Day: 100

Zombies killed: 3030

After our last mission, not only I showed myself too hurt to take into action any soon, but our brand new base was filled with around a hundred corpses and with a lot of breaches from where zombies could invade with easy, so my twin sister and I took some time to put everything in order.

I didn’t really new how to improve our base, so I just did as usual and, after cataloging everything, I just did as Morgaine said, that is: helped my twin sister to dig a giant hole in the backyard, cut the iron bars of few cells in the third floor, move then to the first floor, break some plaster walls to make really spacious rooms and drag the trash to the hole already half-filled with zombies’ corpses, close the hole when it got full, move furniture from our last base, as well as the boxes containing our supplies, to the new building and, for some reason, install some poles, ropes and pulleys system. When I asked why, she said that she wasn’t joking at all when talking about the secret passage thing, and would take it forward; it was to move the earth or something.

After a few days of welding, of screw and woodwork (done completely by Moragaine while I, like some kind of annoying kid, kept just patrolling the area and dealing with lonely wanderer undead; though I could barely move one of my arms, with the god and old net, it was relatively easy to deal with the creatures even if all by myself), the first floor became really something to see: all the windows and the front door were protected by metal bars, and the glass had even wood blinds so the creatures wouldn’t shatter it when we lit up candles at night, and a trunk trap stood still over the front door, able to be activated from the inside in case zombies waited at the entrance for us. As soon as it was done with the building’s exterior, Morgaine started to work with the interior before turn her attention to the usual outer protective layers and scatter a few traps around the police office.

Of course, though I ended everything relatively faster, my logistical work wasn’t all for nothing, and killing my nostrils with the putrid odor, I dove into the zombies’ corpses we left behind and checked every single pocket, wallet, backpack, phone case and belt after each key, weapon, equipment (and money and valuable items); tested each and every lock, tagged properly them and their key, from rooms and cabinets to the cars parked in the underground garage; checked the size of the clothes and equipment and what was functional and what wasn’t; and, of course, counted the supplies.

Just from what would be “usable” for us, and not things stored for take pieces for repairs, there was gas, walkies-talkies and their batteries, food, water and clothes for around eternity, six police cars, one armored, twenty full body armors (Morgaine decided to fuse the police helmets with our motorcycle ones, once that the first let more flesh exposed, and even added horns onto them somehow), and, of course, the ammo and weapons.

Though I was itching to count the guns in the arsenal, I decided to let these ones for the end and first dive into the things I found in the “evidence room” first; and I found many there for my surprise, some really wild: between millions of knives, pepper sprays, tasers, bats and knucklehead, there were at least four long swords, an axe, six hunting rifles, twelve pistols (some really old), a sub-machine gun, a shotgun, a machine-gun, and even some explosives; besides, of course, hundreds of ammo boxes. And this was only the “evidence room”.

When I finally entered the vault-like arsenal, empowered because of the special zombie situation the police had been forced to deal with in its last days, I felt like I was inside the inventory of my character in Border Lands; the guns were numbered in the hundreds, and there was a bigger variety than I knew it even existed in the first place, from giant rifles that could probably put a hole even in the armored vehicle in the garage, and machine guns that were simply impossible to be used unless its bipod was firm on the ground, to pistols that… well, even the pistols ended up being bigger than I thought they would be, and the ones that usually were portrayed as “weak” in games seemed as mortal as any other to be honest. A second room inside the vault was filled to the ceiling with ammo boxes, and I asked myself if the police itself wasn’t planning to kill everyone even before the idea came to me?

In any case, I could barely wait to see how those things would help us to reach or end goal. But, before that, we still had cleaning and preparations to do…

“This floor definitely seems completely different now…”, I pointed, leaning myself on the broom, midway the exit with the damn plaster powder that covered every centimeter of the building after my twin sister and I broke the walls.

“Well, the original design wouldn’t be really of any help to us; it was planned to be just like a waiting room and a call center after all”, Morgaine also took a break from her woodwork, the covering of the holes and flaws after we destroyed the interior of the building, and answered, wiping sweat out off her forehead. There were small skulls everywhere, and already dozens of empty black painting buckets close to her, but I decided that should just decorate like she wanted to.

“And, what will it be when it gets done?”

Morgaine turned to me, all dirty and covered in paint, though with a big smile when she replied:

“A gaming room!”

The broom I was holding fell to the ground. My hands were shaking when she continued:

“Well, we don’t have electricity, so I’ll try to fill this place the best I can, with, like pool and tennis tables, so it may not be as cool as your video games, but… bro? Are you okay?”, Morgaine got up, visibly worried. “Are you hurt?!”

“No… No, it’s nothing”, I cleaned my eyes wiped the tears that started to form on my eyes and blurry my vision. “It’s just… Sorry. You’re doing all of this for me, even though… Haha, even though this gaming thing is so stupid, right? Hahaha…”, my sleeves were already getting soaked, but for some reason, my eyes just didn’t stop to leak.

“It’s not stupid.”

“Sis?”

“It’s true that I thought it was strange in the begging, and I even made assumptions, but… I spent much more time with you since, and... listened to you, understood the way you think. I learned! And, you know, I’m not annoyed by it anymore”, Morgaine got up, holding onto her own elbow, eyes moving from one side to another over the ground. Taking a deep breath and finally facing me again, opening her arms and forcing a smile, she added: “And, I hope you feel the same about… well, all of this! Though, haha… I know its strange.”

“It’s not strange.”, I replied, suddenly not crying anymore. “When you kept saying that things would only get worse, and wearing the same things though our world literally ended, it… itched me a bit. But, staying this long with you, observing, I discovered that you didn’t really wish for bad things to happen, nor…”, thinking about the past I couldn’t avoid but to let a laugh escape my lips before concluding: “nor you really make living sacrifices to an evil God. I like to think I came to understand you better, sis.”

We dumbly stared at each other, with our eyes red and big smiles on our faces, laughing. I felt lighter, more accomplished, happier than ever since our city turned into a zombie hell hole, more than when I killed the first zombie, more than when I conquered a bigger base, more than when I got my hands onto a car, and, I suspected, more than I would even after cleaning the entire town.

Maybe, I didn’t need to try to act cool around Morgaine.

“Th- this is…”

I had started to experiment with guns, testing each and every one of them, ensuring everything worked was smooth and nice, feeling their kick, trying to adjust to their aim, making notes about what weapon made the biggest damage against the trees close by the building and zombies that came, attracted by the noises of the guns, and trying to figure out what kind of shell went with what kind of gun (able to just pray that I wouldn’t explode my hands off during these tests). In the end, Morgaine was right and my aim really wasn’t as good as it was in video games, even with the “precision rifles”… I loved the shotguns, though: their “effective range” wasn’t as near as small as in video games.

“Didn’t you liked it?”

Finally, the reforms had reached the third floor; Morgaine working with impressive rhythm when doing what she loved the most and creating things. And so, I stared at the bedroom. The single bedroom with only one mattress, though the place was so spacious.

“I like it! I really do”, I cleaned my throat. I… I was a fool to imagine that things would just solve themselves just because we had then more space…

“Really? Don’t you think there’s nothing that needs to change?”, Morgaine insisted. And, this wasn’t strange, right? Not so long ago I said that it was okay to have her style and we finally got closer, if I suddenly condemned it (even though I wouldn’t be talking about her aesthetic sense but the lack of privacy) she could interpret things wrong and that touching moment would go to waste. “Any request?”

“No, it’s perfect the way it is!”, I forced myself to seem as impressed as possible, turning to Morgaine. My twin sister, though, was making a really strange expression while forcing a smile, whose meaning I just couldn’t pinpoint.

“I… see…”

Looking to the bed in the spacious room, whose floor also guarded our food, water, clothes, and other basic necessities, and could only thought how my hard nights would continue for some more time…