Day 32.
Abandoned Farmlands.
2km South of Sector 1.
04:30 Hours.
The cornfield was a dead ocean, and we were drowning in it.
It stretched for miles in the dark, a black, undulating mass of vegetation that had died on the stalk weeks ago. The blight had taken it first, turning the leaves into brittle, razor-sharp parchment, and then the acid rain had finished the job, melting the stalks into a slick, fibrous mush that smelled of fermentation and wet earth.
Ten thousand stalks stood seven feet high, motionless in the humid pre-dawn air. They leaned over the narrow game trail we were following, brushing against our gear with a dry, skeletal rattle that sounded too much like bones rubbing together.
The air out here didn't smell like the chemical burn of the factory or the copper tang of the Gutter. It was sweet. Sickeningly, cloyingly sweet.
It smelled of compost. It smelled of things bursting in the heat. It smelled of a billion black flies breeding in the muck.
"Watch your footing," I whispered, the sound barely carrying over the low, constant buzz of the insects. "The irrigation ditches are deep. You fall in, you swallow slurry. You swallow slurry, you get dysentery. You get dysentery, you die."
I didn't turn around to see if they nodded. I knew they did. Fear makes people good listeners.
We moved in a single file, a caterpillar of desperate humanity cutting through the rot.
I took point, the Fang .45 loose in my hand, my Decay Sight scanning the gloom in a constant, headaches-inducing sweep.
Yana was on the rear guard, her silhouette blurring into the shadows thanks to her Shadow Class passive. She was a ghost, silent and lethal, watching our backs for the things that hunted in the dark.
Sandwiched between us were Ronnie and six Nulls—laborers we had pulled from the construction crew.
They were terrified.
I could hear it in their breathing—ragged, shallow hitches that caught in their throats. I could smell it on them—sour, acrid sweat cutting through the sweetness of the corn.
They weren't soldiers. They were baristas, mechanics, and accountants who had survived the end of the world by hiding until I dragged them into the light. Now, they clutched their scavenged pipe-guns and rusted machetes like religious talismans, praying that the metal would save them.
Lewis, a scrawny kid with a sparse beard who used to work at a coffee shop, walked directly behind me. He flinched every time a corn stalk slapped his shoulder. He gripped his weapon—a piece of galvanized pipe with a nail welded to the end—so hard his knuckles were white.
"I hate this," Ronnie hissed from three bodies back. He swiped at his face, wiping away a cluster of gnats that were trying to drink the moisture from his tear ducts.
The patch over his missing eye was already soaked through with sweat, a stark white square against his grime-streaked face.
"It's too quiet, Jack. Where are the Shamblers? There should be Shamblers."
"They aren't shambling anymore," I said.
I stopped. The line stopped behind me, the Nulls bumping into each other in the dark.
I crouched, touching the mud. It was thick, clay-heavy soil that sucked at my boots.
"Listen," I said.
We listened.
There was no moaning. There was no shuffling of dragging feet. There was only the buzz of the flies and the distant, rhythmic dripping of condensation falling from the dead leaves.
In Phase 1, the dead wandered. They were mindless static, bouncing off walls, driven by a simple, localized hunger.
But Phase 2 had changed the algorithm.
My Decay Sight pulsed. The wireframe overlay painted the field in shades of monochrome grey and danger-red. The data stream scrolled down my retina, analyzing the environment.
`[ENVIRONMENT: HIGH DECAY.]`
`[VISIBILITY: POOR (15%).]`
`[BIOMASS DENSITY: HIGH.]`
`[THREAT DETECTED: 200 METERS.]`
"They aren't wandering because they're conserving energy," I whispered. "The System patched their AI. They know the food is scarce out here. Moving burns calories. So they wait."
"Wait for what?" Lewis asked, his voice a high, thin tremble.
"For delivery," I said.
I stood up and signaled for the advance. "Keep moving. Low profiles. If you see something, you don't shoot. You drop. Gunfire is a dinner bell."
We pushed deeper into the field.
The corn seemed to get taller, thicker, closing in around us like the walls of a prison. The path we were following was an old deer trail, barely wide enough for one man.
Every step was a negotiation with the terrain. Roots snagged our ankles. Mud tried to pull our boots off. The humidity was oppressive, a wet blanket wrapped around our faces.
My User physiology handled it fine. The System Mercy had reset my fatigue, and the Cruelty trait kept my heart rate at a steady, mathematical beat. I was a machine moving through the garden.
But the Nulls were suffering. I could hear Pete wheezing. I could hear the wet slap of boots slipping on slick clay.
We reached a clearing—a break in the corn where the ground rose up into a small hillock.
On top of the rise sat the ruins of a barn.
It was an old structure, wood turned black by the weather, the roof caved in like a broken spine against the bruised purple sky.
"Down," I signaled, dropping to my belly in the mud.
The team followed suit, splashing into the wet earth. They lay flat, pressing their faces into the dirt to lower their profiles.
"What is it?" Pete asked, crawling up beside me. He wiped slime from his chin. "Did you see something?"
"Watch," I said.
I pointed toward the barn.
At first, it looked empty. Just a ruin of wood and rusted iron, a monument to the world that had died thirty-two days ago. The shadows under the overhang were deep, impenetrable pools of ink.
Then, the shadows moved.
A shape detached itself from the darkness.
It wasn't a man. It wasn't a Shambler.
It was on all fours, low to the ground. Its skin was the color of bruised eggplant, tight against the bone, devoid of hair or fat. Its limbs were elongated, the joints swollen and knobbed.
A Runner.
But this wasn't the twitchy, chaotic sprinter we had fought at the factory. This was something else.
It didn't scream. It didn't twitch.
It trotted.
It moved with a fluid, predatory grace, placing its hands and feet carefully to avoid making noise. It moved to the corner of the barn and stopped.
It lifted its head. It sniffed the air, tasting the wind.
"Jesus," Ronnie breathed.
A second Runner joined it. Then a third. Then a fourth.
They emerged from the barn one by one, silent as smoke.
There were twelve of them.
They didn't swarm. They didn't fight each other for position. They didn't snap or snarl.
They began to circle the barn.
They moved in a perfect, clockwise rotation. They spaced themselves out, leaving exactly ten feet between each unit. They were covering the angles. They were sweeping the perimeter.
My Decay Sight locked onto them, the red text flickering as the System analyzed the new behavior.
`[THREAT IDENTIFIED: PRIMAL ZOMBIES.]`
`[VARIANT: PACK HUNTER.]`
`[BEHAVIOR: COORDINATED PATROL.]`
`[INTELLIGENCE: TIER 2.]`
"They're... they're marching," Ronnie whispered, his voice cracking. He lowered his head, pressing his face into the mud as if trying to disappear. "Jack, they're walking a beat. Like guards."
"Wolf pack tactics," I said, my eyes glued to the procession. "They aren't mindless anymore. They're marking territory. They've established a den."
"Can we kill them?" Lewis asked. He raised his pipe gun, his hands shaking so bad the barrel wobbled like a divining rod.
I grabbed the barrel and forced it down into the mud.
"Put that away," I hissed. "There are twelve of them visible. That means there are twenty inside sleeping. You fire that pop-gun, and they will peel the skin off your face before you can reload."
The lead Runner stopped.
It swiveled its head. Its neck moved with a mechanical precision.
Its eyes were milky yellow, glowing faintly in the dark. They locked directly on the patch of corn where we were hiding.
It froze. Statue-still.
The other eleven stopped instantly.
There was no audible signal. No scream. No growl. Just a collective, hive-mind pause.
They all turned their heads. Twelve pairs of yellow eyes stared into the dark.
The silence that followed was agonizing. It stretched out, heavy and suffocating.
I could hear Lewis's heart beating. I could hear the blood rushing in my own ears.
My hand drifted to the Fang. I calculated the odds.
Distance: 80 meters.
Targets: 12.
Ammo: 30 rounds in the mag + 1 in the chamber.
Time to contact: 4 seconds if they sprinted.
I could kill four before they reached us. Yana could take two. Ronnie might get one with the shotgun.
That left five to tear the Nulls apart.
`[COMBAT SIMULATION: FAILURE.]`
`[SURVIVAL PROBABILITY: 18%.]`
`[ADVICE: DO NOT ENGAGE.]`
The lead Runner bared its teeth.
They weren't human teeth anymore. They were rows of jagged, yellow needles, reshaped by the virus to tear meat from bone.
It knew we were there. It had to. We smelled of living meat, fear, and diesel.
But it didn't scream. It didn't charge.
It chuffed—a low, animal sound in its throat, like a lion clearing its airway.
Then, it turned away.
It resumed its patrol. The others followed suit, falling back into their rhythmic circle around the barn.
"They're letting us go," Yana whispered from behind me. Her voice was disturbingly calm. "Why?"
"Energy conservation," I said, watching them move. "They know we're armed. They can smell the gun oil. They know we're a hard target."
"Since when do zombies care about hard targets?" Ronnie asked.
"Since they started starving," I said. "They're learning to pick their battles. They're waiting for stragglers. Or they're guarding something more important than a meal."
I checked the map on my HUD.
The Riverside Grain Silo was two kilometers past the barn. The barn was the outpost. The early warning system.
"We flank," I whispered. "Wide berth. We stay downwind. If we engage that pack, the noise will bring every dead thing in this valley down on us. And I don't have enough bullets for the whole valley."
We moved out.
We crawled. We didn't walk. We dragged our bellies through the muck, sliding through the irrigation furrows, keeping the corn stalks between us and the barn.
It was slow, grueling work. The mud soaked through our clothes, chilling the skin. The sharp edges of the corn leaves sliced at our hands and faces.
I watched the pack as we passed. They watched us back.
Every time a gap in the corn revealed the barn, I saw those yellow eyes tracking us.
They were escorting us out of their territory.
A mutual agreement of violence postponed.
05:15 Hours.
The Overlook.
We crested a ridge. The cornfield ended here, chopped off abruptly by a rocky slope that tumbled down to the riverbank.
We crawled to the edge of the scrubland and looked down.
And there it was.
The Riverside Grain Silo.
It was a fortress of industrial agriculture, a monument to the scale of the old world.
Eight massive concrete cylinders rose a hundred feet into the air, grey and imposing against the green sky. They were connected by a web of steel catwalks, conveyor tubes, and maintenance ladders.
A central processing tower stood in the middle, dark and silent, looking like the keep of a castle.
Behind it, the Mississippi River flowed black and sluggish, a natural moat filled with toxic runoff.
"That's a lot of storage," Ronnie whispered.
He had crawled up beside me, pulling out a small pair of binoculars. He assessed the structure not as a survivor, but as a Constructor.
"Reinforced concrete," Ronnie muttered. "Steel blast doors on the lower levels. Ventilation systems for the grain dryers... Jack, we could fit five thousand bodies in those dryers. We could run the Gutter 24/7 and never fill this place up."
"It's perfect," I said.
Then I saw the patrols.
Down in the courtyard of the Silo, figures were moving.
They weren't zombies. They didn't move with the jerky, animalistic trot of the Pack.
They wore robes.
Long, violet robes that dragged in the mud, stained with grease and filth.
They carried weapons—crude spears made of sharpened rebar, clubs wrapped in barbed wire, shields made from trash can lids painted with a weeping eye symbol.
Zealots.
`[TERRITORY DETECTED: THE REBORN.]`
`[OCCUPATION: LIGHT GARRISON.]`
`[COUNT: 20+.]`
"Prophet Eclipse," Yana spat, sliding up on my left. "He's everywhere. Like a fungus."
"He knows the value of infrastructure," I said. "He wants the Silo for the same reason we do. Storage. Or a temple."
I watched them through the scope of the binoculars.
They weren't patrolling like soldiers. They were wandering.
One Zealot was standing by the perimeter fence, swaying back and forth, banging his head rhythmically against the metal post.
Another was sitting in the middle of the loading dock, staring at the sky, laughing silently.
"They're high," I said. "On the corruption. They're injecting the virus."
"Injecting it?" Pete asked, horrified.
"They think it's holy," I said. "They dose themselves with zombie blood. It gives them a high, makes them stronger, numbs the pain. Eventually, it turns them into Howlers. But right now, they're just stoned."
I scanned the perimeter, looking for a weakness.
The main gate was blocked by a pile of wrecked cars—a barricade erected by the Zealots to keep the Primal Pack out.
The river side was exposed, but the current was too strong to swim, and we didn't have a boat.
The only way in was through the loading bay on the east side.
"Jack," Ronnie whispered, pointing a dirty finger. "Look at the fence line. Behind the dryers."
I looked.
The dead cornfield ran right up to the chain-link fence on the eastern side of the complex. The Zealots hadn't cleared the brush.
"Concealment," I said. "We use the cover. We get close. We breach the fence there."
"Now?" Lewis asked, gripping his pipe gun. He looked ready to bolt. "Can we do it now? I don't want to be out here with the wolves."
"No," I said.
I pointed at the sky.
The green light was brightening. The sun was coming up behind the smog layer.
"The Zealots are nocturnal," I said. "They're active at night, doing their rituals. They sleep during the day. We hit them at dawn, when they're crashing from the high. When they're weak."
I looked back at the cornfield behind us. At the wolf pack circling the barn in the distance.
We were trapped between the monsters and the madmen.
"We wait," I said. "We hold position here on the ridge. Sleep in shifts. Cold rations. No fires."
"And the zombies?" Yana asked. "If they decide to stop conserving energy? If they decide we look appetizing?"
"Then we feed them the Zealots," I said.
I marked the approach vector on my HUD, a blue line cutting through the wireframe map.
`[OBJECTIVE: SEIZE SILO.]`
`[EXECUTION TIME: 05:30 HOURS (TOMORROW).]`
We slid back down the ridge, into the cover of the rotting corn. The mud was cold. The flies descended on us instantly, sensing the stationary meat.
We waited.
And as the sun rose, turning the world into a sauna of rot and heat, I listened to the breathing of my crew.
It was the sound of prey trying to be invisible.
FOUNDRY PROTOCOL - DAY 32
SECTOR 1 (JACK MONROE) █████████░ 9/10 Nodes
LOCATION: FARMLAND RECON
Status: Hidden
Threats: Primal Pack (12), Zealot Garrison (20)
Objective: Assault at Dawn
Casualties: None (Yet)