Chapter 42: Stage 3 Zombie
"Your calmness in the situation is more horrific than the... fucking zombies, you know...?" Feeling Fredrinn’s hand on her back, Jenny murmured under her breath.
The stench of rotting corpses and blood was lingering in the air.
Some zombies were faster and stronger, aiming to kill everyone that moved as they jumped from one target to another.
A woman was trying to run away as a zombie followed after her.
Once the lights were turned on, several people saw the unchosen hiding on top of the shelves, while the ones on the floor finally saw the ridiculous amounts of zombies.
Screams became more panicked as gunshots began to echo throughout the room.
Max and the other two unawakened teammates of Jenny all had guns of themselves, and they didn’t hesitate to shoot down any zombie in their sights.
But of course, the ratio between zombies and the gunslingers was too great to ignore.
Especially when these people were never trained at using guns and barely had any practice.
Jenny gulped down the rising bile in her stomach, as she clutched the gun in her hand and aimed at the nearest zombie.
But before she could shoot, she felt Fredrinn’s hand gently wrapping over hers, as he calmly aimed her gun towards a more distant zombie.
"Aim for the distant ones. I got the short range covered." He said in a low voice, stepping towards the zombie as he slashed his sword in a beautiful arc.
Blood erupted following his slice, and the attacked zombie’s neck was sliced like butter.
It was one of the dumber and weaker zombies, which Fredrinn decided to dub as the base stage zombie.
Jenny gasped seeing the brutal efficiency in Fredrinn’s methods, as she nearly forgot that she was supposed to shoot the distant zombies.
Her eyes were glued to him!
But she broke out of her daze when she heard a zombie’s groan in the distance.
He was currently kneeling, his grotesque face dripping with blood as he ruthlessly chomped on a dead zombie’s corpse.
Surprisingly, the feeding was working.
The zombie was visibly getting stronger in front of her eyes.
The rotten parts of his skin were slowly getting healed, his teeth became sharper and the nails began to grow as if they were claws!
Jenny wasted no time before taking an aim.
She targeted his skull, pulling the trigger as the bullet pierced through the air.
But what she expected never came to reality.
The zombie was unfazed. He kept eating as if nothing happened, and the puncture wound on his skull began to heal magically.
"Wh- What the hell...?" Jenny stepped backwards in surprise.
Quickly, she took the aim again and let loose another volley of bullets.
This time, she shot nearly 5 bullets in quick succession!
All of them found their marks, but yielded no satisfactory result at all...
No result except for making that zombie roar out in pain and look up from his meal, his pupilless eyes locking onto Jenny’s surprised and beautiful face.
"F-Fredrinn, there is something wrong with that zombie... He is not dying... I have never seen a zombie like this before..." Jenny called out to the sword wielding guy beside her.
Hearing her shocked voice and hesitant tone, Fredrinn glanced in the direction she was looking in.
The zombie was no longer kneeling on the floor, and had instead got up to his feet, his eyes locked onto Jenny’s while 5 clean punctured wounds were visible on his skull.
Viscous red blood flowed out of the wound, but it only made the zombie look more dangerous and scary.
"Change your targets, shoot the weaker zombies and save the important people first." Fredrinn said briefly.
"What do you mean by ’important’ people, Fredrinn?" Jenny looked up at him.
"The doctor, the awakeners, that woman with connections to higher-ups and the engineers." Fredrinn glanced into her eyes.
Jenny gulped seeing his detached eyes. Did he even care about those people or simply wanted to save them because they could be useful?
But then... Why did he make the first move and decide to save Andrea and the other 2 girls of his group?
They were only unawakened and realistically, weren’t too important in the grander scheme of things.
Still, she nodded to his words, "Okay. That zombie feels weird, I will be covering you from behind but still... please take care." she said softly.
Jenny realized that she still couldn’t understand Fredrinn one bit, and it only made her more interested in him.
Fredrinn chuckled, "Alright."
He then focused on the zombie before his eyes widened.
The zombie was no longer in the distance, and instead, he was leaning forward, sprinting towards Fredrinn with a great speed.
Although the balance of that zombie was beyond shitty, he never fell and never stopped. The distance was getting covered at a rapid pace.
"Blind speed would get you nowhere. You still have much to learn." Fredrinn said in a low voice as the zombie approached him.
But, he simply swerved to a side and hooked a foot in front of the zombie, making the undead monster trip and fall face first into the tiled floor.
The tiles cracked from the impact as the zombie growled, smashing his fist into the tiles and pushing himself up to his feet.
He ignored Jenny who had shot him earlier, and focused on Fredrinn.
With another loud "GRAAH!" sound, he lunged towards Fredrinn who once again dodged out of the way, even kicking the undead right in his stomach, sending him tumbling backwards.
’Oh? Looks like absorbing some mana wasn’t all useless after all. Still can’t perform any spells though.’ Instinctively, Fredrinn knew that after regaining some mana, his physical strength had been boosted slightly.
Fredrinn clutched his sword and once again, the ’stage 3’ zombie, as Fredrinn dubbed him as, lunged towards him and was kicked away as a result.
The poor undead had learnt a lesson by now.
This time, he didn’t instantly lunge towards Fredrinn blindly, instead, he growled and brandished his claws, looking at the human warily.
’Animal-like instincts... huh?’ Fredrinn noted the information in his mind for later use.
Jenny’s gunshots were still ringing in a close proximity, but to Fredrinn, the zombie in front of him was his biggest threat ever since coming back to Earth.