Chapter 973 Frog, Frog, Toads?!
It was a little difficult to get a whole view of the situation while I was at the front but since Kaley was on top of my Raptor while clearing zeds with movement speed buffs, I was relying on her comms. and her surgical shots to make it easier for me. However, we were missing one crucial part of our factory line and it was someone to reload spent mags for everyone.
There were two— no, three options depending on the situation.
The first option was to make Logan pick up the duty while keeping a lookout on the road at the same time so he could easily maneuver our truck when the time called for it. Secondly, I could make Seb run back to the truck while I make Kuzma move a little to the left so we could work together instead—and Seb could still shoot a few rounds from the trucks after loading appropriate mags since he was taking careful shots from the get-go.
Besides, Kuzma and I would need mags as well and we'd need a runner to throw us a bunch so we wouldn't have to run back and fetch it ourselves.
And the third one, I doubt it would be that difficult to reload mags but Nancy could take up the spot, though this option was far-fetched considering her reaction earlier.
In any case, the most logical choice was to call over Kuzma to my side as Seb retreated, but he only did so after using up two magazines of his pistol. I would've wished he put more deadheads down with all that noise but accuracy severely drops for some people if they start to fire rapidly.
Once he made his way back, I was a little assured that Kaley would have someone right next to her just in case, but I was safer in my spot when Kuzma came in and made a lot of space by sinking his axe on this taller deadhead then kicking it back, knocking down the ones behind it.
The axe he was using was actually the injector axe that belonged to Tatiana but it wasn't as bloody as my katana due to its hidden feature.
With a push of a button, it could expel gas to expand the wound cavity it created but it could also be used to somehow clear out the grime and other shit stuck in its tubes—where in the case of Tatiana's axe, it had eight in total and six of them weren't right on its edge.
They were located a few centimeters back—which was still by the edge—and it took a lot of tries to copy the edge pattern from one of those knives or even cleavers that had this particular bevel to make pulling it out much, much easier.
Like cutting trees, a lot of shit could affect the cutting process if the axe had tons of other foreign shit on it so aside from wiping it with a rag or a clean cloth, expelling gas from its holes could get rid of its problems akin to me flicking my wrist to remove the excess blood on my katana.
Kuzma could press it a total of ten times for a quick burst of air but he could pretty much hold onto the button to expel everything out—it if ever punctured inside a Hulker's head—but it would be considered a regular axe at that moment because reloading the gas canister would take longer, and he couldn't simply do it on the spot without help.
But yeah, it didn't even take that long before backup came from the other side of the road.
"BEEP! BEEP! MADAFACKAZZZ~!!!"
"GET OUT! GET OUT! GET OUT! BIG DICKS, COMING THROUGH~!!!"
Kuzma and I had to take a step back and get out of dodge once I heard the roar of engines followed by the incessant blare of their horns, but even Logan suddenly backed up our vehicle out of the road because two pickup trucks straight-up rammed into the walking corpses from the other side and went straight through.
And to our fucking delight, they cleared—debilitated or dismembered if not, almost 90% of the deadheads stomping their feet on the asphalt because their trucks were not only equipped with almost the same bumper we had, but they also had these spiked, thorn-like rods sticking out of their wheels like war chariots to rip out the legs, torsos, or whatever the fuck it came contact with—and with the speed that they came in, let's also add kinetic energy into the picture.
Granted some of them were still "alive", but the whole process became easier because we'd only have to aim a rod to their heads like people who picked up garbage for community service would do.
However, once I saw the trucks slow down and perform a U-turn, I simply wiped my blade, put it back in my sheathe, then picked up my rifle because the only problem we had left was the ones still coming from the woods that fucking goose went into.
Their spiked wheels still did some of the work but the weight of their vehicles made this musical of sorts that sounded like an ASMR clip—to make it a little PG—of several watermelons getting crushed into pieces, but the visual aspect of it was just way, way~ worse.
With that said, we took it upon ourselves to finish off the ones that were pushed out of the road, but with our limited space, I was the one to go forward while Kuzma slightly fanned the side to finish off the dismembered ones with a knife to the head.
I didn't even notice that our group eventually caught up to us and I completely forgot to rescind my call for backup because these two trucks that came in were the MVPs today.
Furthermore, the ones coming from the woods ground to a halt once I reached the halfway mark of the meat paste on the road, but that fucking elbow-necked goose was still nowhere in sight.
I would've shot it or run it over when I had the chance because even if causation wasn't equal to correlation, the motherfucker must've done something. And yeah, if I see any fucking frogs hopping around, I would fucking murder it on the spot.
'We've spent so much time horsing around about anything else would make me trigger happy…'
In any case, the look on everyone else's faces—the ones who came late—was fucking priceless when we started the clearing process where we'd gather the corpses in one spot, pile them on top of one another before burning them, picking up spent casings, etc. but as we were gathering assorted body parts from one place to the other, not only did I, but a few others noticed that a good quarter of them seemed to be strewn together—not in the stitcher kind of way—but like an actual human put them together with a needle and some thread.
Looking at the one I found closely, its eyes, nose, ears, and mouth were sewn shut, but its torso was also stitched up for some reason, and a few things seemed to be out of place.
It definitely made me curious to the point that I pulled out my dagger and attempted to open up the ones I found, but before I even had the chance to do so, James #2 did first but he vomited on the spot after he discovered a stack of fingers jammed inside its mouth while several dozen eyeballs had replaced its digestive system.
His vomit dropping onto its torso which was now acting as a fucked up bowl for those eyes that were also the most fucked up bundle Orbeez I've seen so far didn't help his case. Even some others who saw it had to look away but I've just noticed that the torso of my corpse twitched momentarily at one spot so I had to back away for a moment before sinking my dagger at the spot I saw multiple times until it stopped twitching..
I said loud enough for everybody to hear:
"Hey! Gather the ones you found in another spot and make sure that there aren't any living creatures inside them. It's a shame but stab their stomachs a few—no, several times for good measure first…"
As they did, I eventually tried to open up mine to discover the surprise and it was actually this discolored toad that looked to be a little poisonous but it also had small but dead animals inside like rats, birds, and the like, making it seem like this toad I stabbed multiple times was on its last legs.
Because from what I'd experienced so far, animals wouldn't last long if whatever was making these corpses come back from the dead made its way inside their system, and it was a good thing we haven't hunted anything to eat this far in our journey so chances of us eating a carrier were slim to none.
'But what's the point of this though?'
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