Apocalypse: My Golden Vision Sees Every Drop

Chapter 3: Night Raid

Jake had barely closed his eyes when gunfire ripped through the night and snapped him awake.

He rolled, pistol already in hand, and pressed his back against the cold, cracked wall, eyes scanning toward the source of the shots.

A sharp whistle cut through the dark.

Someone had fired a flare.

White light tore the sky open. The flare arced upward on a pale gold trail before detonating at its peak, blooming into a fireball that lit up everything within a hundred feet like daylight.

The world flipped from pitch black to blinding white in an instant. Nothing in the shadows had anywhere left to hide.

Rubble, dead grass, collapsed walls, distant shapes, all of it laid bare under the flare's glow.

In that light, Jake finally saw what was attacking them.

"...Lickers."

His stomach dropped.

Lickers weren't on the Anomaly's level, but pound for pound, they were far worse than an ordinary infected to deal with.

Every one of them moved with brutal speed and explosive power. Their muscles sat too tight under skin that looked half-melted, exposing raw, dark red flesh dripping with something foul-smelling. Long tongues whipped out like living weapons, fast enough to spear a man clean through. Their claws could gut a person before they even registered being touched.

Hitting one in the dark was several times harder than putting down a regular infected. One bad moment, one second of hesitation, and there'd be nothing left to bury.

Thankfully, the Caravan didn't lack firepower.

The first gunshot was all it took. Survivors who'd been hardened by three brutal months snapped into motion, taking cover behind buildings and forming a rough but functional line of defense in seconds.

There wasn't another option. Nighttime belonged to the infected and whatever else was out there. Abandon camp now, and everyone would end up scattered and picked off alone, one by one.

Hard lessons had taught the Caravan that much already. You didn't break camp during an attack unless you had absolutely no other choice, that was the last resort, not the first move.

The flare's light didn't last. Less than thirty seconds, and the darkness started creeping back in.

But in that window, sustained gunfire tore through the first wave of Lickers hard.

Several went down immediately, riddled with bullets before they even reached the line.

A handful got lucky, dodging enough to avoid a kill shot, though all of them limped away wounded, movement slowed.

The real danger with Lickers was speed and how well they climbed.

That first volley hadn't been enough to stop them all. The moment the dark swallowed the settlement again, the survivors used the cover to close the distance fast. Within seconds, several had broken through the line entirely.

"Aaahh!"

Screams tore through the night.

Some people never even got the chance to call for help before a Licker was on them.

The rest didn't fold. After a rough scramble, the fight broke into a dozen smaller battles happening all at once. Gunfire echoed from every direction, screams punctuating the chaos.

Some of the better-equipped survivors carried submachine guns, grenades, even night-vision gear.

It wasn't just the Lickers hunting people, either. Plenty of survivors were hunting the Lickers right back, chasing the cards that dropped when one went down.

And some of them were getting results.

From where Jake crouched, at least two people in the Caravan had already scored kills and pulled cards.

He felt a small pang of envy. All he had on him was a pistol and a folding crossbow, enough for ordinary infected, nowhere near enough to take on a Licker solo.

So he stayed put behind the ruined wall, watching the fight unfold.

Bang, bang, bang

One Licker broke cover for half a second and immediately drew concentrated fire from several survivors, dropping instantly.

It happened close enough that Jake watched the whole thing, unable to do anything but sigh.

A red card hovered over the body when it dropped. He had no idea who ended up claiming it.

He was about to shift his attention to another firefight when something caught his eye, a wrongness he couldn't quite place yet.

A faint red glow, moving fast across the black ground.

It looked like a lantern buried under a thin layer of dirt, the light stubbornly bleeding through the soil, impossible to miss against the surrounding dark.

That thing... can it burrow?

The thought crossed his mind and he almost laughed it off immediately.

Lickers were nasty, but burrowing wasn't something he'd ever heard of.

Then it clicked. There was a drainage ditch running through that part of the settlement.

The Licker hadn't died when it took those hits earlier, it had dropped into the ditch and used it as cover, faking its own death to everyone watching from above.

The red glow kept moving. Within seconds, it had used the ditch to close in on a three-story farmhouse.

That building was packed with survivors, several of them posted at windows on the second and third floors, firing down at the Licker they thought they'd already exposed.

None of them had noticed that a second Licker had slipped past their entire line of fire and was now crouched directly beneath their own building, ready to strike from below.

Jake watched it happen in real time. He didn't shout a warning, doing that would give away his position instantly, and there was no guarantee anyone would risk their neck to save him in return.

In this world, people were scarier than the infected most days.

Jake quietly swung a leg over his motorcycle.

It wasn't an ordinary bike. He'd built it up from a hybrid electric-gas frame, fused and upgraded piece by piece until the body stretched past eight feet long.

Loaded with the three storage cases mounted on the back, the whole thing weighed close to nine hundred pounds. A genuine steel beast.

Most of the time he didn't think twice about the weight. But when he needed to scavenge quietly or slip away unnoticed, he switched it over to electric mode, completely silent.

Like right now.

No engine roar, no backfire. Just a faint electric whine, nearly swallowed whole by the gunfire echoing across the settlement. The bike moved through the dark like a ghost.

The instant the Licker sprang out of the ditch, coiling to strike the survivors above, something massive slammed into its side.

Nine hundred pounds of steel, moving at full speed, sent the mutated thing flying with a sickening crunch.