Trash in the Apocalypse

A black SUV stopped at a gas station. Its bumper and hood was filled with dark-red bloodstains while the windshield have several cracks on it.

The SUV was parked between two parallel overturned jeepneys. There's a two feet gap in between the cars that only allowed a person to comfortably pass through.

Jun stepped out of the vehicle leaving the engine running. He looked around the area. There's a few infected that came out of hiding after hearing the car's engine. He took out his shield and aluminum baseball bat as he walked toward the convenience store.

Sheila and Edward alighted from the car puzzled.

"Why are we stopping?" said Sheila.

Edward shrugged. "Don't ask me. I'm just as confused as you are."

The two followed inside the convenience store. The place was neat and fully stocked with variety of items. Half of the items were related to cars; mostly oil, etc. while the other half were food and drinks. On a corner, they saw Jun, standing with crossed arms, cooking a cup of noodles on the dispenser.

"Really?" Sheila rolled her eyes, then copied Jun as she folded her arms in front of her chest. "What are you doing? I thought you were in a rush to go home?"

"We need to replenish our energies too. Come on, get yourselves some."

"There's one thing I learned after being with him for a few days, that is, there's no use discussing things with him." Edward smiled and approached the shelves of cup noodles.

Sheila sighed then followed Edward. There weren't many variations so Sheila chose a spicy flavored seafood while Edward chose the regular flavored bulalo cup noodle.

They sat near the front door so they could see everything from the outside and the inside.

"Is this place safe?" Sheila worriedly looked around.

Jun who was about to drink some of his hot noodles, suddenly raised his head and shouted, "Anyone here! Hello!!"

Jun looked around and waited. No movements or noises. He was about to shout again but Sheila stopped him from doing so.

Sheila complained to Edward that Jun didn't have to do that. They could have been swarmed by infected and that would be a bad thing. They could deal with infected in a narrow passage where they can control the number of infected they have to fight but in this open space, infected could attack them from everywhere.

The two men nonchalantly ate their food while the only woman anxiously looked around as she ate her cup of noodles.

After exactly one minute, Jun finished his cup and toured inside the store. Sheila watched him curiously as he fiddled with a few branded engine oils. On her mind, she thought that Jun likes his cars clean and well maintained. Sheila watched Jun took a gas canister on display and go out of the store as she ate her noodles. When Edward finished his cup, Sheila hurriedly ate her food. The two of them followed Jun outside.

Jun was currently refilling the gas canister with fuel. Afterwards, he went straight back to the SUV. He spilled all the fuel and oil around the car.

Just as his two companions was about to ask what he was doing, a horde of infected appeared on the distance.

Jun took out two propane tanks and placed them between the vehicles.

"Aren't those the infected we passed by?" Sheila said as she stared at he large group of infected. That group should have more than thirty infected.

"We were waiting for them to catch up, right?" Edward grinned as he turned to Jun. Seeing his action of preparing in advance, he was confident that he hit the right mark.

"Ready your guns. We're not going to fight in close combat."

Hearing his reminder, the two people behind him sighed in relief. They thought he would say something crazy and fight the infected on melee. That was just suicidal! The two happily swapped weapons.

Jun also thought that since they couldn't mask the sound of explosions, they wouldn't make it hard for themselves to fight the horde of infected.

His idea seemed absurd and dangerous but Jun thought this through before committing to it.

The mall was just a five minute drive away from here. Sooner or later they would encounter this horde of infected. Calling out all the hidden infected and the nearby infected was also part of the plan. A safe neighborhood is the best neighborhood.

The highway was at least a few kilometers long and when they got out of the vehicle earlier, he noticed that there was a dot on the horizon.

Jun also saw earlier that there was a Rank 1 Destroyer among the horde. That's why he formulated this explosive plan, testing out if explosions of this caliber could be used to deal with evolved infected. Even if the plan failed, he was confident that he could kill a lone Rank 1 Destroyer by himself. Heck, he even managed to kill a Rank 2 Destroyer.

The credit wasn't all to him and he almost died, but he can atleast say that he killed an Rank 2 Destroyer at close quarters. This should also be a good experiment whether explosives could work against them.

Jun already knew that shotguns can kill a Rank 1 Destroyer, so he would also like to test the piercing power of the M60 machine gun on the infected's skin.

After setting up the pathway filled with gasoline, the three stepped back at a safe distance and waited for the horde to arrive.

The main character of the horde was the two meter muscular giant that was running like a gorilla. Its body that inclined forward was supported by its elongated arms.

Jun aimed at the towering infected and pulled the trigger. The M60 machine gun roared and spat out bullets after bullets.

The Rank 1 Destroyer howled in pain every time a bullet struck it. Though the bullets didn't pierce the body, it still gave some damage on the infected as red marks appeared everywhere it was hit. The skin also appeared to be burnt.

Though it was rained down by numerous bullets, the infected endured and advanced forward. When the Destroyer was ten meters away, Jun used Time Perse to stop the time. He used some energy to move and aim at the head. He zoomed in a bit for greater accuracy, then fired. Two bullets went through the eyes and killed the Destroyer. The body fell forward, stopping right in front of them.

At the same time, the regular infecteds finally reached the detonation zone.

"Light them up!" Jun shouted. He then knelt and started looting the body.

Edward and Sheila sent a hailstorm of bullets towards the propane tanks.

Afterwards, a series of explosion came one after the other.

The bodies rained down on the area. Most of the bodies were burnt and had incomplete limbs. Some infected were still alive but could only crawl. A few lucky ones that could stand were quickly dealt with.

The three advance forward and killed the remaining infected. The smell in the air turned so bad that Sheila wasn't able to stop herself from puking. The noodles she just ate spilled on the ground. Seeing that the noodles mixed with some black burnt limb, her body reacted naturally and made her puke again.

Jun tried looting the severed bodies but didn't receive the Looting Notification. He thought that something was wrong but the notification came back when he looted an intact body.

When they finished the looting session, three new batch of infected came over. This time all of them were regular infected.

"Backs on each other!" Jun said.