West Virginia, deep within the Appalachian Mountains. A private car was driving along a mountain highway. The driver hummed along to the classic "Take Me Home, Country Roads" while snacking on a burrito as he drove.
It was approaching dusk, and the sky was still bright. The setting sun sank slowly before him, its glare making him squint slightly.
Suddenly, he seemed to spot something. He narrowed his eyes to observe more closely, then let out a sigh of relief.
From its silhouette, it looked like a moose sitting on the ground.
These big fellas weren't uncommon in the Appalachians. Generally speaking, as long as you didn't provoke these behemoths, there wouldn't be any trouble. The driver had essentially decided to just speed on past.
The moose, however, seemed very wary of this iron monster's passage, staring fixedly at the car. The driver felt the deer looked a bit strange, but he couldn't quite put his finger on why.
Suddenly, as if something had struck him, the driver nearly choked to death on his burrito because of a realization. He slumped over the steering wheel in panic, staring deathly at the moose that was getting closer and closer, now only dozens of meters away.
There was no mistake; that was no moose! Although its antlers looked like a moose's and its fur looked like a moose's—it looked like a moose in every way—there was one exception.
The eyes.
Normal moose, along with most herbivores, have eyes on the sides of their heads to gain enough peripheral vision to evade predators. This moose was different; its eyes were more like a wolf's, set on the front of its face. Like a predator, it stared straight ahead.
No—though they were still pitch-black eyes, he felt they were more like human eyes.
He felt as if a stone were weighing down his stomach, and the hair on the back of his neck stood on end. He sensed a certain non-cervine super-intelligence emanating from this deer.
The driver immediately floored the accelerator and sped past, quickly rushing by the side of the deer. He felt as if he had survived something truly terrifying and couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief.
Then, he heard a distorted sound—the sound of a woman crying.
For some reason, the sound made him feel nauseous. He drove while trying to analyze the source of the noise, eventually realizing it was coming from behind. Driven by some unknown impulse, the driver looked into his rearview mirror.
He saw the deer stand up. Swaying unsteadily, it revealed a torso that had been more than half devoured by something. As the deer's mangled body lurched, its internal organs swinging within the tear, it moved its legs.
The deer's legs seemed to have extra joints; they weren't normal, but rather formed a sort of recurve structure through additional articulations. The deer ran toward him, but due to the bizarre construction of its limbs, it didn't run like a deer—it crawled and contorted like a spider.
The deer whimpered as it ran. Terrified, the driver sped forward at full throttle, seemingly leaving the range of that eerie deer very quickly. The driver couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief, but then, those strange sounds appeared again.
Could it be that the monster was still following him?
The driver didn't know, and he didn't dare look in the rearview mirror. Even when he stole a glance, he saw no such animal. But then, the driver realized the monsters weren't behind him—they were in front.
He had reached a stretch of road with a cliff on one side. On that side of the precipice, one after another, these strange deer crawled up from the abyss.
They were hissing; they were calling out. Their front-facing eyes watched the driver. Their bodies were tattered and broken, looking like a pack of zombies.
They opened their mouths—which were clearly deer mouths—but they were filled with jagged, razor-sharp teeth. Then, one deer leaped directly from beneath the cliff and landed on the hood of the car.
Amidst his own screams, the driver saw twisted, viscous biomass within the deer's gaping maw. He lost control, and the car went careening off the cliff.
By the next day, the Appalachian forest rangers received a report from a passing vehicle. Only then did they learn a car had gone over the cliff. The driver had fallen to his death at the foot of the mountain, and they hurriedly drove their patrol car to the scene.
"These people never pick a good place to die; they had to die in this godforsaken spot."
The lead veteran officer questioned the young rookie, who was busy vomiting nearby. "Did you find anything?"
"Thank God, I found nothing. It's too gruesome. The whole body is impaled on a tree stump, and it's like the head was just erased—it's gone."
Unable to help himself, the veteran officer covered his nose and sighed helplessly. In their eyes, the case was as clear as could be: a man died in a car accident and lost his head in the process. That was all.
As for anything else, it was beyond their scope of thought.
"Speaking of which, Ryan, have you heard about the legend going around the mountains lately? Something called 'Not-a-Deer'?"
The veteran officer felt only confusion upon hearing this. "What the hell is that supposed to be?"
And so, the new officer began to chatter away, telling the story.
Meanwhile, Cletus and Carnage were enjoying a rare delicacy. Since moving to this place, they had hardly eaten anything substantial.
Until now, when this unlucky bastard of a driver passed by and surrendered his head.
Countless eerie deer stood up in the surrounding area. These herds were all controlled by Cletus—or more accurately, by Carnage. During his flight, Carnage had learned how to create his own puppets, greatly enhancing his power.
Thanks to this, Cletus had a larger, more magnificent, and maddening plan.
He wanted to transmit his aesthetics into everyone's heart. He chewed on the driver's head, speaking in a muffled, slurred voice.
"More, my children, more..."
The surrounding deer scattered like startled animals, continuing to spread themselves throughout the entire Appalachian mountain range. Cletus, meanwhile, was contemplating his next move.
What should he do next? Contaminate the water supply? Or find a couple of idiots to test his infection capabilities?
A few days later, Cletus, who had been hiding away, suddenly broke into a "hehehe" laugh.
Because as the deer dispersed, he discovered a beef cattle ranch and slaughterhouse dozens of kilometers away. The owner of this ranch operated in violation of regulations, using a meat grinder to shred the leftover beef scraps and trimmings, which were then packed into the feed for the other cattle.
This meant that as long as he infected one or two of those cattle, they would undergo a frenzy of cross-infection. Then, following the American dietary habit of medium, medium-rare, or even rare steaks, along with various canned beef products, it would spread across all of America.
Even the whole world!
"And when that time comes, every corner of the world will be Carnage!"
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