Authors Note: Hey all, sorry for the shorter than normal chapter. But I wanted to make the next one bigger. Hope you all have a merry christmas!
Callie and Marie had gone to a large metal gate, which was the entrance to the survivor shelter, being controlled by two very strong inklings who had to turn a winch to make it raise and close. There were lines of various vehicles, each one loaded with inklings armed with weapons and back up supplies. The Squid Sisters saw a black van that had an extreme burning fire painting on the side of it.
"Ohh! Can I drive!?" Callie begged, her eyes shimmering with her pleading expression. Marie patted her cousin's head.
"No, you don't have a driver's license," the white squid simply said. Callie had failed her driver's test eight times in the past. However, Marie herself had passed it and had a license secretly, not that she was going to drive, but she had gotten it in case of emergencies, and did not let her precious relative know. Callie pouted, wanting to argue that there were no laws now, but that would make her gain some odd looks. Rules still existed that had to be abided by, and laws were going to be enforced as long as they could. They opened the side door to the van and climbed into the backseat. The inside of the van had a floor made of shag carpeting. Emerald was in the passenger seat of the front and Beige was in the driver's seat.
"Ready?" Beige quirked to the Squid Sisters while handing them two very small ear pieces. The girls both put them in one of their pointy ears. They were communicators that all the inklings had, but only the leaders of the groups for missions would be given the ability to talk aside, from the one who gave the orders on what to do and how to go through with the plan.
"Yeah!" Callie and Marie both said, a little too eager, while they were grabbing their weapons from the back of the van. Callie took a krak-on roller, and Marie grabbed a splatterscope, their favorite two weapons that never had let either of them down, even back when they were fighting the octarian army. The Squid Sisters tried to relax while each getting a few bottles of the cure stuffed in their pockets. There were a few boxes full of the cure in the back.
"Alright. Start it up," Octung's voice rung out from the ear pieces as the gate began to open, and then all of the vehicles began to move out, some immediately splitting off into different directions. Marie just looked out the window, seeing all the snow around and how the condition of each building was. It was creepy that half of the buildings were untouched. The zombies were not strong enough to break glass alone, yet they usually flocked to the most obvious opening around anything in their way. Callie meanwhile was just making sure her roller was ready.
The ride took a long time, but then the van they were in spontaneously coming to a stop, along with all the other vehicles left in this small squadron. The four climbed out of their vehicle, and immediately all of them scattered to entirely different areas with the rest of the inklings and octolings they were leading. This plan took a bit of odd variety, but they had done it before. Any zombies they ran across, they just instantly splattered with ease, because of how slow they were to react to even the simplest of attacks.
"Leaders of each squad, tell me when you're in position," Octung spoke through the ear pieces, ready and waiting. Callie wound up on the streets with all the other rollers, sloshers and splatling guns. Marie and the other chargers were on the roofs. Emerald and Beige were together with the shooters. Everyone was getting set up. Once everyone signaled they were ready, it was time to set the plan in motion.
"Okay, bait squad… start painting!" Octung shouted. Everyone in the streets of Eelectric Avenue waited patiently. There was a very normal tension in the atmosphere. Stress and worry plagued nearly everyone's minds.
"We're on it," a random female voice chimed from the radio, belonging to the leader of the bait squad. They all waited, hearing the sounds of various moans and groans ringing out loudly from all around that kept getting louder. All the groups saw two vans suddenly appear from around the corners, both turning and heading toward the ground troops. The back doors of the vans were wide open, and two squids in each van were pressing rollers against the road, leaving behind vibrantly bright pink trails of ink. The other van was leaving behind a bright yellow wide streak of ink. The vans came to a stop once they got past the rest of the inklings and octolings.
Callie gulped in fear, hearing the sounds of the monstrous groaning and moaning. They saw giant waves of zombies appear from both sides that the vans had come from, and there were hundreds of them, all covering up the pink and yellow ink, with their grey ink spilling from their mouth. The survivors had discovered that the infected squids and octopi were drawn by other ink colors for some reason, like moths mesmerized by a flame. These zombies had an obsessive disorder to turn everything grey.
"Alright! Cure rounds loaded! Splatling guns, open fire!" Callie ordered, and at least fifteen squids and octopi stepped up, revving up their splatling guns, the barrels of the weapons spinning fast. They opened fire, the rainbow mixture in their ink tanks flying fast and hitting the zombies randomly. Instantly they would be splattered in a few shots, but when blasted with the cure or any type of ink, they will reappear at the nearest spawn point which were mostly set up in hospitals, small medical facilities or at turf zones. Thankfully, the survivors already had planned ahead and had sent a small squad to the nearest hospital to make sure it was clear, and that people cleansed of the infection would not get harmed again.
"Alright, chargers! Aim for the back line of the zombies and weaken their numbers!" Marie ordered. All the chargers on the rooftops obediently opened fire, their grand rainbows of ink soaring through the snowflake filled sky and splattering any zombie they hit instantly.
This fight went on for minutes. This was nothing new to the Squid Sisters or any of the other inklings. They were noticing a few rogue zombies coming from the back road they had came from. Callie saw this, feeling that voice in her head already trying to think up some comment to demoralize her.
"We got these," Emerald stepped up with a grin, Beige right beside him. They both began to walk, going past the vehicles and opening fire, the rainbow ink hitting each zombie and making them fall over. Their weapons were too weak to splatter anything without using up half of their ink tanks. The zombies were being cured before their eyes. Emerald approached one of the newly cured octolings.
"Hey, hey, I got you. No need to panic," he said, helping him up while Beige covered his best friend.
"Don't touch me!" the octoling made him get off, just turning into his octopus form and hiding in the rainbow ink. Emerald was confused, but needless for anyone to say, this was the one environment the germaphobic octoling never wanted to be in.
"The zombies have been thinned out. Rollers, get ready and finish them off," Callie ordered. The splatling gunners were nearly out of ink. They backed off to refill, Callie getting in front of the zombie horde with the rest of the squad.
"Shooters and sloshers, black them up!" Octung commanded. Callie slammed her roller on the ground, everyone with her following her movement. They all began to charge forward, all of their rollers leaving behind a huge rainbow trail on the streets. They instantly splattered all of the zombies ahead of them. Marie's squad was shooting from the roofs, helping them. The sloshers and shooters followed behind the rollers.
Before they knew it, the battle was finished, and all the zombies were defeated. At least a good quarter of the horde that had not gotten splattered were now back to normal. They had color in their tentacles again. Octolings and inklings were all looking overjoyed to be back to their normal state, and the sound of cheering and joyous cries rung out.
"Eelectric Avenue is ours. The area is completely clear. No grey ink is appearing on our surveillance. In an hour we'll advance for Pufferfish Park," Octung said, and like that, nearly everyone else began cheering as well.
"Ain't that wonderful? More morons to add to the army of blatant fools trying to delay the end of the city," the voice in Callie's head rung out.
"Shut up, you…" she growled quietly, seeing Marie climbing down from the rooftop with her charger on her back. The two met and hugged each other tightly in joy of their victory.
"We did it! We did it!" Marie gleefully said.
"Yeah! We'll have Inkopolis back to normal in no time!" Callie added, both of them looking out over all the squids and octopi who were trying to adjust to what just happened, being quite surprised to be back to normal.
"We have vehicles on the way to extend the security wall and bring supplies for the newly cleansed," Octung explained, also overjoyed. Callie and Marie however were aware that Pufferfish Park would be a lot harder. They still wanted to go to the plaza to hopefully find their grandfather and Agent 3. The two just sat down on the sidewalk, trying to take it easy, the snow continuing to fall around them and pile up. They and the whole survivor squad needed time to recover their energy.