Free Web NovelChapter 26: Man, I Hate Sprinters...
The thought struck me halfway to the bedroom door and I stopped, turned, and crossed back to the chest and pulled the lid open again.
Kara flinched hard enough to hit the back wall of it.
"What?"
"Forgot something."
"That isn’t reassuring."
"It shouldn’t be."
The house shook under another impact and somewhere toward the front, glass shattered against tile, the infected finally getting through another window into the building proper.
I ignored it and opened the System.
-Ding!-
{
Purchase Successful
Ops-Core AMP: Hearing Protection With Integrated Communications
Quantity: 2
Cost: 4,200 Credits
}
Two headsets appeared in my hands, and I tossed one at Kara, who caught it automatically, her reflexes still working even with everything else not.
"What is this?"
"Communication... Put it on."
I pulled off my old hearing protection, threw it on the floor, and put on the new one. "Can you hear me?"
"Yes."
"Good."
The house shook again, a deep groan rolling through the walls as the infected outside kept trying to peel the Ascender apart from the inside out.
Then the more important thought arrived right behind the first one.
"Right." I reached into the inventory and pulled out the 1301.
Kara stared at it, then at me, then back at the shotgun.
"You’re giving it to me?"
"Because it’s not going to help me where I’m going." I held it out toward the chest.
"I’ve never fired a shotgun." freeweɓnøvel.com
"Safety’s here. Remember to disengage it and then engage after..." I pointed at it. "Don’t touch the trigger unless something’s actually in front of you. Remember to brace youself for the recoil... You got three whisper-quiet shots before it goes unsuppressed for 15 seconds. "
"Nikki, that’s-"
"We’ve played enough COD..."
"That’s not how that works."
"Close enough for tonight."
Her expression made it clear exactly how much she disagreed with that statement, which was fair, because most actual firearms instructors would have had a medical event upon hearing that explanation.
But most firearms instructors weren’t currently hiding a college student in a metal storage chest while an apocalypse unfolded six feet away.
She took the shotgun anyway.
I sent the M110 into the inventory, inside the shotgun’s slot, the moment her fingers closed around the grip, and the weight came off my front immediately.
And I felt the difference right away. Running with the DDM4 in my hand was a necessity.
Running with the M110, a designated marksman rifle hanging off the front, a full plate carrier, and wounds serious enough to require a trauma response was an entirely different problem.
Right now, mobility matters more than firepower.
Another crash sounded from somewhere in the front of the house. freeweɓnovel.cѳm
"Stay frosty~" I grinned at her, closed the lid, and left before she could reply.
The kitchen was small and cheap, tile and cabinets that had seen better decades, a narrow window over the sink and a back door beside it.
Beyond the glass, a service alley ran behind the row of houses, laundry lines strung overhead, trash bins scattered along the walls, concrete pressed close enough on both sides to feel like a hallway.
I pulled a flashbang from the inventory and pulled the pin, which in turn pulled at my chest hard enough that I had to breathe through it for a second; every twist of my torso was reminding me that a rifle round had hit that exact spot a few hours ago at almost point-blank range.
The graze along my waist pulled with every movement on top of that.
"I’ve survived worse..." I muttered as I threw the flashbang through the window before raising the DDM4 at the doorknob.
-Tissh-!-Tissh-!
The knob came apart in pieces just as-
-BANG-!
The flashbang detonated outside; white light and a sharp, ear-splitting wave flooded the alley, and the scream that followed was nothing a human could ever make.
I kicked the door open the very next second. Three infected stood by the door, all stunned, all blinking against the light their eyes couldn’t process yet.
And I sprinted just as the other infected in the alley detected me.
The first reached toward me, and I ducked under the arm.
The second turned, and I dropped my shoulder into its chest, and pain detonated through my bruised ribs hard enough that I nearly went down with it, but I kept my legs moving.
The third managed to close a fist around my jacket, and I pivoted, making it lose the little balance it had before putting two rounds into its head and sprinting like hell.
The alley blurred past back doors, concrete, laundry and trash, while behind me, the three infected recovered from the flashbang and started screaming, which was exactly what I needed them to do.
But it wasn’t just three of them; more had joined them, from god knows where.
The alley spat me out onto a wider road, the same one that had the ascender and the horde.
I stopped, turned and raised the rifle and-
-Tissh-!-Tissh-!-Tissh-!
The rounds went into walls and doors and caught one infected somewhere in the shoulder, and the accuracy did not matter at all; only the noise mattered, and the effect arrived almost immediately.
The horde piling around the Ascender began to shift, not all at once, heads turning first, then bodies pivoting, and then the whole mass starting to flow in my direction like a tsunami finding a new path downhill.
Hundreds of them, deciding in unison that I was more interesting than a parked vehicle.
"That’s right... Come to papa."
I turned and ran, and behind me the entire district answered with one continuous scream.
I sprinted properly now, the kind of running where every footfall threatened to separate something from something else inside my chest.
The bruise under the plate flared with each impact, while the graze along my waist rippled searing agony through my body, damn near sending me to the ground more than once.
Sprinting through a slum while a horde of barrels at you, while more infected come at you from every direction, involved an enormous amount of twisting, turning, shoulder checking, and vaulting over stuff.
I vaulted a fallen scooter, just as an infected launched itself from a doorway on my left, fingers grazing the edge of my plate carrier and missing, and I somehow twisted around it without losing speed.
Another came from the right. Then several more, pure adrenaline running their bodies on instinct and stimulus alone, and right now, I was the loudest stimulus in the entirety of the slums.
A parked car appeared ahead, and I stepped onto the bumper, then the hood, then the roof, the metal groaning under my boots while hands reached up, missing my ankles by inches from pure luck.
I jumped from the roof onto an overturned vendor cart, damn near falling off of it as I jumped down before taking off again, and the infected behind simply ran over the wreckage without slowing.
I took a sharp turn, dodging an infected, and nearly collided with one bursting out of a doorway directly into my path, and I shoved my shoulder into it. The impact lit up my ribs again, but at least it fell down.
The road opened wider, and I risked one glance back, which was a mistake, because the road behind me had disappeared completely under bodies packed shoulder to shoulder, pouring from houses and alleys and shattered windows in every direction, looking less like people and more like a flood.
"Fuckin hell..."
More emerged from a side street, then more, the horde growing exactly the way I needed it to.
I pulled the Shorty-40 from my chest plate without slowing, turned halfway while still running, and fired blindly behind me.
-Thunk-!-BOOM-!
The blast rolled through the street, and bodies probably got shredded into pieces. But I didn’t look back because looking meant slowing down further, and slowing down meant dying.
And now, every infected within several blocks going even beyond the slums, knew exactly where I was, which was the entire point, even though they hated every moment of it.
"Come on!"
The screaming intensified behind me as the horde accelerated, and I kept running.
An alley opened to my right, narrow and predictable, and I dove into it, firing more rounds behind me, most missing entirely, but none of it mattered because the bullets were advertisements rather than kill shots, and they were working better than expected.
More screams answered. More infected joined the chase behind me, filling up the entrance of that alley entirely.
And that got me the perfect funnel.
I pulled the C4 brick from the inventory, tossed it behind me without looking, kept running while I pulled the detonator and waited for the exact moment I made the turn into the back alleys of the line of houses before-
-BOOOOM-!
Dust rolled through the alleyway as the shockwave, even through the walls, hit me like a physical blow, while the screaming behind multiplied from every direction, adding more infected to the horde than I probably killed.
I reloaded the Shorty-40 while running, pulling the spent casing free before summoning a fresh grenade directly into my palm through the inventory, and shoving it into the tube.
The whole process took under three seconds, thanks to the inventory doing in an instant what would have taken real fumbling under normal circumstances.
The alley stretched ahead, leading outside to another road, empty for a moment, but only for a moment.
A second horde poured in from the exit, hundreds in numbers, already sprinting, already too close.
"Oh, come on!"
I now had one horde behind me, another ahead, no room to maneuver in either direction.
That’s when my eyes fell on the back door, thirty meters ahead, cheap wood, weak frame.
I raised the launcher and fired.
-Thunk-!-BOOM-!
And that door stopped existing as a door.
I dashed at it, lowered my shoulder and hit what remained at full speed, and the frame gave up entirely as I stumbled through into the house before catching myself against a wall.
The front of this house was already compromised, windows shattered, infected climbing through from the street side, three of them already inside and converging from different rooms.
"Nope."
I took the stairs two at a time, pain detonating through my chest with each step while the waist wound burned with every twist, and I ignored both because what the hell else could I have done?
The second floor went past in a blur of pants and burning lungs, and then the balcony doors that I burst through, closing the doors behind me, snapping in every latch it had, before turning around and just freezing mid-motion.
The entire street below had disappeared completely. The road, every alley, every gap between buildings, was gone under a solid moving carpet of infected stretching as far as I could see.
[Be careful what you wish for...] I now had more attention on me than some chick doing a Get Ready With Me.
The infected behind me reached the second floor, and the balcony door began to shake under their weight, then started losing that fight.
No more time to stand here regretting decisions.
I grabbed a plastic chair from the corner of the balcony, dragged it to the wall leading up to the roof, stepped back three paces, then two more for good measure.
And just as I did, the balcony doors exploded.
I sprinted, stepped onto the chair, then the wall, one step, and leaped. My fingers caught the roof edge by a margin too thin to measure.
I hung there for one full second with my legs kicking open air.
And that was enough time for the infected to reach me.
Hands shot up immediately, closing around my pants, my boot, my ankle, one and then two and then three separate grips all pulling downward at once.
"DAMN IT!!"
I kicked wildly, pain screaming through my ribs, my waist tearing further with every motion, my fingers slipping a fraction of an inch against the roof’s edge, lungs burning while at the back of my mind, a thought floated up that said, ’It’s too much, just let go.’
One grip on my legs lost its hold, and I seized on it.
With everything left in my arms, I heaved myself upward, rolled onto the roof and just collapsed flat on my back.
I lay there panting, chest burning, vision swimming at the edges, hands and legs trembling.
Below, the infected kept shrieking. Above, the sky carried an orange tint from fires burning somewhere across the city.
For several seconds, my focus remained entirely on not passing out or puking my guts out.
Then real panic arrived, sharper than any knife I’ve been stabbed with, and I sat upright fast enough to make my vision swim worse.
I checked my left leg. My right leg. Ankles, calves, boots, pants, every inch of exposed skin.
[Nothing...]
No bites, no blood that was mine, felt no torn flesh anywhere either.
"Oh, my god..." I laughed once, half hysterical and half pure relief, completely breathless "Okay... Okay, no bites."
I stood up slowly, as I pressed a hand against my side and looked around the rooftop.
The rooftops connected to each other across the entire block, an unbroken stretch of concrete with no stairs leading up to any of them and no ladders as far as I could see.
While below me, the balcony had vanished completely under bodies, infected piling over the railing and over each other, over the ones already piled there.
The mass was climbing higher in slow, steady increments.
And eventually, they would climb high enough to reach the roof.
I looked down at them, then at the unbroken rooftop stretching away in every direction, then back down.
[Man, I hate sprinters...]
