Apocalypse Reset: My Crab Can Heal the World!

Suddenly, it gyrates - the cosmonaut who ostensibly stares at them from the other side of the barrier.

"AH! AH! AH!"

The astronaut air-trusts over and over, grunting every time it does: "AH!"

"What in the…"

"Yep," Eldrie says, nervous. "That's him. Corpsie."

The spaceclad zombie stops mid-thrust and points a hand in their direction.

"Came here for me, you naughty boys?"

It's impossible to tell, but it seems like the crazed zombie would have winked or made a kissy face after that.

And then, in a flash, the zombie is just inches away from them, its arms rested on the barrier wall.

The head tilts, the black glass on the helmet completely obscuring the face inside.

"It can touch the barrier…" Barns frets.

"OH ME? YE-UH! Space suits aren't evil, you silly! SILLY!"

The second 'silly' is a screech so loud that Barns almost falls off his feet in surprise.

It paws at the barrier, sickly, twitching, tweaking hands grabbing at whatever it can.

"Come play…" it says, sad and dejected.

Barns has never seen an aura so malicious. The bloodlust radiating off the deranged creature is palpable.

"Please?"

Barns takes a step back from the barrier. "It's two against one," he whispers to Eldrie. "What should we do? The horde is nowhere in sight. We can end this before they arrive, and run back into the barrier."

"Which one of you is Barns? You're cute. Mister Emperor didn't tell me you'd be cute. Tee-hee. I bet it's YOU!"

The zombie makes a dramatic flourish toward…Eldrie. The former vampire crosses his arm over his chest, trying to hide himself.

"...Is what I would say, but damned if I don't have eyeballs in here. What's it like? I don't even remember. Oh, boys…don't they feel so small when you're looking around? I remember how shocked I was when I ripped one out and saw how big that bad boy was! Hehe, not the first time I was surprised by something unexpectedly big…like the one time I slurped up an entire intestine. You know an intestine can wrap around the whole planet, or some bullshit like that? It also fits nicely in my tummy."

"I don't -" Barns starts, but he can't continue. The overwhelming sense of dread throttles his mind so strongly he's disoriented. Can barely even think.

"Mister Emperor said such nice things to me the other day," the cosmonaut says, pining. "Not that I met him or anything. He talks RIGHT into my brain. Like a droning voice that never turns off. It just talks and talks and - oh, you wouldn't believe it. It's enough to DRIVE SOMEONE FUCKING CRAZY, IF YOU CAN IMAGINE."

It bangs its head against the barrier so hard the glass on its helmet begins to crack. "We should really play, you know. I had the horde walk away so we'd have a nice big open field to run around and chase each other in. Can I be 'It'? I'm 'It'! Yes!"

The zombie dashes away from the wall, beckoning them forward. "Come on! Chase me!"

"Let me try something," Eldrie says coolly, nocking an arrow.

He aims it with precision and fires quickly - the arrow shoots through the barrier and passes through the cosmonaut's head, breaking through the glass. The zombie flies back from the impact of the arrow through its skull and lands on the ground.

"Too easy," Barns says. "No way it's dead."

It lays there on the ground, completely immobile - arrow sticking out of its head.

They wait there for a full minute, making sure it doesn't spring back up and do something horrible.

"Should we…" Eldrie finally says, another arrow prepared to fire.

"Yeah. Whatever trick it has prepped, we're ready."

They step out of the barrier - cautiously, and approach the corpse.

As they stand over it, the astronaut certainly appears to be dead.

"There's no way," Barns says. "Wasn't this thing on the level of Adon or Adea?"

"That was…my understanding." 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

"Helllllooooo!"

They turn to a sudden sound, where they see another figure standing about twenty meters away.

It's wearing a spacesuit. It's waving. It's dancing. It's hard to deny, but the figure is identical to the one they just killed.

Barns glances back to the corpse - it's different, now. No longer wearing a spacesuit. Instead, all he sees is a festering pile of tar and flesh, vaguely in the shape of a human.

"What the - !"

"That's not how you play hide and seeeeeeek!" the cosmonaut shouted from far away. "You were supposed to catch me! With your hands! Oh wait, that's not hide and seek, that's tag!"

"How did you do that!" Barns roars.

"Do what?"

"Change places, you freak!"

"Oh. I didn't change places. You killed that guy. Which is kinda bad! Poor fella. He didn't even want the cool spacesuit."

The zombie starts dancing again, lost in its own world.

"Should I shoot again?"

"I don't think it'll work, for some reason," Barns says with a glower. "It's hard to say what's going on here. Are there multiple Corpsies? Or did it somehow swap places with another zombie?"

"If there were multiple, wouldn't this thing be mourning the death of a comrade?"

"Highly unlikely. These Corpsies are insane."

The zombie screeches at them again. "If you asshat fuckos don't want to chase me, you could have just said so!"

Barns withdraws the blades of the Silver Rake, uneasy.

"That's okay! We can switch it up! I'll be a good little zombie, I promise! Tee-hee!"

For as innocuous as it acts, the being is pure terror. The unpredicatbility hide a hideous hunger for blood that made Barns' skin crawl.

"How about this!" the zombie shouts, putting both hands up to its helmet and leaning toward them. "I'll be the chaser, and you can both be 'It'!"

Realization dawns quickly as the zombie begins to run. Despite being undead and wearing all that heavy equipment…

It's fast.

Impossibly fast.

On them from a hundred meters out before they can even turn around.