Crunch—crunch—
Outside the hotel, the packed snow shattered under a thunder of feet.
A black tide of dead surged like floodwater, rolling forward with terrifying speed and slamming toward the front doors.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Rotten, twisted faces smeared across the glass.
Each impact landed like a sledgehammer on everyone's chest.
In just three seconds, uncountable infected clogged the hotel's perimeter. Black claws raked the walls in frenzied scrapes; wave after wave slammed the buckling glass. Like piling sand, the mass rose and rose until it stacked a story high, blotting out the pale light and plunging the lobby into a sudden dusk.
Stomachs turned. Scalps prickled. It was a scene ripped straight out of World War Z.
Creak… creeeak…
Even reinforced panes couldn't hold forever. Under that relentless pressure, the main doors sang with the sound of failure.
Then—
Crash!
The doors disintegrated.
The packed horde, compressed to a limit, burst inward like a squeezed sponge.
From behind the marble of the split grand stair, Aiden sank the muzzle of his AK-105 and settled the invisible dot on skullcaps—the brain stem, the only shot that mattered.
"Open fire!"
His low command tore the silence.
Bang bang bang! Bang bang bang!
From cover on the flank, Yukino braced her MP5 with both hands. Per Aiden's drill: three-round bursts, half-second pause.
Bang—bang bang!
Utaha, far less experienced, stuck to the simplest mode. She rode the trigger at the edge of cyclic, kept her muzzle stitched to the mass, and let a line of rounds thread brows like a string of beads. No heroics—just no mistakes. Better to waste a few than let the tide break through.
"There are too many…"
Hayato's face was set as the dead funneled forward, fearless and endless. He'd braced himself for bad. He hadn't imagined this.
Worse—
Who knew how many specials hid in there…
With nothing else for it, he worked the lever on a Winchester M1887 and took the corner of the stair. Each trigger pull cracked like thunder; at five meters the pellets fanned into a killing curtain, turning jumpers into a spray of limbs and meat.
"Claymores—stand by to fire!"
Three minutes of white-hot firefight. Teeth clenched. No one had a breath to spare.
When every barrel ran low at the same time and fingers hit empties, Hayato finally slammed the remote.
Whu-BOOM!
Three spears of fire ripped the snowfield outside. The M18A1s spat a rain of steel; shock and shrapnel turned the leading ranks into a red mist that painted the steps and blew black blood across the white. The snow began to swallow it again at once—black and white blending into something eerily beautiful.
Then, as if nothing had happened, the gap filled. The tide climbed on.
The opening defense was textbook.
The grand stair was a natural funnel. The dead could only queue and climb. Their fire wove an iron net that stopped every breaker below the risers. Brass rained, skittered, and piled into glittering little drifts. The air stung with cordite and rot.
Aiden could hear it—the crisp crack of rounds punching skull, like brittle ice.
With Master Gunplay, he didn't need to aim. The muzzle found weakness on its own.
One AK mag—thirty bodies. No follow-ups.
"Ammo status?" Aiden's reload was lightning: empty out, fresh in, bolt—up, three quick taps, three heads trying to spider up the side snapped back like puppets cut from their strings.
"Two mags left on my MP5!" Yukino's reply rode a breath; her trigger finger had gone pale at the knuckle. "But I'm light on shells!"
Shotgun shells were few across the board.
Hayato started to answer—then his pupils pinpricked. "Above!"
A black shape dropped from the chandelier like a striking cat. A hooded form, green-gray skin stretched over corded muscle, claws catching the light—
Hunter.
The second time they'd seen one. No one froze this time.
Barrels snapped up—but the thing was brutally fast, vaulting through the air on monstrous spring. It arrowed for the middle ranks—Taisuke, nerves drawn tight, mid-mag dump with his SCAR-L, never seeing the shadow over his head.
Only when the air sang with cutting claws did he look up—straight into a face twisted with fanatic hunger.
"No—!"
He tried to bring the rifle up. The Hunter's swipe batted it away; the next instant drove him flat to the step.
"Hel—!"
The plea cut off. The thing's teeth punched clean through his throat. Blood geysered, painting the white marble in a spreading sheet of red.
"I…I…I don't want to die… help… me…"
Taisuke's body bucked and spasmed. His hands clawed uselessly at the Hunter's back, fingers finding only cold skin and knobby spine.
Seconds later—
He went still. Eyes rounded wide, pupils frozen in absolute terror.
(End of Chapter)
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