“What did you mean, ‘four more coming?’” I asked when we were settled in. Our full company had joined us at the school, and within ten minutes the families sat in the school cafeteria, eating and drinking from our supplies.

Commander Hogan, Agent Carter, Andy, the other group leaders, and I were sequestered in what was once a math classroom if I had to guess. There was a long paper strip around the top edges where the walls met the ceiling, with the numbers of pi written out. At least I assumed it was pi since it said, “3.14” and kept going from there. There was also a framed poster on the wall with the caption, “Calculus can be funny if you understand it.” I didn’t. The only light in the room came from the two barred windows on the external wall.

“If I had to guess, we’ll be seeing the same thing today as we did yesterday,” the man across from me said. “Five waves of hostiles, one hour apart.” Bragg was a pale-faced man whose eyes were set too far apart above a nose that had been broken at least twice, and his build suggested the lean strength of a wrestler. Despite all that, he had the friendly look of someone used to smiling. He wore a t-shirt and jeans, and his arms held numerous scars over corded muscle. And he had a core in his chest. It was brighter than the cores in Heidi and Pierce, but the black in the core threatened to overtake the other five colors. The thought of that happening gnawed at my insides, but I had to push the worry away in light of the greater problems.

“Just like this one?” Andy asked. “Didn’t seem so tough.”

“Not like this one. We lost people in the last two waves yesterday.”

“What was it like?” Andy was in operation planning mode, already feeling out what we would be up against.

“Next one was lions and some kind of wild dog. After that are the bears, then the birds, and finally the reptiles.”

“How could you let that happen?” Commander Hogan asked.

“You ever try to shoot a bird out of the sky with a single shot rifle?” Bragg asked, steel lacing his voice. After Hogan nodded, Bragg continued. “Now imagine they’re all attacking you while you’re trying to shoot them. We will probably have a better chance against them now, with your automatic rifles, but that won’t help against the Komodo dragons.”

“What’s different about them?” I asked.

“Every wave has something different about the animals. Mostly, they’re just stronger and bigger. The wild dogs are closer to the size of wolves. The lions are bigger, too. Takes a helluva lot of bullets to take one down. As long as we have ammunition, we can do it. The bears are the same. Just big and tough. The birds just come in large numbers. Craziest thing I ever saw, the sheer number of birds, and they tore two of my men apart and carried off pieces of them. The Komodo dragons though… they’re…” He paused a moment to swallow, then continued. “When they look at you…” he shuddered. “And bullets just bounce off them.”

“How did you kill them then?” Hogan asked.

“Kill them?” Bragg met the commander’s gaze. “We didn’t kill them. They each took one of my men and dragged him away. Three of them, gone, just like that.”

“After all that, why didn’t you take the survivors and run?”

“We can’t outrun those things with the kids we have. We wouldn’t make it three miles in a day with them, and there aren’t enough of us to protect a group like that. We’ll lose more if we leave.”

“You’ll lose them all if you stay,” I said to the quiet room.

“Then we lose either way,” he said, feigning nonchalance with a shrug. “Not like we could expect to survive the apocalypse.”

“So we stop it,” I said.

“Yeah, we just stop the apocalypse,” Bragg answered, his voice laced with sarcasm. “You’re not some knight in shining armor. The apocalypse is already here, and it’s bulletproof.”

I didn’t bother with him any longer. The man had given up, and his defeatist attitude wouldn’t help us solve the problem in front of us.

“I’ll take a team of other volunteers into the zoo,” I said, turning to Andy. “We’ll kill those Komodo dragons and find whatever is causing the mana tornado. I’m pretty sure that’s the cause of these rapid monster mutations we’re seeing.”

“Excuse me, Lieutenant,” Commander Hogan interrupted, his pompous baritone catching everyone’s attention. His face was etched with irritation as he looked me up and down. “Isn’t that my decision to make?”

“I did say I would only take volunteers, sir. You don’t have to come.”

“I beg your pardon.” He did not seem amused by my dodging the question and my implications about his character.

“Commander,” I began. I kept my voice calm and firm, trying to convey that nothing he could have said would change my mind. “I am going in there to try and stop whatever it is that’s happening.”

“You have no idea how to stop it, but you want to risk your own life and the lives of others in a frontal assault onto the home territory of creatures that are immune to bullets. And you think I will sign off on this mission?”

“With all due respect, Commander, I am not under your chain of command. I will be going.”

“This is outrageous!” His previous veneer of calm was cracking under the challenge to his authority. “No one under my command will follow you into that death trap.”

“Perhaps,” I said coolly.

“I will go,” Bragg said. “If we are going to die, then I may as well take the fight to them.”

“You have any combat experience?” I asked as Hogan scowled.

“Not until yesterday,” Bragg shrugged.

“You know how to shoot, though,” I said.

“I was almost in the Olympics for the fifty-meter.” He patted the gun hanging from the sling around his shoulder. “This might not be my competition rifle, but I’ve put over a hundred thousand rounds through this baby in the last couple of years.”

“And where is your competition rifle?” I asked, looking around the office for a case or something else that would hold a long rifle.

“It got beat up in the last fight when I tried hitting one of those lizards.” He looked down, not meeting my eye. “Had to let it go.”

I winced. Having lost prized guns in the past, I knew how he felt. It was not like the rifle itself was extremely valuable — though maybe his was. No, it was hard losing a weapon you’d spent thousands of hours becoming familiar with. They say it takes ten thousand hours to become an expert at anything. And this man had probably put those numbers to shame with a competition-level shooting rifle.

“With credentials like those, you can be the sniper,” I said, holding out my hand. “Welcome to the team.” I shook his hand, then turned to Andy.

“You don’t have to ask. I’m there.” The other soldier laughed low. “Besides, who else is going to keep you in line?”

“Perfect,” I laughed. “Let’s go pitch the idea to the others.”

I was not surprised that Chavez volunteered. This was when the argument began all over again with Commander Hogan.

“Permission to accompany Lieutenant Ward on his mission to save the school,” Chavez stood at attention while he spoke, the picture of a soldier who knew his commanding officer would take any opportunity to deny a request.

“Permission denied,” Hogan spoke tersely, barely waiting for the stocky Hispanic to finish speaking before he overrode him. “I will not support a suicide mission.”

“Commander, this may be our best opportunity to stop this from happening again. Lieutenant Ward said this same wave came yesterday. How long before we run out of bullets?”

“Agent Chavez, I would remind you that disobeying a direct order is insubordination.”

“Frankly, Commander, this is the best way to protect these people.” Chavez had not raised his voice to match the pitch of the Commander. In the lunchroom, everyone could hear what was being said. Nearly one hundred people watched on as we discussed a plan to possibly save their lives. “I swore an oath to defend against all enemies, foreign and domestic. The enemies are knocking at the gates, and these are the people I need to protect. If anything, the orders you are giving could be considered unlawful, and I’m required to disregard unlawful orders.”

“So that’s it,” Hogan said disdainfully, looking at us. “Four of you against the three invulnerable monsters in there?”

“Five,” Carter said, stepping from behind the Commander and over to my side.

“Agent Carter,” Hogan spluttered. “Have you lost your mind too?”

“I will protect and defend, commander. There’s not much left, but I’ll help the people best as I can.”

“Let’s go,” I said after it was clear Hogan had no more to say on the subject. He simply glared at us as we made our way back into the classroom.

After briefly introducing Bragg and Chavez, I revealed my plan. After fishing around inside my backpack, I pulled out the four cores from the squirrels I’d killed and placed them on the table in front of me.

I examined the faces of each person in turn. Chavez looked at the cores like he was a sailor seeing a whiskey for the first time in months. Bragg eyed the orbs curiously, but if he felt the draw, I couldn’t tell. Carter’s hand actually twitched as if it would reach out on its own. Andy, however, took a step back from the orbs as if I’d put a viper on the table instead of the promise of power.

“Hogan was right about one thing,” I said as I looked at them. Only Andy met my eyes, as though forcing his gaze away from the spheres. “We need to be stronger. And this is how we do it.”

I picked up one of the spheres and held it out to Chavez. Despite his eager eyes, he reached out tentatively. The moment his first finger touched the core in my hand, the shining green orb lost its inner light. The glass shell lost its clarity, dark fractures spreading over its surface before it turned to dust and drifted into motes in the air. His eyes lit up and snapped to the other cores on the table. I put a hand firmly on his shoulder, keeping him from possibly reaching out for the rest.

I repeated the process with Carter and then Bragg. I held the core out to Andy last. “Trust me on this,” I said as he hesitated. “We need this.”

Andy waited a moment longer before he too reached a hand out to touch the shining core. I did not watch the core disappear as I had with the others. Instead, I watched his face. I knew the moment the energy rushed along his arm and into him, creating a new core in his chest. His body visibly relaxed at the rush of the cool energy, and his eyes came alive with the rush of power from the core. Ever the professional, he steeled his resolve and returned his focus to the mission.

“What’s next?” he asked.

“We scavenge more cores from the corpses outside. Then we take the fight to the monsters inside the zoo.”

The team collected and absorbed the power from as many cores outside as they could. I tried absorbing the power from one of the cores myself, but as the power flowed into my body, it never went into my core. The core in my chest already felt swollen to its limits, and the energy that entered simply flowed away from it, through my other channels, around my other cores, then out my other hand. I knew that it would not help for me to take more cores. Somehow, I knew that to be true. I was on a precipice, and I was missing something that would help me take the plunge.

By the time the team finished collecting and absorbing the cores of power from the bodies, they were thoroughly covered in gore. For that matter, where were the old bodies? Shouldn’t we have to bury all the bodies out here?

“Lieutenant Ward!” Bragg called from where he stood, having just absorbed the core from one of the orangutan corpses. “The next wave will begin in ten minutes.”

“Perfect timing,” I said. “We protect the school during the next wave, then we head into the zoo.”

It went exactly as Bragg told us. Just like the smaller monkeys had led the charge earlier, wild dogs the size of gray wolves led the way. The lions were fearsome, led by a proud male, his large mane tossing as the Volkswagen bus-sized cat loped across the road. But even the hide of the majestic creature was no match for the sheer volume of bullets output by the defenders.

After the fighting, I watched in fascination as each of the members of my team transformed. Andy’s core shattered first. After absorbing the power from one of the female lions, a wave of energy rushed out of him, blowing him onto his back. I could see the mana rushing out from him and watched the colors of red, blue, and green blow past me, threatening to even knock me over. I saw Andy open his eyes again and gaze in wonder at his surroundings, drinking it in with awe.

The other three had the same thing happen, each looking at his surroundings like I imagined a person seeing color television for the first time. Their attention was rooted in their surroundings and the dancing, twisting interplay of mana around us.

It couldn’t last. At this point, I knew we were ready. I looked at the gates, tall, showy wrought-iron gates that once rose impressively and were now twisted wreckage on the ground, trampled underfoot by monsters from nightmares.