—
A blackened foot came out of the trees and touched the forest floor. It pressed down on stones and brittle twigs.
A thorn as thick as a finger slid straight into the sole.
The foot did not stop.
It did not tense.
No blood came. No breath caught.
Whatever owned that foot did not feel pain.
Dead men seldom did.
The thing moved with a slow and even rhythm. Its joints creaked as if packed with sand.
Ten paces behind it, another shape pushed through the brush.
It wore the same cracked leather armor, torn into strips.
A fox-fur cap clung to its skull by a split seam. A curved blade hung loose from its hand.
Its pale eyes held no pupils and no thought.
They stared past the trees toward a small slope of dirt where a boy and girl sat.
Wei and the girl, Chun, were on the hillside. They leaned close.
Their voices were low but young, carrying more laughter than sense.
"You looked silly catching that rabbit today," she said.
"I did not," Wei said. "I'm just tired. That's why I tripped."
"You always trip," she said.
"I caught it," he argued.
"That's because it ran into a stump."
"Still caught."
Chun smiled. "What are you going to do with it?"
"I'll roast it for you tonight," Wei said. "Deal?"
She nodded. "Deal."
The boy looked down the slope.
Down the hill, a few grass huts stood in a thin clearing.
Smoke rose from small fires inside the huts, weak in the dusk.
It was early autumn. The air was cool.
The families living here, five in all, were used to the cold and the quiet.
They were runaways from the deadland. They had lived in the forest for a few years now.
They were always listening, always wary.
Tall shapes drifted between the trees.
They did not hurry.
They spread out the way shadows did when firelight grew strong. Weight made them real.
A sharp crack echoed from the brush.
"Wei? Chun?" a man called. "Is that you?"
It was Wei's father, Lin.
He stepped out from between the huts.
He was an experienced hunter.
The other four families trusted him. He had lived in this forests longer than any of them.
He could snare a hare with one hand or strike a boar from twenty paces with a javelin.
Because of him, the five families had survived here.
But something was wrong now.
He felt it as soon as the sound came.
It was the same feeling he had the day a stag bolted past him without a sound.
The forest had been silent then too.
Too silent.
He reached for the hunting knife at his belt.
Another man from the huts, tall and broad, the one everyone called Big Brother, looked at him.
Big Brother stepped forward.
"Maybe an animal," he said. "I'll go and check."
He was over twenty and strong.
He trusted Lin as an uncle.
He picked up a thick burning branch from beside the fire and went into the dark.
There was a rustle, quick and light.
A small shadow broke from the brush.
A rat!
No bigger than a rabbit.
The branch swung in a clean arc.
Thump.
Sparks shot out in all directions.
The rat curled on the ground.
Big Brother pressed a foot on it. It squealed, then was still. He held it up by the tail.
"Meat again," he said.
Lin laughed. The sound eased the others.
He sat down by the fire and tapped his knee.
"Fool luck," he smiled.
The families settled again. Whispers and small laughs returned.
The forest listened.
The fire hissed and shrank an inch, as if troubled by something.
The wind faded. Smoke hung heavy.
Then came a soft puff, air pushed aside.
A metallic tint crept into the air.
Lin stood.
His eyes sharpened.
He stepped forward, but he was too late to stop what had already begun.
Big Brother stood with his rat still dangling from his hand.
He looked confused. Then he looked down at something pushing through his chest.
It looked like a branch at first, rough and dark-colored.
But it glinted in the firelight.
Metal shone on the tips.
A hand.
Or simply this: a giant claw was inside his chest.
And in the hand, inside the broad space between its fingers, lay a heart.
Fresh.
Beating.
Big Brother stared. He did not scream.
He tried to take a breath but only let out a wet sound.
His legs shook. Then he toppled forward like a tree felled in a storm.
Behind him stood a man.
He had a hairless skull except for a single braid hanging like a rat's tail.
His face was dark and stiff, like wood soaked in oil. Firelight reflected off his skin as if it had been lacquered.
His golden armguards melted into the dark like a pair of coiled snakes. Burned leather clung to his frame, cracked at the joints, smeared with dried blood.
He was tall as Big Brother but moved with a controlled grace that belonged to hunters, or to predators.
He lifted the beating heart, looked at it, and closed his hand. Blood ran down his wrist.
Then he put it into his mouth.
The sound was soft at first.
Crunch. Crunch.
Big Brother's younger brother ran at him with an axe. His shout broke halfway from his throat.
The Iron Cavalry General, the title the elders whispered about but never claimed to believe, stood still and watched him come.
The axe struck the General's chest.
Metal rang against bone. A black crack opened there.
It showed an empty cavity.
No organs. No blood.
Only cold and hollow space.
The boy froze.
The General looked at him as if curious.
Blood trailed down his chin.Fear was in the younger brother's eyes. He shook. Then he ran.
He had seen dead men in war and in far places. But not like this.
No man ate hearts while standing still. No man lived with his chest split open. No man walked without breathing.
Hoofbeats rolled through the fog.
Low howls followed them. One after another, shapes came through the trees.
More zombie soldiers in broken armor, eye sockets caved and empty.
They carried old blades. Some had only bone stumps for hands.
They moved without rhythm or breath.
The refugees ran.
They did not scream; screams took air, and their bodies needed air to run.
Feet pounded earth. Leaves scattered.
Someone fell. Someone else did not stop to help.
The forest swallowed all of them.
None reached far.