Stronghold In The Apocalypse

Bloodied, the two soldiers walked over towards the exhausted Austin and Bella.     

Breathing with exhaustion, Bella looked at the them and couldn't help but comment, "You two are sick"     

"Hahaha!"     

The two soldiers just laughed when they heard her, because for them, those words were considered a compliment because they had already heard things worse than that.     

[Guys? A little help here!]     

The joyous and somewhat awkward atmosphere was suddenly broken when a voice of one of the survivors echoed from their walkie talkie.     

Only then did they register the gunshots happening behind them, and they quickly hurried over towards the normal survivors, and with their help, the rate of the swarming zombies around the bus lessened as they quickly died with the return of Bella and the rest.     

"Quick! Inside!"     

The team leader quickly ordered after they had cleared most of the zombies around them.     

The people who were on top of the bus hurriedly got down from it and followed the rest inside the apartment building near them, which was also their objective of coming here.     

"Lieutenant, shall we move together or split up into two groups?"     

Looking around the surrounding inside the building, the other soldier turned to their team leader and asked.     

The lieutenant looked at the two opposite corridors and said to the others, "It's safer if we move together, we don't know what surprises this place holds"     

"I'll take point, be on the lookout"     

The lieutenant immediately took the lead as the others followed after him, and in turn, the other soldier took charge of guarding their rear while the group carefully moved forward in almost a tiptoe.     

Arriving at the fifth floor, the lieutenant raised a fist as the group came to a halt in the middle of the corridor, with open and closed apartment doors around them that were littered with trash all over the place.     

"This is unusual, why haven't we encountered even one zombie so far?"     

"Maybe all of the zombies came out with all the commotion earlier?" replied one of the survivors while warily looking at the opened apartments, afraid that something would suddenly jump out of nowhere.     

"That's impossible, ordinary zombies can only move upstairs but now down the stairs as they would just fall, and we've never encountered even one crippled zombie along the way since we started ascending the building" Bella quickly dismissed the man's idea, as its common knowledge that ordinary zombies can't move down the stairs.     

"Enough, move in groups of two and three. Investigate the rooms on this floor and see if there's anything weird, and while you're at it, don't forget to loot anything useful you see"     

"Roger" replied the other soldier while the rest just nodded their heads before grouping themselves into twos or threes and moved separately.     

Meanwhile, the lieutenant was carefully making his way over towards the end of the corridor where a stairs leading towards the next floor is located.     

While carefully moving forward, his hand reached out to his thigh and pulled out a tablet size gadget and looked at it.     

On the screen is a fan-shaped image that constantly flickers, and anyone with knowledge of the military or just gaming nerds would recognize it as a heartbeat sensor that detects people in the surrounding area.     

"Still no signs of survivors" said the lieutenant as he put it back.     

Standing before the stairs that leads to the next floor, he used his walkie talkie hanging on his shoulder and said, "Status report"     

"[Nothing so far sir]"     

"[Same on our side. There's just a bunch of rubbish scattered around. We did managed to retrieve a couple of antibiotics and painkillers]"     

"Make it snappy and regroup at the stairs on the right corridor"     

"[Roger]"     

"[Copy that]"     

Lieutenant looked around, then he walked over towards the broken window and took in the surroundings of the building.     

"This place is more dangerous than I thought"     

The man mumbled when a hulking figure that he didn't ever want to see suddenly appeared from a street corner, and whenever it moved, its four limbs produced a sound similar to a bass drum, and the man could even feel the building shaking slightly.     

Rush footsteps. [sfx]     

Then the sound of hurried footsteps light echoed in the corridor, and then the rest of the team appeared from the corner.     

"Sir, there's-"     

"I know, I'm looking at it"     

The man didn't even finish what he wanted to say when the Lieutenant quickly cut him off while looking out the window.     

Then he quickly turned around and looked at Bella and the rest and said, "Let's quickly finish the mission and quickly get out of here. I have a hunch that this place is not what it seems"     

The others also agreed. After all, it hasn't even been that long since they got here and they already met a couple of events that could threaten their lives, and the creepy atmosphere inside the building even made it worse, and now they are in tenterhooks with the appearance of the Tanker Zombie outside.     

"Put your silencers on, we'll be moving as discreetly as possible from now on"     

Eight floor.     

Ninth floor.     

Tenth floor.     

Until the group reached the fifteenth floor, which was also the rooftop, they didn't encounter anything, not even fly!     

"Hurry up and record down as much information as you can. There's something wrong in this place"     

Arriving at the rooftop, the lieutenant immediately relayed his orders the moment they arrived, and Darius and another survivor hurriedly made their way into one corner and started gathering information on the mall turned zombie nest in the distance while the two soldiers guarded the door with their guns pointed towards it.     

"What do you think about this?"     

"It smells bad"     

"No, I'm talking about our situation, you dumbas*"     

The Lieutenant was angered when he saw that his companion wasn't paying attention and was daydreaming instead.     

"Well, all I know is that we need to get out of this place as soon as possible. I keep getting the feeling that we're being watched, and a Tanker Zombie lurking down below is not making it any better"     

"You felt it too?"     

"Yeah, I thought this task would be simple since most of the zombies in the city are already gone. Hopefully, it's just us being anxious about battle we'll have to face in the next couple of days"     

"I hope so"