He’d seen the images from above. A few dozen Chosen had swept through Chihuahua; blasting any large concentrations of zombies from the sky, clearing out whole crowds; and of course, absorbing excess mana to help progress their own levels.

  It was hoped… not really believed, but hoped… that most of the zombies were gone. But Grey, Watkins, and the fire-teams with them were going to be among hundreds of teams, both Mexican and American, sweeping the city in a grid pattern, block by block, clearing out every car, building, vehicle, and marking them off on the map.

  Grey was wearing an actual uniform, with no rank insignia, and felt somewhat uncomfortable. This likely wouldn’t be too odd; Joshua Grey hadn’t worn one for over fifty years. What was less uncomfortable… was the steady walk through the suburbs.

  He stopped… pointing at a house.

  “Three zombies inside. Two adults and a kid, by levels. Currently walking to the front door.”

  Watkins nodded. They had this figured out, after the smaller villages; one of his men simply waited, rifle aimed at the front door… and when it opened, fired three rounds.

  With the zombies neatly lined up, a bullet would pass through one to damage the ones behind it; sending all three tumbling. The shooter stepped up to loot the bodies; all three vanishing into the void; before stepping back to rejoin his fireteam.

  Grey hadn’t even stopped walking; his hopes of this particular infestation dragging out and giving him a bunch of levels had quickly been crushed by the sheer efficiency of the two governments and locals at handling the outbreak.

  Both the cartels and the texan militias and law enforcement had cleaned their own areas so rapidly it never even became a problem.

  They steadily walked through the suburbs; just eleven men out of thousands currently working their way through the outskirts of the city.. Stopping at a house here, there… until they reached the point where things would get complicated.

  To the right was a low ravine; mostly just gravel and rock. But on the left… a block of three warehouses and an office building.

  He glanced at Watkins. “Got hundreds of them inside that warehouse. We can handle it, but we’ll want to take it slow. Open one entrance, get them to start rushing us… and I’ll start clogging them up at the entrance. We’ll probably need to go inside, after.”

  The team looked at Watkins… who nodded. By now, they’d come to respect Grey, but he wasn’t their commanding officer. He looked around. “Alpha. You three on top of that truck, and keep an eye on our flanks. Bravo, set the big gun right there if we need it. Charlie, your turn on door duty. Hit it, and we’ll lure them out.”

  It didn’t take long for the three fire-teams to be ready; two of the three men of Charlie waiting, crouched, weapons braced as the third stepped forward, yanked open the door, then ran back to his comrades…

  Grey focused. There were quite a few in there, scattered through various rooms. He picked one near the door… and made it smack the wall, making a loud noise… and start heading for the chosen doorway.

  Only… he couldn’t see what the zombie did, so it hit a wall. It was in an adjacent hallway. He let it go… and picked another. This one did the same… and he could feel it, and then see it, as it reached the door. . All the undead in the building were now active, moving… and when Charlie team opened fire on the one in the doorway, the rest started running for the door.

  “Hold fire for the next… ten!” He called out. Some of these zombies were bigger, bulkier people, and would count as level three; so he seized control of the closest ten… and when they got outside… they all crouched down… and he ordered two of them to crawl forward at waist level… and grab hold of the next zombies to pass through.

  There was an immediate backup; zombies struggling against each other to push through the doorway, weapons firing…

  Off to the right, the windows of an upper floor office suddenly broke, and a handful of zombies fell through… there was an audible crack as they hit the ground, and when they started to rise… Grey ordered them to clump together, then stay still.

  A gunman from Alpha carefully nailed the group from the office, the cracks of rapid gunfire sounding from atop the truck, even as Charlie team kept firing single shots through the growing mass Grey’s zombies were holding back; the two he first chose were eventually so broken they couldn’t do the job, and joined by two others.

  Each rifle round; and fired by Uncommon or Rare-grade rifles; passed right through the first zombie into the ones behind it as well.

  Eventually, there was such a clog of corpses at the door that the soldiers could no longer hit anything but already broken zombies… and Grey got back to work.

  The zombies under his control started hauling bodies away, one at a time, as the soldiers took the time to replace magazines… until, after they’d gotten enough cleared out, there was another surge… and once again the steady fire into the group.

  With expendable undead at the door controlling the flow… and the rare straggler simply being seized and standing still… they emptied the building of free zombies in rapid order… and then proceeded through, looting the bodies.

  Grey glanced at the building, then Watkins. “I can’t see what they see, but there’s about thirty still stuck in there. If I had to guess, they either dumped the bodies of people who died into a room and locked it, or… honestly, can’t be sure.”

  This was the only even vaguely dangerous part of the operation. Once all the bodies had faded, with Alpha still providing overwatch from atop their truck, Bravo took point… with Grey sandwiched between Bravo and Charlie, feeling the building out, trying to find the rest.

  The inside of the warehouse… had apparently been used for packing boxes for shipping purposes. There were a few corpses scattered around…. “Hold.”

  Watkins glanced at Grey. “Problems?”

  “It can take up to a few hours after a zombie kills you to turn. Faster with more attacks. I thought we were clear that all bodies needed to be removed or looted?”

  Watkins glanced out. “Charlie. Loot all the bodies, zombie or not. Good call, Grey.” He frowned. “...Don’t like that. Nobody’s gonna be able to identify bodies, or bury the dead.”

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  “Better that than coming back to eat their families.”

  One of the soldiers in Bravo chuckled. “I hear that.” They all watched as the bodies vanished, one by one… often with the contents of their pockets appearing on the floor as the only sign they were there… as the troops resumed their former formation… and continued sweeping the building.

  Grey quietly looted a few of them himself as they walked, since he could do so from a distance.

  What would an uncommon Multitool do? He should check that later. The safety glasses… also weird. Were they just unusually durable, or was it like a converted storage unit, gained special properties?

  He kept feeling around… and as they stepped forward, he looked up. “Alright. All of the ones I can see are inside a room above us, right there. There’s… yeah, twenty-six left…. Twenty-five… Fuck, there’s a survivor up there fighting them. Hurry, I’ll delay them as best I can.” He focused… and reached out, seizing control of a dozen zombies… ordering them to grab the nearest uncontrolled zombie.

  The soldiers started stepping up rapidly, and when they came to a locked door, leading into some sort of offices… and a member of Bravo team body-checked the door, slamming it open.

  There was a man standing there, bleeding from numerous small cuts and bite-marks, holding a tire iron in his hand, staring at the mass of zombies that were suddenly tackling and seeming to fight each other… and looking with a mix of relief and fear as the three soldiers stepped in… and started calmly taking them out.

  Watkins and Grey joined in; Grey with Cold, Watkins with his own rifle; and they rapidly swept through the undead.

  The man looked at the soldiers, then at his arm… and pointed at a bite mark. He made a shaking his head gesture… and then pointed at Grey’s shotgun.

  One of the men stepped forward, and started speaking in broken spanish… making it clear to the poor man that no, a bite was not a death sentence; they had to kill you to turn you; while his companions started clearing the other bodies.

  Grey looked around the office, focusing for a moment… and nodded. “Building is clear. No more undead. If we’ve got all the bodies, this place should be fine.”

  This would be systematic, bloody, work… but there were thousands doing it, closing in on the city center from all directions.. It was good that he’d fed the spiders before he left; if the neighborhood got eaten by a swarm while he was gone, they might trace it back to him.

  ***

  The outer regions of the city had been cleaned out, and dubbed safe. But what remained… was solid blocks of densely packed housing, businesses, and apartment buildings. On a busy day, there would be half a million people inside that perimeter; and according to the Chosen, at least a hundred thousand had been alternately burned, frozen, or shocked apart out in the various open spaces.

  Which meant… there would still be a crazy amount of work.

  While there were only a handful of towers over twenty stories, each of them would be a real slog to work through; and considering each might have hundreds of zombies and rooms, some of the shorter five-story apartment complexes could be almost as bad.

  As they arrived at the front door of one of the buildings; painted a dull rust red, with a taller, white building immediately behind it; they’d been joined by another several groups of guardsmen… and across the street, units of the Mexican military were outside another building, nodding… as local police were moving through the bodies, triggering the ‘Loot’ function, leaving their belongings in the street… but collecting wallets, supposedly for identification purposes.

  Grey looked up at the building; he now had Watkins and another Sergeant, and nine fire-teams for backup…. And grimaced. “There’s… over a hundred zombies in there, scattered all over the place. It’s gonna be a real rat’s nest… I can point out the big concentrations easy, there’s one on the fourth floor with over thirty… but… this is gonna be a pain.”

  The new Sergeant to the scene, apparently named Davidson, nodded. “Glad to be on one of the Necromancer teams. It true you had zero casualties?”

  Grey nodded. “Not even a sprain. I’d like to keep it that way.” While pretending was important, he wouldn’t really mind losing a soldier… or all of them, if they were close enough for him to get a boost off of it. He was about to hit level 9, and the heaviest fighting had yet to come. So long as he didn’t do something stupid, he might be able to hit 10 today; likely would have already, if his gains hadn’t been spread across so many people.

  He focused for a moment on the new title he’d gained; he hadn’t checked to see if it had benefits.

  He blinked. So… a title and a skill? Eh. He’d worry about it later. Especially since he wasn’t actually in command here, so it shouldn’t even count.

  As one of the new fireteams led the way into the building, they entered a long hallway, with apartments on both sides… he felt around. Seven on this side… six on that. Total… below the levels he could command. He ordered the Undead to step closer to the hallway… getting as far from the window as possible… and knock on the door, otherwise remaining motionless.

  “Alright, there’s only a handful on the ground floor. All of them are frozen, and will be knocking on the door. Either kick down the door or shoot through it.”

  The men moved forward; listening; as one by one, a steady knock sounded at several of the doorways. They started firing… the sound even louder in the closely confined apartment hallway… and worked their way through… until he felt no more on this floor, leaving a long series of doors with bullet holes.

  Sergeant Watkins sighed. “Alright. Hate to say it… but we need to open all of them. Check them all for corpses, clear them all out, so we don’t have any zombies coming up the stairs behind us.”

  Relatively assured there were no active undead on the floor, the men split… using the buts of their weapons to smash off doorknobs, using feet to kick in doors, body-slamming them; they all had their own ways. For Grey, he decided to pull out the multi-tool he’d found earlier and see if it had become anything special.

  He blinked… and shrugged. Useful enough. A bit odd, but useful enough. He focused on it for a moment…. And it became a hammer. Nothing special; just a decent solid metal hammer with a rubber handle.

  He looked at the door for a moment, at the frame, at its simple wooden construction… considering hammering off the handle and using the hammer to pry things open… and shook his head.

  The tool became a hatchet… and a few moments later, he had whacked a hole in the door, and was reaching through to unlock it…. Before returning it to its handle form and pocketing it.

  This was going to be a long process; this was only the first floor. He would probably be at this for the rest of the day.