The Guromaniacs

"Ew." Aleya Namoryib looked across the landscape that began shambling upright. Zombies. And not just insane druggies comparable to shambling corpses, diseased by some rage virus, they were dead bodies that had been picked up by parasites moving tendrils around their bones, flinging them and getting better at nuanced movements.

A few hundred miles inland, the mountains had mellowed into hills, coveres in corpses that long tentacles pushed upright.

Several major trade routes were shared between companies paying their dues, to strengthen these trains and tunnels, as some of my idiot competitors had strengthened deranged cults- everyone's enemies- for short term profits. They saw them as separate little clusters of bugs and bikers and had no clue they'd become a 2nd Great Heathen Army. A few disaffected elites took to such challanges as unifying this chaotic mass of gangs, so now our trade routes were in danger. Cultivating them over decades, buying tools to lend these fiends that weren't otherwise allowed access to the most restricted equipment, meant they could hide from our incredible detection systems and deflect immense barrages launched from super massive weaponry.

They had attained an incredible mix of weapons, each faction buying indepently of the rest. They had numbers far above our own, for a few reasons. Our contractors sent only dedicated troops, with some modified animals to assist special roles, and disallowed using corpses infected with parasites that were themselves controled by computers. These insane tribes had no such rules, nor any understanding of these tools. The worms that popped out from the eye sockets of their dead were not remotely commanded by any program, but just instinctively sided with some over others, and even then they'd often turn on each other.

"Bombard them." Aleya ordered. While the enemy had attained some long range weapons, they seldom had the advantage of range over these sophisticated soldiers.

**fwww! frrrruuu!** fire cackled before rockets shot off into the many bloodied units moving towards her position, and then they ran at her. She had some miles before the bulk of them reached her, and those closest were quickly cut down by her bodyguards.

She was the leader of a vanguard. Her job was to survive and hold the line for her allies to reach her.