The acrid stench of smoke and decay hung thick in the air as Haider surveyed the hellscape from the third-floor window. The distant gunfire had dwindled to sporadic pops, the screams largely silenced, replaced by the unsettling chorus of moans and the crackle of unchecked fires. His initial plan – dash to the weapon shop, then the military camp – now seemed suicidal. The town center was a meat grinder. But the chaos presented an opportunity: the main hordes were drawn to the last pockets of loud resistance, leaving the fringes like this building complex relatively clear... for now.
**The New Calculus:**
1. **Immediate Armament:** Guns were loud magnets for death. He needed quiet lethality. A sword, an axe, a proper spear – something for close-quarters efficiency without broadcasting his location. The police station was too deep. He'd have to scavenge locally.
2. **Scavenge & Hoard:** Food, water, medicine. Prioritize perishables while power lasted. Find a sturdy backpack.
3. **Shelter First:** The kiln was still the goal, but reaching it meant traversing dangerous ground. He needed a temporary, defensible base *here* to gather strength and supplies. This building, quiet and gate-secured (for now), could work short-term.
4. **Military Contact:** Later. Survive first, get stronger, *then* find a way to reach or signal the besieged camp. Rushing towards the current chaos was suicide.
**Fortifying and Forging:**
Haider moved methodically through the silent, ransacked apartments. He found:
* **Sustenance:** A half-full bag of rice, lentils, some wilted but edible vegetables, tinned fish, and precious bottled water in one untouched kitchen. He packed them carefully.
* **Potential:** In a storage room, four heavy iron rods, each about six feet long – remnants of construction or fencing. Not swords, but raw material.
* **Workshop:** A ground-floor unit had a functional gas stove and, crucially, a heavy hammer and metal file abandoned in a toolbox.
He barricaded the main entrance to his chosen third-floor apartment with a heavy wardrobe and a sturdy dining table wedged against the door. Every window was latched, curtains drawn. Only then did he focus on the rods.
Using the gas stove, he heated the end of one rod until it glowed cherry-red. On the concrete floor of the kitchen, using the hammer, he painstakingly flattened and tapered the hot metal, creating a crude, thick point. Sweat stung his eyes in the heat. Once shaped, he used the file, the grating screech unnervingly loud in the silence, to sharpen the point and edges, creating a lethal, if ugly, spearhead. He repeated the process for three more rods. By the time the fourth spear cooled, dusk had deepened into night. The sounds outside had shifted – fewer screams, more guttural moans and scavenging noises, the fires casting long, dancing shadows.
**The Night Watch:**
Power flickered but held. Water still ran. Haider cooked a simple meal of rice and lentils, prioritizing vegetables that would spoil first if the fridge died. The hot food was a small comfort. After light exercises to test his "First Step" enhanced body (movements felt smoother, strikes faster and harder), he risked a peek through a crack in the curtains.
The street below was a tableau of devastation. Cars were crumpled together or flipped onto sidewalks. Bodies lay strewn, dark stains on the concrete. Fires still smoldered in shops, casting an eerie orange glow. Lampposts lay bent like straws. And then, lights. Faint, cautious glows from upper windows in nearby apartment blocks. Survivors, huddled and hiding, just like him. A fragile thread of shared humanity.
Then, the scream. Piercing, terrified, from a fourth-floor window a few buildings down. "HELP! SOMEBODY! PLEASE!"
Instantly, the street below erupted. Moans turned to hungry snarls. Shadows detached from the wreckage – jombies, but *different*. Their movements in the gloom weren't shuffles; they were lopes, sprints. One vaulted onto a car hood with terrifying agility. Others swarmed the base of the girl's building like ants.
*They're faster. Stronger.* Haider's blood ran cold. *Night changes them?*
He watched, helpless, as jombies began scaling the building's rough facade, clawing at pipes and window ledges with unnatural strength. Lights snapped off in other windows of the building. Angry shouts echoed: "Shut up, you idiot!" "You killed us all!" But it was too late. The first jombie smashed through the girl's window. Her scream cut off abruptly, replaced by wet, tearing sounds and triumphant snarls. The other lights in the building winked out. Silence, heavier than before, descended. Haider slowly let the curtain fall back, the image of the scrambling, night-enhanced jombies burned into his mind. Rest, now, was a necessity, not a luxury. He slept fitfully, spear within reach.
**Dawn & the Hunt:**
Morning light filtered through the curtains, grey and smoke-hazed. Haider checked the barricade – undisturbed. He exercised, feeling the subtle thrum of energy beneath his skin, then ate a cold breakfast of tinned fish and rice. He packed his scavenged supplies into a sturdy backpack, slung two spears across his back, and gripped the third firmly. Time to harvest the fringe.
Moving silently through the complex, he found lone jombies – stragglers missed by the nightly migrations towards the center. A janitor trapped in a basement storage room. A shopkeeper tangled in its own fallen awning. He dispatched them with swift, brutal efficiency using his spear, the reinforced strength and speed of his First Step making the fights short. Each kill yielded colored orbs – purple Strength, crimson Endurance, amber Agility – further honing his physical capabilities. He felt faster, tougher, able to push harder for longer.
**The Mansion and the Hound:**
He moved towards a larger, walled property nearby – a local businessman's mansion, now silent and imposing. The ornate iron gate hung open. Inside, the garden was overgrown, statues toppled. He entered cautiously, senses alert. The stillness felt predatory.
He found canned goods and bottled water in the pantry. As he stuffed them into his pack, a low, guttural growl echoed from the grand hallway. Haider froze. Around the corner padded a nightmare. It had once been a Rottweiler. Now, it stood nearly 2.5 meters tall at the shoulder, its skin stretched taut over bulging, corded muscle, patches of fur missing to reveal grey, necrotic flesh beneath. Exposed ribs glinted whitely in places. Its jaws were massive, dripping viscous saliva, and its eyes burned with feral, hungry red light. A **Zombie Hound**.
It charged. Not a lope, but a terrifying, ground-eating sprint straight at him. Haider bolted, diving through a doorway into a lavish living room, the hound crashing through the frame behind him, splintering wood. He used the furniture – overturning heavy sofas, throwing chairs – to slow the beast, but its strength was immense, smashing through obstacles. The commotion was loud. Too loud. He heard answering moans from outside the mansion walls. *Others are coming.*
He couldn't outrun it forever. He needed to kill it fast. Ducking behind a massive oak desk, he pulled a spear from his back. He waited, heart pounding, as the hound sniffed, its massive head swinging side to side. As it lunged around the desk, Haider hurled the spear with all his enhanced strength. It whistled past the beast's snarling head, embedding in the wall. *Miss!*
The hound snapped at him. He scrambled backwards, pulling his second spear. He feinted left, then threw as the beast corrected. This time, the heavy iron point slammed deep into its lower abdomen, just behind the ribcage. The hound yelped, a sound like tearing metal, and stumbled. Dark, viscous fluid gushed from the wound. Its speed faltered, a hitch in its powerful stride.
*Now!* Haider gripped his last spear two-handed. He didn't throw. He *charged*, channeling every ounce of Strength and Agility from the orbs, every bit of Endurance to withstand the impact. He drove the spear point-blank into the side of the beast's massive skull, aiming for the eye socket.
**CRUNCH-THUD!**
The impact was colossal. The spear punched through bone and brain, but the kinetic force of the charging hound met Haider's charge head-on. It felt like hitting a truck. Haider was lifted clean off his feet and flung backwards. He crashed into a glass display cabinet, shattering it, shards raining down. Pain exploded in his side – cracked ribs, definitely. The breath was knocked from his lungs.
The hound staggered, the spear shaft protruding grotesquely from its head. It took two wobbling steps, its remaining eye glazed, then collapsed with a ground-shaking thud, twitched violently, and lay still.
**The White Prize and Sudden Rescue:**
Gasping, ribs screaming, Haider pushed himself up. Ignoring the pain, he focused on the corpse. A pure white orb, larger and brighter than the one from the bloated woman, coalesced above the hound's ruined head. *Spirit Orb!* He limped forward, grabbed it.
The energy flooded him, icy and purifying. It washed over the pain in his side, numbing it, knitting the micro-fractures with astonishing speed. His breathing eased. His mind, fogged by adrenaline and pain, snapped into crystal clarity. He felt *renewed*, stronger than before the fight, the energy integrating seamlessly with his First Step foundation.
"Hey! You! Over here! Quick!" The harsh whisper came from the mansion's shattered front doorway. A man, lean and grim-faced, maybe in his late thirties, dressed in stained mechanic's overalls, beckoned frantically. Behind him, Haider saw the shambling figures of at least a dozen jombies emerging from the street, drawn by the noise of the fight, moving with that unnerving nocturnal speed.
Panic flared, instantly tempered by the white orb's clarity. *No time.* Haider snatched up his remaining usable spear (the one embedded in the wall) and sprinted, ignoring the lingering ache, towards the doorway. He dove through just as the first jombie reached the steps. The man slammed the heavy, damaged door shut and threw his weight against it. "Barricade! Help me!"
Together, they shoved a massive, overturned hall table against the door, then a heavy, ornate cabinet. The door shuddered under the impact of bodies. Moans and snarls filled the air outside. They were in. For now. Haider leaned against the barricade, chest heaving, meeting the gaze of the stranger who'd just pulled him out of the fire. The mansion was no longer a looting ground; it was their shared, precarious fortress. The silence inside was thick with unspoken questions and the relentless thudding from the other side of the door.