DEAD CITY: A ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE

CHAPTER 4 ~ FIRST BLOOD, FIRST COMMAND

"Before we talk strategy," Riccardo said while holding up one finger, "I have a question about you guys."

Hayes stood at parade rest with his hands clasped firmly behind his back and his expression completely neutral while the nine other soldiers waited behind him with the same disciplined stillness. None of them seemed remotely bothered by the impossible fact that they had just materialized from a mobile phone application a mere twelve minutes ago.

Riccardo pulled up the troops tab on the holographic interface and read aloud that they were supposedly fully human and military-trained personnel integrated directly through the System deployment protocol before looking up to ask what being fully human actually meant in this bizarre context.

"It means exactly what the manual says, sir," Hayes replied smoothly.

"Do you need to eat?" Riccardo pressed.

"Yes, sir, we absolutely do."

"Do you also require sleep?"

"Yes, sir, we need sleep as well."

Riccardo paused and scrolled further down the manual entry as his expression shifted slightly, prompting him to cautiously ask if they could actually turn into monsters if one of them happened to get bitten by the infected.

"If that happens, then that specific unit immediately becomes a deadly liability and should be treated accordingly," Hayes explained, delivering this chilling information with the exact same mild tone someone might use to explain a mundane parking policy. "We are completely human, sir, which means we possess full biology and full vulnerability because the System does not make us immortal, but rather it simply makes us highly effective."

The soldier standing on the right side of Sergeant Hayes was a shorter and leaner man with sharp eyes and a printed name tape that read Ortiz, and he abruptly spoke up without being formally addressed. "Being human also means that we get quite hungry, sir, and I just want you to be fully aware that we have been officially deployed for approximately fourteen minutes without anybody offering us anything to eat."

"That is enough, Ortiz," Hayes warned sharply.

"I am merely establishing our baseline expectations, Sergeant," Ortiz replied without missing a beat.

Riccardo checked the field ration packs currently sitting in his digital inventory before pointing out that he only had five ration packs available to feed eleven grown adults.

"We can easily work with that ratio, sir, because we have certainly worked with much less in the past," Ortiz assured him confidently.

"I honestly bet you have," Riccardo muttered as he closed the troops tab and looked around his living room, specifically focusing his attention on the dark smear of dried blood ruining the kitchen tile that had actually been his neighbor, Amanda Cruz, a mere forty minutes ago. The gruesome sight of it sat heavily in his chest like a cold stone, so he immediately pointed at the mess and declared that his very first official order was for someone to clean up that blood using the paper towels located directly under the sink.

A profound beat of absolute silence fell heavily over the cramped apartment.

"Sir," Hayes began incredibly carefully, "we are a highly trained team of tactical combat infantry."

"And I am the designated commander, so I am directly telling you that I absolutely cannot look at that terrible mess while I attempt to plan a complex tactical operation," Riccardo countered while meeting the sergeant's steady gaze. "Therefore, I need you to ensure that the floor is cleaned immediately, Hayes."

Hayes silently looked down at the bloody floor, shifted his gaze back up to Riccardo, and finally called out to a soldier named Jenkins.

A soldier standing at the very back of the tight formation possessed a young and freckled face that truly belonged on a peaceful college campus, and he smartly stepped forward with absolutely zero complaint to confirm that he was actively on the job.

Riccardo nodded in satisfaction and turned his full attention back to the glowing interface. "That is good to hear, so now we can finally talk about the actual mission."

The missions tab had dynamically updated while he had been distracted by reading the dense survival manual. The original mission, instructing him to locate Lucia, was still running its ominous countdown timer at just under forty-seven hours, but directly beneath that objective sat a freshly generated new entry that was steadily blinking with a bright green active indicator.

[ ACTIVE MISSION: AREA SUPPRESSION STAGE 1 ] You must strategically eliminate exactly fifty infected entities within your current operational zone to receive a handsome reward of three hundred gold, one hundred and fifty experience points, and immediate access to the second tier of the weapon shop. Infected eliminated: 0/50.

"We apparently need to kill fifty of them," Riccardo stated flatly.

"That is a highly manageable number, sir," Hayes noted as he appeared directly at Riccardo's shoulder and studied the glowing interface with the matter-of-fact interest of a mundane manager simply reviewing a weekly work schedule. "We have eleven armed personnel tasked with clearing fifty targets inside a structured and controlled environment, so I need you to explain the precise layout of this building."

Riccardo quickly pulled up the overall building schematic from his own memory since he had lived in this exact complex for the past two years. "This is Avida Towers, which consists of thirty-two floors with my specific unit located on the fourteenth floor. There is a deep parking structure underground, commercial business units occupying the first and second floors, and residential apartments filling floors three through thirty-two." He thought critically about the layout for a moment before proposing a plan. "We should start from the very top and methodically work our way down because anything we successfully clear will remain cleared, primarily because the infected creatures do not seem to climb back up stairs very efficiently. I personally watched three of them try to clumsily navigate the stairwell landing outside earlier this morning, and two of them immediately fell."

"That essentially means they are not physically coordinated," Hayes concluded.

"The regular ones are definitely not coordinated," Riccardo agreed while privately remembering the massive sprinting monster he had seen earlier on Ayala Avenue, though he consciously chose to say absolutely nothing about it right now because he firmly believed in tackling one terrifying problem at a time. "We are going to officially split up into two distinct groups, where you will take five men, Hayes and I will take the remaining four men, along with Ortiz, simply because he seems like the type of person who will complain if he is not kept near me."

"That is a highly accurate assessment, sir," Ortiz playfully confirmed from the kitchen area where Jenkins was actively finishing cleaning the bloody floor.

"We are going to clear each floor incredibly fast, securely meet up at the central stairwell, and then safely move down to the next level together while exclusively utilizing headshots because I have watched more than enough zombie content in my entire life to know that crucial detail." He looked very seriously at the assembled group. "Ammunition is going to be a massive problem since we currently have extremely limited rounds and absolutely no resupply options available until I manage to earn enough gold to formally access the next tier of the weapon shop, which means every single shot truly counts. If you find yourself in a situation where you can safely use your combat knife instead of a firearm, then you must use the knife."

Hayes nodded slowly in understanding before asking about their specific rules of engagement.

"The infected monsters are our only approved targets, and any living civilians we happen to find must strictly stay exactly where they are because we are absolutely not acting as a dedicated rescue convoy right now, and we simply do not have the necessary capacity to protect them on the move. We will firmly instruct them to lock their doors tightly, stay completely quiet, and patiently wait for proper rescue." He checked the glowing interface one more time to ensure he was ready before asking the room if anyone had any final questions.

"I have just one question, sir," said a tall and broad-shouldered soldier named Brooks, who was currently carrying the heavy tactical shotgun from the beginner's pack that Riccardo had specifically assigned to her. "You have clearly never done anything like this before."

"What exactly do you mean by that?" he asked defensively.

"I mean that you have never commanded a military unit, actively cleared a hostile building, or truly done any of this tactical work before today," she clarified bluntly.

The cramped room instantly went quiet in a very specific and uncomfortable way while several of the trained soldiers very carefully avoided looking directly at each other.

Riccardo silently looked directly at Brooks for a long and tense moment before finally speaking. "Your assessment is completely correct because I was nothing more than a simple political science student yesterday, but today I violently killed my infected neighbor with a kitchen knife right before a bizarre mobile phone application magically gave me a personal army." He held her challenging gaze without blinking. "Do you actually have a productive point hidden in there somewhere, or are you simply choosing this specific moment to do a comprehensive roll call regarding all of my personal inadequacies?"

Brooks stubbornly held his steady gaze right back until the corner of her mouth finally moved in the absolute barest hint of a respectful smile. "No, sir, I do not have a point beyond simply establishing our operational baseline."

"Ortiz already took care of establishing that baseline," he replied dryly as he turned decisively toward the front door. "Let us move out."

Arriving at floor thirty-two proved to be an incredibly bad experience.

It was not necessarily catastrophically bad in the same way the absolute nightmare fuel on the street below had been, but it was still terrible in a contained and claustrophobic narrow-hallway sort of way that instantly made Riccardo's heart rate violently spike the exact moment Hayes aggressively shouldered the heavy stairwell door open and the horrific smell forcefully hit their senses. The thick air smelled strongly of metallic blood and sickening rot mixed with a bizarre chemical undertone that strangely resembled the sharp scent of ozone.

There were exactly six infected entities roaming freely on floor thirty-two, and it was tragically obvious from their ruined clothing that they were all former residents of the building. The horrific group consisted of someone's retired father wearing a bloody bathrobe, two young urban professionals still dressed in their torn morning commute outfits, and a very small child whom Riccardo aggressively forced himself not to look at directly simply because he desperately needed to stay mentally functional for the rest of the mission.

The highly trained team led by Hayes moved exactly like smooth water fluidly flowing straight through the narrow hallway in a beautifully clean, heavily practiced, and incredibly efficient manner. They systematically executed a flawless double-tap to the head of each monster before seamlessly stepping right over the falling bodies to instantly acquire their next viable target. The infected creatures did not actually scream, but rather they produced that terrible vibrating frequency sound that echoed deep within human bones. Fortunately, these monsters were incredibly slow up here since they were very recent turns, and the professional System soldiers absolutely did not hesitate to fire clumsily Riccardo's trembling hands were currently hesitating around the grip of his M9 pistol.

He forcefully made himself squeeze the trigger to fire on the third approaching monster, but he completely missed the required headshot and only caught the creature violently in the shoulder before quickly firing again to finish the job, which immediately prompted the digital interface to emit a cheerful ding.

+6 XP earned, and the current tally for infected eliminated is 3/50.

"You really need to aim for headshots, sir," Ortiz advised from right beside him in a tone that was surprisingly not unkind. "The sloppy body shots will honestly just make the creatures much more angry."

"I am completely aware of that fact, Ortiz," he replied through gritted teeth.

"I am just trying to help," the soldier started to say.

"I said that I am completely aware," Riccardo firmly interrupted him.

The entire thirty-second floor was completely cleared in exactly four minutes, and the tactical squad smoothly moved right down to floor thirty-one.

Floor thirty-one featured a heavily locked door with an older and clearly terrified man's voice echoing from directly behind the wood, and the frightened resident immediately started shouting the moment he heard heavy combat boots loudly stomping through the hallway.

"Who exactly is out there right now, because I am warning you that I have a weapon and I swear to God that I will absolutely use it," the panicked man threatened blindly.

"Sir, please calm down," Riccardo commanded as he knocked twice on the heavy door while carefully standing far to the side of the frame out of newly acquired defensive habit. "My name is Riccardo Gonzales from unit 1402, and my team is currently in the process of clearing this entire building, so I need you to tell me if you have been bitten."

A long pause followed before the man finally answered, "No, I am completely fine, and my wife and I safely locked ourselves inside this apartment at six o'clock this morning, but we desperately need to know exactly what is happening out there."

"The shortest and most honest version of the current situation is that you need to stay exactly where you are and ensure that the lock remains securely engaged at all times. Do not open the door for absolutely anything that does not clearly knock like a normal human being, and we will make sure to send someone back for you just as soon as we have this entire building properly secured." He quickly glanced down at the glowing interface to note that they had currently eliminated eleven out of their fifty targets. "Can you promise me that you will safely do that?"

"Exactly how long is that going to take?" the man asked nervously.

"I honestly do not know the answer to that question just yet, but I can confidently promise you that you are significantly safer inside that locked apartment than you would ever be out here in the hallway."

There was another incredibly long pause before the man finally relented. "Okay, we will stay put and wait for you, but we really need to know if the building is being officially evacuated and if there is an actual rescue plan in place."

Riccardo helplessly looked over at Sergeant Hayes, but the seasoned soldier merely looked right back at him with the guarded expression of a man who had definitively learned the hard way to never answer that specific category of desperate question.

"We are currently working on developing a comprehensive plan, sir, so please just stay safely inside your unit," Riccardo offered vaguely as he moved efficiently over to the very next apartment door.

By the time the squad finally reached floor twenty-nine, Riccardo had miraculously completely stopped flinching at the horrific violence unfolding around him.

He was certainly not proud of that specific psychological development, but he pragmatically chose to file the disturbing realization away right alongside a rapidly growing list of terrible things that he would force himself to process at a much later date. He promised himself that he would properly deal with his trauma only when Lucia was finally safe and when there was actually a guaranteed future available in which to process those complicated feelings. For the time being, the floating interface was accurately tracking their progress at forty-seven eliminated targets, his glowing experience bar was already three-quarters of the way full toward reaching level two, and his bloody hands had wonderfully stopped shaking around the heavy pistol grip sometime around clearing floor thirty.

The final three required targets were unfortunately tightly clustered together at the far end of the twenty-ninth floor corridor. The deadly trio consisted of two standard infected creatures and one distinct monster that moved slightly faster than the others, which strongly indicated that it was a much fresher turn that was perhaps only an hour old and still actively retaining some basic human muscle memory.

Brooks decisively put the significantly faster monster permanently down with a deafening blast from her shotgun before the creature had even fully registered their sudden presence in the hallway, while Hayes and Ortiz simultaneously took out the remaining two targets in the same practiced breath.

The digital interface instantly chimed with a victorious tone.

MISSION COMPLETE: AREA SUPPRESSION STAGE 1. You have successfully eliminated 50/50 infected targets and successfully claimed the rewards of 300 Gold and 150 XP.

LEVEL UP SECURED: THE HOST IS NOW LEVEL 2. You currently have two unspent stat points available, and you have officially unlocked access to the second tier of the weapon shop.

New Skill Unlocked: TACTICAL AWARENESS Level 1. This new ability provides a fifteen percent increase to peripheral threat detection and significantly reduces the overall probability of suffering a successful ambush.

Riccardo stood silently in the bloody hallway of the twenty-ninth floor with his heavy pistol resting at his side and his eleven loyal soldiers standing guard completely around him. He noted with profound relief that the massive building was now at least seventeen floors quieter than it had been an hour ago as he carefully read the glowing notification twice just to ensure he was not hallucinating the text.

"We just successfully leveled up," he announced quietly.

"Did we actually achieve a level up, sir?" Ortiz asked curiously.

"I technically leveled up, which means the rest of you are all unfortunately still exactly whatever level you were before," he clarified dryly. He immediately navigated over to the newly unlocked second tier of the weapon shop with the intense focus of a desperate man who had just miraculously discovered that the literal apocalypse featured a video game progression system that he fully intended to ruthlessly exploit. "Okay, we have freshly acquired gold and a brand new shop tier available, so what exactly do we actually need to purchase before we attempt to cross an entire zombie-filled metropolitan city to find my sister?"

"We definitely need ammunition," Hayes answered immediately without any hesitation.

"We actually need vastly more ammunition than that," Brooks added seriously.

"Acquiring a reliable vehicle would be absolutely ideal," chimed in a quiet soldier named Wade, who had not spoken a single word for the past four floors and had apparently saved all of his verbal energy exclusively for this specific moment. "Sir, I say this with all due respect, but we are absolutely not walking all the way to Quezon City on foot."

Riccardo silently looked up at his digital gold counter, glanced back down at the glowing shop interface, and finally looked around at his eleven heavily armed soldiers standing vigilantly in the freshly cleared hallway while the ruined city continued violently ending right outside the walls.

"Wade," he said with a decisive nod of his head, "I completely and wholeheartedly agree with that assessment."

He confidently opened the digital shop interface and immediately started spending his hard-earned gold.