Chapter 64 – Is This Home?

Alice and Rita exited the portal only to find themselves surrounded by zombies! Most of them were human zombies wondering around aimlessly, but there were a few demon zombies too, who now seemed to also wander aimlessly. 

They appeared to be in the suburbs of some city, presumably an American city based on the style of buildings, brands of the cars wrecked on the road and even the layout of the roads and buildings. 

"Over there!" Rita communicated through the mind link and both herself and Alice ran towards a large strip mall. They were both still in invisibility mode, so although they moved cautiously, they did not feel that they were in imminent danger, even surrounded by zombies. 

"That... that's a 7-11! That's a Starbucks, and a McDonalds! And they're running towards a Wallmart! Is this home?" Sam wondered to himself, looking outside the Nexus. 

Knowing Sam's thoughts, Alice and Rita entered the mall silently and bolted the doors behind them. They ran to a newsagency and looked at the local newspaper and looked for some local maps. 

Sam exited the Nexus, joined by Natasha, Buffy, Lara, Maxine, Wynona and Phoebe, a random range of Americans who may recognize the place. 

Sam looked at the year on the newspaper and nodded that it was the same year he left. 

"I've never heard of this suburb. Do any of you know this place?" Rita asked. 

They all looked over the local maps and shook their heads. 

"I was never good in geography. I... I used to live there!" he said, pointing to a small town on the map of California. 

"Well, lets give it a go then" Natasha said as they all brought out a Gantz flying cycle each. 

There was a loud crash as 8 Gantz flying cycles flew into the sky and headed towards where Sam pointed on the map.

Sam sat behind Natasha on her bike, his hands holding her from the back as they departed. His wondering hands enjoyed groping her breasts and wondered down her body, and she didn't mind his attention either as he kissed her neck. 

They flew at high speeds for 40 or so minutes as they arrived near the border of California, however they stopped and hovered in the air.

The whole state had fallen into the sea and was no more!

What was a huge state was now a cliff that extended as far as the eye could see, and some rocks sticking out of the ocean was all that was left of California!

"Holy shit" Sam said looking at the devastation. It looked like it happened not long ago as highways, power lines, parts of houses etc were still on fire or were smoking. 

They flew around a bit more and landed in an abandoned school. 

They entered and secured the area, determining that there were no zombies around. There weren't even any bodies of dead people around, so maybe the zombie apocalypse did not happen here. 

"Lets get the generators running. Maybe we can access the internet" Sam said, still wondering if this was his world. 

Minutes later, the lights came on and Sam immediately turned on the computers in the computer lab. 

The computers logged onto the internet not long after and he started searching online. 

He remembered starting a lame website for his video shop when he first took over the place, but it was so lame, he eventually abandoned it. 

Now, it was a clue whether or not he was from this dimension! If the lame web site existed, this was his world!

Much to his relief, there were no signs of his web site. He searched is high school web site and found that his town didn't exist in this world, let alone his school. 

As his relief that this world was not his settled him down, he started searching instead about what happened in this world. 

Apparently a zombie plague started in California and spread fast. Within a week, the larger cities of Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, San Diego and everywhere in between were completely overrun by zombies, the President actually agreed to firebomb the state.

Unfortunately, the bombing triggered a major earthquake that measured 10.8 on the richter scale, causing the whole state of California to plunge into the sea. 

But even such drastic actions did not stop the zombie apocalypse. Hundreds of fleeing people, some who were bitten, brought the zombie virus all over the country and even internationally. 

By the end of the second week, most of the major cities faced the same zombie plague. 

Some of the more isolated societies managed to isolate and hold up in their isolated communities. 

However, when the military started appearing to help move them to safer areas, fighting broke out and in many instances not only were there alot of needless deaths, it attracted zombies from nearby, wiping out those small communities. 

By the end of 6 months, all the cities were full of zombies, and the last bits of news he read were from preppers who were posting from their underground bunkers. They were probably the last people alive in the country. 

"Stupid... so stupid" Sam said, reading the many blogs and underground news sites. 

"Zombies!!" Lara suddenly yelled.

"Do we abandon the dimension and enter the Nexus?" Natasha asked.

"No. If we can somehow find our place in this dimension, it perhaps gives us an escape path in case the other one is completely overrun" Sam said. 

He remembered that after the demons and dragons attacked, Aristonia was completely uninhabitable. The Crying Forest may be their current base, but it is uncertain how long that place would continue to be liveable. 

As for this dimension, even though it was filled with zombies, they posed little threat to his current forces and he liked the familiarity of being in a place similar to his home. 

He looked around and saw more and more zombies coming out of the woods or from the nearby town and suburbs. 

Apparently when they ran the generators and turned on the lights in the school, it was fine. But when it became dark as the sun set, the brightly lit school started attracting zombies from all over. 

"It's the lights that are attracting them" Buffy said. 

"No way we're shutting off the lights!" Wynona answered. 

Sam nodded. Since the zombies were already coming, it's too late to turn off the lights, and they wouldn't want to fight zombies in the dark.

"Lock and load!" Natasha yelled as they all went to the roof and brought out their Gantz X-Shotguns to snipe. A few more Avengers, namely Mindy, Mathilda, Aeon and Violet joined them on the roof. Tauriel appeared and quickly went below to double check that all the entrances are fully secure.  

They could see Tauriel's body moving at high speeds securing the gates. Then she jumped directly onto the roof and took out her Gantz X-Shotgun as well. She has been practicing using it too. 

They looked at the growing number of zombies pushing on the gates and started firing. The weapon only targeted the zombies, and seemingly locked on and splattered the zombies leaving the gates intact.

After half an hour, there were a sea of dead zombies at the gates. Luckily the Gantz weapons did not have a limit to how many times they could fire as more and more zombies seemed to be approaching from all directions. 

"It's going to be a long night" Sam said as he too took up a Gantz X-Shotgun

Natasha nodded grimly.