Apocalypse: I Raised the Ultimate Antagonist from Scratch

The departure of the zombie left the Dead Man’s Switch in a state of unnatural, suffocating quiet.

The screaming winds of the blizzard seemed to drop for a brief moment, leaving only the crackle of burning diesel fuel and the heavy, ragged breathing of the strike team. Han Zheng did not waste a single second celebrating their survival. He immediately stepped toward the rear of the convoy, his heavy boots crunching through the fresh layers of snow as his dark eyes locked onto the damage.

Da Yong’s truck was completely immobilized. The massive, jagged ice spikes that had erupted from the road had punched cleanly through the thick, reinforced rubber of the rear tires, pinning the multi-ton utility vehicle to the frozen asphalt like a butterfly on a display board.

”Commander, the undercarriage is jammed solid,” Da Yong reported, kicking a chunk of frozen debris away from the rim. His face was tense as he wiped a layer of frost from his forehead. ”We can’t move an inch like this. If we abandon the truck, we lose half our transport capacity and a massive chunk of our mobility.”

Han Zheng shook his head, his jaw tightening. ”We aren’t abandoning anything. We drove out here with empty truck beds specifically to intercept this convoy, and we are going to finish the job. Xiao Li, clear that ice. Da Yong, get the spares. We change the tires right now.”

Turning to the rest of the squad, Han Zheng gestured toward the smoking wreckage of Gao Feng’s shattered logistics line. ”Lieutenant Chen, Ah Hua, strip the enemy trucks. Take every crate of heavy ammunition, every unexploded mortar round, and every functional automatic weapon you can find. Load them into the back of the primary vehicle first. Move!”

Because they had caught the mercenary vanguard completely by surprise, a significant portion of their military cargo had survived the initial thermal explosions. While the clock ticked silently against them, Lieutenant Chen and Ah Hua scrambled through the burning beds of the mercenary trucks. Working with a frantic, systematic efficiency, they tossed heavy, green-painted wooden crates of military-grade munitions onto the snow before hauling them over to the leading transport.

As for the rest of the mercenary convoy, the vehicles were entirely useless—either reduced to twisted, burning metal from Han Zheng’s initial ramming ambush or left with cracked engine blocks from the intelligent zombie’s sudden sub-zero blast.

For the massive iron artillery pieces that were far too heavy to be lifted or secured into their own vehicle beds, Han Zheng provided a permanent solution.

Walking over to the remaining field guns, he coiled his muscles and let his kinetic core surge. With a series of devastating, targeted physical shocks, he tore the heavy weapons from their towing mounts.

Together with Xiao Li, they rolled the multi-ton war machines over the lip of the canyon road, watching them plunge silently into the blinding white fog before smashing into absolute ruin on the jagged rocks hundreds of feet below. If Gao Feng sent a recovery team, they would find nothing but useless scrap metal.

While the salvage and sabotage operations were underway, Xiao Li knelt beside Da Yong’s pinned rear axle. Activating his molecular stone armor, he extended his hands and channeled his earth manipulation core directly into the base of the glacial traps. Under his precise control, the structural integrity of the massive ice spikes dissolved, shattering into a harmless, fine white powder without leaving a single scratch on the truck’s steel axle frame.

Old Wang, who had descended from his initial sniper nest to cover the rear of the primary transport truck during the chaotic skirmish with the intelligent zombie, quickly realized they were blind from above.

With his rifle slung securely across his back, he dug his spiked combat boots into the sheer face of the northern ridge, climbing back up the treacherous, ice-coated rock wall with the practiced agility of a veteran scout. He needed the high ground to anchor their perimeter while the team was vulnerable.

Down on the canyon floor, the physical labor had become a brutal battle against the elements. Da Yong and Ah Hua dropped the heavy-duty commercial spare tires mounted beneath the utility truck’s chassis, dragging the massive blocks of rubber through the deep snow drifts.

Working with frozen steel jacks, massive lug nuts, and heavy tire irons in cold temperatures was a nightmare. The freezing metal threatened to bind to their thick gloves, and the howling wind threatened to shift the balance of the vehicle.

”I don’t trust a mechanical jack on this black ice,” Da Yong grunted, his breath pluming heavily in the air as he struggled to position the frozen iron lift.

”Don’t bother,” Han Zheng said, walking up to the rear quarter panel of the truck.

The tall commander clamped his large hands onto the reinforced steel bumper. Bending his knees, he unleashed a continuous, controlled upward stream of kinetic force. With an almost terrifying display of raw physical leverage, Han Zheng effortlessly lifted the multi-ton rear frame of the utility truck completely off the ground, holding it perfectly stable in mid-air.

”Hurry,” Han Zheng commanded smoothly, his voice showing no signs of strain despite holding the massive vehicle. ”Change them out.”

With the truck lifted, Da Yong and Ah Hua worked with furious speed, spinning the lug nuts off the sheared bolts and pulling the ruined, deflated rubber from the axle before rolling the massive, fresh spares into place.

High above them on the freezing northern ridge, Old Wang settled into a prone position behind a snowbank, peering through the high-magnification optical lens of his rifle.

Because zombies were corpses whose biological functions had completely ceased, they did not possess internal body heat. Their frozen flesh was entirely invisible to standard thermal imaging—the intelligent variant they had fought earlier was a massive, terrifying anomaly because its active, turned evolutionary core had radiated a distinct energy signature.

Therefore, Old Wang relied entirely on his raw, trained eyesight, scanning the pale, moonlit slopes for physical movement.

As his eyes adjusted to the shifting patterns of the blinding blizzard, his heart skipped a beat. The massive, echoing explosions from the artillery ambush, the long, droning wail of the vehicle horns, and the chaotic noises of their battlefield victory had traveled deeply through the narrow mountain passes. The noise had officially shattered the silence of the wilderness.

Through the white fog, Old Wang spotted them. Dozens of low-level, cold-adapted zombies—stragglers that had been buried deep within the snow drifts or preserved inside the mountain crevices—were actively waking up. They weren’t running or sprinting with supernatural speed, but they were moving with a relentless, terrifying persistence.

From the vertical, icy walls of the gorge, the dark, emaciated silhouettes of the undead were beginning to crawl, slide, and drag themselves down the steep cliffs. They looked like a slow, silent avalanche of frostbitten limbs and hollow eyes, systematically descending from every single ridge line to converge directly on the bottleneck where the trucks were parked.

Old Wang slammed his finger onto his radio communicator, bypassing the lockdown protocol. ”Commander, we have incoming! The noise from the ambush woke up the entire ridge line. Dozens of them are sliding down the northern and southern slopes right now. They are crawling fast, and they are steadily cutting off our exit routes!”

Inside the leading truck’s cabin, Lin Qing’s eyes widened as she checked her external proximity sensors. Though the zombies lacked thermal heat, the physical displacement of the snow drifts was beginning to trip their perimeter lines one by one.

”Han Zheng, the first wave is less than fifty yards out from our rear flank!” Lin Qing warned over the frequency, her voice tight. ”They are closing the circle!”

”Da Yong! Drop the truck!” Han Zheng shouted.

Da Yong slammed the final lug nut into place with a heavy tire iron, tightening it with a brutal twist before shouting back, ”Done! Clear!”

Han Zheng instantly released his kinetic grip, dropping the heavy utility vehicle back onto its fresh tires with a solid, echoing thud. Da Yong and Ah Hua threw the heavy tools into the back of the flatbed, scrambling into their respective cabins just as the pale, frostbitten hand of a crawling straggler clawed mindlessly at the rear tailgate of the secondary truck.

Up on the ridge, Old Wang fired two rapid suppression rounds, shattering the skulls of the closest undead before sliding down the snowbank and leaping cleanly into the moving flatbed of the secondary transport as it began to roll.

”Go! Move out!” Han Zheng roared, throwing his own vehicle into gear.

Both modified transport trucks roared to life simultaneously, their fresh, heavy-duty tread patterns gripping the black ice of the mountain road. Han Zheng slammed his foot onto the accelerator, utilizing the heavy steel plow plate welded to the front of his vehicle to violently ram through a cluster of early-arriving, frozen stragglers who had successfully made it down to the valley floor to block the path. The heavy truck batted the frozen corpses aside like brittle kindling.

The two vehicles successfully accelerated, their engines whining against the freezing gale as they began the dangerous, winding descent down the narrow mountain road. Behind them, in the fading light of the burning mercenary convoy, the dark, multiplying silhouettes of the mountain’s newly awakened horde fully descended into the canyon floor they had just vacated, their hollow, frozen eyes staring into the darkness after the escaping trucks. The peace of the mountain was officially over.