The raider trail was too easy. Bootprints pressed deep into thawing mud, branches hacked aside without care. They weren't hiding. They thought no one would dare follow.
Michael didn't like it. Nothing about this world was easy.
He moved at point, rifle raised, scanning every shadow. Tommy shadowed him on the left, steady and quiet, a man who'd walked this wilderness long enough to know when it was holding its breath. Kyle trudged behind, muttering curses whenever his shotgun strap slipped, but his eyes were sharp.
The forest was wrong. It wasn't just quiet it was empty. No birds, no wind through the trees, not even the faint scratch of squirrels. Just stillness, and under it, something wet. A sound like lungs full of mud.
Michael raised a fist. The three of them froze.
The sound came again, rattling, broken.
They crept forward, boots sinking into moss, until a clearing opened around them.
That was where they saw it.
The figure stood alone, swaying. At first glance, it was just another infected until its chest rose, unnaturally high, ribs stretching as though something inside was pushing out. With each heave, it forced out a gray mist of spores that hung in the air. A wet cough followed, thick and ragged, like the lungs were tearing themselves apart.
"Mask up," Michael snapped.
Tommy already had his cloth tight. Kyle yanked his scarf up fast. Michael dragged his mask over his face just as the haze rolled toward them.
The world went muffled. Breathing turned heavy, like trying to suck air through soaked fabric. Every inhale carried a weight in the chest, pressing, resisting. The haze clung to the masks, a film you could feel but not smell.
The thing coughed again, a mist of spores spilling into the trees.
Tommy's muffled voice was tight. "Never seen one do that before."
Then a wet pop.
They spun. Another corpse slumped against a fallen log, split wide like rotten fruit, fungal sacs steaming in the snow.
Kyle gagged into his filter. "Jesus Christ."
Michael's voice stayed low, hard. "Move. Don't breathe deep."
They backed out quick, boots crunching frost, lungs straining until the haze thinned. Only when they were clear did they slow, masks damp with their own breath.
Kyle tugged his scarf down to spit, eyes wide. "That wasn't a Runner. Wasn't a Clicker either."
Michael said nothing. His rifle was steady, but his gut twisted. The world had rules, even in its madness. This didn't fit any of them.
They thought it was just one freak. Then they reached the ridge.
The raider camp below was chaos. Fires lit the fences of an old trucking yard. Raiders shouted, rifles cracked. And between the gunfire came another sound wet impacts, then thunderous bursts.
One bloated figure staggered at the gate. Bullets riddled it, and it exploded in a spray that dropped raiders screaming, clawing at their throats as spores clouded the yard.
"Holy hell," Tommy muttered.
Another collapsed inside the fence, bursting and choking the camp in haze. Raiders fired blindly, coughing, panicked.
Kyle's grip whitened on his shotgun. "They're fighting those things."
Michael steadied his rifle. "Then we finish it. Raiders don't get to live and come back later."
They slipped into the chaos. Gunfire masked their approach. Michael's rifle cracked, picking raiders from cover. Tommy fired clean, cutting down men scrambling to reload. Kyle stormed in close, shotgun roars knocking bodies into the dirt.
The infected did the rest. Each burst filled the air with choking clouds of spores, panic was spreading faster.
By the time the fires burned low, silence ruled. Raiders and infected alike lay scattered. The stench was thick smoke, blood, and the sour heaviness of spores still drifting in corners.
Michael crouched near one of the burst corpses. Its flesh was waxy, stretched to breaking, fungus twitching faintly inside.
"These aren't like the others," he said through his mask. "They don't chase. They detonate."
Tommy's jaw was tight. "Like walking bombs."
"Bombs that poison the air," Michael muttered.
They took what they could rifles, crates of ammo, fuel. Enough to matter. Then they turned back, their steps heavier with more than just supplies.
The dam's turbine hall filled with voices when they returned. Survivors from the dam lined the railings. Jackson's scouts stood grim-faced, rifles slung. At the table plywood across barrels Michael set down their spoils.
Maria crossed her arms. "Well?"
Michael tapped the table. "Raiders are gone. But we saw something else. Infected that breathe spores into the air. Others that burst when shot, poisoning everything nearby. If we hadn't masked up, we'd be dead out there."
The hall rippled with fear.
Alice leaned forward, her face pale but steady. "Remember when we raided that abandoned Firefly base?" She pointed to the crates stacked against the wall. "We brought back papers. Notes. Equipment. They were already tracking changes in the fungus before they pulled out. They knew this was happening."
Kyle's lip curled. "And they ran instead of warning anyone."
Maria's jaw tightened. "So what do we do?"
Michael's voice was flat. "We build a lab. Not for a cure. That dream's gone. Just to understand. To see what's coming before it walks through our gates."
Silence stretched across the hall.
Finally, Tommy broke it. "Walls and guns won't matter if the air itself turns against us. We build. We learn. Or we wait for those things to show up at our doors, and by then it's too late."
No one argued they didn't know if knowledge would save them. But they knew ignorance would kill them.