The dirt road wound through skeletal trees and collapsed fences, remnants of farmland long abandoned. Branches clawed at the overcast sky like desperate fingers. The wind carried a distant stench — not rot this time, but smoke. Controlled. Purposeful. Smoke meant fire. Fire meant people. And people meant danger.
Or hope.
Li Wei led the group in silence, rifle slung over his back, hood drawn low. Rui followed with her bow in hand, steps light, scanning every shadow. Chen Yu, in contrast, hummed a cheery tune with a stick of dried mushroom in his mouth like a cigar.
"You smell that?" Chen said, grinning as he stepped over a fallen road sign. "Smells like capitalism."
"No talking," Li Wei said flatly.
"Oh come on, boss. We've been walking for days. My feet are crying. Literally. You hear that squish? That's despair."
Rui chuckled, breaking her quiet spell. "You never shut up."
"It's a coping mechanism," Chen replied, striking a dramatic pose. "Either I joke or I scream."
They reached the crest of a hill, and below, nestled in the shell of a crumbling stadium, was the camp.
It wasn't what they'd expected.
Metal towers had been rigged from old scaffolding, strung with solar panels and dangling lightbulbs. Colorful cloths formed tent roofs. Flags made from stitched jeans and tarps fluttered in the breeze. Banners in multiple languages waved like a desperate invitation: TRADER HAVEN — WE DEAL IN ALL THINGS.
Armed men stood at the gate, their rifles not pointed but clearly ready. There were no uniforms. Just makeshift armor, scraps of motorcycle gear, and tattoos.
"I hate this already," Rui said.
"Same," Li Wei muttered.
Chen just clapped his hands. "Let's go shopping."
As they approached the gate, a woman with a facial scar and a shaved head stepped forward. She had a radio clipped to her belt, and her eyes moved sharply across their gear.
"State your business."
"Trade," Li Wei said. "Information."
"Name?"
"No."
She smirked. "Alright, quiet boy. You'll need to give up your weapons at the checkpoint if you want to step inside."
"No."
Chen stepped in, flashing a lazy grin. "How about a compromise? We keep our gear, don't shoot anyone, and spend a bit of that sweet old-world currency you folks seem to love."
The woman laughed. It was short, but genuine. "You think this place runs on old money?"
"We've got other things," Rui said, pulling out a vial of purified rainwater.
The woman's eyes flicked to it. "Follow me."
Inside the camp, the noise hit them like a wave — talking, bartering, metal being hammered, music blaring from a salvaged speaker. It was chaos, but organized. There were food stalls made of ambulance shells, a barber cutting hair with surgical precision, and traders selling everything from ammunition to dried rat meat.
People watched them as they passed. Some curious. Some hostile.
"They're not used to outsiders," Rui whispered.
"We're not the friendly kind," Li Wei replied.
They were led to a makeshift office — an old locker room repurposed with plywood walls and solar lighting. Inside sat a wiry man with silver-rimmed glasses and fingers stained with oil. He wore a scarf over his mouth and a military-style jacket.
"I'm Mercer," he said without looking up from his ledger. "And you're new."
"We're not staying," Li Wei said. "We want information. We'll trade."
"What sort?"
"About the Ascendancy. About the zones west of the coast. Mutations. Anything real."
Mercer finally looked up, eyes sharp. "That costs more than food and bullets. You're asking about ghosts."
Li Wei placed a small device on the table — a blood-filtering chip scavenged from an old lab.
Mercer stared at it. "Where did you get this?"
"Are we trading or not?"
There was a long silence before Mercer nodded. "Stay the night. Tomorrow, I'll show you something."
They were given a tent in the back row, away from the main paths. The tent flapped in the wind, and the ground beneath was uneven, but it was dry.
That night, they sat around a dull camp stove Chen had bartered for using a bottle of shampoo and three bullets.
"So what's your read on this place?" Chen asked, stirring a pot of canned beans and lizard meat.
Rui sat polishing her blade. "Too quiet."
"Too watched," Li Wei added. "They don't trust us. And that Mercer… he knows something."
Chen leaned back, putting his hands behind his head. "You think he's Ascendancy?"
"No," Rui said. "But he's seen them."
Li Wei didn't answer. He was staring at the wall of the tent. Listening.
A low groan echoed from outside — not zombie. Not human. Something in-between.
Rui froze. "Did you hear that?"
Chen nodded slowly, the humor gone from his face.
They stepped outside.
The camp was quiet. Most fires had dimmed. A few drunk traders muttered around a barrel fire. A dog barked once — then yelped and went silent.
Li Wei motioned for the others to follow.
They crept toward the storage area — a chain-link zone guarded during the day but now left unmanned. Inside, crates and barrels were stacked high. But at the far end, where a tarp flapped in the wind, something moved.
Rui drew her bow. Chen held a sharpened pipe like a spear. Li Wei raised his knife.
A hand emerged from beneath the tarp — long, pale, fingers tipped with black nails. Then another hand. Then a face — stretched, hairless, teeth filed into needles.
It hissed.
Rui let the arrow fly.
The thing collapsed, twitching, an arrow in its eye.
They stared in silence.
Chen broke it with a whisper: "What the hell was that?"
Li Wei crouched beside the corpse. It was human… or had been. But the skin was stretched unnaturally tight, and the bones had shifted, broken and re-healed in strange ways. The muscles were too lean. The eyes too far apart.
"Not a normal mutation," Rui said.
"Not one at all," Li Wei muttered. "Someone's breeding them."
Chen looked back toward the camp. "You think this place is a haven?"
"No," Li Wei said, standing. "It's a market."
He looked at Rui, at Chen.
"And we just walked into a farm."