The Cardinal Directive: Mission Log #8

A small dilemma

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The first few seconds of the camera’s movement are erratic, paired with rushing footsteps and several calling voices.

There’s a loud thud and curse before the camera swings up into position.

It reveals the darkness of Martian night just past sunset, cold and stretching endlessly over the barren desert. Well… not quite so barren as one would expect.

“There, quarter past — you see it?”

The tracks of the crew stretch long across the desert, but some fifty feet away they’re interrupted by a small, dark mass. It moves, shambling toward them. Even for as comparatively slow as the freighter class dragons are, the creature stands no chance at catching up to the sled. Still, they aren’t quite outpacing it either.

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“I see it,” Alison murmured, zooming in as best she could and flicking on the night vision. It was still a bit hard to make out, but they all knew there was really only one thing it could be. “Jeez, Sol. How did you even spot that thing?”

“Got lucky?” She offered. “Just looked over the side and saw it coming for us. We’re lucky it wasn’t a faster one.”

Aret, Maven, and Sebastian had come to the back of the sled as soon as they’d heard the call too, watching the thing fight with every muscle in its body to catch them.

“So… Do we… kill it?”

Everyone glanced at Solena, then back at the undead creature following them. It wasn’t gaining any ground, though wasn’t losing any either.

The agreed-upon answer seemed to be an obvious yes, but that would require stopping the sled, and very possibly engaging with the zombie on equal footing unless they were willing to use CO2 spikes on it.

“…How, though?”

“Well, that’s the advantage we have over every other zombie apocalypse. We already know what a zombie is. We just need to destroy the brain, and it’ll… y’know.” Sebastian made a motion with his hand of something falling over.