Leveling Up Wives In The Apocalypse

"Retreat!" Leila shouted from the bottom of her lungs while tracking the invisible tread with the tip of her saber.

Her blade went straight through two elbows, one neck, and one wrist in a single swing before she had to take a step to the side and change the angle of the attack.

Leila's attack was quicker than how long it took Peter's first unit to shake off their daze and adapt to the new situation.

The situation, where instead of rounding up the remaining zombies, they were stuck in the middle of an open field with zombies all around them.

"RETREAT!" Leila shouted again, leaping to the side before kneeing another zombie that reached out for the throat of one of the soldiers.

'I made it,' the girl thought, breathing out before turning her head to scan the situation around.

She managed to save one of the soldiers. By the time Leila turned her head around, two others in the other part of the formation had their limbs caught in the firm grip of different zombies.

'Shit!' Leila cursed under her breath, swirling on her heel while taking a deep breath of fresh air.

For a second, she nearly jumped to help the two victims. Yet, before she could launch herself, she had to watch how one of the soldiers had his throat ripped apart by the zombie's sharp, broken teeth while the other scowled in pain when another zombie penetrated his thigh with its boney fingers.

"For fucks' sake!" Leila screamed out while executing a quick, triple slash with one attack following each of the words she uttered.

She then bit her teeth down and jumped.

Not in the direction of the soldiers that were about to get bitten, though.

No, rather than trying to save each and every individual, Leila jumped back, slashing at all the zombies that dared to stand between her and the relative safety of the base.

"MOVE!" Leila shouted again as soon as she landed, turning around and swinging her saber in a wide circle, beheading two more zombies and leaving only about seven of them left between herself and the soldiers still stuck in the daze out on the street.

'Five got bitten already,' Leila counted with a single glance, bitting down on her teeth as she brought her weapon back to a neutral stance.

The soldiers finally started to move. Even those that received injuries still attempted to fight back, smashing their weapons against their opponents in close quarters or shooting them at point-blank range.

Slowly, extremely slowly, but they started to move, inching their way towards the open garage doors behind which safety awaited.

'What now?' Leila asked herself, standing guard and ready to jump back into the fray the second she would notice a situation where she would still have a chance at making any real change.

Her eyes lingered on the faces of the total of now seven wounded soldiers, all of whom were as good as dead.

They were still fighting. Desperately fending off the attacks while doing their best to let the entire unit retreat.

She saw their desperation when the first of the soldiers got swarmed and ended up abandoned.

Boom!

A bullet of mercy came from the roof of Peter's base, ending the poor fellow's struggle.

And finally, the people on the roof shook off their daze and started to cover the retreat of the ground unit.

'They can't rain hell like before,' Leila quickly realized when she noticed just how small the distance between the soldiers and the zombies was.

A machine-gun series would help... but it would be as likely to hit one of their allies as it would be to reach its desired target.

'In that case...' Leila's eyes wandered away from the group of now twenty-three people with a total of nine injured. Her eyes moved all the way until they reached the particular zombie that caught her attention before.

It was standing at the very back of all that remained from the horde, observing the events with a perfectly still expression on its dead face.

'That's it!' the girl twitched.

The sense of anxiety from before vanished from her soul. Her fingers tightened over the handle of her saber.

'He is the one behind this disaster!' Leila thought.

And now, it all made sense.

The zombies that carelessly wandered right into the kill zone of Peter's base. The zombies that fell down and pretended to be properly dead. The single moment when all the surviving zombies rose back up and executed their unexpected counterattack.

Leila gulped down her saliva, fighting off her desire to just rush ahead and deal with the opponent.

'I know I can take the fucker down on my own...' she thought, biting down on her lip, using the pain to rein in her own emotions.

And so, the girl simply raised her saber before pointing its tip right at the zombie in the back.

The zombie in question raised its eyes upon noticing the movement.

And for but a brief moment, the two of them looked right into each others' eyes. Leila into the dead pupils of the zombie, the zombie into the fury-filled eyes of the girl.

"Shoot the fucker with all you have!" Leila then shouted, paying no mind to the intimate moment that sprouted between the two.

Traaaaa....

In a mere instant, the intense wall of fire followed. And this time, no matter how much the zombie attempted to move, it couldn't avoid all of the bullets striking it in its vital points.

The soldiers nestled within the machine gun position had to be waiting for this specific order, pressed to do something yet unable to shoot given the proximity of the zombies to their allies.

And now that Leila conveniently provided them with a target they were comfortable with mowing down, they likely didn't even wait for Peter to confirm her instructions.

TRAAA.....

The sound of the intense gunfire went away as soon as it came to be. It lasted three seconds at the very most, yet it was more than enough to kill anything that was still alive within that particular zombie.

Whiiiiizzzz....

BOOM!

The mortar shell came in late, only serving to scatter the zombie remains all over the place.

And as if by a touch of a magical wand, the behavior of the zombies changed.

Sure, they still focused all their efforts on reaching the victims closest to them, but the sense of cohesion that kept them together before has now disappeared into a thin air.

"Kill them all!" Leila shouted yet again, lowering her saber only to jump forth.

She passed right by the retreating soldiers and jumped into the crowd of the remaining zombies without any hesitation. Yet, even though it would take her only a few moments to finish all of those mob zombies off, she only killed those who had a chance to catch up with the retreating unit before turning around and fleeing herself.

The entire expedition lasted no longer than three minutes total, from the moment the garage doors opened to the moment they closed back down. And yet, the worst part of the battle has yet to come.

Leila released a heavy sigh once the loud crash of metal striking the ground could be heard behind her.

With the entrance to the base secured, she no longer needed to worry about a zombie attacking her from behind.

Right now, all she had to worry about were the guns that would soon be pointed at her head.

"Where did they bite you?" Leila asked, approaching the nearest out of the twenty-one soldiers that managed to make it back to the base.

"Actually, I wasn't bitten, this but a scratch..." a young, barely twenty-years old soldier of the first unit reported back while raising up his left arm.

There was a faint smile on his sweat-covered face, showcasing just how proud he was of his first battle scar-to-be.

"I see," Leila muttered in return, breathing all the air out of her lungs in one go.

And then, without even a shred of hesitation, she fixed her grip over her saber before executing a horizontal cut, slashing the young man's hand right at the height of its elbow.

"Wha..." the young man only uttered a short cry of surprise. He looked down at his now bloody stump, watching in shock how the crimson liquid shoot out from his opened veins.

His brain had simply yet to process the pain that he was about to experience.

"Someone, tend to his wound," Leila quickly ordered, ignoring the shock that her action caused amongst the survivors of the unfortunate attack. And before anyone else could react in any way or form, she approached her next victim.

"Where?" she asked, looking down at the horror-struck face of the next wounded soldier in line.