How Zombies Survive in the Apocalypse

Having completed the request, Aiden returned to the Huntington Docks’ pub where he was lodging.

He pushed open the brown wooden door.

Immediately, the distinctive atmosphere of a bar enveloped him – the laughter of people, raised voices, and the thick aroma of liquor permeating the air.

A stark contrast to the eerily lifeless research lab he had just been in moments ago.

Amidst that lively scene, one person reacted upon noticing Aiden’s black helmet.

“You’re back.”

It was Adam, the pub’s owner.

While pouring a cheap vodka for some man, he was looking at Aiden.

Aiden approached the counter where Adam stood and took a seat in front of him.

“Business going well?”

Aiden asked.

In this Huntington Beach area, Aiden tried to limit his conversations as much as possible.

Building unnecessary rapport would serve no purpose for him.

But even Aiden made an exception for Adam, the pub owner.

It was for the sake of gathering information.

Like most pub owners, Adam was privy to all sorts of minor rumors and gossip.

Moreover, unlike Dirk who assigned Aiden requests, Adam didn’t seem to view him with the same wariness.

He was the perfect source to exploit.

Of course, Adam was still affiliated with the Huntington Docks gang, but he adhered more to his profession as a pub owner than as a gang member.

At Aiden’s question, Adam let out a chuckle.

“Who’re you kidding? You’ve not bought a single drop here.”

“Hmm, sorry for that.”

Aiden responded shamelessly.

Adam snorted and picked up a glass.

“Here you go.”

Some woman had placed an order.

After bringing her drink, Adam stood before Aiden once more.

“So where’d you head off to today?”

“Riverside.”

“That’s quite a distance. What for?”

Adam enjoyed hearing tales of requests from the junk dealers.

Aiden obliged him each time, so long as it didn’t involve anything problematic.

In exchange, Adam provided Aiden with trivial pieces of information he requested, a mutually beneficial arrangement.

“Dirk told me not to discuss it.”

But this time, the gang had demanded confidentiality regarding the request.

No matter how curious, Adam couldn’t openly defy his own organization’s mandates.

So he simply backed off without pressing further.

“Well, can’t be helped then. Did you at least encounter any zombies?”

“Of course.”

Aiden had already reported the mutant he discovered at the research lab to Dirk.

But Dirk himself seemed to have no knowledge about that particular mutant.

Since Dirk hadn’t explicitly required secrecy on that aspect, Aiden continued speaking.

“It was a mutant. The kind with sharpened bone protrusions extending from its arms in place of hands. Do you know something about it?”

Aiden asked, just in case.

As expected, Adam opened his mouth as if this wasn’t the first time he had heard such a description.

“Ah… I have heard similar accounts before. Thought it was just drunken ramblings, but I guess they were real. Probably doesn’t have an official name yet. Though some of the fellas who claimed to have seen it have been calling it a ‘Spear’.”

A Spear, referring to the spear-like protrusions.

According to Adam’s following explanation, there had only been a few unconfirmed sightings until now, so it had merely been treated as an unverified rumor.

It didn’t seem to be a very common mutant in this area.

Meanwhile, upon hearing Aiden’s encounter, Adam’s eyes gleamed with interest.

“So you fought against that thing?”

“I didn’t engage it directly, but I did confirm its remains.”

“Lucky you. Word is, Spears are pretty dangerous. Supposed to be incredibly fast, too quick to even draw your gun before they’re on you.”

“That makes sense. Its build didn’t appear particularly large either. Speed was likely its weapon over brute force.”

Aiden echoed Adam’s words in agreement.

Before Adam could continue the engrossing conversation, he was called away to take another customer’s order.

Soon after returning, it was Aiden who posed a question this time.

“Do you know anything about the mayor, by chance?”

“The mayor? You mean the one inside those walls?”

Aiden nodded.

Adam grinned as he continued speaking.

“Sure, I know a thing or two. I used to be from LA myself, after all.”

Adam had originally been a citizen of LA but had voluntarily left due to being unable to cope with the labor environment there.

According to him, it was because he couldn’t secure work as a bartender, but even so, abandoning the safety of LA over such a reason seemed rather incomprehensible to Aiden.

“So what kind of person is the mayor?”

“Ross Preston! Now he’s one hell of a character. Barely over 30 years old, and that young pup became the ruler of LA. But I guess you’d want me to tell you more?”

“Quite young, yes. He wasn’t the original mayor then, was he?”

“Of course not.”

Adam continued while clearing away a vacated table.

“Ross used to be just one of the mayor’s aides, from what I’ve heard. But then the old mayor died in the chaos, and Ross took over, leading the survivors ever since. That’s why he’s still called the mayor to this day.”

“I see.”

“You’ve seen LA’s walls, right? Those were all his doing. They aren’t fully completed yet, mind you. Word is, the northern section is still under construction.”

Aiden had indeed heard that the northern side of LA bordering the mountains still lacked a completed wall section.

It wasn’t particularly surprising, given the sheer scale of such a massive construction project.

“Hmm…”

As Adam recounted this information, Aiden pondered inwardly about this Ross Preston, the mayor of LA.

Summarized succinctly, he was essentially the hero who had narrowly brought the city under control and safeguarded it in the immediate aftermath of the zombie outbreak.

A far more remarkable figure than Aiden had anticipated.

But it was at that point that Adam’s voice dropped slightly lower.

“However, word is that those days are ancient history now.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Well, I don’t know the details, but there are rumors that the mayor’s standing is becoming shaky.”

An unexpected revelation slipped from Adam’s lips.

Aiden focused his attention on Adam’s subsequent words.

It seemed the clues he had been grasping for were finally converging with this information.

“Apparently, several of the mayor’s recent policies have all ended in failure. So the city’s living standards have been deteriorating rapidly, and there have been quite a few casualties too, or so I’ve heard.”

“But surely that alone wouldn’t be enough to shake his position.”

No matter how poorly the mayor’s recent performance might have been, his achievements in safeguarding LA were still from just a few years ago.

A mayor with such accomplishments wouldn’t have their position so easily undermined.

But even as he nodded, Adam voiced a rebuttal.

“It would be enough, here. You see, over half of LA’s current population consists of evacuees.”

From the very beginning, LA had desperately sought to attract evacuees to their city.

Some of their original citizens had even risked their lives, spreading out across America to broadcast radio messages.

The reason they had needed to do so was because while they had barely managed to preserve the city’s infrastructure, there was a severe shortage of people to actually operate and maintain those facilities.

Power plants, oil refineries, water treatment plants, and so on.

The numerous facilities required to sustain a functioning society would simply deteriorate if left unattended.

So for LA, accepting evacuees was not a choice, but a necessity to keep those infrastructures running.

“But here’s the problem – those evacuees who poured in never witnessed the mayor’s celebrated achievements firsthand.”

To those evacuees, the mayor was merely a leader clinging to past glories.

The policies enacted since their arrival had largely failed, leading to worsening living conditions.

So from the evacuees’ perspective, the current mayor was simply an incompetent ruler.

Despite all authority being concentrated in the mayor’s hands, it was the citizens who had to bear the full brunt of those policy failures.

What’s more, most of them had already witnessed numerous cities collapsing under incompetent leadership before arriving here.

It was only natural for them to fear their new home of LA might eventually meet the same fate as those other fallen cities.

“That’s why I’ve heard the evacuees are demanding reforms to the mayoral system. In other words, they want the mayor to step down from his position. Apparently there’s even conflict brewing between the original residents and the evacuees over this.”

Having grasped the general situation within LA, Aiden nodded in understanding.

Indeed, if that was the case, then it made sense why LA’s government would want to conceal their own failures.

It meant LA was far from the perfect haven it outwardly appeared to be, just like every other fallen city.

However, what Aiden couldn’t have imagined was that his own actions would potentially influence this matter.

“Still, the mayor’s side had managed to keep a lid on things, until recently at least. With the route here blocked off, the influx of new evacuees had slowed to a trickle.”

“…”

“But then Fear suddenly disappeared, didn’t it? For LA, that’s both a blessing and a curse. Without that creature around, evacuees will start flooding in again. And that could drastically destabilize the city’s situation that they had just managed to settle. So who knows, something big might happen in LA soon. My advice? Don’t even think about trying to get inside there.”

Adam spoke those words as if he realized Aiden had been gathering information to potentially gain entry into LA himself.

But Aiden’s mind was preoccupied with more complex thoughts.

Could the repercussions of him defeating Fear truly trigger such a butterfly effect, plunging LA into chaos?

“…I think I’ll head back for now.”

“Yeah, you do that.”

Aiden rose from his seat.

As Adam saw him off, wiping down a table for the next customer, Aiden retreated through the door to his room.

The drunken chatter from outside could still be heard, but Aiden paid it no mind today.

With his eyes closed, he began organizing all the information he had collected within his mind.

* * *

The next morning.

“Ah, this must be it.”

From the early morning, Arian had come to the school Sadie attended.

Today was a day she needed to go to her own workplace as well, but fortunately, this place did have a leave system in place.

Of course, that leave wasn’t something readily granted to someone who had only worked there for barely a week.

But through persistent persuasion with her superior Ava, Arian had finally secured permission to be absent from work for just this one day.

The primary purpose of taking that leave was, naturally, to visit city hall.

However, what weighed more heavily on Arian’s mind was confirming how Sadie was faring at school.

Each day, she would hear about Sadie’s time at school, even leaving home together with the child.

But she had never directly witnessed Sadie’s life at the school itself.

So Arian had decided to observe Sadie’s school life before heading to city hall, making a brief stop there first.

“There are so many children…”

From the rooftop of a nearby residence overlooking Sadie’s school, Arian muttered those words.

The school itself didn’t appear to be of particularly large scale to Arian’s eyes.

It was a pre-existing elementary school building that had been in use even before the zombie outbreak.

But the number of students attending that school was considerably high.

During what seemed to be a physical education period, with the children out on the schoolyard, it was so crowded that the entire area was packed full.

And yet, there were still numerous children seated inside the classrooms as well.

It almost seemed like three times the original intended capacity, at the very least.

And among those children, Arian easily spotted Sadie’s figure.

Sadie was outside in the schoolyard area.

“Hmm…”

The number of children outside was around a hundred or so.

But supervising those children were only two teachers at most.

As a result, the children weren’t being properly managed, and the so-called lesson was complete chaos.

But even amidst that pandemonium, Sadie was smiling.

The figures of other children could be seen around her as well.

It seemed she had made new friends, with three other girls standing beside Sadie.

“Huh?”

One of those girls’ appearances struck Arian as familiar.

Upon closer inspection, it was Luna.

The daughter of Taylor Evans, whom they had met in the small Texan town of Santa Rosa.

Now that she recalled, they had been heading towards LA at that time as well, hadn’t they?

Though unavoidable circumstances involving zombies and vampires had forced them to part ways, Arian remembered them as good people.

It seemed that mother and daughter had finally arrived in LA after all.

With her increased workload involving outside missions lately, coupled with the surge of new evacuees, Arian hadn’t been aware of their arrival.

Back then, they had parted with such regret.

But now, it appeared the two children were happily reunited.

At that sight, Arian couldn’t help but beam with a bright smile.

While the educational environment didn’t seem ideal, Sadie at least appeared happy.

For Arian, that was enough.

After watching the two children’s joyful reunion for a while longer, she descended from the rooftop.

Spotting Arian’s sudden leap from the roof, one of the residents was startled enough to stare at her in shock.

But Arian paid no mind to such gazes as she went on her way.

“Then… this must be the place.”

Having confirmed Sadie’s wellbeing, Arian headed towards city hall with a lighter heart.

LA’s city hall was located in the most prosperous downtown area within the walled city.

Along the wide roads weaving between the high-rise buildings, people could be seen bustling about busily.

Passing through that financial district, Arian soon arrived at the street where the city hall and other government offices were concentrated.

The city hall itself was still utilizing LA’s original pre-outbreak building.

An archaic, classical design dating back to the 1920s, yet still a stately 32-story structure with a pristine white exterior.

“I probably can’t just walk in, can I?”

Arian muttered to herself as she examined the entrance to that building.

As expected, security guards were stationed at the front of city hall.

Of course, if Arian utilized her abilities, bypassing those guards would be far from impossible.

But there was no need to go that far.

Instead, she simply pressed herself against the building’s outer wall and closed her eyes.

Then, she opened her ears.

No matter the distance, even sounds originating dozens of floors above from within the building, a vampire could still perceive them.

Immediately, a multitude of voices reached her.

Among them, Arian strained to identify the mayor’s voice.

Naturally, she had never heard the mayor’s voice before, but it wasn’t an impossible task.

She already knew the mayor’s name, after all.

All she needed was for someone to call out that name, and then pinpoint the responding voice – that would be the mayor’s.

After how long did she wait?

“Mayor Preston!”

A woman’s voice uttered the name Arian had been listening for.

It was coming from some conference room on the top floor of city hall.

There, Mayor Ross Preston seemed to be engaged in a heated argument with someone.