Pick up a parcel — three zombies guard each one — and its address appears on the map. You carry two at a time. You take 5 hits per district; out of health costs one of 3 lives.
A zombie only watches the arc in front of itself, and notice distance depends on what you are doing: the front ranges are roughly 150 while sprinting, 90 while walking, 45 while still, and 38 while crawling. Everything shrinks to about a third from behind. Press C to toggle a slow crawl with almost silent footsteps; touching a zombie or catching it in the flashlight still betrays you instantly. The HUD meter shows the most suspicious zombie, while the filling arc shows exactly who is working you out. Come up from behind with the light off and press E for a silent kill.
Two parcels fit on the courier's back, and you can see how many you are carrying on the sprite. An address is only revealed when its parcel is picked up, and it stops being marked the moment it is signed off — the map never shows more than the work in hand. Standing over a third parcel with both hands full does nothing; deliver one first. The district ends when the last parcel reaches its door.
The horde flanks, dodges the firing line, and surges after a retreating courier. Every type throws a projectile with its own colour and speed — and a zombie splattered by a neighbour's throw turns on the thrower instead of you. You have 5 seconds to look around after spawning; your first shot ends that grace period.
Tanks roam in packs of three or four, far from the parcels: huge, half as fast as a walker, no tactics at all, and immune to silent kills. Traffic steers around a tank instead of flattening it — a car that hits one wrecks its own front and barely survives a second collision. Walking around a pack costs far less than fighting it.
Street lamps hang over the road on a bracket and carry the night shift — a lit street needs no flashlight. One bullet in the glass puts that stretch out for the rest of the district, and the sound of it carries as far as any broken window.
Cars run zombies down, but crashes crumple bodywork and smash windows and lights. A wrecked car smokes for half a minute and then goes up — hard enough to kill you where you stand, and four times what a tank's head does. Watch the column: when it blackens and starts throwing sparks you have about fifteen seconds. What is left is a burnt-out hull, and that is still cover. A patrol car siren draws zombies, and the officers shoot back — their gunfire pulls the horde toward the car rather than toward you. Batteries and ammo are scattered through the yards, and most of the horde drops cash — a tank always does. Nothing sells anything yet, so the wallet just fills up over the shift.
Two couriers can share one district. Type the same room code on both machines, one presses HOST and the other JOIN, and the host starts the shift for both. Health, ammunition, the flashlight and what is on your back are your own; the district, the horde, the parcel count and the wallet belong to the shift. A parcel is signed off by whoever is carrying it.
Running out of health puts you on the ground instead of ending the district, and the horde loses interest in a body. Three seconds of your partner standing over you gets you back on your feet with part of your health — an arrow points to them whenever they are off screen, and turns red the moment they go down. The district is only lost when neither of you is standing. Only the host can pause.
Pick MADNESS on the start screen for the same district with two rules changed: you never count rounds, and the horde keeps arriving — slowly at first, then in twos and threes as the night goes on. They walk in from further away than the screen is wide, already heading roughly your way. Parcels still have to be delivered; the district simply stops being somewhere you can wait.
Every patrol car is issued a heavy gun on a roof mount for the night, on a belt nobody counts. A burst of it goes through whatever is standing in the way and on into the next two, and the mount has to swing before it can shoot, so the rounds walk across the street. Stay near one while it lasts: the crew is on top of the horde for the first minute, and under it by the second.
You get a flamethrower too. Q swaps between it and the pistol — keep the pistol for lamps and for tanks' heads. The stream is short and the fuel is free. It barely hurts on its own; what it does is set them alight, and a burning zombie stops caring about you, runs, and pulls the rest of the horde after it. Hold it on one until the fire takes hold and anything but a tank dies of it a few seconds later, wherever it has got to by then.
Pavement is faster and louder; rain muffles sound, while thunder breaks the trail. On a phone the first finger moves and the second fires.