Surviving the apocalypse with a wife and a system! [GL]

Chapter 232: Killing 2.

A zombie tried to grab her from behind.

Bai Li lowered her center of gravity and drove the dagger backward without looking. The blade sank in under the chin and came out the back of the skull. The monster crumpled at her feet before she even bothered turning around.

Then she spun.

Another one was coming from the left.

She lifted her arm and let the creature’s hand brush harmlessly past her sleeve, then drove the dagger into the side of its neck and twisted. It dropped straight down.

A pair of zombies approached at the same time.

Bai Li did not flinch. She waited until the first one got close, then used a short step to slip inside its reach and cut its throat. The second one came in a second too late. She turned the dagger over in her hand and punched the blade upward through its jaw, straight into the skull. The body jerked once and collapsed.

The courtyard around her was turning red fast.

The zombies that had gathered closer to the gunshot noise were now making a messy ring around the space, but they were still too stupid to coordinate properly. They swarmed in chunks, not as a real pack. That was their weakness. Bai Li broke each chunk apart before it could become a bigger problem. She tore through them with the same ease a person might use to cut open a packet or slice fruit, except her hands were covered in blood and her body was moving with the fierce precision of someone who had long stopped caring about the smell.

By the time she had reached the halfway point, her breathing was still steady, though a little warmer now. The muscles in her forearms had begun to tighten, and sweat had gathered at her temples, but there was no real fatigue yet. She had learned how to move efficiently. The gene enhancing drug had improved her body enough that these zombies were no longer enough to exhaust her quickly. A few months ago, this kind of fight would have taken everything out of her. Now it only felt like a hard workout done under ugly conditions.

A zombie snapped at her from the front.

She caught its wrist with one hand, shoved its arm aside, and cut through the throat with the dagger in the other.

Another tried to leap.

Bai Li stepped into the jump instead of away from it, drove the dagger into its chest, and let the momentum carry the body past her shoulder while she pulled the blade free.

A third was too slow. She kicked it into the one behind it, and both of them went down in a tangled mess that she finished off with two quick strikes before moving on.

Her eyes stayed empty and focused.

Not emotional.

Not cold in a frozen way.

Just clean. Clear. Unbothered.

The kind of expression that made a person look like they had already accepted death as a normal part of the road ahead.

A few more zombies had reached the edge of the courtyard by then. Bai Li used the narrow space between two broken planters to force them into a line, then killed them one by one with short, efficient movements. Another one came staggering through the left side and she answered with a sharp thrust into the temple. The sound of impact was dull and ugly. She did not even blink.

One by one, they fell.

The entire fight lasted longer than a simple sweep and shorter than a real battle. To Bai Li, it felt somewhere in between. Enough pressure to keep her sharp. Enough blood to make her clothes stick a little. Enough danger to remind her that even a small mistake could be fatal if the wrong enemy got lucky.

But lucky was not what the zombies got today.

The last zombie in the front cluster came rushing toward her with both arms stretched out. Its mouth was open wide, the jaw hanging in a way that made the whole face look even more broken than the others. Bai Li did not back away. She stepped in, planted her foot, and let the zombie keep coming until its own momentum was exactly where she wanted it. Then she drove the Whisperfang dagger across its mouth and up through the skull in one smooth motion. The blade slid in hard and clean. The body shuddered, then folded over at the knees and dropped.

That killed the outer cluster.

But there were still more.

The forty five had not been standing together in one neat pack. They had been spread around the courtyard in different little groups, some drawn by the sound of the gunshot, some by the smell of blood, and some just by the random wandering that made zombies so irritating in the first place. Bai Li scanned the area and counted the nearest bunches with a quick glance. Seven on the left side. Five near the broken wall. Another six drifting near the parked wreckage. A few more at the far edge. She did not need to count every single one twice. The pattern was clear enough. If she kept moving at this pace, she could clear the whole place before the others upstairs figured out what was going on.

She rolled her wrist once, loosening the muscles there, and then went after the next group.

This time she changed her rhythm slightly.

Instead of attacking the closest zombie first, she went for the one in the middle. That broke the group’s weak structure immediately. The first cut took out the center, and before the others could adapt she stepped through the opening she had made and started carving them apart one by one. That was something Bai Li liked about zombies. Their biggest advantage was also their biggest flaw. They always moved forward. They always committed. They always got too close without really thinking about the space around them. It made them easy to bait and easier to kill if a person knew how to use angles.

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TO BE CONTINUED.