Code Zulu Alpha: Nerd in the Apocalypse!

While June brought up a good point, I began to think about Manila Bay as a whole and our hold on it was about a quarter or maybe a fifth around the coast if we were being generous.

Still, the only saving grace from this situation was since the areas we occupied were around harbors, wharves, or even piers, they had a bit of elevation like the ones in Pasay City, unlike the rest following the Bulacan Area's coastline.

'There are breaches but they're more like funnels for our team. And yeah, we'd still have to do our part and everyone else's once again…'

But right as we reached the Barangay of Pulo, I turned right instead of left for a quick detour of Borris' area.

Kaley looked at me confused, "Aren't we supposed to go—"

"Just a quick check. Lawrence should be over there already but the harbors had hundreds of soldiers plus our reinforcements. This place only have a few dozen and they might need something from us too."

"Okay, you're right."

With that said, from the time that had passed before this border of ours was obviously improved as bigger and more solid walls, gates, and checkpoints were built upon that old barangay—aside from building up on root crops, ducks, and other resources that place was capable of growing.

But as we arrived, we could already see that from way~ back of the couple of checkpoints in Tawiran Bridge were strong floodlights shining down on the waters below.

Suppressed gunshots would also ring out here and there but I could also hear the sound of large machinery operating from the distance.

"What's that sound?" June asked.

Quinn answered, "Sound like a back hoe."

Tatiana shook her head, "So, it also reached this place."

I shrugged my shoulders as I sped up, "It could've been from another area too but Mauricio would've called it—or they haven't noticed yet. I guess we'll see…"

At that point, even if our vehicles were familiar to the eyes of the people guarding the other end of the checkpoint, I appreciated that they still tried to make us slow down for a quick check-up just to follow protocol. Lots of shit could slip in and out the premises when an emergency was happening and doing this type of shit was definitely appreciated.

"What's the situation?" I asked one of the guards.

"You can all come in— Ah, shit's weird, sir. They all just floated up for some reason and good thing we just ordered for a backhoe for the garbage yesterday. We lost some nets but we've been— they've been handling things for a while now. Sir Lawrence is a little pissed because he just woke up but all's good."

"Okay, we'll go in for a bit to check the situation," then I looked behind my group and beckoned JP over, "Wait here with the group but start turning the Raycolt and everything else around because I'll be quick, alright? You take care of shit for the moment since Jared's still groggy."

"Yes, sir. Duly noted."

At that point, I made my way inside with Kaley, Tatiana, Quinn, and June—and let's just say that Quinn was half-right when we saw the backhoe hauling shit from the water and then dropping its catch to a wood chipper. And immediately after that, the wood chipper would just vomit out the slop back into the water.

But yeah, the backhoe couldn't take care of everything so there were still people below doing it manually either by using fishing hooks to pull one out, kill it, and then lining them up to dry on one side while another group was still securing ropes to their waists so they wouldn't fall in accidentally.

After a while, Lawrence caught me scanning around with my group and he quickly rushed over to me with a desperate look on his face.

"BRO!"

"What?"

"D'YOU HAVE A PROTEIN BAR OR ENERGY BAR THERE OR SOMETHING?! I'LL MUNCH ON COFFEE BEANS IF I HAVE TO!"
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"C-Chill, bro— Here—"

"MGsghsjgkNMKGSJHg!!!" Lawrence just inhaled a couple of protein bars in my pack within a few seconds.

"Jesus, what happened to you?"

At that point, Lawrence mentioned that from the church's bell tower, he just saw how the lights from our bases in Manila Bay lit up one after the other, followed by sirens and several radio calls.

However, the people from this place received the call late and wasn't able to respond as early so he just rushed here as fast as he could and was almost shot by the guards because he looked like he'd ram the gates down.

But yeah, he followed by telling us that after he got into a fistfight with one of the guards did everyone else realized that there was an emergency and everyone needed to fucking wake up not because they had a city to burn but because these fucking floaters just appeared of fucking nowhere and they numbered a fucking thousand.

And if they haven't made a proper enclosure of this checkpoint, they would've been in real deep shit.

I nodded a few times before I said, "Alright, I guess you're good here, see ya—"

"WHAT?!"

"Do you need more people or what? Just keep doing what you're doing—"

"Nah, nah, I need more .308s and a bunch of energy drinks! Coffee, I tell ya!"

"Are we really running out, what the fuck— Fine, come with me to the truck, we have some to spare."

"GREAT!"

So yeah, it didn't take long before I left Lawrence with an ammo can full of .308s, a box of protein and energy bars, and a bag of instant coffee.

The situation there wasn't as terrible compared to what I was hearing from the radios because this emergency situation made people who had been hiding around the coastline call for help because of the sudden appearance of the drowned.

While their movements were slowed due to being waterlogged, their numbers would prove to be a difficult encounter all the while they suddenly popped up in the middle of the night.

However, our priority right now was to secure our own place before heading out in the middle of the fucking night to help strangers who would only request assistance fucking now even though we've been offering help or an alliance since time immemorial.

Currently, 80% of the hands available on the harbor were on deck while I moved out around 40% of my people from my HQ. In addition, Mauricio moved 10% of his to supplement my 60% back home while everyone else in between just chipped in for the most part.

But yeah, it didn't take long before I received word from Oscar that the Subic Bay didn't have any floaters like us and they were already sending three choppers and two ships full of Marines to help us in our predicament. Because if it wasn't any obvious, we have a fucking lot of ground to cover.

It's just that despite our overwhelming manpower and firepower, we still needed a lot of information.

So I tried to contact the helicopters coming in as I let Quinn take the wheel for me.

"Yo, yo, yo, 49% owner here, where you guys at?"

[What— This is a secure channel how in the— Oh, OHHHH! YOU'RE THE KID, RIGHT?! 'SUP, MA BOI!]

"Ayyy~ I'mma need a favor, whoever you are—"

[Now that's cold, bruh.]

"It is chilly outside, but yeah, I'll request one of you to head over to the South Harbor where Iskoh's people are and—"

[We'll have the rest on yours, right?]

"Not exactly but as soon as you drop a few of them in, I'd like you to circle around the coast to see where the floaters have docked, stopped, or anchored in or whatever so we can decide how much we're gonna fan out after the Habor's clear. If you can do it right now with your current team, I'd love if you guys cut into the edges so we'd have less work to do later."

[What about the harbor then?]

"It'd be too crowded if you pile in, don't ya think? I appreciate the help but it's literally needed elsewhere. And I'd argue this is more important."

[More dangerous too.]

"You ARE Marines, right? I thought you're better than us?"

[Shiii~ Fuck it, I'll just send you the bill then, hah!]

"Sure, if you accept fucking pesos!"

[WE ALL AGREED FOR A SEAFOOD BOIL! WAIT— FUCK! THESE WATERS ARE—]

"TOO LATE I ALREADY SHOOK YOUR HAND OVER THE PHONE, BYE!"

[NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!]

At that point, I had already ended the call with the dude who I still couldn't figure out whoever the fuck he was but it didn't take long before we reached the North Harbor. Obviously, everyone's guns were pointed down at the water—where the floaters were—but I was already rushed by another officer, urging me to meet with Officer De Los Santos.

Let's just say that Morales' old office looked like a jumbled mess of a call center because of the calls in between groups, checkpoints, and stations—but I just jumped into the mess and tried to absorb everything as fast as I could.

And as much as I'd hate to say it, this thing was more of a nuisance than I thought but I couldn't say the same for the areas with low elevation.

Because from what I could see and hear, there were only seven spots we need to plug from our territories and it was just a guessing game for everything else in between. We could easily block those areas by dropping a shipping container and we can start clearing the dead after fishing them out of the water.

Still, as I said earlier, their numbers weren't a joke—but this time, instead of taking command, I acted like a sous chef to Officer De Los Santos so I wouldn't disrupt the chain of command and uproot everything he started. To be fair, he was doing almost the same thing I was and I just needed to nudge him in the right direction.

"Can I ask why you're using half of our team to guard the other side of the fence on the road to Manila?"

"We have threats on the other side besides the water, right? We can't ask Sir Morales and the Russians to make noise in this time because they'd be in a more precarious situation than ours."

"Can't we just make them move back and forth?"

"Move what back and forth?"

"There's space in between our fence line, Morales' base, and LRT Line 1. All we need is something small that could kite the threats around land so we could focus on the threats in the water—"

"Something like a drone?"

"Maybe a few drones to be sure."

"That'll work— Still, I should leave at least 10% of the groups—"

"That's what I'd do too, great job. Now where's the place that has more trouble? Send us there."

"You guys? I can't—"

"You're good in here and we have pent-up energy. Just drag us where it's needed."

"Well… That's—"

"Pasig River, right?"

"Yeah, how'd you know?"

"We're on the same communications line, Officer. Besides, Iskoh's also there so they'd prolly need me there too. I'm going now, see ya~ Call me if there's anything else."

"Umm, right— Coffee—"

"Your cadets already took it—"

"DAMMIT!!!"

At that point, we quickly got back in our vehicles and drove further down the road but one of the details I forgot to mention was the fucking smell that was wafting all over. In a year plus change into the apocalypse I thought we'd get used to them but several waterlogged corpses at once was a new fucking record and our masks were working overtime with it.

So yeah, as we were driving around the coastline and passing over everyone else who was doing work, it was just something else to see a sea of dead bodies floating and squiggling in the water, totally helpless from the waves.