Chapter 41: Stay Safe, Got it?
Jenny flinched when she felt Fredrinn’s right arm jerk against her body.
He had clearly shot a bullet.
"Wai— UGH!" A loud groan accompanied Fredrinn’s gunshot. Adrian’s body fell on the ground in the distance as he whimpered with confusion clouding his eyes.
How did he get shot so cleanly in such darkness...? Did Jenny’s flashlight help?
Or was this really the result of him running his mouth incessantly?
"GRAAHHHHH!"
Adrian wasn’t given the time to process his mistakes.
A rotten smell drifted to his nose before he blinked with difficulty and looked up in the darkness.
There, he saw a vision that would haunt him even after his death.
A man was hovering over him, his skin rotting, eyes were pupilless and flesh clung onto the bones with great difficulty.
The man opened his mouth to show a set of yellowed, dirty teeth as Adrian screamed, trying to fight off his pain from the gunshot as he began to scramble away from the zombie.
He crawled, begged, screamed for his teammates... but little to no avail.
The zombie effortlessly caught up to the scared man, and bit down on Adrian’s foot, tearing a large chunk of flesh directly...
Jenny stepped back involuntarily. She had killed several zombies outside, and had even managed to level up many times... but... looking at the savage and large horde of them, she saw death staring back at her.
However, before she could give into the panic and fear, she felt a hand wrapping around her waist, not letting her back out.
A metallic object alongside a firm, muscular hand pressed onto her skin, making her gasp softly.
"T-There are too many of those, Fredrinn... We can’t possibly win... Let’s escape with as many survivors as we can from the front door." she said, no longer trying to escape his grasp.
She stood beside him, her face flushed and her knees feeling weak.
"It’s alright. Just wait for the lights to come back, and cover me with your gun from a distance. If I cannot defeat them... We will escape." Fredrinn replied calmly.
Zombies had already entered the room, all of them separating and running in different directions, towards the people who made the loudest noise.
Screams and curses filled the room, everyone shouting at the top of their lungs.
Fredrinn tried to keep calm, before tightening his hand around Jenny’s waist and pulling her backwards alongside him.
He wasn’t escaping, he was making a tactical retreat.
Towards the place where Andrea, Rhea and Naomi were supposed to be.
Somehow, they hadn’t run away yet.
Andrea was sitting on top of Rhea, pinning the poor girl down as Andrea’s hand clasped around Rhea’s mouth.
Naomi sat nearby, looking at everything with horror in her eyes, but she didn’t let out a single peep either.
"F-Fredrinn? Is that you?" Andrea’s hesitant and soft voice reached Fredrinn when she saw a masculine figure retreating towards them.
"Yes." Fredrinn replied, removing his hand around Jenny’s waist.
"You three did a good job realizing that zombies are attracted to noise and stayed silent. That’s what those bastard unchosens had planned as well. Causing chaos and climbing on the shelves while zombies kill everyone inside." He said.
"I-I am glad you’re okay... What is going on? Can we all live?" Andrea whispered.
Rhea was trying to speak against Andrea’s hand, but could only let out some muffled sounds.
"Yes. You will live. Use your flashlights, climb on the nearest shelves and stay silent. No matter what. Jenny and I will help you right now, but we will need to go when the lights turn back on. Now, move. Get up."
Jenny stayed silent to Fredrinn’s words, but she indeed nodded.
She was also feeling worried about her friends from Max’s group, but in such darkness, it would be near impossible to find them. Especially when zombies were going around killing everything in sight.
Quickly, Andrea, Rhea and Naomi scrambled to their feet and began to run towards the nearest shelf.
It was tall and wide enough that three petite women can easily huddle together on the top.
However, the moment they reached the shelf, they were shocked to see two men were already hiding on the top.
Not only that, those two were dressed in black robes and clearly were part of the unchosen... the reason behind this carnage.
Andrea felt her rage bubbling.
She wanted to throw the two down and feed them to the zombies, but while she was thinking, Fredrinn was already implementing it.
He pulled out his sword from the sheathe, silently stabbing one of the men through the heart while pressing his gun on the other’s temple and then pulling the trigger point blank.
Due to the close distance, the gunshot was muffled significantly as Fredrinn grabbed their hair and threw them down the shelf.
Then, he gave a cold glance to the three unawakened women who were following him.
"Climb and stay silent."
Andrea gasped, hyperventilating before nodding stiffly and awkwardly climbing the shelf while Fredrinn assisted pushing her up.
She felt a viscous liquid sticking to her hand when she reached the top, nearly making her scream, but she bit her lip and stayed silent.
She couldn’t afford to put her own and her sister’s life at a risk.
Soon, Rhea and Naomi had also climbed to the top.
Fredrinn nodded to Jenny as the two planned to leave, when Andrea whispered softly.
"Stay safe and come back to me. Got it?"
She heard a soft, masculine scoff. "Got it."
Fredrinn glanced at the two corpses by his feet before ignoring it and moving towards the central area where the most amount of carnage and screams were coming from.
Just then... he caught onto a sound and smiled in relief.
The lever finally flicked back on and in an instant... the LED’s flickered back to life. Bathing the entire room in a white glow.
There were more than 20 zombies inside the room, a few of them eating the remains of other humans as blood was spilled everywhere in sight.
The sight was grotesque and triggered Jenny’s gag reflexes as she doubled over but Fredrinn calmly patted her back with his right hand that held the sword.
"Told you... we will have bigger problems to deal with soon enough."