novelraw Chapter 81: No One Is To Know
Chapter 81: No One Is To Know
The silence snapped like a wire pulled too tight.
Then everything happened all at once.
The zombies didn’t groan. They didn’t shuffle. They simply moved. Without warning, they tore through the broken windows like a wave, hands clawing over shattered glass and metal. Dozens of them. Maybe more.
The moment the first one touched the floor, Zubair opened fire.
"Contact!"
Elias and Alexei joined him instantly, shots ringing out one after the other as the horde swarmed through the wrecked entrance. Bullets tore into skin, split faces, shattered ribs—but nothing slowed them.
If anything, it made them worse.
They roared.
Twisted.
Split.
Where heads exploded, new ones formed within seconds. Where limbs were blown off, the arms cloned completely new creatures that dragged themselves forward like sentient vines before they got to their feet.
One dove straight at Elias, missed by inches, slammed into the floor, and twisted upright like a marionette with tangled strings.
Zubair grunted as claws scraped across his arm, tearing clean lines of red through the fabric and flesh. Blood splattered across the floor. His arm went numb, but he didn’t flinch. He twisted away, caught the creature by the throat, and slammed it into a wall so hard its spine audibly cracked. Another was already lunging.
The store turned into a killing field—aisles collapsing, bottles shattering, glass snowing from the ceiling like rain.
And in the middle of it all, the professor screamed.
Dr. Halvorsen stumbled toward the back, knocking over a pyramid of discount toothpaste in his panic. His eyes were wide, terrified. There was no pretense now, no lectures about fear.
He threw himself into the nearest upright freezer—the kind with glass panels so customers could see inside—and slammed the door shut behind him. He crouched, wedged between frozen pizzas, frozen fries and bulk pierogis, shaking as blood streaked the outside of the glass.
His breath fogged the inside, but Sera didn’t look at him.
She had a bigger problem at the moment.
One of the creatures—half-formed, its face split in three directions like it hadn’t finished healing itself—caught sight of her.
It didn’t pause. Didn’t think. It simply reacted, charging forward.
Sera spun to brace herself, her fists rising to meet the attack, her body twisting slightly to protect her core even as she forced her creature to take a step back and let her handle it.The thing inside her wanted blood. It pressed against her ribs like a dog against a leash, hungry and ready to tear. But she held the line.
But she didn’t have to block.
She didn’t even move.
Because Lachlan was already there.
He didn’t say her name. He didn’t yell.
He snapped.
In a blur of limbs and rage, he launched himself between Sera and the creature, his body twisting mid-air as something underneath his skin shivered free.
He hit the zombie in the chest with enough force to crack the tile beneath them. Blood flew in a wide arc.
And when he straightened—he wasn’t Lachlan anymore.
His skin had gone pale blue as veins spidered like frost over his face and arms, pulsing faintly beneath the surface. His mouth had split too wide, showing off monstrous shark-like teeth. His fingers cracked backward for a second before reforming into something sharper, more brutal.
Sera’s breath caught.
The last time she’d seen him like this was in the forest—when she was battling the horde the first night of the apocalypse.
But even then, it was an almost...tame creature that emerged.
And this was not that creature.
Instead, he looked like a cross between a zombie and a Reaver. A mutated monster. A predator.
And it was pissed.
Lachlan didn’t hesitate. He turned, caught another zombie by the spine, and ripped it upward in one brutal motion before sinking his teeth into the creature’s body. The creature screamed, its mouth splitting into two, and he tore its head clean off before kicking the body into the bakery section.
Blood sprayed. The walls shook. And the gunfire stopped.
Zubair, Elias, and Alexei lowered their weapons as the reality sank in.
This wasn’t a fight anymore.
It was a slaughter.
Lachlan moved like a creature starved—feral, fast, and entirely precise. He didn’t waste motion. He didn’t miss.
He ripped. Tore. Crushed. Cracked skulls beneath his boots. Drove one zombie straight through a metal shelf and turned to grab the next before the blood had even hit the ground.
And not once—not once—did he look away from Sera while he was obliterating the threat to her.
Every move he made, every body he threw, was to protect the space around her. To keep it clear. Untouched.
And the zombies didn’t notice.
They didn’t stop for him. Didn’t even react.
To them, he was just another being to attack. He wasn’t part of their horde, so he was free game.
Eventually, it was over.
The floor was soaked in blood and worse. Shelves were twisted and overturned. A body twitched near the ice cream cooler, but only for a moment before Lachlan’s heel crushed its throat.
Silence returned.
Wet. Sticky. Thick with the stench of death and something else—something colder.Lachlan stood in the middle of it, chest rising and falling too fast. Blood streaked down his face. His fingers still twitched. The creature wasn’t gone. Not yet.
No one moved. No one spoke.
And then, with a squeak of hinges and the soft pop of suction...
The freezer door opened.
The professor stepped out slowly, half-bent and dripping in frozen sweat. His eyes were wild, staring at Lachlan like he was a nightmare made flesh.
"Is... is it safe?" he gasped.
Then he looked at Lachlan again.
And froze.
"What the fuck is he?"
Zubair didn’t answer.
He raised his pistol and shot the professor in the head.
The glass behind him cracked. Blood misted outward in a starburst. The man crumpled between frozen fries and his own stupidity.
"No one," Zubair said, turning the weapon slowly toward Sera, "can know."
The muzzle lined up with her chest.
His hand didn’t shake.
"No one."