CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 13

A week later. . . .

Roosevelt sat on top of a truck meditating. Since she bonded with her axe, it became an habit because it was the only way she could improve her connection with the axe. Well it wasn't her alone, all her friends now had to adapt to the regular meditational exercises. Suddenly, the familiar groans of zombies broke her meditation and without much ado, 'she summoned' - yeah! summoned - her axe. That was one ability she recently discovered, she could actually form a link with the axe and communicate with it when she wanted to. Well it wasn't time to be relishing on such thoughts, the zombies were approaching slow walkers, majority of them were swifts. For some reasons, during the past week the zombies seemed to have mutated further. The rarely seen swifts had now become common as garbage, and the slow walkers were the ones now rarely seen.

Something definitely was wrong, Marvellous had been saying for the past few days that things weren't feeling the same, like something had changed. Perhaps because of his mutation, he was more sensitive to whatever was happening than they were.

But no matter how hard he tried, he just couldn't figure what ever it was.

Getting a hold of herself before she got completely carried away by her thoughts, Roosevelt jumped off the truck top with a war cry and axe raised above her head, ready to dice the zombies into practically nothing. Like an angel descending to the earth, she landed at their middle and gathering all her might, she cleaved 360° to the horizontal. An ear splitting sound was generated from the force of the axe grinding against the air as the attack wave spread for a couple hundred meters, directly destroyed and killing the zombies that came in contact with it. But for some reasons, the zombies not only seemed to have upgraded in strength, they had also upgraded in intelligence. For those of them that were in reaction chancing distances, they actually dodged!.

'For God's sake! Zombies dodging attacks?. . . When had that ever happened in history!'. The rest like her also jumped into battle with the zombies. As Roosevelt watched their fights, she could not help but sigh in relieve that she was not the only one facing such bizarre zombies. Well all of them with the exception of the half zombie and Joy.

What ever had happened to the zombies seemed to have affected Marvellous too, moving through the zombie crowd like the wind with the aid of his speed and their unsuspecting ability to someone that had a faint scent possessable by their kind alone, he slaughtered swifts like they were just standing pieces of brainless toys - which they kind of actually were.

As for Joy, granted the power of invisibility by her cloak, she walked leisurely through the crowd of zombies stabbing them through the head. The only clear indication of her location being her dagger that seemed to have a mind of its own as it seemed to float through the air. As for the zombies, they could smell her but could not even see her, leaving them confused.

'Well confusion works well for me too', she smirked.

Using the confusion of the zombies to fuel her eager heart, Joy began a blood party - except the colour of blood wasn't red but a purplish black - or more better a mutilation party, spilling the insides of zombies everywhere.

"Yeah! Fuck 'em!", Basit shouted.

********

Maxwell watched the sanctuary wall rise slowly but steadily as members of the sanctuary directly or indirectly joined and contributed one way or another to the construction, the wall was a necessity if people wanted to live with a sense of security in sanctuaries. So from the moment the sanctuary was founded, they had made the construction of the wall their priority, now Maxwell couldn't help but feel a sense of accomplishment seeing it at an almost completed level. But at the moment, he could only hope for the wall to be quickly completed, it was shocking like a fairy-tale when the raiders that went out to gather

supplies brought back the ridiculous story of the zombies upgrading and even seemly gaining consciousness, dodging attacks and possessing even stronger attacks and strength. If they hadn't brought one of their bitten friends back, he wouldn't have

dared to believed them. But the man had been tied before him and he had seen clearly for himself how the man had been. The virus seemed stronger.

'If the slow walkers are actually upgrading, then what have the swifts upgraded into. Are they. . .?'.

"Are you thinking again?". Anthonia asked, breaking his chain of thoughts. "What's on your mind this time?, and why the sudden order for the wall construction to be hastened?. Are you scared because of the report?", she asked.

Sigh. . ..

Slowly, Maxwell faced Anthonia. Placing his hands on her shoulders he stared straight into her eyes, letting his eyes reflect his fear.

"Anthonia. . ." he said, "Something is wrong. I don't know what it is yet but I can feel it, something has changed. THE REAL APOCALYPSE HAS BEGAN!". He said. Anthonia froze, she just stared Maxwell in the eyes without so much as a blink, as if she was trying to see through the fear at the usually spirited confidence they usually held. But all she saw was more fear for the unknown, she had never seen him so

afraid as he was that it even scared her, she could feel her heart tremble in her ribcages as she stared in those eyes.

"Is it because of what happened today?", she finally asked. "But you can't just conclude based on that alone" she said, more to convince herself than to convince him.

"I know. . .". Maxwell replied with a sigh, 'Perhaps it's time to let out my thoughts for others to think it through, I think it's best I tell her'. He thought.

"You see the thing is. . . John said that the zombies seemed to have upgraded because the ones they met this morning were all swifts. But why don't you think of it this way, if the slow walkers had become swifts and awoken consciousness, what have the swifts become?".

Silence. . . .

Anthonia stood still but this time, she wasn't frozen by fear or anything but shock. Shock at the fact that she had failed to think of such an obviously possible outcome. If everyone just happened to skip the thought of such an outcome like she did, what would be the outcome when they were taken by surprise?, she didn'tdare to think of it. Everything just clicked into place, if the slow walkers had upgraded into swifts, the definitely the swifts should have upgraded too. But that was the final puzzle they had to solve, what had they upgraded into, or what new abilities did they now possess?.

The worst fight anyone could have was with an enemy they new nothing about. Suppose the zombies could no longer be hurt by their weapons after their upgrade? Or what if they gained new abilities?. . . Abilities beyond human imagination?.

'Humans are toast', she thought.

***

As night approached signalling the end of work for the day, the sanctuary members were so tired that they were glad to hug their pillows to get a good night sleep. But no one in the sanctuary or even the world noticed that with the darkness came a strange purplish mist that stuck out clearly at night. As for those who did, the probably just discarded it as something extra ordinary, after all it seemed beautiful to look at. But most probably, it was the answer they were looking for.