Code Zulu Alpha: Nerd In The Apocalypse!

Chapter 1399 COFFEE - Surfin' in our Turf

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?"

"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.