Apocalypse: The Ice King Returned

Chapter 8: The Child

Luther looked back at the little girl. She bowed her head and dared not to look at them.

She opened her mouth and screamed. Luther’s eyes widened. He quickly covered her mouth and noticed a dry, bony hand clutching her ankle from under the bed. Another zombie.

The zombie climbed out further and its head was visibly reaching out, its mouth open and ready to bite her foot.

Luther quickly unsheathed the fire ax from his belt and swiped the sharp side down, cutting its head clean off. It hit the floor and rolled to its side, the mouth still hanging open.

"Behave yourself, or I won’t stop the next one." Luther scolded the girl in a cold voice. Her body was trembling, and she had tears in her eyes. His hand still covered her mouth and she didn’t dare say a word. Luther felt relieved and lifted his hand from her mouth.

He didn't mean to threaten her. But he knew how serious he needed to be right now. The door to the room they were in was wooden and weak. Any sound could attract an entire horde of infected people to them, and they would be done for.

"When there’s no more food, the infected are going to hide in dark places. It has nothing to do with intelligence, it’s only instinct. I know I should have kept an eye out for that, but we all need to be more careful." Luther muttered to Constance.

He then cracked the door open and peeked outside. This floor looked like a shopping mall. There were all kinds of food there. Clothing and other items were strewn about everywhere, and zombies could be seen wandering through the walkways.

Luther felt less nervous seeing that the zombies hadn’t noticed them. The virus hadn’t evolved yet, so their hearing and eyesight was still no better than a normal human’s. But when they mutate again, their senses will be heightened to be far stronger. They would soon smell a drop of blood from hundreds of feet away.

The mall was very big. Around three hundred zombies were roaming around in it. Most of them were in the middle, only a few were wandering around the periphery.

Luther noticed a directory that showed the outside of the building about two hundred feet away from them. Behind it was the exit to the underground parking lot.

This was their way out. There couldn’t be too many zombies that found their way down to the parking lot, and that’s where he was going to find a sewer to navigate wherever he wanted. But damn it, there were five zombies at the entrance that were fighting over the remains of a dead janitor.

Luther turned back and split open the zombie's head, took out the power core, and ate it. He felt a soft glow in his stomach, and he felt energized. His power level had reached Bronze II.

Luther felt satisfied. After killing about ten zombies and eating all of their power cores, it made sense that he had finally reached rank two.

Luther waved to Constance, "Those zombies have been eating well, so they’re going to be a lot faster. We must get the parking lot two hundred and fifty feet away. We probably have about ten seconds. We’re going to have to kill the ones at the entrance. When I say ‘Go,’ follow me."

She nodded in agreement. Luther gave a quick look at the girl. Her eyes were red but she had regained her composure which put Luther more at ease. He counted, "Three...Two...One. Go!"

Luther was the first to rush out, and as soon as he stepped outside, a zombie sprinted toward him.

Luther ran ahead, pulled out the fire ax, and swiftly decapitated it. He then kicked away a second one that was behind it.

Before reaching the door to the parking lot, Luther threw out a few water balls and hit the legs of five zombies, making one fall and hit its head on the floor.

Then he froze the water, and the other four zombies could no longer move.

Now that he had ranked up, his strength had increased enough to match the zombies now. He was much more in control of his power and it didn’t tire him out nearly as much as before. It took no time for him to quickly kill the infected ones he had frozen.

Constance and the girl rushed out at the same time, but there were up to twenty more zombies just a few feet behind them.

"Come on!" Luther stood at the exit, pulling the iron gate shut.

The girl’s eyes suddenly flashed a sinister look as she reached out for Constance in an attempt to make her fall and distract the zombies.

Constance’s eyes widened at the girl, not expecting her to want to harm anyone. Just before the girl reached Constance, a frozen arrow drove deeply into the child’s forehead.

In her last moment of consciousness, she looked Luther in the eyes in shock, not realizing he could do something so vicious.

Constance was stunned by the arrow, but she recovered immediately and ran to Luther.

The girl died, her body dismantled and her blood drained by the zombies, giving Constance enough time to reach the door.

As Constance ran in, Luther shut the iron gate, gesturing for her to keep running. "They’re going to break through the gate soon. We need to go downstairs and find the entrance to the sewer." 

"How did you know to shoot that girl? She didn’t look like she would hurt a fly." Constance asked as he ran by her side.

Luther spoke evenly, "She was faking it the whole time. When the world is ending, only three kinds of people live the longest. Survivors, double-crossers, and whores."

Constance felt a flash of anger at her brother for including the last option, but she knew deep down that he was right. 

"Doomsday is a day ruled by trickery. Unless you can trust someone completely, you always must be on guard. I wouldn’t be surprised if that girl had pulled that stunt with the last person that partnered with her. I noticed she had s*x not too long ago, so we know what kind of person she was." 

"How...how would you know? " Constance furrowed her brow. 

"You could smell s*x on her. It was covered by the stench of blood, but it was there." Luther replied. If there were three things Luther could smell a mile away on doomsday, it was a rotting corpse, blood, and s*x. 

"Freak."

They had now arrived in the underground parking, and the sound of zombies echoed from behind them. They had already broken through the iron gate. 

"Find the manhole cover. Go!" Luther ordered, signaling to his sister with the light of his flashlight. The sewer had to be somewhere on this floor. 

A loud bang now rang out from somewhere in the underground parking lot.

Constance gasped, "What was that?”

They shined their flashlight forward. Fifty feet away from them was a giant round monster with yellow hair. It looked to be over nine feet tall and six feet wide. Its foot stomped and scratched at the ground like a bull ready to charge, pointing straight at Constance.

"It's a level four Viro-Cryptid. Get out of the way, Constance!" Luther warned.