Beyond the Walls

Price

“They helped us with a price, shouldn’t we do the same?” Lucas had this unwavering look.

“Dude, I, I still think we don’t need…” Elijah tries to calm down Lucas but when Lucas faces him with a stern expression Elijah doesn't know what to say anymore.

“Their condition was that the first collected key cards will be given to them and they will pass through the gates first. ” Lucas explained.

The man bit his lips, he obviously didn't want to give up the piece of bread they acquire through sweat and violence.

“You all would've died if we didn't help! Two of our men had died in the process too. Isn’t our condition in exchange for all of that too much. ” Concealing his hostility towards Lucas.

“Ah well! Calm down, of course we are grateful for coming to our rescue.” Elijah stood up and calmed both parties now.

As Lucas took the anger of the man, he closed and opened his mouth and when looked up again he had the calmest expression which is inconsistent to his personality up to now.

“You offered bread and water in exchange for your safety, but now you don’t want to give it up? Does the condition of your safety in exchange for bread and water seem unfair to you? ” Athena suddenly appeared, finishing her bread.

Looks like the man was caught off guard with that statement.

“Ah no! Please have them.” The teenage boy urged them to give up the bread and water to them, Athena was the one to receive it and place it on Lucas’ side.

“See, it wasn’t that hard?” Athena patted the man’s shoulder and returned to her seat.

Lucas looks at Athena but she only gives him a smirk.

Few hours had passed and nothing had changed in the small room. Lucas' group takes turns to guard as others get their rest.

It was Aaron and Lucas’ turn to guard. Behind them are their group members.

“Is this necessary? Killing is forbidden.” Aaron asked as he stretched his legs in the staircase. There is only a three step staircase towards the bed bunks and in the lowest ground displays the rules of the waiting room.

“Yes, but other else is fine.” Lucas answered meekly.

“You know, it is hard to know what you are thinking. Why did you insist on taking the bread earlier? It’s just bread. They said, they will hand out bread again tomorrow.” Aaron said.

Lucas didn’t answer right away.

“... because people are looking. If you show slight compassion on them, they will cling to that until they leave you dry.”

The only reason why those two approached them is because they are the best choice as of the moment. Even if it was Elijah’s skill that secured their share it was their number that protected it. Humans tend to cling to whoever is in power. It wasn’t necessarily to be them.

“What kind of life have you lived up to now? Will you keep doubting everyone like this?”

In Lucas' mind he answered these questions but had no chance to answer out loud because the door to the adjacent room opened.

People walked out.

“Ah! Another room?!” A slouch postured man with bored looks complained loudly.

“Pipe it down, Uly.” Liam emerges from the room. His hands are in his pocket as he scans the surroundings.

He met eyes with Lucas and confidently walked towards him.

“AH! You survived!... Again… I was wondering if you could make it.” He greeted Lucas with a smile. Just like the first round, it was the same monologue.

Lucas clenched his molars.

‘This is bad.’ He thought as he counted the men that newly arrived.

Sixteen full grown men had arrived.

****

“Clear!”

“Clear!”

One by one, military men announced the status of the rooms they scanned.

Walking behind them is a woman with a heavily distorted face.

*Bzzt bzzt

The woman answered her radio.

“Sir, Basement is clear.” The report from the other side of the radio said.

Clicking her radio off she announced.

“Move out!”

Her soldiers salute and exit the floor. Only she remains on the dark floor. She removed her night vision glasses. She looked to navigate alone the floor scanning around.

There was a faint smell of blood around but unlike the previous time, there was only a miniscule smell of death and blood in the air now.

She already knew something was wrong after arriving at the entrance of this building. Not only the metal bars used to trap hundreds of Level 1 undead are gone but the whole entrance.

Arriving in the corner of the floor, she stands by a darkened and moldy glass window, She looks down from it and sees her squad surrounding the perimeter.

“What happened here?” She asked herself.

There are hundreds of undead just on the ground floor and the basement parking lot was also full of them but they were gone leaving no traces.

“Hah! How is that possible?” She taps the glass as she thinks. That’s when she sees a handprint on the glass placed just below her knees. It was slightly covered and when she removes the debris, she sees dried blood hand print.

As she moved closer to hand print, her body perked up. The blood smell gets stronger.

In the dirty transparent mirror reflected a standing body behind her.

“ARRGH!!”

*Crash

The glass window broke as she and an undead were thrown away from it. Her reaction to pull her gun was slightly slower, now it was out of her hands as they fell.

‘NEWLY TURNED UNDEAD!!’ She thought as tries extends her hands while holding its neck to prevent it from biting her in the face.

*SWISH!!

A long rappelling rope appeared at the end of the gun and the spider-like metal pin grabbed the building’s cement and it stopped them from falling over.

“Urgh!” She groaned and she felt a weight clinging to her boots.

Looking down the undead is desperately clinging to her and still tries to bite her but because of her leather boots the undead is unable to bite directly out of her flesh.

She weighed her options fast.

Her soldiers can’t open fire because it might go through and get her shot, and she can fall to her death.

She can’t kick down the undead.

They fell a little too much near the ground, she looked up and down the ground. She is hanging at the top of the second floor. If she kicks down the undead, there are high chances it will survive and kill some of the soldiers below, especially, the undead is newly turned.

“ARGH!” She groaned. She holds the rope more tightly. The muscle in her shoulders might've been stretched. She doesn't have much of a choice and no time, her grip is slowing to lose. She can feel her fingers sliding.

“MOVE!!!!!!” She shouted and the soldiers quickly removed themselves from below.

“I don’t want to do this but, you give me no choice.” She said and let go of the rope and as they fell her hand extended to the undead’s forehead.

There was a reason why Gabrielle Rosetta, despite being a woman, held a ranking officer title and was unconditionally followed by her colleagues. It’s not only because of superhuman olfactory sense but also because...

*BAM!!

They hit the ground. The undead is unmoving and head squashed. A meter away from it is Gabrielle. She used the undead’s body as a cushion to the ground while making sure that the undead died on impact before rolling away to try and minimize the impact on her. Aside from a few bruises, stretched shoulder muscles and sprained ankle, she is relatively fine and functioning. That is because she is Gabrielle Rosetta, not only does she possess incredible and unexplainable olfactory sense but also she possesses above average in strength, combat and intelligence. This is what landed her the position of Renaissance Captain Position.

The soldiers assisted her and some checked the undead condition. She places herself where she can see the undead. It’s head is squashed but anyone can tell it was a woman before turning to undead.

Gabrielle dragged her limping ankle towards the body.

“Turn it over.” She said,

She observed it for a while. “It doesn’t smell like rotting.” She finally said it. The blood smell is there but not the rotting, it means, it might be a few minutes or hours since this one had turned.

As she observes more, the forearm of the undead has a loose cloth surrounding it. She removed it and saw some bite marks, her legs also have it.

In the side of the undead is hanging a large folded paper, Gabrielle pulled it out. Though it was worn out and stained, it is still readable. It was a map and there was a blood handprint just like the one on the upper floor.

“Hey, Holland. Do you still think I am delusional?” She asked her vice captain.

“I never said anything like that. Ha-ha” Holland denied it with a nervous laugh.

She doesn’t need to hear it directly from him, because she heard it plenty of time after reporting this to her superiors.

“Level 1 Undeads are rarely seen anymore. Are you saying you saw hundreds of them? That’s impossible.”

“Sir Rosetta might need some break. Why don’t you take some vacation?”

“Survivors? That can’t be. All humanities are already inside the walls.”

“There are no resources outside the walls anymore. Humans can’t live outside the walls.”

That’s all she hears back in the base, but despite all of that she insists on this mission. With her credibility and skills it was hard to ignore her so she made use of it to force to assemble a team.

And here they go, even if they didn’t see the hundreds of undeads as she claimed, she still has evidence of a survivor or at least it used to be a survivor.