Night in the farmlands was worse than day. The silence wasn't silence—it was listening. Every cricket, every whisper of wind felt like a warning. John sat against a broken tractor, revolver across his lap, cigarette ember glowing faint. His eyes refused to shut.
That's when he heard it.
A screech—high, sharp, inhuman. It sliced through the fields like a blade.
John flicked his cigarette into the dirt and cocked the revolver. He knew that sound. Survivors called them Ferals. Crimson-skinned demons, fast as wolves, mad with hunger. If a Shambler was a joke, a Feral was the punchline that ripped your throat out.
The first shape darted between corn stalks. Too fast to see clearly—just a blur of red, limbs bending wrong, teeth flashing. Then another. Then three more. They circled.
John didn't breathe. His revolver tracked shadows, but he didn't fire. Wasting a shot meant death. The Ferals moved quicker than his trigger finger anyway.
A low growl echoed, closer this time. His hand brushed the handle of his knife.
He realized something—they weren't charging. Not yet. They were waiting. Herding him.
John's mind worked quick. He slipped low to the dirt, sliding into the tractor's hollowed shell. Rust flaked under his palms. His heartbeat thundered against metal.
One of them screeched, and suddenly the others answered. They darted closer, red bodies twitching like firelight. Their claws scraped against the tractor frame. John could smell them—blood and rot baked into skin.
He closed his eyes. Darkness. He waited.
The screeches faltered. The scratching slowed.
The Ferals hissed, sniffed, chittered like broken things. John's memory clicked—Ferals saw poorly in absolute dark. They hunted by movement, by panic.
So he became a corpse. Perfectly still, perfectly dead.
Minutes bled by like hours. His muscles screamed to twitch, to breathe deep. He stayed stone.
Then—silence. Just the wind again.
John opened his eyes. The fields looked empty. He slid from the tractor, revolver raised.
But the night wasn't done.
One last Feral broke from the shadows, sprinting straight at him. Twenty miles per hour of teeth and rage.
BOOM.
John's revolver cracked the night open. The Feral's head split wide, its body skidding into the dirt at his boots. He reloaded slowly, smoke curling from the barrel.
The others were gone. For now.
John lit another cigarette with shaking hands, staring into the black fields. His journal waited in his pack, but he didn't write tonight. Some things weren't worth remembering.