Afternoon sunlight spread across the complex while the soldiers dealt with what the battle had left behind. The parking lot was quieter now, but the pavement told the whole story; black blood marked the firing lanes, spent casings glittered between the cars, and bodies had to be dragged into piles before they could be burned.
Alexei pulled another corpse by the ankle and grimaced. "We always have to do this, right?"
"Stop complaining and keep moving," Adam replied, hauling a mangled infected toward the same pile.
Hans stood nearby with Dmitri and the newly trained Scout, Adrian Kessler, looking over the damage around the manager's office. He had expected a careful search of a two-story building, not one special infected smashing half the interior apart and dragging hundreds more into the complex.
"That got out of hand fast."
If Dmitri had been a little slower, the fat infected could have caught him inside. If the parking-lot teams had not been close enough to regroup, or if their ammunition had run dry before the promotions started coming, the outcome might have been much worse.
Hans rubbed the side of his face and looked at the giant corpse. "Burn that thing first. I don't want to smell it all day."
Adam called Alexei over to help with the gasoline while Hans moved toward several recovery bags stacked away from the bodies.
"These are the valuables from the fighting and the office?"
"Yes, Commander," Dmitri said. "We kept them separate from the contaminated equipment."
Hans tried not to look too happy. "All right. I'll convert them." The number that came back was better than he expected.
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[ Automatic Gold Conversion complete. ]
[ Gold: 85 (+2,665) => 2,750 ]
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"Two thousand seven hundred and fifty..."
For about three seconds, Hans wanted to save everything for the Radar, but then he looked around at the people dragging bodies, guarding two apartment buildings, watching the underground entrances, and helping the maintenance survivors settle in.
"Nope. I need more people first."
The Radar still cost 5,000 Gold, and whatever the War Factory cost afterward would probably be worse. Saving toward both while his current soldiers spent half their day standing guard did not make much sense yet.
Adrian glanced at him. "Commander?"
"Nothing. Just arguing with myself."
Hans looked back at the fat infected before the others moved it. The face was badly damaged, but the build, the remaining features, and even the expensive clothing underneath the ruined flesh were familiar enough to make him stare.
"Wait. That's the manager."
Dmitri looked over the corpse again. "You recognize him?"
"Unfortunately. He used to walk around this place showing off those rings like everyone needed to know how much money he had." Hans clicked his tongue. "Lucky bastard even got a special zombie form."
He had disliked the man while he was alive, and seeing him full of bullet holes did not create much sympathy now.
"How bad was he to fight?"
"Fast for his size, very strong, and difficult to stop with small arms," Dmitri said. "His eyes did not track us properly. He appeared to follow scent and sound, but this is the only one we've seen, so I wouldn't assume every similar infected works the same way."
"Fair. One fat monster isn't exactly a research paper."
Hans looked toward the ruined manager's office. "Did you get anything useful before everything went crazy?"
"Not much. The power is still out in most of the building, and we didn't finish searching."
"Then you and Adrian can go back once everyone has rested. Look for the blueprints, security records, keys, whatever helps us understand this complex. If you find the manager's stash, that's also extremely important for... strategic reasons."
Adrian's mouth twitched. "Strategic reasons, Commander?"
"Gold is strategic. Don't question it."
Dmitri almost smiled. "Understood."
"You two know how to search a building better than I do, so work it out between yourselves. I'll send people to help move things if you need them, but don't stay there until dark. Four o'clock, everyone comes back."
"As you command."
Hans let them go and looked toward Building Three. The meteorite fragments were still embedded along its damaged exterior, quiet in the afternoon light.
"You can wait until tomorrow." He had already learned what happened when they tried to do too much in one day.
On the way back to Building One, Hans passed Ryan and two Conscripts patrolling the access road. They saluted, and he returned it awkwardly before waving them on.
The highway beyond the complex remained clogged with abandoned cars, which made his armored SUV and sidecar motorcycle almost useless for anything beyond the immediate area.
"I really need someone to move all that junk."
Even a working armored vehicle could not help much if it spent the whole day trapped behind civilian traffic. Hans added another note to his growing list and went upstairs.
Once he reached his room, he opened the Barracks queue.
"System, train ten Conscripts and four Army Soldiers."
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[ Conscript x10 queued. ]
[ Cost: 1,000 Gold | Training Time: 1 minute each ]
[ Army Soldier x4 queued. ]
[ Cost: 1,600 Gold | Training Time: 2 minutes each ]
[ Gold: 2,750 (-2,600) => 150 ]
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Eighteen minutes of training would add fourteen more people, which sounded ridiculous when Hans remembered that he had been alone in this apartment less than a week ago.
When the queue finished, his unit count finally looked less embarrassing.
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[ Current Units ]
[ Conscripts: 30 ]
[ Army Soldiers: 10 ]
[ Scouts: 2 ]
[ Attack Dogs: 1 ]
[ Platoon Leader Promotion Requirements ]
[ Infantry: 5 squads (~60 units) ]
[ Army Soldiers: 10 ]
[ Scouts: 3 ]
[ Attack Dogs: 2 ]
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Hans stared at the requirements before letting out a breath. "At least the Army Soldiers are done."
Forty-three System units sounded like a lot when he said the number in his head, but the complex was already eating through them. Building One needed guards, Building Two needed guards, the underground routes needed watching, and any clearing team still needed enough people left over to matter. Reaching sixty no longer looked like simple unit spam; he actually had places for those people to go.
Everything else could wait until he had more Gold.
Another set of notifications sat below the unit count, including Alexei's promotion to 3-Star and Ryan's promotion to 1-Star, so Hans opened Alexei's first.