Rewrite the Apocalypse dream (by Dee Cari) novel Chapter 168

Chapter 168 Zombie Horde Arrives

Finished

The taillights of the black sedan vanished into the gloom, leaving a thick, poisonous bitterness swelling in Briggs’ chest. He watched the empty space where the car had been, a hot, blinding rage fighting against years of hard-wired military discipline.

“What kind of piece-of-trash leader abandons his own men?” Briggs spat, the words scraping past his throat like gravel. His knuckles turned white, straining against the polymer grip of his rifle. “He left forty of his own soldiers to get chewed to pieces just to save his skin. He’s a coward.”

Joanna didn’t answer. She couldn’t. Together, they stole a final look down at the Eldon Galleria, where the world was actively ending.

The situation below had deteriorated into a scene straight out of an apocalypse painting. Legions of groaning dead shattered the remaining glass facades, their decaying bodies flowing into the building like water bursting through a failed dam. Inside, the chaos was a deafening wall of sound. Trapped survivors and abandoned raiders let loose blind, panicky bursts of gunfire that echoed erratically from the upper levels, the muzzle flashes strobing against the night. But the ammunition was running out, and the collective human uproar inside rapidly splintered into scattered, desperate shrieks of absolute agony.

Suddenly, Joanna stiffened. Her eyes snapped away from the slaughter at the mall, fixing instead on the broader grid of the surrounding city. Her breath hitched, catching in her throat.

“Briggs,” she whispered, her voice tight with a sudden, sharp dread. “We have a problem. Look.”

She pointed a trembling hand toward the massive four-way intersection framing the mall layout. Eldon had been a thriving metropolis of millions before the collapse, and now every single one of those lost souls seemed to be answering the dinner bell.

An ocean of shuffling, decaying bodies packed the asphalt from curb to curb, stretching back into the foggy concrete canyons of the city. The immense horde from the highway was actively colliding with fresh waves of infected flooding out from the residential sectors, creating a horrific bottleneck that squeezed tighter around the Eldon Galleria by the second. The very tree line they had planned to use for their retreat was already being heavily flanked by stray ghouls spilling off the main roads.

They were being completely boxed in.

Joanna slung her pack over her shoulder, her eyes darting across the sprawling rooftops. “We’re going to have to hop a few blocks on the roofs,” she murmured. “The streets are entirely compromised.”

Briggs hoisted his tactical bag, gave his rifle to Joanna to put in her space, and nodded. The raw grief was gone, locked away behind the cold mask of his commander persona. He was back in operational mode.

After storing everything but the jewels, Joanna gripped Briggs’ forearm tightly.

What followed was the strangest feeling Briggs had ever felt. In a blur, they were airborne, but gravity felt completely broken. Four times in rapid succession, the freezing November wind and the horrific screams from the streets below violently cut in and out, tearing at his senses as Joanna leaped them across four separate rooftops in a series of micro-blinks.

The pressure finally released with a sharp pop of displaced air on the last building. Briggs stumbled hard, his combat boots slamming onto gravel-strewn asphalt as his equilibrium spun and he frantically sucked in a breath.

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Chapter 168 Zombie Horde Arrives

Finished

They were standing exactly five blocks away, perched on top of a tall highrise. Joanna paused, dropping to knee near the ledge to recover. Down below, easily a hundred zombies shuffled past like a shifting ocean, completely oblivious to the two souls who had just materialized high above them.

Joanna looked over the edge of the highrise, shielding her eyes against the icy wind as she scanned the surrounding streets. “The swarms are thinning out a little down there,” she observed, her voice barely carrying over the distant, muffled chaos. She turned back to face him, her brow furrowed. “Where is the convoy, Briggs?”

Briggs didn’t hesitate. The absolute authority of his commander persona was firmly back in place. “Will and the rest of the men should be holding at Eldon’s school district,” he barked. He turned and sprinted toward the western corner of the concrete roof, pointing a rigid finger out into the dark fog. “Three blocks that way.”

Joanna’s expression soured instantly, a flash of pure annoyance crossing her face.

“Three blocks in zombie-infested streets?” she snapped, gesturing angrily toward the dense, undulating mass of decay gridlocking the asphalt below. “With this many ghouls, you might as well have said the convoy was across the ocean, Briggs. A single running car would attract the entire horde in minutes.”

Briggs stared at her, his eyes calculating the risk. “Can we teleport?” he asked bluntly, nodding toward the western horizon.

Joanna looked away, but she couldn’t hide the telltale signs of mental strain wearing on her. Dark circles shadowed her eyes, and a slight tremor shook her hands as she wiped a bead of cold sweat from her

forehead.

“I can,” Joanna answered, her voice strained and tight. “But I have a killer headache coming on. I need to stop jumping for a while, or I’m going to black out.” She rubbed her temples, her expression darkening with a deeper anxiety. Even drinking her rejuvenation water could only help her so much. “What I am really worried about is the tsunami coming. We don’t know what the fallout from that will look like. We need to clear out of here before it hits, otherwise we might be trapped in Eldon a lot longer than we can survive.”

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