The gunfire was a staccato heartbeat of panic, thumping closer with every second. Leo walked with a purposeful, annoyed stride, Big Tom lumbering behind him. He wasn't running. Running was for emergencies, like a hailstorm threatening the seedlings or a blight on the squash. This was just people. Probably messy, loud, ungrateful people.
He reached the toolshed just as the first of them crashed through the treeline on the eastern border.
It was a young man, maybe twenty, his face a mask of grime and terror. His military-style jacket was ripped, and he clutched a smoking rifle with white-knuckled hands. He stumbled into the cleared land surrounding the farm, his eyes wide with the frantic hope of the doomed. Then he saw the farmhouse. The tidy fields. The green, living plants.
His expression shifted from terror to disbelief, then to a heart-breaking, desperate joy. "Oh my god... A farm! It's clear! IT'S CLEAR!"
He staggered forward, straight towards Leo's prize-winning strawberry patch.
"Whoa there, partner!" Leo called out, his voice cutting through the man's euphoria. "Mind the berries! They're just setting fruit!"
The man skidded to a halt, staring at Leo as if he were a hallucination. A living man. In overalls. Holding a hoe. Concerned about berries.
Before he could speak, more survivors burst from the trees. A woman supporting a bleeding comrade. Two more men covering the rear, firing wild shots behind them. They were all thin, hardened, eyes sharp with a chronic survivalist paranoia that Leo's eyes had long lost.
The woman, clearly their leader, had her dark hair shorn close to her skull. A scar ran from her temple to her jaw. Her eyes, a flinty gray, scanned the farm, the zombies standing docilely in the fields, and finally, Leo. Her assessment was instantaneous and冰冷. This wasn't hope she saw; it was a trap. Her rifle, sleek and black compared to the others' scavenged weapons, snapped up, aiming directly at Leo's chest.
"Identify yourself!" Her voice was like gravel, worn raw by command and smoke. "What is this place? What are those?!"
She gestured violently with the barrel of her gun towards Frank, Moe, and Larry, who were now standing motionless by the irrigation hose, staring blankly at the newcomers.
Leo sighed, leaning on his hoe. "This is my farm. I'm Leo. Those are my helpers. Now, I'll have to ask you to lower that firearm. You're upsetting the soil."
"Your helpers?" one of the other men shrieked, pointing a trembling finger. "Those are ZOMBIES! They're fucking monsters!"
"Frank's never been a monster a day in his life," Leo said defensively. "A little slow with the tools, maybe. But he means well."
The flinty-eyed woman's finger tightened on the trigger. "Last chance. Explain, or I drop you and we see how 'peaceful' this place really is."
A bone-shaking roar erupted from the treeline. The trees themselves seemed to shudder. A massive shape, covered in matted black fur and sporting a crown of jagged, bony antlers, crashed into the clearing. It was the size of a truck. Its maw dripped with saliva and what looked like scraps of Kevlar. One of its six milky eyes was a ruined crater, still smoking from a gunshot wound.
The survivors froze. Pure, animal terror seized them. This was what had been chasing them. A Tier-3 Mutated Ravager. A bunker-breaker.
"Ah," Leo said, his annoyance deepening. "That's Bruno. He's usually not this far east. You must have really pissed him off."
"Bruno?" the young man whispered, his bladder letting go.
The Ravager locked its five remaining eyes on the group of survivors. It lowered its head, antlers scraping furrows in the earth. It was preparing to charge.
The female leader swore, swinging her rifle towards the beast. "Fall back! To the house! Now!"
They were too slow, too exhausted. The Ravager charged.
Leo didn't move. He just shook his head, a gardener watching a stray dog trample his flower beds. He took a single step forward, placing himself between the charging beast and his strawberry plants.
"Bruno!" he shouted, his voice not a scream of fear, but the stern command of a man chastising a misbehaving pet. "BAD DOG!"
He slammed the butt of his hoe down on the ground.
THUMP.
A visible pulse of something—not sound, not light, but a feeling—rippled out from the point of impact. It was the smell of fresh-turned earth after rain. It was the quiet hum of bees on a summer afternoon. It was the profound, undeniable peace of a long, uneventful day.
[Peaceful Farmer - Active Skill: Hearth's Reprimand]
[Effect: Enforces the Sanctity of the Home. Amplifies Aura of Tranquility into a concussive wave of normalized reality.]
The wave hit the charging Ravager.
The beast stumbled. The furious, predatory gleam in its eyes flickered and died, replaced by a sudden, profound confusion. It skidded to a halt just a few feet from Leo, its hot, rancid breath washing over him. It sniffed the air. It looked at Leo. It looked at the zombies staring blankly. It looked at the ripe strawberries.
With a confused whimper that sounded absurd coming from such a monstrous frame, it backed up one step, then two. It shook its massive head, turned, and trotted away with a subdued air, back into the treeline, as if it had suddenly remembered it left the oven on.
Silence.
The only sounds were the moaning of the distant horde and the gentle clink as Frank finally figured out the sprinkler and dropped it on his foot.
The female leader's rifle was still raised, but now it was shaking. She was staring at Leo, her tactical certainty, her understanding of the world, crumbling to dust before her.
"What..." she breathed. "What are you?"
"I told you," Leo said, turning his back on her to inspect a nearby strawberry plant for damage. "I'm the farmer. You're trespassing. You've scared my helpers, you almost ruined my berries, and you led a mutated hell-beast to my doorstep." He finally looked back at her, his eyes no longer just annoyed, but cold. "You owe me. And in this world, you pay your debts in labor or in blood. And I don't need more blood for the compost today."
He gestured with his hoe towards the hulking form of Big Tom. "Your wounded can go in the shade by the barn. The rest of you? You're on fence duty. The east perimeter is looking weak. Tom will show you what to do."
The young man who had first found hope wept openly, not from fear now, but from a total systemic collapse of his reality. One of the others just sat down heavily in the dirt.
The female leader slowly, slowly, lowered her rifle. Her eyes never left Leo. She wasn't seeing a man anymore. She was seeing a force of nature. A bizarre, serene, and terrifying anomaly.
"My name," she said, her voice barely a whisper, "is Amara Stone. Lieutenant, 7th Bunker Defense Force." She swallowed hard, her Adam's apple bobbing. "What... what are your terms?"
"Terms are simple," Leo said, walking past her towards the cottage. "You fix my fence. You don't touch my crops. You don't antagonize the locals." He nodded towards the zombie crew. "You work, you eat. You cause trouble..." He didn't finish the threat. He just glanced towards the treeline where Bruno had disappeared.
He left them there, standing in his field, surrounded by docile zombies, under a sickly sun, in the most terrifyingly peaceful place on earth.
Amara Stone watched him go, her mind racing. A farm. A safe zone. A man who commanded monsters with a word. This changed everything. This was a resource beyond imagination. This was a weapon.
And as she looked at the back of the simple farmer, a cold, ruthless calculation began to form behind her flinty eyes. He controlled the food. He controlled the land.
She needed to control him.
In the field, Frank the zombie carefully picked up the sprinkler head again. This time, he placed it right-side up. A drop of rusty water dripped from it.
Progress.