Day 32.
The Cornfield.
05:30 Hours.
The mud wasn't just dirt and water. It was a mouth.
We moved parallel to the irrigation ditches that sliced through the field like open veins. They were filled with stagnant black fluid, choked with algae and dead stalks. The smell was a heavy, wet blanket of fermentation that coated the back of my throat like grease.
"Watch your footing," I whispered. "The banks are slick. You slide in, you swallow sewage."
"I see ripples," Pete hissed. He was a Null we'd pulled from the scrap crew, clutching a pipe pistol with white knuckles. "Something's moving under the scum."
"Wind," Yana said. But she stopped.
She stared at the ditch to our left. The water level was high. Too high for a drought. The surface tension was bulging in the center, as if something massive was displacing the volume from below.
My Decay Sight flickered, struggling to penetrate the murk.
`[TARGET DETECTED: SUBMERGED.]`
`[STATUS: DORMANT.]`
`[COUNT: 40+.]`
"Ambush!" I screamed. "Back from the edge!"
It was too late.
Ronnie was mid-step, crossing a narrow section of the ditch.
The water exploded.
It wasn't a splash. It was an eruption. A hand—grey, bloated, and slick with algae—shot out of the mud. It clamped around Ronnie's ankle with the wet slap of dead meat hitting skin.
"Hey!" Ronnie yelled, firing his shotgun blindly into the air.
He fell hard. He didn't hit the ground; he hit the water. He went under with a wet, choking gurgle.
"Get him!" I roared.
The ditch came alive.
It wasn't one zombie. It was a carpet of them. They had been lying flat on the bottom, buried in the silt, waiting for the vibration of footsteps.
`[PRIMAL TACTIC: AMBUSH INSTINCT.]`
`[LEARNED BEHAVIOR: DORMANCY.]`
Ronnie surfaced, sputtering black mud. "Help! It's got my leg!"
A Shambler rose behind him. Mud sluiced off its shoulders like oil. It didn't moan. It just wrapped a forearm around Ronnie's neck and dragged him back down.
Yana moved.
She didn't shoot. She jumped.
She dove into the ditch, her courier knife leading. She hit the water with a splash that coated us in slime.
Under the surface, the water churned violently. Bubbles of methane and black blood broke the surface.
Then, Yana stood up.
She was covered in muck from head to toe. She was holding Ronnie by his collar with one hand. In the other, she held a severed zombie arm, still twitching at the elbow.
She threw Ronnie onto the bank. He scrambled up, coughing up black water, his one good eye wide with panic.
"Move!" Yana shouted, climbing out. "They're waking up!"
All along the ditch, the mud was shifting.
Heads were breaking the surface. Shoulders were shrugging off the silt.
Forty of them. Just in this row.
"They aren't just in the water," I said, scanning the field with Decay Sight.
The heat signatures were everywhere. They were in the ditches to our left. To our right. Behind us.
We had walked into a grid of graves.
`[TACTICAL ALERT: ENCIRCLEMENT.]`
`[ENEMY COUNT: 200+.]`
`[TYPE: AMBUSH PREDATORS.]`
"Run!" I ordered. "Get to the high ground!"
We sprinted.
The corn stalks whipped our faces, leaving stinging cuts. The mud sucked at our boots, trying to hold us in place for the things rising from the earth.
To our right, a Null named Lewis screamed.
I turned.
He had slipped near a cross-ditch. Three Shamblers had erupted from the mud bank. They didn't bite him. They didn't tear at him.
They grabbed him.
"Help me!" Lewis shrieked, clawing at the mud. "Jack! Don't let them—"
They dragged him down.
He vanished into the black water. The surface closed over his head.
A second later, large bubbles broke the surface. They were red.
We could hear the muffled, wet sounds of tearing underwater.
"Keep moving!" I yelled at Carter, another recruit who had frozen, staring at the spot where Lewis died. "He's gone!"
Carter scrambled forward, hyperventilating.
We hit a clearing—a dry patch of earth near the center of the field where an old pump house stood. The ground here was solid, an island in the swamp.
We formed a perimeter.
The corn around us rustled. The wet, slapping sound of feet on mud echoed from every direction.
They were closing the net.
I looked at the field. Ten acres of dry, dead corn surrounding us. The zombies were using the stalks for cover, moving through the irrigation channels like alligators.
"We can't fight them in the stalks," Yana said, wiping slime from her knife. "Visibility is zero. They'll pull us down one by one."
She was right. If we stayed, we died. If we ran, we died tired.
I looked at the jerry can Ronnie was carrying. We had brought five gallons of diesel to jump-start the Silo's generator.
"Ronnie," I said. "The fuel."
Ronnie looked at me, his face streaked with black mud. "You want to burn it?"
"All of it," I said. "Flush them out."
"We're in the middle of it!" Carter shouted, his voice cracking. "We'll cook!"
"The wind is blowing north," I said, checking the drift of the smoke from the distant factory. "The fire will chase the Zealots toward the Silo. We ride the smoke to the river."
"Do it," Yana said.
Ronnie uncapped the jerry can. He splashed diesel in a wide arc across the dry stalks on the south side of the clearing. The smell of fuel overpowered the rot.
I pulled a road flare from my vest. I cracked the cap.
HISSS.
Red light sputtered to life, harsh and bright against the dawn gloom.
"Run," I ordered.
I tossed the flare.
WHOOSH.
The dry corn went up like it was soaked in gasoline. A wall of orange flame erupted instantly, roaring as it consumed the blight-killed stalks.
The heat hit us like a physical blow, singing the hair on my arms.
"Go! Go! Go!"
We sprinted for the riverbank. The fire spread behind us, a tidal wave of heat and noise.
Inside the fire, the zombies screamed.
It wasn't a human scream. It was the high, tea-kettle sound of boiling fluids and snapping tendons. The ambush had turned into an oven.
The Primal Zombies in the ditches tried to rise, but the heat sucked the oxygen out of the air. They burned where they stood.
We broke through the last line of corn and slid down the embankment to the rocky shore of the Mississippi.
We scrambled over the rocks, putting the water at our backs.
Carter slipped on a wet stone. He fell behind.
A burning shape burst from the cornfield.
It was a Shambler, engulfed in flames. It didn't stop. It launched itself off the embankment, a human fireball.
It landed on Carter.
Carter screamed as the burning mass pinned him to the rocks. The zombie bit him, its mouth a ring of fire.
"Shoot it!" Carter wailed.
Yana fired. One shot. Head.
The zombie went limp.
But Carter was already burning. The diesel from the zombie's clothes had transferred to him.
"Help me!" Carter begged, rolling toward the water.
I looked at him. The infection from the bite would kill him in an hour. The burns would kill him in minutes.
He was thrashing in the shallows, the steam rising from his melting skin.
"I'm sorry," I whispered.
I put a round in his chest. It was a mercy.
`[CASUALTY REPORT: LEWIS (KIA), CARTER (KIA).]`
I looked up at the Silo complex.
The plan worked.
The Zealots who had been guarding the perimeter saw the wall of fire rushing toward them. They didn't stand their ground. They didn't pray to the rot.
They ran.
I saw violet robes streaming out of the main gate, fleeing north along the river road, away from the smoke.
"They're breaking," I said, panting. "The garrison is abandoning the post."
The fire raged behind us, a curtain of destruction that separated us from the horde.
"The Silo is open," I said. "Let's take it before the fire dies down."
We moved up the river bank, using the smoke for cover.
The loading bay doors were wide open. The Zealots had left in such a panic they hadn't even locked up.
We swept the interior.
Ground floor: Clear. Conveyor belts silent.
Control room: Clear.
Storage bins: Empty.
We reached the roof. The view was apocalyptic. The cornfield was a blackened scar on the earth, still smoking. The stench of roasted meat was thick in the air.
"Secure," Yana said, holstering her weapon. She looked pale, her hand resting on her stomach.
I walked to the edge of the roof. I looked north, toward Sector 1.
We had the outpost. We had the storage capacity.
"Ronnie," I said. "Check the dryers. If they work, we start moving bodies tomorrow."
"On it," Ronnie said. He sounded numb. He didn't look at the smoke where the cornfield used to be.
I leaned against the railing. My leg throbbed where the acid burn had healed, a phantom pain.
`[TERRITORY ACQUIRED: RIVERSIDE GRAIN SILO.]`
`[RANKING UPDATE: 167.]`
`[CAPACITY INCREASE: +500%.]`
"We expanded," Yana said quietly. "Cost us two men."
"It cost us two Nulls," I corrected. "We gained a fortress."
I looked at the ranking. 167.
"We need more," I said. "Pack up. We head back to base. Tonight, we plan the Tanker Run."
FOUNDRY PROTOCOL - DAY 32
SECTOR 1 (JACK MONROE) █████████░ 9/10 Nodes
RANK: 167 (Climbing)
STATUS: EXPANSION SUCCESSFUL
Asset: Grain Silo (Secured)
Casualties: 2 Nulls (Lewis & Carter - KIA)
Next Event: Tanker Run / Fuel Crisis