"Bang."
The boom was not a sound. It was pure violence manifested as a pressure wave, slamming against the walls of Fort Thares like the blow of an angry god. Johann felt it in his bones, in his grinding teeth, in the hollow cavity of his chest where something that was not a heart beat with a strange rhythm.
He didn't see the imperial soldier in the corner of the room stand up. He felt its movement—the scrape of rough wool on stone, the draw of air that shouldn't be drawn by lungs already pierced by bullets, the dry creak of joints like an unoiled old door.
"Fire!" yelled Weiner, but his voice was different now—higher, filled with a tremor of fear no longer hidden behind a soldier's mask.
A musket roared. Johann covered his ears too late. The sound in the enclosed stone space was more like thunder in a cave. Thick white smoke filled the air already saturated with the smell of death. A pea-sized lead ball hit the imperial soldier's chest—right next to an existing hole, the place where the real Johann Reth's blood had flowed out eight hours earlier.
Thud.
A dull sound. No scream of pain. No shout. Just the sound of dead flesh being penetrated.
The soldier staggered back a step. Its stiff right leg jerked sideways, seeking footing, finding it. Then it stepped forward again. One step. Two. Its movements were mechanical, stuttering. Like a toy clock whose spring was almost broken.
"The head!" The words came from Johann's mouth, but the tone was alien—a mix of Alex's panicked shout and Johann's trained command. "Destroy the head!"
Gilbert didn't need to be told twice. The heavy axe in his hand spun, slicing the air with a low hiss promising death. Crunch! Not the sound of flesh being cut. This was the sound of splitting wood, or more accurately—a coconut being smashed with a stone.
The axe sank into the temple of another rebel corpse beginning to rise from a pile of grain sacks. Fragments of bone and something dark—dark as tar, dark as a starless night—scattered onto the stone floor. The body fell.
But its legs kicked. A regular rhythm. One, two, one, two. Like a clock's tick. Its hands clawed at the air, stiff fingers trying to grasp something that wasn't there. Then the palms slapped the floor, pushing the body to rise again.
"Bang."
Another cannon. Which one was this? Johann had stopped counting after five. This vibration felt different, deeper, more personal. As if the earth beneath the fortress were writhing in pain.
In a corner near the stairs leading up, stones from the wall cascaded down. Two rebels standing too close—one of them a young man no older than eighteen with acne on his chin—were caught. One screamed, his voice cut off when a stone the size of a baby's head struck his shoulder, crushing his collarbone with a sound like a dry twig snapping. The other simply went silent, half-buried, eyes still wide open staring at the ceiling as if wondering why.
Chaos was no longer something coming. Chaos had arrived, and it wore a cloak of gunpowder smoke, blood, and cold sweat.
Three corpses were now active in the stuffy underground storage room. They didn't run. They didn't scream. They didn't even seem angry or hungry. They just walked. But their direction wasn't random—they walked toward movement, toward the warmth of living bodies, toward the mist of breath still visible in the cold morning air.
A rebel with a beard beginning to gray tried to leap over a stack of crates filled with cannonballs. His leg, already tired from hours of watch, caught on a loose binding rope. He fell with a heavy thump, air forced from his lungs in a pained hiss.
Before he could draw another breath, the first imperial soldier was upon him.
Stiff hands grabbed his ankle. The grip was unnaturally strong. Johann saw from ten feet away—the fingers were like claws, clamping with a force that shouldn't be possible for something that had been dead for hours.
"Let go! Damn it, let go!" the rebel screamed, his free leg kicking wildly, hitting the corpse's ribs. Thud. Thud. Dull sounds. The corpse didn't react. Not in pain. Not in anger.
Its other hand reached for his throat.
Johann moved. His body moved before his mind finished giving the order. He vaulted over a wooden crate, landing with a dusty sound, his knees bending to absorb the impact automatically, trained. The bayonet in his hand—still smeared with the blood of Frederich and Luke—felt light now, like an extension of his own arm.
A thrust.
Not a slash. Not a hack. A precise, directed thrust, like a surgeon performing an operation. The steel tip found the gap between the neck vertebrae and the base of the skull. Resistance—bone—then a wet, piercing sound that made Johann's stomach churn.
The corpse ceased movement instantly. Went limp, like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
But Johann had no time for relief. Because the first imperial soldier—the one already shot in the chest—was now only three feet away.
From this distance, Johann could see details that froze his blood.
The soldier's facial skin was corpse-pale, where blood had settled after death. The eyes, which should have been brown—Johann could tell from remaining pigment—were now clouded like glass smeared with oil. No light within. No awareness. Only emptiness.
But the most horrifying was the mouth. Slightly open. Inside, dark teeth, blackened gums. And the tongue—the tongue was a blue-black, swollen, looking like foreign flesh that didn't belong there.
A hand reached for him.
Johann ducked, a reflex not entirely his own, inherited from Johann Reth's six months of training in the Südsea barracks, then swung the bayonet toward the temple.
Thud.
Not the sound of piercing living flesh. This was the sound of piercing frozen, hard, resistant flesh. The blade went in maybe three inches. Johann pulled it back, and something black and viscous—dark as old motor oil, thick as crystallized honey—clung to the steel blade.
The smell.
It stabbed his nose, different from the smell of rotting flesh he'd inhaled since his awakening. This was a chemical, metallic smell, like rusted iron mixed with damp earth and something sweet turned sour. The smell of a laboratory. The smell of a failed experiment.
"Bang."
Another explosion. This time in the room's eastern wall. Stones cracked, and a fissure appeared—a palm-width crack, running from floor to ceiling like a giant's scratch mark. Through the crack, light entered.
The light of dawn.
Pale yellow. Cold. Not warming.
That light illuminated the room with cruel clarity, and Johann saw what was truly happening.
Six corpses. All male. Ages varied from teenager to perhaps forties. Some wore the empire's dark blue uniforms with faded eagle embroidery on the chest. Others wore rough civilian clothes—leather jackets, work trousers, farmer's boots. Rebels.
All moved in exactly the same way.
Stiff. Stuttering. Like wooden puppets with half-broken strings, manipulated by a drunken puppeteer. No coordination between arms and legs. Right leg moved forward, but left arm moved. Head lolled to one side, but the eyes—those empty eyes—remained fixed forward.
The eyes. All empty. No expression. No recognition. No emotion. Just two clouded orbs in grayish faces.
And the mouths. Some open. Some closed. But none made sound. No groans. No words. Only the hiss of air moving in and out of damaged lungs, like folding paper.
"Form a circle!" shouted Weiner, trying to take control, his voice straining but still cracking. "Melee weapons to the front! Muskets behind, reload!"
Those remaining—eight rebels plus Johann—gathered, backs to each other. A circle of living humans, breath forming white mist in the cold air, surrounded by a circle of corpses that did not breathe at all.
Gilbert beheaded one of the corpses with his axe. Crunch! Not the sound of flesh being severed. The sound of hard wood splitting.
The head rolled on the dusty floor, coming to rest face up. Johann saw from the corner of his eye: the mouth of the head still opened and closed. Rhythmically. Like a fish on land. The empty eyes stared at the ceiling.
The headless body walked three steps. One. Two. Three. Then fell. But its hands, God, its hands—still moved. Stiff fingers clawed at the stone floor, leaving faint scratches.
"They won't die!" Gilbert yelled, his face pale beneath layers of grime, sweat, and other people's blood. "They're already dead, but they won't die!"
"They are dead," someone said, his voice flat, hollow. "That's precisely the problem."
"Stab the base of the skull," Johann said, his breath becoming labored, lungs burning. "Or destroy the brain completely."
Weiner nodded, too panicked, too terrified, to question further.
"Bang."
This explosion was different. Deeper. More rumbling. As if the earth beneath the fortress were opening its mouth.
The ceiling above them groaned. The old oak beam that had supported this room for possibly a hundred years sagged. The hairline cracks that had existed for ages now widened into gaping fissures. Dust fell. Then plaster fragments. Then small stones.
"The ceiling's coming down!"
And at that moment—right as that warning sound echoed—the corpses attacked.
They didn't attack with strategy. Not with tactics. Not with coordination. They simply walked forward. But their numbers, and their total disregard for danger, including the debris beginning to fall from above, made them dangerous in a primitive, unstoppable way.
A rebel with a bandaged arm—the bandage already a dark red—got trapped between two corpses. He tried to turn, the short sword in his hand glinting in the dim light.
One of the corpses—a young imperial soldier with a still-smooth face—reached for him. Not with an open hand. With fingers locked, straight, stiff.
The fingers stabbed.
Stabbed like daggers.
Through the leather jacket. Through the linen shirt beneath. Through skin and muscle and into the abdomen.
The rebel screamed. A living sound, full of pain, full of fear. Bright, living, shimmering fresh blood spurted, a stark contrast to the thick black fluid from the corpses.
The corpse didn't stop. Its hand remained embedded in the rebel's stomach as it kept walking forward, pushing the writhing rebel back. They fell together—corpse on top, human beneath.
Johann moved.
This body moved with surprising efficiency. He didn't think—muscle and bone memory remembered the training, remembered thousands of repetitions on the drill field, remembered how to survive, how to kill—they thought for him.
A stab to the base of that corpse's skull. Pull. Move to the next.
One, two, three.
The bayonet went in and out. Each time resistance of bone, then piercing through. Each time a spurt of black fluid whose smell made his eyes water.
But there were too many. And he was getting tired.
Muscles that weren't his—Johann Reth's muscles. His right arm, already wounded by stone shrapnel, throbbed with pain. Breath that wasn't his breath became heavy, each inhalation feeling like inhaling dirty water.
Gilbert struggled against two corpses at once. His axe was effective—each swing broke bone, severed limbs—but required immense energy. And Gilbert, though strong, had been fighting since before dawn. His swings were slowing. Becoming less accurate. One swing missed, the axe striking the stone floor, spraying sparks.
Giovanni fought with pure panic. The short sword in his hand swung wildly, without pattern, without aim. Sometimes hitting a corpse's shoulder, cutting off a bit of dead flesh. Often missing entirely. His face was pure terror—eyes wide, lips trembling, sweat mixed with tears streaking his dirty cheeks.
Johann stabbed the fourth corpse—an old rebel with a white beard now tangled and stained black. The bayonet entered below the ear, exited the other side of the neck. The corpse fell.
But as Johann pulled the bayonet free, the fifth corpse—an imperial soldier with a missing left arm—grabbed his arm from behind.
Its grip was cold.
So cold.
Like ice.
And strong. Unnaturally strong. Johann twisted, trying to break free, but the fingers were like iron clamps. He could feel the bones in his arm creaking under the pressure.
From this close—face to face—he saw the corpse.
Young. Perhaps the age of this body. Twenty, twenty-one. Dirty blond hair stuck to a forehead that should have been sweaty but was now cold and stiff. On its chest, not one bullet hole, but two. One in the right shoulder. One right over the heart.
But the most horrifying were the eyes.
The blue eyes were now like glass windows smeared with oil and dust. Not seeing. But still aimed at Johann's face. Like two cameras focused on a target, with no understanding of what they saw.
No sound came from its open mouth. Only air escaping in a hiss—a hiss like wind through a small hole in a wall.
Johann kicked. A desperate kick, drawing power from a deep place—a place where the terrified Alex Tan and the trained Johann Reth met in the fundamental need to survive.
His foot hit the corpse's knee. Crunch! Bone broke. The corpse staggered, its grip weakening. Johann pulled free, backing away several steps.
His bayonet fell, clattering on the stone floor.
He glanced around quickly. An axe. There was an axe on the floor—belonging to a rebel who no longer moved, his body crushed by part of the collapsed ceiling.
Johann grabbed it. Heavier. Unbalanced. Its handle slick with blood—human blood, not the corpse's black fluid.
The corpse was standing again. The broken leg bent at an unnatural angle, but that didn't stop it. It took another step. Limping. But still advancing.
Johann swung the axe.
Not at the head. At the good leg.
Crunch!
Bone snapped with a dry sound that filled his ears. The corpse fell. But its hands still reached, fingers clawing the air just in front of Johann's feet.
Johann swung again. This time at the neck.
Not completely severed. But deep enough. Deep enough to make the head loll to one side, held only by some skin and muscle. Deep enough to make the body stop moving.
"Bang."
This explosion changed everything.
The main ceiling beam—right above their circle—snapped.
The sound was like thunder inside a cave. Not a rumble. An explosion. The centuries-old oak wood, never meant to withstand such pressure, finally gave up.
And then a ceiling section perhaps ten feet square collapsed.
Stone. Wood. Dust. Straw from insulation dried for decades. Hardened rat droppings. Spiderwebs. All cascaded down.
"RUN!"
They scattered. But not all made it.
Johann saw Gilbert struck by a large wooden beam. The beam—a piece of oak as thick as a man's thigh—landed squarely on his back. Gilbert didn't scream. He made a sound—a sound no human should make, the sound of air forced from crushed lungs. His face contorted, his mouth forming a word unheard. Then debris and dust covered him, hiding him from view.
"Gilbert!" Giovanni screamed, his name, his voice high, desperate. He tried to move forward, tried to pull his brother—Johann only now realized they were brothers—but another part of the ceiling collapsed between them. A curtain of stone and wood separated them.
Weiner grabbed Johann's arm with a strength that nearly tore muscle. "No time! To the eastern wall! The crack!"
They ran—Johann, Weiner, and two other surviving rebels, men whose names Johann didn't know—toward the crack in the eastern wall made by the earlier cannon fire.
The dawn light was brighter now, almost blinding to eyes accustomed to basement darkness for hours.
They emerged outside.
The world outside was a hellscape of enlarged scale and intensity.
Fort Thares was no longer a fortress. It was a stone tomb being cremated alive.
Fire licked at least six different places—the thatched roofs of barracks, piles of firewood in the inner courtyard, the armory in the western wing which occasionally exploded, sending fireballs into the morning sky. Thick black smoke billowed, forming a dark cloud that obscured what should have been a clear morning sky.
In the distance, in the valley below, Johann could see the imperial camp. Blue and silver tents in neat formations. Cannons still wisping smoke. Ranks of troops—infantry with muskets, cavalry on the flanks—stood in formation, waiting. Waiting for this fortress to fall completely. Waiting for fire and the walking dead to finish the job for them.
But Johann's mind, Alex's analytical mind, couldn't focus on that threat now. Not when a closer, more personal threat already surrounded him.
Because inside the fortress, in the inner courtyard now illuminated by raging flames and the cruel light of dawn, there were more.
More corpses. Moving.
A rebel with a gunshot wound to the head—half his face gone, showing white skull bone beneath—staggered along the western wall. His steps were uneven, lurching. Every few steps, he stopped, like a jammed machine, then started again.
Two dead imperial soldiers—one missing an arm, one with a broken left leg dragging behind like a severed tail—stood facing each other in the middle of the courtyard. Then, for no reason Johann could discern, they attacked each other. Not with anger. Not with skill. Just stiff punches hitting dead flesh. Thud. Thud. Dull, lifeless sounds. Like two puppets accidentally placed facing each other.
"To the commander's room!" Weiner yelled, his voice hoarse from smoke beginning to enter his lungs. "Captain Vogel might still be there! He knows the plan! He knows the way!"
They ran along the southern wall, avoiding the open area in the center of the courtyard where fire had formed a ten-foot-high wall of heat. The heat could be felt even from thirty feet away, searing the skin of Johann's face, making his eyes water not from emotion but from pure, blazing heat.