Dark Apocalypse

Episode 15

A city as silent as death



The next day, the world remained unchanged, a wasteland teeming with zombies. There was no fantastical twist like in some comics where the protagonist wakes to discover it was all just a dream.

Having regained some strength, Adam began his second day's journey. After gathering his belongings and consuming a compressed biscuit that would sustain him throughout the day, he left the building where he had rested the night before.

Outside, the streets were still crawling with zombies, dense and relentless, aimlessly wandering as though never to tire.

"It seems reaching the city center is impossible now..." Adam observed the road ahead from behind a derelict car.

He was already quite close to the heart of the city, where the number of zombies far exceeded that of the outskirts. They swarmed every meter of space, leaving not a single patch of ground unoccupied.

It made sense; urban areas always had a dense population, and the city center would have been no exception. The more populous the area, the more zombies there would be.

Adam abandoned any notion of advancing further inward. There was no pressing need to venture into the heart of the city. His goal had merely been to confirm the existence of other survivors. In times like these, encountering a fellow human being would be a significant comfort.

"Looks like all life here has been extinguished..." Adam checked several locations, yet no survivors appeared; all he encountered were more and more zombies.

Along the way, he took down many of them, pushing his points into triple digits. But it hadn't been without peril. In a city crawling with the undead, armed with only a steel rod, Adam had narrowly escaped being overwhelmed on several occasions.

Still, he managed to keep his composure, surprising even himself with how rational and calm he could remain when confronting such horrors. Whether it was slaying zombies or making a strategic retreat, his emotional state hardly wavered.

"So, I really am someone who adapts well..." Adam quipped, using self-deprecating humor to alleviate the suffocating tension.

Realistically, even after surviving the previous day, most people wouldn't be able to steel themselves like Adam did. Perhaps growing up as an orphan had fortified his resolve and maturity at an early age.

Having decided against heading toward the city center, Adam moved westward, toward the newer developments where several universities and corporate complexes were situated. Among them was the university he had once attended.

Of course, that was in the past. After being convicted of attempted **crime** and murder, Adam had been expelled, becoming a criminal, not a student.

Oh, and now he was also a fugitive, having escaped from prison. He wondered whether anyone in this ruined world would even care to chase him down anymore.

Nevertheless, Adam chose to head west. His solitary nature left him with few friends, but he still wanted to see the university that had once been his home. In desperate times, one's thoughts naturally turned to friends and family.

For Adam, who had no family left, his only father figure, the orphanage director, had long since passed. And with his aloof and seemingly arrogant demeanor, he had few friends.

Yet, he had spent a year at that university and felt compelled to check on his old classmates and teachers. There were others he wanted to find as well...

Progress was difficult; the streets were nearly impassable. Though zombies filled every part of the city, the majority were clustered on the streets.

Adam had confidence in his skills, but even he couldn't handle overwhelming numbers. His journey mostly followed the main roads, but he frequently had to change course.

Finding an alternate route often meant avoiding streets and moving through buildings. While structures weren't entirely free of zombies and the confined spaces made combat riskier, they offered relative safety compared to the exposed roads.

City buildings were spaced close enough that Adam could often leap from one rooftop to the next. For larger gaps, he would improvise, using available materials or sneaking through back alleys sparsely populated by zombies.

At that moment, Adam was making his way through an office building, his sights set on the department store across the way. Beyond that lay an ancient moat marking the city's old boundaries. Reaching it would mean transitioning from the urban core to the suburban edge. The city had expanded considerably over the past few decades, so leaving it was still a long journey.

Rushing through the office hallway, Adam suddenly halted, throwing himself sideways into a roll just in time to avoid a crashing noise and a guttural growl.

He didn't even need to stand to know what had appeared. He had grown desensitized to the sound: zombies.

Scrambling to his feet, Adam swiftly backed away. Sure enough, two zombies dressed in suits emerged—a man and a woman. The female zombie had a striking figure, with ample curves, a slim waist, and long legs accentuated by her pencil skirt.

But it was all for naught. Her throat bore a deep, savage wound, a clear sign of her death. The male zombie, despite his pallor and decay, still showed traces of a once-handsome face. His designer suit hinted at a life of wealth, though half his neck had been gnawed away, exposing a section of his spinal cord.

"Were they hiding in there..." Adam's gaze flicked to the storage room door, now ajar. The zombies must have burst out, nearly ambushing him.

They posed little threat; within ten seconds, Adam had dispatched them, ensuring their eternal rest. As long as there were no surprises or large hordes in confined spaces, he had nothing to fear.

"Were they lovers...? Perhaps they sought refuge, only to succumb and turn on each other..." Adam muttered, finding some usable items on the corpses. He always scavenged when he could, never knowing what might prove useful.

Sighing softly, he pressed on. Yet, he couldn't shake a peculiar feeling lingering from the sight of that ill-fated couple...