Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition

Juno sprinted straight into the storm of limbs, smoke, and fire.

The Zombie Shepherd moved like a prophet of death—its arms raised, issuing no commands but every infected swarm reacting to its silent will. The battlefield pulsed with madness, Rustborn fighting tooth and nail as synthetic abominations flooded the Rustfront.

Juno wasn't just running toward the Shepherd.

She was running toward the Signal Pit—the crater at the edge of the fields, still glowing faint blue, humming with the buried technology of VIREX's last failed attempt to reboot the world.

Behind her, Axen's voice crackled in her earpiece.

"What are you doing?!"

"Ending this," she breathed.

She reached the pit's edge just as a shrieker lunged. Shade's bullet took it down mid-air. H-13 limped behind her, sparking and struggling, arm half-melted from a glancing hit.

The Shepherd descended like a phantom, antennae twitching violently, its aura destabilizing the very ground. The closer it came, the louder the whispers grew in Juno's mind. Pleas. Screams. Commands.

"Give in."

"Burn with us."

"You were made to serve."

But Juno had learned something in the Vault: the virus adapted only to patterns. It didn't understand chaos. Or sacrifice.

So she reached into her jacket and pulled out a red ignition tag—Marla's failsafe detonator. Still half-active. Still connected to the Vault's emergency node.

"Tell me this will work," she said to H-13.

"It'll burn everything in a 100-meter radius," he said. "Including you."

She smiled grimly. "That's what I'm counting on."

The Shepherd floated above the pit now. Its cloak of flesh spiraled outward, trying to cocoon her. She lit the trigger.

A fire bloomed beneath her feet—too fast, too wide.

But the Shepherd stopped.

Halted.

Hesitating.

It saw the flame not as death—but as something it didn't compute. Defiance.

For the first time, the creature recoiled.

Axen and the Rustborn watched from the ridgeline as Juno tossed the detonator into the pit—and leapt after it.

Shade screamed.

"JUNO!"

The explosion that followed wasn't just thermal.

It was viral-purging. A white-hot burst of light washed the crater, incinerating anything carrying active infection code.

The Rustfront shook.

Infected dropped mid-charge, screaming. The Shepherd staggered, its body flickering—glitching between form and data. Then… imploding into ash and circuitry.

Silence followed.

The kind that suggested something had changed.

When the smoke cleared, the pit still glowed.

And from its edge, a hand reached up.

Juno.

Burned, coughing, alive—but changed. Her veins flickered faintly blue.

The virus hadn't consumed her.

It had accepted her.

Or feared her.

Either way, the Shepherd was gone.

But its legacy… still lingered.

And in the ashes, a metallic spine twisted with cables continued to twitch.