Surviving Zombies Was Easier Than Raising Beast Cubs

Chapter 46: Chapter 46: What did they just say?

She looked past the floating hair, past the swollen shoulder, past the dead fingers dragging through the water.

There.

A vine was wrapped around the wrist.

The other end disappeared under the mud.

Swanly’s voice dropped.

”That is bait.”

Raku’s jaw tightened.

The drowned beastman’s fingers twitched.

The second cub made a small frightened sound against Swanly’s chest.

Immediately they all connected the dots and realized that some infected were actually still conscious!

Swanly’s stomach clenched because that was worse than hunger, worse than blind rot, worse than a dead thing crawling toward them with its mouth open.

”They are learning.”

The words came out too quiet.

Kael heard them anyway.

His hand tightened on her back.

Swanly knew that kind of silence. She had lived through the first time her old world realized the infected were not only chasing anymore. She remembered barricades that failed because something had pulled them open from the outside. She remembered people laughing from fear when they saw dead fingers using door handles.

She hated that memory.

She hated that this world was beginning to wear the same face.

They moved around the drowned body in a wide curve.

Raku went first this time, careful with each step. Soren watched the water ahead, while Kael kept Swanly and the cub between his body and the corpse. Swanly walked with the bow half raised, her eyes fixed on the swollen throat.

The corpse opened one eye.

The second cub saw it at the same time Swanly did.

His whole body went stiff.

Swanly did not let him scream.

She fired.

The arrow left the black bow with a quiet snap and sank straight into the rot core bulging under the dead beastman’s throat.

The corpse convulsed once.

Its open eye rolled toward her.

Then the body sank under the black water without a splash, as if something below had swallowed it whole.

The second cub buried his face into Swanly’s neck and shook.

”Too scary.”

The words were so small that Swanly’s heart almost cracked in two.

She pressed her cheek to his wet hair.

”I know, baby.”

Kael’s voice came from beside her, rough enough to sound torn from his chest.

”He should not be here.”

Swanly looked up at him.

The anger in Kael’s eyes was not for their son. It was aimed inward, sharp and merciless. He had not smelled the cub in the bundle. He had not stopped him from coming. He had walked his own son into this rotting death place and only noticed when it was too late.

Swanly knew that look.

She had worn it before.

The face of someone counting the ways they had failed after the danger had already arrived.

She reached for his hand with her free one.

”Do not start blaming yourself.”

Kael’s jaw worked hard.

”I should have known.”

”You are not magic.”

His eyes flicked toward the bow in her hand.

Even in that place, even with rot water around her knees and a terrified cub clinging to her neck, Swanly almost smiled from how stupidly unfair that look was.

”Wrong moment.”

Kael did not smile back.

He only moved closer until his shoulder blocked more of the forest from touching her.

Then a moan came from the right.

Not one.

Many.

The sound rose slowly from the drowned trees, wet and thin, like a throat trying to remember how to be alive.

Swanly turned.

The trees opened around a half-submerged trunk.

For one long breath, her mind could not understand what she was seeing.

The infected were not lying beside the tree.

They were inside it.

Their bodies had grown into the bark.

Chests fused with wood. Ribs split around roots. Arms stuck out from the trunk and scraped the air with broken fingers. Black sap leaked from mouths and eye sockets, dripping down pale skin and rotted fur. One body had antlers tangled high in the branches, and another had a small child-sized hand growing from its shoulder.

The second cub went silent.

That silence scared Swanly more than a cry would have.

Kael covered his eyes with one hand and pulled him harder against Swanly.

Swanly’s stomach rolled.

She had seen bodies piled in streets. She had seen infected crawl on broken legs. She had seen things that should have stayed dead drag themselves after sound.

But this was different.

This looked like the forest had eaten them slowly and decided not to finish chewing.

Raku muttered something rough under his breath.

Even Soren stopped.

The fused infected turned their heads.

Not all at once.

One first.

Then another.

Then another.

Their necks cracked as they faced the group, and their mouths opened together with a wet sucking sound.

”Sssoren.”

The name slid out of them in many broken voices.

Swanly’s blood chilled.

Kael’s head snapped toward Soren.

Raku’s grip tightened on his weapon.

Soren did not move.

His face remained cold, but his tail dug slightly into the mud.

Swanly saw it.

”What did they just say?”

Soren did not answer.

That silence was worse than a confession.

The rain stopped.

No warning.

No fading.

One moment it hammered the leaves, and the next moment the Rot Nest swallowed every drop.

The sudden quiet pressed against Swanly’s ears until she could hear water dripping from roots, hear the cub’s frightened breath against her neck, hear the wet scrape of the fused infected’s fingers against bark.

The sweet rot smell thickened.

The bodies in the tree moaned again.

This time they did not say Soren.

They said brother.

Soren’s expression did not change.

But something in his eyes went far away for half a breath.

Kael saw it too.

Raku took one step back, which told Swanly more than any warning could have.

”We should move,” Raku said.

Soren’s voice came out low.

”Yes.”

They walked past the tree.

The fused infected watched them go.

One of the hands kept scraping toward Swanly until the nails tore from the fingers and dropped into the water.

The forest grew darker after that.

The gray light above them thinned until the trees looked like ribs closing overhead. The water moved around their legs with purpose now, not like water pushed by wind, but like something under the surface was turning its head as they passed.

Something followed them.

It never rose fully.

It only lifted the surface in long slow shapes behind them.

When they stopped, it stopped.

When they moved, it moved.

Swanly kept the second cub pressed under one arm and the bow ready in her other hand. Her shoulders burned. Her legs ached. The cloth over her nose was damp with rain and breath. Her mind felt too full and too sharp at the same time.

Rot under the water.

Voices in the trees.

Bubbles that burst spores.

Traps set with corpses.

A child in her arms.

A snake beside her.

A panther one heartbeat away from murder.

”This is taking too long,” she snapped.

Soren looked ahead.

”We are close to the outer heart.”

Swanly stared at the side of his face.

”That means we are not close to the actual heart.”

”Yes.”

”I hate you.”

”I know.”

The second cub lifted his head from her chest with wet golden eyes.

”No hate Mama.”

Swanly’s anger cracked open just enough for pain to slip out.

She kissed his wet forehead.

”Not you.”

The cub looked at the dark water. His small ears flattened, and then he turned his tiny face toward the flood and tried to growl.

It came out soft.

Too soft.

A little trembling sound from a baby who thought he could scare the Rot Nest away from his mother.

Swanly almost lost her soul, she thought he was just being a cub trying to be brave.

”Do not threaten the water.”

But then the water answered.

A long infected creature burst up beside them.

It came out with a violent splash, black water flying from its body. It had the slick length of an eel, but one beastman arm grew from its side, twisted backward and clawing at the air. Its mouth opened wide toward the cub.

Kael lunged.

Swanly raised the bow.

The creature was faster.

...

(I’m so hungry i may pass out😞)