Stu made his way through the dark, empty tunnel, his flashlight in one hand and his baseball bat in the other. He felt like he was in a horror movie. His puny flashlight couldn't quite penetrate the gloom -- he had the impression that a monster might jump out of the shadows at any second -- and the silence was oppressive. The only sounds he could hear were his own footsteps, echoing off the walls, and his own ragged breathing.

  The tunnel was bad enough, but the morgue, which awaited him at the end of the tunnel, promised to be even worse. He didn't like this. He was sweating. He was scared.

  Fear was a funny thing. He hadn't really felt afraid, when he had battled the Brute, or the rager at Southside Elementary school, or the gigantic mutate at the Dealership. Adrenaline, and an instinctive self-preservation, had pushed the fear aside, or allowed him to overcome it, at least. Walking through a darkened tunnel, however, on his way to a morgue, with no idea of what might be lying in wait for him -- these were the kinds of situations where his fear came to the fore. He had felt the same way exploring Meku City's subway tunnels. He had no way of knowing what kinds of horrors might be lurking in these shadows, and it was the not knowing that was really frightening.

  He wished he hadn't wasted his Night Vision. It was very dark down here.

  A pair of double doors stood at the end of the tunnel -- the entrance to the hospital's morgue. Someone had run a heavy chain through the door handles, sealing them shut, but Stu, with his enhanced strength, was able to pry one of the door handles off, causing the chains to fall uselessly to the floor.

  He took stock of himself before he opened the door. He had a handful of weapons -- his baseball bat, his Midnighter, and a couple of small throwing knives. Unfortunately he only had nine rounds in the Midnighter -- he had left the rest of his ammo with the glider -- and it was a weapon of last resort anyway; gunshots tended to attract unwanted attention. The knives probably wouldn't be of much use, either; he had already wasted his Dead Aim skill, and without it...well, he wasn't exactly a skilled knife-thrower.

  He wished he had thought to grab his machete, but he had left that with the glider, too.

  As for his skills, he had already used Dead Aim, Night Vision, and Brick Wall tonight; he wouldn't be able to use any of these again until tomorrow. That left with him with just his inherent skills -- Strong Arm, Speed Freak, Regeneration, and Zombie Radar. These were all useful, of course, but except for (arguably) Strong Arm, none of these were offensive skills.

  He opened up the ICON menu -- causing it to appear had become completely instinctive to him now, as natural as moving his own arm -- and scrolled through the list of skills. Maybe he ought to buy something with those seventeen skill points he had saved up? Turtle, perhaps, which would hugely increase his defense? Nice Landing? Nice Landing would allow him to survive a fall from any height without injury, which might come in handy if he needed to make a sudden escape out a hospital window. But wouldn't Regeneration heal him anyway, if he fell? He wasn't sure; he had never really put the Regeneration skill to the test. So far he had only seen it repair minor cuts and bruises. Could it fix a broken leg? Probably it could, but he had no idea how long it might take.

  There were some cheap skills that might be useful, like Silence or Sniffer, which enhanced his sense of smell; he thought maybe he could use it to track down Lucky and Luna in the hospital. He might also enhance his strength further by leveling up the Strong Arm skill.

  Ultimately, though, he dismissed the skill menu without purchasing anything. This was partly due to simple indecisiveness, and partly because he didn't like having to make important decisions like this under pressure.

  You're stalling. He didn't have time for this; he needed to find Lucky and Luna. They could be in incredible danger.

  Shaking his head, he pushed open the doors to the morgue, just a crack, and peered inside. His Zombie Radar was quiet, and he didn't see any robots or signs of movement, after waving his flashlight around a bit, so he pushed the doors open all the way and stepped through them.

  The morgue was pretty much how he had imagined it might look -- a low-ceilinged, basement room with a tiled floor and tiled walls, with low-hanging lights, a sink, a couple of wheeled trays full of dissection tools, several operating tables upon which a body might lay, and one wall containing a row of those refrigerated cabinets where corpses were placed. The place was utterly disgusting, however; the sink was filled with reddish brown water, the floor was filthy, and there were bloodstains all over the walls and floor. It smelled terrible, like death and formaldehyde. It was so bad that it made his eyes water.

  "Well, that's encouraging," he muttered under his breath.

  There was also a corpse lying on one of the operating tables. It was that of a thin, bald man, with a long and pointed nose. Stu couldn't tell how long the man had been dead, but he definitely was dead; there was a giant hole in his chest cavity, and his internal organs had obviously been removed. He was staring up the ceiling, his mouth hanging half open.

  Stu looked away. He had seen plenty of disturbing things since he had come to this world, but seeing this man's body, splayed out on a table, with his eyes open and his guts pulled out, was not only disturbing, it was sad. Who was this poor fellow? How had he ended up here? He deserved better than this, whoever he was.

  Trying not to inhale because of the smell, he moved past the man, into another room. It was similar to the previous room, with a tiled floor and operating tables, but there was some strange equipment here as well, including a set of knives and some kind of electric bone saw, still plugged into an outlet on the wall. Using his flashlight to see ahead, he could just make out a door at the other end of this room, beyond which was presumably a set of stairs which led up to the hospital. He started for it.

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  ...And stopped, because his Zombie Radar had suddenly started blaring in his ears.

  He froze, trying to use the Radar to get a fix on the zombie, wherever it was. It must have been close; the electric feeling in his head was as intense as it had ever been. He swung the flashlight around wildly, trying to find it.

  He heard something small and metallic clatter to the floor behind him. He whirled around just in time to avoid a lunging zombie, leaping out of the shadows -- its arms outstretched, its eyes rolling like a maddened beast. It stopped to hiss at him, just for a second, which gave him the opportunity to read the ICON designation hanging over its head:

  Level 13 Rager (Enhanced)

  He had never seen this "enhanced" addendum before in any previous ICON messages. What did it mean? And a Level 13? He groaned. The rager he had fought back at Southside Elementary had only been a Level 3, and he had had a hell of a time killing it. Even the Brute had only been a Level 10. Except for the Living Hell, he had never encountered a zombie with a level this high before.

  He didn't have much time to think about it -- the rager was coming at him again. Dropping his flashlight so that he could grip Excalibur with both hands, he swung the bat as hard as he could, aiming for its head, but it leaned away from the swing, like a boxer retreating from a punch, and caught his wrists when he tried to catch it again on the backswing. Its hands were cold and clammy, and its disgusting odor made him sick -- it smelled like roadkill, embalming fluid, and feces, all mixed together. If he hadn't been preoccupied with fighting for his life, he probably would have vomited.

  The rager was also extremely strong. It was, he quickly realized, stronger than him, and by a considerable margin -- it had no trouble ripping the bat out of his hands. Any other zombie would have probably thrown it away, but this was a rager; these zombies fought more like human beings. Now in control of the bat, it raised it over its head and tried to bring it down on Stu's skull.

  He avoided it, but just barely. The bat crashed into the wall behind him with colossal force, pulverizing the tile and clouding the air with dust. Stu grimaced. The blow would have killed him instantly if it hadn't missed.

  The rager, apparently delighted with its new weapon, continued swinging the bat, destroying a glass cabinet and an overturning a wheeled tray as it chased after Stu. Stu, backing away quickly, drew his Midnighter, clicked off the safety, and pulled the trigger, but his first two panicky shots missed. The third hit the zombie squarely in the chest, causing it to stagger for a second, but zombies were seldom bothered by body shots, and it was back up and chasing after him again within seconds. He took aim one final time, trying to hit the damn thing in the head, but it was coming at him too quickly, and the room was dark, anyway. His fourth shot also missed.

  The rager was rushing him, coming at him so fast that he didn't even have time to holster the gun -- he was forced to simply drop it instead, in order to contend with the rager's onslaught. For a split-second he considered wrestling the bat out of its hands, but the monster was simply too fast, and its destructive power too great. It was wrecking everything in sight with that bat, and making a huge amount of noise. Stu gritted his teeth -- if the gunshots hadn't alerted the Researcher and her goons to his presence, the noise the rager was making now almost certainly would.

  Forced to duck beneath the bat as it swung at his head, Stu stumbled back, into the room he had just emerged from -- the room with the cadaver. Spotting a metal tray, he seized it and used it to block another swing of the bat, but the impact dented the tray and sent him reeling backwards. Holy shit. This thing was strong.

  Stumbling backwards again, Stu found himself backed up against another glass cabinet, full of jars and vials of mysterious liquids. The bat came crashing down on this cabinet as well, sending glass shards flying all over the place, but also loosing several bottles from the cabinet. Stu, thinking quickly, picked one up and threw it at the zombie's face.

  It turned out to contain a white powder, which got into the rager's eyes, blinding it. Its strength and fury were undiminished, however, and it continued swinging the bat, battering the walls, the lights, and everything else that got in its way. Stu backed away from it again.

  The powder hadn't really harmed it -- it was still fighting ferociously -- but Stu had some more options now that it had been blinded. He managed to slip past it and reacquire his Midnighter. Then, taking more careful aim this time, he opened fire, hitting in the head.

  He expected it to fall, but it didn't; it merely whirled around, enraged. Confused as to why the shot hadn't killed it, he picked up his flashlight as well, and shone it at the monster.

  And that's when he saw it -- the morgue was so dark that he hadn't noticed it at first, but the zombie was, in fact, part machine. It had a strange robotic appendage for a right leg, and the right half of its skull had been removed and replaced with a chunk of metal. The .45 caliber bullet he had just fired had put a dent in it, but it hadn't penetrated it.

  Well, that explained the "enhanced" designation.

  Uncertain as to whether another shot from the Midnighter would kill it, he holstered the gun and looked around for something else he might use as a weapon. He didn't see anything, though, and the rager was now closing in on him again -- the zombie may not have been able to see him, but evidently it could hear him, smell him, sense him.

  Stu was starting to think it might be better to make a run for it, to simply leave the morgue and the rager-zombie behind. As he was turning a corner, however, his hand brushed up against a light switch, causing him to accidentally flip it on.

  Stu had had a vague feeling that there wouldn't be any power down here, but to his surprise, several lights did spark to life, filling the room with a harsh, flickering florescent light. The filthy, bloodstained morgue was revealed in all its grotesque glory.

  The rager, now screaming, was still bearing down on him, swinging the bat like a berserker. Stu, suddenly seized by an idea, maneuvered the rager over to the table containing the electric bone saw. Using his strength to rip the power cable out of the device, he waited for the zombie to get close enough, then ducked under the bat and jammed the sparking live wire into its body.

  The electricity locked the zombie in place, and it stood there, shivering with voltage, for several seconds. Something in its robotic leg shorted out, causing it to fall to one side, and something exploded in its head as well; whatever it was gave off a little puff of smoke. Satisfied, Stu withdrew the cable, took Excalibur out of its hands, and delivered a huge blow to the left side of its head, caving in the non-metal portion of its skull. It fell to the floor, rather anticlimactically.

  Level 13 Rager (Enhanced) defeated!

  Critical Bonus!

  Level Up! 26-28

  Gained 8 SP!

  Access Menu?

  He blinked at the numbers. 8 SP for killing a single zombie? Well, it had been a Level 13, he supposed, and he had gotten a critical bonus out of it.

  Shrugging, he breathed a ragged sigh of relief, tightened his grip on his bat, and left the morgue, heading up to the steps to the hospital.