Another Kind of Living Dead
Without another word, Barloi quickly summoned more than a dozen soldiers and sped toward the mining area aboard Westwind-G hover bikes. The Clone Trooper Commander remained in the colonial town to establish a forward base.
The mining area was about twenty kilometers from the town. Barloi and the others went at full speed and arrived within minutes.
Sure enough, as soon as they reached the mining area, they saw dense rows of three-to-four-meter steel spikes outside the open grounds. Each spike was secured with a tripod, and every one had a corpse impaled upon it!
Barloi raised his binoculars and examined them closely. The corpses were all shriveled and withered, their hair fallen out and their clothes stripped away. More horrifying still, tiny blue points of light covered the major muscle groups and joints of their bodies, making the corpses look exceptionally terrifying.
"W-What is this? Some kind of religious ritual? Or... a demonstration?" a Clone Trooper cried out.
"Stay alert. I sense immense danger," Barloi said grimly. "Hold your positions and stay on guard. I'll go take a look myself."
"General..."
Barloi waved a hand to cut the soldier off. "No need to say more. If I go alone, I have a better chance of escaping."
He rode his hover bike beneath the vast field of steel spikes and inspected them carefully. He even tried to knock one of the spikes over, intending to remove the corpse from it.
But at that moment, the steel spikes suddenly moved!
The spikes began retracting section by section, lowering the corpses one after another.
When the final sections retracted, the corpses that had rolled onto the ground suddenly flipped over and scrambled to their feet. Terrifying howls burst from their throats as they lunged straight at Barloi!