"Be sure to take care of yourself." The leader says. "You will get a frost bite."

"Yes." Flustered, she puts her hand under her clothes, then finally has a chance to look around the tumbledown house. It stops short if something one could call a house. The remains of a house, perhaps, like a skeleton lying in a field. This is what it makes her think of. 

But it still has four walls and a roof, if only just, and would keep out the elements. It isn't warm by any stretch of imagination, but they could hardly hope for better.

"We're lucky it is snowing." Another man peers through a hole in the wall. 

Outside in the White night, eyes shine like  glowing flames. The zombies seem perfectly able to be out and about despite the chill. However, zombies lack certain spring in their step, their movements appear sluggish and aimless. 

The zombies, except the rare ones, lack desire and goal. They couldn't help it if it is cold and snowing outside, and they will roam aimlessly under the snowstorm without regards to their well being. 

Third man turns around, towards inside of the room, looking for useful items. As the original dwellers turned into zombies, the things here remain untouched until now but none of the foods still edible.

"Nothing much except clothes." Fourth man mutters, riffling through battered chest of drawers, carefully so as not to make sound. He pulls a pair of a moth-eaten gloves from the chest. Given that her glove inside the gauntlet has-been torn apart as they escaped from zombies, this is as good a find as top quality glove.

He tosses the glove to Hanabi and advises, "If your body hasn't given up, the rest is only a matter of effort. 

She is speechless, and wiping away the sweat, and the last traces of her accident during the last zombies attack. 

The fifth man focuses on one corner of the room, pulling his kunai (small dagger) in a reverse grip. He drives the kunai onto the ground and almost immediately feels something hard. He, the sixth and seventh man begin to dig it out. As they expected, in place of wooden chest, there are several jars buried underground. Most are useless after all the years they had spent there, but they could scrape the mold off the dried meats, and they would be probably edible.

The eleven man and a woman sit in a circle, distributing the dried meats as their dinner. 

Their breath turn to fog and float away. 

The cold is almost hard to bear. Small shivers begin to wrack her body. She chews restlessly in the tough meat.

"This is better than nothing." The leader's says. Her smile grows strained. 

The leader ignores it and looks outside the shack once again. To escape, or to wait for rescue, or to continue thinning the enemies' number? 

They could be at most last several days.

The twelve of them might be trapped in the snow imposed darkness but he doubts it would be difficult to evade zombies if they venture into the plain and woods. 

Even if the zombies could go about during the day as well as at night, it would still be just as cold, and there would still be just as many places to hide.

Zombies gibbering outside, their feet crunching in the snow, but all of those things felt far away. 

Finally, Hanabi's eyelids drift out. She slumps slightly, leaning against the wall.

"Thump!" An impact turns everything upside down.

They sit up suddenly, are already getting ready to fight if they have to. They are looking around vigilantly, weapons at the ready, their stance low, and their eyes fixed on ...

A huge pale body. Same as the white haired things they encountered yesterday. But it is much taller, at about 2 meter. A mouth that emits rotting odor. 

Hanabi's eyes wide with amazement, squeezes out a voice that is barely a whisper. "Is... Is that the same thing?"

"I don't know. But it should be a zombie, and bad news." Leader says shortly.

With a 'thump', 'thump', each step shaking the ground, the thing comes closer. Zombies surround this creature as if drawn to it. 

Unlike sluggish zombies movements, this large creature looks agile like the unusual zombies they encountered before.

Evidently, neither escape nor waiting would be easy.

Four hours later ..

"Mmm...err." Her sleep has been so light it us no surprise she has trouble waking up. The night is long and her dream is short. She has been roused by various metal clicking sounds around her.

She nods as her brain catches up with reality. They are still in the dilapidated shack, everything just like it has been when she had gone to sleep. She shivers, and takes a quick look outside.

There are no zombies in the snowy field beyond, at least as far as she could tell.

Her ample chest settles as she exhales in relief.

She watches them, and clears her throat,

"What we will do today?" 

She couldn't bring herself to ask, "What do we do next?"

"According to our mission, kill more.." The leader says that while checking his equipments.

"But before that..." They come out of the place.

They couldn't build a fire to melt the snow, nor could they use the well, which the zombies are lurking around there. They get water from a frozen lake at the edge of the village.

"Snow accumulates following the lay of the land.... An if there is well, there must be a water source. Though this one is probably used for irrigation." As the leader speaks, he draws his dagger and plunges it into the ice, scraping away at it.

While the eleven men doing the hard work, it is her job to keep a lookout.

She scans around, hugging her jacket and shivering, "If only we could use the well." 

With that, they continue working the dagger, and before long, they has gouged small holes in the ice. The small holes combined to form a big hole. He reaches in to check the water. It is clear and looks clear.

"Since there used to be villages here, there shouldn't be doubt."

They draw a thin, black straw from their item bags. They put one end in the water, and the other in their mouths, and suck on it.

Once the straw is full of water, they let it drain into his water skin. 

They place the skin in a small depression, in the snowbank, that he'd dug for that purpose, and the flow of water flows naturally.

She observes everything an hugs her knees to ward off the cold, drawing them into her generous chest. 

They take a water skin and gives it a shake. A sound of water emanates from inside. Satisfied it is full, the leader exchange it for empty ones until everyone get to drink. Then, the empty water skin is refilled and traded the full water skin with empty ones until everyone has water skin full of water.

They look up at the sky. The gray clouds, thick and heavy and dark, continue to split now. The wind is gusting, and there is no change in the amount of snowfall. No sign of birds anywhere.

They run in the woods until they discover some zombies. They count the numbers and look for unusual zombies. There are only twenty and there is no unusual one. 

"One man kill two." They stealthily slid in between zombies and cut their throats. Before the remaining zombies could do anything, the men jumps from the fallen zombies and kill another ones. 

Then, they wander to look for more zombies. They discover twenty two zombies roaming on the plain. They stealthily kill half and fight another half. 

Then, they discover a group of over twenty zombies and perform the same before hiding into crumbled building nearby.

The hiding place they find us a storehouse half buried underground. It must have been where some commoners keep their food, once upon a time. The whole place is starting to rot, but the familiarity of the structure appears comforting to her, she starts to calm down. 

They are shielded now from the cold outside, the store house could be hardly called warm, but at least it protects them from wind and snow. Hanabi seats herself at the corner, exhaling. 

"We will install traps in area connected to plain and area connected to villages " Fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth men walks out from the crumbled place.

"Understood. Be careful." 

The leader says while checking his weapon.

After a while, the return safely.

After over half an hour, there are footsteps crunching through the snow. Fleet and unhesitating, just audible over the wind.

Zombies. One, two, three, four, there are ten of them.

The men move at virtually the same instant  they shadows fall over the storehouse door.

They wrap their armoured hands around the zombies' mouths, who are letting moans and slit their throats. There is whistling geyser of dark blood, the spray reaching as far as the plain.

"Rrrroaa." 

"Grrr."

Moanings of zombies from the villages and plains. They turn around and see hundreds of those things are walking unsteadily towards them. 

"Hanabi. You, be ready with weapons. We are leaving this place!"

Their eyes are staring at the traps they set up earlier. The wires are connected to trees and raised to about 20 cm. Moreover, the wires are sharp enough to cut something fragile like zombies' legs. They are now standing in straight lines in front of two wires. 

The incoming monsters from two sides stumble on the trip wires, and the ninja brings their blades down. They slice through the zombies' necks, those creatures don't even manage to make a noise before they are reduced to a twitching lump of meats. Hanabi, this time, cut the two stumbled zombies like crazy. 

The next batch of zombies trip too, and the ninjas put their fat-dulled blades through the creatures' neck and medula oblongata. To kill two or three dozens of weakened and mindless zombies is easy enough. The problem is doing it over and over and over again. 

The third batch of zombies stumble and the ninja immediately cut their vital parts like before. As there are too many zombies fall at the same time, they miss some fallen ones but luckily the zombies' legs are already incapacitated before falling to the ground. Some newly fallen zombies are killed and some that fell before are missed out and still moaning. The ninjas are lucky as the newly fallen zombies crash into zombies that fell before, which render their hands immobile. 

Fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth batch of zombies falls on top of one another. 

As more an more bodies overlapping, the situation becomes hectic. 

The ninjas are just blindly cutting and stabbing anything that enters into their sight.  

Upon the stumbling of tenth batch of zombies, the wires are finally detached. 

The men are too busy killing the fallen bodies to notice the traps no longer work.

"Escape! The trap is destroyed!" The vigilant leader finally notice that, grabs Hanabi's hand and jump away from the chaos. 

Two men stumble as their legs are stucked within the piles of corpses. 

"Go!!"

"Leave us!!" 

The two men bravely cut whatever zombies coming at them.

Half of the zombies swarm over them while the other half chase after the remaining ten ninjas.

Although they run away, they still glance to their back.

One of the stumbled man already escaped from the piles of zombies but his bodies already bitten.

Despite the hopelessness, he chases after zombies that follow his comrades and cut them one by one.

"Go!" He shouts while slashing a zombie. 

He run after his comrades, not for joining their escape but to kill any advancing zombies.

"Kabooooom!!!" 

A sound of explosion comes from the piles of zombies that makes him smile.

No longer concerned with anything, the last man taunts the advancing zombies from chasing after his comrades.

The hundreds of initially roaming zombies are fully decimated. However, hundreds of more zombies have arrived.

At first, he just nimbly dodges and kills zombies but as time pass, his body could no longer cope with the number. 

They bite his body but he still manages to kill every zombies that bite his body. 

However, as a hundred of more zombies pile over him, he loses weapons. 

As the zombies are munching his intestine and bones, he stares at sky while smiling. 

"Still not enough. I need more zombies to be here." He whispers to himself.

His fingers still have some power and attached to the explosive. Weird enough, his consciousness is still there despite losing limbs and everything, perhaps that's the work of the germs of zombies that had already invaded his blood flow. 

When the number of zombies swarm over him exceeds 150, he smiles and pulls the trigger.

"Kabooom!!" 

Another 150 zombies are blown to pieces, after 400 zombies are decimated.