Chương 7: Desperate Pleas

Another guy also responded to the desperate survivor. [Yo, I'm speaking from an ORV, a fully armored one. I can come and lure the zombies away for you, I have a machine gun too. Except I'd require 9 Gold pieces for my services or a good Mod card.] [Seriously guys, how am I gonna find such an amount? Ten gold is a lot, I've only got a Glock 21. I've barely killed a single zombie. After food costs I only have two gold. Come on guys, help me out here! Please! Oh shit, my windshield just cracked. Come on guys, I'm sending my coordinates, please help out! I'll pay the favor back in future!] The radios of everyone else immediately went quiet, while Nyx received the guy's coordinates. He was only a kilometer to his left towards the Stardew Mountain foothills. Nyx thought over the guy's situation. It was humane and perfectly moral to go help him out of his predicament.

But this was no game either; if he went in willy-nilly, and even so much as drew the zombies away, he was certain to be tailed by that horde all night. The few zombies he'd stumbled onto while escaping the initial spot were still following him. Although he was running his bike at only 70 km/h to keep it from hitting the zombies ahead too hard and damaging itself, he could speed up and leave the ones behind him in the dust. But even getting into the Stardew Mountains was like inviting trouble.

He understood why those guys had asked for exorbitant prices to rescue him, and why only those with machine guns had responded. The Stardew Mountains were a zombie-infested death zone even during the day, let alone at night. If he went in and got surrounded from front to back, his bike would be kept from reaching top speed as more and more zombies piled in from all sides. Thinking it over a bit more, Nyx came up with one plausible solution. And it wasn't a smart one.

He reconnected with the guy through the radio again. [Hey, what's your name? I can come help you, but do you have enough bullets?] [Sir! Thank you, sir, for even considering the request! My name's Syrin, and yes, I have approximately two thousand bullets, all universal! I'd have sold them to buy myself a machine gun, but they were so expensive that even selling all of them wouldn't cover it. That's why I came here, to kill some zombies and gather loot for the purchase, and some more bullets. Except… except I saw a certain special thing that stopped me from leaving the mountain foothills before nightfall. If you help me, I'll tell you its location too!] Is he resorting to lying now? He heard gunfire, accompanied by the sound of shattering window glass. The guy was probably out there fending off zombies forcing their way through the broken windshield. [Well, whatever, I'm coming to your location. I'll draw them away from you, but in exchange, give me one gold and half your bullets. I'll be there within ten minutes. Once I fire a shot at your vehicle's rear, that'll be the signal for you to transfer the bullets over (Exchange).] [Ok, sir! Please come quickly! Please!] The voice sounded terribly young. Like fifteen or something. He didn't really get it—did whoever ran this game-like ordeal just scoop up anyone from Earth, regardless of age or physical ability? He shook his head and clicked open the [Exchange].

There he found the price of Universal Bullets soaring ever higher, with machine guns going for as much as 50 gold. His goal, though, was something else. He sifted through the flood of materials—glass panels, iron panels, and so on—bundled in packages of 100+ for as little as two gold each. There were also Modification Cards, not the kind that granted infinite bullets, silencers, or ballistic correction, but ones like super sharpening or light-weighting for melee weapons.

He specifically picked out one going for a horrendously low price—a Barrel Extender. It was listed at only two gold, but after some negotiating, he got it for one gold, giving the seller fifty universal bullets as an extra to make up. Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site. After buying the card, he immediately went to apply it, and a familiar notice popped up. [Once applied, a Modification Card's effect cannot be removed.] He nodded and applied it anyway.

Next, he mounted his bike and rode it straight toward the guy's location. Within a few minutes, he began to hear the guy's gunshots. They grew closer to the mound he'd previously scouted the Humvee from—so it seemed he'd drawn all the zombies from the area toward himself. Earlier, the guy with the Humvee cleared out a bunch of them from that section. That means it's just the last few stragglers attacking now.

He drove the vehicle up the slope and onto the mound, cleared out the remaining zombies around it with his Glock, then walked over to the cliffside. He retrieved his goggles and switched on the night vision. Zooming in, he soon spotted the RV, its windshield and side windows shattered, several dead zombies draped across it, and more still scrambling to climb in. The guy was still inside, keeping up suppressive fire against the ones trying to get through.

The moonlight overhead dimmed briefly, disrupting his vision slightly. He bumped the night vision up a notch along with the illuminator, and everything sharpened again. Aiming his gun barrel at the zombies below, he fired a single shot at one's head, immediately following up with a second, just in case the first missed. The first bullet cut through the darkness and thin fog, driving straight into the collarbone of a zombie clawing over the broken windshield.

It twitched to react just as the second bullet slammed into its skull, knocking the body over and splattering brain matter everywhere.

"Headshot!" he cheered. He shouldered the gun and moved over to his vehicle's radio. [Hey, Syrin, send over the ammo. My username on the Exchange is @BlackTail.] [Yes, sir, doing it now! BlackTail, huh.] Within seconds, the person had mailed him—listing the items on their private marketplace and granting him free access. He collected them; they'd put up roughly a thousand bullets. Taking them, he aimed his barrel at the area around the windshield.

With his extended barrel, even his assault rifle could reach shockingly far. Normally, recoil would've made any real aiming pointless—except his gun had no recoil at all. So the shots he fired came out clean and accurate. First, he sprayed rounds around the front of the vehicle, clearing out the large horde gathered there.

The rifle spat out tens of bullets per second as muzzle flashes lit up the deep night like a fireworks show, tearing, cracking, and punching through anything and everything that made up the zombies. The death notifications chimed like jingling gold as he kept up the assault. Within a few breaths, the ground around the vehicle was stained black with coagulated blood, shattered bone, and rotten husks. Nyx finally eased off the trigger as the person inside the vehicle kicked the last of the zombies out.

The figure was short, lithe, with black hair—and a set of full… chest? Nyx blinked, "Wait, she's a girl? I could've sworn her voice sounded pretty boyish…" His radio crackled again in the middle of his confusion. [Thanks a lot, sir savior! To think you'd take a thousand of my bullets as payment and still burn through most of them saving me… really, thank you! I won't forget this favor.] At her words, he double-checked his inventory. Sure enough, he had only about 1. 3k Universal Bullets left.

And glancing at his gold total—a whole seven pieces—Nyx finally grasped just how many zombies he'd mowed down. Taking a deep, renewed breath, he surveyed the foothills of the Stardew Mountains, littered with maple trees and dried-out, long yellow grass. Across the plains, he could make out headlights from several vehicles moving along, trailed by silhouettes of ragged, withered, red-eyed figures close behind. Gunfire from the vehicles picked off some of the pursuers, letting the vehicles pull ahead.

But he also noticed a distinct formation that hadn't been there before.

"The fog was thin, barely noticeable earlier, and now within just an hour it's thickened so much…" He walked back to his Armored Racer, mounted it, and reconnected with Syrin. [Hey, Syrin.] [Yes, sir?!] [Drop the formalities. From up here on the mound, I can see strange fog thickening more and more over the plains. It's especially dense around the open central areas. Do yourself a favor and stick close to the mountain's edge.] [What about you, sir BlackTail?] [It's Nyx. I'm heading out now, got some things to take care of.] [Back to the plains, sir?] [Yeah. I've got your payment, so you don't need to stick around anymore. Clear out your undercarriage while I keep watch, and once you're done, I'll head off.] [Ok, thanks a lot, sir!] Nyx stayed put, keeping up his vigilance. A few zombies still seemed to emerge from the thick fog out of nowhere, as if spawning straight from it. He made sure to warn Syrin about this new anomaly.

Once she'd finished clearing her RV's undercarriage, she boarded it. Nyx restarted his own vehicle, ready to leave, when another message came through on the radio. [Also, sir, I wasn't lying out of desperation. There really is a treasure chest near the top of the Stardew Mountains. I'd planned on grabbing it myself, but since you've so graciously helped me, you can go ahead and take it as thanks.]"Wait, seriously?"