4.6 | Dark Ages ✓

- 0 3 : 0 5

– 0 3 : 0 5

HE LANDS IN the middle of a battle.

It takes him several seconds to register where he is. When he does, terror roots him to the spot. The biting tang of blood assaults his senses; terrified screams and inhuman shrieks rupture his eardrums. Mere feet away, a man lies battered on the floor. His eyes roll up and agonizing wheezes escape his lips as two zombies feast on him. He's being eaten alive.

Another man that is his spitting image—his twin—swipes at an attacking creature with a machete. In one swift cleave, the knife comes down on the zombie's arm. It lets out a screech—more out of fury than of pain—and careens forward, undeterred, to sink its teeth into the man's hand. The machete falls to the ground with a clatter as the man stumbles back, panic etched onto his features as he stares down at the bleeding stump of his arm.

Just then, a sharp scream pierces the chaos. It's high-pitched and feminine. No. Taehyung twists around, cold dread clawing at his chest as he anticipates the worst. No, please don't be her, please don't be her, please don't be—

It's not her. He watches in morbid helplessness as the zombies sink their talons into a blond woman and rip her apart, limb from limb. The crack of bones and squelch of tearing flesh makes bile rise up to his throat. He stumbles a step back, dry retching, filled with both horror at the sight and relief that it's not her.

He's jumped through ages, but this is the first time he sees the Dark Ages for what it really is: A battle that he can't win. An era of death and destruction, where evolution means nothing in the face of these zombies. All that is left is survival, and your endgame is almost always death.

Either that, or you become one of the monsters.

He stumbles back, but his footsteps send a zombie lurching towards him. A new wave of fear grips him, but his hands move on instinct. His fingers curl around the gun; his legs shift into a steady stance as he takes aim. With a blood-curdling growl, the zombie lunges at him.

Calmly, with the ease of a killer, he shoots it in the face.

These are people, he thinks, the words piercing like glass shards through his mind. These are people who've been turned. I'm killing people. But on the heels of that thought comes another—do whatever it takes to survive. Whatever it takes.

He clamps his fear down and allows his survival instincts to take over. Somewhere in the background, he registers muffled cries and gasps. The other people who had valiantly fought for their lives are now dead (or turning—but he doesn't want to think about that), and he's the only one left.

He stumbles back, step by step, as each zombie charge towards him, their attacks held back only by the gun in his hands. Will he run out of bullets? Will he get bitten too? His lungs burn, his eyes sting with the effort of keeping them open, but he knows that a split second of negligence could result in his demise.

Survive, survive, survive.

He lets out a strangled sound as one of the creatures close its jaws around his gun. He flinches away as the zombie's teeth come perilously close. Without the trigger, he can no longer blast it in its face. He yanks on the handle of the gun to pull it away and scrambles that last step back. He yells in pain when a zombie claws him in the arm, and his feet hits the gate.

Dead end.

Just then, something closes around the back of his shirt. With a rough tug, he's forced off his balance and sent tumbling right over the fence. In a flash, he finds himself sprawled on a patch of grass. He blinks, then twists his head to the side.

The hollowed-out eyes of a zombie stares right at him.

"Shit!"

He jerks back in horror, just as a sickle comes down on the zombie. The razor-sharp tip gouges a good chunk of flesh from its face, but the creature merely lets out a keening wail and pushes itself up. Standing above them, a dark figure drives the sickle into the zombie again, shredding bits of flesh and blood out of it.

"Die, you undead creature!" The man screams hysterically, driving the sickle into the zombie over and over. "Die, die, die!"

Wide-eyed, Taehyung gapes up at him, torn between terror and fleeting amusement. He would've laughed at the man's ironic words had he not been so close to hysteria himself. The zombie convulses and shrieks, but he's certain that it'd take a dozen more puncture wounds to put it down. He drags himself over and yanks his gun out. He takes aim, curls his fingers around the trigger and tugs.

With one final shudder, the zombie collapses onto the ground.

"And that's how you kill a fucking zombie," he rasps, amidst the stunned silence, before retching into the grass.