The rest of his team all dropped to the deck as a bright pulse of neon blue light lit the doorframe where Johnson had been a moment before. An afterimage was burnt into anyone’s vision who was looking that direction. Cunningham started to fire his M60 in short bursts through the doorway, laying hate into the adjacent room. The beam of light flickered rapidly and swept left and right, punching holes through the wall that separated the baggage claim from the inner workings of the airport.

“DAWSON! Get up here! Frag that room and breach!” Johnson shouted to be heard over the machinegun fire.

Dawson swapped his magazine for a bright red ammo drum and crawled up to the opposite side of the doorway the Johnson was next to. He took a pair of grenades off this belt and lobbed them one at a time into the room after priming them. After a few seconds there were two thunderous booms as they detonated. Cunningham ceased fire as Johnson stored the doorway followed immediately by Dawson a fraction of a second later. Before he was even clear of the doorframe Johnson was unloading his magazine into the enemy. The zombie with the laser weapon was already down, but two of the remaining zombies had moved to shield a third that had a series of arms rapidly constructing a laser weapon on its forearm. His weapon clicked to empty when he was only a few steps into the room, he stepped to the side opening up a line of fire for Dawson who immediately started firing explosive slugs into the trio of zombies to devastating effect.

The two zombies acting as shields were essentially disintegrated above the waist, the third one was only standing for a fraction of a second longer. The construction of his arm mounted laser continued despite the body slumping to the floor the strange machinery held its arm tightly. Johnson heard the sound of thumping feed coming from the doorway that rest of the zombies had come through and finished reloading in time to drop the next zombie to enter the room.

Johnson started barking out orders to the rest of his team who had not followed him into the former baggage processing room. “Move up! Cover that door! Gomez, get Hoss’ team, take that arm and get it to LtCol Brown! Ya’ll movin like pond water!”

Gomez sprinted into the room and used a machete to sever the metal arm off the zombie who had sprayed them with laser fire, then sprinted out of the room with it in hand toward the ticket counter where Hoss was holding with his team.

The next moments were tense, dozens of zombies started to try to get through the opposite doorway, obviously enraged that they had lost control of a high value piece of equipment. Between the chokepoint of the doorway and the concentrated firepower it wasn’t long before the entrance was completely packed with bodies. The zombies behind the wall worked to pull the disabled ones out of the door frame even as they were trying to push through any gaps.

With the arrival of Hoss and his team they were able to prevent the zombies from making it more than a few feet into the room even when they were using their own dead as shields.

Eventually all motion in the pile of bodies ceased, “What did ya’ll do to piss them off so much?” Hoss asked gesturing at the pile of bodies. The last time they had clashed with zombies it was obvious that they held forces in reserve to salvage their own dead during combat, but they showed none of that effort here. Just a mad rush to get into the room.

“It looks like this box here is making some kind of arm mounted laser weapon. It’s almost like the ship in Houston was making disks. I think we took it out before they had a chance to field many.” Cook added while circling the cube photographing it from all sides.

The sound of distorting metal was the only warning the team had before the strange cube of machinery started to glow white hot. “Out!” Johnson yelled and grabbed Cook by the collar hauling her away from the box as it started to spray sparks.

While they were still headed towards the door, the cube started to melt, spreading liquid metal over the floor. Hoss grabbed the legs of the other zombie who died before its new weapon was constructed and started hauling it away from the expanding pool of liquid metal. The room had rapidly become overbearingly hot, the air above the melting machine visibly distorting as waves of heat rolled off it singing the hair of everyone nearby. They all piled out of the room, Lee and Hoss the last ones dragging a zombie behind them. As the debris around the room started to smoke.

Before anything could start burning the sprinkler system kicked on, soaking everything in the building, and hitting the liquid metal with a hiss as it turned to steam.

The team stood in silence, the only sound the spray of the sprinklers and the periodic thump of an explosion powerful enough to be heard through the building's soundproofing.

To say the least, Johnson was shaken by recent events. The laser weapon the zombie had been using would completely change future engagements. He could also see from the expressions on his teammate’s faces that they were drawing the same conclusions as they stood quietly watching steam poor out of the baggage area.

Following in the tradition of non-commissioned officers since the dawn of recorded history and keep his team from thinking about it too much. They were all experienced soldiers or marines, so he wouldn’t need to do much to keep them moving mentally.

“Everybody give me an ammo count! Why is no one watching the other entrances? Cook! Stop playing with your phone and get this space gun bagged up so we can keep moving!”

Both teams started to take count of their remaining ammo, everyone quickly moving into defensive positions to cover the entrances of the baggage claim instead of gawking at the door steam was still rolling out of.

Keeping them focused on the small things so they wouldn’t have time to worry about the big things, Johnson barked acknowledgements in response to their ammo counts. “I've never seen a group of soldiers take so long to secure a room!”

“The main terminal’s next, times a waistin’”, Hoss added then caught Johnson's attention with a gesture. The two of them stayed behind when the teams moved out.

“Thoughts?” Hoss asked.

“Destroying their own equipment is new. I guess they don’t want us to have it.” Johnson said. “We can add scorched earth to the tactics they use”.

Hoss removed his Stetson and ran his fingers through his grey hair. “They didn’t want us to check that room. Kept everything out of our way, pressed the perimeter to pull the other teams off, then tried to hide when we got close.”

Johnson nodded and confirmed Hoss' theory. “The ones inside kept their heads down while they got ready to arm up. Looks like the only group ran into us on accident. Maybe they were the ones stripping cars for parts.”

“Agreed. We need to complete the sweep of this building. Make sure nothing else is ready to eat our ass. Lets get a move on, don’t let them get sloppy but we need to move fast. There’s still a lot of area to clear"