Chapter 48: Castellanotis
Adam had rushed through the door and immediately turned with the Jameson’s apartment behind himself. His pistol was raised high, and immediately, a shot fired within moments of the sight of more zombies having come after the others.
In the time that he had been reloading, they had drawn rather close from the other end, thus, while both easier on his aim the threat was greater.
Bullets tore through the air, bursting through the heads of two of them. He had only stolen a half glance behind himself in leaving the room.
’At least thirteen more back there,’ he had counted internally.
There, his arm had whipped towards the farthest zombies in the group ahead of himself. Their bodies lurched far back, their heads torn through with bullets.
Then, Adam pressed one of the buttons to the front of his wheelchair’s armrest. The wheels suddenly began to drive themselves, and his hands had snapped down.
Bullets fired and blasted through the knees of the creature. It thud harshly against the ground, and in its collapsed as the wheels drove him forwards, the pistol had been holstered, and his other hand took the axe from his front, where his extra magazines sat.
Adam’s arm swung hard, and it cut through the neck of the zombie as it had risen even despite the injuries he had inflicted upon its legs.
The damn things were tenacious to no end!
Blood sprayed from the remaining stump of the zombie’s neck and he swiftly pressed the same button, his wheelchair dragging to a stop.
He had slipped the axe back into his front and then brought his hands back to the wheels, turning himself around.
There were more coming from the direction of the Jamesons. His brows furrowed, the silent, distant wonder of why they had concentrated climbing through towards that side lingering in his mind briefly.
This time he did not reach for the pistol. There were over a dozen of them down there, and had his wheelchair not driven him forwards, some of them would have already reached him.
Spinning himself to face them, his hand had then reached to his back, yanking free the rifle, and he had immediately brought himself to an aim where he had released a practiced sigh, loosening himself.
Adam would have shot moments later when suddenly, the door down the hall to the Jameson’s apartment crashed open, the wood blasting off of it, throwing back one of the zombies that had been nearest to it, entirely having disregarded the noise that he had made, banging on the door.
A rushing stream of red had broken through the door right then and impaled through both the zombie and the wall.
"What the—?!"
There, a tall figure had suddenly raced out of the room. The blood that had skewered through the wall and the zombie suddenly moved, shielding the man in a swirling circle of red liquid.
The man’s attention had immediately turned to the zombies down one end, while the blood suddenly transformed into thick, hardened arrows that blitzed through the air, puncturing through the heads of a few of the zombies that had rushed down his path.
A wide, slightly manic grin spread on Adam’s countenance, and the spark of bullet fire as well as its rumble thundered through the hall.
The scent of blood had filled the hall, the zombie corpses of those ahead of Adam falling with gorges of holes torn through their heads.
Then, his rifle’s sight snapped towards the fighting figure down the hall.
The clothing on his body had been as tight as if it were forced onto his figure, torn in places where it could not easily fit anymore.
Till now there were still near a dozen zombies ahead of him, and more were coming down. It would have been far too risky to shoot; to aid him, he was simply moving too erratically, with a makeshift blade formed from the hardened red liquid in his hand, slashing through the heads of zombies.
Adam’s attention through the scope was focused on his figure as it moved and the sight was suddenly blocked by the flash of his gunfire.
The bullet whirled through the air, spinning and cutting through the distance within moments, directly for the tall, dark-haired figure’s head.
Its head was hardly moments from piercing through the back of him when the figure moved.
Adam’s manic grin only grew when the bullet blasted through the head of the zombie to the figure’s side, one that he had not yet turned his attention to but had been close enough to demand being his next immediate attention.
The crack of another bullet followed as Adam pressed the button of his wheelchair twice this time, and it drove him forwards at a more leisurely pace, and more zombies fell.
The red liquid that had pierced through the zombies in Adam’s direction flew through the air, returning to the dark-dressed figure, and zombies filling the hall were slaughtered.
Faint huffs of breath sounded in the finally silent hallway.
Smoke drifted off the mouth of the rifle, and that red liquid flowed towards the tall figure, wrapping and compressing around his wrist.
Once he had turned, Adam’s eyes, as he lowered his rifle, gradually drew wide. He found himself staring up at the six-foot-three figure with slit, animalistic red eyes.
"You ain’t a zombie, are you?"
The man’s brows raised, and Adam watched as his eyes gradually returned to a circular shape, an intrigued look to his face.
"The last people I met looking like this almost tried to kill me for my eyes. How did you know?"
Adam hadn’t responded immediately, his eyes briefly drifting down to the red bands around the man’s wrist, then back up at him.
"It’s fair enough, when Eve Taylor said what she had. Your awakening turned you into a vampire? That liquid is blood, isn’t it."
"My name is Dion Borealis." The figure’s hand reached forwards, leaving a slight laugh at those words, and he said, "I had hoped I would find you still here."
"The hope is mutual," Adam’s hand raised, and they shook with a tight grip, "The name is Adam. Adam Castellanotis. And I’d like to ask for your help."
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