Early the next morning, Lin Feng slung his shotgun over one shoulder and poked at the burning firewood with a stick. He was just about to get up and start breakfast when Daryl crawled out of the tent.

Daryl didn't look good. Dark bags sat under both eyes, clearly the result of a rough night.

"Heading out now?"

"Yeah. After what you said yesterday, I think it's likely. Want to go take a look and confirm it."

Lin Feng nodded, ducked back into his own tent, and came out with a small backpack. He held it out to Daryl.

Daryl took it with a puzzled look. Opened it, and found four hand grenades inside, the high-grade kind from the look of them.

Daryl's mouth fell open slightly. The expression went very still. Then Daryl looked straight up at Lin Feng. "You actually had this stuff stashed away?"

"Bottom-of-the-chest goods. Didn't tell a soul — except you. If you hit trouble, use them. Don't save them. You staying alive is what matters."

Something warm moved through Daryl at that. A smile pulled at the corner of Daryl's mouth, not a pretty one. "I promise, Lin."

Lin Feng clapped Daryl on the shoulder. "Stay alive!"

"Stay alive!"

The pickup rumbled off shortly after, kicking up dust until it disappeared completely from Lin Feng's line of sight.

Handing over every last grenade hadn't been a snap decision. It was the conclusion Lin Feng had arrived at after sitting with it for several hours.

Because he'd realized the situation in front of them seemed to already be drifting off-script.

Through the early to mid stretch of The Walking Dead, there had never been a single walker that could run...

Well. Except for the Whisperers and their fake-corpse act.

Then again, those people didn't really run either. Mostly they blended into the herds, steering walkers around with whispered sounds.

So what worried Lin Feng more was whether some unknown variable had slipped in, like, say, someone had already started experimenting on walkers.

Looked at that way, if Daryl ran into something out there, having wide-area weapons on hand could mean the difference between walking away and not.

Lin Feng let his mind wander while he pried open a can with his short blade and set it beside the fire to warm.

...

Daryl drove to the old campsite. The stench of rot hit before the place even came into view.

Daryl's expression went dark immediately. A foul curse, a brief hesitation in the truck, then the Remington came up across the chest.

One hand touched the grenades clipped to the belt. Then Daryl raised the shotgun and moved in carefully toward the streamside camp.

But the closer Daryl got, the thicker the rot in the air became, and it didn't smell like bodies that had been dead one day. It smelled like something that had been decaying for years.

Daryl racked the slide and chambered a round, then hunched low and started shuffling forward in short steps. Hadn't gone far when both feet stopped dead.

The burial trenches, previously neat and orderly, had been torn into chaos. Severed limbs and shattered bones scattered everywhere, like something had dug them up with its hands and gnawed through them raw.

Bright sun overhead. Flies droning loud in the air, circling and circling before landing on blackened chunks of shredded meat.

Daryl wasn't spooked by it. Stepped more carefully and kept moving, until something hard underfoot pulled focus.

Not a rock. Daryl stepped back and looked down.

A piece of dried, purplish-black carapace, hard as a shell.

What the hell was this? A beetle carcass? Wrong color for that.

Curiosity won. Daryl crouched, pulled the hunting knife, and used the tip to lift it for a closer look. The fine grain and tissue were immediately familiar, unmistakably familiar.

Skin. A fragment of shed skin.

Like a snake sloughing off a layer. A discarded husk.

Daryl filed that away, flicked the piece aside, scraped the knife clean against the dirt, and sheathed it.

Two more steps and Daryl was at the scene.

The ground was a mess of overlapping footprints and handprints. Several hollowed-out skeletons. A pile of those same hard carapace pieces scattered around.

Daryl crouched and studied them. Palms fully flat to the dirt, the whole hand down. Phalanges thick. The fingernails had changed into something else, leaving claw marks pressed deep into the mud, at least a centimeter and a half.

The footprints were mostly forefoot, the balls of the feet. Heels barely registered at all.

Were they crawling?

Daryl watched the scene for a long time before settling on a count: at least seven distinct sets of tracks. Chaotic, but not scattered. They moved together.

Pack behavior. Possibly a leader.

Standing up, Daryl did a rough count of the bodies. Seven corpses on site. The rest had been dragged off into the woods.

Food cache, or taken back to feed something else?

Miska's body, though, hadn't been touched at all. Just unearthed and turned over.

So they didn't eat the already-dead. Only fresh meat.

Daryl confirmed everything the scene had to offer, then made the call: don't follow them into the woods. Go back to the farm. Pass this on.

Because creatures working like coyotes and hyenas could blindside you fast if you weren't ready for them.

The engine turned over and Daryl drove away, leaving the wreckage behind.

Back at camp, Daryl took a plate of spaghetti, a piece of cornbread, and a can of fruit from Nancy, and put it all away fast.

Only after that did Daryl walk Lin Feng through everything, what was at the scene, what it all pointed to.

Merle listened, then said with a slight frown: "So you're saying... these things have brains?"

Marcus glanced sideways at Merle with the expression of someone watching a slow kid finally catch up.

"Natural biological mutation?"

Lin Feng's temple twitched. He bit out the words carefully. "I really hope that's not what's happening, because if it is, we are in serious trouble."

"This patch of nowhere managed to produce a whole pack. How many could the hundreds of thousands — or millions — of walkers inside Atlanta evolve into? Tens of thousands? A hundred thousand?"

"Lin." Daryl cut in. "Your math doesn't work. There isn't that much food inside Atlanta."

Lin Feng's brain stalled for a second. Then: "Fair point."

"So what's the move? Go take them out first?"

Lin Feng turned it over, expression pulled tight. Then nodded.

"We go. We have to go. These things ate one meal and already started shedding skin. Give them another and who knows what they'll turn into."

"As for the supermarket warehouse, put it on hold. Even if it gets cleaned out, we're not dead. Food stocks will carry us to mid-June. By then the wheat in the fields should be ready, and that harvest will keep us fed for years."

That settled it. Lin Feng and the others started gearing up.

Andrew saw them and stepped forward quickly. "Take me along, Lin. My aim's not great, but I know how to handle a firearm. And I'll follow orders."

Lin Feng looked at Andrew's face, steady, decided, and understood immediately. This wasn't about wanting to be useful. Andrew wanted to belong to this group all the way, not just as the resident tech person.

"...Fine. Don't slow us down."

Andrew picked up a Remington, loaded it with clean, practiced efficiency, and grinned, broad, guileless. "I don't believe any carbon-based lifeform can shrug this thing off."

Lin Feng blinked. Wait. Wasn't this supposed to be the tech person? Why did Andrew suddenly look like a frontline brawler?

➤ Next: War in the Abandoned Attic

Chapter 38 - War in the Abandoned Attic

After entrusting all three little ones from the camp to Hershel's family, Lin Feng and the others drove straight to the riverside camp.

The moment they stepped out of the car, the pungent stench of rotting flesh hit them full in the face, nearly triggering a collective vomiting session.

Only Marcus and Daryl kept their expressions normal — one had spent years around cadavers, and the other was a top-tier Hunter with a stomach for just about anything.

"All right, all right, let's not stand around here. Let's get moving."

Lin Feng waved them off. He'd rather hack down a hundred walkers in one go than endure this kind of torment.

This was practically a top-tier chemical weapon that ignored friend and foe alike, draining your health by percentage.

God only knew what was going through the Whisperers' heads when they put those walker-skin masks on...

Wait. Looking at it that way, Negan was one ruthless bastard too.

To be able to infiltrate Alpha's inner circle under those conditions...

Daryl rubbed his nose, AR-15 in hand, compound crossbow slung across his back, and took point without a word, stepping into the forest first.

Tracking the walkers took almost no effort. All they had to do was follow the drag marks on the ground and keep walking.

Along the way, Lin Feng studied the messy claw prints and footprints scattered across the dirt. A shape formed in the back of his mind: a humanoid creature with purplish-black skin, crawling frantically across the ground...

A Licker?

He shook the thought loose just as quickly.

Lickers didn't store food. And they didn't molt during mutation. So probably not...

Hopefully not.

Time passed. The group pushed on, following the trail, and eventually arrived at a farm that looked like no one had set foot there in years.

The bloodstains on the ground pointed straight toward an attic.

Merle scanned the overgrown vegetation around them, rifle shouldered. "Looks like nobody's touched this place in at least ten years. How the hell did those things even find it?"

Marcus pointed to another spot. "There's a path over there. Looks like it connects somewhere outside."

Merle looked over, eyes narrowing. "Fuck. We didn't just walk into somebody's body-dumping ground, did we?"

Silence fell instantly. Everyone turned to look at Merle.

Andrew's face lit up. "Actually... that kind of makes sense. The grass over here is a bit taller than the rest."

"..."

"..."

Whose eight-year-old was this kid...

Lin Feng cleared his throat. "All right, enough. Stop fooling around and think about how we're going to handle this if they're actually in there."

"Shouldn't we be at least a little curious about why they'd close the door?" Marcus pointed at the tightly shut entrance and asked with exaggerated puzzlement.

"Tsk. Teaching people to be cheerful, warm, and full of sunshine? I can do that." Merle said it with a smirk and cleanly racked the rifle.

Lin Feng gave Merle a second glance, then slid a quiet look over at the stone-faced Daryl.

Daryl caught the look and threw up a middle finger without missing a beat. "Fuck you."

Lin Feng let it go without a word, but dropped the joking. "Same plan as always. I take point. Daryl, Merle, cover my flanks. Andrew, swap your shotgun over to Merle. The rest of you hang back and cover. Any questions?"

Merle silently traded the rifle for Andrew's shotgun. "None. Lin, let's go. I'm already itching."

"Move out, boys."

Lin Feng racked a shell into the chamber with a sharp clack and walked in first, acting as the tip of the spear.

The three of them crept to the attic door. Merle took up position on the right side and gave it a light push. A wave of stench poured immediately through the gap.

Merle forced down the gut reaction, nodded once to Lin Feng on the left, then shoved the door hard.

It swung wide open.

Sunlight poured straight through the doorway and lit up the dim interior by several shades.

But there were no walkers crouched inside waiting for them. Just a heap of piled-up, mutilated corpses.

Second floor?

The thought flashed through Lin Feng's mind and he snapped his head up.

A monster with purplish-black skin was hanging upside down from the ceiling in a twisted, unnatural posture. Its pitch-black eyes crept open, and it lunged straight at him.

"Shit!"

Every alarm in Lin Feng's body fired at once. He swung the muzzle up and pulled the trigger.

BOOM!

The shotgun roared. A spread of steel shot tore through the air and obliterated the dark shape mid-lunge, blowing it apart on the spot.

Dead center — the head.

[Killed Mutated Walker ×1, gained Experience Points ×3.]

Pitch-black blood and shredded flesh sprayed in every direction. The monster never even got a screech out before its mouth went shut for good.

In the same instant, heavy thuds began sounding from all over the attic, like something, multiple somethings, crashing around up above.

"Shit! That was a lookout! The rest are upstairs! Get ready — they're coming down!"

No time to explain. Lin Feng racked the slide, chambered another shell, and leveled the barrel at the staircase on the left side of the attic.

The sounds were getting closer.

The first one launched itself from the staircase, moving so fast it left blurred afterimages in the dim light.

But what Lin Feng was holding wasn't some delicate semi-automatic. It was a close-quarters wrecking ball.

Why bother aiming? Raise it and shoot. Every shot counts.

BOOM!

BOOM!

BOOM!

One second. Three shots from the Remington 870. Interlocking waves of steel cut through the dark with every muzzle flash, shredding everything in their path into chunks.

His body had taken over completely. Adrenaline flooded his system, bypassing the brain entirely.

Fear?

Nothing. Just the raw thrill of pulling the trigger, over and over, watching them drop.

BOOM!

BOOM!

BOOM!

The second mutant came apart. The third and fourth each lost half their bodies and collapsed twitching to the floor.

"Last round! Get ready to swap!"

Lin Feng roared it out, pulled the trigger clean, and the moment the final shell fired, he rolled hard to the side and cleared the position.

Merle stepped straight into the gap, screaming with laughter. "Come on then, you dogs! Come get a taste of Grandpa Merle's gun!"

The gunfire dropped for less than a second before it picked right back up.

Lin Feng was already moving, fingers digging into his pocket, pulling shells out one by one and ramming them into the tube.

His eyes were tight with urgency. Come on, come on, load faster.

Then a thunderous crash shook the floor, and a shadow far larger than anything before dropped straight down from above, punching through the rotted attic boards into the first floor and lunging straight for Lin Feng.

➤ Next: Fierce Battle