LOGINThe refugees didn’t just scramble blindly into the open doors.Desperation made people reckless, but survival made them paranoid. The small crowd halted about twenty yards from the lead bus, huddled close together like frightened sheep. A few of the men gripped rusty iron pipes and broken table legs, their knuckles white, their sunken eyes darting between our immaculate armor, the mounted heavy machine guns, and the massive steel cowcatchers coated in fresh, blackened gore."Who are you people?!" a middle-aged man called out, his voice cracked and trembling against the cold morning wind. "Are you with the military? Did the central command send you?""Is the government finally doing something?!" a woman with a shivering toddler cried out from behind him, tears cutting pale streaks through the grime on her hollow cheeks. "Are the evacuation zones open again?!"I pushed open the heavy armored door of the command rig, stepping down onto the cracked asphalt. My boots hit the pavement wit
By dawn, the convoy rolled out of the newly repaired northern gates like an iron beast waking from slumber.Leading the pack was our heavy armored tactical truck, outfitted with reinforced cowcatchers and a roof-mounted .50-cal. Right behind us trailed the three modified double-decker evacuation buses, their lower windows welded shut with crisscrossing steel rebar and heavy mesh, flanked by two fortified flatbeds stacked high with fuel drums, crates of dried rations, and clean water barrels.To anyone watching from the wastelands, we looked like an apocalyptic relief fleet.To us, it was the most entertaining road trip we’d had in weeks.The morning sun had barely crested the jagged gray horizon when the highway began to cough up its usual rotting filth. Stray zombies and lingering stragglers from the Vanguard's acoustic mess wandered aimlessly across the cracked asphalt, their hollow groans drowned out by the thrumming roar of our diesel engines.THUMP-CRUNCH.The heavy steel cowcat
The cluster of survivors dragged themselves out of the scarred wasteland, their boots sinking deep into the churned mud and ash left in the wake of the fallen titans.As they drew closer, our twelve perimeter gunners remained stone-faced, weapons held at low-ready behind the forward barricade. The sheer, terrifying scale of our fortress became clear to the refugees: twenty-four-foot-high walls scarred by fresh claw marks, smoldering heaps of charred corpses giving off thick plumes of smoke, and the colossal, shattered carcasses of the two stone-armored gorillas pinned against the ditch line like slaughtered gods.The survivors stopped dead in their tracks, their hollow faces slack with awe and sheer terror. There were twenty-four of them—gaunt men clutching lead pipes, mothers holding shivering toddlers wrapped in dirty quilts, and half a dozen wounded leaning heavily on each other's shoulders."Halt right there," Daniel called out lazily, stepping forward with his thumbs hooked cas
The beast thrashed wildly inside the inferno, its agonized roars shaking the soot loose from the steel beams beneath our boots. The smell of scorched bone and melting, blackened muscle drifted upward, thick and sickening, but the creature didn’t try to flee back into the forest.Even with the fire licking its flesh and its shattered kneecap dragging in the dirt, it clawed blindly toward the cracked foundation of the wall, its single-minded obsession terrifying to behold. It wasn’t trying to save itself. It was trying to finish what its fallen twin had started.Even zombie mutated animals felt a distorted sense of kinship. How utterly disturbing."Look at the damn thing," Daniel breathed, standing tall beside me, his rifle lowered as he watched the ape's desperate, broken crawl through the flames. "Brain's fried, body's turning to ash, and it's still trying to tear our house down for its dead partner.""Then let's put it out of its misery," I said coldly, stepping closer to the iron r
The world seemed to fracture into blinding light and concussive sound.Lucien slammed his palms down onto the firing mechanism. The rail-cannon let loose an ear-splitting, supersonic crack that sucked the air straight out of our lungs, hurling a hyper-accelerated tungsten penetrator downrange in a streak of electric azure. At the exact same fraction of a second, Daniel pulled the trigger of his heavy rifle, his custom incendiary slug riding the rail-slug’s wake like a tracer from hell.The heavy tungsten round hit the first ape’s pinned skull dead-center on the unshielded temple.The kinetic devastation was total. The sheer force didn't just penetrate the calcified bone; it detonated on impact, sending a violent shockwave through the beast's cranium that blew out the back of its skull in a spray of blackened brain matter, shattered stone, and foul gore. A microsecond later, Daniel’s incendiary round burrowed into the ragged cavity, bursting into a roaring pillar of white-hot phospho
The Vanguard mercenaries were hauling their asses.Their tactical formation had broken completely, scrambling backward toward their transport tracks in the deep forest. They certainly hadn't planned on summoning a pair of mini King Kongs, and professional killer or not, nobody with a functional brain stuck around when the meat-grinder started throwing boulders. They knew the crossfire from here on out would turn their composite armor into tin foil."Let the roaches scatter," I muttered, shifting my gaze straight back to the smoking clearing. "We deal with them after the house is clean."The two giant apes were beginning to shift behind their cover, stone-spiked shoulders flexing as they tested the air. If those things closed the gap, our advantage was gone. At thrice their natural size, they were like walking titans; if they reached the base, they could plant their knuckles, straighten up, and peer right over our twenty-four-foot walls, swiping us off the catwalks like flies."I ne







