Damn it! They're too fast!!!
Much faster than the walkers in the original storyline!
"Fire!"
Both teams were startled and immediately opened fire. Over a dozen bullets ripped through the female clerk's chest. Black blood mixed with fibrous clots seeped from the bullet holes.
The body swayed, its neck nearly blown apart and hanging crookedly over one shoulder. Just as everyone expected it to collapse, it lunged forward again with clawing hands.
Even mercenaries used to life-and-death combat had never seen anything this sanity-shattering.
"That's not human!" Leah shouted in horror.
Danny was grappling with the pharmacist. His larger build let him shove the crazed man away easily, but the pharmacist immediately snarled and lunged back at him.
Danny had no choice but to keep swinging his fists to stop the creature from biting him.
"What the hell are these things? Someone help me!"
"Fuck! Fuck! They won't die!" Turner emptied his pistol and switched to the shotgun slung over his shoulder, blasting off half of the female clerk's arm with a single shot.
The impact forced her back two steps, but she still thrust her exposed bone toward them.
Ethan and Wells rushed in from the sides and tackled the pharmacist, each grabbing one of his arms. The pharmacist bared his foul, blood-slick teeth and tried to bite their hands, but Danny stepped in and twisted his neck from the front, snapping it clean.
The body finally collapsed.
Its head had rotated a full one hundred and eighty degrees. The body lay motionless, yet the mouth kept opening and closing.
Everyone felt their skin crawl.
Calista's mind, blank until now, suddenly recalled the walkers' weakness from the show.
She pulled the pistol from the back of her waistband, flicked off the safety, and fired twice.
Two bullets pierced the pharmacist and the female clerk straight through the forehead.
Both infected went completely still.
Calista let out a breath of relief. The hand holding the gun trembled slightly.
"Looks like you have to destroy the brain," she said to Leah.
"Is this fucking rabies?" Jenson spat, still shaken as he rubbed his arm.
"They look like zombies from the movies," Calista said, pointing at the bodies on the floor, deliberately steering everyone's thinking in that direction.
She had to make the mercenaries realize the truth as quickly as possible.
This was definitely not simple rabies.
As everyone talked at once, they completely missed a third set of footsteps.
A little girl walker wearing children's sandals limped out from the shadows and lunged forward. Her blood-stained pink nails reached out, the thumbnail missing entirely—perfectly matching the fake nail embedded in the tile near the door.
"Fuck!"
Calista barely managed to curse before the back of her head slammed hard into the vitamin shelf. Her pistol and bayonet flew from her hands, landing two meters away.
The walker, a girl around ten years old, straddled her waist. Her cloudy pupils reflected Calista's panicked face.
The walker's face was right in front of hers.
The shock—both visual and psychological—was overwhelming.
Instinctively, Calista grabbed the walker's neck.
The little girl walker's abdomen had been ripped open. Half of her intestines hung outside, already chewed away. The blood on her body was still bright red.
She must have been the "food" the pharmacist and the female clerk had been chewing on.
Now she had become one of those horrifying things too.
Rotting saliva dripped onto Calista's collarbone. Reacting quickly, she desperately held the thin neck back.
The walker's cervical bones creaked loudly, but it didn't seem to notice. Its head twisted into a grotesque angle.
"Don't shoot!" Carver shouted.
Calista struggled to turn her head.
The mercenaries had formed a semicircle around her, guns raised but fingers frozen on the triggers. Leah's gun barrel was even trembling beside Calista's left temple.
It was too close—almost touching her face.
She and the walker were still struggling. One careless shot could go through both of their heads.
Calista forced herself to stay calm.
This wouldn't work. She needed to create distance.
Suddenly she shoved the little girl walker upward, forcing it away from her body.
Carver seized the moment. He drew his hunting knife and drove it straight through the walker's right eye socket.
Filthy blood splattered everywhere. Calista squeezed her eyes shut.
The walker finally went still.
Warm brain matter slid down Calista's chin and into her collar. The sticky, nauseating sensation made her freeze in place until the body on top of her was suddenly kicked away by Leah.
"Breathe!"
Leah grabbed her arm and hauled her up, her expression tight as she quickly checked Calista's body for injuries. Only after confirming there were no wounds did she finally relax.
Calista managed a faint smile.
"Good thing my jacket is the thick version."
Leah suddenly pulled her into a tight hug, squeezing the air from her lungs as she whispered softly beside her ear.
"Thank God you're okay…"
Calista silently thanked herself for the weeks of hard training.
If she were still the pampered rich girl she used to be, she probably wouldn't have even had time to push the walker away before being bitten.
After confirming nothing else had been missed, they finished gathering the medicine and left.
Outside, the street in front of the pharmacy had already turned into hell.
The gunshots from inside had drawn at least a dozen twisted "pedestrians."
Bossie was lying prone on top of the vehicle with his rifle ready to sweep the area. Bits of flesh were stuck to Mike's windshield and wheels, clear signs that he had already run over some of the earlier arrivals.
Everyone here was a professional.
Now that they knew the walkers' weakness, they opened fire and quickly cleared out the walkers around the two vehicles.
"Drive!" Leah shouted, though her voice was nearly drowned out by the rising chorus of walker screams.
Eight people scrambled into the back seats of the two vehicles, leaving the pursuing walkers behind.
Through the rearview mirror, Calista saw the leading walker running with half its skull missing—yet it was still surprisingly fast.
She remembered that walkers in the original storyline moved slowly.
But the ones they had just encountered were almost as fast as those in Resident Evil.
Could it be because Rick only woke up two or three months later, when the walkers' bodies had already begun to rot and deteriorate?
Calista's thoughtful expression made the others think she was still in shock.
Especially with the little girl walker's blood and brain matter still smeared across her chin and neck, making her delicate face look even paler and more fragile.
Turner cleared his throat.
"Hey… you okay?"
Calista snapped out of her thoughts and saw Turner and Carver looking at her with concern. She curved her brows into a reassuring smile.
"I'm fine. It's just the first time I've seen something like this. Is the situation outside really this bad already?"
Her question shifted everyone's attention.
After what had just happened, no one believed this was merely a "new strain of rabies" anymore.
The dead coming back to life.
Bodies moving despite missing limbs.
Wasn't that exactly what zombies were?
Carver rubbed his chin.
"Now that I think about it, there weren't this many walkers on the road earlier. But once we got into the city, there were suddenly way too many of them."
Mike nodded in agreement.
"When we arrived, the streets were empty. But once the gunshots started inside the store, a bunch of them came running from other streets. I already crushed several with the car. One of them even tried to snarl at me with half its head gone."
"Yeah. Their bodies were practically shredded and they still kept moving. In the end it was Calista who figured out destroying the head was the only way," Leah said, nodding.
"Where are the police and the National Guard?" Turner asked, confused.
"Clearly the government has already lost control of the situation," Calista said, her eyes filled with deep worry.
She looked out the window.
Knoxville had never felt this quiet before.
Like a lurking beast, waiting for the moment to strike.
And who knew how many walkers would be waiting at their next destination?