After the massive gray outline of Safe Zone Seven completely vanished into the thick fog filled with radioactive dust, an unprecedented sense of isolation instantly gripped everyone inside the vehicle. It was as if the last flicker of civilization in the universe had suddenly extinguished, and they had been exiled to the end of time and life itself.
The engine roar of the heavy armored transport "Mule" sounded particularly jarring and harsh amid this dead and silent wasteland, like a desecration of this forbidden land. The vehicle bounced along cracked, tilted roads covered in sand, gravel, and unknown grime from an older era. Tires crushed shattered glass, twisted metal, and the occasional pale-colored animal carcass, producing teeth-grinding crunching sounds.
Ethan gazed out through the vehicle's bulletproof observation window at the slowly decaying world outside.
The sky was a sickly yellow, as if an invisible hand had wiped it with a cloth stained with rust and blood. Thin sunlight struggled to pierce the dense radioactive dust clouds, casting twisted, elongated shadows that made everything look bizarre and unreal. In the distance, the once skyscraper-filled city center had been reduced to a jagged black silhouette, many buildings snapped in half, massive concrete slabs and twisted steel exposed like the gnawed skeletons of giant beasts.
Closer by were even more ruined streets. Burn marks and dense bullet holes covered the remnants of walls, silently narrating the chaos and despair of the early Great Collapse. Behind shattered storefronts, black voids could barely reveal traces of the old world—overturned tables and chairs, rusted shelves, and fragments of faded billboards showing stiff smiles long turned to skeletal faces. Vines spread in frenzied, grotesque shapes, their leaves an ominous purplish-brown, veins glowing with strange phosphorescence, like shrouds devouring all human-made objects.
Visible dust particles floated in the air, dancing slowly in the sickly light. Even through the high-grade filtration system of his protective suit, Ethan could faintly smell the "outside air"—a nauseating mix of radioactive dust, ozone, decay, and some indescribably sweet chemical stench. The vehicle's environmental monitor emitted a steady low hum, and the radiation readouts jumped constantly. Though not yet at lethal levels, the numbers alone were enough to chill anyone with basic education to the bone.
"Welcome to paradise, rookie," Lina's voice came over the internal comm channel, tinged with a deliberately casual tone, but the underlying tension was unmistakable. "A breath of fresh air worth fifty roentgens—doesn't it make you feel alive?"
Rick didn't look up from his screen, fingers flying over the interface. "Technically, current ambient radiation is approximately 2.7 sieverts per hour. Continuous exposure over twenty minutes would produce acute symptoms. By the way, roentgen is an outdated unit; Sievert or Gray is recommended—"
"Shut up, Rick," Captain Barton's low voice cut through from the front seat. "Stay alert. We've entered the edge of sector B-7. Mutant activity is increasing."
Everyone tensed immediately. Morgan adjusted the angle of his heavy machine gun, producing faint mechanical clicks. Lina stopped joking, her gaze sharpening as she scanned her assigned sector. Ethan drew a deep breath, pressing his cheek against the cold observation glass, trying to acclimate to the disturbing view outside.
The vehicle pressed on.
The ruined landscape repeated in horrifying variations. They passed an overturned school bus, severely rusted, windows shattered, something moving inside, though too fast to identify. A massive industrial-robot-like wreck lay across the road, crudely pushed aside by the Mule with a screeching metallic grind. Further on, what might have been a park was now overgrown with enormous, twisted fungi, grayish-white, swollen like fingers emerging from rotting soil, tips exuding faint, sticky, insect-trapping gleam.
"Life… it's fucking resilient," Morgan muttered, breaking the silence, shaking his head at the fungi and plants that thrived even under high radiation.
"Or just ridiculously adaptive," Lina corrected, moving her gun slightly to aim at a cluster of thorn-covered bushes that had moved unnaturally without wind. "Who knows if these things are even 'plants'."
Her intuition was terrifyingly accurate.
Almost immediately, the strange bush exploded!
Three or four gray-yellow shadows leapt out like lightning toward the moving Mule!
"Left side, contact!" Captain Barton's shout rang out.
Alarms shrieked!
What were those things?!
Ethan's heart clenched. The creatures moved astonishingly fast; only their outlines were barely visible—dog-sized, skin raw from intense radiation, covered with pustules and growths, nearly hairless. Limbs were unusually muscular, especially the hind legs, giving them incredible leaping ability. Their heads were disproportionate, jaws split open, showing dense, sharp teeth coated in filthy slime. Eyes were missing or reduced to small black pits. Relying on other senses—perhaps hearing, heat detection, or vibration—they lunged precisely at the vehicle!
"Fire!" Barton's command was concise and cold.
Morgan reacted inhumanly fast. The rotary machine gun roared almost the instant the shadows leapt!
"BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM—!!!"
Deafening gunfire tore through the ruins' silence. The recoil made the heavy Mule shudder. Red-hot ammo belts lashed at the two leading monsters like Death's whip.
High-explosive rounds ripped through what looked like resilient skin, exploding into vile, colorful sticky matter and chunks of flesh. The two creatures were shredded midair, limbs slamming against the vehicle and bulletproof glass, leaving streaks of gore.
But the remaining two leapt at the vehicle, exploiting tiny gaps created by their companions' sacrifice. Claws scraped against the armor, sending shivers down the spine!
"Suicide!" Lina sneered, remaining seated, firing her large-caliber pistol through a dedicated shooting port.
"Bang! Bang!"
Two heavy, solid shots. One creature's head burst like a rotten watermelon, the other's forelimb shattered, tumbling under the wheel with a screech. The vehicle jolted violently, crushing sensation sending waves through the cabin.
Only five or six seconds passed from attack to end.
Gunfire ceased. Only the rotary gun's cooling hum and the sizzling of burning carcasses remained, mingled with an indescribable, sweet-and-foul stench of blood, entrails, and radioactive matter.
Inside the cabin, silence fell.
Ethan felt his heart hammering, knuckles whitening around his rifle. It was his first close encounter with a radioactive mutant, witnessing their repulsive form, terrifying speed, and pure malice. The sensory impact far exceeded any training simulation.
He instinctively glanced at the other team members.
Morgan was expressionless, silently replacing the hot ammo belt as if it were routine. Yet Ethan noticed a subtle tremor in his thick fingers.
Lina blew smoke from her gun, resettled, her lazy, mocking expression back in place, though frequent glances outside and slightly quickened breathing betrayed her true tension.
Rick looked pale, rapidly scrolling data from the creatures they just engaged: "…Preliminary ID: 'Burrow Hound.' Highly radiation-sensitive, pack-hunting, aggressive. Surface radiation readings… holy hell, they're mobile radioactive sources themselves!"
Barton, cold eyes scanning the cabin, paused briefly on the nauseating streaks on the windows. "Clear shooting ports and observation windows. Rick, continue scanning for life signs. Morgan, report ammo expenditure."
His voice remained steady, commanding. Yet Ethan caught a faint twitch in the scar slicing across Barton's cheek as he turned back.
A silent pressure filled the cabin—not pure fear, but something deeper: a sense of nihilism after civilization's collapse, questioning their own existence, instinctive aversion and extreme psychological discomfort in the face of these twisted, resilient "new lives." Killing several creatures gave no victory, only a cold reminder of the world's madness and despair.
Ethan forced calm, adrenaline-fueled thoughts racing. He recalled the brief, intense encounter.
Something was off.
The Burrow Hounds' attack pattern was direct, almost reckless. They leapt from hiding spots straight at the vehicle, no evasive maneuvers—typical of low-level instinct-driven mutants.
But…
Ethan frowned. Four creatures initially attacked. Two were shredded by Morgan's heavy fire, one precisely killed by Lina, the last crushed under the vehicle after its forelimb was broken.
Yet Rick's environmental scan had not detected them beforehand. They had seemingly evaded the sensors perfectly. They emerged from a bush that seemed too small to fully conceal four large-dog-sized creatures from the powerful sensor array atop the Mule.
Unless… they hadn't been there all along.
Perhaps they approached rapidly from further away, using cover, hiding briefly behind the bush before striking. Their path suggested some… guidance?
More concerning, Ethan thought he heard an extremely short, high-pitched screech at the moment the last creature was run over—not a dying howl, but some kind of… signal?
"Rick," Ethan's voice was dry and tense, "can you pull the last thirty seconds of audio and vibration data from our left sector?"
Rick hesitated, annoyed at the interruption: "What? Now? I'm analyzing their tissue radiation samples—"
"Do it," Barton's voice cut coldly from the front.
Rick muttered, fingers flying over the screen: "Done. Sent to your auxiliary display. Audio noise is messy; vibrations besides our vehicle, none… wait—"
He froze.
On Ethan's screen, waveforms for sound frequency and vibration intensity scrolled. About ten seconds before the attack, a very weak but high-frequency vibration occurred for less than half a second, almost masked by vehicle noise. Three seconds later, a similarly brief, high-frequency audio spike appeared—nearly ultrasonic.
Both signals were too weak and brief; the automatic alert system classified them as environmental noise.
"What is it?" Lina asked, peering at the nearly imperceptible waveforms.
"Some… kind of command?" Ethan said, uncertain, heart racing. "Or a coordination signal? After that, the Burrow Hounds attacked."
He paused, then ventured: "Doesn't it seem like… a test? Using four lives to probe our firepower and reaction speed?"
Dead silence fell in the cabin.
Even Morgan stopped replacing his ammo belt.
Testing with low-level mutants? If true, what did that mean?
It meant these instinct-driven creatures might have a higher-level, intelligent controller behind them.
Or their hunting instincts had evolved to a terrifying degree.
Either way, the mission's outlook darkened with ominous uncertainty.
Barton remained silent for a few seconds, then said in a voice low and heavy as rolling stone: "Rick, recalibrate sensor sensitivity. Focus on abnormal high-frequency signals. Everyone, raise alert levels. We might… be in trouble."
His gaze swept the cabin again, now with an almost imperceptible weight in its depth.
The Mule continued its bumpy advance, mercilessly crushing twitching carcasses on the road.
Outside, the ruins grew stranger and more desolate. Twisted vegetation thickened, more unidentifiable small life traces appeared, quickly hiding in shadows and debris.
Sticky blood-like fluids slid down the windows, like the dirty tears of this dead world.
Ethan felt a chill climb his spine.
This was only the beginning. They had just crossed the edge of the ruins and already sensed the cold, malicious gaze hidden beyond the yellowish fog.
Missing scientists, what had you discovered?
And behind that "abnormally active" signal, what horror truly awaited?
He had no answers. Only his cold rifle in hand, and the vast, silent, hungry wasteland outside.