Opening the door a crack, Mike peeked outside.

In the hall outside his door there were three zombies.

He recognized one of them as one guys from the apartment across the hall. The other two didn’t look familiar.

Not that it mattered much.

He’d seen Jeff everyday and still hadn’t hesitated in killing him.

The slight noise of the door opening drew the zombies attention and Mike quickly pulled it shut again.

Grabbing the couch, he moved it flush with the right side of the door-well, opposite the direction the door would swing into the room.

The move made a lot of noise as the couch’s shape made it hard for one person to move on their own.

From the other side of the door the groaning and wheezing he could hear was considerably louder, indicating it was closer too. The noise had definitely attracted the zombie’s attention.

Luckily the apartment doors were sturdy.

The door quality probably had something to do with the fact the building was coed. The school administration making sure the girls felt safe, while at the same time not wanting to be accused of any sort of double standards.

The usual behind the scenes political stuff.

Mike lived in the over flow student housing, across the street from the campus itself.

The apartments consisted of six plain looking floors, broken into three squat rectangular sections. Two big squares and a short rectangular connector between them. Female student housing made up the first three floors, with the top three floors being left for male students.

The system wasn’t perfect. Sometimes two guys would be assigned an apartment on a girls floor, or vice versa. But for the most part, the separation held true.

Standing with the couch between him and the door, Mike leaned out and flung the door open. Leaning back, he took the wooden bat into a two handed grip.

The zombies didn’t react to the door’s opening. The barrier prohibiting their progress suddenly disappeared, so they moved forward, stumbling into the couch as they tried to reach the meat buffet standing in front of them.

There was nothing like thought involved, only instinct.

Grouped together they made for an easy target, and Mike swung for the fences.

His first blow caught the lead zombie full on. A jarring sound rang out as the zombie’s head actually separated from its neck, and its body crumpled to the ground where it further tangled the uncoordinated feet of the remaining two zombies.

Mike didn’t so much as pause before he jammed the bat’s end into the eye socket of a second zombie. The crunch of brain and spattering of bloody grey matter that would have turned his stomach even a hour ago, actually made him smile.

The smile was short lived as his enthusiastic blow caused him to overextend himself.

Before he could fully recover his balance the last zombie battered against the couch, knocking it a fraction of a inch forward.

The shift was just enough to catch Mike on his shin.

Already off balance he tumbled forward, hitting the back of the couch and pitching it forward spilling him onto the other side.

Struck by the couch, the last zombie was knocked to the floor as well, right next to Mike’s face.

Having dropped the bat, no time to retrieve a golf club from the bag on his back, Mike didn’t panic.

Without mercy he Gregor Clegane’d the zombie’s skull, gripping it on both sides of the head as he pressed his thumbs into its eye sockets, squeezing down with all the strength he could bring to bear.

The squelching sound that rang out just before the zombie’s death was sickening even to the new Mike. He gagged, quickly rolling to his feet to put some distance between him and the bodies.

Wiping the blood from his eyes Mike looked for his discarded bat, finding it halfway into the kitchenette.

Picking it up he smiled grimly, it wasn’t a great weapon, but it was definitely better than touching them directly as he’d just discovered.

With the addition of the zombie corpses, his apartment no longer felt so welcoming, and so without much of a breather, Mike headed out into the hall.

A quick circut of the halls led him into two more groups of zombies, a duo and a quartet.

Backpedaling between swings and maintaining his calm, neither fight was much of a challenge. Soon the hallway for the entire floor was cleared.

The fifth zombie he killed dropped an item.

A small bottle of red liquid just sort of poof’d into existence next to its defeated body.

Without any sort of analysis skill Mike had no idea what it was. Considering it looked remarkably like a health potion from a role playing game though, he couldn’t resist stuffing it into a side pocket on the golf bag.

No other zombies dropped anything. But he did level up before he was done, a *ding*sounding out in his head to announce it.

In the emergency glass case next to the elevators Mike found a fireman’s ax(axe). Sliding the bat in with the clubs he traded up. Shortly there after he found a trashcan lid for a shield completing his ridiculously mismatched ensemble of the urban warrior.

Taking a breather on the bench in front of the elevators, Mike thought about his next course of action as he distributed his attribute points, and seeing it was an option, hiding his skills list.

Without much thought he put both points into Quickness. He gained a point in Strength and Body naturally thanks to his bloodline. And since he wasn’t sure if Spirit had any non-magic based applications, it seemed pointless to waste points in it before he had any magic.

Mike wanted to grind his level some more.

Zombies made an easy opponent.

At least they did when they couldn’t form into giant hordes or herds like they did in movies.

When Mike considered the「System」from a gaming point of view, it made sense the zombies were weak.

The first monsters in games, be they slimes, boars, rats, or wolves, were traditionally there to give new players a chance to learn the ropes, to build familiarity and confidence. They were harmless to anyone with a few levels under their belt.

Mike meant to see he had those levels as quickly as possible.

How to earn them was his only real question.

Systematically clearing floors, halls first, then room by room, seemed to be the most straightforward way.

But he couldn’t shake the worry that if he didn’t find other survivors soon, it would get a whole lot harder to find people he could trust to watch his back.

Years of useless zombie fiction knowledge had taught him several things about the end of the world.

First, surviving alone was a nightmare of never sleeping through the night and constant running. Second, the earlier in the story a character met another survivor, the less likely they would shank them and steal their food. And third, the real monsters were other humans, case in point the previously mentioned food shanker.

If he spent a lot of time grinding his level, then anyone who was just barely surviving through luck would likely end up dead.

It could be said that someone who couldn’t survive the first day of a zombie apovalypse was unlikely to be of much help anyway, but Mike was a heavy sleeper. Any person who could wake him up before he got bit by a random zombie would be worth their weight in gold as far as he was concerned.

Besides, there were lots of hot girls in the apartments. Hot girls who might just come to see the attractiveness of a manly barbarian warrior watching thier backs. It had been a long time since he’d had a girlfriend. Maybe the「System」wasn’t all downside.

If he could survive long enough, and grow strong enough, he might even make the dream of all perverted teenage boys the world over, into a reality, the mythical harem.

Standing and stretching Mike headed for the nearest apartment. Even if he didn’t clear them all right away, he could check to see if anyone living was holed up on his floor before moving on. He might prefer a companion with boobs, but that didn’t mean he wanted any surviving guys to die while he piddled around.

Passing the west stairwell door, something caught his eye. A note was taped to the rectangular glass window set in the heavy metal door. It read: “If you’re still alive, we’re gathering on the roof.”

Mike grunted.

Without much thought, he decided to follow directions.

Worse case scenario, everyone who’d gone to the roof was dead and he could just head back down, moving from floor to floor as he searched for any survivors who hadn’t seen the note while also grinding his level like he wanted to do in the first place.

 

Name: Mike Tanner – Race: Half Orc Occupation: None – Level: 2 Purse: 1080 Credits STR: 1.5 / QUI: 1.2 / BOD: 1.4 / SPI: 1.1 [AP: 0.0]

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Author : The Steve

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