Chapter 234: Summer Time [1]

After parting ways with the others and watching them disperse in different directions to assist various clearing teams, I decided to head toward the western section of the area we were systematically securing.

My destination was the massive commercial structure that served as a physical barrier separating our territory from the Boardwalk Community’s controlled zone. The Brighton Garden where I had been a day ago was probably only one or two miles beyond that enormous building, making it our nearest neighboring survivor group.

During my journey through the streets, I encountered several of Martin’s group who had intelligently divided themselves into small units of three or four people each to engage the Infected they encountered. It was solid strategy.

You should never be arrogant enough to hunt Infected completely alone if you had the option of working with others—not unless you were an exceptionally skilled expert in killing the creatures, or someone like me who possessed a Symbiote that altered the risk calculation. But even with Dullahan’s enhancements, solo operations remained genuinely dangerous.

Well, maybe I was hypocrite saying such things but I considered myself different since I could literally stop the time in case things gets really dangerous

Regardless, any Infected could potentially take you by surprise if your attention lapsed for even a moment. And if a Hybrid Infected suddenly appeared—it would almost certainly mean death for anyone caught alone without backup or an escape route.

Despite that anyway, I naturally didn’t join any of Martin’s teams. I continued moving independently, operating alone as I typically preferred.

I chose to follow the Boardwalk pathway, killing every Infected I encountered along the route with quick, efficient strikes.

I was heading specifically toward the area where the Piers Shop Mall was located, and several minutes of walking later I stopped abruptly, turning to look at the structure on my right.

The mall was considerably larger than I’d initially estimated from a distance.

I found myself wondering what this place had looked like before the Infected outbreak—how many thousands of shoppers had walked these spaces, how vibrant and alive the commercial heart of Atlantic City’s boardwalk must have been. But judging from the numerous bloody handprints smeared across the broken glass entrance doors and splattered across the ground surrounding the building, the interior definitely didn’t look pleasant now.

The structure appeared to have at least four distinct floors based on the visible architecture.

Just four floors might not sound particularly impressive, but given how exceptionally wide and deep the building extended—sprawling across what must have been several city blocks—each individual floor likely encompassed massive amounts of interior space. Thousands of retail units, food courts, entertainment venues, all now presumably filled with wandering Infected or corpses.

We would eventually need to thoroughly clear and secure the entire mall interior if we wanted to properly control this territory and access whatever valuable supplies remained inside. But today wasn’t the day for that ambitious undertaking.

Ahead of my current position, the Boardwalk pathway continued, and suspended above it I could see some kind of enclosed pedestrian corridor connecting what appeared to be the second floor of the Piers Shop Mall to a casino hotel structure on my left side.

That elevated corridor hanging above the Boardwalk might mark the exact boundary line between our newly-claimed territory and the space controlled by the Boardwalk Community.

I walked past the corridor’s shadow and even from this distance I could clearly see the barricades that the Boardwalk Community had constructed—crude but functional barriers designed to prevent Infected from wandering from the unclaimed areas into their secured zone.

It was actually quite convenient that they’d established their defensive perimeter right at this natural boundary point. The geography created a clean division between territories.

But I was already thinking that we should probably construct our own corresponding barricade positioned directly below that hanging corridor on our side. Create a proper no-man’s land buffer zone between the two communities, clearly delineating where our responsibility ended and theirs began.

Before implementing that plan, though, I wanted to clear out the narrow stretch of space that currently existed between the overhead corridor marking the boundary and the Boardwalk Community’s actual barricade position. There were several Infected visible wandering aimlessly in that transitional zone, and it felt unsound to leave them roaming around in the gap between our respective eventually controlled areas.

Drawing my hand axe from its belt loop, I moved forward and began dispatching the Infected shambling through that space.

The kills were straightforward, these were standard wanderers without enhanced capabilities, easily eliminated with precise strikes to the head or neck. Within minutes, I’d cleared the immediate area of mobile threats.

There was one additional Infected that had gotten itself stuck in the landscaped patch of grass and decorative plants on the right side of the pathway. This green space extended along the side of the mall before terminating where another building created a dead end, forming a natural L-shaped configuration that the Boardwalk Community had taken advantage of with their barricade placement.

The fortification created an inverted L-junction barrier since nothing could approach from the left anyway, that direction was blocked by solid building structure.

As I approached to deal with this final Infected, I found myself hoping there weren’t any Boardwalk Community guards currently stationed at this particular barricade position. I knew they maintained armed watchers at the most strategically important or vulnerable entry points to their territory, but maybe this relatively narrow, easily-defensible chokepoint didn’t seem dangerous enough to warrant constant manning.

Peering toward the barricade in the fading afternoon light, I didn’t see any movement or silhouettes that would indicate human presence on the other side.

Good. The last thing I needed was an awkward confrontation with suspicious guards who might misinterpret my presence near their defensive perimeter as some kind of threat.

I could be mistaken as one of Callighan’s men and in such case get shot knowing how much they hated Callighan.

I turned my attention to the stuck Infected, which seemed trapped near the base of the barricade itself, arms reaching futilely toward me as I approached.

Moving closer while staying carefully outside the creature’s limited range, I dodged the grasping hand that stretched desperately in my direction, then crouched down to examine exactly what was preventing its movement.

The Infected was wearing a backpack. The bag’s straps were still secured across the creature’s shoulders, but the pack itself had become firmly impaled on one of the sharp metal spikes jutting out from the barricade’s construction.

The Infected must have wandered too close to the barrier and gotten caught, then lacked the cognitive function to simply remove the bag or back away at an angle that would free the obstruction.

“Bad luck, buddy…” I muttered, looking at the pathetic creature with something almost resembling pity.

I swung my hand axe in a clean arc, beheading the Infected with a single strike. Blood sprayed in a wide arc, splattering against the barricade’s surface and adding fresh stains to what were undoubtedly many previous kill marks.

Crouching down beside the now-truly-dead corpse, I began examining the contents of the trapped backpack.

I was fully aware that looting the dead, even the Infected dead who’d once been living peoplen was somewhat shameless. It felt shameful every single time I did it.

But pragmatism outweighed squeamishness in our current situation. Useful supplies could mean the difference between survival and death. And the former owners certainly didn’t need these items anymore.

“Oh…”

The first object I extracted from the bag was a book. A reasonably well-preserved paperback despite the months of apocalyptic conditions.

One of Stephen King’s novels, I recognized the distinctive cover design and author name even though I couldn’t immediately recall if I’d read this particular title.

“Mei might like this,” I said quietly to myself, allowing a small smile to form as I opened my own pack and carefully tucked the book inside. “Or maybe not,” I added with a self-deprecating laugh after securing my bag closed again.

I honestly had no idea if Mei enjoyed horror fiction. Our world had essentially transformed into a real-life zombie horror movie, so she might find fictional horror either cathartic or unbearably triggering. But regardless of her literary preferences, offering her a book felt like a gesture that might help reduce her anger toward me.

“What else…” I muttered, reaching deeper into the scavenged backpack.

My searching fingers encountered additional items—a mostly-empty pill bottle with a few remaining tablets I’d need to identify later, a pair of shoes that looked roughly my size and were in better condition than my current footwear, and several personal documents and identification papers belonging to the bag’s former owner.

Not a tremendous haul by any measure, but definitely better than finding nothing. The shoes alone made the search worthwhile.

“Hm?”

I suddenly frowned as I noticed darkness looming over me despite the summer sun still burning overhead in the afternoon sky. There shouldn’t be anything positioned above capable of casting such a shadow…

I raised my gaze upward and immediately froze.

A young woman was descending the barricade structure, climbing down the exterior surface with impressive agility. Our eyes met for a brief instant—just long enough for me to register her startled expression—before her hands released their grip.

Whether she let go or simply lost her hold from surprise, I couldn’t tell.

“Nnugh!” I grunted as her descending feet crashed directly against my back and neck with the full force of her falling bodyweight.

“Wha—haahh!!” She simultaneously yelped as the impact destabilized her landing, causing her to topple backward and crash onto the ground behind me.

I managed to avoid falling completely—my strength allowed me to catch myself with my hands against the pavement—but I still ended up in an undignified crouch while pain radiated through my neck and upper spine where her feet had connected.

That descending kick to my neck had genuinely hurt, even with Dullahan’s physical enhancements reducing the damage.

Turning my head to look at the girl who’d just used me as an unintentional landing platform, I found myself momentarily distracted surprised by her appearance.

She appeared to be roughly my age, maybe sixteen or seventeen at most—though it was always difficult to accurately judge ages in our current circumstances. Her long, dirt-blond hair was tied back in a loose ponytail that had partially come undone during her fall, with several escaped strands framing her face.

But her eyes were what really captured attention—an unusually vivid aqua-green color that seemed to almost glow in the afternoon light.

Those eyes stared at me with wide surprise as she remained on the ground, propped up on her elbows while clearly trying to process what had just happened.

When her gaze fully focused on me and she seemed to actually register my presence as a specific individual rather than just a startled blur, she visibly flinched. In one quick movement, she pushed herself up to her feet and took an immediate step backward, putting distance between us while her hand moved instinctively toward something at her beltn probably a weapon.

“W…who are you?”

Well, this situation had become immediately awkward in the worst possible way.

“Just a survivor passing through,” I said, trying to sound casual and non-threatening despite still crouching on the ground with a blood-stained hand axe gripped in my right hand. “I was clearing Infected from the area and looking around…”

My explanation sounded weak and suspicious even to my own ears.

Since she’d just climbed down from the interior side of the barricade, she was obviously affiliated with the Boardwalk Community. But I definitely would have remembered encountering someone as beautiful as her during my previous visits—and not in a creepy way, just as an observable fact that distinctive features tend to stick in memory.

So we hadn’t met before, which wasn’t particularly surprising given that the Boardwalk Community had roughly two hundred members and I’d only interacted with a small fraction of their population.

Regardless of our lack of prior contact, she clearly didn’t know who I was or recognize me as the guest who’d been somewhat welcomed by Marlon. Which meant I preferred to maintain the pretense of being just a random survivor rather than explaining my actual identity.

Even if I told her the truth, that I wasn’t with Callighan but another community—she would almost certainly wonder what the hell I was doing crouched suspiciously near their defensive barricade, apparently looting corpses and examining their fortifications. She’d probably feel obligated to immediately report the encounter to Marlon, and I genuinely wanted to avoid creating unnecessary tension or complications with the Boardwalk Community, at least until our group were fully settled into our new territories.

The girl raised a suspicious eyebrow at my vague explanation, clearly not finding my story particularly convincing.

“You’re not with Callighan, are you…” She said slowly, her hand moving to grip what appeared to be a long, distinctive knife secured at her belt.

The blade looked specialized, a filleting knife with the extended, flexible design typically used for cleaning fish. An unusual weapon choice, but potentially dangerous in good hands.

“Calli-who?” I asked, attempting to play ignorant about recognizing the name.

But as expected, I was absolutely terrible at deception and feigning ignorance. My acting skills were essentially nonexistent.

So catastrophically bad at lying, in fact, that she actually grimaced at my pathetic attempt and took another step backward, her suspicion visibly intensifying.

Sydney would mock me mercilessly for eternity if she ever witnessed this embarrassing failure at basic deception.

“Wait, let me just—”

“Don’t come any closer!” She interrupted sharply, immediately pulling the filleting knife fully from its sheath and pointing the blade directly at me in a clear defensive posture.

I froze in place, not wanting to escalate the situation further by making any sudden movements.

She maintained her aggressive stance, gripping the knife with obvious familiarity while glaring at me with those remarkable aqua-green eyes. Her gaze briefly flickered toward the barricade behind me, and I could see her calculating whether she could successfully vault back over to her community’s side before I could intercept her.

How did I become the villain here?

“Just let me explain the situation,” I said, slowly raising my hands. “I’m not a threat to you or your community—”

But her eyes shifted back to focus on the blood-covered hand axe I was still gripping firmly in my right hand, the blade still dripping with fresh Infected blood .

I must have looked absolutely unconvincing as a “non-threat”—a strange man crouched near her community’s defensive perimeter, covered in blood spatter, armed with a brutal melee weapon, and now claiming to be harmless.

Her expression changed.

Fuck.

Without another word, she suddenly turned around and ran—sprinting away from both me and the barricade.

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