Lost (5)

"Fuu-- Hold on!"

Lieutenant Mickey shouted to his juniors and stepped-almost stomping-on the gas pedal. The dark green truck drifted forward, away from the red slime blob that was just 5 meters behind it, and slammed the people inside almost making them dizzy. The sudden acceleration made everyone inside the truck dizzy.

*screeeeech*

As the dark green truck blew black smoke towards the faces of the slime collector, Anthony once again clicked open another grenade and threw it towards the red existence. He threw not one, not two, but three grenades in quick succession. He did it as if he had thrown grenade after grenade his entire life.

*boom boom boom*

Even Lieutenant Mickey didn't realize that it was Anthony who threw all three.

"Nice!"

He thought that the three bombs were thrown by bus three juniors.

The three quick explosions rang inside their ears as the bomb blew up just behind them, but nobody was in any state to look back. Even Anthony who threw the grenades closed the doors of the small truck immediately and crouched while he covered his eard with his hands.

Everyone was dizzy, but that didn't stop Lieutenant Mickey's hands and feet to keep driving the truck.

Ever since the time where he drove his team and the rescued civilians back to safety from the terrorists, Lieutenant Mickey was always assigned to a driver role. That didn't mean that he was to wait in the vehicle until his team came back, but that he was in charge of protecting the team and the vehicle from behind.

He became good at handling guns because of that. Precision, accuracy, good fire rate, and fast reload speed were skills that he mastered soon after he became the driver. Because the enemies have always been far and fast, he needed to have better and faster aim and he needed to fire continuously in order to support his teammates well.

Although he was never a 'one shot, one-kill' person, he did manage to achieve something close to that. He could always hit the enemy even if where he hit wasn't fatal. His role was support after all, and he did that very well.

But he wasn't with his team this time. He doesn't know how his juniors would act based upon this situation, so all he could do was do his best in surviving.

If Lieutenant Mickey could escape, then so would his juniors who were riding the truck with him.

The dizzyness soon faded out, and Lieutenant Mickey could now see the airport.

'The military base is still far, what should I do?'

There were three things that Lieutenant Mickey can do right now:

1. Drive back to the base,

2. Use a different road to go to Rando's house, or

3. Face the existence behind them.

'That thing is too huge and the blown up arms in front of it started healing as soon as the explosion ended. I don't think those grenades are enough. I hope they are.'

If they did work, then maybe Lieutenant Mickey's group could, for the first time, defeat an existence. All by themselves, too!

Although Lieutenant Mickey has indeed faced a Herder before, but it didn't look like the existence behind them nor did it act the same way.

A Herder.

The soldiers called it that because these existences looked like humans, large dead humans, who screamed like it was calling to its allies. The army first encountered it during patrols, and it was Lieutenant Mickey's patrol group that first saw it.

The Herder they saw walked slow, looked like a tall and fat pale man, but the face looked like the person has lost his mind. The tongue sticking out of his face and the continuous drops of saliva made the man look like he had contacted rabies with severe symptoms.

The patrol group thought the man was sick and called out to him at first. And then they saw the man come out of the tall grass with injuries all over his body.

The man looked like a zombie, and like one, he started gnarling and ran towards one of Lieutenant Mickey's comrades in the patrols.

His comrade didn't realize what was happening and even asked what was wrong to the tall man.

Well, until he got bit.

Lieutenant Mickey still remembers how his comrade screamed and yelled in pain, and how Lieutenant Mickey raised his gun and immediately shot at the tall man.

But the tall man didn't flinch, the bullets that entered his body all came out, and the holes from where those bullets came out started closing, he was healing.

The tall man then screamed.

He screamed and started slowly walking away. He was walking away as he screamed.

Lieutenant Mickey panicked and hastily grabbed a grenade and threw it inside the man's mouth. The grenade did explode, but it didn't explode the tall man' body, which should have happened since the grenade blew up inside. Instead, what happened was two more herders came and began slowly nearing Lieutenant Mickey's patril group.

They then picked up their fallen comrade and ran back towards their military base.

The two additional herder that came ran after them, but they seem slower when sprinting than when an adult human is sprinting.

It was incredibly slower than the existence that is currently chasing the truck Lieutenant Mickey's group are riding on.

He also remembered how he reported what happened to their patrol to Captain Dante.

"I threw a grenade in his mouth."

"I thought you said that person looked like he has rabies, he simply bit your teammate but you threw a grenade in return? Fuu-- give me a good reason why you did that Lieutenant, or else you'll have to live with the civilians."

"Si-sir, the thing is..."

"The thing is?"

"He didn't explode."

"Yea-what?! A grenade in his mouth and he didn't explode?"

Their conversation was not only full of amazement and disbelief, but also with fear.

What Lieutenant Mickey's patrol team saw was certainly a monster for withstanding a grenade inside his mouth.

It was a good thing that they walked slow and that the patrol team managed to light a molotov before then throwing it towards both of the herder coming after them once they reached the nearest watchtower. The two herders who ran after them caught on fire and paused for a minute, standing in place right in front of the tall metal fence, and then slowly backed out.

It wasn't only Lieutenant Mickey that saw this, but his team and the soldiers in the watch tower as well.

Slow, able to call other existences nearby, and able to think when to attack and retreat. That is the characteristic of a Herder.

And they are completely different from a collector, whose blood was was infected rather than the mind, and continued to attach body parts to themselves rather than eat them.

The military had also heard about the so called biters from the radios and how they bite people to infect them and kill them. Although the soldiers never saw one as they weren't there when that happened, they did thought that maybe it was just a deadly virus that kills a person who gets bit. But they never thought that a monster who can withstand a grenade from the mouth and was able to think when to retreat existed, and that was the first time they saw one.

The army base which was turned into a quarantine zone because of the disease, now has become one of the safest place in the city after the rise of the existences.

However, Lieutenant Mickey's group are currently outside of that safe haven, and is currently facing an existence they had never seen before.

'Shit, are the monsters all different?'

There was no time to think.

Lieutenant Mickey looked at the side mirror to see the fallen existence.

'Did it di--'

Before he could even articulate his thoughts inside his mind, he saw one of the legs rising. And then an arm, and then another, and then a head.

The slime collector began to stand back up again.

"Shit, shit, shit, fuck!!! HOLD ON!"

'We can't bring this back to the base, grenades didn't even work against this guy. We have to either kill it or make it go far away.'

Lieutenant Mickey kept driving, driving, and driving until he couldn't see the collector behind them anymore.

Unfortunately, panic got the best of him. He was only a highschool student when the war happened, and he is barely 20 now. Although he was a good driver, that didn't mean that he knew the roads of the city.

Lieutenant Mickey saw a T-junction, a few houses, tall grass, and a few destroyed buildings. None of which he recognized.

He was lost.

They were lost.

And they couldn't go back because of the existence.