Part 4: The Zombie Mystery
#4 of Deep in Kansas
Amanda's encounter with zombies leaves her with many questions as to their nature.
Amanda mulled through what she had seen so far. Why are there zombies on the farm? How are they controlled? She remembered from the first zombie she encountered a strange hidden string pulling the zombie. The recent appearance of the fox anthro merely added another piece to the mystery. She then recalled earlier her Indagator badge vibrated. It indicated the presence of magic and/or monsters.
Having seemingly caught onto the horse's expression, the fox met her gaze with a similar question.
"Amanda, what's going on?"
"I wish I knew."
A sigh. "Fine, what should we do next? I'm putting you in charge of this case now. It's far outside my jurisdiction."
The horse grunted. "Great. I need more information."
"So, we're to continue poking around."
She nodded.
"Where are we looking next?"
"We've only ventured into one house. Let's look into the rest of the buildings around here."
The fox nodded.
"Stay near me; I doubt you'd survive an encounter."
She sighed. "Fine."
Amanda proceeded to investigate the rest of the buildings. She started with another smaller house to find it a mess. Chairs and tables had been overturned. While glass and porcelain littered the ground in pieces. Pictures had fallen off the wall and sat on the ground cracked. _What happened here?_She wondered. The Indagator proceeded to rifle through the house to find a scrap of paper hidden beneath some turned-over furniture.
Her hyper nature made picking things off the ground challenging. Luckily she had developed a method of working around it. Angling her hip inward, she was capable of bending down and grabbing the note. Although doing so caused the floorboard to creak, groan, and snap beneath her ginormous nutsack.
"What was that?!"
The fox asked, alarmed after the floor had gone.
"Just me. Forget it." Amanda responded.
She was silently thankful she wore her cloak. As it would've complicated the task further had it not hidden her gigantic breasts. The note was written in a hurry as the handwriting was scribbled. Amanda could glean from it that the writer knew they were about to be taken away and never seen again. _What were they taken away for and why?_That was what popped into her mind.
"Found anything?" The fox inquired.
Amanda handed the note down to the fox and searched through the house. She found nothing else of interest.
"Odd note. What does it mean?"
"No idea. All it does is tell us someone was taken."
As they ventured back out, more zombies were shambling around.
"Where are these damn zombies coming from?" Amanda questioned aloud as she drew her sword. From behind, she stabs a zombie, then twirled around, cutting the head of another. As if directed by a swarm mentality, all the zombies stopped and convened Amanda's position. _How can they do that?_Was another questioned which bounced around her head.
As the first zombie stumbled forward, it attempted to swat at the giant horsewoman. Effortlessly, she avoided its attack, removed its arm, followed by its head. More zombies attacked her. She danced through the hoard as she deftly removed their heads. It was not until she heard gunfire, followed by a subsequent scream as she found the fox desperately trying to repel a zombie.
_Shit!_She shouted inside her head. The path to the fox was blocked by the numerous zombies. She began to cut through the zombies as quickly as she could, desperate to save the fox. As she got closer, so did the fox's attackers until by the time she finally got to the fox, a zombie was already upon her. Quickly, she cut down the zombie.
The fox stood, grasping her shoulder as the zombie bit out a large gash.
"How bad is it?" The Indagator questioned.
"Some alcohol and bandages, and I should be fine." She groaned.
"I don't have any of those ingredients on me," Amanda responded as she returned to cutting down zombies.
"Well, we're going to have to find some. Otherwise, I might not survive."
"Let's get back inside; there might be some alcohol." The Indagator motioned to the house behind them. She slowly migrated back towards the house, ensuring the fox remained behind her. Amanda turned around and pressed herself against the door. She felt the zombies bang on the door, desperate to get inside.
The horse watched the fox rummage through the abandoned kitchen, searching for some kind of alcohol. She was silently thankful that her immense weight made it nearly impossible for the zombies to push open the door. She only had to be concerned if they started banging the door near her hooves. They might throw her off balance due to her special horseshoes, displacing her weight and reducing the ground's overall force against her.
"You done yet?!" Amanda shouted at the fox.
"Almost, bandaging the wound right now!" The fox responded.
Eventually, she re-emerged from inside the house to where Amanda pressed herself against the door.
"I can't fight inside this house." The Indagator stated, frustrated.
"Why not?"
"Because I can't move. This house is too damn small for me." The horse mentioned as she was bent over, her concealed, bubbly rear pressing against the door due to her ridiculous height. "I barely fit in them as is."
"What should we do?" The fox asked, worried.
"I need you to step away from me."
The fox nodded and stepped away. As she removed her weight the door, fell down with a loud crash as wood snapped and splintered. But before zombies could pour inside the house, Amanda generated a massive shock wave with her hand blasting them back. She stepped outside and resumed her killing.
Immediately she went after zombies who had not gotten up and crushed their skulls beneath her hoof. Then she resumed her blade dance. By the end of the encounter, she had slain dozens of zombies as their headless bodies littered the ground. Her blade was coated in a mixture of blood and blood plasma. She crouched down as far as her churning nutsack would let her.
She picked a zombie head off the ground, silently thankful for her cloak's concealing nature, and proceeded to examine it. Looking into its eyes, she could still feel some hidden strings pulling the zombie along. She noted how they were rapidly fading away after the zombie had been killed.
"Amanda. You're creeping me out staring at that head." The fox spoke up as she exited the house.
"I need to examine these zombies."
"Then why not look at the zombies you've killed?"
"Because looking at them isn't the only thing that needs to be done." The Indagator responded in her usual stern tone.
"What else needs to be done?"
"The zombies, from what I can tell, are controlled by a separate entity. As I felt something tugging on some strings inside of them."
"So they're like radio-controlled toys?"
"Yes."
"Is there a way you can trace their signals?"
Amanda nodded.
"Then let's get started on that."
"It's not that easy. We need some live zombies, and I need to set up some things first to trace the signal."
"What do you need? I can help out."
"I need two zombies tied in place with a 90-degree angle between them."
"Why so specific?"
"So I can triangulate their signals."
"Oh. Getting two zombies shouldn't be hard. But we're most likely going to need some rope and something to tie them to."
The Indagator agreed with the fox.
"Let's get started then."