Chapter 93: Your Mother’s Dead
“Hng! Aaaaaagh!”
The tattooed man sounded as if his nose and throat were blocked. He snorted forcefully, then resumed screaming.
“What the fuck! What are you doing?!” The woman next to him, holding the RPG, frowned and glanced at him, her eyes then widening in horror.
In the blink of an eye, the man’s body had shriveled, his skin clinging to his bones.
What he had snorted out wasn’t mucus or a blockage, but a bloody, yellowish-white fluid.
His eyeballs bulged, hanging precariously by their optic nerves, swaying with his movements.
And in stark contrast to his shrunken body, his head swelled grotesquely, splitting open down the middle.
She could even see the fungal tendrils connecting the two halves of his face.
A thick, white stem erupted from his throat, pushing through his cracked skull, its tip a blood-red, disc-shaped mushroom cap, which swayed as it turned towards the woman.
“Help… help me…” he gurgled, reaching out with a trembling hand.
“Save me…”
“Scatter! Get away from the pancake!”
A voice blared from a car’s loudspeaker, a woman’s voice, sharp and commanding, loud enough for the entire convoy to hear.
The woman near the… pancake, jolted back to reality by the warning, ran towards the convoy.
What the fuck… what just happened?
He was fine just a moment ago… and now…
And that thing growing out of his head… it looked like a mushroom…
“Whoosh—”
Before she could process it, a rocket whizzed past her, its fiery trail scorching her hair and blistering the skin on her face.
“Boom—”
The explosion behind her threw her forward, and she crashed to the ground.
Disoriented, she looked up and saw a woman in a full-face gas mask, her head shaved for a better fit, crouching beside her. The woman wore a leather jacket and pants, her waist and abdomen exposed.
“Sister… Sister Yun…” the woman on the ground stammered.
The woman, called Sister Yun, had already drawn and cocked her pistol.
“Where’s your mask?” Her voice, cold and emotionless, was muffled by the gas mask.
“I… I…” The woman on the ground touched her face; the explosion had blown it away.
“Click—”
Sister Yun tossed the pistol at her feet, stood up, stepped over her, and walked towards the front of the convoy.
Tendrils… parasitic… mushrooms…
Just like the Boss’s ramblings during her episodes, this… must be one of the “mushroom people” the Boss had talked about.
They had all laughed at the term “mushroom people” when they first heard it.
Mushroom people? Had the Boss been dreaming about Ultraman or something?
But now, seeing this, she couldn’t dismiss the Boss’s words so easily.
Her reinforcements, driving normally along the highway, about to bypass Qingzhou City and head towards Fuzhou, had heard a commotion from the exit ramp ahead.
A vehicle, moving against the flow of traffic, heading towards Qingzhou City.
A vehicle pulled by zombies.
At first, she had thought it was just an Awakened with a special control ability, perhaps with some eccentric hobby for using zombies to pull his vehicle.
But after the snipers had taken out the zombies pulling the vehicle, her subordinates, letting their guard down, had approached to scavenge.
And then… that had happened.
Her subordinate, suddenly drained of life, a blood mushroom sprouting from his head. She’d instantly remembered the Boss’s warnings and ordered everyone to scatter.
Now, standing at the front of the convoy, all she had to do was raise her right hand, and her team would unleash a barrage of rockets and grenades at that little zombie girl.
But she hesitated. She’d heard that little zombie… curse?
A cursing zombie? It was so absurd she didn’t quite believe it.
“What did you say?”
She asked tentatively, then mentally scolded herself.
Why was she trying to communicate with a zombie?
And one of the “mushroom people” the Boss had warned them about, the ones that could bring about the downfall of the Voodoo Cult.
But to her surprise, she received an answer.
The little zombie girl stomped her foot angrily, her small fists clenched, her eyes squeezed shut, and shouted, “Your mother is dead!!!”
So it was cursing.
Sister Yun waved her right hand downwards and then turned, walking back towards the convoy.
“Whoosh—”
“Hiss—”
“Whoosh—”
Rockets and grenades, trailing smoke and fire, arced through the air towards the little zombie girl.
If it survived that, then they could talk. Maybe even offer it a cigarette.
As she walked back, she saw the female Voodoo Cult warrior sitting on the ground.
Her burned face was etched with terror, her hand clutching her pistol, the barrel in her mouth, but she wasn’t pulling the trigger.
And unbeknownst to her, the back of her head had split open, fungal tendrils writhing within.
Sister Yun looked at the woman and then, raising her right hand, mimed a pistol, pointing it at her own temple and pulling the trigger.
“Bang—”
As if controlled by an invisible force, the woman on the ground mirrored her actions and pulled the trigger.
Sister Yun could briefly force blood crystal entities to mimic her actions, but only within a limited range and for a short time.
She didn’t look at the corpse but walked past it, towards the convoy.
The deafening roar of explosions echoed behind her, the heat on her back. The highway on the other side was a chaotic mess of debris and flames.
No zombie could survive that.
Back in her vehicle, Sister Yun looked at the devastation.
Was the mission complete?
There had been no word from the team in Fuzhou City; she didn’t know how their sweep was progressing.
She had to record this encounter with the fungal zombie and report it to headquarters.
Just as she was reaching for a pen, a bad feeling washed over her.
She looked up and saw the corpse of the Voodoo Cult warrior, the one she had just seen shoot herself, slowly stand up.
The bullet through her brain hadn’t killed her, only drained her of life.
But this time, no mushroom sprouted from her head.
Tendrils erupted from her body, engulfing her in a blood-red cocoon.
The tendrils spread outwards from the base of the cocoon, like a net, searching for nutrients.
“What… the hell…?” Even Sister Yun, a veteran of the Voodoo Cult’s “purification squads,” was stunned.
She watched as the cocoon split open, revealing the little girl in the white dress, white stockings, and white twintails, standing where the Voodoo Cult warrior had been.
It… it had replaced her dead subordinate?
Then what about the one they had just bombed…?
Sister Yun quickly looked towards the bombed area; it was a smoldering wasteland, a dead zone.
“Reverse! Reverse!” She slapped the driver’s head and grabbed the walkie-talkie. “Front of the convoy! Fire at will!”
Despite being a woman, having grown up in Chongyu City, she still spoke like a man.
“Screech—”
The driver spun the steering wheel, the modified BMW M4 drifting expertly as it sped into the emergency lane, reversing away from the scene.
“Sister Yun! It’s too fast, it’s right behind us, we can’t lock on!”
The voices from the walkie-talkie made her frown.
Too fast? Faster than her modified sports car?
She looked back and gasped.
The rear window was covered in a web of tendrils. Through the gaps, she could see a thick tendril extending from the web, its other end attached to the little zombie girl’s hand.
The little girl was being dragged behind their car, but the tendril was rapidly shortening, pulling her closer and closer.
She had… led it right into the center of the convoy.
“Snap—”
The tendrils on the rear window suddenly detached, leaving a sticky residue. Sister Yun, who was about to pry open the window, felt a surge of dread.
It could have kept pulling itself closer, why detach now, right in the middle of the convoy?
“Stop!” she shouted at the driver and then, grabbing an ammo vest filled with grenades, climbed into the back seat.
No wonder the Boss had ordered them to fire on sight… She was paying the price for her carelessness.
By hesitating to destroy that strange van earlier, from the moment her first subordinate had been infected, that terrifying little girl zombie had been clinging to them like a shadow.
Climbing out of the window, she saw the little zombie girl, no longer being dragged, kneeling on the ground, staring intently at the weapons in their hands.
“YAAAA—”
A piercing scream from the little girl, and then, her body rapidly expanding like a balloon.
No!
Sister Yun dove back into the car and slammed the door shut.
Just as the door closed, the zombie reached its limit and exploded.
“Boom—”
Countless thin tendrils erupted outwards, like shrapnel.
The tendrils pierced the exposed skin of anyone nearby, burrowing into their bodies.
Those infected also began to swell, their bodies exploding, spraying more blood-red tendrils, a chain reaction of fleshy detonations.
Within seconds, almost everyone outside the vehicles, or with open windows, had exploded.
All that remained of the convoy were the webs of tendrils connecting the vehicles, pulsing ominously.
What… the hell… was that?
Sister Yun, safe inside the car, stared at the carnage in disbelief.
Their twenty-vehicle reinforcement team was practically wiped out, only a few drivers, who had been inside their vehicles with the windows closed, surviving.
“Gulp—”
She took a grenade from her vest and then put it back.
Grenades were useless… This “mushroom person” seemed to have no weaknesses. How could they possibly fight it?
“Vroom—”
Suddenly, one of the monster trucks in the convoy roared to life, smashing into the nearby vehicles, driving over the smaller ones, trying to escape.
She wasn’t concerned about the attempted escape; she’d noticed that the flames from the monster truck’s exhaust pipes had parted the tendrils as it drove through them.
Fire!
Its weakness is fire!
Without hesitation, she looked at the fuel tanker in the convoy.
She could see the terrified expression of the driver inside, ready to flee.
Thankfully, all their drivers were at least E-rank Awakened, not ordinary people.
Sister Yun took a deep breath, pulled out her car keys, her eyes glowing red, and then, her hands gripping the empty air, mimed turning the steering wheel.
The other drivers, the monster truck driver, and the fuel tanker driver, simultaneously mirrored her actions.
But only the monster truck’s engine started; the others were stalled, their drivers simply miming.
Like the dual-pilot system in Pacific Rim.
Sister Yun’s foot pressed down on the imaginary accelerator.
“Vroom—” The monster truck roared to life, driving towards the guardrail.
And the fuel tanker at the back of the convoy… charged towards the tendril-covered vehicles.
Leave a Reply to asdasdsd Cancel reply