CHAPTER 41: GOING TO THE CRASH SITE

The noises outside the door were starting to quiet as the zombies no longer received any external stimuli. And this was the chance Riku had been waiting for.

He rose to his feet and walked over to the door. His tomahawk was already in hand, the M4 slung tight across his chest.

He reached for the doorknob and turned it slowly. The faint click of the mechanism made his jaw tighten, but nothing stirred outside.

He pushed the door just enough to open a sliver and took a cautious peek through the crack.

The hallway beyond was dim, lit only by shafts of sunlight cutting in through shattered windows. The moans and scratching that had once battered the door were gone. In their place was heavy, suffocating silence. A few corpses lay in the corridor, heads smashed in from his earlier fight. The rest... had moved on. Drawn elsewhere.

Good.

He slid the door open just enough to slip through, careful not to scrape the hinges against the frame. The barricaded office he left behind was still intact. If things went wrong, at least he had a fallback.

Riku crouched low, tomahawk raised. His eyes flicked left, then right, every sense sharp. Dust motes floated lazily in the air, stirred by his quiet movement. For the first time since entering the building, he could hear his own breathing.

But the quiet was a lie.

A shadow shifted in the stairwell at the far end. Another groan rattled out, soft but unmistakable. Then the scrape of feet dragging across linoleum.

Riku tightened his grip on the tomahawk. He couldn’t waste rifle rounds here. Not when a Juggernaut might still be roaming outside.

The first zombie stumbled into view—a woman in a shredded business suit, her throat torn open, dried blood crusted down her chest. She spotted him instantly, eyes clouded but fixed on his movement.

She snarled and lurched forward.

Riku didn’t retreat. He surged ahead, meeting her halfway. His tomahawk swung in a brutal arc, cleaving into her skull. She dropped instantly, twitching as the blade split bone.

But the sound was enough.

More shapes stirred in the stairwell. Two... three... then five.

"Of course," Riku muttered under his breath.

He exhaled once, steadying himself, then broke into a sprint—straight toward them. Better to strike fast than wait for them to swarm.

The first lunged. He ducked, slamming the tomahawk up into its jaw with a crunch. He wrenched it free in the same motion and pivoted, cleaving across the next one’s temple. Bone and blood sprayed across the cracked walls.

The third crashed into him, claws raking for his throat. Riku shoved it back with his shoulder, using the momentum to drive the tomahawk blade straight through its eye socket. It dropped like a stone.

Two left.

He didn’t wait. He grabbed the fourth by its collar, yanked it forward, and rammed the tomahawk down into its crown. The last one stumbled past, jaws snapping wildly. Riku spun with a grunt, swinging low, severing its legs at the knee. It toppled forward, and he buried the blade into its skull before it could rise.

Breathing hard, Riku stood over the bodies, the hallway littered with twitching corpses. His arms trembled from the exertion, sweat beading at his temples. But his ammo was still untouched. That was worth every drop of blood and sweat.

He wiped the tomahawk against a torn sleeve and glanced toward the stairwell. More groans drifted upward. Too many.

"Not staying here," he muttered, turning sharply. His goal after all is not to wipe out the zombies in this building. He has to return and check on Miko.

He adjusted the sling of his M4, tomahawk slick in his grip, and pushed toward the exit.

The lobby was half-collapsed, sunlight spilling in through shattered glass doors. Papers and broken furniture littered the floor, and somewhere in the corner, a vending machine lay on its side, glass cracked but empty. The front doors had been forced open long ago, one hanging off its hinges.

He paused just inside, scanning carefully.

The street beyond looked deceptively calm. A handful of zombies wandered aimlessly—two near an overturned delivery truck, another limping down the sidewalk with its arms hanging like broken branches. Their groans were faint, lazy, as if the hunger hadn’t yet been triggered.

Good. They hadn’t seen him.

Riku crouched low and slipped out through the ruined doorway.

Once outside, he pressed against the wall of the building, eyes sweeping the street. The SUV wreck lay two blocks down, the twisted frame unmistakable even from here. Supplies were scattered across the asphalt, and he could see the glimpse of Miko’s figure.

And somewhere nearby, the Juggernaut.

Riku could feel it more than hear it—the faint tremor beneath his boots, the way the glass in broken windows gave the slightest rattle every few seconds. It hadn’t gone far. That thing was still hunting.

"Alright... one step at a time," he muttered under his breath.

He pulled the tomahawk tight against his forearm and moved. Every ten steps he paused, scanned, and waited. The few zombies on the street didn’t notice him yet, but he knew that could change with the smallest mistake.

A groan rose behind him. Riku whirled—one of the strays had spotted movement. It staggered forward.

Riku’s lips pressed into a thin line. Really, even when he was using the Tomahawk, the noise it made when he used it against the zombies are enough to attract the zombies.

Riku clenched his jaw, rushing forward before the stray could make more noise. The tomahawk swung in a tight arc, the blade splitting the side of its skull with a wet crack. The body dropped instantly, but the impact echoed louder than he liked. One of the others nearby turned its head, groaning as it began to shuffle toward him.

He sprinted towards that zombie and killed it with a slash on the neck, chopping it cleanly in half. And then came the other, and the other, until there’s no zombies left in the area.

With this, Riku headed over to the SUV and to his relief, Miko was still there, unconscious. Well, it hasn’t been an hour and thanks to his luring tactics, the zombies left her unharmed.

"Well...I’m going to get you..."

He paused mid in his sentence, he looked over to his shoulder and two blocks away, the Juggernaut stood there menacingly.

Riku sighed. Looks like in order to get Miko out of here, he must deal with that thing.

[New Mission Alert!]

[Kill Juggernaut]

[Rewards: 10,000 SP and 2,000XP]