Weapon System in Zombie Apocalypse-Chapter 185: Two Days After at the Site

Two Days After the Assault on the Colossal Worm

Cubao Ruins, Former Kill Zone

The air was hot, but dry. Most of the smoke had cleared. What was left of the worm's body—now slumped across the crater—had stopped leaking fluids. It had begun to dry out, baking under the Manila sun like a massive slab of overcooked meat.

The buildings around Cubao were dead. No power, no people, no movement. Just silent ruins and blackened concrete. But the peace didn't last.

A group of survivors entered the area from the east, coming from the collapsed highway that once connected to the Aurora Boulevard junction. They didn't walk like soldiers. But they didn't walk like scavengers either. Their formation wasn't tight, but it wasn't aimless. There were fourteen of them—men and women of different ages, most of them in makeshift armor, motorcycle pads, and sun-bleached clothing layered for protection. Their weapons were old and rusted—bolts barely held together, magazines duct-taped to keep them from falling apart.

They weren't a gang. Not really.

Just a group that had survived long enough together to become something worse.

At the head of the group was a man called Marrow. He was lean, with sunburnt skin and short, uneven hair. His rifle looked more like a hunting weapon than anything military-grade, but he carried it like it had weight. Like he had used it often.

They stopped when they saw it.

The corpse.

It lay in a twisted mess across the crater, like a dead god had fallen from the sky. Giant coils of armor-plated flesh. Burned holes through its sides. Blackened organs spilling into the soil. The head, if you could even call it that, was half melted—its massive jaw torn wide open, exposing layers of shattered fang and collapsed tissue.

"Shit," one of the younger survivors whispered.

"Is that the one?" asked another. "The monster we heard from up north?"

"Must be," said Marrow. He stepped closer, squinting down at the body. "No one said it was this big."

A woman beside him, wearing a torn flannel shirt and leather gloves, crossed her arms. "What the hell could've killed something like that?"

They stood there in silence, staring. The worm wasn't moving. There were no crows. No rats. No infected. The usual scavengers avoided the corpse like it was cursed.

Marrow stepped down the slope, slowly and carefully. The others followed after a moment, watching the ruined skyline for threats.

The closer they got to the crater, the more signs they noticed.

Empty shell casings. Crushed treads in the dirt. Burned-out drone fragments. Scorch marks from missiles or high-caliber explosives.

"This was military," someone said.

"No way," another replied. "Military's dead. We'd have seen them by now."

"Then who did this?"

They didn't know.

That was the problem.

Whoever had come here—whoever had fought this thing—was long gone. But they hadn't just fought. They had won. Cleanly. Precisely. There were no signs of chaos, no corpses scattered around, no failed last stands. Just empty crates, burned-out fuel drums, and a few temporary shelters already broken down and packed away.

Marrow crouched by one of the brass shell casings and picked it up. "This wasn't home-made," he said. "This is factory. Clean press. Same with the missile shrapnel. Whoever did this had access to real gear."

"They could still be nearby," the woman in the flannel warned.

"I don't think so," Marrow muttered. "If they were, they'd have finished cleaning up. This looks like an abandoned forward camp. They packed what they needed and moved out."

He stood up, looking at the worm again.

"We're standing in the middle of someone else's battlefield."

The group spread out across the edge of the crater. A few of them moved cautiously around the worm's corpse, poking it with sticks or examining the melted bones. They didn't get too close—none of them trusted it, even dead.

"What if it comes back?" asked one of the younger men.

"It won't," Marrow replied. "Not after what happened to it."

"How do you know?"

"Because no one stops this thing halfway. Whoever killed it made sure it stayed down."

He looked at the others.

"But that raises a question. If there's someone out there strong enough to kill something like this, why haven't we heard of them?"

The group went quiet.

They hadn't thought about that.

Everyone in the city knew the rules by now. You heard gunfire, you ran. You saw infected, you hid. You found someone with better gear than you, you avoided them. The strong didn't go unnoticed. The ones with firepower and food—people talked about them. Word spread.

But whoever fought here had done it in silence.

No broadcasts.

No banners.

No looting.

Just in and out.

"Maybe they don't want to be found," the woman said.

"Or maybe," Marrow added, "they're not trying to save anyone."

He didn't say it like a threat.

Just a fact.

Because in a world like this, anyone with enough power to kill a monster the size of a stadium wasn't out there to hold hands and sing songs. They were cleaning house. And maybe—just maybe—they didn't care who got caught in the crossfire.

"What do we do?" one of the others asked.

Marrow didn't answer right away. He looked at the corpse. At the signs of battle. At the strange silence around them.

Finally, he said, "We don't go looking. Not yet."

"So we just leave?"

"No," he said. "We watch. We find out who did this. Quietly. If they're friendly, maybe we get lucky. If they're not, we stay out of their way."

He looked at his people.

"We survived this long because we didn't pick fights we couldn't win. This? This isn't just another gang or a settlement with barbed wire."

He motioned to the worm.

"This was a war."

The group nodded slowly.

They didn't need to be told twice.

They marked the route on one of their paper maps and took turns sketching the layout of the ruined camp and the body's position. They didn't take anything, didn't disturb the site.

And something about this place… it felt wrong to touch.

As they pulled back from the crater and began the long walk back toward their shelter east of San Juan, the silence around the worm returned. ƒreewebηoveℓ.com

Still.

Heavy.

Unnatural.

The kind of silence that warned you not to stay too long.

And none of them did.