Sadie already knew what would happen in Fort Wayne today.
Cleaning.
Her colleagues Aiden and Arian made that clear.
Reclaiming the city of Fort Wayne and clearing out the zombies there.
Sadie couldn’t quite understand why the military would want to do such a thing.
The facility she was assigned to in the military, referred to as the school on the inside. For Sadie, staying there brought a sense of peace she hadn’t felt in a long ti.
It had been three weeks since she arrived in Fort Wayne.
During that ti, Sadie had been experiencing the sa days repeatedly.
In the morning, Aiden and Arian would escort her to the so-called school.
During the day, she would spend ti with friends at school.
And at night, she would return to the temporary shelter where Aiden and Arian were.
Sadie found comfort in such repetition. It resembled the peaceful routine she enjoyed before the world frighteningly changed.
She wished these days would continue forever.
So, Sadie couldn’t comprehend why adults insisted on going to the city.
And why they wanted to clean up the zombies in the city, she simply couldn’t understand.
Isn’t it okay as it is?
“Are you asleep?”
In the dark night, while lying in a blanket in the classroom, Sadie, lost in thought, was addressed by a girl nad Nora.
Nora, aged 10, the sa as Sadie.
Nora was Sadie’s first friend she made in this place.
The surroundings were quiet.
Due to the ‘cleaning’ today, all the soldiers were staying up at their positions through the night. As a result, all the kids were gathered at the school.
For Sadie, it was her first overnight stay with peers.
So, she couldn’t sleep.
That seed to be the case for other kids too, as everyone had been awake for a long ti.
It was undoubtedly midnight now.
So, while most other kids were sleeping, Sadie kept her head up as if to indicate she wasn’t.
Then Nora, with a wide smile, imdiately started talking.
Nora was a sowhat talkative friend to Sadie.
“It was amazing, right?”
Although there was no context, Sadie quickly understood what she was referring to.
It was about the long procession they passed by in the morning, with nurous soldiers and even several large tanks.
It was an impressive sight for any child to see.
But Nora had another reason for making such remarks.
“The howitzer! My dad is a howitzer operator.”
Even today, Sadie had heard this several tis, but she simply nodded in response.
All the kids at school, including her, said that.
Soone’s father had a gun, soone’s mother had a car.
There were also children who made eye contact with their family during the procession and waved to each other.
And Sadie just looked at those children and their parents.
Naturally, she thought of her mom and dad.
She felt lonely.
But before the thought deepened and tears ca, Nora’s voice continued.
“Your dad... He is a junk dealer, right?”
“No, not dad.”
“Then who?”
Nora asked innocently.
She was undoubtedly talking about Aiden.
But Aiden wasn’t Sadie’s father.
That was for sure.
Certainly, though... what should she say in response to Nora’s question?
“Um...”
The first ti she saw Aiden, he was a doctor who treated her illness.
She was surprised when she found out he wasn’t a human but a zombie.
But still, Aiden didn’t bite or growl like a typical zombie. He behaved like an ordinary person.
Although he rarely smiled and had a stern way of speaking, Sadie’s grandfather was the sa way.
Up until then, Aiden had been a kind zombie uncle to Sadie.
But after.
Her mother died, and Sadie left Pittsburgh.
Since then, she had beco less aware of him.
Aiden took care of Sadie, taught her how to shoot, and many other things. Now, for her sake, he ca all the way to Fort Wayne.
She heard all of this was because of a request her mother left.
But if Aiden decided otherwise...
If he decided to throw away such a request, Sadie would understand.
What to call Aiden then, Sadie didn’t know.
He wasn’t family. But she couldn’t just say he was a completely unrelated stranger.
Yet, to call him a colleague would be too much, and he certainly wasn’t a friend.
“... I don’t know.”
So, that’s how Sadie replied.
Grateful and precious as he may be, she still couldn’t co up with a word to address him.
At that mont, Nora tilted her head.
Thud!
Suddenly, sowhere, the sound of an explosion resonated.
It wasn’t an incredibly loud noise.
The sound ca from a distant place.
However, so children woke up in the school, having never heard such a noise before.
“What’s that sound?” Nora asked.
Sadie shook her head.
It was impossible to identify her at that mont.
What could have happened?
Up until then, Sadie had only shown vague curiosity.
But then...
Bang!
Tat-tat-tat-tat!
After a while, more explosions were followed by the echoes of small gunfire.
The noise woke up all the children.
Soon, the classroom was engulfed in chaos.
“Quiet!”
A soldier, playing the role of a teacher, tried to calm the children.
But looking at their faces, it was evident that they, too, were quite bewildered.
“What’s happening? Contact headquarters.”
While they tried to assess the situation, the explosions and gunfire were approaching the school.
Sadie suddenly got up from her seat and approached the window.
Nora followed her.
“Sadie?”
“Look over there.”
In front of the small school made of containers, there was a narrow playground, and beyond it, there was a wide road where a tank could pass.
And from the direction of the north gate, a red light was visible.
It wasn’t the sun.
The red light emanated from the ground, not the sky.
“I-Is there a fire?”
Fire.
If only it were just a fire.
But Sadie had already discovered the shapes of bodies passing through that fla.
“There are zombies!”
Sadie inford the soldiers about it.
Then one of the soldiers, frowning, approached the window.
“Zombies? Kid, enough, go back to your place-“
It was when the soldier spoke like that.
“Raaaaah!”
Amidst the explosions and gunfire, a mad and frenzied scream echoed from sowhere.
At this, he looked at the window that Sadie was pointing to, and he, too, saw the zombies roaming the streets.
“This is insane...”
Confusion settled in the soldier’s eyes.
“What should we do? Hey, what does headquarters say?”
“I don’t know! Communication is down!”
Chaos spread among the soldiers.
All the soldiers here were new recruits with little experience.
It made sense since the skilled ones were all deployed for the cleanup operation.
The soldiers assigned to this school were mostly young, not much older than high school students. So, there was no way they could adequately handle such an unexpected situation.
Seeing those soldiers, Sadie, who couldn’t bear to see such soldiers, spoke up.
“We need guns.”
“What?”
“We need to get weapons first.”
It was Aiden’s teaching.
Whenever sothing happened, the first thing to do was to secure weapons.
“Oh, that... right.”
In response to that, the soldiers belatedly ard themselves.
Their hands putting bullets into the magazines were shaking faintly. Perhaps because they never thought they would et zombies within the safe barricade.
After a while, they finally got into a combat stance.
anwhile, the sounds of gunfire and explosions were getting closer to the school.
The sa for the zombies.
One zombie limped across the school playground.
Whether it hadn’t noticed the children yet or it was just walking, it was only a matter of ti before the situation changed.
“What about us?”
“What?”
“We need guns too.”
So Sadie demanded.
There were training pistols in the school.
They used them for actual shooting practice.
But the soldier shook his head.
“No, you can’t. Just stay quiet here.”
It was a frustrating answer for Sadie, but it was a reasonable judgnt.
Even if they had practiced shooting, there weren’t many among these kids who could properly handle a gun. And how many of them could maintain a steady aim in front of those crazed corpses.
“Absolutely do not co outside.”
After urging the children like that, the soldier left the classroom.
The school was a one-story building, a modified old military barrack.
And as he stepped outside, soon, disruptive gunshots began to echo even in the school.
“... “
There, Sadie quietly observed the situation outside.
There were twelve soldiers.
For a while, it seed like they could hold off the zombies by themselves.
The number of zombies infiltrating the school’s surroundings was small, and all of them were just regular zombies.
But the situation changed dramatically as mutated ones began to appear, turning everything in an instant.
“Why won’t that one die!”
Looking at the Bigfoot walking across the playground, one soldier shouted.
He was pouring all of his bullets toward the Bigfoot, but...
The giant body, as if mocking him, didn’t slow down, continuing to chew on one zombie’s leg.
“Head! Aim for the head!”
Another soldier shouted.
But it wasn’t as easy as it sounds.
The head was much smaller than the body, and there was only the light from the fire behind it.
Moreover, it was an unexpected ergency.
For the inexperienced soldiers, it was a situation where shooting accurately was almost impossible.
“Aaargh!”
At that mont, soone’s scream echoed.
“Jason!”
A soldier who turned towards the direction of the scream shouted.
Having been hit by sothing that ca from nowhere, he witnessed his comrade being brutally killed.
“Jason is dead!”
“Damn it...!”
Fear spread among the soldiers.
Yet, the zombies continued to pour in.
Now they were aware that there were humans here too.
“There are too many of them...”
“We can’t, we absolutely can’t win!”
One soldier left his position and ran in the opposite direction.
But even that place wasn’t safe.
“Aaahh!”
In the flas, the silhouette of a soldier surrounded by nurous zombies writhing in agony shook.
Seeing this, the other soldiers frantically fired in all directions.
However, one by one, they began to be killed by the approaching zombies.
“...”
Watching the situation unfold, Sadie could no longer bear it and left the school. She judged that staying still was no longer an option.
“Sadie, where are you going? We were told to stay here.”
“We need to find weapons.”
Sadie approached the corpse of the first soldier who had died.
A grueso sight, buried in filth behind the school building, with a broken neck.
Nora swallowed hard as she saw it.
Sadie, too, was surprised, but at the sa ti, she quickly realized how this soldier had died.
Sadie lowered her body and approached the soldier.
“Don’t co close. Don’t step on this water.”
Thanks to Aiden, who had shared information about all kinds of mutants with Sadie, she was well aware of the danger of a Vomiter.
So, Sadie cautiously approached the soldier, avoiding the contaminated water, and pulled a pistol from the soldier’s waist.
A solid black semi-automatic pistol.
Having carefully picked up the magazine and bullets, Sadie stood up from her position.
“Wooooah!”
As they approached the building, a zombie that had co near the building suddenly noticed them.
Madness filled its vacant eyes.
The creature let out a scream, and the ominous sound of worn-out sneakers approached rapidly.
“Eek!”
Caught off guard by an unimaginable fear, Nora froze in front of it. Before she could react, the distance quickly closed.
Bang!
A surprisingly loud noise echoed right next to them. The zombie rushing towards them collapsed with a thud, a small hole in its head.
Nora stared blankly at the scene.
“Nora.”
“...”
“Nora!”
“Huh... what?”
“Let’s go back.”
Sadie grabbed Nora’s hand and led her.
Nora, seemingly enchanted, followed Sadie and asked:
“Sadie... Aren’t you scared?”
“No, I am scared too.”
Sadie’s words were not a lie. Her trembling was transmitted to Nora through their joined hands.
“But I can endure it,” Sadie said.
She attempted to re-enter the building. However, in the anti, the school had turned into chaos.
A zombie stuck to the window broke it with its bare hands and pushed its body inside. Fortunately, the window was small, and the zombie couldn’t get in.
anwhile, a dangling zombie on the window fra reached out, trying to grab the children inside the building.
Upon hearing the screams, several other zombies rushed towards the walls of the makeshift barricade, shaking it as if they were about to collapse it.
Luckily, the door was closed, so they couldn’t find an entrance.
The sound of gunfire from the soldiers was no longer audible. Only the cries of zombies echoed everywhere.
“What... what do we do?”
Nora asked with a trembling voice.
“Let’s get inside for now.”
“Inside... into the school?”
Sadie nodded.
Moreover, Sadie knew that the kids were still inside the building.
They weren’t as close as Nora, but they were friends who exchanged a few words and greetings with each other.
So Sadie couldn’t just ignore them.
“...Okay.”
Nora and Sadie cautiously approached the entrance.
But soon, the zombies spotted the two girls.
“Run, Nora!”
Sadie shouted.
Without thinking, Nora followed Sady’s words.
Bang!
A zombie hit by a gunshot stumbled and fell backward.
When the second gunshot rang out, Nora had safely reached the entrance.
Nora opened the door and looked back.
However, Sadie wasn’t there.
“Sadie?”
Sadie was running towards the playground, as if luring the other zombies.
Gunshots continued.
Zombies beating on the walls of the school, one by one, started to fall.
“Kraaaaa!”
Finally, except for the one hanging on the window fra, the other zombies turned away.
Spotting Sadie with a gun, they fell from the building.
More than ten zombies rushed towards Sadie.
“No!”
Sadie wasn’t particularly fast.
In the end, just as Sadie’s shadow was about to be hidden by the back of the corpses, Nora could see the silhouette of Sadie falling among the undead.
Even the Bigfoot that had been lingering around the playground turned its head towards Sadie.
Amidst the sporadic gunfire, the scene was interrupted.
It was that mont when Nora was about to scream due to an ominous premonition.
Thump!
The zombies gathered in the playground were scattered by a bright red shock wave that ca from nowhere.
Limbs of the rotten corpses tore apart, and their bodies shattered into pieces, floating into the air.
It looked like a scene from a bomb blast.
However, behind the scattered corpses, the unhard figure of Sadie was visible.
She seed unhard.
Watching this, Nora breathed a sigh of relief.
And standing beside her was another person who had appeared unnoticed.
That was an unknown girl with blood-red eyes.
The girl held Sadie dearly in her arms.
At that mont, Sadie, who had appeared unshaken, began to emit small cries.
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