The bait thrashed forward, bending desperately at the waist, but his empty sleeves caught nothing.
Gravity did the rest. The bundle hit the ground with a wet thud and burst open in a spray of red.
"AHHH!"
He convulsed like he'd been electrocuted, thrashing wildly, his screams so raw they barely sounded human.
At the same instant, I let out a guttural snarl.
Every zombie holding position went berserk, surging toward the gate in a frenzy.
"There it is! That bastard really can command the undead. Too bad for him—"
The squad leader beside Muriel cursed under his breath.
The guards were well-trained. Rifles up. A wall of gunfire.
But the zombies weren't attacking the walls.
They swarmed over one another, climbing shoulder to shoulder, stacking into a grotesque living ladder.
The sheer, suffocating numbers rendered the shotguns useless.
The guards stared, bewildered by the unnatural behavior.
"What are they doing?"
"No—their target is HIM!"
Muriel screamed the order, lunging for the crane lever, trying to hoist the bait up and out of reach.
Too late.
Thousands of dead hands seized the bait's body, their collective force wrenching against hers.
The crane arm snapped.
"Kill him! Don't let him turn!"
The squad leader's voice cracked with panic.
An arrow split the air and punched straight through the bait's skull.
He killed him.
He was destroying the evidence.
Rage whited out my vision. I charged forward without thinking, without caring.
One thought. Only one. Climb that wall and kill the squad leader.
With the bait gone, the hunt was over.
They pulled back fast.
The scene left behind was carnage.
The zombie legion had taken devastating losses.
The man lay in the center of it all, like the ruined heart of a flower blown apart.
"No. Please don't let it be—please, God, don't let it be—"
I stumbled through the piled corpses and pulled what was left of him into my arms.
Gently, I brushed the hair from his face. His skin was chalk-white, frozen in the agonized expression he'd worn when he died.
Identical to the brother in my memory.
"Don't... please..."
Tears streamed down my face. I traced along his unseeing eyes, past his cheek, behind his ear.
There, near the ear, a scabbed-over scar.
And behind it—a small, familiar bump.
The moment my fingers found it, a ringing flooded my ears and swallowed every other sound. All that remained was the hammering of my own heart and the ragged saw of my breathing.