Walker? or Zombies? (Walking Dead Game x Strong OC)

Chapter 16: The Gilded Cage

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The wave from the hotel window was a silent declaration of war. It was a gesture of supreme confidence, of a predator watching its prey walk willingly into the snare. Zack stared at the silhouetted figure, his hand resting on the hilt of his blade, his entire being narrowing to a single, lethal point. The rage was gone, the hatred was gone. All that was left was a cold, absolute certainty. The hunt was over. The war was about to begin.

"He sees us," Lee breathed, his voice a low, tense whisper. "He knows we're here."

"He's been waiting for us," Carley added, her knuckles white where she gripped her pistol.

"Good," Zack said, his voice devoid of any emotion but grim purpose. "It saves me the trouble of flushing him out."

He turned away from the window, his back to the ominous hotel. His focus was now on the immediate problem: the wide, debris-choked street that separated them from their target. It was a killing field, dotted with stalled cars and shambling walkers. Crossing it would be suicide.

"We can't go across the street," Lee stated the obvious. "We'd be torn apart before we got halfway."

"We don't go across," Zack said, his eyes scanning the waterfront. "We go around." He pointed down the street, away from the hotel, toward a series of connected low-rise buildings—a bait shop, a closed-down diner, a laundromat. "The rooftops. We stay high, move parallel to the river, and come at the hotel from the side. He's watching the front. He'll expect a frontal assault. We'll give him something else."

It was a solid plan, born of an assassin's instinct for flanking and misdirection. Without waiting for agreement, Zack led the way out of the fish market's back door, plunging them into a narrow, refuse-filled alley. The fire escape of the adjacent bait shop was rusted but sturdy. Zack went up first, moving with a fluid, silent grace that made the corroded metal barely groan. Lee and Carley followed, their movements clumsy and loud by comparison.

From the rooftop, the scale of the dead city was breathtakingly grim. The Gilded Hotel loomed to their left, a monument to a dead civilization. Below them, the dead shuffled and groaned, oblivious to the living ghosts moving above them.

They moved from roof to roof, a tense and dangerous journey. Zack led them in a low crouch, his blades always ready. They found a small colony of walkers on the flat roof of the diner, half a dozen sun-baked corpses drawn by some forgotten sound. The fight was over before it began. Zack moved among them like a whisper of death, his blades flashing in the grey light, dispatching them all with silent, brutal efficiency before Lee or Carley could even raise their weapons. He was a machine built for this world.

Finally, they reached the roof of the building directly adjacent to the hotel. It was a smaller, three-story office building, separated from the gilded monstrosity by a narrow, fifteen-foot alley. The hotel towered over them, its brick walls stained with age and grime. Most of its windows were dark and empty, but they could still see the faint, flickering lights on the upper floors.

"Now what?" Lee whispered, peering over the ledge at the alley below, which was crawling with walkers. "We can't get in from here."

"Yes, we can," Zack said. He pointed up. On the fourth floor of the hotel, one story above them, was a large balcony with ornate iron railings. A set of glass doors leading from the balcony into the hotel room were slightly ajar. "That's our door."

"That's impossible, Zack," Carley said, her voice laced with disbelief. "It's a story up and fifteen feet across. We can't fly."

Zack looked at her, then at Lee, a flicker of something almost like pity in his eyes. He didn't bother to explain. He walked back ten feet from the edge of the roof, taking a moment to measure the distance with his eyes. He crouched, his body coiling like a spring.