How Zombies Survive in the Apocalypse

“Haah…”

The night after subduing the Huntington Docks pursuers with Aiden and escaping from there, Arian had come to Santa Monica, where LA’s research facility was located.

Originally a separate administrative district from LA, Santa Monica was a different city.

However, with one side facing the beach and the rest surrounded by other LA districts, the area within the walls was now simply treated as part of LA.

There, Arian gazed at the research facility building.

Once belonging to a game company, this structure stood out even in the resort town of Santa Monica.

Its white, cathedral-like columns and azure glass windows set between arched entrances were particularly eye-catching.

With park-like surroundings, had it remained intact, it would have been opulent beyond mere splendor.

But now, that grandeur was nowhere to be found.

Due to the infamous ‘accident’ that had occurred here.

“Hmm…”

From the rooftop, Arian looked down at the research facility.

Most of the building was charred black from the fire.

Through the melted window frames, only piles of ash scattered like shadows in the darkness.

Outside, a few guards patrolled the perimeter, as the city government still restricted access to this site.

After roughly surveying the guard positions, Arian turned away.

Fortunately, it didn’t seem they had posted guards inside the building itself.

Then… there would be no issues exploring it.

With that judgment, she vanished from the rooftop, reappearing inside the vacant research facility a moment later.

“It was the third floor, right?”

Amid the burn-scarred remains, Arian muttered softly.

She already possessed rough information about the facility’s layout.

Details she had heard from Ava.

According to her, the third floor contained the director’s office where Nora resided, as well as the main research labs she oversaw.

Arian walked those third floor interiors.

The corridor leading to the emergency stairwell, the deactivated elevator – all bore traces of human passage. Beyond lay a soot-blackened marble lobby. Venturing deeper revealed the main research labs.

But surveying them made Arian furrow her brow slightly.

Despite the intense fire that must have swept through, there were areas suspiciously untouched by the flames.

Signs that something had been removed from here after the fire was extinguished.

“…There’s nothing for me to recover here.”

Her faint hopes were for naught, as expected.

A considerable time had already passed since the accident occurred.

If the Mayor wished to conceal something from this place, he would have ample opportunity to do so.

So Arian cleanly abandoned searching the labs.

She checked the director’s office too, but it was the same story. That room seemed even more thoroughly stripped of any related materials – whether monopolized or discarded outright. Desks, bookshelves, everything was gone without a trace.

“Hah…!”

Arian scoffed at their brazen lack of effort to even hide this confiscation of data.

Yet separately from her derision, this was an unfavorable situation for Arian.

It meant the lead she sought was no longer present here.

A faint sense of unease rose within her.

Meanwhile, Aiden was acting independently, having headed north toward LA’s outskirts.

Partly to investigate those northern mountain ranges, but also due to unavoidable circumstances.

After the Huntington Docks gang began pursuing him, he could no longer remain in that area.

The gang’s reason for hunting Aiden was that LA had identified him as a zombie.

Specifically, from that CCTV footage showing his undead form.

The very scenario Arian had worried about had come to pass.

Now Aiden could no longer even linger around LA.

But if so, Arian couldn’t remain in LA either.

For he had been her sole reliable source of blood supply.

Of course, Arian had steeled herself for eventually leaving LA.

But the current circumstances were not favorable.

With the LA Mayor revealed as a zombie, and that ominous discovery in the sewers, Arian couln’t depart and leave Sadie behind until the truth was fully uncovered.

Hence Arian felt a sense of urgency.

If she left here empty-handed, would the trail simply end like this?

“Tsk…!”

Clicking her tongue, Arian forcibly suppressed that restlessness.

Now wasn’t the time to be swayed by anxiety, but to remain levelheaded.

Closing her eyes, Arian recalled the conversation with Ava about this research facility.

It had been something Ava had grumbled, rarely opening up about this matter before the Mayor’s arrival.

More a one-sided lamentation than any substantial information.

But from that, Arian had gleaned a small clue.

“…Lodgings.”

Arian murmured to herself.

Ava had said she understood protecting the research data, but questioned why they had retrieved personal belongings from the residential quarters too.

At the time, Arian had simply brushed it off without much thought.

However, did Ava’s words not imply there were living quarters somewhere in this facility for the researchers?

With her objective renewed, Arian swiftly moved.

Soundlessly, she scoured the entire five-story building at speed.

And finally, in one corner, she discovered the staff lodgings.

A small conference room that had been repurposed into residential quarters.

“…”

Arian cast a somber glance over those lodgings.

The late night fire had reduced this area to ash heaps as well.

Leaving more than a few who had met their demise here.

Though the bodies were already removed, Arian could clearly sense their presence.

She stepped inside those lodgings.

Perhaps even the Mayor lacked justification to confiscate personal items as thoroughly as the lab data.

Fortunately or not, most of the residents’ belongings remained untouched here.

Among them, Arian found Nora Hill’s private room.

Unsurprisingly, the walls were completely charred black.

On the burnt desk surface, only the corner of a photograph showing Nora’s face remained.

“Haah…”

With a brief sigh, Arian began searching that blackened room.

But all she could see were charred clothes and melted decor.

For a while, nothing noteworthy appeared.

Then, at the very bottom of the desk’s metal drawer, Arian discovered something.

“This is…”

From the outside, it merely looked like the drawer’s scorched base.

Inside were a thick notebook and various unused cables.

The heat of the fire had melted and fused the rubber and plastics, pooling into the drawer bottom.

However, Arian’s senses detected something embedded within that re-solidified surface.

Using her sharp nails, she pried it open and retrieved the object buried inside.

It was a palm-sized notepad containing Nora Hill’s handwritten journal entries.

Arian immediately examined its contents.

Was this Nora’s diary?

The calendar pages were filled with meeting schedules and such.

Interspersed were scribbled notes, likely thoughts jotted down amid her research work.

There were also personal musings akin to a diary, like foods she felt like eating.

“…”

Arian read through Nora’s notepad entries.

Most contained nothing particularly noteworthy.

However, on the very last page of that diary…

There was an entry stating Nora had finally succeeded in developing a vaccine and reported it to the Mayor.

The date was just two days before the research facility fire.

Too coincidental a timing to dismiss as mere chance.

Could this vaccine have been what the Mayor sought to conceal from this facility?

Arian’s eyes narrowed.

It strongly suggested the Mayor himself had orchestrated burning down the research facility.

Willing to jeopardize his own position, all to eliminate this vaccine.

“…Alright.”

Taking the diary with her, Arian exited Nora’s room.

The Mayor’s previously ambiguous intentions were now somewhat discernible.

She then headed for LA’s northern area to reunite with Aiden.

* * *

At that time, Aiden was in the Santa Monica Mountains adjoining LA’s northern boundary.

“Hah, this is…”

He could only let out those words at the sight before him.

The Santa Monica range meets LA’s walls across a 20km stretch from northeast to northwest.

As Aiden traced that range from east to west, this area didn’t seem particularly dangerous at first.

The far eastern end joining the Los Angeles River at LA’s eastern border was where the famous Hollywood sign stood.

So despite being mountainous, it had numerous buildings and roads crisscrossing, with human traffic regulated but no special threats apparent.

If anything did exist there, someone other than Aiden would likely have noticed first.

However, Aiden’s assessment changed as he progressed further westward.

The numbers of buildings and roads dwindled, the undeveloped area steadily expanding.

And finally, after a stretch of quiet forestry, Aiden felt something snag underfoot.

Initially, he thought it was just a protruding rock.

But upon closer inspection, it was someone’s corpse – the skull that had tripped him.

At first, Aiden assumed it belonged to some hapless drifter who had met their demise here.

But that was not the case.

Looking carefully, the ground appeared unnaturally disturbed.

Digging a little deeper revealed the corpse Aiden had kicked was glaring right back at him.

It was not just a regular corpse, but a zombie that had been buried underground.

A rather disconcerting discovery.

Zombies, even if buried after death, do not remain docile in their graves. Driven by primal instincts to move, they attempt to claw their way out, dismembering themselves in the process.

Like old zombie movie posters depicting a rotting hand bursting from a grave.

Especially here, where the zombie had simply been lying horizontally with a light soiling of earth over it.

Buried so shallowly, it should have emerged immediately.

As that thought crossed Aiden’s mind, the sight of the sewers flashed before him.

Those zombies gathered underground, as if hibernating.

Their dormant appearance overlapped with these zombies compliantly buried in the mountains.

Soon harboring a certain suspicion, Aiden proceeded to dig in various spots.

Each time, he found more zombies lying interred as if asleep.

“…Just how many are there?”

Aiden surveyed the blackened mountain range.

Even beyond LA’s western border, the Santa Monica range stretched dozens of kilometers further than where he stood.

So the total number of zombies buried here was… something Aiden couldn’t dare to guess.

Tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands?

In the worst case, reaching millions would not be strange – just as Fear had gathered.

“…”

In the face of this, Aiden could only harden his expression.

This was a threat on an entirely different scale from those sewer zombies.

The zombies there had numbered mere thousands at most.

While their potential to infiltrate LA through the sewers was certainly troublesome, it posed no existential risk to the 2 million population if precautions were taken in advance.

But the zombies in these mountains were of another magnitude altogether.

No matter where Aiden tread across that considerable span he surveyed, zombies were densely interred everywhere.

Even just the area he had directly inspected likely contained over a hundred thousand of them.

If such numbers breached LA’s vulnerable northern border… the city’s future would become utterly bleak.

“Tsk…!”

Aiden hurriedly descended the mountain.

He seemed to grasp the Mayor’s intentions behind amassing them here.

The sole consolation was that the Mayor hadn’t prepared these for LA’s destruction, it seemed.

More likely to preserve his position, or as a contingency worst-case insurance policy.

A transparent ploy.

For the best way to quell internal unrest and dissent was to present an external threat.

As Aiden made his way down, LA’s northern border naturally drew closer.

But for some reason…

“That is…”

LA’s soldiers had ventured outside the boundary.

Some had even entered the restricted mountain range interior to search it.

An excessively reckless and unthinkable action in the dead of night.

However, Aiden soon grasped the likely reason behind it.

It was because of him.

Not satisfied with tasking the Huntington Docks to find Aiden, the Mayor was now mobilizing the military as well.

“…”

Aiden regarded the soldiers with displeasure in his gaze.

He didn’t know how they had detected his presence here, but their search vector was clearly aimed at him. At this rate, a confrontation was inevitable.

So then… should he immediately retreat back into the mountain ranges?

But there was an urgent matter requiring his attention first.

Unable to simply leave or stay put due to that, Aiden found himself stuck.

It was at that very moment-

“Aiden.”

That voice called out from behind him.

Arian had arrived.

“Over here.”

Quickly grasping the situation, she presented Aiden with an escape route.

At his trusted colleague’s words, Aiden calmly nodded in agreement.