Chapter 6: Stake's debut
The stalker zombies were struck with high voltage electricity and actually didn't get burned. However, the runner zombies were burning madly with some weaker ones burnt crisp.
It seems that fungi are extremely flammable, but not the ones on stalkers.
Once the stalkers were stuck with electricity, they stood rooted to the ground before being blasted to bits by grenades.
Meanwhile, deep in the zombie horde, the extremely large zombies that looked bloated…
Hmm, the fat zombies shall be called bloaters and the weird zombies with cocoons on their backs shall be named Lethocerus Zombies.
Named after giant water bugs that grow eggs on their backs.
The bloated zombie's stomach area rumbled then they spat out several larvaes with fungi growing on it.
The fat larvaes slithered quickly towards the nearest zombie and dug itself into their backs.
Then after a few minutes, the zombie shriveled up and collapsed. However, surrounding zombies stopped and fed themselves to the larvae zombie.
After a few more minutes, the larvae zombie was 'normal' again and cocoons sprouted from its back causing it to hunch over.
Meanwhile, the zombies that already had cocoons on its back exploded. The cocoons burst and human sized humanoids with wings flew up.
Their faces were a hybrid of a human and an ant. While their legs were replaced with 4 insect legs.
Truly repulsive creatures.
The electric man, probably Carl whom he met a month ago, went back inside the truck after the stalker zombies were dealt with.
Despite the constant barrage of zombies, the line of decimation did not move at all. The survivors stopped using bullets and switched to flamethrowers and molotovs.
Now that the zombie horde truly started to decrease, the remaining human insectoids retreated with the bloaters.
The foreign pheromone concentration started to decrease so now Atkinson can control any one of them, of course one at a time.
He is close to controlling two at a time after binge eating. He felt that his other power was having a super stomach.
He ate probably the most unhealthy mix of a meal and felt completely fine. Actually he felt even better than before.
Should I invite them to trade at the bank? I got lots of interesting reading material and movies that must be worth a lot.
But they can annihilate an entire zombie horde so should I do it? Nah, I'll just get Stake the stalker to write a message for them to come next week on a cardboard.
This way I can truly protect myself when I can control more zombies.
And so, after a message was written stating, "Meet back at this street next week to trade items - adult books and movies, clean water and food", Stake the stalker danced from his dumpster towards the group that was now sweeping the battle field for orbs.
He controlled Stake to dance because how else are the survivors going to not shoot at sight?
"Guys watch out!" a person who saw Stake shouted.
Three other persons holstered their assault rifles in a fighting position. There was only one stalker zombie, so the rest of the survivors were not worried.
"Wait! Garry, doesn't it look like it's dancing?" a person with the body of a body builder was perplexed at the dancing zombie.
"Yeah Jake, I didn't take my psychoactives today, that is for sure real! A scrawny person pointed out as he lowered his gun.
The rest followed suit.
They also noticed a sign hung around the stalker zombie's neck and thought that was strange as well.
Before long, Stake the stalker was in front of the survivors. They were incredibly curious to see a passive dancing zombie.
The whole scene looked out of place, numerous buildings of varying sizes and conditions loomed over the group. Plants were overgrown in some buildings. Blood and body parts were strewn all over the ground.
A dancing zombie just destroyed the whole somber scene.
Stake made a low grunting noise and waved his monstrous arms to greet them. However, they didn't think it was that friendly but could see the zombie's intent.
Stake threw over the cardboard for them to read it. While the meet and greet was happening the other survivors were busy finding and collecting orbs from the corpses.
It's messy work but honest work. It was probably the most common job out there right now, a stable job and good pay.
Of course it was dangerous work for the average person and it was only great for those enabled with extraordinary powers.
"Adult things eh? Alright we got lots of those, clean water and food.. Alright we'll come back here next week" the scrawny person replied after reading it.
Stake the stalker was about to walk away
"Wait before you go, Mark over here forgot to ask, who are you.. You know like what are you exactly" Garry asked as he stares at Stake the Stalker.
Obviously Stake couldn't speak so he made a series of low and high grunting noises.
…
The survivors left but they didn't bother to clean up the streets.
Atkinson thought long and hard and believed that there probably weren't many survivors like them.
Coordinated, heavily-armed, and enabled. They must be part of a large survivor town that is heavily protected and safe from zombie hordes.
Atkinson decided to eat more and increase his mind-sense range of control and vision. In the next few days that's all he did.
But he also learned a few interesting things about the zombie hordes controlled by a nest, they were like slime molds in a way.
They seek out organisms not infected with their unique spores in a random but calculative way, if the zombies moving south didn't meet with any organisms then they will return and slowly travel to another random destination.
Of course, zombies are not exactly like slime molds so there are random zombies still pacing around from when they were first infected.
While some walked mindlessly in no particular direction.
Organisms also include wild and domestic animals obviously, but he hasn't seen any zombie animals.
The domestic animals must've been eaten by the fungi zombies since he has not seen a single cat, dog, or bird… you name it.
Interestingly, he also hasn't seen any wild animals but maybe that's because he is in the city at the moment.
Stake the stalker zombie was doing well.
If his fungi growth counted as muscles then he grew stronger. A few parts of the fungi on Stake were solid as stone.
Naturally, Atkinson was doing very well all he did was eat, sleep, poop, and repeat.
However, he did work out, he tried practicing some hand combat techniques from the saved shows and movies he downloaded.
Anyways, it wasn't very successful. However his power did increase successfully, and now the experience bar was level 2 and a third to level 3.
Now he could control 2 zombies at once, the way he 'saw' it: an analogy would be the best way to describe it.
He could see two points of views from the two zombies. It felt innate like he was born to see the world this way.
With multiple perspectives and a truly broad mind. Smart and wise.
Should I get another stalker zombie? They are very useful, strong, fast, intimidating, and can regenerate.
There are now more zombie bodyguard options to choose from now. The battle ground is littered with hundreds of zombies and quite a few new ones.
Meanwhile, the group of survivors driving back to their safe camp were conversing about today's weird encounter.