"Wait until they're closer before firing!"
The shambling figures soon came into view. The stench of decay hit the guards like a physical blow. Among the zombies was a naked middle-aged man—perhaps caught mid-shower when the outbreak began. As the undead closed in, the Cube cut its music. The seven zombies stumbled over scattered debris, jaws snapping at the air as they clawed uselessly at the warehouse walls.
"Ahhh—!" A male guard collapsed, trembling.
"Get up! Or I'll toss you to them!" Zhang Xiaowen yanked him to his feet and shoved him toward the edge. His rifle slipped from his grip, but she caught it mid-air. "Go to the back. Even the girls aren't this pathetic."
The remaining guards opened fire. Bullet casings rained as they adjusted to the recoil. Below, corpses piled into a grisly mound.
"Headshots only! Conserve ammo!" Zhang barked, her PDW picking off stragglers with surgical precision. ——
Meanwhile, the Cube transformed atop a delivery van, its left arm morphing into a mini-gun. Zombies funneled through a bottleneck of wrecked cars, only to meet a hail of bullets. Skulls burst like overripe melons.
"Building a wall, one corpse at a time," it quipped, leaping onto a sedan to stab a bald zombie through the skull.
——
By midday, the warehouse team finished their grim work. Two girls vomited over the railing. "Are… are they all dead?" Gao Dong panted.
"Almost." Zhang checked her visor. "The Cube's handling the last cluster. Rest up—next target's the town entrance."
They moved cautiously through blood-slick streets. At the town's edge, a macabre barricade of bodies blocked the road.
"Holy shit…" Fatty Wang gaped. "Did that toy car do *this*?"
"Call it… advanced pest control," Zhang muttered.
They breached a nearby house. Upstairs, Zhang kicked open a window. Eleven zombies milled below, oblivious.
*Crack! Crack! Crack!*
The final shots echoed. Silence fell, broken only by flies buzzing over the carnage.
——
Elsewhere, the Cube basked on a metal plate, solar panels drinking in sunlight as it synthesized fresh ammo. "Humans and their fragile constitutions," it mused, watching Zhang's team retreat. "Still… not bad for rookies."
The town was cleansed. For now.