Chapter 78: Fighting for Survival (Patreon)

I retreated into a dark corner of the room with my cloak wrapped around me. Damian activated his invisibility, which as a party member gave him a shadow like form. He then removed the shelves that were blocking the door before he backed away into another corner.

The noise of the shelves being dragged across the floor drew the attention of three zombies. They threw themselves at the door and knocked it clean off its hinges. In their fervent desperation, they fell with it to the ground and then scrambled to their feet to explore the room.

So the first part of the plan was a success.

We’d needed a way to test the senses of the undead and to learn whether my cloak and Damian’s shadow form could work against them.

The three zombies wandered aimlessly around the room. One of them screeched in frustration before running off into the back room. It returned a second later, disappointed that the place appeared empty.

Rather than sneak past them, we waited until another noise caught their attention, and they dashed off in pursuit of it.

[Lucas Hudson: So far so good.]

[Damian Sutter: We should get moving.]

I agreed, and Damian went first. His ability to remain unseen still bested my own, and so he was responsible for taking out any nearby lanterns that were lit and steering me away from fires.

Once out on the street, Damian fired his crossbow twice to destroy two lanterns, bathing the street in darkness.

Damn, even his weapons are invisible in that form.

A few zombies further down the street glanced up from the corpses they were eating, but didn’t follow after the sound. Between buildings burning and collapsing and all the fighting, the sound of some lamps breaking barely registered as interesting for them.

With Damian giving the all clear, I followed him out onto the street.

By now, the zombies who weren’t eating had gotten faster and ran through the streets in packs of around four or five. They moved in long, loping strides, eager to devour the living.

We kept to the edge of the street, moving carefully to not make a sound.

The clock tower was visible in the distance and appeared to be undamaged. That was good. It meant that the undead had been ignoring it. Though, just to be on the safe side, we’d warned Hugo and the others to stay out of sight.

If our interpretation of the quest was accurate, then all I had to do was get inside the clock tower as the owner. That would show me taking ownership and reset the clock, which hopefully will bring an end to the zombies.

As we neared the town square, we saw a massive bonfire. To avoid me being discovered by the light, I was forced to head down an alleyway, but to progress further, we’d need to go vertical. There was one zombie lingering in the alley with a human leg in its hands. There was no sign of the rest of the person.

I stabbed it in the brain with my knife and caught the body, before gently lowering it to the ground to minimize noise.

*DING!* You have slain [Young Developing Zombie (common)] Level 26 – Experience Points and Currency Acquired

A tiny burst of energy hit me as soon as I’d killed it. That must be from the amulet, which was good, but the effect was very brief. Five seconds after I’d killed it and the feeling had vanished. That item description wasn’t kidding when it said that the effect window was very short.

With the alleyway now empty, I climbed up onto the roof and saw a big problem.

[Lucas Hudson: You better come up here and see this too.]

Damian’s shadowed form was there a moment later and saw what I saw.

The bonfire was from an improvised barricade that some of the other floor residents had formed to hold back the zombies with. It was a circular barricade right in front of the clock tower entrance and it looked to be failing. I didn’t know who’d used fire, but it was a mistake. Fire was too ineffective since it was too slow and the zombies didn’t feel pain.

There was a group of around eight still inside the circle fighting for their lives. The zombie horde surrounding them had far greater numbers. Eventually, they’d be overwhelmed.

[Lucas Hudson: We should help them.]

[Damian Sutter: We can’t. There’s too many to fight head on. The best thing we can do is get inside the tower and reset the clock. If we hurry, then we might be able to do it before they die.]

It bothered me to just leave them like that, but he was right.

Damian deactivated his shadow form and summoned a bolt with a rectangular box attached to the back of the crossbow. The box contained a coiled cable that was connected to the bolt. He fired high up at the tower wall just below the belfry and the bolt lodged itself into place with the cable.

Now we had an impromptu zip-line.

Damian pulled the box out of his crossbow. It had some kind of barbed spike at the back. He shoved the spike into the chimney to secure the other end of the zip-line. He then gave the cable a few tugs to test the weight of it before giving me a nod.

Back inside the house, I’d said that he should go first for this part since if something went wrong, I was better equipped to handle it. Damian didn’t argue, and now that we were here, we knew we had to do this quickly. The survivors down below would only distract the zombies for so long.

He secured the crossbow on his back, wrapped his legs over the cable, and began to climb. It was curious that he didn’t go back into shadow form now, but perhaps it took too much energy. Unfortunately, this meant he was very visible.

A few zombies noticed him and let out a guttural cry. They couldn’t get to the base of the tower to climb it because of the survivors, but they were smart enough to follow the path of the cable and find me on the rooftop.

With my sword in hand, I cut several down in quick succession while trying to protect the zip-line.

The zombies had gotten faster, but they had next to no survival instincts. They would just wildly charge at me with their hands outstretched. Easy enough to handle when they were few, but if it became many, then I’d end up like the survivors below in their desperate last stand.

Once Damian had made it across to the clock tower, it became my turn.

Climbing up the cable wasn’t difficult at my level of strength and dexterity. The real problem was my weight. The zip-line was designed for Damian, who was smaller than I, so when I felt the line shift, I started to get nervous.

The box and chimney will hold, I told myself as I kept climbing.

There was another screech. I stopped and looked down. More zombies were pointing up at me. They must think I’m an easier target.

Some tried to jump up from the ground and grab me, but I was still far too high for that. The smarter ones, however, found the zip-line. At first, I worried that they might rip the end out of the chimney but instead they did something worse; they climbed on it too.

With the excess weight, the zip-line dipped lower, threatening to break.

I rushed along the cable until I heard a snap. It was too much weight for the chimney. The box end of the zip-line was ripped out, and I held tight as the cable swung towards the clock tower.

It slammed me into the lower wall of the tower and I fell down next to the survivors.

I was a little dazed but one of my knifes was already out when one of them approached me.

A young man with a bow asked, “are you okay?”

“Sam!” another man barked. “Keep fighting!”

The archer turned back to the encroaching zombie horde. He magically summoned and fired arrows as fast as he could. All of them were headshot kills, but I doubted he had the energy to maintain that pace for much longer.

I got to my feet and realized that I was right next to the clock tower door. But as soon as I opened it, the survivors would follow me and then the zombies.

I shook my head. It didn’t matter. They had a right to know.

“I’m opening the clock tower,” I shouted over the noise. A few of them glanced back at me but didn’t respond. “I think there’s a way to use it to stop the zombies.”

That’s all that I could give them. Either they’d believe the information and use it, or not.

I pulled out my clock tower key and went inside. I left the door open for them, hoping it would give them something to retreat into.

As I sprinted up the wooden stairs, I heard the other survivors trying to slowly follow while fighting the zombies. But I couldn’t worry about that now. I had a more important problem to focus on.

Just being within the clock tower itself as the owner was not enough to reset the clock. There had to be something that I was expected to do. Maybe alter the actual clock itself? But then, to what time?

When I reached the top, I found Hugo, but not the others.

“Where are they?” I asked him. “Zombies are coming up the stairs. I need their help holding them off while I solve the puzzle.”

“They’re already fighting them. As soon as you entered, some of them started scaling the walls. They’re in the belfry trying to hold them back,” said Hugo.

Before I could respond, the glass window of the clock tower was smashed open and the clock face was destroyed as several zombies forced their way inside.