Chapter 3: City Life (Part 2)
Perspective: Mike Britowski
Location: Southern United States, 25 miles from home
Date: October 26, 2025
“Hey asswipes, we’re over here!! Come on you pathetic cunts, I dare you to come get us!!” Edgar bellowed out the top of his lungs. That definitely grabbed their attention. Suddenly the storage warehouse was consumed by howls, growls and groans as they approached the sound of what they thought was their prey, unaware that the tables were about to be turned. Edgar and I had our rifles up to our shoulders, sights aligned with the entrances to our corridor, waiting for the first unlucky bastard to poke his head out.
Instead, five of them came out. They were stunned momentarily by the bright skylight, before advancing slowly on our position. At least, the three that remained anyway. As soon as they appeared, four pneumatic pops were heard, Edgar and I both firing a two round burst. The one I aimed at immediately found its life quickly being drained by the two new holes that ‘suddenly’ appeared on its chest, right in the heart area. Meanwhile, Edgar’s first shot merely clipped its ear, but his second shot found home right between the eyes, decorating the other Infected behind it with blood and brain chunks before the shot creature fell. Making sure there still weren’t any behind us, Edgar aimed at the one on the left and fired again, but missed the vital organ he was aiming at, for the creature still stood. I fixed that quickly, the shot landing right above the left eye.
The problem with these rifles is that because they’re made with hardware-store parts (and a few specialty parts), they don’t have rifled barrels. This, coupled with round ammunition, meant that shots tended to stray more the further you placed them. Still, the enemy was getting closer to us, so we were able to make quick work of the remaining two. I took the moment to let down my rifle and complement Edgar on that excellent head shot, or was about to anyways. A hot breeze suddenly blew over my shoulder. A breeze that felt a lot like a breath, a breath right behind me.
“SHIT!” I screamed, and instinctively tilted the gun 90 degrees counter-clockwise and spun right. Metal met flesh as the back of the air tank on the rifle collided with the side of the Infected’s head with an audible crack. Unfortunately, large blunt metal cylinders tend to be terrible at piercing, so while the creature staggered a bit, he didn’t fall. In fact, I could visibly see the wound slowly healing as it regained its bearings.
“Edgar, we’re moving, now!” I shouted at him. He nodded, and we took off in the opposite direction of the healing being. As soon as we left the skylight though, another group blocked us off, four of them this time. We slowed from a run to a controlled fast walk so we could level our rifles to aim while still moving forward. We took aim, and blinding them with our flashlights, we fired.
*PSST! PSST PSST! PSST PSST! PSST! PSST PSST PSST! PSST!* Ten pneumatic pops sounded as the barrels let steel fly. Three of those shots were Edgar’s, the rest were mine. Normally my aim was much better, but that incident earlier with the Infected left me really shaken up. Never before have they snuck up that close to me; I was lucky the light was still blinding it. When I ran up to that Infected to stab it, I at least knew it was there, not to mention I had the upper hand. Not so much fun when they get the jump on me. After the four of them were eliminated, Edgar quickly spun around and dispatched the one I clobbered using my rifle with a two-round burst. It was still a good 30ft from us when it fell.
“Come on Mike, this way,” said Edgar. We passed the pile of corpses as we rounded the corner and ran. My hands were still shaking, so I forced myself to take deep breaths. ‘Calm down Mike, panicking will only get you killed. Take a deep breath and get a hold of yourself!’ We skipped a couple of shelves until we arrived at a corridor with our prized skylight. Turning left, we ran down the corridor to our destination.
There were boxes and crates along with their respective opening tool strewn haphazardly across the floor; we would need to be careful. Arriving under the light, we examined our surroundings further. In addition to the boxes and crates, I noticed the shelves were skewed, making one entrance larger than the other one. Said large entrance had a large group of ten standing there.
“Edgar!” was all I said as I sent ball bearings down range. I had managed to mostly quell the shaking, and as such was able to close my grouping considerably. Edgar at this point had turned around and joined me in slinging bearings at the group. Their numbers were quickly dwindling; we had this in the bag. And that’s what I kept thinking, right up until a dreadful noise sounded from my rifle, a sound that made my adrenaline pump and my body break out into a cold sweat.
*PSST! PSST! PSHH!* Oh no. That hissing sound at the end meant only air left the barrel that time. In other words, no more bearings.
“Fuck, reloading!” I called out, then reached for a new magazine. I never did manage to grab that mag before committing the second stupid mistake of the day: backing up. My legs collided with something wooden and rather unyielding, momentum kept my top half going. I fell backwards and smashed my head into the ground. While I didn’t black out, I was dazed and pain exploded from the point of impact, not to mention my rifle slid away from me, out of reach.
“Shit Mike! Are you ok?” Edgar asked, sparing me a quick glance every so often before returning his attention back to the task at hand. I wanted to tell him that I was the least of his worries right now, tell him to focus. As fate would have it though, all that really came out was some unintelligible mumbling and a finger pointing behind him. Fortunately, that seemed to satisfy him for now.
“Sit tight,” he said, and with that he carefully backpedaled and finished off the remaining Infected. As he did so, the rest of my muscles decided they were going to start listening to my brain again, and slowly but surely, I regained mobility. Edgar, having dealt with the threat, was returning to my position. I spun slowly on the ground to face him. Immediately my attention wasn’t drawn to him, but rather behind him.
“Edgar behind you!” I yelled. He turned around, only to find two creatures less than 10ft away. Panicking, he shot twice, but his gun wasn’t raised all the way to head level and instead he nailed both in the neck. The two undead went limp and dropped to the ground; he must have severed their spinal cords. That’s not a lethal shot for an Infected though, so quickly gathering himself, he stood over the first body, placing the gun’s barrel right on its forehead.
*PSST!* That takes care of the first one. He proceeded to repeat the move on the second downed creature.
*PSHH!*…Did that really just happen? Frantically, Edgar began to reload his rifle, but the monster was already starting to get up, and it didn’t look like he’d finish reloading in time. The only way I could help him was with my pistol, which I really didn’t want to use, but reached for anyways. If only I still had my rifle, I could have reloaded it by now.
“God-damn crate,” I cursed under my breath…crate…wait, that’s it! A previous observation came to mind. ‘There were boxes and crates along with their respective opening tool strewn haphazardly across the floor.’ After quickly looking around, I found it, my hands wrapping around the solid, hardened-steel shaft. I had never been happier to see a walking-stick-looking steel rod in my life.
“Fuck reloading man, take this!” I shouted as I slid the crowbar along the floor. Edgar picked it up, the terror that was on his complexion now twisting into a wicked grin.
“I’ve got a special surprise for you,” he said to the creature, which had stood up, but was still somewhat dazed. Edgar rotated the bent end downwards, the prying bit at the end of the bend facing the undead being.
“Here, FUCKING TAKE IT!!” he yelled and quickly brought down the end on top of the undead’s head. Instead of the cracking sound my tank made, there was a much louder *SNAP* as the crowbar shattered the top of its skull, prying end sinking into the grey-pink organ beneath. With the crowbar still buried in its head, the creature dropped down once again, this time for good. After watching it fall to make sure it was dead, Edgar walked over to me and offered his hand.
“Thanks,” I said as I took the hand and was helped up. The pain in my head flared slightly, obviously not happy with the effort I had put in to stand. Blinking both it and the light-headedness away, I grabbed my rifle from the floor. There was no damage, but the bolt was open when I dropped it, so the empty magazine had rolled off somewhere. Whatever. I dropped in a new mag, making sure place it correctly in the bolt.
“Hey Mike, you gonna be ok?” Edgar asked. As I slid the bolt closed, I answered.
“Oh yea, and they’re gonna pay for that. Let’s go get those sons of bitches.”
Perspective: Edgar Worthington
Location: Southern United States, 25 miles from home
Date: October 26, 2025
5 minutes later
Those last ten plus the two that attacked me were the last real offensive they seemed to have. We began clearing corridors carefully, occasionally shooting an Infected or two that we found wandering the space. So here we are 5 minutes later, the room finally given the all-clear by Mike and me. We slumped against the closest wall, finally able to catch a breather. I looked around at the massive storage facility full of precious chemicals that we secured. Surely with such a big stash, the ones we need would be in here somewhere. I pulled out my Walkie-Talkie and signaled Eddy to get us the hell out of here.
“Guys, it’s Edgar. We’ve secured a lot of precious cargo, but we ran into some Infected within the building. We’d rather not run into more waiting in this God-damn warehouse, know what I mean?”
“Ok sit tight, we’re on our way. ETA 5 minutes,” Jonathon replied. Good enough.
“Hey Edgar,” Mike’s voice broke the silence. “Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you do realize we’re locked in here, right?”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “We’ll just head out the way we came in.”
“We can’t. Think about it, we had to apply power to the lock to open that door. It’s no longer powered up, and so it probably re-locked behind us as soon as the door closed. All the loading doors are also closed, so unless you can jump out of one of those skylights, we’re stuck.”
‘…Oh damn, he’s right!’
“Well, I guess we should definitely fix that problem,” I replied. “There’s no sense in trying to go back through the office; even if we could get that door open, transporting large amounts of chemicals through the small office space would be impractical. Let’s focus on getting one of those loading doors open.” Nodding in agreement, we walked to the array of doors to get a closer look.
The doors looked like massive garage doors, and were originally meant to be automatic, judging by the electric motor atop each one. It didn’t take much however, to realize that our puny batteries were never going to drive those massive motors. So much for using our previous pick-locking technique. Thankfully, next to each door was a chain assembly that looped around a gear on the mechanism and stretched downwards. One would pull on the chain to open the door manually. Problem was: they’re all locked. A meaty looking lock assembly drove long steel bolts through the frame of each door.
“Any ideas?” Mike asked, already looking around for something to open it.
“Give me a minute,” I muttered. ‘Ok, so the door itself looks pretty strong, so ramming the car into it might damage the car. That leaves disengaging that blasted lock on the door, but how? I bet we might have found some keys in the office, but we can’t get in there now. No one in our group can pick-lock, and the lock looks too sturdy to break o-’ My train of thought was interrupted by Mike.
“Hey, would this work?” I heard him inquire behind me. I turned to look, and discovered that he had somehow found a small propane torch all packaged up, like the ones you'd find at a hardware store. Either way, the torch gets nowhere near hot enough to do anything, but the idea of melting the lock set my train of thought on a whole new course.
“While it’s a step in the right direction, that little torch won’t damage the lock anytime soon. Maybe though, we could use some chemicals to melt the lock, but what?” ‘We would need something simple and quick to make, but when burned would produce enough heat to melt the lock, or at least weaken it so we could break it with the crowbar.’ After running through my mental list of flammable compounds, one stood out among the rest; one that could completely obliterate that pesky lock. I felt the corners of my mouth tug upwards as the plan came together.
“Mike, I think I have an idea…”
3 minutes later
“Are you sure about this?” Mike asked, eying the compound now covering the lock. “It looks a little…you know…underwhelming.”
“This should work, assuming everything goes to plan,” I retorted. “I make no promises.” We had found a small, mostly empty trash can, and took the trash can itself and an empty water bottle from it, depositing the bag in a corner. We dumped eight ‘water bottles’ of aluminum powder and three ‘water bottles’ of iron oxide into the trash can and shook. Using Mike’s knife, we sliced a piece of Magnesium ribbon from a reel of the stuff and proceeded to put as much composition on top of the lock as we could fit, then stuck the ribbon in the center to act as a ‘fuse’. The torch Mike found would light the ‘fuse’.
“Here goes,” I announced as I lit the ribbon. The burning magnesium ribbon eventually contacted the Thermite compound and ignited it in a literal blaze of glory. An impressive shower of hot yellow sparks sprayed from the brightly burning pile of Thermite. The lock was no match for the insane temperature of the flames and soon enough the flames dropped below the lock to the floor, having melted a hole straight through the inner mechanism.
“That was some freaking impressive shit man, nice job!” exclaimed Mike. He then proceeded to give the lock a few ‘persuasion taps’ with the crowbar, and the weakened center piece collapsed entirely. The steel bolts, no longer secured in the center, were easily pulled out of the door.
“Moment of truth,” I said, and pulled on the chain. There was some resistance, but the chain started moving, the door beginning to slowly rise upwards. Sunlight flooded through the darkened interior, and I mentally reminded myself to never take its warming rays for granted again.
“Hell yea dude, we did it!” I yelled, feeling on top of the world.
“Yo guys,” I heard a voice call from the other side. I quickly finished opening the door and let my eyes focus in the bright mid-day sun. The figure standing there was a welcome sight for both Mike and me.
“Need a lift?” Eddy joked, both him and Jonathon lowering their pneumatic rifles upon seeing no threats.
Perspective: Jonathon Burley
Location: Southern United States, 25 miles from home
Date: October 26, 2025
7 minutes later
“Dude, you sure we need all this?” I asked Edgar. “Not much else fits in the car or trailer now.” We loaded a bunch of chemicals into our vehicle, most of which comprised of methanol, sodium hydroxide, and phenolphthalein for Biodiesel titration. Also in the list of chemicals we loaded were potassium nitrate, sulfur, and charcoal for BP and some aluminum powder and iron oxide powder for Thermite. By the time we finished loading the car, the only place that had any storage room to spare was the ‘frunk’.
“Trust me, they’ll be very useful to us,” Edgar replied over his shoulder. Deciding to trust his judgment (and not really caring enough to argue), I let it go and climbed back into the Model X.
“So guys, considering not much else fits into here, are we leaving?” Mike inquired. He was lightly rubbing the back of his head, discomfort clearly shown in his facial features. Edgar had relayed the whole story to Eddy and me while we were loading. We didn’t have an ice pack or anything of the sort to give him, so water and some of the Advil pills we found would have to do for now. Thankfully, the injury only appeared to be bump on the head and not something more serious like a concussion, though we weren’t entirely sure. We’d let the doctor back in town have a look at it.
“Almost man, we’ll drive around quickly to see if there’s anything else that we could fit up front that’s worth taking, and then we’ll leave,” said Eddy. There were a lot of office buildings, restaurants, stores, and malls around the area, but none of them would really have anything important enough to risk venturing inside. After what happened to Edgar and Mike, I don’t think I was the only one eager to not leave the relative safety of the car. There were Infected on some of the streets, but most of them didn’t notice us whisper along right past them in the mid-day sunlight. The few that did were quickly shot by one of us out of an open window. Thank you electric car!
We were about to head out when I spotted a Home Depot. Home improvement stores were always among the more useful stores as they contained building materials to create weapons, ball bearings for our existing pneumatic guns, and/or stuff to repair or barricade homes. This was probably the only store that might contain something useful, so despite our desire to just leave, we agreed to at least quickly search the place.
Eddy parked the car and switched it off. Everyone piled out and started grabbing their gear, along with backpacks to store anything useful we found. I immediately noticed Mike once again rubbing his head. He wasn’t wincing as badly anymore when he touched it, but it was quite obvious his head was still hurting.
“Um, maybe you should sit this one out Mike,” I told him.
“I’ll be fine,” he countered. “It doesn’t hurt as much anymore.”
“Oh really?” came a voice from around the car. Edgar walked up behind him looking a little peeved that his friend was being so stubborn; Edgar obviously wasn’t buying Mike’s story. To prove the point, he came up behind Mike and lightly flicked the back of his head. To anyone else, the flick would have been mildly annoying, though nothing more. Mike, however, recoiled from the ‘devastating blow’ and clutched the back of his head.
“Yea, I didn’t think so. Look, you’ve done enough for one day, so just relax. Besides, we need someone to watch the car anyways.” Mike was about to protest when Edgar lifted his hand again, three fingers in the air while the thumb held the tip of the index finger back, threatening to flick again. Mike sighed, but finally agreed to watch the car.
We all checked our rifles and secondary weapons before entering. Edgar, having had to fend off undead at the warehouse and shoot out of the window, was low on ammunition. Since Eddy and I haven’t had to shoot too much as of yet, we each gave him two magazines. Loaded up and ready, we entered Home Depot.
The darkness was all-powerful and all-consuming, the light from the door stretching only so far before being swallowed up by the black. Like every other place, the store had absolutely no power; any reserve power the place may have had was drained by now, and any fuel in the generator would be spoiled at this point. Some of the shelves, from what little we could see from the entrance, were emptied. Others still had items though, so the chances of finding something useful were good. There was just one teeny tiny problem however, one that none of us were very comfortable dealing with. Growling and wails were emanating from the darkness; we weren't alone. Fucking damnit, of course we’d have to deal with this!
“Great, we’ll have to fight our way in,” grumbled Edgar as he switched on his flashlight.
“Follow my lead.”
Perspective: Mike Britowski
Location: Southern United States, 25 miles from home
Date: October 26, 2025
Though my pride probably won’t let me tell them anytime soon, I’m grateful for the opportunity to sit this one out. My head is really killing me right now and the last thing I need right now is to be running around. When the adrenaline rush wore off after the warehouse, the pain worsened, though the Advil did help a little. Nothing to do now but lie down and watch for threats.
15 minutes later
‘Wha? What was that? Oh…must have drifted off there for a second. But I was sure I heard something that wok-’. Suddenly, there it was again. It the second time I’ve heard it today, and it’s still not any less unpleasant than the first time. The growling, usually indicative of Infected nearby. Being careful not to make too much noise, I grabbed my rifle from the back and peeked my head just above the window; ready to shoot whatever it was that was outside. I pretty much abandoned all hope of that when I looked out.
I don’t know how we avoided them, or how they didn’t notice us, but there was a massive mob of Infected outside. A mess of dirty ripped cloth and flesh was all that said mob looked like, and though not much detail could be seen at this distance, there must have been hundreds of them! They were at the other end of the parking lot, on the street. They were still squinting due to the bright sun, and (hopefully) couldn’t see the car, but they were able to see and follow the road they were on. All I had to do was be very quiet and the flash mob of Infected would leave, disappear down that road. Too bad Life’s a total whore and never really gives us a break.
*BANG!!!*
Perspective: Edgar Worthington
3 minutes ago
This sucked, and I mean really sucked. Fighting Infected when you can see them is one thing, this pitch-black battle arena of death we stupidly walked into was another thing entirely. There were quite a few more undead than I had anticipated earlier, and fighting them off had already exhausted two of my mags, and half of the third one in my gun. At this point we were still picking off stragglers, but had decided it would be safe enough to split up. I wish we hadn’t.
I found a bin full of 5/16” ball bearings and dumped the whole thing in my backpack, adding considerable weight in the process. It was as I slung the pack over my shoulder that I heard shuffling. I grabbed my rifle and shined the beam down the hall, only to find one of them that had been stopped just short of grabbing me by the beam. I rocketed back with a yell as the creature covered its face. I brought up my rifle and lined up my shaky sights. Luckily, the being was pretty much right in front of me, and its head jerked upwards as the ball bearing caught it right between the eyes.
“Die demon!” I spat out, smiling that I would live to see another day. It was a smile that dwindled the longer the Infected stood there. Ever so slowly, its head tilted back towards me, the ball bearing falling out of the crevice it had left. ‘This shouldn’t be possible! How is it still alive!?’ I chanced a look at the glow-in-the-dark regulator pressure gauge; the needle was well in the red zone. I was out of air…
My fear must have been tangible somehow, for it seems like the undead fed off of it. It almost appeared to have smiled while looking at me, something that a brain-dead Infected shouldn’t be able to do. Then it howled and charged me again. There was only one left thing to do if I wanted to live, though I felt I let everyone down by having to resort to it. I lifted my M1911.
“Abort mission,” I whispered softly.
*BANG!!!*
Perspective: Eddy Culivin
The gunshot reverberated off every metal wall and shelf in the room. I had just thrown a wire spool into my bag along with a couple of tools when the thunderous explosion sounded. Guess it’s time to bail. Since our cover was blown anyways, I pulled out my Smith and Wesson 910; the rifled barrel and shaped ammunition it used made it more accurate than the pneumatic rifle.
“Edgar, Jon, where are you guys!? We gotta go!” I yelled.
“Right here, behind you!” One of them returned. We had all made our way to the center aisle somehow.
“Sorry guys, no air pressure left,” Edgar said, looking down at the ground.
“Dude, it was bound to happen to one of us, no worries. But let’s talk about that later, and focus on getting the hell out of here now,” Jonathon replied. With that, we fought our way to the entrance, with Jonathon using his rifle-mounted flashlight to light the way while Edgar and I fired. We burst through the front door, only to see Mike standing outside the car giving us an incredulous look.
“You couldn’t have picked a better time to fire a pistol!?” he all but screamed, pointing to…to…oh shit!
“YOU’VE DOOMED US ALL!!”