One hour remaining. Yeoman exhaled and lowered his left arm. If he was lucky, then the infected herd wouldn’t show, the chance of dying would be close to nil. In the original story, the smart infected stayed in the Log Cabins after ransacking it. It acted like a spider, waiting for prey to enter its lair rather than hunt itself. It only left after chasing two people and noticing another smoke plume in the distance. In the story, there wasn’t a river, so it was completely possible for the smart infected to be miles away by now.

A rustling sound came from above Yeoman. Moments later, Ella appeared, climbing down the tree. Yeoman wasn’t quite sure how she did it. He had tried climbing the tree but only got three feet off the ground before his legs and arms were shaking out of fear.

“I saw them,” Ella said once her feet were planted on the ground. “The infected herd is coming.”

“About damn time,” Cody said and stood up. “Which way are they coming from?”

“There,” Ella said, pointing in the direction of the Log Cabins. “On the other side of the river. There’s a lot of them, at least fifty.”

Fifty infected. The butterflies in Yeoman’s stomach turned into rocks. His throat felt dry, and his hands grew clammy with sweat. Were they really going to blend into a herd of fifty infected? One wrong move and they’d be torn apart in an instant.

“Alright, let’s walk along the river and blend into them as they cross over to our side,” Cody said. “Remember to walk like a zombie. Yeah, just like that, Yeoman. The stiffness is completely accurate.”

Yeoman eked out a smile. “Thanks.” He followed behind Cody and Ella; they were walking side by side as if they were afraid the other would get a head start on killing the smart infected. They were holding knives in their left hands and hatchets in their right. Yeoman copied them, keeping his metal bat tied to his belt with a piece of cloth. Swinging the bat in the middle of the herd was a great way to attract attention, but a hatchet strike wouldn’t be as noticeable. That’s what the group agreed on beforehand.

Clang, clang.

Dread filled Yeoman’s body. Just hearing the sound of the smart infected leading the herd around made Yeoman nauseous. In college, there used to be project presentations. Every time, without fail, his heart would be pounding before it was his turn to go up to present. Right now, he felt like he was in the classroom again, but it was a thousand times worse. If his presentation wasn’t good, he’d be eaten alive.

Clang, clang.

The smart infected came into view. It was wearing a motorcycle helmet and thick camouflage clothing that was two sizes too large for it. The lower half of its pants were wet from wading through the river. Inside the river, there were dozens of infected stumbling along. One of them had fallen and was struggling to get up. After a while, it crawled out, completely soaked. The river had failed to get rid of a single infected, but that didn’t crush Yeoman’s hopes. He hadn’t expected it to do much in the first place.

Cody and Ella slowed their steps, stumbling along, looking like they’d fall over at any second. Yeoman copied them—or did the best he could. His acting skills weren’t the greatest. The smart infected turned to look at the three of them, and Yeoman lowered his head, staring at the backs of Cody’s and Ella’s feet. If they ran, he’d run too. However, their pace was steady, and soon, dozens of other wet shoes and feet joined them in Yeoman’s view. Their group had blended into the herd without an issue.

Yeoman looked up. The smart infected had gone ahead, towards the bonfire. The plan was to kill the infected at the very back. Ella and Cody had already split up, following two different stragglers. Yeoman spotted a third straggler and sped up to get behind it. For some reason, it sped up too. Did it sense danger? There were two squelching sounds, and Yeoman assumed it was Cody and Ella striking. He dashed forward and raised his own axe before swinging as hard as he could at the back of the infected’s head. The infected let out a short grunt, and Yeoman caught it before its body could hit the ground. Since he had completed the bonus mission, there wasn’t a flashing light that signaled its death, but Yeoman was pretty sure he had killed it in one hit. Yeoman squatted while holding the body, letting it silently make contact with the ground. A white orb of light rolled out of the corpse’s left wrist and flew into Yeoman’s palm, lighting up his own wrist in turn.

[Obtained Proof of Murder.]

[Proof of Murder: 4]

A thousand different thoughts ran rampant in Yeoman’s head, but they could all be summed up with three words: What the fuck? How was killing an infected counted as murder? That had never happened before! Unless…. Yeoman grabbed the infected’s hand and yanked back its sleeve. His suspicions were right. This infected was actually another abductee pretending to be an infected just like them.

Something tapped Yeoman’s back, and he nearly screamed in surprise. He looked up and saw Cody looking at him. Yeoman pointed at the man’s wrist, and Cody’s face twisted in confusion. After a short pause, Cody raised his head, his mouth opening as if he were saying, “Oh.” He shrugged and pointed at the infected ahead, gesturing for Yeoman to keep moving. Yeoman wasn’t sure how Cody could be so nonchalant about murder. Was the Asian man a psychopath? Ella didn’t seem to care either. The odds of someone being a psychopath were pretty low, so what were the chances Yeoman happened to be paired with two of them at once?

Ella and Cody went ahead, and Yeoman packed up his unnecessary thoughts. He said a silent prayer in his head for the man he had just killed. It was really unfortunate; there was less than an hour left. The man had survived through a week of hell and lost it all right at the end. It seemed like there was only one infiltrator because the next three infected Yeoman had killed didn’t give him any Proofs of Murder. The plan went surprisingly smoothly. The three of them had killed over a third of the infected without getting caught, but Yeoman felt like it was only a matter of time before they were exposed. Every single cell in his body was telling him to run away right now, but Cody and Ella were getting braver and braver with every passing second.

There weren’t any stragglers left, so Cody grabbed the back of an infected’s shirt. It tried to walk forward but couldn’t. After a few seconds passed, it was separated from the group, and Cody sank his hatchet into the back of the infected’s head. Ella saw how well it worked for Cody, so she copied him before giving Yeoman an encouraging look. Yeoman crept up to the herd and grabbed an infected by the back of its shirt. The shirt ripped, and the infected kept going forward, leaving Yeoman standing there with a piece of soggy cloth in his hand. …It had worked so well for Cody and Ella.

Cody snickered but stopped himself after half of a laugh came out. Luckily, the infected herd didn’t notice. Since they were approaching the bonfire, Cody and Ella sped up the pace of killing. Yeoman felt a little regretful that they hadn’t placed the bonfire further away from the river. It would’ve given them more time to thin out the herd. When they arrived at the clearing where the mud hut had been, there were only six infected left in the herd aside from the smart one. The smart infected was crouched over the four bodies that the trio had split open to disguise themselves.

Yeoman frowned. Would those bodies give away their disguise? The smart infected hadn’t encountered a situation like this before, so it shouldn’t—

“Grah!” The smart infected rose up and whipped its body around. When it realized there were only nine infected in the clearing with it, it stomped its foot and pointed its metal rod at Yeoman. “Krah!”

The six infected turned around, and two of them were greeted by axes to their heads. “I think it figured it out!” Cody shouted and kicked an infected, keeping it at bay. Yeoman dropped his knife and axe before undoing the cloth tying his bat. He readied himself and swung it, striking an infected in the head.

“Look out!” Ella shouted.

Yeoman looked up; the smart infected was running towards him. It stomped down with its left foot and swung the metal rod in its right hand at Yeoman’s head. He jumped backwards, barely avoiding the rod. He fell onto his back, and the smart infected took another step forward while swinging the rod in its left hand down. Yeoman raised his bat in front of his face, and the two metal weapons collided. Like an empty soda can, Yeoman’s bat crumpled and bent into a V-shape. The point of the V was resting against his nose.

“Get off of him!”

A spear struck the smart infected’s shoulder, pushing it to the side. Yeoman threw his crumpled bat at the infected’s helmet before turning around and crawling up. He scrambled to his feet and bolted behind Ella. He didn’t think it was shameful to hide behind an old lady. All he was thinking about was surviving. He fumbled around his waist for his spare hatchet and assessed the situation. Cody was being chased by three infected. Ella was fighting the smart infected. Yeoman charged towards the infected attacking Cody and struck one in the head from behind.

“Nice one!” Cody shouted while running. He went around a tree, leading the remaining infected around in a circle. “Take care of these, Yeoman. I’ll help Ella!”

It was clear Cody wanted the points for killing the smart infected, but Yeoman didn’t mind. After experiencing the smart infected’s strength for himself, he didn’t want to clash with it again. Instead, he’d rather take down these normal infected. He only had a hatchet, and it was two against one, but he had killed dozens of infected before. He was a little scared, but he was still confident. The two infected had spikes tied to their arms; one infected was ahead of the other, reaching its arms towards him. Yeoman swiped his hatchet all the way to the left, smacking the spikes with the side of the axe head. He rotated the hatchet and swung it back to the right while stepping forward, sinking the sharp metal into the infected’s head. It went all the way through, practically ripping off half of the zombie’s face.

Yeoman raised his leg and kicked the infected’s waist, forcing it to fall backwards onto its companion. The two infected tumbled to the ground, and Yeoman sank his axe into their heads. He kicked them, making sure they were dead, before turning around. Ella was keeping the smart infected at bay with her spear, and Cody was shooting at it with arrows. The smart infected had slowed down by a lot, and its strength wasn’t as great as when it hit Yeoman’s bat. Yeoman suspected Cody had coated the tips of his arrows with nightshade berry juice. Maybe that’s what the Asian man was inspecting earlier today.

The smart infected got slower and slower. Yeoman exhaled and went around to collect the hatchet and knife he had dropped. He wasn’t going to help his partners kill the smart infected. Those two would probably be angry at him for stealing their kill instead of grateful for his help. He didn’t know which one of them would get it, but it was a fact that the smart infected was going to die. Yeoman thought it was a little silly. In the original plot, the smart infected had been portrayed as a rational zombie, one that would do anything to survive. However, in this messed up world, it was smart to the point of having emotions, leading to its downfall. It got angry at them for tricking it and rushed in to fight them without considering if it would survive. It hadn’t even learned how to use a bow despite taking over the Log Cabins.

“Looks like the kill is mine,” Ella said and toppled the smart infected with her spear. She stepped forward while pulling her hatchet from her belt. With a swift strike, she chopped the smart infected’s neck right below the motorcycle helmet. Her precision was mindboggling to Yeoman.

“Bullshit,” Cody said and sighed. “If it didn’t have a helmet, I could’ve killed it thirty times over.”

“That’s odd,” Ella said. “My wrist didn’t light up. Is it still—”

Twang!

Yeoman flinched. It sounded like a gun had gone off. His eyes widened at the arrow flying from beyond the trees. He saw it, but he couldn’t react. His mouth had only opened halfway before the arrow embedded itself into Cody’s back. “Cody!”

The Asian man was knocked forward. He took four steps before coming to a halt, his eyes filled with disbelief. He touched the arrowhead protruding out of his chest, and his hand tilted up, revealing bright-red stains on his fingertips. He coughed out a mouthful of blood and dropped to his knees. Then, his torso tilted forward, and he collapsed onto his face.

“Get down!” Ella shouted.

Twang!

Another gunshot-like sound rang out. Yeoman was in the process of dropping to the ground when the arrow came into view. It was moving at an unbelievably fast speed, striking his shoulder before he could even get on the ground. He was lucky. If Ella hadn’t shouted, it would’ve been his heart that was pierced instead of his arm.

Twang!

An arrow shot out from within the trees. Ella was already on the ground and had taken cover behind an infected’s body, but it didn’t help. The arrow curved, shifting to the side, and struck Ella’s leg. She let out a howl of pain.

Yeoman’s mind filled with dread. He had made a mistake. Silly? He had actually thought the smart infected was silly? He was the silly one here! The smart infected had outwitted them. It taught a different infected how to click the two metal rods together. It dressed it in camouflage clothes and blocked its head with a motorcycle helmet. Anyone would assume the best-dressed infected was the leader. Then, the smart infected followed behind the herd, baiting out anyone aiming to kill the leader. Perhaps the other humans had already tried implementing a similar plan during the past week, so the smart infected knew what to watch out for. Not only that, but the arrow it fired had curved! Yeoman had seen a video on the internet of a master archer curving arrows around people to hit the targets directly behind them, but the archer had said the skill took him years to master. The first time the smart infected saw an arrow was when Cody shot at it almost a week ago! They were facing an absolute monster.

Was he going to die here? For some reason, Yeoman didn’t feel any pain in his arm. It only felt like someone had punched him in the shoulder, hard. The smart infected would surely come over, exam its kill. Could he pretend to be dead? The smart infected liked dissecting the dead. Then, there was only one shot at survival. Yeoman inched over to the dead infected next to himself. He dug his fingers into the holes the axe had left in its head and scooped out some blood which he smeared onto his wound. If he could disguise himself as an infected, there was a slight chance he could survive. He was infecting himself by doing this, but there were only fifteen minutes left on the fleshwatch timer; hopefully, the infection wouldn’t kill him before then. After mixing the dead infected’s blood with his own, he crawled forward. Infected ate people. If he was going to fool the smart infected, he’d have to pretend to eat Ella. There was also a chance the smart infected knew he was living since it shot him with an arrow, but there really wasn’t anything else he could do. He could only pray the smart infected would be fooled.

Yeoman managed to crawl to Ella’s side without being shot at. Perhaps the smart infected couldn’t see him, or perhaps it was toying with them. He didn’t know. His shoulder was aching, and pain rippled across his body with every movement. “Scream. Pretend I’m eating you.”

Ella screamed, and Yeoman pressed his fingers on Ella’s leg, near the arrow. He smeared her blood on and around his mouth before ripping off the cloth he used to hold his metal bat from his belt. He pressed it near her wound, letting it absorb her blood, and put it into his mouth. If someone saw him, they’d think he had just bitten a piece of cloth off of Ella’s stomach.

Faint footsteps came from behind Yeomen, but he didn’t turn around. Infected never let themselves get distracted while eating. He pressed his head deeper against Ella’s stomach, and she let out a bloodcurdling scream. The footsteps stopped, and a shadow fell over Yeoman’s view. The smart infected was standing right over him. He nearly pissed himself. The shadow raised one arm up high. It looked like it was holding a hatchet. Yeoman froze. He couldn’t help it. In times of danger, people mention the fight or flight response, but they often forget there’s a third response that involves freezing in place like a deer in headlights. The third response is what Yeoman’s body defaulted to. Luckily for him, Ella was a fighter. She pushed Yeoman’s shoulder, knocking him away as the smart infected’s arm slammed down.

Ella screamed as the hatchet’s head was embedded in her stomach. She grabbed the smart infected’s arm, keeping it in place. “Yeoman, now! I’ll haunt you forever if you fail!”

Yeoman’s eyes were wide, staring at the blood staining Ella’s clothes. The smart infected was standing over her, one arm down. It had on baggy camouflage clothes and a motorcycle helmet. It was positioned awkwardly, trying to yank its arm back up with a rounded back like a warehouse worker who hadn’t learned how to lift with his knees. Yeoman had dropped his hatchet and knife while pretending to be an infected. He grabbed the only weapon he could find, the arrow embedded in Ella’s leg, and ripped it out.

“Son of a bitch!” Ella shouted.

Yeoman roared and lunged upwards. He grabbed the back of the smart infected’s motorcycle helmet with his left hand, digging his fingers underneath it. He could feel its coarse hair clumped up and rubbing against his skin, but he didn’t have time to feel disgusted. His right hand jabbed the arrow up, slamming it into the infected’s neck at a steep angle pointing towards its brain, but it wasn’t enough. The smart infected jerked its head to the side, slipping free from the motorcycle helmet. Yeoman dropped the helmet away and snatched the smart infected’s hair. A bestial cry came out of his mouth as he brought his right leg up, slamming his knee into the butt of the arrow. It sank in, and the smart infected stopped moving. A soft, blue light flashed on Yeoman’s wrist.

[Bonus Mission: Kill the smart infected. 1/1]

It was over. The nightmare was finally over. Yeoman’s strength left his body, and he released the smart infected while dropping to the ground like a sack of potatoes. He groaned before exhaling. There were still things he had to do. “Ella. Are you alright?”

“I’ve had better days,” Ella said. “In fact, all my days have been better than this one. One could say this has been the shittiest day of my life. Why did you pull the arrow out of my leg and not your shoulder? Don’t you know you should treat the elderly with respect?”

“Hang on,” Yeoman said and sat up, feeling a bit sheepish. The arrow in Ella’s leg had just been so grabbable that he felt like it was the natural thing to do. “Let me see if I can find any medical supplies on these infected.”

Yeoman glanced at the smart infected. There was something glowing purple on its chest. He bent down and picked it up an orb. It sank into his palm, disappearing from view.

[Obtained Human Zombie Fungus Gene (Epic)]

[Human Zombie Fungus Gene (Epic): Unlocks the Human Zombie Fungus evolution tree. Can be used at any time. The user will turn into a zombie.]

[Would you like to use the HZF Gene?] [Yes] [No]

Yeoman stared at the description. This…, how the hell was this an (Epic) item? All it did was infect someone! Any random splash of infected blood could do the same as this item given enough time. Not to mention, the name of the gene was really … quite something. Yeoman shook his head and pressed [No]. He flipped the smart infected over, but it didn’t have anything else other than a bow and quiver. The stats were the same as Cody’s bow. Speaking of Cody, Yeoman took a glance at the Asian man. He hadn’t moved since he had fallen over. There was a large puddle of blood underneath him. Yeoman guessed he was dead.

A sigh escaped from Yeoman’s mouth, and he checked his surroundings. There were a ton of dead infected. There probably wasn’t enough time to loot them all before the stage ended, but still, he had to check to see if any of them had bandages for Ella. He took a step towards the direction of the river, and his foot bumped into a metal rod. The metal rods were unique. He hadn’t seen any other infected carrying them before, so he bent down and picked one up, wondering what the stats on them were like. Nothing happened. Yeoman frowned and picked the other one up too. A golden light flashed on his left wrist.

[Obtained Dread Callers (Rare)]

[Dread Callers (Rare): When the Dread Callers ring, all living beings learn the definition of fear. Reduces the stats of all enemies within ringing range by 10%. Increases the stats of all allies within ringing range by 10%. May attract the undead.]

Yeoman’s eyes bulged at the info. No wonder why his metal bat crumpled like a piece of paper. These metal rods were (Rare) while his bat was just (Common)! The golden text was much more eye-catching as well. It also explained why his body felt unnaturally stiff every time he heard the clanging sound. He raised his arms, ready to knock the two metal rods together to test out its effects, but the last few words caught his eye. A bit rueful, Yeoman lowered his hands and examined his belt. How was he going to attach these rods?

“Hey! Are you going to find me some bandages or not! I’m literally dying here!”

Right! Before that, he had to help Ella survive.