After the wave of ferals and sprinters came the second wave where the regular deadheads were at their highest.
Almost all of them were marching forward as their rotting bodies were literally side-by-side, worse than riding a bus while the person next to you was jerking off. It was like seeing deranged shoppers at an opening of a Black Friday Sale, pushing and squeezing against each other just so they could get to their targets first.
From a select few, their bodies had almost congealed to each other probably due to being in a confined space for far too long while some got their bodies chewed up by the ones they chewed up as well.
This was the only time where I've seen beings consume more than half of their body weight and lose more than half their body weight as well.
It was because all they ate had just passed through their ruptured digestive system, beating any sort of dietary program. In some fucked up way, their 'program' allowed them to be able to live forever—unless killed directly—and it was far better than any food or drug that offered longevity.
With that said, the side of the living was also eager to come to blows with the walking corpses stinking the place, and another type of massacre began. Some people at the back switched with the people in front and they were this close to just jumping in and going wild.
Before the DJ switched to the next song, a burly guy from the Castillo Family just shoved a 15-feet pole to the deadheads in front of him—impaling more than five bodies—before he flexed his whole body and threw them behind him.
The five deadheads were easily flung with the use of that guy's long pole and the ones behind him just flattened them in a matter of seconds.
'That's some arm strength...'
The guy easily pulled out his weapon from those mangled bodies before he swung down from overhead over and over, crushing skulls with the weight of his weapon instead. I could only imagine the stress on his arms right now because my katana only weighed less than a few kilos.
Well, some weapons needed the extra weight to be able to bash heads in with a single strike but this pole—much like the blunt side of Mikhail's weapon—was overkill for a regular person. Everyone could almost hear that satisfying crunch each time a skull gets shattered to pieces before the sound of brain matter getting squashed followed.
Looking at the other participants, most of them were like Nikolas but the movements were completely different. Everyone else had their own way of sinking a few inches of their blade in a small opening or just straight up making their own cavity to shove their blades into.
One of them would just lead a deadhead straight to the tip of his blade while another was doing the good ol' chop and pull.
At this point, those three people were still staring in shock at the 'tentacle' that went through their bodies but the one in front just gritted his teeth before he tried to tear it off of his body. However, the tongue itself was slimy and slippery so after he held it with both hands, he started to chew it off with a maniacal expression before the tongue retracted with a huge chunk missing.
Well, that didn't dishearten the three that were already dead so they just rushed forward and tore the living shit out of the special that took them out. While doing so, they rushed ahead and took down as much as they could while their bodies were bleeding out from the wound they just sustained.
Like the ones before them, it was something else to see people fight when their death warrants were already signed because there was no fear of death any longer.
All they had to do was stay awake in the little time they had left and sink their blades into their targets. They were already dead but I bet they never felt so much alive being to throw out any worry they had to preserve what they had just lost.
In this place, sometimes, people were remembered not by how they lived but by how they died.
It's just that sometimes, that last burst of life could easily be put out.
Once those three had carved a path on the thick of the deadheads, it only took an instant before the deadhead in front of them raised its hand and slapped the guy in front. Well, a 'slap' was what it really did but the guy who tried to chew off the other special's tongue was now in two places at once.
His head had now flown out and bounced off the play area but the rest of its body didn't even know what just happened. It was still standing upright with a large hole in its chest and it just fell down when it finally ran out of juice.
Almost immediately, everyone from my crew—especially Tatiana—tensed up when we saw a deadhead that was fully intact, exerting the same amount of pressure as the last one we saw like it, but completely looking like a regular joe. Granted its skin was already far from a person that had that healthy pinkish glow, but its gray-greenish hue almost blended with its comrades.
The last one we met was huge in size—granting it the name "Hulker"—but this one seemed to just have some of its attributes.
Cheers just erupted from the viewing platforms as they saw someone breathe his last but Tatiana and I had already gone down with our weapons in hand. We wouldn't actually interrupt the game while it was still in progress but we went down to make sure to step in when it was the right time.
Even Kaley went into position with Jared—also telling Alexei to pick up his rifle—but no one else besides us seemed to be caring that much.
To them, it was still part of the game but to us, it was something entirely different.