Luka’s eyes struggle to adjust as night drapes across their shoulders. Despite the shroud, the glow of the aurora overhead illuminates the snow faintly. It is barely enough to see dim shapes. He squints anxiously into the dense, frozen trees, half-expecting to see monstrous forms hiding among their twisted branches—or Sceps, who melted into the darkness, grumbling indistinctly about the direction they are headed. Luka feels that there is little to differentiate between a monster and Sceps.
The corpse hunters led Luka away from the resort hours ago, going uphill along the abandoned road littered with shattered ground cars and derelict buildings. As they left, Luka had paused to capture a few images of the resort receding behind them, framing crumbling structures silhouetted beneath the glow of the aurora. A few intact, barricaded buildings stood out among the ruins, a reminder of sporadic safari tour groups. Even through his unease, Luka recognizes the beauty of the desolate landscape. The photographs would stand out in his private collection back on Earth, though he doubts he'll ever share them with his family. They would not understand.
His family had been scandalized when he expressed a desire to visit Grave at all, let alone participate in what they consider ghoulish hedonism. As Earth elites, they view the planet as little more than a grotesque amusement park—brutal, crass, and unbecoming of anyone with proper lineage, despite their corporation’s involvement in the region’s economy. But Luka had insisted.
He had undergone the mandatory installation of the resuscitation device and booked passage to the planet. At first, he joined the more typical tourist groups: the safaris that frequented the hunting stands stationed outside the spaceport, firing wildly from the fortifications at the shambling hordes that always seemed drawn to them. But the empty violence, and the endless livestreaming had quickly worn thin. He had started looking for something deeper, though even he wasn’t sure what.
Luka had eventually joined a smaller, exclusive hunting tour with a handful of well-funded tourists and a guide with a stellar reputation, one who charged a premium for venturing deeper than most. The experience was supposed to be more authentic, more thrilling. It was. Until it wasn’t.
Their ground car had barely made it to the outskirts of the old city when they were overrun. The guide had kept Luka alive, screaming at him to run for the shelter of a mostly solid building as the others were consumed in a wave of undead. Luka had managed to shut a rusted door behind him and lay prone on the cold floor, too paralyzed with fear to move, listening to the sounds of tearing flesh and shuffling feet.
When the horde finally moved on, Luka crept outside to find what remained of the others. The tourists’ bodies were strewn across the snow-covered pavement, mangled and already frosting over. Without thinking, he had torn the dog tags from their necks with trembling hands and fled the scene. At the time, he hesitated, thinking he should stay in case his guide returned or a patrol from Arkhangelsk came through. But he’s grateful he didn’t. He now understands completely what happens to the dead. He wouldn’t have enjoyed seeing their faces again. Not like that. He wanted to see his friends again in the spaceport, after Rigo and Sceps returned their dog tags to the resuscitation clinic.
Luka is pulled from his memory as the wind causes the branches along the road to rustle and to send a chill up his spine. They climb steadily uphill, following a cracked road strewn with broken ground cars and crumbling buildings, their shells glazed with frost. Shadows flicker at the edges of Luka’s vision, each one threatening to twist into something else. He can’t shake the sense that it’s more than just the presence of zombies unnerving him. He glances at the sky in the south, which churns with the electrical storm. Thunder growls like some distant beast. Crimson lightning flares now and then, painting the horizon in blood-red flashes.
Luka knows the official explanations of the storms—the carefully sanitized versions released by the corporate scientists who study Grave’s bizarre weather—but he also knows those accounts are incomplete. Despite decades of corporate-funded research, no one has ever definitively explained what fuels the planet’s infamous storms.
The storms had appeared only after the zombie plague spread and the planet froze, leading to endless speculation about their connection to the catastrophe. This mystery had long since been overshadowed by the intense zombie livestreams broadcast across the galaxy; they simply provided an atmospheric backdrop.
Luka’s formal education had been focused on business rather than science, yet he has absorbed enough from corporate reports and whispered rumors to suspect there's more hidden beneath the official story. He has learned that the distant rumbling will build slowly over days, steadily deepening until the entire world is engulfed in shades of black and bruised purple.
Those caught outside the protection of the specially built walls of Arkhangelsk—or who lack the expensive corporate-issued survival gear—are overwhelmed, collapsing unconscious as the might of the storm breaks overhead.
The storms don't typically kill outright, they merely engulf the world in darkness, unless victims are caught exposed to the elements, without protection, when the full might of the phenomenon can sometimes prove fatal. But then again, fatal is never truly final on Grave.
Not wishing to think about what is fatal on the planet, he brings his focus back to his current situation. Luka has never felt this level of dread on a company-sponsored zombie tour. With his previous groups, the adventures had been thrilling but controlled. But now, trudging uphill along this fractured road with two silent, threatening men, that sense of curated danger is gone. His excitement has long since evaporated. The zombies certainly frighten him, but not as much as the presence of Rigo and Sceps. Their movements are too precise, their silences too practiced. They make the zombies feel like background noise.
He remembers seeing corpse hunters swaggering through Arkhangelsk, with pouches full of dog tags like trophies. The stories he heard about them were always half myth—tales of desperate firefights and last-minute rescues, of retrieving dog tags from deep inside massive hordes of zombies. But there were stories of hunters tracking down safari groups, and each other, not only for profit, but also for sport. After the gunfight at the resort, Luka believes those to be true. Rigo and Sceps seem like the kind who don't just survive the fight but seek it out. He never imagined standing this close to men like them. Not while still breathing, at least. He knows he has to keep quiet and do whatever it takes to make it back to the city. He really, really doesn’t want to find out what dying feels like.
Now, Luka’s survival rests in the hands of these two men. He reluctantly trusts Rigo and Sceps—or at least trusts their practical, ruthless professionalism. If they’d planned to betray him and pocket his dog tags, they would have done so long before reaching this isolated road. Their silence, broken only by curt commands to keep quiet or move precisely where instructed, reinforces his status. Luka is no fool; he understands clearly where he stands with these corpse hunters, aware he's merely cargo. He has, however, decided to not let them know the true value of their cargo.
The gunfight had thrilled Luka in the moment. It had been terrifying, yes, but undeniably exhilarating. The aftermath, however, had sickened him. He had never seen freshly killed men up close before, only long-since dead zombies. He had not thought of them as previously human. The bodies in the cabin, slumped unnaturally and still warm, had shaken him more than he expected.
He shudders at the memory, praying Rigo doesn’t notice. Instinctively, his hand twitches toward the tags embedded in the back of his neck, but he stops himself just in time. Rigo would know what that gesture meant. He would know Luka was thinking about death—about his own, and how they will collect his tags when he falls. Luka forces his hands to his sides and steadies himself. He will pretend, as best he can, that he is calm. That everything is fine. That he is just another tourist tagging along, not a terrified man trying desperately to hold himself together.
The road they follow is cracked concrete, scarred with frost-filled pockmarks and patches of ice that glisten in the faint aurora. Once a scenic route for tourists seeking panoramic views of the hills, it has crumbled with the overbearing cold like everything else on Grave. Each step is rough and uncertain. Luka stumbles more than once as he follows in Rigo’s much more steady footsteps. He keeps glancing back over his shoulder, searching for signs of Sceps or something worse.
Rigo says nothing, eyes fixed on the dense treeline that stretches below the road. He seems unconcerned with Luka’s unease. Luka, watching the twisted silhouettes of the trees, wonders what corpse hunters feel here.
Rigo breaks the silence only once, voice flat. “Anyone can hide in those branches.”
“Anyone?” Luka echoes. He blinks and struggles to keep his voice steady, “You mean zombies?”
Rigo doesn’t look at him. “Zombies don’t hide.”
“Who would be out here?” Luka asks, suddenly feeling more exposed than before.
Rigo shrugs slightly, still watching the trees. “Other corpse hunters. Bandits. Or safari groups.”
Luka blinks again. “What? Safari groups? For you to kill?”
Rigo finally glances back at him, his expression unreadable between the scarf and helmet. “Possibly. Sceps isn’t keen on this area.”
Then he turns away again, taciturn as ever, leaving Luka staring nervously into the dark and wishing for an elaboration on what could possibly upset Sceps. Or perhaps he would rather not know.
“We need to pick up the pace,” Rigo mutters finally, scanning the treeline. “This storm’s coming in too fast.”
“Zombies,” comes Sceps’s deep voice. Luka doesn’t hear him from the trees, but softly through Rigo’s earpiece. He catches only the one word, but Rigo gives a slight nod, confirming the message.
Rigo relays it without turning his head. “Sceps says movement in the trees below.”
Before Luka can respond, a shadow shifts beneath the frozen canopy. Sceps emerges from the darkness like a phantom. He is silent despite his size, the snow barely crunching under his boots. He climbs the hill effortlessly, his black clamshell armor blending into the night, eyes hidden behind his slick visor.
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Luka stiffens. No matter how tense things feel with Rigo, it’s nothing compared to the constant pressure of Sceps’s presence. The big man barely speaks, but Luka feels his cold, uncaring gaze all the same. As if he’s already decided Luka is expendable. Luka realises he probably is certain of his expendability.
Sceps stops just beside them, turning his helmet slightly toward Luka. The blank visor gives nothing away, yet Luka instinctively shrinks back, inching behind Rigo. He has no idea whether Sceps is glaring at him or just watching. Somehow, the silence is worse than words. Luka turns to peer in the direction in which Rigo is looking.
At first, Luka isn’t sure what he is seeing. The cold mists his breath into a cloud in front of his face. The puffs of white fade in his vision as he stares down into the darkness. The trees at the bottom of the hill are bent and brittle under the weight of old snow. The branches tremble. Then shapes appear. Jerking limbs, slack faces, silvered eyes glowing faintly in the aurora-lit gloom.
The horde is large. Too large.
“How many?” Rigo asks, his voice barely above a whisper, but calm. Snowflakes begin to dance lightly around him.
“Thirty? Forty?” Sceps tilts his head and shrugs. “More come. Storm’s pissed them off.”
“We will have to outrun them,” Rigo says. He looks at Luka, who is starting to flag with the exertion of keeping up with the corpse hunters.
Sceps turns to look at Luka.
“They come for you,” he tells the man in a low voice.
“Not you?”
Sceps does not respond, but Rigo fills in the silence, “No, not us, we are protected. We will need to destroy some of these, but quickly. The hills will carry the echo of gunshots to others.”
Luka’s stomach turns. He shivers, but not from the ever-present cold. His fantasies about moments like this, gunning down endless waves of undead in heroic triumph, disappear when faced with the reality. The zombies are not as dangerous as the others Rigo mentioned. His Winchester on his shoulder feels heavier than it has any right to be.
Rigo claps him on the shoulder with a gloved hand. “Breathe, bro. We run and we fight.” He shrugs, and finishes the thought, “Or you die.”
The words are stark. Luka nods, his lips a tight line. He knows the corpse hunters will not die in this encounter. This is probably easy for them.
Luka follows them along the road, looking down the hill nervously at the zombies as they squirm through the trees. His breath begins to come in short, sharp bursts as he scrambles to keep up, boots slipping on patches of ice. The cold bites at his face, his legs burn from the exertion, and the pressure of staying close to the corpse hunters is almost unbearable. The road winds ahead of them, broken and uneven, flanked by skeletal buildings and jagged drifts of snow.
They have begun moving faster since Sceps rejoined them. Luka trips and falls to a knee, but neither corpse hunter assist him. Rigo says nothing, he only glances back at Luka with a look that says: keep up or be left behind. As they march silently up the road, the snowflakes thicken into another blizzard. The snow builds on their heads and shoulders, making their clothing heavy and cold. It quickly whites out their vision. They can still see the zombies following them, grey shapes in the white swirls of snow. The distance is closing.
Rigo finally speaks, “We’re going to have to go to Stryga.”
Luka, panting hard, looks up. “What is Stryga?”
Ahead, Sceps grunts. A low, guttural sound that doesn’t bode well.
“Fuck Stryga,” the large corpse hunter growls.
Rigo keeps walking, unbothered by the reaction. “You know it’s easier than the alternatives.”
“Yes,” Sceps snaps, “but fuck Stryga.”
Luka blinks. “Wait—what is it? Some kind of bunker?”
Rigo slows slightly, letting Luka catch up. “It’s a dorp. I mean, in English, a village. In the cliffs by the lake.”
Luka nearly trips again. “A village? I thought there were no settlements outside the spaceport.”
“There aren't. Not officially,” Rigo says. “But this one is there. Has people. Living ones.”
“That’s… good?” Luka offers, though the uncertainty in his voice is hard to miss. Surely the government in Archangelsk would know about a village in the wilderness.
Rigo glances at him. “People are more dangerous than zombies, but there are fewer of them.”
Before Luka can ask more, Sceps’s voice cuts the conversation short. “Movement. Road ahead. Left side.”
Rigo’s hand goes up in a quick, silent command, and he crouches low behind a chunk of collapsed concrete. Luka follows, his heart hammering.
The horde is there. And it is massive.
“Shit,” Rigo mutters. “Sceps, how many now?”
“Too many to fight clean. We move.”
Rigo is already up and moving fast along the side of the road, using the cover of broken-down ground cars and snowbanks. Luka scrambles after him, adrenaline dulling the ache in his legs. Rigo keeps telling him that the zombies are not as dangerous as the people, but he feels like this might not be true even for the two corpse hunters right now. Sceps, falls slightly behind them, somewhere to the left. He watches the horde as the two men in lighter armour continue up the road.
“They’re fanning out. Picking up speed.”
“They’re tracking us?” Luka asks breathlessly, dodging a rusted-out van.
“They smell the blood in you,” Rigo answered flatly. Even he is starting to pant.
Luka’s stomach turns. “They are really coming for me?”
Rigo doesn’t sugarcoat it. “Not Sceps and me, bro.”
Zombies begin appearing in full view, stumbling between cars, slipping in the snow, but always moving forward. One lunges from behind the ruined shell of a bus, arms wide and jaw slack. Rigo didn’t even flinch—he spun, raised his suppressed pistol, and fires once. The zombie crumples, its skull cracked clean through. The sound is a muffled pop, but louder than Luka expected
“They’ll hear that,” Luka gasps.
“Yes,” Rigo replies. “Now shoot or die.”
Luka ducks behind an overturned ground car, fumbling as he pulls his pistol from his side holster. His gloves feel too thick, the small weapon too heavy. Rigo kneels a few meters ahead, already lining up more shots.
Then Sceps’s voice crackles again on Rigo’s earpiece, this time more urgent. “Coming up the hill. Right side.”
The trees between the buildings to their right erupt with motion. Zombies, moving faster now, as if the storm’s static charge had sparked something inside them. Some drag themselves awkwardly, broken limbs flailing. Others are quick, aggressive. And worse, a few had fused bodies melded together by cold, rot, and time. Those lumber forward with grotesque speed.
Rigo barks out a command. “Luka! Left side. Sceps is flanking. You stay on me!”
Luka raises his pistol, aimed, and squeezed the trigger. The first shot misses wildly, ricocheting off an old signpost. He grits his teeth, adjusts, and tries again. This time the bullet hits home, square in the skull of a charging zombie. It collapses in a spray of black ichor.
He barely has time to celebrate before two more come from the trees. They are reaching for him. He stumbles backwards.
Rigo steps in front of one. It doesn’t seem to notice him. He levels his gun, and fires twice. Both drop.
“Stay calm, bro,” he says without looking back. “You’re doing fine.”
Luka’s chest heaves. “I don’t feel fine.”
“Then fake it. No time for nerves.”
Zombies are swarming behind them now, cutting off retreat. They have no choice but to push forward, using the elevation and curve of the road to break the line of sight from the bulk of the horde. Rigo and Luka quickly empty their magazines into the horde, destroying several more zombies as they continue their escape up the street. Luka realises he is out of ammunition in the pistol. He struggles to reload it. Sceps appears at Luka’s side like a wraith, shoving a new pistol into his hands.
“Backup. Stop wasting rounds.”
“Wasting?”
“You miss many shots.” Sceps says with a disgusted snarl.
Then the big man is gone again, charging ahead with brutal grace, carving a path through the closest threats. His armor is already streaked with gore. Sceps carries short stellium knives, as deadly to zombies as his guns. He slashes a zombie from stomach to sternum as he grabs it’s head in his other gauntleted hand. He crushes the skull with his fist. Gore slides between his fingers and down his forearm. He doesn’t seem to notice as he continues to the next zombie, dispatching it with similar gruesomeness.
Luka fires the pistol. The sharp crack of a perfect shot echoes faintly, and a zombie folds into the snow. He feels a jolt of pride, but it is quickly drowned by panic as another zombie surges forward.
They run again—between rusted wrecks and collapsed signage, weaving through the narrow gaps between wrecked tour transports. The road narrows ahead, hugging the edge of a steep slope, the drop on the left is obscured by blowing snow.
There are more undead spilling into the road behind them, but the snowstorm picks up enough to confuse them. They can’t pinpoint Luka in the heavy storm. The horde begins to slow.
Rigo points to a cluster of concrete barriers ahead. “There. We take the path down to the lake there.”
Sceps is already moving, a human battering ram. He reaches the barriers and ducks behind them, picking off a few remaining targets with mechanical precision.
Rigo slides in beside him, motioning for Luka to follow. “You got five seconds to stop breathing like a fish and start down the hill.”
Luka nods, dropping into cover, and gathers his breath. He hasn’t got much left, but he is beginning to sense that Rigo is getting desperate to get him away from this horde. He has to keep up with them somehow. Rigo suddenly grabs the strap of his pack and hauls him up, pulling him out of the barriers and down the hill. Luka doesn’t see any zombies close by. The snow blows over them, covering them with a solid wall of white in the dark. The visibility is now nearly zero, he doesn’t know if a zombie will suddenly surge out of the snow at him. He doesn’t struggle in Rigo’s grasp. He does his best to not slow the corpse hunter down.
“Stryga is near, about an hour of walking,” Rigo informs him, nearly yelling to be heard over the wind.
Luka cannot contain his curiosity, even this close to their desperate run up the road. “How many people live there? Does the spaceport know about the village? What about the governor? How long has it been there? Does it get overrun by zombies? How do they survive?”
Rigo, his patience at the end of his rope, does not respond. He turns down the hill and leads Luka to the frozen shoreline.
“Other side of the lake. Come,” Rigo says as he starts down the slope. Sceps mutters something, but heads down the hill.
Luka follows the two men down to the lake, desperately trying to stay ahead of the horde has nearly broken him. When he was with the tour group, they had had a ground car. The walking had been minimal. Rigo and Sceps never seem to tire completely. They lead him through the snowstorm and around the lake. Sceps does not disappear into the trees this time; the snowstorm keeps him close to Rigo. It is too difficult to track people in this weather.
The three finally reach a river. The edges of the river are frozen, but the center runs wild. Like veins in the snow, the river breaks into smaller creeks and lakes. Luka is terrified he will fall through the ice and be washed away. No one will find his dog tags, even with the expensive extra beacon, for a very long time if his body is trapped in the water under the ice. His family would be very angry if he were dead for years.
He is relieved when the corpse hunters finally find the spot they were looking for, a frozen creek bed. They go upstream, away from the main river, which continues past the other side of the creek. They carefully climb around and over the rocks, making sure they don’t slip on the icy surfaces. Finally, at long last, they arrive at the entrance of a cave, built in the shadows of the bottom of a cliff face.
They go up the winding stairs inside the rocks. Luka is surprised there are no defenses against zombies, until he realises there are gates over his head, that could come crashing down on him at any moment. The gate at the top is closed. Rigo presses the button next to the gate and asks to be allowed in. They are let into a lock, and the gate closes behind them. Luka starts to remove his guns, but Rigo tells him that they will keep their weapons. This isn’t Archangelsk, there is no port authority to confiscate them.
The gate in front of them opens. They are allowed to enter the tiny village, built into the interior of a cave. Stryga, Rigo had called it. No one in Archangelsk had mentioned this. Not even a whisper. Luka has so many questions.
The village is nothing more than a collection of a few buildings built into the sides of the cave. The buildings are haphazard and makeshift. Luka thinks that any sudden gusts of wind would take out several of them if they were outside of the cave. They seem to be powered with electricity as well. He can hear the low hum of a generator deep in the rock of the cave. A single, flickering neon sign marks the building in which Rigo and Sceps head. It is a bar, and it is the heart of the settlement.
“I hate this shit, bro,” Sceps grumbles.
“It’s fine,” Rigo responds.
The last thought Luka has before they enter the bar is to finally wonder why Sceps, a massive mountain of a man who doesn’t seem to be afraid of anything, doesn’t seem to be comfortable in this village. He realises that this should concern him as the door closes behind him.
