Chapter 191: Clink. Clink. Clank.
"Drop the food!" the tallest boy shouted, his voice cracking with a mixture of bravado and pure terror. "We... we saw the carts! Give us the supplies, and the girls stay safe!"
The silence that followed was deafening. Every member of Snow and Leaf Team stared at the boys with a look that was less "threatened" and more "insulted."
"Victor, wait!" Felicity shouted, scrambling down from Lucan’s back, her bunny ears bobbing. She saw the hollows in their cheeks and the way their hands shook. "They’re just kids! Look at them, they’re practically babies. Put the fire out, please!"
Victor’s hand was already humming with a faint, white-hot glow, his eyes fixed on the leader. "They’re old enough to hold a weapon, Felicity. That makes them targets."
"They’re children!" she insisted, stepping into his line of sight with a stubborn pout. "They probably haven’t had a breakfast wrap in months. You can’t just ’annihilate’ a group of teenagers because they’re hungry and stupid."
Dimitri stepped forward, his Silence Domain making the boys’ knees buckle before he even spoke. "They are unmated males, Felicity. In this world, there are no ’kids.’ Only predators and prey."
Sarge nodded, blue sparks dancing across his knuckles. "She’s too soft. Give the word, Victor. We’ll clear the road in ten seconds."
The teenagers looked between the golden girl in the bunny dress and the wall of snarling Alphas, finally realising they hadn’t found a supply wagon; they had found a slaughterhouse.
"If you touch them, I’m going back into my space and locking the door!" Felicity threatened, crossing her arms.
Victor let out a frustrated, guttural growl, the nuclear light in his eyes dimming just a fraction. He looked at the boys, then at his defiant mate. "Fine. But if one of them so much as breathes in your direction, I’m nuking the entire road."
The lead boy dropped his pipe, his face going pale as he realised how close he had just come to becoming a memory. He looked at Felicity, his eyes wide with a mix of awe and fear, while the beast husbands circled closer, their possessive energy turning the air into a heavy, suffocating weight.
"Well?" Felicity prompted, looking at the terrified boys. "Are you going to keep standing there, or do you want a sandwich? Because my beast husbands are very cranky when they haven’t killed anything in an hour."
The scene on the highway was a mix of mercy and absolute terror. While the beast husbands stood like a wall of living muscle and murderous intent, Felicity was a whirlwind of kindness. She had Ivan bring out a mountain of supplies from her space, shoes that actually fit, thick sleeping bags, and sturdy tents.
She even insisted on giving them some obsidian-edged blades for protection. When she handed a short sword to the lead boy, Exile’s pupils dilated until his eyes were obsidian pits of rage. He let out a low, wet hiss that made the boy’s hands shake so hard he nearly dropped the weapon.
"Felicity, giving them steel is giving them a reason to think they’re men," Damien grumbled, his green eyes tracking the teenagers’ every move. "They’ll just get themselves killed, or worse, think they can come back for more."
"They’re kids, Damien! They need to protect themselves," she countered, her voice firm despite her fluffy bunny-eared hood.
Dimitri stepped closer, his Silence Domain turning the air into a vacuum. He didn’t say a word; he just stared at the youngest boy in the group. The pressure was so immense, the lack of sound so unnatural, that the boy’s eyes went wide, and a dark stain rapidly spread across the front of his ragged jeans. He had literally wet himself under the weight of a Level 95’s gaze.
"Dimitri! Stop it! You’re terrifying him!" Felicity huffed, stepping between them.
The mist didn’t just roll in; it crawled, a heavy, suffocating blanket that smelled of iron and stagnant water. It swallowed the highway, turning the charred gum trees into skeletal fingers reaching through the grey.
The teenagers Felicity had just helped were huddled together, their new sleeping bags and shoes forgotten as they stared into the gloom.
"Defensive positions!" Sarge’s voice cracked like a whip across the bitumen.
Snow Team moved with a synchronicity that was beautiful and terrifying. Kai and Ash took the flanks, their forms blurring as they prepared to warp space and set their lethal traps. Sarge stood at the front, his rhino-hide skin shimmering with blue electrical discharge that illuminated the fog in jagged pulses.
Leaf Team didn’t need orders. They simply vanished into the mist, becoming the ghosts they were trained to be, their Level 95 auras creating a cold pressure that made the teenagers’ teeth chatter.
Felicity stood in the centre. She felt the shift in the air, the jagged, necrotic hunger that was moving toward them. But she wasn’t cowering.
"I can help!" she shouted, her voice ringing out with a newfound steel. She raised her hands, and a blinding, ethereal light erupted from her palms. "Buff!"
The gold light didn’t just illuminate the road; it sank into the skin of every man in her pack. To the beast husbands and the teams, it felt like a jolt of pure adrenaline mixed with liquid fire. Their senses sharpened to a razor’s edge; their strength doubled; their fatigue from the night’s march vanished as if it had never been. Even the ocean-beasts pulling the carts felt their muscles swell with divine endurance.
Then came the sound.
Clink. Clink. Clank.
Heavy, rusted chains dragged across the road, the metal screeching against the cracked highway. Out of the grey emerged two hulking figures, nearly three meters tall. These weren’t the mindless shufflers they had seen in Orange. These were General-class zombies, their grey flesh corded with black veins, their eyes glowing with a sentient, hateful intelligence. Rusted chains were fused into their very bones, swinging like flails as they moved.
Behind them, a sea of two hundred lesser undead emerged, a wall of rotting teeth and reaching claws.
"The... Golden... One..." the lead General rasped, its voice a wet, guttural rattle. "The King... falls... she... serves... the Grave."
"Over my dead body, you overgrown sack of laundry," Marx chirped, though his eyes were narrowed and serious. He launched himself forward, his hands crackling with high-voltage current.
The action was explosive.
With Felicity’s buff coursing through them, the teams were unstoppable. Ash moved through the horde like a needle through silk, his invisible tripwires decapitating rows of zombies before they could even register his shadow.
Kai twisted his hands, and the space around a dozen zombies simply collapsed, crushing them into bloody, unrecognisable spheres.
In the chaos, the cubs Luna and Frost tried their paws at the fight.
"Get them, Frost!" Luna squealed, her silver hair whipping as she used her telekinetic spark to trip a group of approaching dead.
Frost, looking characteristically grumpy, flicked his wrist. A slab of concrete ripped upward, slamming into a zombie’s chest. "They’re too slow," he muttered, though he stayed close to Ivan, who was swatting away anything that came within ten meters of the children with a casual, bone-shattering backhand.
Felicity watched the carnage, her heart hammering. She saw a gap in the line where a few stragglers were closing in on Alice and her weak beast husbands.
The ragdoll-cat woman was huddling behind her koala husband, her ears flattened in terror.
"I’m going in! I can heal while I..." Felicity started, pulling a small obsidian dagger she’d tucked into her bunny-eared dress.
She didn’t get a third step.
A massive, muscular coil wrapped around her waist, lifting her off her feet. Exile didn’t even bother to shift; he used the raw, terrifying strength of his Anaconda-beast blood to haul her back against his chest. His arms locked around her like bands of iron, his chin resting on her shoulder as he hissed into her ear.
"No," Exile rasped, his voice thick with a deluded, frantic obsession.
"You are the sun. The sun does not touch the filth of the earth. You stay in my coils, Felicity. I will feel your heart beat against mine while the world burns. I will not let a single drop of rot touch your skin."
"Exile, let go! I’m buffing you! I’m helping!" she cried, kicking her legs, but she was like a baby bird caught in a python’s grip.
At the front of the line, Victor watched the two Generals. They were coordinating the horde, their chains sweeping through the air with enough force to shatter a cart. He saw the mist thickening, sensed more movement in the trees. He was done playing.
He raised his hand, his eyes turning a blinding, nuclear white. He began to channel the energy, his mind mapping the area. He saw the teenagers cowering behind the supply carts; he saw Alice and her husbands huddling near a ditch.
Victor let out a long, weary sigh. Felicity liked that stupid cat. She liked those "kids." If he killed them, she wouldn’t look at him with that bright, cheeky smile for a month.
Fine, Victor thought, the command rippling through his consciousness. The cat is on the white list. The children stay.
He extended his power.