One after another, the strange zombies were slain. Still, the chosen were on alert. Not because of the zombies, but because of all the noise those explosions made.
It was unlikely that the evolved beasts didn’t hear them. To be safe, they set up extra guards and agreed to take turns staying awake and resting.
As for the dust, they rubbed it off and returned to their duties.
Meanwhile, the blood rain outside continued to patter against the walls. Somehow, it felt soothing, despite the disgusting smell, as people fell asleep.
As for the guards, it was a boring night. Other than the exploding zombies, nothing graced them with their presence.
No zombies, no mutants, and no humans.
"It must be the rain," one guard mumbled. "The rotting smell must have scared the mutants."
"Maybe..." another guard said, yawning. "Man, I need to sleep."
The other guys nodded as the guard stepped inside. He crouched beside a man wrapped in a filthy blanket and reached to shake his bare shoulder.
"Get up," he said. "It’s your turn—what the hell?!"
The guard yanked his hand back as the man was burning up with fever. In the good old days, it wouldn’t have been an issue, but now even the slightest sickness could kill someone.
The guard got up, looking for the resident healer, but as he did, the man’s body began convulsing.
"Someone get the healer here!" the guard yelled.
His loud voice woke everyone up, and they grabbed their weapons, thinking they were under attack. However, the reality was far worse than that.
Mark rushed to the site, pushing through the crowd.
"What’s wrong?" he asked, pointing at the man.
"I-I don’t know!" the guard stammered, pointing at the man. "I was outside, then it was time to switch, so I came in and found the guy ."
"Move. Move. Analise is here!"
Analise was an old woman, probably in her mid-seventies, and the group’s healer. Despite her age, thanks to her class, she had reversed age and looked like a thirty-year-old at most.
"Clear the space, let the child breathe," she said, squatting down next to the man.
However, before she could even start her treatment, things went to shit.
The man’s eyes remained shut, but dark blood seeped from his eyelids like tears. At the same time, his mouth foamed as if he had been poisoned.
"Hold him!" Analise urged.
Mark and the guard grabbed the man’s hands and legs as he began thrashing around violently. The group watched in horror as the convulsions got worse.
Analise was trying her best to figure out what was happening, but before she could, the man’s spine snapped by itself, and his body went limp.
"No pulse..." Analise announced.
Everyone went quiet. They had seen many people die. Some at the hands of the zombies, and some even from underlying illnesses that got worse after planetary evolution.
However, they hadn’t seen such a gruesome death where someone’s body broke itself.
Little did they know, it was just the beginning.
"Burn the corpse—" Analise said, getting up, but fell to the ground the next second.
Mark reached for her, only to find her body burning just like the man from before.
More people collapsed, showing the same symptoms.
One by one, the chosen fell into fever followed by deadly convulsions.
"How the hell should I know?"
The shouts grew frantic as fear took hold of them. They could fight mutants, zombies, and even other chosen, but how were they supposed to fight an invisible threat?
In the middle of the panic, a cracking sound echoed. Everyone stopped, turning towards the man who had died first.
The sound of cracking bones grew louder as his chest swelled until it couldn’t anymore. Then, his ribcage split open, and a wild mushroom-like structure appeared from it.
The man’s arms turned and twisted into a grotesque whip made of flesh and bones. His head lolled to the side, and his mouth ripped open, all of his blood shot out of it at once.
The chosen couldn’t even digest that when the man’s corpse stood up. His head hung below as if he had lost all control of his body.
"Kill it!" someone yelled, lunging at the man.
At that moment, no one cared what happened to the man. They just saw a strange zombie and had to kill it.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t going to be easy.
As soon as the chosen charged to strike the zombie, its whip struck. It tore through the chosen’s chest as if it were made of paper.
Mark jumped back, nocked an arrow on the string, and fired away. The arrow struck the zombie’s head, snapping it backwards. It stumbled forward before falling to the ground.
"Destroy their heads now!"
On Mark’s command, the chosen quickly destroyed the heads of those who had died. No zombie could survive without its brain.
They had barely let out a sigh of relief when the first zombie’s body twitched again. The other followed as the chosen watched on in horror.
"H-How is this possible?"
Mark shot another arrow, this time hitting the zombie in the chest. However, there was no stopping them.
They were surrounded by unkillable zombies!
"This... can’t be happening—"
Mark’s words were cut short as his blood sprayed all over the floor. Screams followed. Some tried to run away, only to be dragged inside and ripped into pieces.
As for the guards, their end wasn’t so gruesome. After all, Blaze wasn’t a savage. He just crushed their heads, leaving their bodies intact for further experimentation, of course.
He sat on top of their piled corpses, enjoying the symphony of screams from a distance.
Flanking him was his latest creation.
A little creature he called Infectors, created from manually assembling a walker with the blightspore. The same zombies that Mark and his group had killed earlier, while mocking Blaze’s desperation.
Suddenly, it wasn’t Blaze who was desperate, but the chosen. And he was enjoying every damn second of it.
"Perfect," he said, jumping off the corpses. "Let’s check the harvest, shall we?"