4 Chapter 4

I managed to take down the three zombies wandering around near the front door without using too many bolts but sadly the bolts were made from a fiberglass material and didn't hold up well to being fired more than a couple of times and started breaking.

Checking my inventory I found that I only had about 15 bolts left of the initial 30 I started with but I figure that should last me long enough to clear the interior of the building. Most of this first floor seemed to be an open lobby and socialization area with only a few doors on the far side, away from the front entrance, that were still closed.

I crouched inside the open entrance doorway and spent a few minutes just listening and looking around the lobby to see if there were any surprises. I even chucked a couple of small pieces of trash I saw on the ground near me, the loudest being a glass bottle that I chucked across the lobby towards the closed back rooms to see if I could rile up any walkers into giving away their positions. 

You see, wandering through the trailer park, I noticed that a number of zombies seemed to be "sleepers". What I mean is that it seemed like under certain circumstances zombies seemed to just lie down or sit in various places and just go into a hibernation or deep sleep until disturbed.

I noticed this particular behavior the most when I was walking past sealed cars and trailers that were closed up. I hadn't done any looting on my way over so I can't say for sure that ALL zombies inside sealed spaces share this trait but I had seen enough of them start moving when I made enough noise that I wouldn't just blindly walk past any bodies without making sure to take care of the head. 

The noise I was making didn't seem to attract any attention from inside, or if it did they were being pretty quiet, so next I started to weigh the pros and cons of sealing the front door to prevent any undead from getting in or leaving it open as a potential escape route. After thinking about the potential dangers I decided to do a mix of the two by pulling the doors closed and then using a length of fiber, twisted into a makeshift rope, to simply wrap around the handles to keep them closed against limited numbers of the dead. If I needed to I could simply pull the fiber cordage off or if pressed for time use my camp knife to cut it free and then flee.

After I cleared the building I would return downstairs to better barricade the doorway in a more permanent fashion. Honestly, remembering that I had access to schematics in the crafting system that would allow me to easily construct wooden blocks, wooden ladders, and even rope I decided I would create a different way to get in and out that wouldn't weaken my defenses or leave me blocking and unblocking doors all the time but that would come later.

Clearing the rest of the building was surprisingly anticlimactic as I found no more deaders. What I did find, luckily, was a well designed building that was two stories AND had a basement. The ground floor, where I came in, was mostly wide open except for a set of two locker rooms with both toilets and showers, a small office, and a stairwell leading to the second floor. 

The second floor was set up with a number of comfortable couches that were all shoved into various corners and had been used at some point as makeshift beds. There were a few folding tables setup in places for different purposes and from what I could see one was their makeshift "kitchen" area, another was for weapons maintenance, and the last seemed to have been setup for keeping children occupied. Each of the tables was covered in materials that showed their intended purposes and I would check them out more in depth later.

The basement entrance I probably would have missed entirely if I hadn't decided to explore the access hatch leading to the roof. I had noticed that there was a decent sized water storage tank on the roof and didn't know if the people who were here before had drained it or not so I made my way up to check. The roof was clear of deaders, which didn't surprise me although I carefully checked anyways, and when I knocked on the side of the tank I found that it was not only full but that the people here before me had even managed to rig some scrap metal and plastic to act as a makeshift rain catcher that was then directed into a hole bashed in the side of the tank to fill it.

"Pretty smart people to have rigged the water tank to refill every time it rained. I guess that means that as long as I boil the water it should be safe enough to drink. It definitely makes me wonder why people would leave such a well equipped location though." I muttered quietly to myself, more to break the silence and hear the sound of a human voice than because I really needed to say anything out loud.

I was checking the rest of the roof and found that they had even started to set up a makeshift greenhouse and growing stations in a couple of places. There were half finished raised grow beds in various places as well as what looked like a couple of pallets of garden soil bagged and neatly stacked along one corner of the building. This did make me stop and think though as with my System I had access to a number of features and abilities that people normally would not have. 

Growing vegetables in the "real" world could take months or seasons in order to be successful, but how would farming or gardening work for me? I know I saw some perks that mentioned faster growth times and better harvests, but would planting using the system have a naturally shorter growth time already? Many of the games that I had memories of, without context of when I played them or whether I enjoyed them, seemed to have growth times of either hours or days in game time. With a decent source of water and enough seeds I could very likely turn multiple buildings or rooftops into veritable Gardens of Eden and become a food baron for the area.

The thought popped into my head of myself with a tricked out apocalypse tractor driving around town with a cornucopia crown tickling my fancy as a ridiculous idea but still food is a very real and absolutely critical resource that I could easily see allowing me to control the world with.

I shook my head to clear thoughts of peaceful conquest through liberal use of food stuffs and refocused on my immediate needs. I didn't know when it would get dark around here yet and I needed to finish checking out and securing the building, then looting the building, and then figuring out my plan of action for the next few days.

I was heading back towards the rooftop access hatch when I saw a large yellow sign attached to the back of the water tank.

It read, "Backup Water Supply System should not be used without turning on the generator and water filtration unit in the basement of the building." and I was intrigued. I hadn't noticed a basement entrance anywhere when I first swept the building but if there really was a basement with a genny and water filter… well this could be a game changer. If this is an integrated backup system for the building, probably so it can be used in weather emergencies for the park, then that could also mean hot showers, running water, and even electrical access. 

I hadn't seen any signs of the prior tenants, here before me, having been using electricity as nothing was plugged into any sockets but that just meant either they had no fuel, which I could always craft/loot OR they never saw a basement entrance either. Thinking about what I had seen in my sweep I was betting on them not having found the basement at all since I recalled seeing they were using buckets of water near their kitchen table and plastic bottles with "boiled water" written on them in marker.

"Interesting, time for a treasure hunt!" I remarked with a growing smile as I head back towards the first floor. First things first I needed to loot the zombies I killed earlier in the lobby and then get rid of the bodies before sealing up the entrances.

I carefully checked the lobby, finding everything the way I left it, and after removing the cordage from the front door to open it I approached the bodies and began doing the system loot function. These bodies were slightly better in terms of rewards as I got a 30ft length of nylon climbing rope, three boxes of 9mm ammo totaling 60 rounds, and a butcher's cleaver. Checking the bodies manually I found some cash, jewelry, a few 12 gauge shotgun slugs in a hunting vest, and a small box of waterproof matches.

Have you ever tried to move dead bodies before? Let me tell you it ISN'T pleasant especially when they were zombies not long ago who were rotting and leaking all over the place. Even trying to drag them by their remaining clothes was just a nightmare and I was close to just giving up dragging them outside, planning to just deal with them until I could find a better way to haul them like a wheelbarrow when I had an idea. 

I had JUST looted a meat cleaver, and not some little Mal-Mart 20 dollar special wannabe cleaver either. This cleaver was a big heavy cleaver like you see in the movie when they show off meat packing plants or local butcher shops. Pulling it from the system I hefted it in my hands and found it was a little different than I expected even as it had an extended handle so that it would be swung with a two handed grip as well as a two foot long blade that was three inches thick on the blunt side before slowly tapering down to a point that was razor sharp on the cutting edge. 

This was made for cutting the bones and joints of large animals like fully grown cows and pigs… or zombie corpses that were too big, heavy, and unwieldy to move normally. It was a gross idea and I am honestly surprised that it didn't gross me out more but I figured it couldn't be worse than leaving them and having to smell them inside every time I wanted to use this floor. 

I approached the first body, cleaver in hand, ready to get down and dirty when a system prompt suddenly popped up in my vision.

"Ding! Would user like to assign butchering as a system action? The benefits of assigning butchering to the system are: All products butchered are neatly packaged and stored in the inventory, no mess is created from butchering process, body is completely consumed leaving no remains, and user gains items not normally accessible by the average person butchering. Downsides of butchering being assigned as a system action: Less items are gotten per corpse (you might get 100 lbs off a boar of usable meat butchering yourself but with the system you will gain 50 lbs instead), there are no remains left behind for secondary purposes (baiting other animals or zombies, fishing bait, traps, fertilizer, etc), and once you start butchering it begins a system countdown timer that cannot be interrupted by the user until the butchering is complete.

Do you wish to assign butchering as a system action?"

I immediately felt as though the upsides were much better than the downsides as I couldn't really imagine a time where I would really want or need the remains of animals that I had already butchered and as far as the lowered gains or being locked into the system action… meh. I didn't see myself butchering bodies in a firefight and would likely only do so after being in a safe situation so it really wasn't a huge loss.

"Yes, assign butchering as a system action." I spoke out loud, immediately feeling a slight surge in energy through my mind and then flowing down into the rest of my body. Looking at the body I had been about to start cutting into pieces, my HUD now showed me that it was a valid butchering target, the possible loot I may get from it, as well as how long the action would take, start to finish, once I began. 

This particular body would potentially yield me rotten flesh, bones, pure fat, potassium nitrate, and zombie virus samples. It would take 30 seconds to harvest.

Virus samples?