TWD: Saving Merle First - Chapter 72: Passing the Buck (Patreon)

From the hillside, Wade and the others watched a massacre unfold.

Under the dim light of dusk, shadowy figures raced across the ground. The exceptionally large Mutated Walker leading the group let out a piercing shriek, and the rest moved like wild beasts, effortlessly vaulting over the barbed-wire fence before tearing into the camp like wolves among sheep.

One Mutated Walker scuttled forward at high speed and locked onto a man fleeing in panic. The muscles in its arms and legs exploded with strength as it launched itself through the air and slammed him to the ground. Its sharp claws clamped around his shoulders and sank deep into his flesh.

Then it lunged forward and buried its fangs in his neck. With a violent jerk of its head, it ripped away a chunk of flesh and swallowed it.

The screaming stopped almost instantly as blood sprayed from the wound. A few seconds later, the man’s struggling arms and legs went still.

The creatures were fast, vicious, and brutally efficient. They never slowed down, and each seemed to have its own target, with barely any overlap between them.

Glenn stared for a long moment before saying quietly, “These things... they’re practically a different species. I mean, they’re nothing like regular walkers.”

Ryan calmly lowered his voice. “They possess a certain degree of intelligence. There’s a command node, clear roles within the group, extreme speed, the ability to jump, and strong individual combat ability. They’re going to be difficult to deal with.”

Wade’s expression turned serious. “The only reason we managed to wipe them out last time was because we had the terrain on our side. They couldn’t make use of their speed, so we were able to pin them down and kill them with shotguns.”

“Out here in the open, once these things gather into a group, they’re practically unstoppable unless you have something that can hit a large area at once.”

They had come out expecting to fight people, so all they had brought were four suppressed M4s and two shotguns.

Trying to take on the mutated horde below with that kind of firepower would be suicide.

Even Shane felt his scalp prickle as he watched. Glenn was right. These things and ordinary slow-moving walkers might as well have been entirely different species. The difference was like comparing a puppy to a full-grown wolf.

Daryl remained expressionless and looked perfectly calm, but the back of his shirt had visibly darkened...

Wade stared at the Mutated Walkers below, which had already finished their slaughter, and suddenly remembered the last time they had encountered these things.

They had found them inside an attic.

And the place had also been filled with bodies dug out of that burial pit.

“Do you think they’ll do what they did last time and drag whatever they can’t finish back to their lair?”

Daryl narrowed his eyes. “It’s not a question of whether they will. They definitely will. They’ll eat corpses that have been sitting around overnight, so there’s no way they’re passing up fresh meat like this.”

“Then let’s wait a little longer and see where they take them.”

“Fuck! Nobody said the difficulty was gonna go up when we came out here!”

Merle had already figured out what Wade was thinking. He wanted to go after the Mutated Walkers below.

Once the Mutated Walkers finished hunting, their leader raised its head and let out another piercing shriek.

As if someone had flipped a switch, the rest immediately began feasting.

Even from this far away, Maggie and Glenn felt physically uncomfortable, goosebumps rising all over their bodies.

It wasn’t disgust or fear. It was the uncanny valley effect making their bodies instinctively recoil from what they were seeing.

As time passed, Shane suddenly spoke.

“Did you guys forget that people killed by walkers turn afterward...?”

“Holy shit!”

“Holy crap!”

“...”

After Wade’s brain spent two seconds processing that, he immediately started shifting the blame. He turned toward Shane.

“Why didn’t you say that earlier?!”

Shane stared at Wade in confusion. “Isn’t that common knowledge?”

Glenn and the others looked just as bewildered.

They had assumed that people killed by Mutated Walkers somehow wouldn’t turn into walkers afterward.

Apparently, Wade had simply forgotten about it himself.

As for Merle, Daryl, and Marcus...

Well, the moon sure looked round tonight.

Strange. Why could they only see half of it?

Perhaps the Mutated Walkers sensed something. One by one, they stopped eating.

After another shrill cry, they crawled back up the mountain and soon disappeared from sight.

Then the corpses began to move.

Whether they had already been gnawed on or were still lying untouched on the ground, they gradually started reacting, slowly climbing back to their feet.

“Tsk. Those things are gone. So what do we do now?”

“What else? We go home, clean up, and get some sleep. What if they suddenly come back? We can collect the supplies down there tomorrow morning. Hmm, and we’ll need to bring more people with us.”

As Wade spoke, something else occurred to him.

“Ryan, how’s that bomb coming along?”

“It’ll be ready tomorrow.”

“Good. Later, teach us how to make Molotov cocktails too. We’ll put some together tomorrow. We’ll probably need them.”

“Sure.”

...

When they returned to camp, Rick came out to meet them. Seeing that all six of them had made it back unharmed, he smiled and nodded.

“How’d it go?”

“The good news is that gang is gone. The bad news is we found something a lot worse.”

Wade explained what had happened with the Mutated Walkers, and Rick’s brow furrowed as he listened.

Back at the CDC, nothing in the doctor’s research had mentioned the virus undergoing this kind of mutation.

Could it have mutated naturally?

There was no way to know.

Either way, they had an even bigger problem on their hands now.

Suddenly, Rick seemed to remember something.

“Oh, right, Wade. Remember Dale’s radio?”

“What about it? Was there another broadcast?”

Rick nodded. “One channel came through briefly. It sounded more like a distress call.”