55 Natural Selection (1/2)

Growling could be heard all around, keeping everyone on edge, day and night.

The monsters do not sleep. They do not eat.

They are always restless, searching for and hunting down the living.

It is all in an attempt to increase their numbers.

That seems to be their only purpose in life.

Unlike in the countless fictional horror stories written in the past, the undead does have any physical weakness.

Decapitating does not kill them.

They apparently do not need eyes to see. They don't need to breathe either.

Dismemberment only incapacitate them until they manage to reassemble themselves somehow.

Full dismemberment is required. Doing a half-ass job of severing limbs only actually makes them much more dangerous due to the increased number of independently-moving body parts.

The only way to truly put down these abominations is burning them to ashes.

However, the flames must be hot enough to incinerate bones. No one wants to have burning skeletons roaming the world, setting everything alight, converting more zombies into skeletal undead.

Even then, there is a great risk of summoning forth something even worst.

This is because like energy, magical energy cannot be destroyed or created. It can only be transformed from one state to another.

The Nazis have learned all about the dire consequences of being half-asses over the decades worth of experimentations and researches, thus it is one of the reasons why they are resorting to using nuclear weapons.

Only nuclear fire can truly destroy any remnant of the monsters, stopping their evolution or mutation dead in its track.

It also thin out their numbers, preventing a terrifying convergence event. It has happened once before in Australia, and it takes an enormous amount of firepower to kill the oversize abomination.

That titanic monster cannot be killed even by countless nuclear detonations. Aside from its incredible size, dwarfing everything in sight, its instant regeneration is something to be feared.

Even with their undead number being thinned out almost daily, their existence alone has caused some irreversible side effect.

With deadly miasma constantly oozes out of their body, poisoning the air and the earth. Nothing grows within their wake.

The world is actually dying thanks to the product of human ingenuity, experimenting in forces they do not yet fully understand.

Hans still remembers the day when the first undead arose.

Under the constant barrage of bullets, the undead creature proceeds to bite off the face of a scientist and kills several more before being put down by a couple of flamethrowers.

It still manages to tackle one of the soldiers onto the ground despite being on fire.

That soldier did not make it, unfortunately. He died on his way to the hospital due to severe burn over most of his body. He was then cremated to prevent unwanted reanimation.

In fact, anyone who died in Germany must be cremated and buried in concrete to prevent an outbreak.

Even the ashes are contaminated with tainted magical energy, infecting all living things.

That is how dangerous these things truly are.

In spite of that, the Fuhrer himself orders the researches to continue no matter the cost. He had even increased the funding, hoping to attain immortality at the expense of the entire world.

At his current old age, he is very desperate. He is no longer the great man who lead Germany to victory over the Soviet and the American.

The man is just a paranoid corpse, holding onto his final breaths.

So many loyalists have been sentenced to death for speaking out against the Fuhrer. Their family exiled into the radioactive wastelands known as the rest of the world.

Hans and his sister are all that left his their family after their exile to Japan.

Japan is the only country that still has some resemblances of society outside Germany.

As allies during the Second World War, Germany did not bomb Japan into oblivion.

Germany only killed most of her people and then executed the imperial family to prove that there is no such thing as divine destiny that the Japanese constantly spewing about.

Seeing their emperor and his entire family being hanged publicly finally breaks the Japanese spirit. The zombie outbreaks crush what is left.

Due to the destruction of the country and its industries and economies, the Japanese are surviving on the scraps that Nazi Germany left behind.

Without foods or supplies, they are dying a slow death, just like everyone living outside Germany.

Even so, those people have not suffered more than Hans had.

Being branded as a traitor to Germany is a fate worse than death. His father and mother have suffered unimaginable torture alongside with the Jewish people and the undesirables.

Hans could only save his little sister with all the merits he had accumulated over the years.

Due to her young age, his sister would have been raped repeatedly until she died by countless of men, who have lost any sense of morality and humanity in a world gone mad.

His mother did. Her mutilated body is nowhere to be found afterwards, so Hans couldn't even cremate her and give her a proper burial.

Before what left of his father join him and his sister in their exile to Japan, his father was experimented upon after the torture. His father was injected with liquefied bloodstone.

What becomes of his father makes his stomach turn despite all that he has seen.

Hans grips his sniper rifle tightly, trying not to remember the pleading face of his father, begging to be put out of his unending torture and misery.

A son being forced to kill his father – this is what his beloved Germany has become.

It is no longer the beautiful country from his childhood, desperately struggling against the titans of the world.

The Titans are killed now, but what has replaced them isn't any better just like the Olympians in Greek Mythology. The new God of the world toys with human lives everyday.

Hans wonders when a Hero would appear from the remnant of humanity, rising up and bringing down Germany just like in those stories. He would love to see the day when that happened, but it is all just wishful thinking.

”Hans!”

A young man breaks Hans out of his thoughts.

He turns towards the person, whose face is covered with dirt and mud.