"Open fire!"
Leila twitched a little when Peter gave out the command. His shout was pretty loud and coupled with how close to her ear he uttered it, the effect was all the stronger.
And then, a hailstorm of bullets began.
All three of the machine gun nests opened fire, laying waste to all the zombies currently squeezed within the mouth of the road. The mortar spewed out its first round, adding a crescendo of a wailing cry of the soaring projectile as it climbed up to the skies before rapidly descending down, right into the mass of the zombies nearby.
'Are they for real…?' Leila watched how Peter's men brought hell to the earth. She watched how the series from the machine gun cut zombies into pieces, like an invisible blade the presence of which was marked with the tracer bullets mixed into the ammunition mix.
She watched how the mortar shells went off right in the middle of the zombie's group, annihilating the few closest to the explosion while turning the others nearby into the pasta before scattering it all over the place.
All of that happened before the zombies could even utter a single screech, a single rallying call to an attack.
'Are they wasting all these experience points for real?' Leila nearly mouthed her question out.
It was a magnificent sight in all its gruesomeness. And yet, Leila's lips formed a disgusted grimace.
"They are not that much of a challenge," Peter muttered once the hundreds of zombies that came turned into mere tens.
The horde that filled every nook and cranny of the street that they picked to attack was now scattered. There was no sign of cohesion left. The entire horde was now reduced to just a few small groups who were lucky enough to happen to be behind a cover when the onslaught began.
"Snipers, prepare!" Peter shouted out his second command.
Up until now, only the machine guns and the mortars were at work.
'Was he trying to save the bullets?' Leila thought, squinting her eyes a little while she watched the rest of the soldiers on the rooftop prepare for their part of the job.
Soon, the repeating sound of the machine guns died down. The mortar team also took some time off. Now that the bulk of the zombie force was decimated, keeping the fire up would mean just a waste of the shells.
'I guess it will be my time to shine soon,' Leila thought, twisting her lips in an unpleasant grimace when she looked back towards the battlefield.
She was long used to the bloody and messy sights of the meat grinder. In fact, the intensity of the fire that Peter's team brought upon the street made the sights far less repulsing than what she was used to.
The destruction was on such a massive scale she could hardly recognize any of the torn-off parts of the corpses. The red mesh of flesh and innards was hardly as disgusting as the entire pieces of the human body chopped cleanly off.
"Fire, fire, fire," Peter's officer commanded, repeating the order three times in a quick yet steady succession.
His voice was perfectly calm, nearly bored.
Boom!
The snipers took their first few shoots. A few zombies fell down to the ground, not moving ever again. Yet, as the seconds trickled by, the few tens of the zombies that survived started to pour out of their coincidental cover and onto the street.
The zombies couldn't care less about all the meat on the street. No, they had their sights set on Peter's base. And in just a few moments, in spite of all the fire from Peter's sharpshooters, the zombies started to walk down the street, ignoring the mounting casualties.
'Why do I feel like there is something weird with this scene?' Leila thought to herself, watching how the events progressed with her hand firmly set on the handle of her new saber.
The zombies acted… way too dumb.
'Maybe I'm just used to someone commanding them?' Leila then thought, trying her hardest to figure out the reason behind this weird feeling welling up at the bottom of her soul.
Bit by bit, Leila's curiosity turned into annoyance and then into anxiety.
"Shooters, fire!" Peter ordered, pushing the rest of his men to join the onslaught as well.
This was the third and the last phase of his defensive strategy and it was perfect between the mass fire of the machine guns and the precise fire of the sharpshooters.
The garage door leading to the workshop opened up, allowing the group of twenty-five soldiers from the first unit to pour outside.
They took only a few seconds to gather up in a two-line formation before they all raised their guns to their eyes and started blasting any and all zombies that could still move. And with the tree of the remaining soldiers on the rooftop joining them from above, nothing that was still alive could keep that kind of status for long.
"There is something wrong with this situation," Leila muttered, no longer capable of holding her anxiety back.
"Huh?" Peter turned his head to the girl, only to see her bite her lips and take a step forward. She then took one more pace ahead…
Only to suddenly start running.
Leila scaled the roof's railing with a single step before jumping down to the hell of the battlefield.
She bent her knees a little bit the moment her legs struck the ground, only to then transfer her momentum into a forward charge.
With her weapon still sheathed, she jumped right in the middle of the line of Peter's soldiers, squeezing between the men while introducing an element of confusion into their ranks.
"What the…"
Leila heard Peter's shout right as her eyes zeroed in on the source of her anxiety. A zombie that appeared to be just like all the others… but one that somehow avoided being hit in any of its critical spots.
'He survived all of that without even a single real wound?' Leila thought, slowly pulling out her saber.
"What the hell are you doing here?!" one of the soldiers scowled.
"Get back," Leila whispered, her eyes locked on the peculiar zombie. "That one is not what you can shoot down with your petty weapons," she muttered while finally brandishing her weapon.
The zombie continued its march in the meantime. And as only a few soldiers in the middle happened to be disturbed by Leila's appearance, the rest of them quickly cleaned up all the remaining mob zombies that accompanied that special one.
And it was also at this moment that both the soldiers and Peter realized they fucked up.
And it was for one, simple reason.
No matter how many times they attempted to shoot that one last zombie down… they couldn't do it!
It would be an exaggeration to say the bullets didn't do it any harm. It was the way it moved in swaying steps that made it so all the bullets aimed at its head and joints would miss their mark.
And even the bullets that actually hit its rotting flesh, would only leave a shallow mark, barely as deep as it would need to be to make the other party bleed if it was still capable of doing so.
Leila entered the state of the highest focus. She tightened her fingers over the handle of her saber, her eyes locked on the strange enemy.
And then, a slight movement forced her eyes to twitch, giving her a momentary look at what she didn't expect to happen.
One of the zombies felled by the culling series of the machine gun… It twitched.
'Shit!' Leila finally pieced the puzzles together. And as her face tensed up, she could only do one thing.
"GET BACK!" she shouted from the bottom of her lungs while simultaneously jumping forth to finish the fakely downed zombie.
But at this point, it was too late. The first unit of Peter's forces advanced too far, too deep into the field littered with what they thought to be zombie corpses.
By the time those men heard Leila's shout, at least thirty zombies started to move behind them with a further forty standing up at the front.
They were locked between two groups of low-evolved zombies. And what was even worse, the garage door that they used to leave the safety of the base… was now open!
'I guess it's my time to shine,' Leila thought, squinting her eyes as she forced herself to step into the zone.
All the images, all the sounds, all of the awful stench that filled the scene… they all disappeared. And then, a single path appeared, like a glistering strand that hung in space, impervious to the influence of gravity or reason.
A thread that marked the path Leila had to take.
And so, without waiting for the first unit of Peter's forces to wake up from their daze, the girl pulled her sword back, before cutting along the threat.
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