Preparations began in earnest as if their very lives depended on them, which of course, they did. Reece first looked to Karina.

"Could you scout out the bad guys? It would be good to know what we’re up against and how much time we have," he asked her.

"Of course, love. I’ll be back in a flash," she immediately replied with a wicked little grin on her face.

"Don’t engage or let them see you, okay?" added Reece as he grew suspicious of her intent.

"Fine," she pouted before taking ahold of her spear.

She quickly sped off to do the reconnaissance. Reece got back to work making basic plans for the evacuation and taking inventory of their assets that may be useful for the coming attack. They contacted every group of survivors who would reply over the radio. The only movements they reported were from the large battle formation of monsters making their way east to the space center. Barriers had already been set months ago when they first claimed the place.

They hadn’t set any explosive surprises yet, so they got to work setting up as many as they could along the roads. They placed most of their artillery to defend the two choke points. The hardware consisted mainly of a few grenade launchers and several heavy vehicles with 40 caliber guns mounted on top. These were loaded with belt-fed armor-piercing rounds. They left a couple of units defending the other entry points in case of a surprise attack from an unexpected direction.

Their fast escape vehicles were under wraps but prepared to go when needed...including Reece’s Helios solar cycle loaded with his equipment and the mysterious nightcore. The same cycle that he had procured from an abandoned farmhouse on his way to Cape Canaveral and had been instrumental in saving his life more than once.

Shortly after the preparations were complete, Karina came back with her report. She had brought her spear along, just in case, and it had plainly seen use as both she and the weapon were stained with blood. She stopped next to Reece in the courtyard by the Welcome Center and smiled up at him.

"They’re coming," she told them. "But not as many as before. You see, I threw them a little welcome party. They still have over two dozen dread wolves, six behemoths, and at least a thousand Z’s. I also saw around twenty or so humans...and I use that term loosely, so they may have brought their entire force with them."

"Are you kidding me? I guess it’s good we’re ready to bug out if necessary," replied Reece as unease sunk in. "I thought I asked you to avoid combat. How long before they arrive?"

"Maybe three hours or so, but the wolves could be here anytime, realistically," answered Karina. "If we want to maximize our chances, we should take our most mobile members and harry them the entire way here, slowing them and whittling their numbers down. Make them fight for every inch. Once they’re here, their likely attack points will be the north and or western bridges."

"Great idea," replied Reece with renewed optimism as he considered how Karina’s many lifetimes of experience would prove invaluable to the coming battle and all future battles after it as well. "Let’s do it. Angel, you and your rakshasa friends will accompany Karina and me. Grab whatever grenades and guns you may need."

Angel nodded and headed off with the rest of his pack to outfit themselves for a sustained hit-and-run effort. Reece headed back to the Helios and prepared it for battle. Aika’s katana and a newly crafted scimitar were already slid into hard sheaths he had carefully welded to the sides of the bike.

He added a fully loaded 30mm M645 multi-shot grenade launcher and a Sig Sauer MCX Spear with additional noise suppressor, both outfitted with high-explosive incendiary rounds to increase lethality against the undead. Luckily, Aaron—a grizzled but friendly Navy Seal and one of the founding members of the community, had shown him how to use them both along with several other weapons.

In fact, the man had insisted that every able-bodied person went through his little training regimen, just in case. Reece silently thanked the man as he also grabbed a fair number of additional magazines for the prolonged fight to come.

"You don’t have to come," said Karina as she walked up to Reece. "The kitty-cats and I can handle this."

"I know you can," replied Reece, "But I can’t ask others to risk their lives for me if I’m not willing to do the same. Besides, it’s not like I’ll be in close combat. I’ve got the swords, just in case, but I plan on lobbing destruction from a distance and bugging out whenever they start getting close."

"Fair enough," she said as she approached him and gently touched his face with her hand. "But don’t you dare get yourself killed; do you understand? You know I’ve become quite fond of you, even though you choose to deny your feelings."

She smiled then. "That’s okay, love. I can wait. You’ll come around eventually."

"You do always know just what to say, don’t you?" Reece teased.

"Well, I have been around awhile, you know...besides, we complement each other well, and that’s more than anyone could hope for in this dystopian nightmare."

"Don’t I know it," replied Reece softly as he lowered his head.

Karina reached up with her other hand and held his head in her hands tenderly guiding his forehead down to touch hers. They stayed like that for a long moment before the immortal girl pulled her head back and looked Reece in his eyes.

"You have no idea what you do to me, Reece Danielson," whispered the girl, her red eyes glancing back and forth between his brown ones. She smiled again; complete love etched across her face.

Reece couldn’t deny himself or the beautiful creature before him any longer and pulled her into a long proper kiss on her sweet pink lips. For once, she let him take the lead and didn’t try snaking her tongue into his mouth. Knowing that time was of the essence, he pulled away and gave her that roguish smile that made her centuries-old heart melt.

"Let’s go hunting," he told her.

"Oookkaaaay," she said, savoring the word and the kiss that had immediately preceded it.

Karina collected her spear and chain-scythe and hopped on the back of the Helios while Reece pulled on his helmet. She circled her arms around his waist, and he rode the bike back out to the courtyard to meet up with Angel and his pack. They were already there, waiting for him with amused looks on their faces at the sight of the lilitu girl holding him so closely.

"Ready?" asked Reece as he pulled up next to them.

"Almost," answered Angel as he nodded to the six somber men and women with him.

It must have been Angel’s cue for them to transform because two of the men nodded silently in response. They looked like they were in their early twenties and easily could be brothers. They looked at each other and nodded again before disrobing, pulling their t-shirts, pants, tank tops, and undergarments off with little humility.

Dropping to their hands and knees, their bones started to crack and pop. Their limbs started to spasm into impossible angles. They bore the familiar pain with little difficulty as their bodies began to grow thick fur and their legs formed an additional joint.

Pale white skin and brown hair gave way to orange fur and their blue eyes turned yellow. Muzzles full of sharp teeth pushed themselves out from their faces as long sharp claws sprouted slowly from their fingers and toes. It only took a minute before the two men were gone and two large cat-like creatures growled deeply in their places.

The next to change was a dark-skinned woman with jet-black hair that hung long and straight down her back. She removed her dark blue sundress to reveal a smooth and toned body with long scars across her abdomen. The scars quickly disappeared as they were covered with burnt-orange fur and her brown eyes turned a deep red as she also quickly changed into a large jaguar-like beast.

She was followed by another female, who was barely more than a girl, but with pure white hair down to her shoulders. It was as if she had witnessed some horrific event that scared her so badly that it caused all the color to drain from her hair. She had large brown eyes that turned a dark red as she changed, but her fur came out the same snow-white as her hair.

The last two were older greying men, one clean-shaven and one with a salt-and-pepper beard. Once they changed, they were nearly indistinguishable, with orange fur speckled with grey and white spots.

As Angel finally dropped to his hands and knees, his body began the change as well. A ripple ran across his skin as the parts of his body changed shape, one after another. Some parts grew bigger and elongated while others shrunk and shortened.

Then he began sprouting thick black fur and soon Angel had turned into a huge cat-like creature, akin to a panther. Reece nodded to the squad of large feline allies, as he admired the power within the large corded muscles rippling under the mat of short thick fur that each of them now possessed.

"Be careful...please, all of you. If things start getting dangerous, just get out of there," Reece told them as they all slightly bowed their feline heads in understanding before taking off for the bridge.

Reece watched them leave, hoping they’d all make it back ok. Flipping his visor down, he nodded at Karina. Then they were off to do as much damage as possible to the incoming horde of uninvited guests. Karina led the way, her slender legs pumping faster than humanly possible, allowing her to slowly catch up to the pack of powerful cats.

Reece followed on the Helios, making sure to stay right behind the agile girl to avoid the traps they had set out earlier. Once they left the bridge, Karina led the group off to the right and traveled up the highway for a few minutes before stopping at the top of a hill a few kilometers from the bridge.

Looking down the other side of the hill, they saw the approaching army of nightmarish monsters. The typical zombies scrambled along in the front, their putrid flesh and the soiled tatters that had once been clothing exuding a stench that preceded them by at least a kilometer.

The foul bunch was followed by several morbidly obese behemoths, their huge and malformed bodies jiggling grotesquely with each lumbering step as they waddled forward. The partly skeletal wolves loped as a pack back and forth, scouting out in front of the main body of the horrific formation. Even though many of them were missing skin, jaws, fur, limbs, and eyes; they behaved much as natural wolves might.

In addition to the horrors out front, several armored vehicles brought up the rear of the formation. Reece recognized the vehicles as Stag Beetles, a type of armored personnel-carriers that had never been fielded due to their fuel source. These were old-school gasoline guzzlers. Black smoke billowed out from the steel beasts.

The Order must have reactivated one of the refineries that had been shut down to stave off radical changes in the climate. The changes had seemed to be occurring on top of the cyclical atmospheric changes that the earth regularly went through.

Old politics had gotten in the way and they never truly learned whether humans had caused environmental distress or not, though the most widely accepted theory indicated that they had. The Order didn’t seem burdened by those concerns. The weight of the vehicle’s armor alone made using gasoline as an energy source extremely inefficient. Some of these pollution-spewing machines even had heavy weapons mounted on them.

Reece just shook his head at the ignorance of the Order, for he held to the conventional wisdom that gas and petroleum were better left alone.

"We need a new plan," stated Reece flatly after flipping his helmet visor back up. He hadn’t counted on the Order employing this kind of equipment. They had more tricks up their sleeves than mutated zombie soldiers, he started to realize.

"Right," replied Karina as a new tactic formed in her mind. After a few moments, Karina seemed to come up with something.

"Okay, Reece and I will hold their attention from the front. Angel...take your pack around the opposite side from where the dread wolves are now and then come up behind them and take out those armored weapons platforms. When the chaos ensues, that’s your signal to begin your attack. We’ll wait for them to come to us and catch them by surprise. And make sure you all keep moving and stay out of sight as much as possible, mobility and surprise are our greatest strengths here."

Reece nodded and snapped his visor closed again. Angel bowed his head in understanding and his squad of jaguar-like rakshasas made their way into the woods that lined the highway on the opposite side from the dread wolves’ current position as they continued using their rotting snouts to scout the area.

Reece positioned his solar cycle behind an overturned red minivan near the side of the highway. Taking a deep breath to steel his nerves, he locked and loaded his grenade launcher and waited. Karina kept her eye on the dread wolves, hoping the main force would make it to them before the dread wolves picked up their scent.

As the wolves continued scouting back and forth as a pack, it became clear that they’d run right into Karina and Reece before the main body even got close. Karina readied her spear and walked up to Reece.

"I’m going to lure the wolves off, which should buy you some time to rain down a little destruction before high-tailing it out of here to regroup."

Reece nodded confidently, but his heart was now beating faster as anxiety and adrenaline flowed through his veins. Karina whisked herself off the highway and through the woods in the direction of the wolves’ howls.

Moments later, Reece could hear high-pitched yips coming from the same direction as the wolves took off after some ‘prey’. Karina had done her job. Reece waited impatiently to do his as he watched the horde ponderously ooze forward through the broken windshield of the derelict minivan.

As the moments slipped by, yelps of pain abruptly carried across the area from the direction of the wolves. The horde slowly came to a halt just out of range of Reece’s grenade launcher. He took a deep breath, trying to ready himself for what was to come.