Darkness filled the train car; light was almost nonexistent.
The flashlight’s narrow beam was the sole illumination, catching dust motes suspended in the air along with a thick, sour stench of decay as it swept across.
Lincoln held his breath for two seconds to let his eyes adjust.
The front half of the carriage still retained its original layout: double rows of seats, a central aisle, and a few scattered suitcases on the overhead luggage racks.
The seats were upholstered in dark red velvet, featuring fold-down tray tables by the windows—a high-end setup for a passenger car.
Now, however, the seats were strewn in complete disarray.
Several had been ripped out by their roots, and dark, dried stains covered the floorboards, giving off the foul odor that saturated the air.
Lincoln raised his hand, sweeping the beam further ahead.
In the middle of the aisle toward the back of the car, a humanoid silhouette stood facing away from him.
It wasn’t standing upright.
Its entire body leaned left by at least twenty degrees, its center of gravity heavily off-balance, yet somehow it didn’t fall over.
Its right shoulder drooped low while its left arm hung at its side, fingers splayed and twitching in small, erratic spasms.
Sensing something, it began to turn around slowly.
The flashlight beam caught its face—or what used to be a face.
Lincoln saw that a large swath of skin on the right side of its head had sloughed off, exposing the grayish muscle tissue and cheekbone underneath.
One eye sat crooked in its socket, the pupil milky and completely clouded.
Its lips were gone, exposing both rows of teeth and gums, with unrecognizable bits of matter jammed between the teeth.
It wore a dark suit.
Pinned to the collar of its dress shirt was a tiny brooch.
Imprinted on it was a red-and-white umbrella design.
Lincoln’s eyes lingered on the brooch for less than half a second before he knew for sure.
An Umbrella employee.
Which meant this train hadn’t been hauling cargo—it was hauling people.
Umbrella Corporation personnel.
Whatever they had encountered on this train had turned them all into this.
The thing that used to be human completed its turn.
Its clouded eye fixed on the flashlight beam.
Opening and closing its mouth, it let out a low, slurred groan, then took its first step toward Lincoln.
It moved slowly, its joints bending at unnatural angles.
With every step, its knee buckled inward, suggesting partial necrosis in the supporting muscle groups.
Just like a walking corpse.
But it was definitely coming for him.
Lincoln didn’t shoot immediately.
Frowning slightly, he ran a quick mental assessment.
The mutant dogs in the forest earlier had been fast and explosive, but this was different.
Its motor control had degenerated far more severely, stripping away almost all coordination.
It was more like a shell being forced to operate by some external force.
If its weak point was the head like the mutant dogs, taking it down at this speed wouldn’t be hard.
But ammunition couldn’t be wasted.
To ensure a guaranteed hit, Lincoln waited two seconds, letting it close the distance by three steps.
When the gap closed to roughly four meters, he raised his M1911, aligned the front sight with the center of its forehead, and squeezed the trigger.
A muffled thud.
The .45-caliber round punched through the brow, blasting a spray of dark red fluid out the back of the skull that splashed onto the seat behind it.
The zombie collapsed limply to the floor, twitching briefly.
In less than a second, it went completely still.
One shot per target, no follow-up needed.
Just like the mutant dogs, once its central nervous system was destroyed, it ceased all movement.
Just as Lincoln was about to holster his gun, a flicker of movement in his peripheral vision caught his eye beneath the left seats.
A hand reached out from under a seat, fingers splayed as it grabbed the metal leg of an aisle frame and dragged its body outward.
Right after, three rows back on the right, a head slowly peeked up from behind a seatback.
At the same time, groans echoed from deeper within the car, coming from more than one direction.
The gunshot had alerted them.
Lincoln did a quick count: one under the left seats, one three rows back on the right, and at least two or three more sound sources further down.
There were far more than just the one he had killed.
Making an instant call, he knew the aisle was too narrow.
Getting pincer-attacked from front and back would put him at a huge disadvantage; he had to choke the direction of engagement.
Lincoln took two steps back until his back pressed against the nearest overturned seat, eliminating any blind spots behind him.
Then he aimed his gun at the zombie crawling out from beneath the left row.
It struggled to crawl, its upper body emerging first, arms dragging along the floor while its lower half remained wedged between the seat’s metal legs.
Its spine appeared broken; it could exert no force from the waist down, relying entirely on its arms to wriggle forward.
But the moment it lifted its head, its milky, unfocused eyes stared straight toward Lincoln, its jaws gaping wide.
Lincoln didn’t hesitate.
He aligned his barrel with the side of its forehead and pulled the trigger.
*Bang!*
Its head snapped to the side, and it went limp against the floorboards.
The one on the right had already rounded the seats.
It moved faster than the first, dressed in a white Umbrella lab coat with a large patch of dried blood across the chest and clear bite marks on its neck.
Its gait was slightly more normal, indicating better-preserved motor function.
About five meters away from Lincoln, it suddenly surged forward, its forward-leaning center of gravity throwing it into a chaotic stumble.
Fine-tuning his sight picture, Lincoln fired when it reached a distance of three meters.
The bullet entered just above the bridge of its nose, pitching its body backward onto the aisle floor.
Immediately after, two more entered the flashlight beam.
One was missing half its lower jaw; the other had its right arm sheared off below the elbow, raw bone and fascia exposed at the stump.
They shuffled close together, practically squeezing side-by-side.
The aisle was less than sixty centimeters wide.
Pressing together only jammed their paths, causing them to trip over each other and slowing them down half a beat.
Lincoln didn’t waste the half-second opening.
Two shots, less than a second apart.
Both headshots, both went down.
Finally, silence returned to the train car.
Six shots, five targets, all headshots.
Four rounds left in the M1911’s magazine, plus forty-one in reserve—forty-five total.
Down from fifty rounds to forty-five, spent to confirm five kills.
The ammo efficiency was decent, but this was only one carriage.
Judging the train’s length from outside earlier, he estimated roughly five or six cars.
If every car shared this density, ammo would quickly become tight.
Just then, the system panel popped up automatically.
[T-Virus Sample Library] Collection Progress: 7/100 Safety Threshold: 93/100
Lincoln glanced over the numbers.
Five humanoid infected.
The collection yield matched the two mutant dogs earlier: one unit per specimen, adding five points to progress while reducing the threshold by five.
Doing quick math in his head, he realized that if this ratio held, reaching 100 would require killing ninety-three more infected, which would drop the threshold to zero.
Hitting zero meant irreversible mutation.
He had considered this back in the forest: if his recovery rate couldn’t keep pace with consumption, trouble was inevitable.
Now he had another set of data: seven harvests lowered the threshold by seven points, a steady one point per harvest.
But what about recovery?
He noticed that roughly twenty minutes had passed since killing the first mutant dog, yet there was no sign of the threshold recovering.
The panel stated recovery was possible through “dormancy” and “nutritional replenishment,” but currently he had neither the conditions to sleep nor any food.
This meant under current conditions, his threshold was strictly depleting without replenishment.
Ninety-three sounded plenty, but between this train and whatever destination lay ahead, the kill count could easily surpass that margin.
Therefore, his strategy remained unchanged: avoid fights where possible, and only engage when necessary.
At the thought, Lincoln’s expression grew even grimmer.