Apocalypse: King of Zombies

”General Cross, you came because of Leonard, right?” Ethan said bluntly.

”Yes.” General Cross nodded. ”I trust your character, Ethan. You wouldn’t kill him for no reason. Can you tell us why?”

”It’s not that complicated.” Ethan waved a hand. ”He wanted to turn us into thralls, so I had to kill him.”

”Thralls?” General Cross and Colonel Mitchell both stared at him, confused.

”Yeah.” Ethan’s tone stayed casual, like he was explaining the weather. ”A method that forcibly creates living people into thralls that only obey him.”

He wasn’t planning to hide this from General Cross. If anything, it was perfect—let Clearford City be the one to spread the news that the Hale family had a thrall-creation method.

Even if nobody believed it, it would still make the Hale family choke on it.

He’d killed Leonard. That meant he was going to clash with the Hale family sooner or later. If they were miserable, Ethan was happy.

”Ethan… is what you’re saying true?” General Cross’s face hardened.

”Why would I lie to you?” Ethan said. ”The Hale family got a thrall-creation secret art from that special pocket world in Atlas City. These past few days they’ve been experimenting on living people.”

”Leonard saw we were strong and decided to make a move on us.” Ethan shrugged. ”Too bad his strength was garbage. I killed him.”

”!!!”

”If that’s really true, then he deserved it,” General Cross said, face turning iron-dark.

”This involves the Hale family,” he continued. ”I need to report it up the chain. Do you have any evidence?”

”Uh… not really.” Ethan didn’t look embarrassed in the slightest. ”I don’t usually need evidence when I do things.”

”…”

General Cross exhaled through his nose. ”Alright. I believe you wouldn’t joke about something like that. I’ll report it to my superior. He trusts my judgment.”

”Sure. Handle it however you want.”

Ethan shifted topics. ”By the way, General Cross—have you found that Zombie King yet?”

”No.” General Cross looked worn out. ”This time the number of zombies is just too huge. Our scouts don’t dare get too close, and that Zombie King is hiding well. We haven’t found a trace of it.”

He paused. ”We also came to discuss something important: our scouts found that the horde seems to be slowly moving toward the compound.”

”That fast?” Ethan’s brows rose.

”Then they’ve probably finished gathering,” he said.

He thought for a moment, gaze sharpening. ”Controlling a few million zombies—honestly, even a Tier 10 zombie might not be able to do it. But there shouldn’t be any Tier 11 zombies yet. So this Zombie King is very likely a zombie with a special ability.”

”Zombies can have abilities?” General Cross and Colonel Mitchell’s eyes went wide.

”They can,” Ethan said seriously, nodding once. ”Low-tier ones probably don’t. But some high-tier zombies do.”

”The Tier 9 zombie we killed last time had one.”

”This…” Colonel Mitchell went stiff.

”If zombies can have abilities,” General Cross said, frowning deeply, ”then the danger humanity faces just multiplies.”

”Yeah.” Ethan shook his head. ”Surviving this disaster was never going to be easy.”

He leaned forward a little. ”How many Tier 6 and above Enhanced do you have in the compound right now?”

”After these days of nonstop sweeps—killing zombies and collecting crystal cores—we now have over ten thousand Tier 6 Enhanced,” General Cross said. ”Tier 7, a bit over seven hundred. Tier 8, a bit over three hundred. Tier 9, thirty-plus.”

Most of the Tier 8 and Tier 9 had come from the crystal cores they’d gotten by killing that batch of Titan Apes.

”Our top-end power isn’t bad,” Colonel Mitchell said with a sigh. ”But mid-tier strength is still way behind the zombies. Tier 6 zombies are already a major share now.”

”In this horde alone, there are at least hundreds of thousands of Tier 6 zombies. With the number of Enhanced we have, we can’t hold.”

Ethan nodded, then asked, ”What about ammo? With your current weapon setup and reserves, about how many zombies do you think you can wipe out?”

”Our stockpile isn’t large anymore.” General Cross grimaced. ”Even if we throw everything we have into it, we’d only be able to eliminate a few hundred thousand zombies below Tier 7.”

”That’s nowhere near enough.” Ethan let out a slow breath.

A big city really wasn’t something you could just ”stand firm” in. A zombie horde in the millions—outside of somewhere like Atlas City, who the hell could survive that?

If they couldn’t find the Zombie King, a horde on this scale… even Ethan and his people couldn’t flip the board.

Clearford City was just unlucky. Running into something like this so early—if they’d been given a little more time, if their strength had jumped another tier, they wouldn’t be this helpless.

After thinking for a bit, Ethan looked at General Cross. ”You should head back for now. Tomorrow I’ll go look for that Zombie King myself. If I find it, great. If I don’t… you need to prepare ahead of time.”

He didn’t sugarcoat it.

”Either fight to the death, or abandon the Clearford City compound and fall back to a smaller city or the outskirts and build a new compound.”

”Understood. We’re counting on you.” General Cross snapped a salute, then left the mansion with Colonel Mitchell.

Watching their heavy footsteps as they went, everyone could practically feel the weight on their shoulders.

”Captain… you can find that Zombie King, right?” Mia asked softly.

”I’ll try,” Ethan said. ”But finding one Zombie King inside a few million zombies isn’t exactly easy. And we don’t even know if it’s inside the horde. It might be hiding in some corner somewhere.”

He frowned. ”If it can control that many zombies, it’s very likely a mental-type. A zombie like that? It’s going to be smart as hell.”

Mia sighed. ”So we’re relying on luck.”

That night, everyone ate dinner and went to bed early. They got up around midnight to watch the stars and absorb mysterious energy until morning, then slept another couple hours.

Ethan got up, swung onto the back of the Peregrine Falcon Flint, and flew toward where the zombies were gathering.

He’d promised. So he’d do everything he could.

He headed south. After about an hour, he saw them—zombies packed so tightly they turned the land into a crawling carpet of bodies.

It was the first time Ethan had ever seen a horde this terrifying.

The horde stretched as far as the eye could see.

And from the air, the impact was even more brutal—pure, immediate shock.

”How the hell am I supposed to find anything in that?” Ethan muttered, scalp prickling.

He shook his head. ”Yeah. I really know how to make myself suffer.”

But there was nothing else to do. He started searching the hard way.

He pushed [True Sight] to the limit and scanned the horde over and over, constantly combing for anything that felt like a ”king.” Every so often he’d pop a crystal core into his mouth to replenish his mental energy.

An hour passed.

Then more.

He spotted over a dozen Tier 9 zombies in the mass—yet not a trace of the Zombie King.

Ethan stared at the horde as it steadily crept toward the compound, his brows knitting tighter and tighter.

”This isn’t going to work,” he said under his breath. ”At this speed… they’ll reach the compound in less than five hours.”

He narrowed his eyes.

”Fine. Then I’ll give them some trouble.”

Ethan pulled out his satellite phone and called General Cross.

”General Cross. Send someone to our mansion and bring Big Mike and Garrick over.”

”Understood.”

Not long after, two more massive birds lifted off from the compound and headed straight for the zombie gathering point.