Day 4.
Sauget, Illinois.
06:15 Hours.
Dawn didn't break; it bled into the sky.
The light that filtered through the shattered windows of the Coldwell factory was the color of a fresh bruise. The air tasted of wet rust and the phantom copper tang of violence waiting to happen.
The Mudroom stood at ninety-eight percent completion. The airlock seals had been pressure-tested, the chemical tanks were primed to vomit bleach at eighty-seven PSI, and the ghost-blue blueprint overlay finally pulsed a steady green approval in my vision.
Paige—Vanessa was dead; this woman was something harder—was down in the muck. She scrubbed the decontamination grates until her palms split, fresh calluses forming over the blisters. The confetti of her murdered career floated in the rust-bucket water.
"Clean," she muttered, scrubbing a spot of imaginary grease. Her eyes were rimmed red, frantic.
Travis was shirtless in the October chill, stacking cinderblocks three-high with terrified ease. Sweat carved rivers down deltoids that could deadlift a Prius.
Helen Voss sat on a folding chair, lighting her fourth Marlboro. Her pale eyes dissected my Decay Sight overlays like they were autopsy reports.
"Atmosphere's heavy," she rasped, smoke curling around the vet kit spread on her knees. "Feels like the waiting room before a euthanasia."
"It's not a waiting room," I said, checking the action on my Fang .45. "It's a slaughterhouse."
Miller was over by the eastern wall, welding rebar double-thick. His loyalty had cratered to 2%. Every twitch of his cop-stache screamed mutiny. He was doing the math on how to put a bullet in my back, but he hadn't solved the equation yet.
Up in the Level 2 vents, the generator hummed a steady rhythm—Boyd's work. The kid hadn't surfaced in twenty-four hours.
And Gary? Gary was a ghost on Highway 40. A lesson etched in blood and broken glass. He was currently being peeled out of his Civic's sunroof like canned meat.
`[ADMINISTRATOR: MUDROOM OPERATIONAL. DECON CYCLE: STABILIZED. REWARD: PATHOGEN RESISTANCE +12%.]`
`[ROOT: TOO CLEAN. WHERE'S THE SLURRY? FEED ME BIOMASS, ARCHITECT.]`
I ignored the stereo argument splitting my skull.
The Singapore flu tally had hit eighteen thousand dead overnight. The CDC suppression protocols were cracking. Reanimation was global.
My Decay Sight pulsed, overlaying the tree line with a jagged orange warning.
`[SHAMBLER SPAWN: 340KG BIOMASS. PROXIMITY: 800M. VECTOR: GUTTER PATH.]`
No Runners yet. Just Tier 1 stumblers. The endless meat-grind.
I walked to the edge of the Gutter—the zig-zag killbox foundation we'd poured yesterday. The lanes were grated to allow the slurry to drip down into the harvest tanks.
"Perimeter breach imminent," I announced. My voice was flat. Cold.
The labor chain froze.
"Shamblers inbound," I said. "Yana, Ronnie—funnel the left flank. Travis, Helen—right grate overwatch. Miller, Paige—scrap barricade choke point. Sal, get those floodlights spiked. We funnel, we knee-shot, we harvest. No bolters. The chain holds."
Travis racked the slide of his scavenged Remington 870. The sound of buckshot shells clinking in his gym bag was loud in the silence. "Boss... real zombies? Like, teeth-and-guts?"
"Worse," I said. "System puppets. `[BIOMASS: DECAYED]`. They're slow grinders until they eat enough flesh to buy an upgrade. Knees first—bone shards immobilize them. Head second. We need the slurry for the serum unlocks."
I looked at them. Really looked at them with the Sight.
TRAVIS: Acid-melt death on Day 16 unless variables shifted.
MILLER: `[MUTINY RISK: 91%]` blinking crimson above his head.
Yana materialized from the shadows of the flank, courier knives glinting. "Count three tangos," she said, her voice tight. "Tree line break. Stumbling drunk-dad style. Flesh... hanging wrong."
The first Shambler breached the chain-link fence at 06:37.
It was corpse-fresh. Likely a flu victim who'd died in the woods overnight. The skin was sloughing off wet, the jaw unhinged and drooling black phlegm onto its chest.
`[DECAY TIMER: 14HRS 22MIN POST-MORTEM.]`
An orange glow locked onto its knees in my vision. I raised the Fang.
Crack-crack.
Two 9mm hollowpoints impacted the knee. It didn't just break; it pulped the patella into bone confetti and black jelly.
The thing folded with a wet, gurgling scream, crawling toward us. Toward the Gutter.
"Fire," I said.
Ronnie's scavenged AR-15 stitched the thing's throat, spraying crimson mist. The body slid onto the grate with a heavy, wet thud.
Slurp.
The sound of the Gutter intake system swallowing the biomass was obscene. A mechanical sucking noise as the body was processed into fuel.
`[BIOMASS HARVESTED: 28KG.]`
`[ROOT: DELICIOUS. YIELD: ACCEPTABLE. OFFER: ZOMBIE SERUM UNLOCK? MUTATE TRAVIS FOR A TEST RUN.]`
`[ADMINISTRATOR: THREAT NEUTRALIZED. GUTTER EFFICIENCY: 87%. CONTINUE.]`
And then the panic chain snapped.
Miller dropped his welding torch. He bolted toward his cruiser, his service Glock drawn and swinging wild.
"Mass hallucination!" he screamed, eyes bulging, spittle flying. "It's a government weapon test! I'm calling the National Guard! I'm calling the fucking Marines!"
He was five feet from the door when Paige moved.
She didn't look like a corporate HR executive anymore. She looked like a cornered animal. She swung a piece of rebar—a rusted, heavy length of iron she'd been using to brace the barricade.
She didn't swing for his head. She swung for his legs.
The rebar connected with Miller's shin, tripping him face-first into the mud. As he scrambled to rise, she brought it down again, hard, on his forearm.
SNAP.
The sound of the ulna breaking was distinct—wet and sharp, like a tree branch snapping inside a raw steak.
Miller howled, a high, ragged shriek, dropping the gun.
"Stay in the damn chain!" Paige shrieked, her voice cracking. Her loyalty flashed: 52%. Terror and adrenaline welding her to the only safety she knew.
Miller's loyalty hit 0%.
Yana was on him instantly. She kicked the Glock away, scooped it up, and tucked it into her own belt. Then she yanked his arms back—ignoring his scream as the broken bone shifted—and zip-tied his wrists.
"Weapon secured," she muttered. "Stay down, Sheriff. Or you join Gary on Highway 40."
The second wave hit at 07:12.
There were ten of them this time. Dallas General overflow. Flu-culled migrants homing in on the biomass signal.
"Line up!" I roared.
Travis stepped forward, the Remington booming like thunder. Buckshot tore through torsos, turning chests into ropey spills of dead meat. He was screaming with every shot, a mixture of fear and gym-bro rage.
Helen was firing a small caliber pistol, popping knees with surgical precision. "Femur shattered," she narrated to herself, the cigarette never leaving her lips. "Crawl vector contained."
Sal hit the switches, and the floodlights washed the kill-lanes in stark, blinding white. The generator roared, masking the wet tearing sounds of the dead. Ronnie spat whiskey and laughed. "Slurry's risin'! Foundry fuel, baby!"
By the end of the wave, the Gutter tanks gurgled with 180kg of biomass. The red meter on my HUD was filling, teasing the serum unlock.
But the cracks were showing.
Paige was hyperventilating by the decon tanks, her hands slick with gore that wasn't hers. Travis leaned over the barricade and vomited protein sludge, the reality of the gut-shot ricochet hitting him hard.
Miller, zip-tied to the grate and unarmed, spat tobacco juice mixed with bile at my boots. "Tyrant meatbag," he wheezed through the pain of his broken arm. "Users gonna cull us Nulls for points. I see it in your eyes, Monroe. You're a fucking monster."
Helen's hand trembled as she lit a fresh cigarette. A Shambler had grazed her shoulder before Yana slashed its throat. Her aggregate loyalty dipped 14%. Fear made them fragile.
Then the noon raid pinged.
`[HARDWARE STORE: 3KM WEST. RESOURCES: SERUM PRECURSORS, REBAR, CHEM.]`
Decay Sight flagged the path clear. `[RUNNER PRECURSOR RISK: LOW.]`
"Hardware run," I ordered. "Travis, Yana—lift and scout. Helen, triage the Sheriff. The rest of you, hold the Gutter."
Miller snarled from the ground. "Take these off, coward. Or execute me properly."
I looked at him. Decay Sight showed his terminal state: `[MILLER: MORTALITY 98%. MUTINY DAY 22.]`
"Work the grate, Sheriff," I said, cold. "Earn loose wrists."
The run was brutal but profitable. We returned loaded with four hundred kilograms of rebar and industrial bleach. But the real prize was in the locked case I found.
The first serum vial.
It manifested in my hand as a System reward, crystallizing out of thin air from the points we'd banked. A vial of blood-red liquid, glowing with an inner light.
`[BASIC USER SERUM. INJECT TO UNLOCK.]`
Travis was staring at it.
"It's juice," I told him. "System steroids. It rewrites your meat. Makes you stronger, faster. But it hurts, Travis. It hurts like fucking hell."
The big man looked at the vial, then at the zombies clawing at the perimeter fence. "Hell yeah, boss," he said, voice shaking. "Hit me."
I jabbed the needle into his neck.
The effect was instantaneous and horrifying.
The Corpse Cold hit him. His veins turned icy blue, then flared with an orange glow under his skin. His body temperature dropped to eighty degrees in seconds.
"Jesus!" he screamed, dropping to his knees, clawing at his own chest.
"Ants!" he shrieked. "Ants gnawing my sack inside out!"
His muscles rippled, compacting and tearing under the skin, density increasing in real-time. He vomited bile, his eyes rolling back in his head as the System rewrote his biology.
Then he stood up.
He walked over to a full propane drum—two hundred pounds of steel and gas—and lifted it over his head with one arm. He roared, the sound animalistic, echoing off the concrete walls.
TRAVIS: LOYALTY SPIKE 76%.
Dusk fell on Day 4. The Gutter biomass counter hit 520kg.
We cycled the Mudroom for its first live test. Paige stripped, shaking, and stepped into the foam. Eighty-seven seconds later she emerged, red-skinned and shivering, but clean.
The Silo nodes ticked: 2/10.
The Shambler waves were lapping steadily against our walls now.
`[ADMINISTRATOR: SECTOR 1 STABILIZED. RANK: 1847/5000.]`
`[ROOT: RANK SCHMANK. MUTATE MILLER YET? FUN STARTS TOMORROW.]`
I checked my own reflection in the dark glass of the command deck. My mortality timer blinked.
`[MORTALITY INDEX: 92%. DAYS REMAINING: 26.]`
Live-fire baptism passed. Day 5 was the serum grind.
FOUNDRY PROTOCOL - DAY 4
SECTOR 1 (JACK MONROE) ██░░░░░░░░ 2/10 Nodes
MUDROOM: OPERATIONAL | GUTTER: LIVE-FIRE
Biomass Harvest: 520kg | Serum Unlocked