Late at night, Hershel's Farm was still blazing with light. Figures moved through the grounds occasionally, only to vanish behind cover moments later.

Rick stood on the watchtower, staring out at the pitch-black country road, brows locked in a frown.

The walkie-talkie in Rick's right hand went up, came down, went up again. Breathing was heavy.

That afternoon, Lin Feng had radioed in: secured a batch of construction materials and heavy dump trucks, bringing twelve people back, and the noise would probably be significant enough to draw walkers from the surrounding area.

All camp members were to arm up and go to high alert. Prepare for a possible horde.

Rick had relayed the situation over the walkie-talkie, pulled everyone back from outside the perimeter, made sure every person had a weapon in hand, and moved them all to the sandbag fortifications.

Rick bent down to check the watch by the glow of the UV light. The thick short hand was already pointing at ten.

Then Rick straightened up, pulled the hat off in irritation, and scratched at the head.

They should've been here by now. So why wasn't there even a glimpse of headlights out there? Had something gone wrong?

Shane was taking it easier. Shane knew that even if something had gone wrong, Lin Feng would handle it and walk back in one piece.

Worst case, they'd lose some supplies. That was manageable. Shane could always lead a few more runs to make up the difference.

The rough hands gripping the fence railing tightened. Fingers went from white-knuckled to bloodless.

"Rick, Rick, we're almost there! Get ready! I've fucking spotted at least four Volatiles on our tail! Fuck!"

Lin Feng's voice crackled through the walkie-talkie. Rick and Shane both jolted upright.

Rick keyed the radio. "Copy, Lin. We've been ready for a while. What's your ETA?"

"Ten minutes!"

"Copy."

Rick glanced at Shane, gave a nod, then turned and shouted: "Everyone get ready! Chamber your weapons!"

Shane unslung the Remington and took the watchtower steps three at a time. "Stick to the plan! Hold your positions! Unless it's absolutely necessary, shut your mouths, listen for commands, and shoot on order!"

A ripple of clicks ran across the fortifications as rounds were chambered. Then everyone settled half-prone across the sandbags, muzzles trained forward. No one whispered a word.

The atmosphere congealed like a cold front had swept through. Still. Murderous.

A pinpoint of light appeared on the distant roadway. It punched through the pitch-black night, caught the eyes of everyone at camp, and steadily grew brighter.

Lin Feng gripped a pistol and squeezed the trigger in rapid succession out the vehicle window, gunfire signals telling the camp: destination ahead, slowing down, veering off.

Ethan looked at the bright UV Matrix ahead and frowned, but didn't ask any questions. Quietly, Ethan lifted off the accelerator and feathered the brake.

Speed bled off gradually. Then Ethan turned the wheel, pulling into the grass, and ground to a halt roughly a hundred meters to the left of Hershel's Farm.

No choice. Heavy dump trucks like these couldn't be driven into camp. They had to stop outside.

And they couldn't stop directly in front of the entrance either. The moment the shooting started, bullets weren't going to politely steer around a dump truck.

"Now — do exactly what I said before: pull the keys, get out, and run toward those lights! No hesitation. Don't stop!"

Lin Feng said it to Ethan and didn't wait to find out if Ethan had heard. Just jumped straight out of the cab and swept a look at the other trucks.

"Out! Run!"

One by one the heavy trucks stopped, engines died, and a figure jumped from each driver's seat and took off sprinting toward the UV lights without once looking back.

Lin Feng had walked them through this before they ever got in the trucks. Vehicles like these didn't even need to honk. Just rolling down a highway, the vibration alone and the engine roar would pull walkers in from everywhere, plus mutated strains like the Volatiles.

So the moment the gunfire signal came: slow down, stop, engine off, keys out, run.

Nobody knew exactly how fast the Volatiles would close the distance. No way to know for sure.

But once the camp spotted movement, they'd throw up the barricades and open fire.

At that point, the only thing left to hope for was not being in the same line of fire as a Volatile. That slim gap between the Volatile and the incoming barrage, that was the margin of survival. Outrun one, dodge the other.

Otherwise, might as well start thinking about the next life.

Lin Feng glanced back at the darkness behind them. His vision didn't reach far, barely under 30 meters at most.

And that 30 meters only existed because Perception had hit nine points, unlocking weak night vision. Without that, he wouldn't have been able to see 30 meters at all.

No helping it. Tonight the moon goddess had picked the Volatiles' side and buried herself behind a solid wall of clouds.

Fuck.

Lin Feng broke into a sprint. The launch speed was explosive, the burst absurdly high, Ethan's desperate three-second head start counted for nothing. Lin Feng floated past like a ghost.

Ethan watched that figure shrink away under the UV lamps, eyes going wide.

That's the butcher?!

What?

The hiring requirement for that slaughterhouse is professional sprinter, is it?

Fuck!

A hundred meters isn't long and it isn't short. By the time Ethan and the others came barreling through the perimeter, Lin Feng still had enough left in the tank to haul every barricade back into position and swing the wire mesh gate shut on the way past.

Ethan made it behind the fortifications and bent double, hands on knees, chest pumping like a bellows. Face had gone pale.

Seventeen years out of high school, and apparently the universe still had a hundred-meter sprint scheduled. What a miserable existence.

Lin Feng gave Ethan a pat on the shoulder and looked over the group, some bent over their knees, some flat on the ground. "All of you, get up and get into the cabins. Sit down and stay there until we're done out here. If Volatiles breach the perimeter later, we won't have time to babysit you."

That said, Lin Feng left them to it.

Turned around, picked up the M4, chambered a round, and moved to Shane's side.

Shane stared like looking at something that shouldn't exist. "Before... you didn't move like that."

"If those things were on your tail, you'd probably run faster than me."

Shane opened the mouth to argue, stalled for two full seconds. "...Fair enough."

Nearby, Marcus and Crane weren't buying it so easily. Both stood there with furrowed brows and didn't push further.

Curiosity was one thing. Prying was another.

➤ Next: Supermassive Walker Horde (Part 1)

Chapter 122 - Supermassive Walker Horde (Part 1)

Between the earth and the sky, dead silence and darkness.

Then, from somewhere in that dark, faint sounds began to surface. Light, brief, rapid.

Lin Feng's eyes sharpened. "They're here. Abraham — Molotovs, now!"

Abraham didn't hesitate. Grabbed a handful of Molotov cocktails from the side, moved to the camp entrance.

A lighter came out of the pocket, the one Abraham had only started reliably carrying after Merle's repeated griping about it, and Abraham lit the cloth strips and threw them toward three separate locations.

The landing points were only about ten meters out, but that was past where the UV lights reached.

Unluckily, only one shattered on impact. The other two dropped into thick weeds and just sat there.

Abraham cursed out loud on the spot, hand already reaching for a sidearm, but Marcus had already put two rounds into the unbroken bottles.

BOOM.

BOOM.

They burst. Flames spread along the accelerant, carving out a small patch of fire in the dark.

In that brief flare of light, Lin Feng caught a glimpse of the Volatile, a flash of movement, there and gone.

It had pulled up short. One bound and it was back in the darkness, no longer advancing.

Shane's eyes narrowed. "Was that it? I thought I saw something move."

"That was it." Lin Feng kept watching the dark. "Looks like the UV lights are doing their job — it didn't push any closer. But the output isn't strong enough and the range is too short. Tomorrow we'll have Eugene and the others work out how to fix that."

Abraham came back from the entrance, looked at Marcus, and said, "Fuck. Thanks, doc."

Marcus wasn't sure whether that was a thank-you or something else entirely, so Marcus just nodded.

The Molotov fuel burned off steadily, and a smell started drifting across camp, scorched weeds, charred rubber. Sharp. Unpleasant.

Merle sneezed, rubbed the nose with two fingers, and snapped: "Fuck! Did those stupid bastards get lost out there? Don't tell me they're still sitting at a red light?!"

Daryl rolled both eyes and didn't bother.

The others were following Orion's instructions from the afternoon briefing: mouths shut, no idle chatter, keep the noise to a minimum. Merle's complaints landed on a wall of silence.

Finding no takers, Merle gave up, turned around, leaned back against the sandbags, and lit a cigarette.

Merle actually wanted a drink. But at a moment like this, if Merle actually reached for a bottle, Lin Feng would hear about it. So a smoke would have to do.

Lin Feng caught the smell, glanced over, and placed it instantly, Merle. Let it go.

This one had been unreliable for a long time. Merle had a habit of drinking while driving. Waiting on walkers was hardly a step down. Forget it. Daryl was right there.

Minutes passed.

Lin Feng was leaning against the sandbags when a sensation crept in, extremely faint, easy to miss.

A vibration.

Lin Feng pressed a palm flat against the ground. Clearer now.

The walkers drawn in by all that noise were already moving in. Less than 100 meters out. And there were a lot of them.

Lin Feng lifted the head and kept the voice low. "Eyes up, everyone. Our guests are almost here."

A few people who'd gone half-drowsy from lying prone too long snapped awake, shook it off, and fixed their eyes on the dark ahead.

The Molotov fires had long since died out. Only thin threads of scorched smoke still curled up and faded into the air.

By the time the horde got inside 50 meters, every person on the line could feel it, that dull, rolling vibration coming up through the ground.

Merle flashed a wide grin, all yellow teeth. "Come on then, darlings. Let's have ourselves a little heart-to-heart tonight."

Daryl threw a disgusted look at Merle and shifted position slightly away. Said nothing.

The clouds kept moving. At 40 meters, the vibrations were getting stronger. Then a gap opened in the overcast sky, and the moon edged out, just a sliver.

That pale light spread out across the land, pushing the dark back, and what it revealed made the blood run cold.

The horde came into view one mass at a time. Dense. Endless. A sea of dead things pressing forward.

Corpse-shadows surging.

A muscle jumped in Shane's jaw. The words came out low and tight: "Fuck. That's got to be over a thousand."

Lin Feng scanned the mass for a moment, looking for anything unusual. Saw nothing.

He let out a slow breath.

Good. No Tank.

That thing showing up would've been a genuine problem. Its absence was a small mercy.

The shuffling footsteps grew louder as the horde pressed into 30-meter range.

The moon was clearing the clouds. Visibility was improving.

Lin Feng raised a right hand. Drew a breath. Low and hard: "Ready — fire!"

The words were barely out before every trigger on the line pulled at once.

The night exploded.

Nearly 40 weapons opened up simultaneously, rounds pouring into the horde in a sustained roar.

Shane fired twice and switched to the rifle, still cursing.

Blasting walkers with a Remington 870 was satisfying at close range. At distance, the satisfaction dropped off fast, and the efficiency didn't come close to matching an AR-15.

Marcus, Orion, Abraham, Daryl, Merle, Crane, Leon, Claire, the trained ones and the naturally gifted ones. They showed exactly what that looked like when it mattered.

Rifles up. Cycling rounds. One target, almost every time: the head.

Not every single shot landed clean, but close enough that the difference barely registered.

BOOM.

A violent explosion detonated inside the horde. The shockwave hit like C-4, launching more than ten walkers off their feet and blowing out a raw clearing in the middle of the mass.

Merle's trigger finger paused for half a second. "What the fuck? Who just threw a grenade? Toss a couple this way — I want in!"

Crane glanced over. "Bomber. God knows how it mutated, but its gut is basically a live explosive. Mobile, too. Goes off whenever it feels like it. Zero warning."

"Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!" Merle snarled the words and went right back to shooting.

Whether it was rage or the urge to find another Bomber, Merle's clear rate actually ticked up.

Crane filed that away as: incomprehensible, but effective.

The horde came on like water. Full camp firepower, multiple precision shooters drilling headshots, and the distance kept shrinking anyway.

These things had no instinct for self-preservation. No fear response. Their stripped-down brains registered one thing: sound, forward, keep moving.

30 meters compressed to 25. 20. 15. 10.

The lead walkers were almost at the trench.

Then the situation broke.

Several streams of viscous liquid arced out of the horde and splattered across the barbed wire, the barricades, and the UV lights.

The barbed wire sizzled. Corroded instantly, melting apart. The wooden barricades where the liquid hit turned black, smoking hard. The UV lights,

They went out.

Lin Feng's heart stopped for a full beat.

"Fuck! The Volatiles are breaching! Get ready!"

➤ Next: Volatiles Aren't All That