Neha remained blissfully unaware of the disaster at the naval base. Her own army kept charging ahead.
It didn’t matter that the initial army had halved by the time they reached their destination. The remaining half wasn’t in great shape either.
Five hours of tireless hiking even tested the resolve of the chosen. Forget about the unawakened, as they were left to turn into husks. None of them had the strength left to move, but Neha didn’t care about that.
She had them whipped into shape until they turned into obedient dogs. They were needed for a purpose, and Neha would have them fulfill it.
"What happened to this place?" Min asked, voicing everyone’s thought.
The Carmel Valley they remembered was a place for the well-off. However, all they saw was a bottomless pit.
The buildings had disappeared into a massive crater filled with zombies. In the middle of it all was their target, the zombie king, or the Headless, which it was until it evolved.
However, it wasn’t like the Headless they saw back at the college.
The one they saw back then was barely six feet tall. But the one before them was easily twice that tall. That was when it was sitting on the ground.
Yet, there was more. Strange vines appeared out of the creature’s spine, which were buried into the ground. Similar vines were connected to the backs of the walkers’ heads.
To state it simply, the Headless was a tree, and those tendrils were its roots looking for nutrients.
"What is it doing?" a chosen asked.
"Evolving," Neha replied.
Looking at the zombies below, she frowned in disgust.
Unlike the zombies everywhere else, none of the zombies below were evolved. They were all basic walkers, all twenty thousand of them.
It was intentional on the Headless’s part. After all, the zombies below were its food, and the method of absorption it used didn’t require quality, but quantity.
That’s why they were the only ones who could propagate the zombie virus. At least in the initial stages of an outbreak.
Unlike regular zombies, who evolved after consuming zombie nucleus, the Headless had a unique way to evolve.
They consumed the zombies differently, preferring to siphon their energy instead of consuming them physically.
It allowed the Headless to convert the undead into pure energy, without wasting a single cell inside the zombies.
Unlike the regular method, which wasted too much energy.
The only downside was that the process was slow. Super slow.
The Headless remained in a dormant state throughout the process. Until it evolved into a zombie king, or something or someone forced it to awaken.
Yet, how the Headless did it remained a mystery to her.
In her past life, a team led by Alaric and Blaze had deciphered some information about the strange consumption method.
Some said they even replicated it. Which gave rise to the world’s first super chosen, or as they simply called them, the evolvers.
They were known for their endless potential. Capable of harnessing the planet’s energy to control it in a way.
However, before they could make that information public or create more evolvers, Blaze, the first evolver, went rogue.
Those he killed that day had disappeared entirely, not even leaving their corpses behind.
Much in the same way, the Headless was absorbing the other undead to evolve.
What happened afterwards was a mystery to Neha.
She died in the outbreak that followed Blaze’s departure, so she did not know what happened after her death.
It was the reason she killed Blaze first and kept Alaric alive.
She hoped Alaric could repeat the miracle of the past alone. In turn, propelling her and those selected by her into a new stage of evolution.
"Neha," Min said, patting her shoulder. "The soldiers are awaiting your orders."
"Right," Neha said, snapping out of her thoughts.
The Headless was in the middle of its evolution. It was unlikely to move, let alone retaliate.
The problem was the overwhelming number of walkers. Over twenty thousand of them were crammed inside the crater.
One had to get rid of them first in order to reach the zombie king.
However, killing so many of them was stupid.
First, it would take days, if not weeks, to clear them.
Second, killing even a tenth of them would awaken the zombie king from its evolutionary slumber since they were linked to the Headless via its roots.
Once awakened, despite being mid-evolution, it would slaughter them with ease.
The only good thing was that the Headless was in a comatose state during evolution. It meant that it couldn’t hear or see anything the walkers did.
It would only awaken if the walkers were harmed.
The only way Neha knew to get to the Headless and kill it was to distract the walkers.
That’s where the unawakened soldiers came into play.
After all, what better way was there to distract a starved zombie than throwing fresh meat at it?
Without a word, Neha walked up to a limping soldier and grabbed him by the collar.
"H-Hey! Wait, what are you—!"
The man could barely get any words out as Neha kicked him off the crater’s edge. The man clawed at the air, trying to grab an invisible rope before tumbling down the slope.
The soldier’s screams echoed all the way down as he hit the lowest part of the crater.
Dazed and bloodied, the man looked up and saw he was surrounded by the walkers. All the yelling he did while falling had attracted them to him.
They had never tasted any flesh since turning into zombies. Now that a living thing had fallen inside the pit, they wouldn’t waste the opportunity.
With low groans, they turned towards the man, slowly making their way to him. The soldier could have outrun them if not for his injuries. Now, he could only watch as they surrounded him.
He tried to crawl, but couldn’t get far. A walker grabbed his leg and sank its teeth into fresh meat.
The soldier’s scream attracted more walkers, who soon piled on him, tearing and feeding on him.
All the while, Neha watched the scene from above. She felt no pleasure at a human’s death, but such sacrifices were important for the greater good.
Blaze would have said the same.
Neha thought, shaking her head.
In her quest to make the world a better place, she was turning more and more like the Blaze of her past life.
A thought that disgusted her.
"Throw the rest of them inside," she instructed the chosen, before turning around. "The rest will follow me to the other side of the crater."