Jake's Story, ch 14

Hey everyone, happy New Years! (almost)

Updates have been slow over the holidays while I've been spending more time with family and kind of learning how to take care of myself better again.  It's been a success!

I've been working on stuff on the back end too, so we're still a go for Delvers LLC 5 being written in another couple of months.

Thanks for being so supportive!  And if you're anything like me, you won't be sorry to see the end of 2020.

-BC

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Jake had planned to kill the mindless zombie in the house immediately, but decided to be a little more cautious once he was out in the living room again.  With a pistol in hand, he remembered how noisy the shot would be.  He moved around the house, closing all the doors and windows before approaching the feeding monster and putting a bullet through the back of its skull.

Unfortunately, no core manifested.  Dammit.  Cores were what he really needed now.  As long as he was stuck as a zombie, he wouldn’t really be able to use his swords, couldn’t escape dangerous situations, and would basically stay a sitting duck.  The more time passed, the more the survivors would get their shit together and start exterminating zombies.

Running out of bullets wouldn’t be a concern for most of America for a while, especially after people started manifesting supernatural powers.  A family that had a beast-transformer wouldn’t have a problem getting food with or without firearms.

His gunshot had rattled the windows.  He knew it was only a matter of time before the noise attracted enough zombies to be a problem, but that was actually part of the plan now.  It just meant his job would be easier as soon as he got everything else that he would need.

Jake explored the house further and got lucky again.  He needed to make a lot of noise soon.  His plan had originally been to bang some pots together, but in one closet of the house he found a real, old school, honest-to-god boombox, the kind that ran on big D batteries.  This one had some juice, and the cassette tape inside was Backstreet Boys Greatest Hits.

He decided to roll with it.

Zombies were already beginning to mill around outside the house, so Jake would have to be fast to take advantage of this.

After putting the boom box in his storage ring along with some more handy items he’d found in the house, he moved outside.  He began emptying gas cans from his storage ring, soaking the yard with gasoline, paying special attention to the areas near the fence.  A few zombies wandered around outside, searching for the source of the noise he’d just made with his newly acquired revolver.  Luckily none came close enough to feel his soul and aggro.

Once that was done to his satisfaction, he examined his handiwork.  He was ready, or at least as ready as he would ever be.  If there were humans around it would complicate things.  The fact there only seemed to be monsters present was lucky.  This really was kind of an ideal sort of place to try a plan this crazy.

Jake opened the gate to the front of the yard, and at the back.  He didn’t normally breathe, but took a deep breath for dramatic effect before moving to the street.  Then he lifted the boom box to his shoulder, turned it on, and started playing, “I Want it That Way.”  He cranked up the sound to max.

Zombies moaned everywhere, signaling an alert.  Jake walked as fast as he could.  The 90’s era pop being blasted from his shoulder would definitely grab a lot of undead attention in this neighborhood.  He just needed to make sure that none of them got too close.

Running zombies would exist in the future, and there were likely even a few now, but they’d be rare. Right now, Jake couldn’t really run, and he wasn’t as fast as he would be if he were still alive.  Luckily, he’d begun his strange, monster cultivation Path, though.  He was just fast enough to stay ahead of the growing horde.  By the time “Backstreet’s Back”started playing, he had a large crowd of zombies following him, shuffling as fast as they could. He counted at least two dozen, maybe three.

Jake kept an eye on his surroundings.  He couldn’t afford to be boxed in, and any zombies that got too close might moan a different alarm.  Even though the zombies were following him, they weren’t trying to actually trap him...yet.  As long as they just continued to follow, his plan would keep working.  Everything would be many, many times harder if the zombies were in kill mode.

Then he saw the first level zombie goliath.

In his first life when he’d led the Grasshopper Mice, Landry had called them voltron zombies.  Zombie goliaths were basically made up of several bodies, all melted and twisted together to create a zombie giant.  First level goliaths were made up of three to seven or so corpses.  This one looked like it had material from six so it was a larger first level goliath.

It wouldn’t look like it could walk very fast, but Jake knew that could be deceptive.  Goliath zombies were capable of moving in spurts of quick, destructive power.  Their normal cruising speed was low, but each limb was longer, bigger, than a normal human--sometimes made up of an entire body.  They were several times faster than a normal zombie, and could even step directly over obstacles like fences.

Jake immediately killed the Backstreet Boys song.  Now he knew at least one reason why this part of town looked to have been totally abandoned.  A zombie goliath is hard to kill with conventional weapons, even for a coordinated group with a plan.

This one had been wandering close to the noise Jake was making, but hadn’t quite pinpointed him yet, probably because it wasn’t sensing anything living.  Jake was just another zombie.  He kept moving.  Jake had made a loop and was a little more than halfway back to the trap he’d set.  Maybe he could still make this work.

Jake slowed down and tried acting like just another zombie...just one that happened to be carrying a boombox on his shoulder.  His nerves were frayed by the time he made it back to the yard he’d soaked in gasoline.  After a moment of thought, he stowed the boombox and added some more gas around the yard.  With a heavy heart, he even splashed a few gallons on the yard’s house, then a few surrounding houses too.  The zombie goliath was a danger and an opportunity wrapped into one.

Once he thought he was going to be as ready as he’d ever be, he moved back the way he’d come.  This step was close to what he’d planned to do before, but he was just getting more of a head start and making the trap bigger now.

Jake took the boombox out of his storage ring and turned it one again.  “You are my Fire” began playing, and all the zombies within earshot changed the pitch of their moans.  He immediately spotted movement above a nearby roof down the block as the zombie goliath began to ponderously turn.  The zombies that had been on the street or nearby were already wandering closer.

All the zombies in the immediate area had moved to one side of his trap now, so he would keep the back gate open.  Jake crossed the yard, closed the other gate, secured it, and used some wire to bind it shut.  Then he put the boombox in some bushes a few feet away from the outside of the fence.  He needed it far enough away to attract the zombies as long as possible, but close enough that when he sprang the trap, the boombox would die relatively quickly.

One curious thing about zombies was how they only seemed to have survival instincts while actively hunting.  Right now the state the zombies were in was high alert, but not exactly hunting. They hadn’t smelled or seen any of the living yet.  In this state, they would happily just stand in a fire.  Zombies were one of the only monsters that could behave so differently situationally.  Granted, some monsters could be incredibly unpredictable--zombies were very predictable, just...weird.

The first few zombies had already shuffled into the yard before the first level goliath was obviously approaching, which was lucky.  Jake kept slowly moving away.  He walked across the street, in the shadow of a porch where his gasoline trail ended--the end of his makeshift fuse.

The trap yard was full of zombies now.  They tried moving toward the sound of the boombox.  Some were jammed up against the fence.  If they were actively hunting, they would have been struggling to get over or through the basic fence, but they weren’t.  Instead, they just kept moaning and shuffling around, packing tighter and tighter against the side of the fence nearest to the music.

Then the zombie goliath was only a few steps away.  Jake took a barbeque lighter out of his storage ring.  A normal lighter would have been too hard to use as a zombie, but this one just required pulling the button.  Jake waited until right before the massive zombie was actually about to enter the yard before bending down to light the gasoline trail.

A line of fire sped across the street to the trap location, but Jake didn’t wait around to watch.  This was going to be a big fire, and he had enough experience with big fires in his former life to know what to expect.  A large enough fire had enough heat to fry you even if you a ways away.

When he’d poured gasoline everywhere, he'd also managed to spill some on himself and he really didn't want to turn into an undead torch.

He glanced back while he was making his exit, and grinned as best he could. The boombox wasn’t working anymore, and all the monsters in the yard were just standing there, even the giant goliath zombie.

Now he just had to wait.

It seemed a shame he would have to wait so long for the fire to do its thing, but there was no helping it. Jake didn’t have to completely waste time, though.  He wandered until he found a house with a pool.  The little half-fence around it was unlocked.  He grabbed a couple of bricks from the garden before dropping into the deep end of the pool.  After dropping into the water, he placed the bricks on his lap, assumed a cross legged sitting position, and began to meditate. He cycled his energy, working on strengthening his fledgling meridians.  The work was slow, and if he’d been alive it would have been agonizing.  This technique had been a secret his master had taught him.  It was dangerous, and had been one of the only reasons he’d been able to practice cultivation despite how he’d polluted his spirit using different kinds of power.

What he was doing now, using the cycling technique his master had taught him long ago, was only supposed to be done for a few seconds at a time.  Even then it could make a cultivating practitioner bleed from the eyes and ears, or even rupture their organs.  Four Winds of Heaven Spirit Purification was not for the faint of heart.  Jake had only managed to use it for ten seconds a day before when he’d been alive, and it got harder every second it was practiced.  A full fifteen seconds might have killed him.

But now Jake was dead and didn’t need to worry about any of that.  He kept cycling, and didn’t even feel any pain.

Jake had learned three cycling techniques from his master, and he’d only ever been able to use two of them.  He’d never even been able to try the third--his foundation hadn’t been strong enough.  He’d been stuck using the Luster of Jade technique most of the time, and had barely ever touched the Four Winds Spirit Purification technique.  He’d assumed he might have never been able to use the Heavenly Dragon Defiance cultivation technique. In fact, his teacher had even told him that the Heavenly Dragon Defiance technique would probably be beyond him forever.  When Jake had asked why he’d had to learn it, his master had smacked him on the forehead.  That had been his only answer.

At the bottom of the pool, Jake felt the power of the Heavenly Four Winds Purification.  It was completely different being able to cultivate this way for a significant amount of time versus only ten seconds.  When he reached a good place to stop meditating, he hadn’t gotten any stronger, but knew he had prepared his body to harness future energy exponentially better.  He dumped the bricks off of his lap.  When he walked out of the pool, he realized there’d been another benefit as well--he could move easier now, almost as well as a normal human man.

Wow.  How well would this work if he could move normally to begin with?  He marveled at his new physical abilities, and felt even more shocked when he realized that he could feel a little bit of the supernatural senses he’d begun to manifest in his first life. How is this possible so quickly? he wondered.  What the hell was this cycling technique that his teacher had taught him?

***

The entire block was a smoking wreck.  A few fires still burned.  Jake’s conscience ached.  Even if everyone in this neighborhood had died, he’d never feel good about destroying the memories and homes of others.

It seemed the fire had spread, too.  He’d only planned to torch a few houses, but at least a dozen had been destroyed, probably more like twice that.

As he walked down the street, the smoke would have choked him or even made him pass out if he still had to breathe.  He arrived at ground zero, where he’d set his trap, and shook his head.  He’d destroyed the one zombie in the house with the sword collection out of respect for the man who’d left it there, but then he’d turned and wrecked the entire neighborhood.

His newly awakened spiritual sense allowed him to locate all of the monster cores in the ash and rubble.  He felt a strange resonance in his spirit that he’d never experienced before, even in his past life when he’d had a stronger cultivation base. Though he’d never experienced it personally, he knew what it had to be.  He’d witnessed his teacher use a form of levitation and he’d described it like this.

The sound of distant engines was faint, but growing louder.  He figured that people had come to investigate the big assed fire that had just sprang up in Tifton monster central.  This meant he needed to get the hell out of dodge--fast.

Jake flexed his new senses, and monster cores rose out of the rubble, rushing toward him like bits of waste circling a drain.  He opened his ring and deposited all of the cores inside.  Counting them all could wait until later.

He turned and moved away at top speed, even triggering a flash step.  Sounds of engines and even gunfire were getting louder now.  The zombies were probably slowing down whoever was coming but that would make Jake more of a target too.  Laying down by the side of the road and acting double dead wasn't even an option.  Just like the horror movie staple, real zombies played dead sometimes to ambush the living.  These survivors likely wouldn't just pass him by.

Jake triggered another flash step and barely caught himself at the end of it before being dumped forward onto his face. He moaned a curse.  The pool he'd hung out in before was in a dangerous direction.  Hiding in water seemed Jake's easiest, most logical option to stay hidden, though.  He needed to find a new place to lay low.

***

Jake fled the burning neighborhood until he found a retention pond.  Perfect, he thought.  It seemed like since he'd become a zombie he'd ended up hiding in water a lot.  In this case, the water didn’t only offer protection, but would make the next step in his plan easier.

The muddy, dirty pond wasn't very deep, but it would work.  Luckily, sitting a certain way while cycling wasn't necessary, just made it easier, helping to center the mind.

Once he was in the middle of the pond he sat and dug his hands into the mud to anchor himself.  He laid back in the water, letting it completely cover and hide him.  And finally having achieved at least some small measure of security, he checked on the monster cores he'd scored.

Wow! He thought.  He had scored two dozen normal zombie cores, the goliath zombie core, and even somehow got a ghoul core! One must have been lurking or feeding in one of the surrounding houses.

This changed everything. All of Jake's meticulous advancement planning was obsolete now.

Jake carefully examined the cores in his storage ring again and shook his head.  He had a choice now.

If he went with his original plan, he could use up his zombie cores and begin an advancement path that would eventually change him to a half-zombie, which was basically a human who was immune to zombie bites, and a few other quirks.  Given enough more time and work, this route would lead to being more or less human again.

And being human again would be great, not least of which because it’s be a great way to show Ahriman that he can go fuck himself, but what if it wasn’t his best option?  Not only would being more or less human might not actually get him to Macon faster than another alternative, what if by being human again, he’d actually be screwing himself?  Ahriman aside, the fact he could actually use the Four Winds of Heaven Purification cycling technique now was kind of a big deal, and it was only because he was undead that he was able to do it without destroying himself.

After another quick look at the info in his head, he learned a few things. There was actually no data on exactly what would happen if he were to evolve with his current mix of cores.  There was data for evolutions using ghoul cores, but not a goliath zombie core, at least not directly from a basic-level zombie.

He wished he had more time to make a decision, but he was running out of time to save his family.

After giving the matter a little more thought and making an educated guess about where a new evolution path might lead, he mentally shrugged and made a decision.  All but one of his zombie cores were going to be used to drive himself deeper and forward.   But he was saving one zombie core, one ghoul core, and the goliath core to use all at once for his first evolution, going “higher.”

Jake took one of the zombie cores out of his storage ring, popped it into his mouth, and got to work.