The corridor was pure chaos, despite not all that many people working on this level of the building.

Nonetheless, my ‘duty station’ as it had been described to me was the C-suite meeting room, fortunately only a few doors down.

Still, I dreaded forcing myself through the milling throng of people. Secretaries, assistants, vice presidents, and whatnot.

If it weren’t for my guards, I would have just decided to remain in my office.

But the two troopers, the, for a Pure, midsized blonde Jordan Donelli, and even more so the downright hulking Leroy Akambe, who not only was close to triggering my phobia with his size but also was one of the very few black Pures I ever even heard of, managed to push through the mass of confused people, followed by Svenja who protected the rear.

All in all, this whole episode showed some deficiencies in the methodology of our emergency reaction.

Nonetheless, I managed to arrive at the meeting room, with only Naveen, Michael, and Maynard missing.

The unusual thing was that my guards were not the only ones in the room, though they were the only ones not in the tan and anthracite uniforms of Enki security, but instead in the emerald and black ones of the Vandermeer Security Service.

Not that either was that domineering in the presence of no less than two dozen of Einherjar in full battle gear.

After a few seconds with none of the others anything but confused from the look of it, I sighed and turned to one of the Einherjar.

“Are you autonomous, or is Cerberus controlling you?”

The bot showed no outward sign of even having heard me, though he answered.

“This unit is autonomous. The situation does not require Cerberus's control yet.”

“Can I speak to Cerberus, please?”

“Affirmative.”

Almost immediately, the bot turned its head to ‘look’ at me.

“You wanted to talk to me, ma’am?”

“Indeed. What is the reason for the security alert?”

“Approximately 10 minutes ago, a horde of zombies was spotted moving into Glen Oaks and Bayside.”

Zombies? How? Not that Zombies were something unheard of or all too rare. They were a couple of the nastier bioweapons of the Great War. A pure terror weapon at that as well.

But their appearance here in Queens was… troubling. We were on an island after all, and one that had been cleaned of such inconsequential things like zombies long ago.

And those things could not swim.

Right then, the door opened again, and Michael entered, followed by Maynard and Naveen.

“Ah, good, you’re all here.”

Michael sounded a bit out of breath, but otherwise fine.

“Where else should we be? This is an alert, for an alert we all have been told to be here, so here we are.”

You could clearly discern that Maggie was a tad annoyed, though it was not clear if it was by the situation or by Michael.

“Yeah, whatever. The thing is, it is important that we are all here in an emergency. Now… the situation is a bit strange.”

Maggie waved him off though.

“Yes, we already heard. Zombies in Glen Oaks and Bayside. Cerberus already told us. But that does not tell us what we are to do about it.”

“Cerberus did? Interesting. Well, for the time being, we will fortify here in Clearview.”

I shook my head.

“How many zombies, what kind of zombies, and where did they come from?”

Naveen cleared his throat.

“We estimate around one to two thousand zombies. Ragers at that. It seems they come from Alley Pond Park.”

Ragers were the more dangerous of the two types of zombies. Oh, they were not really the Walking Dead, like in the horror stories. They were ‘created’ by infecting humans with an airborne variant of rabies. Fortunately, the airborne variant outside of a host was short-lived. Only around 30 minutes or so. Unfortunately, it remained alive in the host, in its bodily fluids quite well, though no longer airborne.

The insidious thing about it was that it changed the victim substantially. Their whole metabolism changed so that they could survive in adverse climatic conditions, hibernate, require little food and water, and be a bit stronger.

The thing that made it a killer though was that it changed the brain. All higher brain functions were… shut off. No more reasoning, no more language, no more empathy. And no personality anymore. What remained was rage, pure and simple. Those zombies were furiously attacking anything moving not them.

And with one bite or a few scratches, and without the specific antiviral, you had a new zombie in the making. Against a properly equipped and trained force, like soldiers, or even militia, they were mostly just annoying. Against civilians? One of the many war crimes of the Great War, and nobody knew who was the first to use them.

That left just one question.

“So… what are we doing about it?”

Naveen shrugged.

“What can we do?”

Maggie growled:

“Do you seriously expect us to sit back and watch when our employees are ripped apart by zombies? Or their families?”

Naveen rolled his eyes in exasperation:

“Again, what can we do? Yes, we have around a hundred Finnsleif power armors. If we ask Vivian’s guard detail, we can bring a whopping 120 of them. And open ourselves up for any opportunistic assault that might occur. And to send our unarmored soldiers out against zombies is no way better than sending civilians.”

I wanted to object, but Kenneth was faster.

“They are armed and have unpowered body armor. It should be a bit better than an unarmed and unarmored civilian. But why send humans at all? How many Einherjar do we have by now?”

Exactly the point I would have made. An Einherjar was completely impervious to the terror aspect of the zombies, and even in low-power mode it was a bit faster and stronger than them.

Even without Cerberus controlling them, they were smarter than the zombies as well.

And most importantly, an Einherjar could not be damaged by a zombie. It was not possible. They were a bit less armored than the Finnsleif power armor, so it took armor-piercing weapons, and heavy armor-piercing weapons at that, to damage one.

Our Indian security chief rubbed his chin before he answered:

“We have by now three divisions with 12 thousand bots of them. Or 36k altogether.”

Maggie threw up her hands.

“So why are we still talking about it then? Send a couple of thousand of them to wipe out the zombies!”

“Two problems. Again, we don’t know who would take the opportunity to attack us. Hell, it looks as if somebody fabricated this situation. We can’t weaken our defenses.”

I rolled my eyes, and this time I was the fastest.

“Send a thousand. That won’t weaken our defenses significantly. You believed that 2.5k Einherjar along with our fixed defenses would be enough to defend against anything but a major assault by one of the triple-As.

Now, even with 1000 of them sent out to eradicate the zombies you have 14 times as many in reserve. Along with what, 1200 humans? 100 of them in power armor? Oh, and the fixed defenses have increased tenfold as well.

Right now, I would put our chance against an all-out assault by Kawamoto as favorable. Even their battleships will have a hard time getting through our fixed weapons. And 35k Einherjar under Cerberus control would stymie even their famed assault divisions.”

Naveen sighed.

“And then there is the second problem. We don’t have the transport capacity. If we ask for your personal assault skimmer, we have exactly one military skimmer available. It can transport 50 of the Einherjar, but that is all.”

Michael cleared his throat.

“What about the Badgers? Don’t you have already a couple of squadrons of them?”

Kenneth frowned.

“Badgers?”

Alena answered him.

“Yes, Naveen asked for some APCs to make his units a bit more mobile. Tracked APCs, not skimmers. We decided on the Burgmeister Dachs A3, or Badger as they are called in English. The first twenty of 100 have already been delivered.”

Naveen grimaced.

“Yes, and each of them can carry 15 troopers. Or 300 in total for all 20.”

I sighed.

“Naveen, even 300 Einherjar can rip a couple of thousand zombies to shreds. And an Einherjar can stand. I don’t know how many we can squeeze into one of those Badgers, but I guess we will get 20 of them in. Makes it 400.”

There was no reaction for a long time, and Maggie used that opportunity to get a strike in as well.

“You do know that sooner or later, we have to take care of this problem, right? Around 30% of our employees live on the other side of Alley Pond Park. Another 40% live south of Bayview. We have to clean out the zombies, or around 70% of our workforce won’t be able to come to work.

Right now, the zombies are more or less in a couple of spots, so we can use these Badgers to cart 400 of them to begin the clean up, and then get another 400 to make it faster. Maybe a third load to canvass the area for any stragglers.”

With a heavy sigh, Naveen turned to Michael.

“Well, boss, it is your decision. I don’t like it, it stinks of a trap, but I have no evidence that it is so.”

Michael did consider it for a few moments before he shrugged:

“I get where you are coming from, but we’ve done our best to conceal how powerful and plentiful our new weapons are, including the Einherjar. Officially, we have 4k of them, and enough firepower to fend off a single battleship, barely.

You know better than anybody else how much we downplayed it. Nobody even knows about the particle beams and the disruptors. So yeah, even if somebody orchestrated this horde to maneuver us out of position, they will badly underestimate what they need.”

Then he grinned.

“Of course, the majority owner already has spoken, and we have our marching orders.”

To his credit, Naveen nodded and his eyes glassed over while he moved into VR to give some orders.

Meanwhile, I turned to the Einherjar again.

“Do we have surveillance of the situation?”

“We do. 12 Atropos and 60 Lachesis have been deployed to observe the fighting.”

“Can you give us a composite view of it?”

Fortunately, or unfortunately, Michael was faster than Cerberus in this instance.

“Stop, don’t do that!”

Then he turned to me.

“Believe me, nobody here wants to see that. From what I know, they already have ripped a few people apart. They are just too fast.”

I sighed.

“You are right, we don’t want to see it, but I think we need to. At least as soon as the Einherjar are on the scene.”

That did obviously not sit well with Tiffany, as our chief administrator piped up:

“Speak only for yourself. I certainly don’t need to see this kind of stuff. I am quite happy with pretending that it is not happening at all.”

I rolled my eyes but shrugged. She was such a ninny sometimes.

“Fine, then whoever thinks they need to observe can look in VR.”

I planted my behind in my chair and did exactly that. I knew immediately that Michael had been right. I so did not want to see this carnage. But I was right as well in that I needed to watch it.

Not only for moral reasons, though I believed that if we were safe here in the heart of Enki, we should at least acknowledge the victims and witness their struggles.

But I also needed to know how the Einherjar were doing. Not that this would be a particularly stringent test of their abilities. It was the first though.

I let the Atropos highlight the victims and the zombies. And the few men, and it was invariably men, who tried to fight back.

Nearly all of them were at least wounded, and the majority perished, ripped to shreds by the ragers, bitten, and half devoured. It was a bloody affair, and I had to salute the courage of those men. Only one in three had an actual weapon. The rest were ‘armed’ with any blunt object they got their hands on.

In a way, the low temperatures of January were a blessing. Both in that it limited the number of people on the street, and that the few that were present were clad in layers upon layers of clothing.

Not enough to double as armor, sadly, but enough that it blunted the power of the zombies somewhat.

It was too bad that the men were outnumbered by something like four to one. Otherwise, they might even have had a chance to stand their ground.

But seeing the number of wounded people, I sighed and got out of VR.

“Jessi, I think we should prepare as much of the counteragent as possible.”

The auburn-haired doctor narrowed her eyes and focused on me.

“Uh, why?”

“The weather. A few hundred men are fighting the zombies, and a few of them survive injured. You know what happens to those poor souls if they can’t get the counteragent.”

For a moment, Jessi lifted her eyebrows but then looked a bit confused.

“You don’t think that the local hospitals and clinics can make the counteragent?”

I shrugged.

“Doc. Schaeffers clinic can. They have a nanofab. The rest… I am not so sure. It depends on how much they invested in a fab.”

For a moment, she looked at me, and then nodded, while Alena shook her head and groaned softly.

“Keep a tally. Sure, it is cold to think about money, but we can use it as a tax break.”

In the blink of an eye, Jessi was in Alena’s face, snarling and with burning eyes.

“How can you…”

She did not get any further as Naveen grabbed her and pulled her back.

I on the other hand lifted one eyebrow and looked at Alena.

“Do we really have to argue about pocket change here? We are talking about $6 in nanobots per dose. If more than 30 or 40 people were surviving and needing those doses, I would be surprised.”

That made Alena back down.

“Oh… I… I thought we were talking about several thousand dollars in drugs each. Not less than $500. Yeah no, we don’t bother with claiming that.”

By the time I got back into VR, the APCs began to arrive, and disgorging bots. The bots immediately began to fire at the zombies, with their supernatural aiming ability, and moved quickly, though still low-powered, into the fray, stepping between the men and the zombies where possible.

The zombies, with their higher brain function utterly destroyed, did not even realize that there were new enemies and began flailing, kicking, and biting on the new arrivals. Without any success, mind you.

The Einherjar were entirely unimpressed. Sure, we would have to give each of them a thorough scrubbing afterward, but otherwise, they were not impacted in the slightest. The same could not be said about the zombies.

We had equipped the Einherjar with a Vandermeer 4.6x55mm caseless assault rifle as a standard loadout. The weapon was specifically designed to beat light to moderate armor and still kill the person inside it, and with enough of them hitting the same spot often enough, they could even go through heavy armor. After some time.

We had also invested in a heavy battle rifle for them, 9.7x62mm caseless, for when they were going against heavier armored enemies, but for this instance, Naveen had kept it at the 4.6 Stormfury, with special soft loads.

The bots did not need the APDS-X rounds against the mostly naked zombies, and the soft expanding bullets were devastating in the soft flesh.

A single shot could remove a limb, or cause catastrophic damage to the body of the zombie. And the Einherjar were good enough to achieve 98% headshots.

The few zombies embarked in close-quarter combat with an Einherjar, or a victim, were in no way better off, as the bots sported nasty combat claws springing from their forearms. And while the zombies failed to gain any purchase on the smooth outer armor of the combat automatons, the one-meter-long monomolecular claws, designed to penetrate even heavy armor, removed heads or split the bodies of the zombies without any problem.

I can’t claim that watching heads explode or be removed from their respective bodies was in any way more palpable just because it happened to zombies. Sure, technically, those poor people were already dead. But they still looked human, although a nasty distorted version of humanity.

I switched the feed from the drones to an additional sector of my visual cortex and returned most of my attention back to the room.

“I think we have to reclassify the threat of zombies. Ragers at least.”

All of them, even the guards, turned to me in question. After some wordless negotiating, Michael was the one who formed the question that seemed to interest them all.

“What do you mean? Zombies are already at a pretty low threat level. Only their numbers make them dangerous at all.”

I shook my head.

“What I mean is that we could have comfortably used the 100 men in power armor from what I see. The 400 Einherjar already in place are going through the zombies like a plasma torch through butter.

The zombies can’t even dent their armor, much less do real damage. Heck, unpowered armor would likely be enough to go against a horde.

It helps that the Einherjar are uncannily accurate with their weapons and that we issued them with soft armor, but in the end, as soon as the Einherjar arrived at the scene it became a one-sided slaughter.”

Jessi spoke softly.

“Yeah, but sadly, it was already a one-sided slaughter when the zombies ripped the civilians apart.”

Michael nodded at that.

“There is nothing we can do about that. Even if we had a plan ready and the Einherjar rolled out as soon as the first zombie was mentioned, there would have been civilian victims.

And before anybody blames Naveen, let’s be realistic. The last zombie seen in NYC was what, 100 years ago? This came out of nothing.”

Well, not quite out of nothing.

“Blumenthal knew about it.”

That turned all of them back to me.

“What do you mean?” Naveen was not quite as polite in his demeanor as usual.

“I mean that he got a message that some Uncle Joe was complaining about the crowds, and then made his way into some hidden war-time bunker in the southwest of the Bronx.

There, on a standalone computer system, he signaled his arrival, followed by the person on the other end giving notice that Operation Bronze Puma would commence. 20 minutes later, the security alert happened.”

Michael’s eyes narrowed.

“Wait… you want to tell me that Blumenthal is really some kind of operative? That this was not your paranoia running wild?”

It took me a moment to parse what he was saying.

“You thought it was just paranoia? Why did you then not try to stop me?”

Michael smiled helplessly.

“For one, it did not harm. Sure, you spent some time on it that could be spent on other projects, but your output is so high, that it did not matter in the slightest while letting it out of your system would do you a world of good.

And second, even with you fixated on Blumenthal, we, as Enki, gained from it. The Atropos, Lachesis, and Clotho drones are, from what I heard, a whole new level of tech.

In other words, there was no reason to try to stop you.”

Marvellous. They thought I was just imagining Blumenthal’s status as an operative. Whelp, whatever, now they would take it way more seriously.

Tiffany piped up:

“Uh, why does it mean Operation Bronze Puma? What is the reason behind it?”

I shrugged.

“I was in no position to ask.”

Naveen interjected:

“It is probably some randomly generated code name for the operation. Good operational security. In other words, it has no meaning.”

“Oh, OK. I was just wondering where they got this strange name.”

“Regardless, this would be too much of a coincidence. We have to assume that whoever is behind Blumenthal is responsible for the zombies.”

After a moment, Kenneth asked into the room:

“Wait, you said this Blumenthal was in the Bronx, right? And this bunker he is in is in the Bronx as well? The zombies are here. On this side of the East River. Why is he hiding then?”

We all looked at him shocked and after a few uncomfortable seconds of awkward silence, Michael cursed:

“Fuck! They have a zombie horde in the Bronx as well. We just haven’t heard about it yet. Naveen, how many Atropos with their Lachesis compliment do we still have undeployed?”

“We have another eight. But I think we can redeploy six of the Atropos from Bayview and Glen Oak. We can substitute more Lachesis there. Those are better at ferreting out any stragglers anyway.”

“Good. Send them to canvass the Bronx. If we haven’t heard of a zombie horde there by now, they must have reached the denser populated parts.”

Then he closed his eyes and sighed.

“And as soon as those drones are underway, let’s all think about how we get a load of Einherjar to the Bronx as quickly as possible.”

Maynard was not the only one who frowned, but he was the only one who asked:

“Uh, why would we want Einherjar in the Bronx?”

Michael smiled grimly.

“Nobody in the Bronx has any heavily armored soldiers. No combat bots, no heavy weapons, no nothing. The only ones who have that in NYC are Ralcon in Brooklyn, Enertech to some extent, also in Brooklyn, Huntington, you guessed it, Brooklyn, IBM, what a surprise, in Brooklyn, and us, here in Queens.

The Bronx has security personnel in light armor, with light weapons, and NYPD. What do you think how long will it take before the Mayor, who lives in the Bronx, squeals for help?

And who wants to take a bet that none of the others will bother helping? We can help with marginal costs for us. We have to transport the Einherjar there, and back. The ammunition is a rounding error in our security budget. We have to clean the bots and recharge them.

In other words, we will send help. And we have to figure out how to do it the best way.”

“We can squeeze 50 fully armed Einherjar in a single freight container if I am not wrong. Not in storage, but so that as soon as the container is opened they can begin fighting.”

Naveen frowned and looked at me. I was not so sure myself, and shrugged, before one of the bots in the room, obviously controlled by Cerberus answered.

“There is room for 52 Einherjar in a standard freight container unless they are sent with a heavy loadout. Then only 48 fit in.”

Kenneth, who had posed the question, continued then:

“So… we can put 52 in a container, fill 16 containers full, or 800 and change, and use our 8 heavy cargo skimmers to bring them to where they are needed.”

Michael rubbed his chin and then turned to Naveen.

“Do you think that is feasible?”

Naveen nodded slowly.

“If we land back far enough so that the skimmers are not threatened, it should be no problem. We need somebody to jump out and open the containers though.”

I chuckled.

“Put one Einherjar in the passenger seat of each skimmer, and have it jump out to open the containers.”

A few minutes later, Cerberus announced that he had found a zombie horde in the Bronx.

Michael sighed and then began a com call. While the phone was ringing, he turned to Naveen and Kenneth:

“Prepare the containers!”

Then, obviously whoever he was calling took the call.

“Hello Jasmine, I have to speak to the Mayor.

Michael Walker, from Enki.

No, it is only peripherally connected to the zombies in Queens. Yes, it is important.

I fear I have to insist.

Yes, I understand that right now the Mayor is busy, but he will be even busier when he has talked to me.

He can talk to me now, or desperately try to get my help, which I am offering now, later.

Fine, but keep it quiet. The zombies in Queens, which are by the way already mostly under control, are not the only ones.

Our drones have just now discovered another horde in White Plains, working its way southeast.

Yes, I know that this is where you are right now. And where your family lives. And where the family of the Mayor lives.

Ah… finally. Hello Mayor Walsh.

I am sorry, but she wouldn’t put me through without knowing what I wanted to talk to you about.

Of course, I understand that she is in a panic. There was nothing to do, as she demanded to know why I was trying to contact you.

Goddamn it, yes, I am sorry that I gave your assistant a panic attack, but what I am trying to say is that we discovered a second zombie horde in the Bronx, moving toward its center.

No, we sent out surveillance drones to all the other boroughs and spotted them in the Bronx. White Plains to be exact.

Yes, I am fully aware that neither Woodrow nor the NYPC is equipped for dealing with zombies.

That is why I am calling you. We are right now taking care of the already-discovered zombies here in Queens with our combat bots.

No, unlike Queens, we can not simply send our bots to the Bronx. We have police power here. We have to be invited into the Bronx.

Yes, exactly, that is what this call is about. Technically, Woodrow has to call us in, but you can override them.

OK, it will take our bots around 15 minutes to arrive.

We are sending you all we can spare.

Of course, we don’t send you all we have. No…. no!

This reeks of a diversion. That somebody wants us to weaken our troops. That is why we only send the bots and only a bit over 800 of them. We keep the rest here, to defend ourselves.

840 is all you get. We are talking about zombies here. Even standard soldiers in decent unpowered body armor should be able to take them two or three to one. The only reason we send more than 800 is that it would take too long and some stragglers might hide in a hole somewhere.

No, the bots we are sending you will be enough to destroy 10s of thousands of zombies.

They have no fear, no revulsion, no regrets, they are almost as well protected as power armor, they are exceptionally accurate with their weapons, and even if they run out of ammo, they can rip them apart in close combat.

We can do that because they are close to our HQ. Bots have always been good on the defensive.

Yes, it is fine. I hope the next time we speak will be a bit less hectic. Goodbye.”

Then Michael deflated somewhat and took a deep breath.

“Fuck, I hate trying to talk sense into a politician. And Walsh is one of the good ones. Whatever, the plan is a go.”

Fortunately, the zombies in the Bronx managed to only kill a couple of dozen people before the Einherjar intervened, unlike Queens, where around 300 died and 80 wounded casualties required treatment.

So yes, I was off in my estimate. It happens.

For the rest of the day, the high tension remained as we did not know if somebody was trying to lure us out of position, but no follow-up attack came.

The tension broke in the afternoon when we heard that several major cities in the US, like Philadelphia, Washington DC, Boston, Chicago, Montreal, Toronto, Quebeck, and a handful more all had the questionable pleasure of hosting a horde of zombies.

Unfortunately, the reaction was suboptimal in virtually all cases. Yes, the death toll in NYC with not even 400 dead was painful.

But the average number of dead from those zombie hordes was 3487 per city. Only Washington DC had anything resembling an adequate reaction, and they had ‘only’ 874 dead.

It was clear that whoever Blumenthal worked for had just attacked the whole United States.