TWD - Zomboid - Chapter 295: Zombieland (Patreon)

Ellie glanced at Luke.

Wichita looked the two of them up and down, clearly not buying the whole brother-and-sister story. They didn’t look anything alike.

Still, everyone had parts of their past they didn’t want to talk about in the apocalypse, so she didn’t press the issue.

Besides, her little sister was still in their hands.

“We should probably introduce ourselves too.”

The nerdy guy spoke first. “I’m Columbus. The big guy over there is Tallahassee.”

The cowboy grinned and tipped his chin in greeting.

“And this is Wichita,” Columbus said, gesturing toward the woman who looked like Emma Stone.

Wichita gave a small nod.

Not one of the three had any negative traits in their buffs?

Luke carefully checked again.

There really weren’t any.

Aside from the natural wariness they should have toward strangers, none of them had any serious negative traits.

“The girl you caught is Wichita’s younger sister, Little Rock.”

“We use place names from back home as aliases,” Columbus explained. “Real names don’t mean much in the apocalypse. Remembering them just gives you more things to be sad about.”

Luke smacked his forehead.

Columbus, Tallahassee, Wichita, Little Rock.

The two guys looked exactly like actors from Now You See Me, and one of them had even been in True Detective...

The woman looked just like Emma Stone.

Luke finally remembered.

Wasn’t this the main cast of Zombieland?

Zombieland was a zombie comedy.

A nerd, a tough guy, a beautiful woman, plus a little sister tagging along. The classic post-apocalyptic road-trip crew.

Well, damn.

Comedy movies were part of this mess too?

Luke felt like that one signal flare of his had drawn out a ridiculous number of people.

These people had all survived this long in a world crawling with walkers, so none of them were pushovers. Tallahassee was basically the berserker type.

Wichita and Little Rock were crafty little con artists.

As for Columbus...

He was probably the glue holding the group together.

And just like that, the two groups temporarily joined forces.

Comedy characters had refreshingly simple logic. If nobody had shot anybody yet, they were basically on the same side.

“So which way do we go?” Columbus asked. “Honestly, we’ve kind of lost our bearings.”

“Oh, then you’re in luck.” Luke pointed in a direction.

Straight toward the outpost.

They hadn’t been driving for long when a distant rumbling sound drifted toward them.

“Is that... a train?” Columbus perked up, looking astonished.

Everyone in the Humvee heard it.

In a dead, silent apocalypse, the sound of an operational railway felt completely out of place.

But it was also encouraging.

It meant the [Ark] might actually be real.

Luke leaned back in the passenger seat. “No idea. Probably. Might be a railway belonging to that Ark.”

“A railway?” Wichita immediately sat up straighter. “If they have a functioning railway, that means they have serious transportation capability. The Ark might really be a large city-state.”

Any faction capable of keeping a railway operational during the apocalypse would need enormous industrial capacity, organization, and manpower behind it.

That was far beyond anything an ordinary survivor settlement could manage.

“Now we’re talking!” Tallahassee slapped the steering wheel and burst out laughing. “This place is sounding better and better. Maybe the trip wasn’t a waste after all. They better have Twinkies!”

“Probably,” Luke replied absently.

It was the apocalypse, and this guy was still thinking about Twinkies?

How about a human with filling?

Ellie sat in the back seat, still wondering what Luke was up to.

He was literally the leader of the [Ark], yet here he was pretending to be an ordinary survivor.

The Humvee tore down the road, but before long, it was forced to stop.

The highway ahead was packed with walkers.

Drawn by the roar of the Humvee’s engine, countless heads turned toward them at once.

Oh.

GG.

The walkers roared and began converging on the yellow SUV.

No question about it.

A walker horde.

“Whoa, now that’s something!” Tallahassee stared at the horde ahead.

Instead of showing even the slightest fear, he rubbed his hands together excitedly.

“Let’s have some fun! Hehehe!”

“Everybody hold on!” He turned around with a huge grin, manic excitement gleaming in his eyes.

Then he practically stomped the gas pedal through the floor.

BOOM!!!

The Humvee charged straight into the walker horde.

Luke sat in the passenger seat.

“Nice!”

Bang! Bang! Bang-bang-bang!!!

The impacts blended into a continuous barrage, almost like a rhythm game.

The Humvee’s reinforced front end slammed into the horde like a meat grinder.

Walkers were smashed apart one after another. Flesh and blood flew everywhere, while mangled limbs and gore plastered the windshield.

The entire vehicle began shaking violently.

Ellie clung to the grab handle.

During another brutal jolt, she instinctively grabbed Luke by the collar.

“Hey, hey! Who are you trying to strangle?”

Luke hurriedly undid the top buttons of his shirt.

The Humvee brutally plowed a bloody path straight through the dense horde.

Half an hour later, everyone was standing beside the highway again.

The ground around them was covered in mangled walker remains, along with several unlucky ones the group had reduced to piles of flesh with gunfire.

Predictably, the Humvee was completely dead.

Bone shards had punctured the tires, leaving them collapsed flat against the road. Even if they had spares, it wouldn’t have mattered much.

The hood itself had been smashed and twisted beyond recognition.

Worst of all, half a walker was wedged underneath it.

“What the hell? You were supposed to keep the car in one piece!” Wichita immediately snapped. “How are we supposed to get anywhere now?”

“Maybe we can fix it.”

Everyone stared at the pulpy mess underneath the hood.

Then, almost in perfect unison, they turned away.

Whoever wanted to fix that could go right ahead.

In the end, the Humvee was beyond saving.

Ellie stood there with the dragon-head knife over her shoulder, completely speechless.

Were these people idiots?

Who drove straight into a walker horde on purpose?

Was this some kind of joke?

“...So what do we do now?” she asked.

“Nothing we can do.”

Luke shrugged. “Looks like we’re taking the Number 11 bus.”

Columbus instinctively looked around, utterly confused.

“A bus?” He frowned. “What bus? I don’t see one.”

The highway was completely deserted.

Aside from the wrecked Humvee, there wasn’t another working vehicle anywhere in sight.

Luke pointed down at his own legs.

“Wake up, man. I’m talking about these.”

“I thought getting away from Leon meant I’d escaped my bad luck with vehicles, but apparently vehicle killers are everywhere.”

Columbus: “...”

This guy really had an answer for everything.

“All right, enough talking!” Tallahassee waved a hand, threw his shotgun over his shoulder, and strode to the front.

“We can’t have much farther to go. Hell, maybe we’ll walk another couple of miles and be there.”

Everyone sighed.

There was no other option.

They could only continue toward the outpost on foot.

Luke really should have seen this coming.

It was a road comedy.

Of course the vehicle had to die.