The Tales of the Legendary Mimic : Momo

Sniper on the Last Row

They moved out not long after.

Engines rumbled to a stop at the edge of the cracked lot surrounding the abandoned lab. The air here felt heavier, thick with an old, cloying rot that clung to the back of the throat. Twisted shapes shifted behind shattered windows; hunched shadows clung to crumbled walls like they’d grown there.

The first order of business was cleanup.

They cleared the outer mutants—stragglers and malformed scouts that lurked near the broken perimeter. Max stayed toward the rear, watching their movements carefully. None of the creatures wandered far from the central structure. They turned away from noise, resisted bait, drifted back toward the lab as if dragged on invisible chains.

When the surrounding area was as secure as it could reasonably get, Captain Jane gave the next set of orders.

The real fight would be at the southern entrance.

A dense knot of mutants had entrenched there, forming a living barricade around the lab’s main access point. That was where they’d break—or be broken.

Max climbed onto the roof of a large transport at the very back of their formation. The metal roof creaked under his weight as he set the Golden Ravine on its stand. From this elevated position, he had a wide, commanding view of everything between the vehicles and the overgrown southern wing.

He peered through the scope.

At the front line, Lorne rolled his shoulders and flexed his fingers around the grip of his custom electric baton. A short distance away, One‑Eyed stood in his usual half‑crouch, expression sour, wide shoulders braced as if he were about to ram a wall.

Even from here, Max could see the unspoken questions in their eyes.

Why is he back there?

Why isn’t he up front, tanking?

Why give the strongest guy a sniper rifle and stick him on a truck?

Max sighed and adjusted the scope.

Lorne’s head popped up beside him a heartbeat later. He hauled himself onto the roof, crouching to keep his profile low.

“You sure about this safety thing?” he muttered. “Since when do you care about staying out of harm’s way?”

Max kept his eye on the scope. “Orders. And… it’s for safety.”

Lorne squinted at him. “Since when do you care about safety?”

Max exhaled through his nose, almost a laugh. “Since now.”

Lorne studied him for a second, then snorted. “Fine, Mr. ‘Since Now.’ Just don’t shoot me in the ass.”

He gave Max’s shoulder a light punch, then hopped down from the vehicle. On the way, he snatched up the electric baton Garfield had made for him—a matte‑black rod wrapped with copper coils, a crude power core humming faintly at the base. Tiny arcs of blue electricity snapped along its length when he flicked it on.

He rolled his wrist, getting used to the weight.

Then he waited.

Captain Jane’s voice crackled over the radio. “All units, get ready. Targets approaching from the south.”

The tree line stirred. Figures pushed through long grass and scrub—first a few, then dozens. The zombies shuffled into view, their skin mottled and split, patches of hardened goo clinging to them like twisted armor plates. Their eyes were vacant, jaws slack, but their steps were disturbingly even, their advance almost in formation.

“Open fire!” Jane shouted.

The air erupted.

Rifles barked. Muzzle flashes stitched bright lines through the gloom. Spent casings rained to the ground in shimmering arcs. Mercenaries rushed to meet the advance—some favoring blades, others batons or modified tools, a few swapping seamlessly between gun and steel. One‑Eyed waded into the fray like a bulldozer, pistol in one hand, cleaver in the other.

But the zombies didn’t fall as easily as they should have.

Bullets tore chunks of rotted flesh away. Limbs flew. Torsos twisted at impossible angles. And still, most of them kept coming.

“They only go down for good if they’re chopped up or lose the head,” someone shouted over the roar of battle.

It quickly became obvious the creatures knew that too.

Whenever someone aimed for a clean headshot, the zombies hunched their shoulders or jerked their necks aside with jerky, unnatural timing. They guarded their skulls with a dim, ugly awareness that sent a chill through even the most hardened fighters.

“It’s like they know!” another voice cried.

“Stop complaining and aim better!” One‑Eyed bellowed back, taking an arm off one zombie and planting his boot in its chest.

On the far left flank, a young soldier found himself in trouble.

Three zombies converged, hemming him in against a ruined low wall. He swung the butt of his rifle like a club, smashing one across the jaw, but it barely slowed. The others pressed in, clawed fingers reaching for his throat, his face, anything soft they could tear.

One of them raised its arm.

The goo coating its forearm bulged, then sharpened, hardening into a jagged spike.

It stabbed forward.

For the soldier, time slowed. The dark goo‑blade filled his vision, aimed at his neck. In that frozen instant, his thoughts collapsed into a single, helpless admission.

So this is it.

A deafening boom shattered the moment.

The zombie’s head exploded like an overripe melon, splattering the soldier in blackened gore. The body stumbled, then collapsed at his feet.

He stood there shaking, ears ringing, vision spotted, heart pounding in his throat. He whirled around, desperate to see who had just saved his life.

At first, all he saw was smoke, muzzle flashes, shadows flickering in the chaos.

Then he spotted him.

Far behind, atop a vehicle in the last row, a lone figure straightened slightly from behind a mounted rifle. The man raised a hand and gave him a casual thumbs‑up, as if they’d just exchanged tools, not lives.

Max.

The soldier tried to lift his own hand in shaky gratitude—but a metallic taste flooded his mouth.

He swallowed on instinct. The taste thickened. Heat roared through his veins.

He doubled over and coughed—once, twice—then vomited a torrent of dark blood that soaked the ground.

Horror crawled across his face.

Goo began seeping from his pores in thin, writhing strands. It crawled up his neck, around his cheeks, across his arms and chest like living tar. His fingers twisted; his skin paled and cracked.

He screamed.

It didn’t stay human for long.

Within seconds, his stance collapsed into a hunched, twitching posture. His eyes clouded over, irises sinking into milky white. The confusion left his face, replaced by a vacant, frantic hunger.

He was now a zombie.Max frowned but it didnt stop him from acting as mimic energy flowe from his pouch he mimiced a cold sniper.

BAAAM!

in on clean shot he killled a previous comrade,everyones heart went cold as they turned back to see the fearless reaper, their view of him changed even more.

The nearest troops recoiled.

Those closest stumbled back, weapons snapping up toward their own former comrade with trembling hands.

“Shit… shit, fall back!” someone yelled.

The line faltered. Even One‑Eyed, who had just torn through another opponent, stepped back, his habitual scowl hardening into something darker. His gaze lost its usual cocky edge as he watched the newly‑turned zombie lunge mindlessly at the men who’d been at his side minutes before.

Lorne and Jane both withdrew a few paces and so did sarah and henrik handling backup, their positions shifting as they tried to contain panic along with the enemy.

Only Max didn’t move back.

From his vantage point, he simply adjusted his aim.

He became a steady drumbeat of destruction.

Each thunderous shot from the Golden Ravine lit the air with a brief golden shimmer. Each round drilled into a skull, a spinal joint, a core of hardened goo. Zombies dropped like puppets with severed strings—some mid‑lunge, some just as they turned toward a new target.

One.

Two.

Ten.

Twenty.

Thirty.

The rhythm of battle bent itself around his shots. Soldiers began to move in step with the booms—ducking as the sound cracked overhead, then surging forward in the pause before the next impact.

Then, abruptly, the gunshots from the rear stopped.

The silence from that direction was almost as loud. For a heartbeat, everyone froze. Then a scattered wave of relief rippled through the line. Shoulders slumped. Being in front of a sniper that accurate was nerve‑wracking, even when he was on your side.

Lorne’s forehead was slick with sweat. Every time a zombie had dropped near him, he’d been painfully aware that somewhere far behind, Max had lined up a perfect shot through smoke, bodies, and chaos.

Captain Jane kept her binoculars on the rear. She watched as Max climbed down from the vehicle and vanished briefly into a patch of brush at the edge of the lot, then reappeared and reclaimed his position behind the rifle.

He started shooting again, calm and methodical. More zombies fell. The once‑solid cluster around the entrance thinned out into scattered, disorganized pockets.

Then, once more, he stopped.

Jane frowned and tracked him.

This time, Max hopped down from the vehicle and strolled toward a parked transport a few rows back. He pulled open the side door without knocking and rummaged casually through the supplies.

A moment later, he emerged with a strip of dried meat between his teeth and a bottle of beer in one hand.

The vehicle belonged to One‑Eyed.

One‑Eyed caught sight of him and bristled. “Hey! That’s my—” He started forward, clearly ready to unload a fresh chain of curses and maybe a punch for good measure.

Then memory crashed over him in a wave.

Perfect headshots, one after another.

Bullets carving impossible paths through the chaos.

The monstrous roar of the Golden Ravine, turning hardened mutants into headless heaps.

His mouth snapped shut. He swallowed hard, color draining from his face. With a stiff little turn, he faced back toward the battlefield and pretended not to have seen a thing.

Even a D‑rank like him knew better than to pick a fight with the man on the last row—the one who could erase him from half a kilometer away with a single golden flash.

Max took a swig of beer, chewed thoughtfully, and glanced over the battlefield.

The front line was stabilizing. The remaining zombies were finally starting to fall in earnest, their coordination shattered and their numbers dwindling.

But the air had started to change.

A low, bone‑deep vibration crawled through the ground, raising goosebumps on every scrap of exposed skin.

Something worse was coming.