Warhammer 40,000: Dark Imperium (2017), p9 — Poxwalkers

Shambling across the battlefield in reeking hordes, Poxwalkers engulf their enemies in rotting tides of grasping hands, gnashing teeth and squirming tentacles. They are the cursed victims of Nurgle's plagues, transformed into unliving weapons by the cruel masters of the Death Guard.

Amongst the countless diseases propagated by the Death Guard, the zombie plague is amongst the most hideous. Its vector is the mighty Typhus, one of the Death Guard's greatest heroes and host to the daemonic Destroyer Hive. Wherever Typhus travels, this terrible plague spreads like wildfire, transmitted through bites and scratches then carried far and wide by fleeing victims and redeployed Imperial soldiery. Nurgle delights in variation, and so as the zombie plague travels it also mutates into countless strains. From the Plague of Despair to the Somnambuphage and the swift-spreading Spawnrot Fever, each has its own symptoms and effects. The Walking Pox is one such strain, afflicting those who battle the Death Guard directly.

Victims of the Walking Pox find their bodies rotting and shutting down until eventually, death takes them. Yet this is not the end. The victim remains cruelly conscious and aware, trapped within their corpse as it reanimates with a rictus grin and staggers out in search of living victims. Many Inquisitors of the Ordo Sepulturum hypothesise that the Walking Pox is a variant of Nurgle's Rot, for its victims' flesh mutates, even after death, sprouting horn-like growths from their skulls similar to those of Plaguebearers.

Whatever the case, Poxwalkers display rudimentary coordination, wielding battlefield debris as they stagger into battle. Though clumsy and slow, Poxwalkers are inhumanly resilient. Worse, the slightest exposure to the groaning cacophony that escapes their lips can afflict the souls of fresh victims, spreading the Walking Pox to anyone nearby as a spiritual contagion. In large numbers, these slouching corpse-mutants can prove incredibly dangerous, overrunning enemy lines, then gnawing, bludgeoning and ripping their screaming victims apart in bloody orgies of mindless violence.