Inside the Trade Center building in the Knoxville Industrial Park, everything had turned into a bloody graveyard.
The order Lorenzo once maintained so carefully was gone, replaced by severed limbs scattered everywhere.
Some human. Some walkers.
The entire building reeked of rot and blood.
The gunfire and explosions from the human resistance had dwindled to almost nothing. All that remained were the dragging footsteps of walkers roaming the halls, and the faint, wet sounds of them feeding on corpses.
Lorenzo. Wagner. André. Marco.
The once-dominant core of the Red Scarf Gang in Knoxville… now only these four remained.
To their credit, they had held out.
Against over a thousand walkers and a pack of useless Knoxville gang lackeys, Lorenzo, Wagner, the Italian bodyguards, and a handful of Wagner's men had managed to grind the horde down to fewer than a hundred.
The remaining walkers were scattered across the building. No longer an immediate threat, but still impossible to ignore.
The four of them stood back-to-back at the end of a fourth-floor corridor, a position easy to defend and hard to assault.
Empty shell casings gleamed underfoot. Around them, piles of bodies, both human and walker, had stacked up into low barricades.
Wagner and the two surviving Italian bodyguards were exhausted, but their eyes remained sharp as they guarded Lorenzo.
Lorenzo himself was different.
His expensive suit was in tatters. His dark brown hair was clumped together with dried blood.
The elegance he once carried had collapsed along with his men. As one bodyguard after another had been dragged away, something inside him had broken.
What remained on his once-handsome face was something close to a nervous breakdown.
He breathed heavily, his unfocused gaze sweeping across the wreckage as he muttered to himself.
"It's over… it's all over… my kingdom… my order…"
His voice trembled, thick with disbelief and madness.
"How did this happen? A bunch of mindless things… how could they… This is impossible!"
He grabbed his hair, his body trembling.
For someone obsessed with control, this kind of total, inexplicable defeat was worse than death.
Wagner glanced at him, concerned.
"Mr. Lorenzo, calm down! We're still alive! There aren't many walkers left. We need to find a way out!"
"Calm down?!"
Lorenzo snapped his head toward him, his light brown eyes bloodshot, his voice sharp.
"How am I supposed to calm down?! Look around you! Everything is gone! Destroyed by those walking corpses!"
He froze suddenly, his gaze turning hollow and obsessive.
"Maybe… this is God's cruelest curse…"
At that moment, slow, dragging footsteps echoed from the shadows at the other end of the corridor.
More walkers?
The four of them instantly tensed, raising their weapons toward the sound.
Even Lorenzo, on the verge of collapse, lifted his nearly empty MP5.
The footsteps were slow and heavy, accompanied by wet scraping sounds and low, rasping groans.
Several walkers staggered around the corner.
They looked no different from the others. Filthy. Stiff.
"Damn it! Does this ever end?" André cursed, pulling the trigger.
Bang! Bang!
The shots hit two walkers in the chest, punching bloody holes through them, but they only staggered and kept moving.
"Headshots, idiot!" Wagner snapped, raising his weapon.
"Wait." Lorenzo suddenly raised a hand.
He narrowed his eyes.
"Look… don't you think their movements are a little too coordinated?"
The walkers seemed unaware of them, drifting aimlessly.
But their paths… were subtly forming a flanking pattern.
"That's not right…" André frowned, tightening his grip on his MP5.
For a split second, all their attention was drawn forward.
And then—
Everything changed.
From the shadows on the flank, several "walkers" burst out at an impossible speed.
At the same time, one of the walkers in front suddenly lunged forward, accelerating sharply.
"What the hell?!"
"Did they mutate?! How are they this fast?!"
"Behind us!"
Wagner and the bodyguards reacted instantly, swinging their guns around.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
Gunfire tore through the corridor.
But what happened next was even more shocking.
The charging "walkers" yanked nearby real walkers into their path, using them as shields.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
The bullets tore those unlucky walkers apart, dropping them instantly.
And in that brief moment of cover, during the reload—
the attackers were already on top of them.
"Drop your weapon!" Carver shouted out of habit.
Lorenzo and the others froze.
Their minds struggled to process what they were seeing.
Walkers… using tactics?
Walkers… speaking?
No.
Not walkers.
Humans.
Humans wearing walker skin.
The shock cost them a split second.
Several precise shots rang out.
Almost at the same time, the weapons in Wagner, André, and Marco's hands were blasted away.
The impact tore open their palms, sending pain shooting through their wrists.
Lorenzo's MP5 was hit directly in the receiver and instantly rendered useless.
Then the attackers closed in.
Four figures, moving like ghosts.
Joint locks. Strikes. Disarms. Fast. Efficient. Overwhelming.
Wagner reacted first, trying to fight back, but his opponent was far stronger and more skilled than he expected.
A brutal strike from a rifle butt slammed into his jaw, knocking the world dark as he stumbled to the ground.
André and Marco were taken down just as quickly, cold gun barrels pressed against the backs of their heads.
Lorenzo didn't move.
His weapon was gone.
He simply stood there, staring at the figures in front of him.
Covered in rotting flesh. Smeared with dark, clotted blood. Reeking of decay.
And yet—
their eyes were sharp. Focused. Alive.
Nothing like the empty gaze of walkers.
He had lost.
Lorenzo Calabria had lost completely.
Absurdly. Completely.
And somehow… fascinating.
"What… are you?"
There was no fear in his voice.
Only overwhelming curiosity.
He even leaned forward slightly, trying to get a better look at these "things" that had destroyed his kingdom of order.
...
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