DEAD CITY: A ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE

CHAPTER 5 ~ WHEELS OF FORTUNE

"Hold up," Riccardo said, stopping on the landing between floors twenty-eight and twenty-seven.

The column of soldiers behind him stopped with the immediate, silent precision that he was still not entirely used to. Hayes appeared at his shoulder without being summoned, which was either impressive or mildly terrifying depending on the hour.

"Sir?"

"There is a tab I have not opened yet," Riccardo noted as he pulled up the interface and scrolled past the stats, skills, inventory, and mission tabs to finally reach a section he had clocked earlier but had not yet found the time to examine. The tab was labeled 'Zombie Encounters', so he confidently tapped it.

The tab opened into what could only be described as a comprehensive bestiary. It served as a catalogued archive of every infected variant the System had on record, completely organized by threat tier and complete with behavioral notes, physical descriptions, and specific engagement recommendations. At the top of the active list sat an entry highlighted in green to indicate the current operational threat, which was formally labeled as a Stage 1 Standard Infected Walker.

He read it aloud for Hayes' benefit.

"The Walker is the most common variant found in the early outbreak stages, and the manual specifically warns not to mistake them for slow-moving cinematic zombies because they operate at speeds comparable to a sprinting human while possessing strength approximately forty percent above the human baseline. The stated cause of this enhanced speed is mana contamination affecting their fast-twitch muscle fibers. Their primary weak point is cranial destruction, meaning that body shots will only slow them down while headshots will permanently stop them. The entry concludes by stating that we can either remember this crucial fact or not, and the choice is entirely ours."

"Those are incredibly encouraging footnotes," Hayes remarked dryly.

"The entire system writes exactly like an aggressive drill sergeant who recently failed out of anger management therapy," Riccardo observed as he scrolled further down the page. Below the Walker designation sat several greyed-out entries for terrifying variants he had not encountered yet, which included the Runner, the Bloater, the Screamer, and the Apex. At the very bottom of the list was a fully blacked-out entry with absolutely no name attached to it, featuring only a severe warning icon and a text block stating that the data remained locked due to insufficient host levels. He quickly closed the tab before he could think too hard about that horrifying prospect. "Okay, there is also this other section."

He opened a tab labeled as the Basic Survival Guide.

It was exactly what it sounded like because it provided a clean, practical, and offline-accessible guide covering essential topics such as water sourcing, food rationing, wound treatment, fortification techniques, and communication protocols. It required absolutely no internet connection to function, which strongly implied that the System had intelligently anticipated that the apocalypse would naturally take the global Wi-Fi network down with it.

"That is quite handy," Ortiz said while reading directly over his shoulder.

"You need to respect my personal space, Ortiz," Riccardo warned him.

"The hallway is incredibly narrow, sir," Ortiz replied defensively.

Riccardo closed the survival guide and nodded firmly down the stairwell. "Keep moving."

Clearing floors twenty-seven through fifteen progressed significantly faster than the upper levels because the System's tactical awareness skill was already paying massive dividends. The ability provided a faint highlighting around the very edges of his vision that functioned exactly like a thermal heat signature, pulsing a bright amber color wherever an infected creature was actively lurking behind a closed door or hiding around a blind corner. 

The predictive system was certainly not perfect because it only gave him perhaps two brief seconds of advance warning before an encounter. However, those two seconds often represented the crucial difference between executing a beautifully controlled shot and descending into a desperate scramble for survival, so he was rapidly learning to completely trust the visual feedback.

The civilians were the complicated part of the mission.

Floor twenty-two housed a terrified family of four securely barricaded inside a corner unit. The trapped group consisted of a father, a mother, and two children under the age of ten. They obviously heard the heavy combat boots stomping in the hallway, which prompted the father to immediately start shouting increasingly creative threats right through the heavy wooden door. However, those aggressive threats abruptly stopped the moment Riccardo calmly listed his own residential unit number, his floor, his full name, and the highly relevant fact that he currently commanded eleven heavily armed soldiers directly outside their apartment.

"Are you actually with the military?" the shocked father asked.

"We are military adjacent," Riccardo clarified simply. "Sir, I desperately need you to listen to me very carefully right now. You must stay inside your unit while keeping both the deadbolt and the security chain firmly engaged at all times. You should push your absolute heaviest furniture directly against the door to barricade it, and you must absolutely not open it for anything that cannot successfully tell you the current president's name."

"How long are we supposed to wait?" the man pleaded.

The two frightened kids were clearly audible right through the door, with one of them crying very softly while the other continuously asked their mother repetitive and quiet questions. The mother was desperately trying to answer those questions in a strained voice that was stretched incredibly thin with the massive effort required to sound reassuring and calm.

Riccardo stared silently at the floor for one agonizing second before replying. "I am actively working on solving that exact problem right now, so please just stay put."

He subsequently found three more surviving civilians trapped on floor eighteen and two more on floor sixteen. He also encountered a fiercely independent retired woman on floor fifteen who had apparently been wide awake since four o'clock in the morning and had already successfully barricaded her door with what sounded like an entire household furniture collection. She confidently informed Riccardo right through the solid door that she possessed forty days' worth of canned goods alongside a fully functioning ham radio, and she emphatically declared that she had absolutely no intention of going anywhere anytime soon, thank you very much.

"That is absolutely outstanding, ma'am," Riccardo praised her. "Please carry on."

"Young man," she commanded strictly, "I need you to kill every single one of those terrible things."

"We are definitely working on it," he promised.

The System's integrated health bar feature revealed itself fully around floor twelve when Brooks took a dangerous glancing hit from a walker that had aggressively launched itself around a tight corner much faster than the tactical awareness skill could properly catch it. A glowing red digital bar immediately appeared directly above her head within the interface display. The graphic clearly labeled her current status as having eighty-seven out of one hundred hit points, and the red bar visibly dropped in real time before finally stabilizing just as she put the creature down and her combat adrenaline metabolized.

"Brooks," Riccardo called out as he quickly pulled a basic medical kit straight out of his digital inventory.

"I am completely fine, sir," she insisted quickly.

"You literally have a visible health bar floating over your head and I just watched it go down, so please just take the medical kit."

She looked at him in total bewilderment. "I have a what floating over my head?"

"I can clearly see digital health bars hovering above all of your heads directly through my System interface exactly like a video game," he explained as he firmly handed her the plastic kit. "Please do not read too much into the existential implications of that fact, and just quickly patch up your injured arm."

"Sir," Wade began incredibly slowly, "are you genuinely telling us that you can see our actual health bars?"

"Yes, I can."

"And you are currently using that highly specific information to do what exactly?" Wade pressed.

"I am using it to actively keep you all alive, Wade, because that is generally my primary goal here." Riccardo then checked the digital ammo counter linked to his pistol and realized he had only two magazines remaining. 

He immediately opened the shop interface, navigated over to the ammunition tab, and swiftly spent eighty gold coins to purchase four additional magazines for the M9 alongside two heavy boxes of twelve-gauge shells specifically for Brooks. 

The newly purchased items miraculously materialized directly inside their designated tactical vest pockets without any delay. "These ammunition costs are going to compound incredibly fast as our combat unit inevitably grows," he noted seriously to Hayes. "I am definitely going to need to establish a highly sustainable income stream very soon."

Hayes simply stared back at him in disbelief. "You want to establish a sustainable income stream during the apocalypse."

"I need to secure a steady flow of gold generated from completing missions and securing enemy kills, which ultimately means I really need to be much smarter about how I am spending it." He performed some quick mental arithmetic against the shop's established price list to formulate a plan. "That specific math dictates that before we actually hit the ground floor lobby, I am buying significantly more troops because that lobby is going to be a massive problem."

He decisively spent six hundred gold coins to purchase eight brand new tactical units. This fresh reinforcement consisted of five dedicated riflemen and three heavy machine gunners, and he immediately deployed all of them directly onto the securely cleared landing of floor twelve. They materialized with the exact same instant solidity as the first ten soldiers had, appearing fully dressed in their dark tactical gear and already standing at perfect military attention.

"Alright," Riccardo announced while facing the impressive force of nineteen heavily armed soldiers crowded onto a single stairwell landing. "You eight recruits are brand new to the team, so I will be incredibly brief with your orientation. I am your designated commander, Hayes is your commanding sergeant, Ortiz will inevitably talk far too much, and Brooks will absolutely carry that tactical shotgun better than any of the rest of you ever could. Does anyone have any questions?"

The squad responded with absolute silence.

"That is good to hear, so let us assign your combat codenames." He pointed rapidly down the freshly materialized line of troops. "The new rifle team will be designated as Eagle One through Five, and the new machine gun team will be designated as Hammer One through Three." He then looked over at his sergeant for confirmation. "Does that specific structure work properly from a tactical perspective, Hayes?"

"That structure works perfectly fine, sir," Hayes confirmed.

"That is great news, so Eagle team will constantly move in a forward spread formation while Hammer team securely anchors themselves at a safe distance to provide heavy range support, and the original infantry unit will carefully cover all of our vulnerable flanks." He glanced back at the glowing interface where the previous mission counter proudly sat at fifty out of fifty targets eliminated to indicate that the first stage was entirely complete. Right below that success, a brand new mission had automatically populated on the screen.

[ ACTIVE MISSION: LOBBY SUPPRESSION ] You must fully clear the building's primary entry point. Successful completion will reward you with five hundred gold, two hundred experience points, and immediate access to the unlocked vehicle shop. Warning: A significantly high infected concentration has been detected in this zone with an estimated count of between eighty and one hundred and twenty active targets.

"There are apparently between eighty and a hundred and twenty of them waiting for us down there," Riccardo read aloud in dismay.

"That is an awful lot of heads to shoot, sir," Ortiz pointed out unhelpfully.

"Yes, Ortiz, it certainly is," he agreed dryly. He intently studied the glowing building schematic to carefully plan their entry angles and secure viable fallback positions. The tactical awareness skill was currently providing a very faint visual overlay of dangerous heat signatures that were clustered incredibly thick around the entire lobby level. "Hammer team will immediately anchor themselves directly at the base of the stairs while Eagle team aggressively pushes out to the left and right in order to completely split the enemy's attention. The original tactical unit will closely follow me straight through the center of the room. We must keep constantly moving, we must keep continuously shooting, and absolutely everyone must aim exclusively for the head."

"What exactly happens if we run completely out of ammunition down there?" Wade asked nervously.

"Then you will have to knife them."

"There are potentially a hundred and twenty angry monsters down there, sir," Wade reminded him.

"Then you will simply have to knife them incredibly efficiently, Wade, so does anyone have any other pressing questions?" Silence met his inquiry. "Good, then let us move out."

The lobby was an absolute waking nightmare currently dressed up in pristine marble flooring and decorative potted plants.

They actively heard the terrible threat long before they ever reached the ground floor. The horrific noise was that same layered vibrating frequency sound, but this time dozens of restless walkers were producing it completely simultaneously. It created an intense wall of physical vibration that Riccardo literally felt echoing deep inside his sternum before the heavy stairwell door was even opened. 

When Hayes finally cracked the heavy door just enough for them to cautiously look through the gap, they saw that the infected creatures were packed tightly shoulder to shoulder in the massive space stretching between the polished reception desk and the steel elevator banks. The monsters were currently milling around in the highly specific and entirely directionless manner of dangerous predators that were simply waiting for an engaging stimulus.

Riccardo and his nineteen armed soldiers immediately provided them with exactly that violent stimulus.

The very first thirty seconds of the engagement were beautifully controlled. Hammer team ruthlessly opened fire right from the safety of the stairwell threshold, and their heavy machine guns actively churned through the dense front ranks of the horde with absolutely brutal efficiency. 

Furthermore, the walkers that went down permanently stayed down because Eagle team was professionally making sure every single one of their precise shots actually counted. The digital interface was rapidly tracking their verified kills in real time as the counter aggressively jumped from sixty-seven to seventy-nine and then all the way up to eighty-eight eliminated targets. 

His digital gold counter was climbing rapidly alongside his rapidly moving experience bar, and for approximately forty-five blissful seconds Riccardo actually allowed himself to foolishly believe that this massive operation was going to be an entirely clean victory.

That hope died the moment the heavy side doors unexpectedly burst wide open.

Hundreds of street-level walkers that had been actively drawn by the deafening sounds of continuous gunfire suddenly came violently flooding in through the shattered glass entrances of the commercial units located on both sides of the lobby at the exact same time. It was not merely dozens of new monsters entering the fray, but rather a massive and overwhelming physical wave of infected bodies that completely tripled the room's total enemy count in under ten terrifying seconds. This sudden influx immediately compressed Hammer team's previously clear firing lanes into absolute and terrifying chaos.

"Eagle Three is currently down on the floor!" one of the soldiers desperately shouted over the deafening gunfire.

"I see exactly what happened," Riccardo yelled as he frantically checked the glowing interface to verify the damage. The graphic indicated that Eagle Three currently had zero hit points out of a hundred and was listed in critical condition, meaning the soldier was not entirely dead just yet but had simply dropped heavily behind the polished wood of the reception desk. "Hayes, you need to pull Eagle Three back to safety right now."

"My ammunition is running incredibly low, sir," Brooks warned him calmly while she continued firing her heavy weapon steadily right beside him. "I only have exactly three shotgun shells remaining."

"What is your status, Ortiz?" he demanded.

"I am down to exactly two magazines, sir, so right after I spend this ammunition we are going to be knifing our way out of here."

The overcrowded lobby was rapidly becoming a catastrophic problem. Riccardo continuously fired his weapon, swiftly reloaded a fresh magazine, fired into the crowd again, and frantically did the terrible math in his head simultaneously. He currently had nineteen mortal soldiers armed with finite amounts of ammunition facing off against what appeared to be an entirely infinite supply of zombies pouring into a massive lobby that was violently filling up significantly faster than they could possibly clear it.

Amidst the absolute chaos, his panicked eyes desperately landed on a specific tab he had briefly seen within the main interface earlier but had not yet bothered to open.

[ FORTUNE WHEEL: DAILY ROTATION ] You currently have exactly one free spin available to use.

"Oh wow," he muttered in sudden realization. "I completely forgot that this specific mechanic actually exists."

"What mechanic, sir?" Hayes yelled as he efficiently put down a lunging walker using his heavy sidearm.

"I just need you to cover me for exactly five seconds," Riccardo ordered as he quickly stepped back two tactical paces. He fully pulled up the digital interface with the intense and absurdly focused concentration of a desperate man attempting to do his online banking right in the middle of a screaming fire alarm, and he forcefully tapped the Fortune Wheel icon.

The digital wheel immediately spun into action. It genuinely spun like a colorful carnival wheel that had been bizarrely rendered using incredibly clean and sterile military interface graphics. The ticker rapidly clicked past various prize segments including a hundred gold coins, a basic ammo pack, a rare troop token, five hundred gold coins, and a valuable medical cache before the rotation finally started slowing down until it eventually ticked to a complete stop.

🎰 JACKPOT SECURED: YOU HAVE WON FIVE MILLION GOLD COINS 🎰

The digital interface practically detonated with cheerful and flashing notification sound effects that were wildly and hilariously inappropriate for the horrific slaughter currently taking place in the bloody lobby.

Riccardo simply stood there in complete shock and stared blankly at his updated digital gold counter, which now proudly displayed a ridiculous balance of exactly five million and eight hundred and forty-seven shiny coins.

"Well, how about that," he whispered.

"Sir," Hayes screamed as he aggressively fired his weapon right past Riccardo's shoulder to drop another monster, "whatever amazing thing you just managed to do, can we please wait to properly celebrate it until after we execute our tactical retreat?"

"You are absolutely right about executing a tactical retreat right now," Riccardo agreed while his fingers were already flying wildly through the digital shop interface. 

He was aggressively bulk-purchasing massive amounts of heavy ammunition with the incredibly frantic and manic energy of a desperate person who had just literally won the lottery and immediately needed to spend every single dime of it just to stay alive. 

Countless heavy ammo packs miraculously materialized across the entire team's vest pockets completely simultaneously. "Listen up, all units, your combat resupply is officially complete, but we are absolutely not trying to hold this overrun lobby anymore."

He frantically checked the available escape routes on the glowing building schematic. "There is a viable emergency exit located in the northeast corner of this room, and we are going to use it to fall all the way back to the penthouse level. It is currently the largest open clear space remaining in this entire building, it is highly defensible, and it is exactly where we are going to safely plan our next major move. Hammer team will actively provide heavy covering fire while absolutely everyone else moves out on my direct signal."

"Are we seriously retreating all the way back up to the penthouse, sir?" Wade asked in exhaustion.

"It offers a massive floor plan, a highly defensible tactical position, and plenty of breathing room to house this entire combat unit," Riccardo rapidly justified the plan as he fired his weapon twice, smoothly reloaded his gun using a freshly purchased magazine, and looked defiantly at his nineteen exhausted soldiers. "I am open to alternative suggestions unless someone here happens to have a vastly better option available."

Nobody in the squad offered a better plan.

"Then aim for that northeast exit and move out right now."

The entire team immediately moved out.