The blade slashed through the neck of a zombie, blood pouring out of the stump. The head thudded away away and the body folded between the cars moments later, with Dion’s movement already having carried him away from it.
The second was already shambling toward him along the row with its jaw biting through the empty air.
Dion stepped around the front of a sedan and cut through its skull at the temple. The impact jolted up through his wrist, and the grooves of the vestige cut a little deeper where his grip shifted against the hide.
’All the hostility from this thing really needs to be dealt with!’ He thought with a deep irritation.
Two rows over, the heavy thud of Anton’s fighting carried through the level.
Meanwhile, Paris was protecting quite watchfully around Florence and Julian with Dion’s shotgun in his hands, and a thick knife at his waist—it was something that Dion passed over to him, from the things he had taken from the Blackout Armoury.
A sharp crack from near the stairwell door, with Madeline’s mama burst ability resounding, and blood spraying from two zombies that had suffered the impact.
Irvin was already at the ramp.
He stood in the thin wash of grey light that came down from the street with the machete in his hand.
One of the remaining ramp zombies lurched toward him and he cut it down in a single stroke, fast.
Eventually, they all finished their fighting, and the chronicle messages stacked in the back of Dion’s head as the last body went down.
{ You have felled a Level 9 Destitute Zombie, harvesting its essences. }
{ You have felled a Level 8 Destitute Zombie, harvesting its essences. }
{ You have felled a Level 6 Destitute Zombie, harvesting its essences. }
The longsword dissolved from his hand in flakes of red that swam back into his skin.
Irvin was wiping his machete on one of the bodies near the ramp. His eyes went to Dion’s hand, then back to the gradually disappearing blade.
’I wonder if any of them have gotten Vestiges besides us...’ Dion silently thought to himself.
In that moment, he remembered seeing how Irvin was holding daggers.
It was nothing more than a feeling from him, but after feeling what it was like to use a vestige, he was pretty sure the weapon must have been one.
The group gathered between the rows soon enough after that.
"We need to find two that are fuelled up enough and have the key inside them," Dion said. If it came down to it, then he would just do what he had done earlier.
They spread out after that, and naturally, most of the cars were locked.
Basil went deeper in, pulling handles, moving on when they refused to budge. the chances weren’t much high at all to find a car that had been left open by this time.
But breaking into the window of a car, with the state of things out there, made things that little more dangerous for them all, so they had to try this more measured approach first.
Some had been left open with the keys still inside, their owners long gone.
Dion walked past one of those and looked at the child seat in the back and the dark stain across the headrest briefly before leaving.
Basil tried an old sedan near the wall. The engine turned over once and died, and the groan of it rolling through the parking level made Florence pull Julian closer.
"Battery issue," Basil said, and pulled the key.
Paris found a dark four-door two rows in, with the key in the ignition, and at a half a tank. Anton checked it over.
Then Basil found the SUV, three rows further in, key in the centre console. When he turned the ignition, the engine caught on the second try and rumbled to life, and the sound of it filled the parking level.
Everyone went still.
"Turn it off," Dion said.
Basil killed the engine, and Dion stood listening to what might have heard them from the street above.
"We can’t drive the whole way," he said, looking at Anton. "Anything between here and the pharmacy that follows sound is going to be on us before we see it, and gnolls and the animals the rain has been changing out there are faster and smarter than zombies."
Anton’s jaw tensed briefly, and he nodded once. His eyes went from the SUV to the ramp, glancing outside into the rain.
"How far do you think we can take them?"
"Half the distance, maybe just a little more. Anything beyond that we have to make our way through on foot."
With that clarified, they loaded themselves up into the cars.
They loaded up. Dion took the wheel of the four-door with Paris beside him, Florence and Julian in the back. Anton took the SUV with Basil behind the wheel, Irvin and Madeline in the rear.
"Bro Dion, you know how to drive?" Jules asked.
"I was once a getaway driver for some very interesting people."
"Getaway driver? Hm... Like Cry for Speed?"
Dion laughed a little to himself at the mention of the game, sighing out his lingering indignance.
"Exactly like Cry for Speed."
The engine turned, with Julian’s eyes silently glimmering in the back seat beside Florence, and the car climbed the ramp into the rain, and through the water running down the windshield.
The street before was littered with its overturned cars and storefronts broken inward and the figures of zombies moving between them in the downpour.
Anton’s car had gone right ahead of them while their four-door threaded between overturned cars and debris that the rain had washed across the road.
"Mr. Dion, you can actually see in all of this??" Paris asked in exclamation.
Paris had to be leaning forward with his elbows on the dashboard, with his eyes squinted.
"Yeah, pretty much. It looks more like thin fog than anything to me at least."
Florence had glanced over when he had been asked the question, and Julian could see the surprise in both of their expressions.
’Can’t even properly use the wipers because they might just break off.’
The SUV’s headlights swung in the mirror.
They had covered maybe a third and a half of the distance. The engine noise was carrying in all directions, and every block they drove was another block of sound reaching things he could not see. The figures were getting thicker where the buildings grew closer together.
Dion brought the car against the curb. The SUV pulled in behind them. When both engines died, the rain sound returned in full force.
They got out into it, and Dion’s body was immediately drenched once more as the stench of rot, petrol, wet concrete all mixed with that of blood and rain brushed through him..
Florence pulled Julian’s hood up and her own, and Julian pressed himself against her side. They were wearing rain coats which had been secretly removed from Dion’s treasury. They were a part of the clothes he had taken from his apartment, so really unfortunately, he only had two.
Anton came around the SUV. "From here?"
"Yeah, and you three will need to keep a very close lookout. Don’t stray too far from me."
The group moved in a loose column through the centre of the road where the debris was thinnest. Dion was walking towards the front of the group with Anton, and Paris walked behind him, and Florence and Julian were between them and Basil. Irvin drifted towards their back with Madeline just ahead of them.
The rain was loud against the street and the hoods of the abandoned cars, loud enough that Dion had to actively filter it from the sounds underneath.
’At least the wind has eased up.’
They had made it three blocks when the first zombies they couldn’t avoid having spotted them early enough came running at them.
It came from an alley to their left, fast and low. Behind it, two more, then a third, and several more spilling from the same alley and spreading across the street.
"Left!" Anton called through the rain.
Paris stepped back and put himself between the nearest runner and Florence. The knfe in his hand came up and with how he had positioned it, the zombies face skewered itself with the knife.
His teeth clenched hard as he kicked against its chest.
His heart was hammering so hard he could feel it in his teeth. The thing on the ground was still twitching, a little and the second was already rushing.
’Move. Move!’
He stepped sideways.
Florence had already pulled Julian behind a car and Basil was there with the CZ raised but not firing, his eyes on the street beyond the runners.
Paris, in his dodge, made a cut for the zombies neck, but it was too shallow to kill it. Blood sprayed out and he swung once more, against the side of its skul. the knife slashed deeply into its skull and its falling body helped him remove his weapon.
The crack of Anton’s Berserk Impact resounded through the noise and the runner he fought had a hole blasted through its chest from hs fist, blood and gore bursting backward.
Then a very strange sound sound came from ahead of them.
It was a low, wet gurgle of a sound coming from between two cars that had been pushed nose-to-nose.
The thing that rose from between the cars was taller than the zombies and thinner, and its arms were... strange.
From the elbows down, they had lengthened and flattened, the bone having pushed through the skin and hardened along the edges.
Its head turned toward them, and its mouth opened, releasing that strange sound, as if metal was being bent, again.
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