Maybe the people on the other side were friendly? The missions details said “Avoid the locals” though, so maybe they should hold off on walking up to the bridge with a white flag.

The setup of their defenses said a lot about this area. If they had to defend against ramming attacks, then they expected someone to do the ramming—was this area more violent than it seemed? No, the fact that there was actually more than one faction was the more concerning implication, wasn’t it?

If that were the case, wouldn’t they just immediately open fire on whoever walked up to the bridge?

Everyone agreed. Avoid the bridge.

Though, to go around and find another bridge would take them another week of precious time. They wouldn’t even be guaranteed that any other intact bridges would be conveniently left unmanned as well.

Still, this was a big find.

If someone was holding down a bridge as a checkpoint, then there was a good chance of some sort of order in Pasig City. A small group wouldn’t choose to outwardly establish checkpoints unless they had the manpower and ammunition to back it up. There was even a chance that there was an active military presence in Pasig City.

Not that that was a good thing.

In any case, they needed to cross the river.

* * *

“H-Hey, I haven’t spoken til now, but I wanna just say—no fucking way I’m getting on that thing.”

Heads turned towards Tristan, then back to the unreliable raft, lashed together from barrels and rubber tires. Karlson took the liberty of fastening bits of driftwood onto the periphery of it in an attempt at camouflage, but it was still too conspicuous for a daytime crossing.

“Have none of you any trust in me?” James asked with an exaggerated frown.

““No.””—came the near-unanimous reply.

Karlson had a hand in its construction, so of course he sided with his fellow craftsman on this one—though, the best he could do was to give a sigh of solidarity.

From an engineering perspective, it was a good raft. Outriggers ensured that it was stable. There was even a rudder for taking advantage of the river’s currents, and they supplied a generous number of oars.

“It’d be dumb if all our oars broke.” “Yeah, that’d be dumb.”

With that reasoning, they ended up with five oars, made with plywood panels nailed or lashed onto two-by-fours.

They used the drone to look for a crossing that didn’t have any sentries, and which wasn’t blocked by foliage or debris. Sentries ended up not being a problem, as they never found any such beyond 200 meters of the bridge. Much of the embankment on both sides, of the river, however, had become overrun with vegetation. They eventually found a good place just before the destroyed first bridge, but it was shored up by a steep reinforcement wall. It shouldn’t be a problem, so they went ahead with it.

They decided on a night crossing, exactly when the flow of the river began to reverse and the current wasn’t strong. The raft was about as stable and stealthy as they could get it, so it was time to go and actually do it.

* * *

By 1948H, the current started to slow. The bridge in the distance was dark. The entire opposite bank was dark. Maybe the Pasig faction had nightvision equipment, but as long as they were far enough away from the bridge, they’d just look like low-res driftwood. It should be fine.

Everyone was on the raft, and they finally pushed off.

With Aurelia on the makeshift rudder, they used the flow of the river to propel themselves to the other side. At some point, the flow halted completely, so they took turns rowing. When the current came back, flowing the other way, Aurelia held the rudder again, and they floated the second half across.

The barrels on the edge of the raft bounced against the embankment’s concrete reinforcement wall. They tossed over a bunch of concrete slabs, anchoring the raft. As for the wall in front of them, its angle wasn’t climable, but that wasn’t a problem.

Io handed Aurelia his nightvision goggles. Aurelia herself had some natural nightvision, but it was better-suited to detecting moving objects, of which guard rail posts were not.

With the NVGs over her eyes, Tristan handed her a solid steel grappling hook, welded together by god-knows-who from the Crafting Group. The welds looked fishy and unreliable, but they stress tested it and it passed their specs, so they couldn’t reject it.

She tossed the grappling hook, latching onto the guard rail’s support post. Lucky shot. They took a minute to send up two more of the same, missing a few times and hitting the guard rail itself once. They were afraid that the clang would’ve alerted someone or something nearby, but nothing happened, so they carried on.

After thoroughly dressing the raft with nearby driftwood, the first to climb were Aurelia, Karlson, and Io. Aurelia easily scaled the wall with nothing but her upper body strength. Karlson and Io, on the other hand, clipped on their ascenders and bunch more safety clips. They went over the top about 30 seconds later, confident in knowing that if there was trouble up there, Aurelia would’ve been screaming mad by then.

20 seconds after they disappeared beyond the edge, a red light blinked from the top, suggesting the remaining three to come right up.

They came up to a four-lane road, devoid of any vehicles. In front of them was a facade wall that disguised the shanties behind them.

James beckoned Loretz over. “Let’s change up the members,” he suggested. “It’ll be me, Aurelia, and Amadeus, and then you, Karl, and Tristan.”

“Wilco—but sir, why though?”

“You seem more squad leader-y. I think Karl will appreciate the changeup.” Behind James, Karl gave a solemn nod.

“Understood. What’s our next course?”

“Let’s go find somewhere hidden from the air. I have a feeling this airspace is gonna be busy in the morning.”

They traveled through the night to look for a good hideout. This would have typically meant finding high ground, but if there were established factions around, they would have already occupied them all.

But they didn’t need high ground. Loretz’s drone changed things. If they just needed to do reconnaissance, it was better to have an unassuming drone base in some suburb than to have a prominent sniper’s nest in a mid-rise somewhere that stuck out like a sore thumb.

Of the group, only Io and Loretz had NVGs. Aurelia herself had some natural night vision, but limited to moving objects. The rest had to make do with red flashlights, which the scouts just called “redlights” to distinguish them from ordinary flashlights.

Zombies couldn’t see red at all, which was good for the scouts. Humans were insensitive to it, so unless it were shining straight at them, they wouldn’t catch it from the corners of their eyes.

Redlights were hard to find, though—and in the case of gel filter-improvised redlights: hard to find the materials to make—so they treated them with such preciousness that certain people started putting enough reinforcement on them to withstand repeated blunt force usage.

Even with the increased stealthiness, it wasn’t good for everyone to turn on their flashlights all the time. Those with NVGs ended up taking point. If the pointmen had to sidestep or note any obstacles, they would either use weak laser pointers and encircle the danger zone, or shroud their hand around their flashlight and blink it at the offending rock or hole in the road.

It would be quite dumb to be done in by a collapsed sewer pipe before the mission had even started, but it had already happened once. Good thing it was just Aurelia who fell in that time, but now, they weren’t privy to taking chances.

They also had a bunch of laser pointer-based signs and gestures for pitch black darkness. The moon was out tonight, though, and it was at least possible to see a faint outline of the person in front of them.

* * *

They settled in a house in suburban area about 500 meters east of their landing point. The area was shadowed by rich tree canopies, affording them decent cover from eyes in the air.

It was rather surprising that the place hadn’t been deforested yet, given how short on materials everywhere generally was. Compared to the neighborhoods in Mandaluyong, there was also more thought invested into the placement of the barricades here as well—actual gates and doors!

The house they occupied was in near-pristine condition. Sure, the front gate had a few bullet holes in them, and the door was rammed off its hinges, but it was just a temporary stop.

Loretz sent up the drone again. Its nightvision was grainy as all hell, but they could still survey the surrounding area with it. They were currently located somewhere in the northern tip of Pasig City. From where they were, the drone could survey the entirety of the tip. They didn’t really expect to find anything, though, since they were some distance from the defended bridge.

“Sir, there’s some movement, 600 meters north.”

Their objective was 2.5 kilometers south-southeast. It was tempting to “check it out,” but the Contract Terminal held priority. On the other hand, they were still in the reconnaissance phase of the mission, so it was just right to do what they could to figure out the actual state of things in Pasig City.

As the night dragged on, and James cooperated with Loretz to map the surrounding area, pops of gunfire could be heard from the north.