Six of us followed behind Elijah. Kait was right behind him, and I was right behind Kait. 

I had swapped my knife for one of the heavy pipes that we gathered. After having made the tip pointed the day before, it was both a heavy weapon and a spear. 

Elijah led us in the direction of the Screamer. We dashed from building to building, keeping our eyes out for the grotesque monster. It had left Elijah's line of sight a while ago when he was watching from the store, but he knew where it could be. 

Sure enough, we eventually spotted it only a street away. We also saw the result of its scream. 

The 12 survivors were now all dead. Their corpses lay maimed and mangled in the midst of a horde that was only just beginning to thin out. It looked like they had tried to hide inside a building, but the barricaded doors kept them out, killing them in the process. 

Kait shivered a bit, letting out a low whimper at the sight of their dead bodies. These were all people who had been running for their lives only a couple hours ago. They didn't even get far, having fallen to the hundreds of zombies called by the Screamer.

I became a bit fearful. What if that were us? Should we have called them? When we were watching, all of us had subconsciously decided to stay out of it. We were able to see the hundreds and thousands of zombies, and we knew we couldn't handle that. 

But was it the right choice? I regretted not having done something, and I tried to tell myself that there was nothing I could do since attracting hordes to the store could kill everyone inside. But it sounded like excuses. We could have saved them, or at least tried. 

We stayed silent, stewing in our own dark thoughts while inching over to a building not far from the Screamer. The monster had decided to stick around in the middle of the street. There were at least 200 zombies surrounding it. 

Once we had ascended to the roof of a building not far away, we got a bird's eye view. Elijah was frowning deeply. 

"We can't kill it with all those zombies around. We need to get it alone."

"Should we try and pull its attention? Maybe we can attract it with sound." Kait immediately thought of a solution.

Everyone liked the idea. So long as they weren't directly spotted, they could stay out of harm's way. 

Suddenly, Elijah crouched and grabbed a large pebble. He then threw it down the side of the building we were on, hitting a window of the adjacent building. 

*Thunk*

The pebble made an obvious sound. Elijah had instantly hidden back down after throwing the pebble, so when the Screamer jolted toward the sound, he wasn't spotted. 

"Screhlgh."

The Screamer made odd noises and walked over to the window that had been tapped. Elijah didn't stop there though. Grabbing another pebble, he tossed it down the back of the building, hitting a metal trash can. 

*Ting!*

This time, the sound was a bit louder. The Screamer seemed to get excited, limping quickly around the building to find more prey. 

That's when Elijah waved at us. We rapidly descended from the roof, crawling through the building and stopping at a back door. 

Through the door, we could hear the curious movements of the Screamer. Around it were a dozen zombies, as we'd seen earlier. 

Elijah looked behind him, grabbing the doorknob. 

"I'll get the Screamer, and you all take care of the zombies around it. It'll definitely scream, so be ready to retreat back into this building and up the roof after killing it. Got it?"

"Got it."

Everyone nodded. Before he opened the door though, I grabbed him. 

"I'll bring out the skeleton. Let it attack the Screamer with you."

"Are you sure?"

I nodded assuredly. "Yes. Everyone, don't attack any skeletons."

I spoke behind me, confusing our three new volunteers. 

After that, Elijah opened the door. He sprinted out, as did we behind him. The Screamer turned to us instantly, its eyes widening in surprise and mouth unhinging. 

*SCREEE-*

*Splat!*

Its scream was interrupted by Elijah's machete that lopped off the bottom half of its mouth. At the same time, I activated the bone rune on my forearm. 

The Skeleton Sentry materialized in front of me. As soon as it appeared with its new bone axe, I pointed at the Screamer. 

"Kill the Screamer!"

The skeleton acknowledged with a turn of its body. It rushed the Screamer, hacking down with its axe while I turned to a zombie. 

Thankfully my skeleton avoided Elijah as well. The bone axe came down, and with strength that wasn't too much lesser than my own, hacked into the shoulder of the Screamer. 

*Scree!*

The Screamer let out a loud whimper as it buckled under the axe, its skinny legs unable to hold it up. Its left arm also fell off. 

It still thrashed out with its other arm though, and Elijah quickly found out how sharp its nails were. Those nails tore through the arm of his sweater, only stopping after hitting the second sweater underneath. He quickly appreciated wearing two layers before attacking the other arm. 

His machete cut into the Screamer's skinny arm, almost taking it off outright. That also opened up the Skeleton to chop down again. 

This time, it chopped down on its other shoulder. The axe dug into its collar bone, turning inward and almost chopping through its spine. With that, the Screamer was easily disabled, unable to fight back anymore. 

Elijah watched as the skeleton raised its spine axe again, this time aiming for the head. The Screamer coughed up a small pool of blood before looking back at the wisps of fire in the skeleton's eyes. 

*SCREEEE!*

*Splat!*

It was killed only after it let out one final death throe. 

At the same time, I had killed two zombies on my own, piercing them through the chest and in the skull with my pipe spear. The rest had also handled zombies on their own, and the initial dozen were taken down rather quickly. 

However, due to the scream of the Screamer, more zombies quickly flooded over. They hadn't been that far anyway, and being alerted from so close drove them into a frenzy. We were rapidly surrounded with our backs to the building. 

"Inside! Now!"

Elijah waved while chopping the neck of another zombie. Kait ran back and opened the door, beckoning through the others. 

Our new volunteers rushed back first, with Coach Todd right behind them. Then, Elijah and I retreated with my skeleton defending our backs. 

Elijah jumped through first, taking Kait with him through the door. I was the last, but I didn't immediately close the door behind me. 

"Get over here!"

I yelled, reaching out for my skeleton. Grabbing one of its rib bones, I yanked it back, throwing it into the building. 

I slammed the door with a bit more strength than I probably should have, taking off the arm of a zombie that had reached through. After flipping the lock, we backed away while listening to the bangs and scratches on the metal door. 

"To the roof."

Elijah moved us further, and we climbed back on top of the roof. There, we finally sighed in relief. 

Mission success. 

I finally took a look at the alerts that had popped up. 

---

{Your [Skeleton Sentry] has killed a [Screamer - Type 1]}

{Your [Skeleton Sentry] has killed a [Zombie - Type 1]}

{You have received [Ectoplasm - Type 1] (x6)}

{You have received [Ability Tome - Type 1]}

---

Ability Tome!

My heart seemed to jump out of my chest as a book appeared in my hands. I stuffed it under my sweater, then looked around and saw that nobody noticed. 

In fact, everyone was staring at my skeleton. Our three volunteers were particularly curious, though equally fearful. 

"What the hell is that?"

Thomas backed away from the skeleton that looked at me. I couldn't help but face my skeleton, thinking of it like some kind of puppy awaiting orders. 

"It's my ability. Elijah, come with me."

Without explaining much, I grabbed Elijah's shoulder and led him to a corner of the roof. There was an air conditioning unit that we walked behind, partially hiding us from view. 

"What is it?" He asked curiously. 

I reached under my sweater, pulling out the Tome. We both looked at the cover, on which were black letters that seemed to be burned onto the leather. 

Ability: Weapon Power Imbuement

"An abi-!"

"Shhh!!"

I hastily interrupted his excited voice. Still, he shook a bit at the sight of the book. 

Though the title of the ability sounded very useful to me, I intended to keep my promise. I placed the book against his chest, causing him to grab it. 

"When you open it, you'll get the ability. That's how it worked for me. Kind of."

"Alright, alright. This is... I can't believe it."

Elijah was obviously a bit overexcited. After looking at me for a few seconds, he nodded and opened the book. 

As I had seen before, the book's cover glowed with runic lines while the pages flipped and had scribbles mysteriously write themselves down. 

Elijah froze for a moment, staring off into space. I just let him be. He was probably being awakened. 

It was a minute later when the book disappeared. The golden glow retreated, and on his palms appeared a series of runic lines. 

That was when I seemed to sense something. Call it a sixth sense, but I could tell that there was now energy within his body, energy beyond the material. It... actually seemed to be a bit more than mine. 

Then, Elijah raised his machete. After activating his ability, we both saw the weapon take on a golden sheen. 

His eyes were wondrous. "The ability allows me to imbue my Energy into weapons, making it sharper and stronger. All at the expense of my own Energy, of course. Still. This will allow me to finally kill and get rewards! I understand now!"

He spoke as if enlightened. He was finally realizing what I meant when I explained everything to him. He now had the Archive, and an ability. Not only that, but the ability wasn't any worse than mine. It was more offensive in nature. If he had that ability, my skeleton wouldn't have been needed in that fight against the Screamer. Not only that, every kill while using that ability would get him rewards.

Now, our combat power rose. I was ultimately glad that I gave him the ability, though I couldn't help a tiny bit of envy. How nice it would be if I could get rewarded for all of my kills, not just the ones my skeleton got?

With that, we walked back over to the group. Elijah didn't say anything about the ability yet. Perhaps he wanted to savor the thought of a secret power. 

Regardless, we had completed our objective, eliminating a potentially devastating enemy. 

The only problem was the fact that this building was now surrounded and swarmed with zombies. 

There were at least 400 zombies surrounding the building now, not an inch of empty space. Many continued to bang on the door, while others broke through some glass and entered. 

The store was only a street or so away, but we couldn't go back the way we came. We all began thinking of a plan, and eventually settled on jumping across to another building. 

There was an alley between our building and another, creating a gap no more than 10 feet wide. I thought about some of our jumpers on the team who could jump up to 25 feet. Compared to that, this was nothing. 

And we really did jump over easily. At least, we athletes did. Even Coach Todd could jump across. Our poor volunteers though weren't as confident, scared of the small gap. 

"Come on, just jump to me. Get a running start, and jump!"

"We aren't athletes!"

"Man, we've got girls jumping nearly 20 feet! You can jump 10!"

After a bit of back and forth encouragement, the three men finally managed to jump over. Though, Thomas was very obviously incapable of running fast, and we had to pull him up after he barely landed on the ledge. 

With that, we descended this un-swarmed building and exited out a back door. We had to kill a few zombies, but we were able to escape without expending too much energy. In the process, my skeleton earned me 4 more Ectoplasm. I had 25 in storage now. 

We made our way back to the store, where Albert welcomed us. There were some corpses by the back door indicating that he'd killed some while we were gone. 

"Alright, we'll recover for an hour and then head out to the stadium. We'll bring our weapons, stay the night, and then fight our way back." Elijah laid out our plans. We had expended plenty of energy hunting the Screamer, and a bit of rest was in order. 

We ate some food, just enough to top off our energy reserves. Then, we prepared all our bags that had been filled with weapons. 

Since our weapons consisted of metal poles and metal tools, we had wrapped many of them in cloth and shirts to keep them from clanging together. So while our loads were a bit heavier, we were also quiet, a necessary tradeoff. 

All 7 of us carried large bags, and we didn't plan on bringing any food. Elijah had wanted to, thinking of the small amount of food at the stadium, but I explained to him that the human body could go weeks without food, let alone a day. We couldn't be bringing too much with us. We weren't delivery men. 

Finally, the hour came. It was still only 8 in the morning, so we had plenty of time to get back to the stadium. It had taken us a few hours to get to the store with how stealthy and careful we had been, but hopefully it would take less now that we were a bit more confident in our ability to fight zombies. 

We didn't tarry, setting out on the dot. From the store we crossed the street, killing a dozen zombies in the process. I didn't bring out my skeleton in order to conserve energy. 

Since the Screamer had attracted zombies elsewhere, the ones nearby weren't enough to stop our advance. We could cross the street with relative ease. 

Still, we knew that if we caused too much of a commotion, the other zombies would get agitated and flood us. When watching the Screamer the night before, we had seen how fast they could run, and how much strength they could exert. Individually, and even in small groups, they weren't that bad. But as soon as more than 20 got active, the situation would rapidly turn deadly. 

So we continued to jump between buildings. We killed any inside, and since we had a direction, we chose the fastest route to the stadium. 

During this, Elijah had showcased his ability. At first, he would imbue his machete with power and hack at all the zombies in our way. His blade slid through their flesh and bone like butter, and he smiled whenever he was rewarded. 

But it was obvious that the ability wasn't light on his energy. After killing a mere 8 zombies, he was huffing for breath. 

After that, he backed off, refusing to use it unless necessary. Or, he would use it only to deliver the final killing blow, minimizing energy consumption. 

It was two hours later when we finally got within sight of the stadium. 

I was a bit excited as we approached. We had a grocery store full of supplies and a plan to build a militia. I could practically see my vision being realized. We just needed to get all our athletes to the store, and we could start. 

We actually spent time clearing out some of the zombies in the vicinity. I brought out my skeleton, and it killed about 10 zombies, earning me 4 Ectoplasm. Elijah also practiced more with his new ability, killing 8 in the process. 

Through watching my skeleton, I was able to get a read on just how much its stats afforded it. 

The Skeleton had 39 Energy. After killing 10 zombies, it had spent 15 Energy. This was about 1.5 Energy per kill, a pleasant surprise. Plus, the zombies couldn't even hit it before it simply split their heads in half with its axe. It was very efficient. 

So my skeleton killing around 25 zombies was reasonable before I had to bring it back. The only thing I didn't like was that, not only did the skeleton consume its own energy pool when moving, but I also had to pay 10 of my own energy an hour to let it operate. In long term battles, I would run through my reserves quickly if I were also fighting alongside it. 

I also wasn't as fearless as my skeleton. I was constantly worried about getting even slightly scratched. My skeleton, on the other hand, could get scratched and grabbed and not care. It didn't have to worry about infection. 

Still, even with the downsides, this made it exceptionally valuable. It was a minion that could take hits, kill, and get me rewards without me having to even lift a finger. Even the 10 Energy per hour drain on me wasn't that noticeable since I would only bring it out when needed. The only downside was that it took a few hours for it to regenerate its own Energy pool, limiting its longevity.

After calling back my skeleton, we entered the stadium, avoiding a small horde that had noticed us. 

Unfortunately, we weren't ready for our welcoming party. 

*Scream!*

"What was that?"

Our ears perked up at the shrill scream of a woman. We looked at each other before running over. 

There, in front of the stadium, a zombie had gotten its hands on one of the female athletes. It had already bitten into her shoulder, hugging her with enough force to keep her from easily escaping. 

We immediately rushed over, and upon approach, I noticed the clothes of the zombie. 

"That's the guy that was scratched on day one! He turned!"

"Dammit!"

Elijah cursed as he ran up to the two. By now, the zombie had bitten into the girl's throat. She was barely clinging to life, but it was clear that she was finished. 

After imbuing his blade with Energy, Elijah slashed, directly lopping off both their heads. Their bodies collapsed to the floor. 

I didn't question him, though I was surprised he decided to decapitate the girl too. Nonetheless, it was the smart decision. We couldn't have her rising from the dead. 

After that, we heard some more yelling. We all ran into the stadium where the locker rooms were, the source of the commotion. 

Flinging open the doors, we laid eyes on a small group of zombies. They were pulling open the doors to the locker room where everyone was staying. 

And one of them in particular looked like it had mutated. This one was taller, with a long torso. Its ribs seemed to have extended and branched out, turning into something like teeth that could reach out and clamp down. 

Its arms had also elongated, its fingers turning into curved claws. 

We could see this zombie reach through the opening in the doors, grabbing an arm and pulling with shocking strength. An athlete was directly yanked out of the room. 

The zombie's arms wrapped around his body. When he was close enough, the ribs of the zombie opened up like a mouth before clamping down. 

The zombie bent over, its entire body holding onto the man and keeping him locked in. We could hear him scream, watching as the ribs dug into his body and tore him apart. 

I brought out my skeleton, which still had a good amount of its energy. Then, I pointed to the zombie, which I promptly named. 

"Kill that Grabber!"