Everybody stared for some seconds at the strange scene, illuminated by the moonlight.

  Gustav had his sword extended towards the staggering soldier, trying to force him to stop advancing. But the soldier kept pushing forward, ignoring the point of the sword ripping through his skin.

  Gustav was screaming for the Gamers to help him, and had to walk backwards to avoid being grabbed by the extended arms of the soldier. Through all the struggle, the soldier remained completely silent, focused on trying to reach for his prey.

  The other Gamer was struggling on the ground against another soldier. The Gamer was holding the face of the soldier away, while the soldier chomped at the air between them, trying to bite him, and cwed at the face of the Gamer, who already had some pretty deep cuts. The soldier was big and seemed very heavy, almost crushing the Gamer under his weight.

  Arthur and Mark reacted at the same time, running towards the fights. Mark focused on the soldier struggling with the Gamer on the ground. Arthur went towards the one harassing Gustav.

  Mark arrived next to the couple struggling on the ground, and his first instinct was to drag the soldier away from the Gamer and kick him a couple of times to make him understand that he couldn’t win this fight, that he was outnumbered.

  But then he noticed the depth of the cuts on the face of the Gamer. The blood covering his face. The fear in his eyes. And the desperate bites at the air of the soldier, acting more like an animal than a human being.

  And something told him that there was no reasoning with that man.

  He was already too far gone.

  Mark looked for a moment to the side and saw Arthur cutting with his sword the back of the knee of the soldier harassing Gustav, making him fall to the ground.

  Mark crouched down, grabbed the head of the soldier with his left hand, and thrust his dagger from the right, towards the side of the head. He went in with all his strength, plunging the bde until only the pommel of the dagger stuck out.

  The soldier stopped moving immediately, as if suddenly deactivated. And Mark helped the Gamer push the body away. Then Mark put his left hand on the soldier’s head, grabbed the pommel with his right hand, and pulled until he managed to take out the dagger.

  It was just as disgusting and brutal as he had expected. But he did manage to avoid puking. His hands were shaking. He told himself it was adrenaline. Not fear.

  The Gamer was crying desperately, muttering something.

  “Dead… dead…”

  “Yeah,” Mark answered, trying to find a pce to clean his dagger. “He’s dead now, don’t worry.”

  He looked to the side and saw how Arthur was taking the situation as an opportunity to give a lesson to Gustav and the rest of the Gamers about how important it was to pay attention:

  “If you’re fucking around and they take you down, you’re putting everybody else in danger!”

  He was giving his back to the soldier he had maimed, who crawled towards him in silence, his face contorted with fury.

  “We depend on each other! And you need to take your responsibilities seriously!” Arthur continued.

  The Gamer at the feet of Mark managed to catch his breath.

  “No… Not dead now. He was dead already.”

  “What?” Mark looked at him without understanding.

  “He was already dead...” repeated the Gamer.

  Mark looked at the soldier lying at his feet and bent down to turn it over, groaning with the effort of moving the heavy body.

  From the corner of his eyes, he could see that the soldier crawling towards Arthur was only a couple of feet away from reaching Arthur’s leg. The soldier made a st effort to grab it…

  And Arthur walked a couple of steps away, and then looked back. He seemed a little irritated.

  “I’m giving you a fucking chance here, man. To live another day. I don’t care what some gods say. We don’t have to be enemies. Not here. Not now.”

  But the soldier kept crawling towards him. There was something desperate in his movement, something primal. The moonlight kept illuminating the scene, and the snarling face of the soldier.

  “Okay, I guess I wouldn’t want to be left like this either,” continued Arthur. “Bleeding out alone is not a good way of going out.”

  Arthur got ready to finish the soldier. He put a knee on his back, making him stop moving, and raised his sword, preparing to plunge it into the soldier’s heart.

  “Stop!” Mark shouted.

  Arthur stopped his sword in the middle of the descending path.

  “What?” he asked, now looking at Mark. He pressed his knee with a little bit more strength, fighting the efforts of the soldier to turn around.

  “It’s a zombie!” Mark shouted.

  He looked again at the body of the soldier he had “killed” just a moment ago. The soldier had been completely cold to the touch, as if he had died many hours ago. Probably this morning, in the battlefield, Mark thought. Also, his face had been completely pale, the lips already shriveled and dry. More revealing of it all was the massive open wound he had on the chest, where he had been injured in a way that made it impossible for anybody to survive, exposing the white of his ribs, and some disgusting organs and stuff Mark made an effort not to look at.

  “It’s a zombie,” he repeated, more to convince himself than anyone else. The Gamers watching the whole thing started muttering, and a couple of them drew their swords.

  Arthur looked at Mark, frowning. Then to the soldier under his knee, still struggling to turn around. Then he looked at Mark again…

  And he smiled.

  “Fuck you…” he said.

  “I mean it!” Mark answered, approaching. “They are fucking zombies!”

  He didn’t like the fear in his own voice. So he tried to level it a little when he added:

  “Somebody check the one under Arthur’s knee. I’m pretty sure he’s dead already.”

  Of the more than twenty Gamers, not a single one volunteered. Suddenly the Gamer whose face had been cut by the zombie, and had been very rudely ignored until then, found himself being treated by many of his comrades—because apparently six people were necessary to clean some injuries and try to bandage them a little.

  The rest of the Gamers kept still, hoping somebody else would volunteer. And after a couple seconds of embarrassing silence, Emily approached Arthur very fast, leaned down, touched the neck of the soldier lightly and ran back with the rest of the Gamers, hiding a little behind Tobias.

  “Yep. He’s very cold. Totally dead.”

  Arthur kept struggling with the immobilized soldier under his knee. He smiled at the young woman.

  “I’m pretty sure dead people don’t struggle like this fucker is struggling. You barely touched him. If you want to be sure he’s dead, you should at least take his pulse.”

  Emily hid a little more behind Tobias.

  “There’s no way I’m doing that. No way at all. Why don’t you just stab it in the heart and see what happens? If it’s really a zombie, it shouldn’t kill it, right?”

  Arthur smiled a little.

  “Sure. So I should do exactly what I was about to do… Everybody agreed?”

  Nobody said anything. And Arthur drove his sword into the heart of the soldier below him. Without hesitation.

  And the soldier kept struggling under his knee, as if nothing had happened. As if he didn’t have a sword stuck in his back.

  “Huh…” Arthur muttered, pulling the sword out. The bde shone under the moonlight, the part covered with blood having a sinister glimmer.

  “Aim for the head,” Tobias said. “A zombie is killed by destroying the brain.”

  “Thank you, Tobias,” Arthur answered, nodding to him. “I will do that.” Then he drove his sword into the zombie’s head, which spasmed for a few seconds before going still.

  Then the Gamers approached, eager to take a look at the zombie—and the guy with the cuts on his face was again left alone with his misery.

  Tobias and another of the Gamers, named Wyatt, crouched down to see the zombie up close.

  “This is crazy…” said Tobias.

  “I know…” answered Wyatt.

  “This is horrible…” continued Tobias.

  “I know…”

  “This is… pretty awesome.”

  Wyatt looked at Tobias, both of them now smiling.

  “I know!”

  Tobias continued talking, now with an excited tone.

  “How can this be happening? There has to be an expnation.”

  “So many possible ones!”

  “I know!” Tobias excimed. “Eldritch Powers, Astral Convergence, Cursed Land, Elemental Forces…” he kept adding possibilities while counting them on his fingers.

  “Maybe that’s why they say we’re the apocalypse? Maybe we’re all carrying the zombie virus!”

  “Zombie Virus,” nodded Tobias, raising a finger and adding it to his list.

  Another of the Gamers, named Jackson, said:

  “If there’s magic, it has to be necromancy. A powerful necromage did it.”

  “That’s absurd! The other armies don’t have a magic book!” Wyatt answered.

  “What makes you think only Johan thought about buying one?”

  That made everybody stop for a moment. The thought of not having that edge was a literal death sentence.

  “No,” ended saying Tobias, who had a little more information than the others thanks to the conversation with Johan in the tent. “They wouldn’t have learned so much already. And you only Level when sleeping, so they haven’t had the time to do this.”

  “You don’t know!” Jackson said. “You’re just making it up! You don’t even know the variables!”

  Tobias got a little defensive:

  “Aren’t you the guy who asked Johan if he was a front-end or back-end developer? How stupid can you be?”

  Jackson actually started shouting:

  “It says a lot about the way of thinking of a person! It’s not the same how a front-end developer will tackle…”

  Arthur cleared his throat to get everybody’s attention. Then he exhaled deeply, as if disappointed.

  “I have been telling you to pay fucking attention… And you’re all debating about stupid things when you have two goddamn zombies walking in your back. Two zombies you should have seen already.”

  The Gamers got startled, and when they turned, they saw two zombies staggering towards them. One was approaching fast, about thirty yards more advanced than the other, who was dragging one of his legs as if it no longer worked.

  The Gamers were afraid. Terrified. Arthur took it as a learning opportunity.

  “You all said you wanted to come. You said you were ready. Prove it. Right now. One of you go take down the first zombie.”

  Mark looked with some curiosity. It was fascinating to see who would grow to the challenge, and who wouldn’t dare to. He kind of wished he had somebody with him to bet on it…

  Eventually, the brave Gamer who volunteered was Gustav. It was Gustav who gathered his courage and took a step forward, towards the first zombie… His sword shaking in his hand…

  We could also bet on whether he’ll survive…, Mark thought.