Last Man Standing: Chapter 15

Part 2 of The Battle in Leo's Lair!

Chapter 15
XV

Megan Snow

Flaming Zombies are the Worst

Zombies began pouring into the room as I watched everyone try to fight them off. I cut one of the zombies right through the skull as it came toward me.

“How did they break in?” I called out to Leo who had changed his mechanical arm into that of a short sword or knife. As he stabbed one right through the eye socket, he called back.

“It seems that demigods that are turned into zombies keep some of their power. Your siblings found a way inside before I could improve the defenses,” he explained as he chopped at another zombie. I looked around and my mind began running a mile a minute. I knew that the biggest advantage our enemy had was numbers and that a single bite could turn us into them making their numbers grow even more. Not only that, but it appeared that demigods kept their powers which would explain how Nolan managed to use his blessing. A movie theater was no place to stage a last stand and we needed to get out of this death trap. Everyone was getting pushed back as the zombies began to overtake us, as we were getting tired.

“Leo!” I called. “What is behind this screen?”

“Nothing, just empty space; why?” he asked but I didn’t answer as I ran toward it and cut open the screen.

“This way everyone, come with me if you want to live!” I called and I realized I had just quoted one of the most famous movies in a movie theater, but everyone was too scared to notice or maybe didn’t care. We ran through the rip in the screen into an empty room that had a few ladders and a couple empty buckets of paint.

“Luke, light it up,” I ordered and I pointed to the movie screen. He nodded in understanding and a fireball appeared in his hand. He launched it from the way we had come and the entire screen seemed to create a wall of fire between us and the zombies. We weren’t out of the woods yet because as I looked around, I noticed there was only one exit door and we could all hear the sound of zombies pounding on it from the other side.

“Now what do we do?” Nox asked as she looked around the room. I wasn’t sure either until I noticed the ladders above our heads. They seemed to be run through the entire factory and were industrial sized, so we should all be able to crawl inside them.

“We go up,” I said and ran to the nearest ladder. I positioned it below one of the air vents and climbed up before using my sword to bust open the fan to make an entrance. “Come on, this way.”

Everyone looked at each other for a second, but they soon followed me up the ladder. Before long we were all inside the air vent and Leo was in front. He knew this place better than us, even if he had never traveled around his own factory this way before.

“So what’s the plan?” Elicia asked from behind her sister.

“Well, we have to find a way out of here. It is only a matter of time at this point before we are completely overrun,” I said and looked ahead to Leo. “Is the RV fixed?”

“Well, I didn’t get a chance to do all the things I had been planning, but it runs,” Leo answered. “I had this plan to make this wicked awesome cup holder with a grip that automatically tightened to fit any cup size. I mean it was brilliant, but I couldn’t decide if I wanted to do it using air pressure or not. Then again, I could have used a piece of rubber that tightened around a cup or maybe even…”

“Stop!” I said. Leo had started sparking the more his brain seemed to go into overdrive like mine sometimes, but unlike me his firepower was showing and the entire vent was heating up like a furnace.

“Sorry, I guess I just got a little carried away,” he said and he scratched the back of his head in embarrassment.

“No harm done,” I said, but I wished I hadn’t. A second later, I could hear the creaks and groans of the vent and it snapped right in front of Leo. The thing fell forward onto one of the sky walks and we all rolled out onto it like it was some kind of slide or something. I instantly got to my feet in case there was a zombie close by, but there wasn’t one in my immediate view which was good. However, I looked down and saw a single zombie that noticed us and let out a loud moan. An arrow went straight into its skull a second to late and I saw Allan cursing himself, possibly for not stopping the call to every zombie within range. Then, like a chorus, I heard moans from neighboring rooms as there was no stopping the calls now.

“We have to go, which way to the RV?” I asked Leo and he pointed down the catwalk into the next room.

“About three rooms over, if we follow this path we should stay above any ground zombies,” Leo said and we all started walking. We entered the next room and Leo was right, we were high above the zombies on the work floor, but there were a few on the catwalk which we started attacking. Leo drew fire into his hand and made a punching motion which made a huge fist of fire shoot down the walkway and burn a few zombies. This didn’t help matters however as about three flaming zombies headed our way. I jumped in front and drew my swords and slashed them to bits and kicked one over the side as he fell to the ground. Unfortunately, his flaming body must have hit some fuel on the floor as a trail of fire went back to an oil tank. There was a huge explosion and we ran forward into the next room as a fire quickly spread to the roof.

There was one more zombie in front of me and I got ready to strike. She was ripping wires out of a control panel and I could hear a computer’s voice repeat again and again that the factory’s defenses were going offline as an error had accord and we had found it. The first thing I noticed was a yellow ponytail as she turned around and her dead grey eyes looked into my still living ones.

“Annabeth?” I asked and the zombie took this as a cue to attack. She came at me with a knife and I dodged, then slashed my sword down and cut her arms off. She looked at her stumps in confusion and tried to bite me with her teeth, but she was horribly unbalanced and ended up missing me and hitting a rail. I drove my other sword into the back of her skull and pushed her now dead body off the side. At that time, the supports gave way due to the fire and we all screamed as we fell to the floor. Some of the supports caught onto wires or we hit machinery.

“Is everyone ok?” I asked, and everyone yelled back in response. There weren’t may zombies in this room as the defenses had kept most of them out, but they were now down and it wouldn’t take long for a zombie to find out.

“We’re only one room away,” Leo called and ran to a nearby door. He opened it just a small amount and stuck his head out.

“Are we clear?” I asked him.

“No,” He replied

“How many?” I asked him.

“Lots.”

Darkcloud1111 ~Fastest Hero Alive