The sun rose, and with its rising, Cale toppled down to the floor, exhausted from the damage he was forced to take.
Shattered flesh and bones squirmed behind him as he slowly steadied himself back up.
'My body...'
"It surrendered control?"
His breaths pressed their weight onto his lungs.
With a crack in his bones, he stood up, voice rasp and weaker.
His gaze rushed behind.
Bone fingers crawled toward him, clawing away with no stop in sight.
Cale supported himself to a column he had found. Taking deep breaths as his cerulean eyes rattled like small bells.
"That's.. A thing now?"
He expected a surprise, but he didn't think he'd get slapped violently by it.
At best, he expected something like the zombies to appear or something similar.
Seeing something like that appear out of nowhere would astonish anyone greatly, so he thought that was all that was going to happen.
"Couldn't be more wrong eh?"
The zombies weren't the actual enemies after all, they were enemies because he was there, not because the storiem needed them.
In other words, those two dots and thin curved smile were the real enemy he had to be on his toes for. Especially so when it can quite literally freeze his body shut.
Cale would much rather fight the zombies instead of something that took away his control over himself.
With bated breaths, he walked back to the reanimating corpses, hand firmly clenched around the hilt of the dagger.
The blade rose, the sun casting its shadow as it lacerated through dead flesh and bone. Then, before picking them up using his shirt, he pounded on the bones, stomping, crushing and shattering them until they were just single pieces. And finally, to cremate at least some of them, he took off to search for a fire to use.
He turned a knob in the corridor he walked through, twisting its golden nugget with cautious moves.
"....."
It didn't open, remaining closed and unbothered.
Cale repeatedly walked to every single door he could find within the corridor, checking for a fire.
When the bones of the dead connected, he'd crush them again. Resuming his search for a fire.
No matter what he did, the bones would surely reconnect together again. So, he'd burn them to ashes before they did anything else that would be troublesome.
Finally, solidifying their fate.
Cale wasn't sure as to why he was still capable of moving around, he knew he shouldn't even be capable of lifting a finger with the state he was in.
He wondered at first if he really was that sturdy, but as he looked at his wounds, it became abundantly clear that that wasn't the case. While blood still flowed, it was annoyingly slow, reason being that they were frozen.
"I...Was caught in it...Huh?"
Cale, being exposed to an explosion already enhanced, caused his wounds to freeze.
This result wasn't due to his body getting permanently colder, he was just too close for comfort.
It wasn't like that made it any better though.
"The moment it thaws....Will I die?"
Cale clicked his tongue inwardly, pressing his lips together into a thin line as he stared at his frosty hand.
He was already slowly dying if that was the case, knowing what this entailed, if the freezing was what was currently extending his lifespan, he would have to use the Desert Eagle to avoid bleeding to death.
Using bandages seemed like an option, but as he thought more about it, the more impractical it would be, not to mention that even finding one to use in the first place seemed impossible.
"....." His hand shivered as he contemplated. Eagle in the cold hand.
'This storiem....It can't be cleared or passed or whatever because it centers around this single gun...'
To avoid using the gun is tantamount to avoiding survival itself.
There was no other option aside from using what was at hand.
"Is this storiem about revenge?"
Cale waved the gun around, scoffing at the ridicule he's being put through.
Quite frankly, he felt quite stupid at this moment, he didn't want to take revenge for someone whose abilities would have killed him if it weren't for his current constitution. It just didn't seem right to him, no matter what perspective he used.
Eventually, as he thought about what to do next, an open door flew into view. Within the room, fire blinked with cute gestures, bed in shambles. It was the room he had been in prior.
"The fire resets?"
He raised a brow at the mystifying scene. His attention locked tight on the fire with more blue in it. A cold bead of sweat trickled down his cheek. Something that could be considered rare to happen at this point.
Drip!
Or at least, he thought it was a bead of sweat. Cale stared at the floor with more red in it.
'Blood?'
The frozen wounds were melting. Although the drop of blood startled him, before the frozen wounds melted more, he walked towards the fire and dumped all the pieces of the constant reanimating dead.
"There are still a lot of pieces of bone back...I should definitely go retrieve them."
A single shirt, no matter how large, couldn't carry away an entire family of skeletons and zombies. Even when pounded to dust.
So, it didn't really brew a feeling of astonishment when they suddenly came crawling towards Cale right outside the room.
On Cale's lips stretched a smirk, one completely full of amusement as his eyes narrowed into slits.
"Yes, yes, crawl like that for your entire zombie lives, that con-artist will surely grant your wish or whatever it might be that he promised....Well, he could also have just forced you to resurrect with no reward."
The hammer, already cocked back with a crisp that scratched the ear just in the right place, pointed its silver, cold barrel at the once alive.
Pointing the silver gun, Cale felt the last bit of hesitation in his mind slip away.
"I wonder since you are capable of holding some sentience. Then..."
Cale's words trailed off, veering off course.
"Would you hate me or thank me?"
At the last words that left him unknowingly, his face turned stone cold as he took a few steps back.
'How strange..'
Step.
Step.
'Even though I know that they are fake, I still consider them as human, despite their current state and all of that.'
It sounded amusing when thinking about it, but in reality, that was a moronic fantasy that breeds careless hesitation.
"This is what you want, right?"
His finger curled, the trigger pressed down to the side. Sinking into the mold.
Bang!
The air shifted with the sound barrier shattering, heat expanded for a moment, but then it transfigured into a cold smell.
Something so cold it froze the surrounding oxygen and hydrogen, flakes of frost danced as a flash ripped away with no warning.
The flash subsided, a raging formation of ice sculpted from a single bullet chilled the entire area in a matter of instances.
A barrel of silver whirred, vibrating in satisfying release.
It thawed the next moment, pale particles flew in and dug into Cale's skin.
"H-haaaa"
His lungs blew out the remaining heat, Cale growing uncomfortably chilly as he burned the remaining fragments of bone.
Done with the cremation, Cale put on his blood-stained shirt he liked back on.
Cale then dragged himself, harsh breaths straining his lungs, his legs barely able to hold him upright. A trail of blood marked his steps to unwanted presences as the dark clouds hanging above accelerated.