Stu's Zombie Radar buzzed again, and again, and again. This wasn't just one or two zombies, stumbling out of the woods; it was an entire horde.

  He grabbed his baseball bat and shook Lucky awake. The kid immediately got to his feet and, sensing the danger, grabbed for his railgun, but Stu stopped him. "I think we'd be better off making a break for it," he said.

  He nodded and followed Stu back to the glider. Luna had already jumped into the driver's seat, and was just about to turn the key on the ignition, when one of the zombies suddenly rushed forward, moving at least three times as fast as the others. The ICON system gave it a designation: it was a Level 1 Speedy. It sprinted over to Luna, reaching for her with its decaying hands.

  There was no time to lose. Stu jumped into the glider himself, grabbed Luna by her jacket, and pulled her out of the driver's seat just as the zombie was trying to grab for her. He threw her over his shoulder, jumped back down to the asphalt, and set her back on her feet; the speedy, undeterred, simply ran around the glider, and was on them in a second.

  Stu pushed Luna a step back to give himself some room and swung his bat at the speedy, uppercutting it right under the chin. A Level 2 or a Level 3 probably would have been able to dodge this blow, but this one was only a Level 1 and wasn't much faster than Stu himself. The blow lifted it off its feet, sending it flying into the front seat of the glider, all splayed out.

  Level 1 Speedy defeated!

  Stu would have liked to have stuck with their original plan, of simply jumping into the glider and driving off if they ran into trouble, but the zombies were coming at them fast; they didn't have enough time to get into the glider and start it before the monsters reached them. Stu also saw, to his dismay, that there were a couple of irregulars mixed in with this horde -- in addition to the speedy, the ICON system was showing two ragers -- a Level 1 and a Level 2 -- and a Level 8 Bomber, with a huge bloated belly. This was the highest-level bomber he had ever seen -- the last one had encountered had only been a Level 1, and it had produced an explosion strong enough to shatter windows when it had blown. He didn't want to be anywhere near a Level 8.

  Luna was trying to get back to the glider. "There's no time!" Stu shouted at her. "We'll be overrun!"

  She swore at him -- obviously she had no desire to leave the glider behind -- but with those ragers rushing forward, she saw that it was hopeless. They only had one option now, and that was to take to shelter in the strip mall.

  Lucky had his railgun out and was firing into the crowd, but the zombies merely absorbed most of the shots. "Come on!" Stu said, dragging the kid away. Together, the three of them ran across the parking lot, to the mall's side entrance. The door was locked, but Stu, using his bat, smashed the handle, breaking it loose and allowing them to enter.

  They rushed inside, into what seemed to be a darkened hallway. "Look around for something to bar the door," Stu said urgently. Now that he had broken it open, it wouldn't close.

  Luna found a filing cabinet in an adjoining room. With Stu's help, they were able to maneuver it in front of the door, just before the zombies reached it; the mass of undead slammed into the door, growling and snarling.

  "That won't hold them for long," Stu said, remembering the ragers he had spotted. Ragers were inhumanly strong. "Let's go."

  And so they turned and ran deeper into the building, pausing occasionally to barricade any doors they passed through. The growling and snarling of the zombies receded into the distance.

  They finally stopped to catch their breath in the lobby of a gym -- a "Curly's Gym," according to the signs, which was one of the businesses occupying the strip mall. "What's the plan?" Lucky said, huffing and puffing.

  "We have to get back to the glider," Luna said. "We'll have to circle around the building."

  "There's too many of them," Lucky argued.

  "There were two ragers back there," Stu warned. "And a Level 8 Bomber."

  "A Level 8?" Lucky asked. "What's that mean?"

  "It means I wouldn't want to be within five hundred feet of that thing when it blows," he said. "Damn it."

  "So what do you suggest?" Luna demanded. "If we lose the glider we're dead in the water."

  "I know." He tried to think, but he was so full of adrenaline at the moment that he found it hard to concentrate. His Zombie Radar was still buzzing, too.

  He stopped, frowning. Surely the ragers, the bomber, and the other zombies that had started chasing them were well over fifty feet away by now, outside of the range of his Zombie Radar. Why was it still buzzing?

  He swore. "We can't stay here," he said. "This place rots."

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  And no sooner had he said the words than a Level 2 Zombie suddenly jumped out of the shadows, throwing itself over the big desk in the lobby in an effort to get to them. Startled, Lucky spun around and blasted it, but missed, sending three projectiles thunking into the wall over its head. Stu, still carrying Excalibur, hit it in the head, smashing its skull just as it was about to finish crawling over the desk. It gurgled silver blood out of its mouth and stopped moving.

  Level 2 Zombie defeated!

  But his Zombie Radar was still buzzing madly. Squinting into the dark, he saw that several more zombies, including a Level 5 and another Level 1 Rager, were now shambling out of the shadows. "This way!" Luna shouted, and together the three of them ran out of the lobby and into the gym itself. Although dilapidated, like every other building in this zombie-world, it seemed like a pretty standard gym, full of exercise bikes, rowing machines, and treadmills. There was also a rack of dumbbells and free weights to their left.

  A set of floor-to-ceiling windows divided the lobby from the workout area, but these were only a minor hinderance to the ordinary zombies, and no hinderance at all to the rager, who banged his fists against the glass and shattered it with a single blow. In life the rager had been a fairly short man, only about five-foot-four, but what it lacked in size it made up for in aggression, racing towards them, practically screaming at them as it flung itself forward.

  Stu quickly positioned himself in front of Lucky and Luna and swung his bat at the zombie. It tried to catch the bat with one hand, and if Stu had been an ordinary man it probably would have absorbed the blow easily -- ragers were very strong -- but Stu, his own strength enhanced by the Strong Arm skill and his rising stats, was no ordinary man. The bat slammed into the rager's hand, shattering the bones within it, and causing it to stumble to one side. Stu quickly followed up on this, attempting to bring the bat down on the rager's head, but he put too much strength and not enough speed into the blow, and the zombie managed to dodge it. The bat wound up hitting the tiled floor instead, cracking it, and the rager slipped around him, seeking out easier prey -- Lucky and Luna, who were behind him.

  Luna, who was not carrying a weapon, seized one of the free weights off the rack -- it must have been a five-pounder -- and smashed the rager in the face as it came rushing forward. The blow staggered the zombie, but only for a second; screaming like a banshee, it threw its arms out, trying to tackle her to the floor. Lucky, however, was not about to let that happen -- dropping his railgun, he slid his hatchet out of his belt, practically climbed up on the rager's back, and buried the little axe in the back of its head. The blow cracked its skull -- Stu heard the crack -- but it must not have been enough to stop it, because the rager still had the strength to fling Lucky off its back and resume its attack on Luna. This time, however, Stu stepped in, ripping the hatchet out of the zombie's head -- it was still embedded in its skull -- and hammering it deeper in. This time the zombie froze, swaying on its feet for a moment, before collapsing forward.

  Level 1 Rager defeated!

  Stu pulled the hatchet out of its head -- spraying silver-tinted blood all over -- and handed it back to Lucky, who reattached it to his belt and picked up his railgun. Half a dozen more zombies were crowding in on them now, including that Level 5, who had the build of pro wrestler. Thinking fast, Stu picked up a barbell (it had hundred-pound weights on each end) and threw it at the horde. It bowled over three of them, knocking them down, but the remainder continued to surge forward. Lucky opened fire with his railgun, killing two, while Luna picked up more dumbbells and started lobbing them at the group. Stu killed one more with his bat -- Level 2 Zombie defeated! -- but there were too many for the three of them alone to hold off. In the distance, and amidst the chaos, Stu heard a peculiar, and very loud, screeching sound coming from the other side of the building, which he soon realized was the sound of the filing cabinet they had used to bar the door being pushed aside. The zombies were getting in from outside now, too -- including, presumably, that Level 8 Bomber.

  Things were going from bad to worse.

  "There's too many!" Lucky shouted, blasting away with his railgun. "We have to get out of here!"

  Stu could only agree. Instead of engaging the zombies, the three of them began a fighting retreat, doing just enough to keep them back while making their way to the back of the gym. There was a door here which led...somewhere, but anywhere was better than here.

  They made it to the door, just ahead of the pro-wrestler zombie, whose face was a grimy mix of blood and sweat. Stu, the last one through the door, slammed it shut -- but then realized that there was no lock on the door at all, nothing to stop the zombies from simply pushing it open in their pursuit of them. Frantically, they looked around for something to bar the door, just as they had before, but the room they had now entered was totally empty, except for some garbage and fast food wrappers.

  They weren't trapped in here -- there was another door, leading out, on the other side of the room -- but Stu wasn't sure they could make it out ahead of the zombies, if he were to let go of the door, which he was now holding shut on his own.

  Drastic action.

  He looked back at Luna and Lucky. "Run!" he shouted at them. "Get out of here!"

  "What about you?" Lucky shouted back at him.

  "I'll hold them here as long as I can! Get out of here! Try to get to the glider and bring it around to the front of the building! I'll meet you there!"

  They both hesitated. "Are you sure?"

  "Go!"

  Lucky nodded at him, his face grim. "Good luck."

  "Don't die," Luna added. And then both of them ran off, barrelling out the other door.

  Stu, grimacing, positioned himself so that he was holding the door closed with both hands, as the mass of zombies pressed against it. He was strong enough to hold them back, but the floor was slippery, and the soles of his shoes were covered in zombie blood, which made it hard for him to stay on his feet.

  He had a solution for this, however. Closing his eyes and concentrating, in order to bring it forth, he activated his new Brick Wall skill.

  Instantly, his entire body froze in place, his feet suddenly bolting themselves to the floor. At the same time, the effort he been expending to hold the door shut suddenly vanished -- although he could hear them snarling, and could feel them pressing against the door, it was almost as though they weren't even there. The Brick Wall skill hadn't increased his strength, exactly, but it made him utterly immovable.

  The effect would last for five minutes. He held his breath, and hoped that Luna and Lucky would use that time wisely.