Ciera and Karina had been keeping watch outside but had seen no sign of the small fleet or any of the horde’s ground or flying forces yet. It had been over an hour since they arrived, and Reece was starting to get nervous. The small fleet of boats should have been there by now. A feeling of dread started to fill the individual members of the small group when the short-range walkie that Angel was carrying came to life.

“Zzzzzt...almost...sorry...late...zzzzt...flying...,” came a broken transmission that they had to assume came from one of the captains of the boats. The radios only had about a fifteen-kilometer range and they must be right on the edge of it. Reece and his crew blew a collective sigh of relief and the transmission. It was short-lived when Ciera abruptly called out, “We have incoming!”

As one, the group all looked in the direction that Ciera was pointing. True enough, the horde had caught up with them and they were coming on fast. Reece guessed the first of them would be there in five minutes. That would be well before the fleet would arrive.

Reece’s blood ran cold in his veins and his mouth tasted of ash as the horror of what was coming dawned on him. He gritted his teeth and forced the nihilistic thoughts to die on the vine. Instead, he channeled his emotions into anger at the Order and their meat puppets.

A couple of minutes later, Angel’s radio lit up again...this time much more clearly.

“Convoy teams one and two, do either of you copy, over?” came the deep voice of Shamus, a gruff but friendly man and one of the captains in charge of the fleet.

“We copy you, what’s your ETA, over?” asked Angel, hoping the answer was very soon.

“We should hit the shore in about ten minutes or so. We had to travel farther out to sea to avoid being spotted by the flyers. We scoped them from a few kilometers out. They were doing sweeps. Looking for us, I would imagine. Over.”

“Copy that. Any chance you could speed up that ETA? We’re going to be crawling with Z’s in about three minutes and I don’t know how long the eight of us can hold out. Over,” replied Angel anxiously.

“We’re going about as fast as we can, but we’re sending help your way. We’ve been in contact with ground control. You should see them in the next couple of minutes, I would suspect. On that note, look to the north. You’ve got more incoming apparently. Over.”

The crew all looked and could see a dark cloud on the horizon, coming up fast. It was directly behind and above the horde of Z’s barreling down on them already.”

“Well, that’s just wonderful,” said Reece dryly to himself before barking out a few suggestions. “Alright people, we need to hold these sons-of-bitches off for as long as possible. We know the cavalry’s been delayed. There’s nothing we can do about that now. What we can do is send as many of the Order’s meat puppets to the grave as we can. And there must be a few members of the Order controlling all these zombies.”

“Let’s try and kill them all before we’re completely overrun. Hopefully, that’ll cause some disarray in their ranks. And if not...hey... they’re still dead. We’re going to make them pay dearly for each of our lives. Now, hold back nothing. Let’s show them why they shouldn’t mess with us.”

A cheer went up from the small group. The eight combatants all seemed energized by Reece’s words as they left the base to reach the end of the bottleneck before the horde arrived. Reece had his twin pistols at his hips, katana, and scimitar on his back, and an over-under rifle and grenade launcher in his hands.

Karina lengthened her long spear to full length as she walked beside him, her eyes glowing red. Bjorn had a pair of huge double-bladed axes strung over his back as he took on his hybrid bear-like form, significantly increasing in size. Reece thought he looked even bigger than the first time he had seen him.

Angel and Naeva kept their human forms for the time being, both armed to the teeth with guns and grenades. Ciera had a pair of pistols on her shapely hips and left the group to crawl on top of a large, abandoned SWAT van. They had staged an ammo crate there and Ciera pulled the end of a bullet-filled belt from the crate and fed it into the large-caliber rifle they had bolted there as well. She laid down, positioned herself with the rifle, and took aim at the oncoming flyers. A grenade launcher lay beside the crate, waiting patiently for its turn in the coming battle.

Talia had taken a grenade launcher as well. Her skin had turned dark brown and craggy, like tree bark. Her red hair resembled a crown of spiky thorns, and her eyes glowed a light green. Reece didn’t know what she was, but she clearly belonged to one of the secret tribes of humanity he had yet to learn about.

Jorgen carried no firepower. Instead, the dark-haired muscular man carried a pair of large, curved swords, similar but wider than scimitars. His skin darkened, turning bronze as his eyes took on a slight golden glow. Reece just chuckled and shook his head as he realized he was the only regular human in the group. It also didn’t get by him that they were all smiling widely. He could think of no one else he’d rather fight and die with at that moment.

The small crew arrived at the opening of the highway just as the first of the zombies drew within range. The flyers were still a kilometer out when Reece started hearing rapid-firing coming from behind him. He had just enough time to see the sky start to rain corpses before his attention was pulled to what was in front of him. The first couple-dozen ranks of the stinking, rotting former humans met a decisive and quick end through liberal use of ammunition and a couple of well-placed grenades. Unfortunately, the easy part was now over.

Ciera was a crack-shot but simply couldn’t keep up with the sheer numbers of flyers rapidly approaching and with the first few ranks of regular zombies down, it created a path for the dread wolves and the hulking gluttonous zombies to charge. Reece fired upon one dread wolf, shredding it with metal, then another as they came in closer and closer to him.

Talia popped off all her grenades in her launcher deep into the horde and dozens of small explosions caused havoc in the undead ranks, but still they came on. Angel blasted at scurrying zombies and greasy-looking black zombies that came at him from the water. Naeva started shooting at the flyers as the gargoyle-like creatures finally arrived and started swooping down on the small group of comrades.

By this time, the defender’s ranged attacks were abandoned in favor of hand-to-hand weapons. Jorgen wielded his dual-curved blades, spinning and slicing every undead thing that came close to him like a bladed tornado.

Bjorn and Karina nodded to each other, an unspoken tactic uniting them. The big bear-man picked up the small lilitu in one of his paws and tossed her like a javelin towards the face of the nearest giant fat zombie. The dumb thing didn’t know what hit it when she sliced through its head with her spear before kicking off its chest and leaping at the next one, giving it the same treatment.

Once he had released Karina, Bjorn pulled his axes from his back and alternated swinging them back and forth, creating a swath of destruction in his path as zombie after zombie lost heads and other body parts indiscriminately.

Talia backed up Angel as he was forced to retreat from the undead things emerging from the water. Her hands had both extended into woody pointed spear-like appendages which she used to deadly effect. She pinned two zombies to the ground with her arms before turning the move into a handstand and piercing several more oncoming zombies with her feet which were equally pointy and deadly. Spinning on one arm, she ripped the faces off more zombies before flipping back onto her feet and continuing her acrobatic fighting style.

Reece now understood why these were the leaders amongst the pit fighters he had helped to free. For a second, it felt like they had a chance until he looked down the road and saw the seemingly endless swarm of undead coming on towards them. They had barely made a dent.

Suddenly, Reece heard the whistling of missiles passing over his head followed by the sight of explosions all over in front of him, both in the sky and on the ground. Several jets roared over his head as he realized that Ground Control had come through just in the nick of time. He recognized the jets as Raptor III’s, fusion-powered aerial stealth fighters.

With a sense of hope in sight, the band of survivors continued to fight on. Even before the sense of hope had a chance to fully form, Reece felt a rumbling under his feet and then the ground exploded. He was thrown deep into the horde of enemies and away from his comrades.

A huge fleshy worm-like creature emerged from the hole and drove itself out into the air over twenty meters before turning its grotesque head to plunge back down and swallow Karina and several zombies whole. Reece screamed in rage and quickly got to his feet while drawing his twin pistols.

He proceeded to blow away the dozen or so zombies that were almost on top of him. More moved in to take their place as he felt shooting pain erupt from both his shoulders as one of the gargoyle-like flyers grabbed him and hauled him into the air. It was quickly downed by a shot from Ciera, but another took its place and grabbed Reece before he hit the ground. Ciera was able to take out this one too, but then the flyers formed a defensive shield in front of the next flyer to grab him.

He tried shooting the one carrying him, but his bullets wouldn’t penetrate the things bumpy grey skin. Instead, he shot at the eyes of the ones around him, most of his bullets bouncing off the creature’s faces, but a couple found their mark and he dropped two of the beasts before his pistols ran dry.

Before he could sheath them, the creature that was carrying him squeezed its talons deeper into his shoulders and he dropped both pistols from fingers he could no longer feel. He tried to fight on, but his right arm wouldn’t obey his commands. Still, he was able to draw his scimitar and stab the thing in the throat.

The attack caused it to choke and drop him, only to be caught by another one of the sky terrors. Ciera was taking out the barrier of defending flyers as fast as she could, but it wasn’t fast enough. Reece‘s adrenaline had kicked in, but he had taken several wounds from the flyers as they kept snatching him up with their unreasonably sharp talons.

He felt blood flowing over his chest, arms, and legs. His scimitar dropped from his hand when his left arm went numb and his vision began to fade, as he got a bird’s eye view of the enormity of the horde. It was somehow bigger than any of them had imagined. He yelled one last defiant shout to his ever-shrinking comrades-in-arms with enemies closing in around them, pouring all his energy into it before succumbing to the darkness.

“Keep fighting! Don’t you dare die!” he yelled as loud as he could. As he did, he felt something leave his body and he instantly grew incredibly weak. A split second later, he was unconscious.