THE APOCALYPTIC RISE OF ADAM

Chp 4 - Learn Or Be Forced To

Almost thirty minutes later, after Adam had thought he would certainly end up as zombie food, he was breathing so hard as he watched the two crystal cores that had rolled out of two of the zombies’ shimmer and disappear.

Immediately, the spatial storehouse shimmered too and expanded in dimensions twice. 6 cubic metres wide now.

Adam waited for the third crystal core to roll out of the adult male zombie, but nothing came out.

With no intention to waste his time wondering about that, he quickly left where he was standing.

Three things were clear to him now, though.

The more crystal cores he got from killing the zombies, the wider the spatial storehouse got.

Each core was equivalent to 1 cubic metre. The spatial storage would shimmer and expand according to how many core he got.

Also, it was not all the zombies that had the cores in their brains.

As he moved farther away from what used to be his home, taking in the destruction on the once-busy roads of Joville, Adam knew that his world would never be the same again.

He had gone from being a workaholic nobody who endured all humiliations just so he could provide for his girlfriend and parents to a man who had to start devising ways to kill monsters that had once been humans like him.

He just wished he could know which monsters had cores in them and which ones did not.

That way, he didn’t have to use up his energy trying to fight most of them.

“That was close,” he thought again in relief as he thought of how the spatial storehouse suddenly appeared in his mind’s eye when he was panicking and forgot how to call forth the orb.

If he had not seen the Claymore sword there on time, he sure might be dead now.

“Not again,” he vowed to himself, not to make such a costly mistake again.

“You want the blade orb; picture it in your mind. You want the storehouse; throw your hands out with its image in your head,” he muttered to himself as he kept walking.

He was tempted to take one of the abandoned cars around, but since he didn’t have the matched keys and he didn’t want the engine sound to attract the zombies, he doubted if it was a good idea, so he decided to keep walking to put enough distance between himself and the swarms of zombies he had seen earlier.

He saw a few humans open the curtain of their window and hurriedly close it back when they saw him looking.

He couldn’t blame them.

A small child waved at him from behind their window with a small smile on her freckled face.

The next moment, Adam saw her mother pull the child away from the window.

He couldn’t blame her.

He wished the child’s smile would not be forever wiped off her face.

He wished the authorities were doing something about the disaster and not just dancing around their bureaucracy and protocols.

He hoped that help would come soon.

As for him, he was not going to wait around for salvation that might not come when he could save his family himself. He couldn’t risk it.

Not especially now that he had better chances at turning the situation around.

He just needed to stay alive first.

And that means keeping his feet moving and his head down.

“Hey! You there! What the fuck do you think you are doing?”

Adam was jolted out of his thoughts by the loud voice, and his first thought was “So much for keeping my head down,” followed by anger as he remembered what that loud noise could attract.

He needed orbs, but he was not about to deliberately provoke the zombies just to get them.

“Keep your voice down!” he said automatically as he looked over at the direction of the voice.

He was taken aback by what he saw.

“What did you say?” said a tough-looking man, who stood in front of two other men who had bats in their hands.

The brown-haired man who had spoken was clearly the leader of the two, and behind them was a store.

People who were coming out of the store were fearfully laying out what they had with them in their bags.

“What are you all staring at, idiots?”

One of the men with the bats snapped at the people disposing of what they had.

“This jurisdiction belongs to us and you had better lay down everything you have with you. Who told you you could take anything with you, you greedy bastards?”

“But…but… I saw the owner of the store turn into one of those things. He is dead now, and we need these supplies to survive while we lock ourselves up in our homes. Please let us go.” One old man dared to talk.

The man with the bat struck it hard at the man’s temple.

The old man fell to the floor, and blood started trickling out of his ears as he lay unconscious.

“Who else has something to say?” the leader of the gang asked the people, but they all cowered back in fear as they saw their champion on the floor.

“That was what I thought,” he said in arrogance before pointing at the off-road jeep that they drove there.

“Start piling everything there in that truck, then go back inside to bring more till the bed of the truck is filled!”

Certain that his order would not be contradicted, he turned back to Adam, who was still staring in amazement.

“You! You seemed to have a lot to say earlier. What was that?” he said as he stepped closer towards Adam and his men behind him.

Adam knew there was no point in arguing with these men, as they would only delay him.

He could see that they were a kind of gang because of the identical tattoos on the arms of the two followers.

He had come a long distance from his area, and these men seemed to have thought that this area and everything on it belonged to them now since the apocalypse started.

He saw them eyeing his backpack, and he knew that there would be no point in telling them that he did not even enter the store they were claiming to own.

Since the most important supplies were in the storehouse anyway, he decided to give them the contents of the backpack.

Looking decidedly away from the man on the floor, he told himself firmly that this was not the time to want to play the hero.

“I am sorry. I meant no disrespect. Please, I want no trouble,” he said as he removed the backpack from his back and stretched it towards them.

“Open it!” the leader snapped.

Adam complied immediately and opened the backpack.

But just as he was pulling out the second pair of shoes he had in the bag, from the corner of his eyes, he saw one of the men strike toward him with the bat in his hand.

He dove out of the way in time as the air from the bat whispered across his cheek.

“What the hell?” he yelled in anger as the men tackled him.

His anger, fuelling his spatial abilities, made the blade he chose swifter than usual.

In no time at all, he had killed the three men.

The people at the store froze in shock and fright for a moment, as if waiting for their fates as well, but he waved them off.

“Take what you need and quickly get back into your homes. Lock your doors and make sure you don’t make noise. Noise attracts them. Take off their heads if you have to fight them. If you have the chance, run as fast as you can! Go take care of that man before he die," he told the people before he turned away.

Just as he wanted to resume his walk, his gaze went straight to their jeep, he figured if any zombies were around by then; the noise those gang men had made earlier would have attracted them already.

He needed a means of transportation and here it was, a nice jeep with the keys still inserted into the ignition switch.

With that thought in mind, he shut the Jeep’s bend with the supplies already packed into it and drove off as some of the people went back into the store and the others carried the man on the floor up.

All done in silence.

“They will learn to survive. Or they will be forced to,” Adam thought to himself as he drove off.