The Dead Brother's Vengeance,Rise of the Zombie King

After the zombie apocalypse broke out, a freak accident gave my brother and me immunity to the virusand the ability to command the undead.

My brother cared about humanity. He revealed his identity to save Muriel Maxwell, a Recon Squad captain who'd been infected with the zombie virus. In return, Muriel hailed him as humanity's last hope and welcomed him into the Bastion with the highest level of protection, swearing her undying loyalty.

I stayed outside the walls, leading my horde in circles for three days until I was sure he was safe. Then I left.

Three years later, I slipped back into the city for his wedding.

What I found instead was a human being strung up outside the Bastion walls as zombie bait.

The bait had been tortured beyond recognition. Days of it, at least. All four limbs severed. Nose and mouth carved away. A death by a thousand cuts, still in progress.

And his facewhat was left of itlooked exactly like my brother's.

Muriel Maxwell. Did I not tell you? If you ever betray my brother, I will bring a second apocalypse down on your head.

The bait they'd flung from the wall had no features left to speak of. The stumps of his limbs had turned black with rot. Every time the barbed whip kissed his body, flesh split open like wet paper, and dark red liquid dripped steadily onto the stone below.

I kept the Undead Legion hidden in the ruins outside the Bastion. The thick stench of blood was driving them into a frenzy.

A handful of strays broke formation, shrieking as they charged the gate. Arrows punched through the backs of their skulls with surgical precision. Second death, instant.

"Ha! These zombies are so damn stupid!"

"A few more rounds of this and we'll have the whole perimeter cleared!"

The soldiers on the wall were laughing, joking, shoving each other. Not a trace of the grim discipline they'd had three years ago.

I muttered the command phrase under my breath, layering another restraint over the Legion.

"That's it? A handful of zombies? Barely worth drawing my bow!"

At those words, the whipping stopped.

But someone immediately pulled out a knife, grinning.

A dull blade, sawing into living flesh. Pure, deliberate savagery.

A few of the younger soldiers covered their eyes, unable to watch.

The man on the wall never made a sound. Jaw clenched, teeth locked together. Impossible to tell whether he was already dead or simply refusing to scream.

Something ugly twisted in my gut.

How could the Bastion allow this? Even criminals had basic human rights.

"Hey! Put some effort into itmake him scream! Isn't he the one who supposedly commands the undead?"

The blood in my veins turned to ice.

In this entire world, only two people could command zombies. Me and my brother.

And my brother had voluntarily entered the Bastion as a senior researcher to help develop a vaccine for humanity. His status alone should have made him untouchable, and on top of that, his fiance Muriel Maxwell was at his side to protect him.

How could some random man used as bait possibly know about that abilitylet alone possess it?

My gaze snapped back to the figure on the wall.

I hadn't looked closely before. Now that I did, what I saw was worse than I'd thought.

His hair hung in matted clumps, stiff with dried blood, plastered across what remained of his face. The severed ends of his limbs had darkened to near-black, still weeping fresh blood. His nose and mouth had been cut clean off, the cruelty of it deliberate and methodical.

But his face. The shape of it, the bone structure beneath the ruin.

It looked like my brother.

No.

I slapped myself so hard my vision blurred.

How could I even think something that horrific?

That was not my brother. It couldn't be. Piers Henson held one of the highest positions in the Bastion. His body was unique, invaluable. There was no conceivable scenario in which he'd end up discarded and butchered as bait.

His vaccine research must have made a breakthrough. That was it. He was busy. Safe.

Yes.

I pulled out my communicator and fired off a message.

Every second I waited for a reply was agony.

I kept my eyes locked on the man hanging from the wall, searching for anythingany detail that would prove me wrong.

The communicator buzzed.

"Hey, bro! I'm doing great here at the Bastion. Come visit anytime!"

Attached was a photo of him inside a tailor's shop, trying on a perfectly fitted suit. Tall and elegant, clean and radiant, like something too pure for this ruined world.

That was my brother.

Three months ago, he'd called me, thrilled, to tell me Muriel had proposed.

He begged me to come to the Bastion for the wedding.

I turned him down, told him I was too far away to make it in time.

The truth was, I'd spent every single one of those three months walking, pushing myself to the limit day after day, until I finally reached the walls of the Bastion today.

Just in time to witness them using a human being as bait to lure zombies.

The next second, a dagger plunged deep into flesh.

And the one who drove it in was my brother's fiance. Muriel Maxwell.

He let out a piercing, bloodcurdling scream.

That voice. It was identical to my brother's.

The relief I'd barely allowed myself vanished, replaced by a dread that seized me by the throat.

His abdomen.

My gaze snapped to his stomach.

His frame was gaunt, wasted thin, but his belly was grotesquely swollen.

As if...

There was a baby strapped to him.

My brother had told me, beaming with joy, that Muriel was carrying his child. That I was going to be an uncle.

But up on the wall, Muriel's stomach was flat. Not a trace of pregnancy.

So where was the baby?

How could this be a coincidence?

My heart clenched again, tighter this time.

He'd endured everything else in silence. But now he screamed.

He was protecting his child.

He was wailing for his child.

What terrified me even more was this:

That scream had actually caused several low-rank zombies to break free of my suppression and bolt from the ruins.

The next instant, arrows punched through the backs of their skulls.

My entire body trembled. I felt like I'd been plunged into an ice bath.

He really could command zombies.

I threw caution aside, no longer caring if I was exposed, and wove through the rubble toward the gate.

I needed to see that man's face. Every detail of it.

Then, as if he sensed something, the man jerked his head up.

His eyes locked onto mine with surgical precision as I moved through the ruins.

One look. That was all it took. His entire body convulsed, thrashing with the wild desperation of a man possessed.

He nearly tore free.

Over a dozen soldiers threw their weight against the crane, shouting:

"Has he lost his mind? How is he fighting this hard? The whole crane's about to tip!"

"Good thing Commander Maxwell stuck that blade in when she did. One clean hit! I was worried it wouldn't be enough!"

"If it's not enough, just cut the thing off his belly and toss it down. More bait for the horde!"

The man's mouth gaped open. From his hollow, ruined throat came a ragged, guttural wail.

Blood streaked from both his eyes like crimson tears.

And in those eyes, so like mine, I saw it all.

Joy.

Longing.

Regret.

And sorrow.

My heart felt like a fist had closed around it and squeezed until I couldn't breathe.

I ran. Fled hundreds of yards back into the ruins.

My hands wouldn't stop shaking as I placed a video call to my brother inside the Bastion.

This time, it rang for over a minute before someone picked up.

A handsome face filled the screen. I spoke immediately:

"Do you know about the bait operation at the front gate?"

"Wait, are you outside the Bastion?"

I didn't answer. I pressed on:

"Where are you right now?"

"I'm at a tailor's, trying on suits. You're acting strange. Are you outside the Bastion?"

He asked the question a second time.

This time, I hung up.

I raised my head, eyes sharp as a hawk's, tracking every movement on the wall.

Up on the rampart, the squad leader beside Muriel pocketed a phone and leaned in close to whisper something in her ear. Far too close.

Closer than any professional distance would allow. I filed that away.

The next second, Muriel wrenched the dagger from his abdomen in one clean motion.

Then drove it in again. Hard.

She didn't stop there.

The blade twisted. The wet, grinding crack of something breaking made every hair on every neck stand on end.

Where the blade carved, flesh split open in a burst.

The bait's body lurched downward.

The stench of blood flooded the air again, so thick it was nearly enough to make a person retch.

His lips were bitten through, his mouth full of blood. He looked at me with raw, broken grief and shook his headbarely, almost imperceptibly.

He didn't want me to go out there.

"Give him an adrenaline shot. Don't let him die."

Darkness crept in.

The slaughter hadn't produced the results she'd wanted. Muriel's face was tight with fury.

I pressed my hand over my nose and mouth, fighting the urge to vomit.

I went back to the video call from earlier.

I'd screen-recorded it.

I studied every frame.

The fingers visible on the other end were thicker, longer than my brother's.

The hair length didn't match the photos that had been sent to me either.

They looked more like they belonged to the squad leader standing beside Muriel.

My brain detonated.

I had to confront that man myself.

I had to find out who he really was.

But at that moment, up on the wall, a blade flew with surgical precision.

The cloth strips shredded apart.

Their only connectionsevered in a single cut.

The bait thrashed forward, bending desperately at the waist, but his empty sleeves caught nothing.

Gravity did the rest. The bundle hit the ground with a wet thud and burst open in a spray of red.

"AHHH!"

He convulsed like he'd been electrocuted, thrashing wildly, his screams so raw they barely sounded human.

At the same instant, I let out a guttural snarl.

Every zombie holding position went berserk, surging toward the gate in a frenzy.

"There it is! That bastard really can command the undead. Too bad for him"

The squad leader beside Muriel cursed under his breath.

The guards were well-trained. Rifles up. A wall of gunfire.

But the zombies weren't attacking the walls.

They swarmed over one another, climbing shoulder to shoulder, stacking into a grotesque living ladder.

The sheer, suffocating numbers rendered the shotguns useless.

The guards stared, bewildered by the unnatural behavior.

"What are they doing?"

"Notheir target is HIM!"

Muriel screamed the order, lunging for the crane lever, trying to hoist the bait up and out of reach.

Too late.

Thousands of dead hands seized the bait's body, their collective force wrenching against hers.

The crane arm snapped.

"Kill him! Don't let him turn!"

The squad leader's voice cracked with panic.

An arrow split the air and punched straight through the bait's skull.

He killed him.

He was destroying the evidence.

Rage whited out my vision. I charged forward without thinking, without caring.

One thought. Only one. Climb that wall and kill the squad leader.

With the bait gone, the hunt was over.

They pulled back fast.

The scene left behind was carnage.

The zombie legion had taken devastating losses.

The man lay in the center of it all, like the ruined heart of a flower blown apart.

"No. Please don't let it beplease, God, don't let it be"

I stumbled through the piled corpses and pulled what was left of him into my arms.

Gently, I brushed the hair from his face. His skin was chalk-white, frozen in the agonized expression he'd worn when he died.

Identical to the brother in my memory.

"Don't... please..."

Tears streamed down my face. I traced along his unseeing eyes, past his cheek, behind his ear.

There, near the ear, a scabbed-over scar.

And behind ita small, familiar bump.

The moment my fingers found it, a ringing flooded my ears and swallowed every other sound. All that remained was the hammering of my own heart and the ragged saw of my breathing.

The last shred of hope I'd been clinging to crumbled to dust.

It was a hereditary trait in our family.

Dad had it. My brother had it. So did I.

"How... that's impossible... it can't be..."

Tears poured down my face. My lips trembled around words that wouldn't form. I couldn't breathe.

I tried to check for other marks on his body.

But his arms were gone. His legs were gone.

"AHHH!"

I collapsed into the heap of corpses and screamed until my throat tore.

This was fake.

This had to be one of Muriel's schemes.

I had to get inside the Bastion.

I had to confirm my brother was alive with my own eyes.

Drums and gongs echoed from within the walls. Celebrations. Humanity had reaped a bountiful harvest from the battle.

Brilliant lights flickered above the Bastion, painting the sky in garish color.

Outside the gate, corpses blanketed the ground in every direction. A wasteland of the dead.

I stripped a jacket off one of the fallen zombies and swapped it for my blood-soaked shirt.

People were celebrating inside. Not a single guard at the gate.

I pulled out my communicator and brought up my identification. Swiped it at the scanner.

A harsh red light. Entry denied.

I swiped again.

Red.

This was the credential Piers had registered for me, backed by his highest-level clearance. He'd told me once:

"You hate humans, but you'd never hurt them. I'm giving you top-level authorization. You can enter the Bastion anytime, anywhere."

But now I was locked out.

I stood at the gate for a long time. Silent.

My heartbeat grew heavier, louder, drowning out the drums inside.

I sent Piers a message, expecting nothing.

To my surprise, he replied almost instantly. A fresh verification code, followed by a text:

"The Information Division's been running a credential audit lately. Old passes got deactivated. Use this one for now."

That reply hit me like absolution.

I sucked in air, gasping, and felt reason flood back into my skull.

Piers was alive. He always handled my problems the moment they came in. Always.

The streets inside were packed with people, shoulder to shoulder.

No one noticed the gate crack open just wide enough for a body to slip through, then seal shut again.

And no one noticed the zombie disguised as a human trailing close behind me.

I called up the layout map Piers had sent me once and made straight for the laboratory. Room by room, I searched, until I found him in a sealed glass chamber at the end of the corridor.

"You came to see me!"

He bounced over like a rabbit, pressing himself against the glass, beaming at me.

My eyes dropped to his hands first. Clear palm lines. All ten fingers intact.

Then his body. Beneath the loungewear, both legs stood straight and whole.

My knees nearly buckled.

This was my brother. This was him.

Only

"Why are you locked in here?"

Before he could answer, Muriel rushed in, breathless.

"Piers has a sensitive constitution, and with the baby to look after, he caught a bit of a cold this afternoon when he went out. Just a precautionary quarantine." She paused, studying me. "Weren't you supposed to be out of town? You said you couldn't make it back."

I smiled. "You forget what Mom used to say? Whichever one of us gets married first, the other has to be his best man."

Through the glass, I raised my hand gently and pressed my palm against his.

"I knew you'd come!" He tilted his head, grinning wide. "I already picked out your suit. You're going to be the second most handsome guy at my wedding!"

He cocked his head to the side, eyes squinting with delight as he pictured it.

My smile froze.

Our mother died when we were four years old. She never lived long enough to say anything like that.

The glass was thick and cold. My hand was already ice.

But his palm, pressed against the other side, was still flushed pink with warmth.

"Stay this time, okay? Just get rid of those disgusting zombies already!" He pouted, wheedling, one finger tracing lazy circles against the glass where my palm rested.

That was his habit. Exactly his habit.

He couldn't remember words that were never spoken, but the little gestures were perfect.

"The zombies are my trump card," I said quietly. "If anyone ever hurts you, I can send them to settle the score."

"Zombies have no humanity! Even if you control them, they'll turn on you eventually!"

"Tell me something." I held his gaze, studying every flicker across his face. "Did you know they used live bait at the gate today?"

He froze for a split second, processing, then quickly said, "Oh, I know about that! Didn't they kill a bunch of zombies? Everyone's been celebrating!"

The last trace of a smile drained from my face.

My brother and I had different ambitions, but we respected each other's choices. I would never stop him from devoting his life to the Bastion, and he would never ask me to destroy my undead and submit to humanity.

My brother was the kindest, most tender-hearted person I'd ever known. He'd volunteered himself as a guinea pig to help develop a vaccine.

Someone that good would never hear about a person being strung up as bait and shrug it off like it was nothing.

My hands began to tremble. My heart hammered against my ribs. But I still couldn't let go.

"Come with me. Please."

He frowned. "What are you talking about? It's nothing but zombies out there. How could that be better than the Bastion? We have clean clothes, vegetables, real meat..."

Muriel chimed in immediately. "He's right. Piers still has a child to take care of, and we're about to get married"

"Is it that you don't want to leave," I cut in, my voice turning to ice, "or that you can't?"

My hand shot up. A throwing knife sang through the air and severed a power cable running along the ceiling.

The room plunged into darkness.

The brother who'd been chatting with me a heartbeat ago vanished. Gone. In the far corner of the ceiling, a black machine blinked its red light in frantic pulses.

I pointed at the empty room, my expression glacial. "Muriel. Is this how you've been taking care of my brother?"