CHAPTER. 23

CHAPTER 23

The lightening zombie leaped across a building and continue to run with breath taking speed, at that moment its vibe was much stronger than when it fought with the metal zombie. Obviously it enjoyed a massive increase in strength since the fight and now had an energy level equaling the level two. At this moment, it was following a group of scents that seemed to be heading in its direction. For the past few days after the fight, it had found a place to rest before completely concentrating on absorbing the energy from the metal crystal, but when it was done it noticed a bunch of new scents in the vicinity.

    At that moment not far away. . . .

A truck was speeding across an eerily silent environment, of course it wouldn't be a surprise that there were no living souls

around there, the only strange thing was the absence of the zombies. However, the men in the trucks didn't seem to notice, instead they were busy doing their things as the truck sped deeper into the area.

"Come on bud, move this truck faster!." the man beside the driver of the leading truck shouted. Due to the apocalypse, most people had become hardened fellows that could hold their own in some situations, the weaker ones were those that got bullied and had to live miserably even in the sanctuaries except they were of great value. So due to the latest information that was circulating around on the energy crystal, a lot of people choose to leave their lives of leisure behind and took on the lives of hunters. Even greater was the temptation when sanctuaries took out a reward system for the amount of crystals that were returned back to the base. Better still, most if the hunter groups were headed by a superhuman.

As days passed, the number of superhumans were increasing as the number of people that lay sick in each bases began to reduce. Still though, most of the superhumans in existence were actually level one because they were still un able to gain access to energy crystals to absorb from or had not accumulated enough energy to even feel the barrier to the next level.

Obviously some of them didn't even want to hunt for the crystals to return to the base, they wanted to keep them for their personal use. Who would give up the opportunity to get stronger and instead pass it to another?, only a minority!. Some of the hunters were out there sticking their necks out to get strong as soon as possible and return to their various sanctuaries to wrestle the leadership positions from the current leaders, after all majority of the sanctuary leaders had just stepped into the second level and were even only able to do so because of the crystals that were submitted to them by the hunters. If they could also break into level two, they would gladly take on leadership roles, after all they were only the leaders of their respective groups because they were the strongest.

"Hey you've got to chill fella." The driver replied while swerving to the side to avoid an abandoned spoilt car. "You don't want to die from a getting bashed by these useless vehicles that lie unneeded on the road do you?."

When the apocalypse first struck, alot people were trying to get out of their various cities to avoid the infected but by doing so they only caused the majority of the roads to be blocked when they ran out of fuel and abandoned the vehicles or were attacked by a monstrous number of zombies and fled the vehicles. Well not to dwell to much in the past, at the moment they were in search of a combatant zombie that was supposed to be in the area but there was no sign of it.

Backtrack to a few days ago. . ..

"Hey Jim what's taking so long?." A man called to another fellow in a truck apart from his, the truck was supposed to be leading but suddenly swerved to the side an came to an abrupt stop. At that moment, a man opened the door of the first truck and stepped out. In his mouth was a cigar which was an extremely rare commodity in the apocalypse, besides his clothes were so neat and of better quality than that of those that were in the trucks. From him the air of superiority was being exuded, clearly he was the leader of the fellows in the trucks. Taking off his shades, a pair of deep slightly wicked eyes were revealed.

Holding his gun extraordinarily close, he looked around alertly for a few seconds causing the other men to also put up their guards before speaking. "A zombie is close by, I can sense its vibe. Besides its a combatant zombie, we are not prepared or armed enough to attack a zombie of that level."

"Let's return for now, we'll have to return to deal with it." He said. "Yes boss." The people in the trucks replied. Reality speaking, they were really not prepared to face against a combatant zombie because they had only left the base with the intention of gathering supply for their group and had used over half of their ammo to fight the swifts and slow walkers.

According to the sanctuary policies, they could exchange their loots for other stuffs they needed that was in possession of the sanctuary. "Also, make sure the word isn't leaked back in the sanctuary, we don't want another hunter group to make the harvest before us."

Back to present day. . ..

"Why do I feel that something is different from that day?." One of the men in the leading truck asked. Usually the amount of zombies in the territory of a combatant would be scanty because they would be summoned by the combatant to act as guards, but even though they had been driving for a long time there was still no signs of even the slow walkers, swifts or combatant. Even if all the zombies had been summoned, there would usually still be a few zombies that would wander about - at least the last time they passed through there they saw quite some slow walkers - but at the moment it seemed like the town was totally ghosted. Both the living, the dead and the ones in the middle seemed to have left the complete area which was just too unusual.

"STOP THE TRUCKS!!!." The leader of the group suddenly shouted. As the trucks continued travelling in the direction of the area from which he sensed the vibe the last time he was there, the greater sense of crisis he felt. He had been trying to ignore the feeling since it suddenly started but at that moment his instinct suddenly warned him that if they didn't stop it would be even harder for them to do so if they continued.

"What's up boss?." A man - the only man sitting very close to the boss - said. "Is there a problem?, why did you ask for the truck to stop so suddenly. You almost caused my heart to stop." Clearly the man wasn't scared of the boss, he was the brother of the boss's woman and the boss would do anything to protect him.

"I don't know, I had a feeling that we are getting close to an extremely dangerous place, probably that's why the left?, what do you think?." The boss replied. The energy crystal of a level one combatant was also as valuable as that of a level two combatant but not as important as his life. "I think. . .."

At that moment, the sense of crisis the boss was feeling suddenly intensified as a vibe that felt very very dangerous and destructive suddenly permeated the surroundings. Worst still was the fact that it was so close that even the non - superhumans felt the intensity of the vibe and stopped all forms of communications as fear struck them hard.

A figure suddenly landed on an abandoned car a little distance from them causing the fear they felt to multiply several times over. Even their boss a superpowered human was scared senseless and could only tremble in fear with his mouth hanging open in front of the newcomer, who were they to think they could defeat that combatant zombie. Obviously it was the lightening zombie, it was very easy to identify that it was a zombie because of it dark eye bags and all that. At that moment, how could the group of hunters not realise that they had actually been noticed by the zombie but had been allowed to move

very far into its territory so that they would be unable to escape in time and that it was not a level one combatant but a level two instead. There was totally nothing they could do apart from waiting for the zombie to feast on their skulls and savour the tastes of their fleshes.

*Roar.* The zombie suddenly let out a terrifying roar at them as ominous clouds began to gather. At that moment, the boss seemed to recover from his earlier daze and looked at the sky before speaking, "This was not the combatant vibe if felt that day, there is a high probability that this one is new and has defeated the other one for its territory and crystal." No matter what, he was still a leader. If he couldn't even collect himself in situations like that, then he would be an irresponsible leader.

_____

The lightening zombie looked at the group of people in front of it, clearly they had only gotten that far because it had allowed them to. The first thing it did as soon as it took control of the territory was to drive out the slow walkers and swifts that flooded the area. As for the people that had been captured, it had no concern for them and had completely ignored them. Completely scared, they had been holing up in one of the buildings in the area and would only venture out occasionally when they felt that it was safe to do so. Of course the lightening zombie had no qualms with that, as long as they kept out of its personal space it would not have a reason to get into them or stuff like that, after all it had its intelligence that was comparable to that of a teenager - the most crucial part of a persons life, when they were even more concerned about their image - imagine it eating human flesh. Besides it had that natural instinct that forbade it from eating human flesh. At the moment it only wanted to have a bit of fun and that was the only reason why it allowed the group of humans to enter its territory.

At that moment, the group of hunters under the leadership of the boss suddenly pulled themselves together and raised their weapons. Seconds later, the sounds of shots being fired rang out as they pulled the triggers of their guns. Basic criteria for joining the hunter's groups was the past record of being in the armed forces in the past era, so none of their shots were off target. But they were facing a level two combatant, they weren't able to keep up with its speed as it darted to and fro while dodging the bullets. If it was a level one combatant, they would probably stand a chance. But for a level two combatant, it was an hopeless cause. Within moments they had fired multiple shots but were unable to hit the zombie when it suddenly raised its hands above its head with its palms clasped into fists. With a swift down pulling motion of its hands, several bolts of lightening fell from the sky. However they only landed a few inches from their targets. Fear struck the hearts of the hunters again as they glanced at the various charred holes inches away from them where the lightening had landed.

A bold conjecture suddenly surfaced in the head of the boss, 'Is this zombie toying with us?.' He thought. No matter what however, he was unable to verify his conjecture because at that a voice suddenly sounded from a building a little distance away from him and his group. At the same time, a series of attacks were launched at the combatant to cover them while they escaped from their location to the building.

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