Caine and the bone zombie faced off amidst a sea of undead corpses and pools of blood, their feral red eyes locked in a deadly gaze, radiating pure killing intent.
BOOM!
The ground erupted in a spray of blood and shattered tiles as the bone zombie launched itself at Caine, its remaining bone claw outstretched and aimed at his face. Caine responded with equal ferocity, meeting the attack with his own claws and catching the bone claw in his grip.
CRUNCH!
Caine's claws began to dig into the bone armor, the sound of splintering bone echoing through the battlefield. Before the bone zombie could retreat, Caine pulled it sharply forward, slamming its head into his knee with devastating force. A sharp crack reverberated as the impact left a fracture in the bone zombie's face plate.
Seizing the opportunity, Caine grabbed the creature by its head with his free hand. With the strength of a raging bull, he smashed the bone zombie's face into the ground repeatedly, each impact deepening the crack in its armor.
BANG.
BANG.
BANG.
Finally, a piece of the bone zombie's face plate broke away, revealing grotesquely mutated flesh beneath. The exposed features resembled a nightmarish version of Deadpool, as though left too long in an industrial microwave. Its bulging eyes, grotesquely swollen in their sockets, seemed on the verge of bursting free, while its misshapen and twisted nose added to the horror of its appearance.
Despite its grotesque appearance, Caine, in his feral state, paid it no attention and continued to pummel the bone zombie with relentless ferocity. Each strike tore away more of the zombie's protective shell.
BANG... CRACK
SMASH... CRACK
The bone zombie, desperate to retaliate, swiped at Caine with its remaining arm. However, Caine seized the arm and, with a violent, bloody twist, tore it off as if it were a crab leg. Black blood sprayed like a fountain, further painting the already grisly scene in dark, morbid hues.
Still clutching the severed arm, Caine swung it down with brutal force onto the zombie's torso.
SMASH... CRACK
The bone zombie emitted sharp, shrill cries with each blow, but having already summoned nearby zombies, none would come to its aid. The area remained eerily void of reinforcements.
Caine reared up, his blazing red eyes fixed on the store's ceiling. He let out a victorious howl before resuming his merciless assault on the nearly incapacitated bone zombie.
BOOM
The bone zombie was sent crashing through a set of double doors, rolling onto the ground momentarily before attempting to flee. Yet, before it could take a single step, a shadow emerged from the doorway. The figure dashed forward, slamming into the zombie with his shoulder and sending it tumbling down the hill toward Lowe's, where the remaining survivors had regrouped and taken refuge in the garden center.
The night outside Lowe's was eerily silent, the air heavy with the foul mixture of decay and gunpowder.
The survivors had transformed the garden center into a fragile sanctuary, overturned carts, welded fences, and stacks of pallets serving as makeshift barricades. Weak torchlight flickered sporadically, casting wavering shadows on their weary, hollowed faces.
Then the first explosion shattered the stillness.
The ground trembled violently, sending ripples through the metal shelving. A second, more forceful impact followed, dislodging dust from the fractured ceiling panels.
"What was that?" someone murmured in a hushed, fearful tone.
No one dared to answer.
A deafening crash broke the silence, a thunderous noise that shook the earth, accompanied by the piercing screech of twisting metal. The survivors turned sharply toward the perimeter just as part of the chainlink fence was torn apart.
Through the breach came something enormous, slamming into the ground with a sickening burst of blood and bone shards.
It was the Bone Zombie, or what remained of it. Its once-formidable armored body dragged along the ground, carving a jagged trench in the gravel before coming to a halt against a pile of soil bags. Its roar was faint now, fragmented and strained.
Then the source of its defeat stepped into view, emerging from the swirling dust.
A figure appeared, towering, broad-shouldered, drenched in viscera, with skin like charred ash. Steam hissed from its body in irregular bursts, and its eyes glowed with a dim, malevolent crimson light, like embers struggling to reignite. Razor-sharp claws, black and gleaming, caught the unsteady torchlight as it moved with a precise, menacing grace.
The survivors stood paralyzed with fear.
"What is that?" one man stuttered, his grip tightening on a rusted pipe.
None of them knew.
The creature before them had shed all traces of humanity, both in form and demeanor.
The Bone Zombie stirred once more, its fractured skeletal armor glistening with dark ichor, emitting an ear-splitting shriek.
And then, before the survivors' astonished eyes, a shocking scene unfolded. Without warning, the bone zombie pivoted sharply on its heels and tried to escape, each thunderous step shaking the ground as it poured all its remaining strength into its desperate retreat.
Yet, the armored behemoth's flight was short-lived. The grey-skinned zombie lunged forward, seizing the back of its head and slamming it down with immense force, driving its face into the concrete.
BOOM!
A massive explosion of shattered concrete and thick dust erupted as the bone zombie's head was violently crushed into the ground.
BOOM
BOOM
BOOM
Caine unleashed a relentless barrage of punches, each blow causing deeper fractures to spread across the bone armor. With a guttural growl, he extended his claws, forcing them between the fractured plates and into the mutated, tender flesh beneath. Dark, viscous blood spurted from the wounds, seeping through the cracks in the bone armor.
"HAAAAAAAAH!" Caine roared ferociously, tearing away the bone armor protecting the undead behemoth's chest with sheer brute force.
SHINK
SHINK
SHINK
SHINK
With the armor torn away, Caine slashed mercilessly at the exposed chest, his claws tearing through the flesh again and again. Each strike sent massive sprays of black blood arcing into the air, splattering his body and drenching him entirely in the vile ichor.
As Caine continued his frenzied assault, ripping and tearing with reckless abandon, a muted voice reverberated in his mind.
Suddenly, Caine's claws became enveloped in silvery-black nanobots. As he slashed, these nanobots voraciously consumed and assimilated the material of the bone zombie at a visible rate, rapidly reducing its dense bone armor under the relentless assault of countless microscopic bots.
Once again, a muted voice resonated within Caine's feral mind, unnoticed in the chaos.
Caine's dark grey skin began to secrete a strange, silvery-black, glue-like substance from his pores, which quickly spread to cover him entirely. It then condensed abruptly, forming into perfectly contoured plates that adhered seamlessly to every muscle and curve, transforming him into the image of a fearsome, unholy knight.
The final piece to solidify was the helmet, resembling a stylized human skull but exaggerated in design. Its heavy, angular brow, outwardly flared cheekbones resembling reinforced plating, and squared, segmented jawline suggested mechanical articulation beneath its bone-like surface.
A raised ridge ran from the forehead to the back, evoking the spine of a predator and exuding an aura of dominance as Caine stood unyielding over his vanquished foe.
Strength (STR) 13 > 28
Dexterity (DEX) 13 > 28
Constitution (CON) 12 > 27
Intelligence (INT) 11 > 21
Wisdom (WIS) 12 > 22
Charisma (CHA) 11 > 21
Caine stumbled forward, overwhelmed as his body surged with more than double his previous stats. He reached out instinctively, seizing an intact fence post to steady himself, only to feel it twist and warp under the sheer force of his enhanced grip.
For a moment, silence reigned, thick and suffocating, pressing down like a shroud.
Then came a faint rustle, the sound of trembling fingers fumbling against twisted metal.
One of the survivors, a young man barely twenty, stumbled forward. His boot clipped the edge of a broken pipe, sending him sprawling onto the gravel. The sharp clang of his weapon striking the floor shattered the stillness like a gunshot.
The grey figure's head snapped toward the noise.
Caine's body moved with mechanical precision, his crimson eyes blazing in the dim light. One step, then another, the unnerving grind of bone plates scraping against one another resonated through the desolate garden center.
The survivors froze in place.
"D-Don't move," Corporal Smith whispered, his voice unsteady. His rifle quivered in his hands. "Don't—"
Caine's gaze locked onto the fallen man. For an instant, something flickered in his burning eyes—a trace of humanity, a glimmer of recognition. It vanished just as quickly, snuffed out by the ravenous hunger coiled deep within him.
Inside Caine's mind, chaos erupted.
No… stop…
He could see through his own eyes, hear the frightened gasps of those he had once vowed to protect, but his body refused to listen. It moved, driven by a primal, ancient force that slithered through the decaying remnants of his nerves.
Hunger.
Not the hunger of a man, nor even a beast. It was something deeper, a gravitational pull etched into his bones, an instinct carved into his soul.
The first scream shattered the silence like broken glass.
Caine's awareness recoiled as his claws slashed downward. He saw the blood spray, heard the snap of bones, the desperate cries for help, but it was distant, as though viewed through the thick glass of an aquarium, submerged in something heavy and impenetrable.
He screamed within his mind until his throat felt raw, but only guttural growls escaped his lips.
His mind raged, clawing against the confines of his own skull, as his hands seized another victim. He couldn't halt the relentless rhythm of the feeding, couldn't block out the sensory onslaught that followed: the sharp tang of copper in the air, the ripping, the frenzy.
Each cry faded quicker than the last.
Granger's voice echoed faintly in the distance, "Fire! FIRE!" followed by the crack of gunfire. Bullets struck his armored body, sparking against the newly grown plates, barely registering. The shots only redirected his focus to the last two soldiers standing.
Please… run. RUN!
But they didn't. They couldn't. Paralyzed by terror, they stood frozen as his monstrous, bone-armored body lunged toward them.
He felt the impact before the sound reached him, the crunch of metal against flesh, the abrupt cessation of shouts. His vision blurred with red, the world spinning in fragmented images: helmets tumbling across concrete, torches flickering as they fell, shadows flickering against walls painted in horror.
Through it all, his mind screamed in silence, the human part of him buried beneath the raging storm of instinct.
Eventually, the hunger ebbed. The growls faded.
When it was over, there was only breathing, heavy, ragged, almost bewildered.
Caine stood amidst the devastation of what had once been human. His chest rose and fell, nanites glowing faintly beneath his skin like the last embers of a dying fire. Blood steamed on his armor in the cold night air.
Inside, his mind floated in stillness.
He couldn't remember when his heartbeat had steadied.
He couldn't remember when the hunger had ceased.
Now, there was only silence.
He looked down, though he couldn't tell if it was him or the monster within that moved his head, and saw the aftermath of his actions. For an instant, something deep beneath the feral haze stirred again.
A memory, a laugh, a name, a face.
It was enough.
A solitary tear formed at the edge of his crimson eye, tracing a clear path through the layers of blood and filth coating his face. It dropped silently to the concrete beneath him, just as Caine collapsed backward into the morass of blood and corpses, surrendering to an unyielding slumber.
After several agonizing moments of oppressive silence, a faint, almost imperceptible tremor rippled through the lifeless bodies sprawled across the ground. What first seemed like a mere shudder stirred by the chill of the night soon became more deliberate, more disturbing. Fingers curled and uncurled, eyelids fluttered over vacant stares, and spines twisted unnaturally against the unyielding concrete.
The soldiers and survivors that Caine had so recently struck down began to convulse violently, their limbs jerking as though manipulated by invisible strings. From their throats, which had only moments prior screamed in mortal fear, emerged guttural moans, low, metallic, and devoid of any trace of humanity.
Their once diverse complexions rapidly paled, draining of life until their skin mirrored the same ashen gray of Caine's monstrous visage. Lips withered to an eerie pallor, eyes glazed over in a deathly sheen, and beneath their skin, veins writhed like blackened, corrupted channels carrying some vile new essence.
One by one, the fallen began to rise. Their movements were hesitant and stilted at first, as though their muscles struggled to obey an unfamiliar will. The dim torchlight flickered across their faces, frozen in masks of terror, now twisted into grotesque caricatures of subservience and half-living awareness.
Then, as if responding to an unspoken command, they moved in unison.
The newly awakened corpses sank to one knee in perfect synchronization; their lifeless gazes locked on the still-sleeping form of Caine. Every motion exuded deference, every posture spoke of absolute submission. Though vestiges of their former humanity lingered, their very existence now proclaimed servitude to a power beyond mortal comprehension.
The thick, damp air seemed to hum with an ominous energy as the collective presence of the undead pressed against the surroundings. The faint rustle of their synchronized movements, the muted scrape of knees on gravel, and the groan of reanimated muscles blended into a chilling symphony of reverence and devotion.