AN: I have been ill for a few days. Not to the extent of throwing up or anything, but severe headaches and feelings of weakness. Every time I tried to write anything I felt like my vision was swimming.

Anyway, that's why I haven't updated anything in a couple of days. Also, we have 2-3 more chapters left in this volume. More likely, 2 chapters. Once we reach the end, as I have said in other places, this story will go on a month long hiatus for clean up. This will allow me to make sure I am on track for the next volume, and also allow me to work on the other stories I have going. I plan to do that for everything I write, from here on out. :)

Chapter 14: Prepare for Total Domination

Survival was a task given to all creatures that walked upon the earth. From the moment that they were born, until the time of their last fleeting thought, living was their deepest and most overwhelming desire. It was a desire that the undead lacked.

The thunderous sound of gunfire echoed through the area as Scott brought down another zombie. They trickled in a few at the time, but they came frequently enough that he was forced to stop his attempt to get his truck back on the road to deal with them.

"Dammit." said Scott before he wiped sweat away from his forehead. He had nothing to jack up the truck, so he was forced to use his increased strength to lift up the side of the vehicle for the extended period necessary to reattach the wheel that had come free.

It was a pure stroke of luck that the wheel studs had not broken when the wheel fell off. The bastard that had called the spider creatures had somehow had the time to remove the lug nuts and toss them into a pile. The moment the truck had started forward his right front tire had rolled off. He could only hope that the studs had not been stressed to the point that they broke on him before he got the group to the hub.

Fixing the truck had taken far longer than he would have liked. He had been forced to find a lug wrench and two matching lug nuts since he could not find all of the originals. He did not see anything in the area that was solid enough to hold the truck up, and none of the nearby cars had a jack he could use.

Scott put his gun away then moved back to the truck. He lifted the side up and then did his best to make certain that the wheel was flush and aligned properly once more. "Three to go." he muttered before he began to tighten the remaining lug nuts.

A low moan drew his attention once more as he reached the final nut. He poked his head around the corner of the truck and tried his best not to laugh. Really, nothing about the situation should be humorous. A little old lady staggered toward him. She wore a gore encrusted sundress, and walked using a battered walker. Upon further inspection she showed no clear sign of having any teeth in her mouth.

He laid zombie grandma to rest with a sad smile and a plasma round to the skull. Zombie grandma fell sideways without complaint. Scott gazed down at the ruination of another life then lowered his head and returned to work. The zombie apocalypse was pretty depressing sometimes.

Tire firmly in place once more, Scott hopped inside his truck then fired it up. "Hell yeah." he said after he drove forward a short distance. Nothing else had fallen off of his new best friend.

"Good girl. Daddy loves you baby." said Scott after patting the dashboard a few times.

It took longer than he would have liked to return to the mall, and soon realized that his lengthy departure had once again allowed the zombies to pile up outside. There were only a few dozen of them, but their presence was still a reminder that a great deal of time had passed.

He honked his horn like a mad man and gunned his engine. Zombies turned from the mall and began staggering toward him.

Suddenly, one of the staggering zombie threw its head back and began to shriek. "Alright..." said Scott as a slight smile rose upon his lips. Time to put his truck to work.

He gunned the engine just as the zombie began to run toward him at a full-sprint. It was another berserker, or a one hundred mile an hour crackhead as he liked to think of them. Big black truck plowed into running undead. The berserker was knocked back and then diverted to the side.

Scott heard the thing screaming in outrage as he continued forward. Several zombies were battered by his plow, and he scooped them away.

He continued to drive in a wide arc for a moment then stopped and pulled back a bit before driving around the pile of battered and dismembered corpses. A few of the mangled monstrosities reached toward him as he drove away, but they would be of little concern for the moment.

The shambling zombies in the parking lot were killed off once again after a few rounds of good old fashioned family plowing. Broken zombies crawled around in wretched little circles while trying to find a reason for their continued existence. Scott put them out of his misery by unloading plasma rounds into their rotting skulls.

Up on the roof of the mall, Scott explained his sweet new ride to the people standing guard. Mr. Mustache led him down to visit with Father Harrison. Everyone was ready to go, but the final plans needed to be made.

On the way to meet the good father, Scott filled Jed in on the situation he had run into previously. The owner of the world's most cop-like mustache found the tale hard to swallow.

"I know. It seems ridiculous. Still, if anyone hears a phone ring you make damned sure they don't answer it." said Scott.

"Will do." said Jed. His tone of voice made it obvious that he did not want to believe the bizarre tale of tornadoes giving birth to spider monsters. However, as they walked along he told a few others to spread the word. No one was to answer a phone if it rang.

Scott bore witness to various people running around doing last minute preparations, but for the most part people were collected in the center of the mall. They were about as ready is they were going to be.

Father Harrison was ministering to a small, but tightly packed, group of people in the Sheriff's office. Even with his miraculous recovery, few people wanted to hear about sort of divine love at the moment. When the dead has risen up to devour the living, many people had lost their former faith. Others had found it, even though they had held no faith in anything before the world ended.

The good father finished his sermon not long after he spied the duo enter. While the people in the room tearfully embraced each other and whispered their hopes for the future, Father Harrison moved as quickly as he could to meet with the new arrivals.

Scott began to tell the older man what had happened, but he Father Harrison spoke first. "I have received a new revelation."

"What did you see?" asked Scott in a curious tone.

The older man's eyes closed gently and a moment later he took a deep breath before releasing a slow rumbling sigh. "We are not safe here. In my vision I saw that something terrible happens."

Jed stepped forward. "What did you see? What happens?"

Scott was about to press for further details as well when a horrific sound echoed throughout the area. The ringing sound of a landline telephone caused his eyes to widen. He looked toward the sound of the ringing phone, and had just enough time to cry out, "No! Don't Ans—" before a little old lady snatched the receiver up.

"Andy, is that you?" asked the elderly woman in a hopeful, but shaky, voice.

Scott ran toward the old lady and the phone, due to having to shove people out of the way, he was not able to reach her in time. He got to her just in time for her to blink then out it out to him. "Andy says he wants to talk to you?"

He tried to slam the phone back down on the cradle, but the received slammed into an invisible wall of force. Scott was hit with a crackling burst of energy and sent staggering backwards.

"I warned you, Champion. This world is ours." said the familiar voice from the phone. Scott recovered too late as another series of air-blistering curses echoed from the phone.

"Dammit!" snapped Scott before he moved to snatch the phone connection from the wall. A harshly barked laugh emanated from the phone a brief instant before a hellish screech erupted from the parking lot outside.

Scott tried to hang the phone up once more. This time it went back onto its cradle without an issue. He seethed inwardly for a moment then turned to Jed. "Get everyone inside and into the sturdiest area possible."

"What's going on?" asked a blond woman nearby.

He ignored her and ran out of the room. "Get everyone to a sturdy location!" he cried back to them once more."

"Sturdy location! Why?" called out Jed.

Scott stopped down long enough to shout, "Shit just hit the fan, and we aren't ready to roll out, yet. Once everyone is secured, tell Father Harrison to get ready with that ability of his. You may need it."

After that, the rest of the survivors were ignored. Scott raced up to the ladder leading to the roof. He arrived just in time to narrowly avoided being crushed by Smug Guy hopping down to safety. The normally smug individual wore an expression of absolute fright. Smug no more, all he could do was pant and wheeze while pointing at the roof.

Scott nodded then headed up. The terror writ large on the formerly smug man's face shifted to one of confusion and disbelief. By the time he became coherent enough to make an attempt to pull Scott back down, proving in the process that he was at least a nominally decent human being, the champion had already gone beyond his frightened reach.

Nothing else to do, he cried out. "Shut the door behind you!"

Scott called out, "Lock it behind me!"

The roof hatch fell closed and smug guy sighed before climbing back up the ladder. He took a breath then locked the man outside the building. He was on his own now.

The embattled man in the battered and cracked armor looked out to the parking lot. Mentally prepared for horrific spider monsters that would probably claim his life, Scott's eyes widened in surprise at what happened.

The massive tornado of whirling wind and gore drew up the bodies of the slain zombies and mashed them together like the world's most disturbing blender. No hideous little eggs were produced. The mass simply continued to grow, to shift and change.

Scott scanned the area, but was uncertain what to do in the situation. He did not even know what the situation really was at the moment. "Guess I'm stuck waiting for the end."

Thousands of bodies streamed through the air, even a few nearby cars were caught up in the whirling winds. That was also something new.

From behind the whirling mass of wind and gore, a single figure walked forward into view. It was someone wearing a dark red robe that covered their head in a hood.

Scott's eyes narrowed and the muscles of his face tightened. He did not need to be told anything to know that the bastard down below was someone to hate. No normal person would wear something like that while standing in front of that hellish nightmare.

The robed figured raised one hand into the air. Scott was confused for a moment, as nothing new happened. What he did not know was that the hand motion was not meant for him. It was meant for the people within the mall.

Jed and the good father had rounded up the survivors, and led them into the safest room in the mall, the security center. It was a room filled with closed circuit television monitors and thick steel doors. At one time Jed had claimed it as his bedroom, but now it was the panic room for the mall survivors.

The mass of humanity huddled fearfully while the roaring winds and hellish screams from outside the mall continued unabated. They did not know what was going on outside, but that was about to change.

The monitors that had been lifeless for months suddenly flared to life. A sinister voice spoke through the speakers. "The gods cannot save you. This world belongs to us, now. Gaze upon the fate of your champion and know despair. Watch as the last hope for your salvation is crushed into the dirt by the ultimate expression of my power... Know the fate of all who oppose us."

"What's going on?" asked a balding man as tears threatened to fall down his cheeks.

"We have come to the final test." said Father Harrison.

"What do you mean?" asked Jed. "What test?"

The priest pointed to the image that appeared on the screen. "God speaks to me, even now."

Jed's eyes widened slightly. "What is he saying?"

All eyes were now on the father. The older man sighed gently then pointed to the figure who stood in front of the tornado. "Our world was never meant to be like this. I do not understand everything that is being told to me. It is mostly information about something called a system upgrade."

He held up a hand to forestall questions. "Our world was supposed to enter something called phase two. We would have had access to amazing abilities. We would have had the power to heal any wound, even resurrect the dead. In time we would have been able to travel between the stars to new worlds."

"What... What happened?" asked Jed after taking a moment to swallow. He could scarcely believe anything he was hearing, but he had seen so much of late that it was impossible to deny completely.

Father Harrison's bushy eyebrows pressed together. "That thing down there happened. God says that it is a worm that invaded his beautiful garden and turned it to the way things are now."

Jed looked to the robed figure onscreen then back to the older man. "What can we do now?"

The elder stood silently for a moment then granted Jed a soft smile. "We pray." The older man's eyes brightened a little, and his smile increased. "We believe in our hearts that the one sent to help us will conquer this evil."

While the people huddled in the security center took the words of Father Harrison under advisement, things were different on the rooftop.

Scott frowned heavily while he waited for the three second reload that his weapon required. "Damn it."

Despite the fact that it had failed to work each time before, once his fire arm reloaded, Scott unleashed another barrage of plasma rounds toward the red robed bastard. Each round slammed uselessly against a spherical barrier.

As the last of the zombies in the parking lot were drawn into the whirling nightmare, the red robed figure spoke in a loud and sinister voice. "Let the ruination of my slaves combine with steel... Let the vile union give birth to a new god of death that will rule this world!"

The tornado stopped suddenly. The mass of meat and metal that had formed at its center began to undulate. It pulsed with a disturbing and visceral motion that nearly caused Scott to vomit.

He shot at the hideous abomination, but the damage was not noticeable in the slightest. His pistol was not enough.

Laughing uproariously, the robed figure floated upward into the air then spread wide his arms. "I am now the master of this creation!"

The massive glob of flesh opened up and then snapped forward in a sudden motion. The robed man was swallowed up by the abomination, but that was not the end of his ambition. It was merely the beginning.

Scott watched in fascinated horror as the bullshit of the moment grew to gigantic proportions. He looked down at his pistol then back to what was happening in the parking lot. The mass of flesh pulsed and undulated hideously for a brief moment then black lightning crackled around its frame.

It began to shift, to change into something new, something that appeared similar to a man but was far from human. The unholy flesh that comprised the thing's chest split open to reveal something even more surprising. The red robed bastard was riding inside what appeared to be some sort of cockpit. "Come on, champion. Show us what sort of pathetic pussy the gods have sent for me to fuck today!"

Scott's left eyelid twitched slightly. "Motherfucker brought a zombie Gundam to a gunfight."

Suddenly, high-octane heavy metal music erupted throughout the area. The robed jackass laughed hatefully and then closed the chest cavity of his hideous zombie mecha. It was time to end things, once and for all.