THE TALE OF THE FALLEN BASE

We drove through the night and we reached the base early morning. When the guards saw our car, he immediately used the radio and sent a message our way, "Is everyone okay? Is anyone hurt?" this was just another way of asking is anyone bitten.

"No, everyone is safe." Said Albus over the comms.

He opened the gates and we drove inside to see the patiently waiting general and gran standing there by the gates. The three of us exited the car and strode towards them while simultaneously telling the guards to check the trunk for all of the supplies.

"What happened out there why did you take so long?" gran immediately questioned us as we met them.

"Not out here," Carly said glancing at the large crowd which had gathered around the van and us to check what all had been brought back and to see if their requests had been fulfilled, "let's go inside."

The general took us back to his house where the three of us sunk exhausted onto his couch, he locked the door and offered us some tea while gran shut the blinds. "What happened?" gran asked in a concerned voice.

The three of us looked at each other and then Albus said, "Well we were late because we could not loot the original store that we had planned we had to go further and see if we could find any other places, and when we went there, we… well we had a run in with the pirates."

This bit of scrap information itself shocked the general, he stood in a corner and just stared at us, I had thought that he would ask us more about the encounter with the pirates, instead he shocked me by asking, "And why exactly could you not loot the original spot"

"Well the zeds there are a bit, umm, different to say the least," I paused and looked at Albus before continuing, "the zombies over there are more evolved, they are faster, deadlier, stronger, stealthier and smarter. We saw them climb walls. We estimate that there are a lot of them over there in the store, because the buildings by the store were full of zeds. We got out of there safely and how we have no idea." Devouring silence fell over the room as I completed that sentence. Gran and the general looked stumped for words and just stared blankly at each other.

"Well that checks with the reports that we have gotten recently." The general said looking at his feet. It was our turn to be shocked, shocked is putting it mildly we were livid.

The general got every question in the book which, he just took silently not answering any of our questions.

"You just let us go into the mall when you knew that there were the new zeds in there? You let your own daughter go-" I started to form a sentence but before I could complete the general, true to his habit interrupted me and said. "Ok will you all just calm down and listen to us for a second?"

"Oh, not us honey just you." Gran said, me and Albus looked disgusted at this slip of tongue, gran never calls anyone honey. Gran just told us to shut up and proceeded to sit down and tell us about the new zeds. The general said that they were in contact with a few other bases which were situated quite far away from each other and that one of them had gotten attacked, he said that this was not anything out of the usual since the bases made so much of noise it is hard not to attract zeds but they were one of the biggest bases in terms of manpower and weapons, he said that only one transmission was received from them before they went cold, "They are here and they are different they are much stronger and more faster god save us all," the general said that this was all that they could send over before a blood curdling scream of pain came over and the link died, the nearby bases made efforts to send search parties over there but none of them have responded or came back ever since then, he also said that many zeds arrive from the direction of the fallen base. He also said that the nearby bases reported new types of zeds that they have been coming across, ones that only attack in the dead of night. With this he let the silence take over the room once more.

"Why not alert the civilians or even the regular soldiers?" Carly asked, reminding me once more that she was just another soldier.

"Well we did not want to create panic over the situation since we have had no sightings in our neighbourhood." It was gran who answered this time.

"Well now that they are close by when are you going to inform them?" Albus asked keeping his anger under control and looking straight into the general's eyes.

"I uh- I will see to it that they are aware of the situation."

With this the three of us left the house and walked among the street the word had already spread of an incident which had supposedly happened on our "Expedition". We neither confirmed the rumours nor did we deny them, we just went back to our house and had a long sleep. We woke up around two in the afternoon, we went to lunch and found out that there was an announcement due at four, this earned us quite a few blatant stares and mutterings. We just had the announcement to look forward to now as we went off to do some of our weapons training.