley chuckled, “As much as I would love that, I’d love to get to know you more like this. It’s fun too, no?”

“Eh~ Then why am I the only one talking?! Spill, you three!”

Tatiana rolled her eyes, “What do you wanna know?”

“EVERYTHING! I SAID SPILL! BIG DICK, YOU START!”

“Are you sure about that?”

“WHA— W-Why?”

With that said, we shared more details of our lives with Quinn on our relatively safe journey and she definitely needed more than a minute to get everything sorted inside her head. That caused her to share more details about her life because she felt like what we knew wasn’t enough but I was just watching out the moment she’d drop the bomb on Kaley because talks about having kids shouldn’t be had in a moving vehicle, especially when the original couple hadn’t even tried themselves yet.

But yeah, she knew where to talk about such a topic and I had more time to focus on the road than on the subject at hand.

We definitely deviated from the original route we took after leaving Jonathan’s domain—though some of it could be attributed to Logan speeding away from everyone—but he’d drop in our frequency to tell us what’s what before Jesus would adjust the route accordingly. Though obviously enough, we definitely avoided dirt roads—not like we drove on them last time—and roads that had a lot of speed bumps, not because the R8 was lowered to fuck but because Logan just didn’t want to slow down.

However, it didn’t take long before the motherfucker attracted unwanted attention because we suddenly saw him speeding back up to us with a trail of ferals and sprinters—and he would’ve rammed them to shit if he wasn’t using Dave’s replacement car or if he had the same attachments to his vehicle to combat them.

Kaley and Tatiana were ready to climb their way to the back of the vehicle to pop some shots to thin their numbers but the cadets already had an idea in mind when they radioed in to our frequency:

–

*bzzt*

[WE HAVE TO USE IT SOMEHOW, RIGHT?! RIGHT?!]

*bzzt*

–

And I couldn’t agree more as I replied:

–

*bzzt*

“FUCK IT! MAKE WAY FOR THE RAYCOLT!”

*bzzt*

–

*bzzt*

[OH FUCK! OH FUCK! OH FUCK!]

*bzzt*

–

Before Logan drove past behind us, everyone else in the way of the Raycolt’s mounted machine gun moved out of the fucking way before Megan was given the honors and popped out from the roof hole.

Everyone else was ready to pick off the stragglers with their own weapons but Megan didn’t even miss even if she didn’t even aim at each of the fucking bastards since all of them were running in a straight line.

Megan just made sure to aim in at one spot and at an angle to dismember and ravage anything that crossed the firing line, because even if the deadhead coming was a professional limbo player, there was no chance in hell that they’d come out of it unscathed.

But yeah, it didn’t take long before the fuckers switched their targets onto us but to reiterate Sebastian’s words, we wouldn’t be in danger even if we tried looking for it. However, as much as I wanted him to be right, there was a reason we always come out of shit untouched and that was the lack of arrogance and taking everything—even a single deadhead, like we would a horde of a hundred or more units marching with each other.

I already made Megan stop firing as I ran towards the closest one with my blade drawn and I sliced half of its face horizontally before I bisected the other one that followed after it.

Kaley was making sure that I was only facing one at a time as she was already firing from atop the Raptor while Tatiana had already fanned to my right to make our jobs a little easier.

She could probably go toe to toe with a feral right now but she wouldn’t take the chance at the moment as she crippled every single one that came at her with buckshots to their knees before finishing them off with the same load to the head.

Agility was the selling point of a feral instead of just speed like a sprinter and taking their mobility was the sure-fire way of taking them out without having to panic as they’d juke out or try to dodge the barrel of our guns or even our attacks with our handheld weapons.

It was the tinge of unpredictability that made them dangerous, aside from their lowered stance, but humanity didn’t survive this long to succumb to something that only existed for a year at most.

With that said, Quinn and everyone else tried to follow after us but we didn’t need a lot of instruction to be able to move on our own because we’ve been doing this a while and we can more or less react to what the other person was doing.

They then resorted to double-tapping the corpses Megan mowed down while Quinn stood behind Kaley as her bodyguard.

I didn’t know where and how Logan attracted such a group from the town before us but it didn’t take long before we saw the main herd that was composed of regular old deadheads akin to goblins in an MMO.

This time, we took our time clearing the flesh litter on the road as I made the cadets take care of our new problem but it should be obvious enough that I didn’t make them use our trump card—making everyone from their group who so wanted to use it complain.

Even I wanted to let it rip for a few seconds but I sure as hell wouldn’t use it on regular dregs.

Unless a weird one, of course, would show up.

In which case they did…

‘Oh, fuck no…’