The Z Gene - Chapter 9：Killing in the dessert

Daniel was making his way through the wasteland now known as Earth, very few mutated living beings could be spotted here and there, after liberating the first city and improving the inhabitants living conditions while also leaving strong guards behind to protect the peace of the city, with the suggestion of Ropego the cat Daniel decided to travel and find another city which he would grace his presence with.

Ropego yawned lazily on Daniel’s now wide shoulders, he wasn’t the same scrawny boy that he was before, now standing at a one-meter and ninety centimeters height his body full of lean muscle, he looked a lot better than before. His body reached the peak of human performance and gone beyond it, every time the Z Gene made advancement in his helix tree his power would increase little by little. Of course, the advancement needed quite a high amount of energy even after he absorbed the blood from the zombified Demon’s burning church fellow who also had awakened a special gene he still hadn’t reached the second branch of his helix tree. It was almost over sixty percent there though.

Daniel yawned as he felt quite bored, traveling the wasteland wasn’t interesting at all for him while Ropego narrowed his eyes at Daniel’s behavior, he was especially brainwashed to always be fully alert and to want to do his best concerning the goods of humanity. Was the brainwashing starting to fail already?

Daniel noticed Ropego’s peculiar gaze, he couldn’t even damn yawn and the cat would suspect it? What the hell is wrong with this cat? he thought to himself, then he increased the pace and put a serious look on his face. Ropego nodded to himself afterward it seemed that the brainwashing was getting chipped away little by little so Ropego decided to reinforce it with suggestions:

“Daniel we should move faster towards the next city, maybe it was already overrun by zombies! What would the poor normal humans do against them?”

Daniel narrowed his eyes inwardly and scoffed at Ropego’s blatant try to manipulate him, then he sighed and increase his speed to even higher amounts. Ropego smiled to himself thinking that the brainwashing was still holding strong against Daniel.

After a few days of traveling and no city’s being in sight, Daniel decided to rest a few minutes but out of nowhere a cloud of dust could be seen growing on the horizon!

It was a truck with shouting savages on it! Some of them even had the Devil’s burning church tattoo on their heads or exposed muscular arms!

They were going in the direction of city Magenta which he just liberated. It seemed the Devil’s burning church was ready to take over the city!

Fortunately for the city Daniel met them midway, there were quite a few people in the truck and no one knew how strong they were or if they awakened any special genes.

Daniel stood in the road and waited for the truck to come closer to him, the truck was running at high speeds over the dunes of sand of the wasteland when the tattooed savages saw Daniel they didn’t hit the brakes but pushed the acceleration! They wanted to run him over.

Daniel chuckled to himself if he was a normal person he might have been able to dodge as the distance was still quite big between himself and the truck but he didn’t need to do that.

He made a saber palm and put it in front of himself waiting for the truck to run directly in it, which the driver of the truck did, The truck was immediately bifurcated in the middle with some unlucky savages being outright killed while the other ones gasped in disbelief at the scene.

The leader of the savages jumped from the truck the moment Daniel started bifurcating it in two, The leader was a portly man with a mustache and military haircut, his tattoo was on his bulging arm, even though he was fat his arms looked infused with steroids, they were extremely disproportioned to his body.

The man looked at Daniel with cold eyes then instructed his remaining men to remain on standby with his hand and intoned in a cold voice:

“Boy, do you know who we are?”

Daniel looked at the man like he would look at a clown then said:

“I know so what about it?”

The portly man started sweating afterward if Daniel knew about them and still decided to offend them and their organization that meant he had quite the big backer behind him! Or else he was a suicidal fool.

The man tried to probe into Daniel’s backing but he didn’t say anything, but when he looked at Ropego properly he shuddered, He was only a Little Devil, not very high in the hierarchy but he knew of the bunkers special agents, Ropego was a top assassin agent from the bunker!

The man wanted to extricate himself from this but he didn’t know what to do, the bunker and Devil’s burning church were like fire and water, any interactions would result in the death of one side. He decided to go for broke and launched himself at Daniel with no prior warning, maybe if he could take him by surprise he would be able to defeat him!

The remaining underlings took a star-shaped formation and surrounded Daniel so he couldn’t run away. Daniel shook his head at their antics, then took a step forward, the ground below him cracked under the pressure of his foot as he hurled a fist directly at the man, the man unconsciously tried to dodge the fist but it was too late for him, he came too close to Daniel!

The punch hit him squarely in the face deforming it beyond recognition so not even his mother could recognize who he was anymore!

But he wasn’t dead, Daniel could now somewhat control his strength, and this fellow wasn’t a normal human being either. The underlings started to cower seeing their boss being beaten back so easily, they weren’t even devilings they were cannon fodder meant to support the operation of taking over the city after their leader would subdue the city lord and with the help of the deviling that infiltrated the city, they could make a clean sweep of it!

Unfortunately, they met with Daniel who was on his way to find a next city, which he could ‘liberate’. Daniel shook his wrist making a loud popping sound be heard in the empty wasteland, that punch dislocated his wrist!

Daniel smiled to himself then looked at the leader who fell after he got punched and said:

“I know you are feigning being knocked out, get up your face is hard.” The man got up from the ground begrudgingly and gave Daniel an ugly smile with missing teeth and his disfigured face, it made an image which could scare little children into crying for days.

This guy was extremely though not being knocked out even though Daniel held back, Daniel appeared behind the leader and held his two huge arms behind him while saying:

“Ok now that we are on the same page, could you tell me why would you want to go conquer city Magenta?”

The man started shaking, Daniel already knew of their plan! As expected of the bunker, they were a formidable enemy.

The man stopped shaking afterward and said:

“You already know our plan and stopped us why would you want extra information?”

Daniel smiled at the man’s words and started to twist his arm which elicited a yelp of pain from the man, the underlings wanted to help their boss but they were scared out of their wits, some of them even tried to run away but their throats were slit by Ropego immediately leaving them just standing there in terror of the little white cat.

Daniel was ready to rip off one of his arms if he didn’t answer what he wanted to know but the man immediately capitulated in front of the pressure and he said:

“Our organization lieutenant Devil Lord Goapun wanted the city lords research and the resources of the city, living humans would also have been great slaves and lab rats for our experiments, that’s all.”

Even though he was a rank higher than the one he killed in the city he still didn’t have useful information besides the bare basics. Daniel sighed then he slit the man’s throat and absorbed his blood, Ropego started flashing among the remaining subordinates killing all of them instantly!

Out of Daniel’s body came little tendrils who entered the dead bodies of the grunts and took all of their blood, even a mosquito is still meat if he accumulated enough nutrients and energy no matter the quality, his next helix tree branch would still be lit.

Ropego informed Daniel that these guys won’t be revived as zombies, Baidoa could control where he would release the gas, so Daniel didn’t have to worry if some of his enemies would come back to life.

At least that was a good thing Daniel mused to himself. Daniel shook his heads afterward and started running forward at high speeds, he still needed to get to the next city.

In the Devil’s church nearby headquarters a muscular man with a bald head and two tattoos on his arms,he was looking at a map and a radar then he scrunched the map and broke the radar while shouting:

“Goddamit, these fools died! Their life signals disappeared in the middle of the wasteland, what wastes, there are no more backups from the main headquarters, I guess I will have to go to the city myself.”

The man was the Devil Lord Goapun, he donned on a military outfit and took some rusted knives from a nearby armory and then set out, he had no time to waste! The Devil Duke gave him strict orders to get the city lords research, it would be useful if they combined it with theirs to create only beneficial mutations to their soldiers, combined with their gene awakening serums they could get ahead of the bunker!

Goapun didn’t even greet Daniel as he took his rusty knives from his outfit pockets and rushed at Daniel with a reckless abandon, but he wasn’t rushing dumbly in like a bull, there was some technique involved in his rush making it seem like he was rushing from different positions at the same time.

Suddenly three silhouettes jumped at Daniel from three different directions and stabbed him in the ribs!

The man chuckled to himself as Daniel coughed up some blood but then he smiled and tried to grab the silhouettes arms, but all he grabbed was smoke!

This guy Goapun had a kind of cloning technique that he made him a tricky opponent to fight.

Daniel rushed towards Goapun but Goapun was a bit quicker than Daniel in terms of pure speed.

Goapun tried to have a battle of attrition with Daniel always sending out silhouettes to slash or cut off parts of Daniel’s body, but Daniel didn’t stay still as he did before, he either dodged or dashed towards Goapun trying to kill him or capture him in one fell swoop!

Killing him would be better here as he could be revived with the gas then restrained making things easier for Daniel.

Daniel’s eyes started to glow red as his berserker mode activated, his tall form increased in height and weight while his muscles bulged and a scaly armor started to cover him, his clothes got destroyed in the process of transformation only his pants remained somewhat intact.

Goapun narrowed his eyes not knowing what kind of gene Daniel awakened, he tried to use his rusty knives again but they just bounced off Daniel’s skin like they were nothing special.

Goapun wanted to run after what he saw, there was no way he could defeat the behemoth Daniel, but Daniel didn’t let him run away, he couldn’t control himself in this form so Ropego already couldn’t be seen anywhere as he hid.

So now the only remaining target in his field of vision was Goapun, Goapun could harass Daniel before with his speed and tactics but now he pretty much couldn’t even escape. Daniel grabbed him by both of his legs then started to stretch him, he started to shout in pain but the shout was immediately silenced as he was torn in two halves.

Daniel wanted to rampage more but a syringe with a yellow liquid in it hit him in the back of the head making him regress to his normal form. Ropego sweated behind Daniel if Daniel dodged or if the shot didn’t hit him properly he would have been done for!

As Daniel reverted from his monstrous form he regained his reason and looked down at himself seeing that he was half-naked he shook his head, he decided to remove his clothes when he transformed in his berserker form from now on.

Ropego called Baidoa and he sent some gas to reconstruct Goapun’s body, Daniel then restrained the mindless Goapun and dragged him towards the bodies of his subordinates which he then ate ravenously, even though the bodies were drained of blood they could still be useful towards the awakening of a newly created zombie, but they would be useless at strengthening an awakened zombie or a one that was out of control.

After he regained his reason the man looked at his hands with terror, he didn’t want to eat his subordinates! Daniel ignored the men shook psyche and immediately tried to interrogate him, the man was already quite broken inside, after all, he experienced things that no normal human would experience, he had a special gene awakened but he wasn’t a mutant, he was a talented guy from a normal city who took military training before the tragedy that reduced the Earth to what it was, happened.

Goapun immediately started to tell him what he knew:

“The Devil Duke Spideo installed me and my men here telling us he needed the city lords research and the humans and resources of the city, he said that with their help we could strengthen our organization to the peak and even overtake the Iron Bunker, thus making us the strongest organization on Earth! Afterward, he said that with the help of our Devil God we would conquer the Iron Bunker and become the Earth’s leaders!”

Daniel nodded at the explanation, it seemed the Devil’s burning church had quite high ambitions for being a group of scavengers.

Daniel felt bad for the man, he seemed genuinely scared and afraid of what he became, it seemed not everyone joined the Devil’s burning church willingly, it could be said that the both of them were similar as they unwillingly became soldiers for the supreme forces of the world.

Daniel decided to use the controlling technique on him and send him to city Magenta so he could protect the city with Silvester and Dabo.

After he used the technique on Goapun which surprisingly went easier than anticipated, he gave him some instructions then let him go towards the city, but before he let him go he still asked him about the next city.

Goapun shook his head at the question then said:

“A few hundreds of thousands of kilometers north, it’s in the mutant jungle, the only place on Earth that has abundant vitality, but in my opinion, the vitality it’s a bit too high.”

Daniel afterward let him go and he started moving according to Goapun instructions, it would be quite a long journey from now on especially on foot.