Chapter 65: Far to the East – I

The sun’s rays broke through the silent dawn, just in time for a group of soldiers to depart in the earliest of sunrise.

The Light APC’s engine hummed loudly in the street, gathering the attention of survivors who had come back from a recent scavenging trip.

A few of the men glanced over. The bruises and wounds on these survivors’ faces were worth nothing to the spoils this group had obtained.

Food. Bottled water. Clothing.

“Did we miss something?” Asked one.

“Houses,” another soldier replied. “Platoon Leader Dmitri said to ignore them. Guess there’s stuff out there.”

“Let them be,” their squad’s leader interjected. “And focus on your watch.”

“Yes, squad leader!”

The two soldiers stopped their chatter, observing the procession ahead. Being stationed was boring. Being sent to scout was dangerous.

Truth be told, they would rather die in duty than die being bored.

When will the Commander unlock more APCs for us?

…

The Light APC rolled forward, swallowing the street’s silence behind it. An armored SUV followed, its seats fully taken by Army Soldiers, a pair of male Medics, and Clara, the female medic.

“Bulldog One, are we Oscar Mike, over?”

“Oscar Mike to Point Dora, Escort One,” Bulldog One replied. “Echo Actual has given the green light. How’s the air out there?”

“Hot as your ass!” Escort One’s driver laughed. “We’ll be a few clicks behind, Bulldog One. The boys down here ain’t liking your smoke.”

“Roger that, Escort One.”

The southern horizon reflected clearly on the SUV’s window, a clear difference to the personnel stuck inside the enclosed Light APC—save for the grinning machine gunner.

Wind brushed across his face, feeling only comfort in the open air.

“Look at that guy, all smiles and no care in the world.”

Erik Vonner, one of Hans’s Army Soldiers, remarked. He was stuck feeling the cramped space inside the SUV. If not for the powerful air conditioning system, his head would have been heated for long.

“Scouts said how long will this journey take?” He asked.

“Eight hours bar any obstructions,” the driver replied. “Faster if you boys weren’t so goddamn heavy!”

Everyone inside the armored SUV chuckled.

“So, were there any?”

“What, obstructions?”

“Yeah!”

“Flyover’s clear,” the driver frowned. “Beyond that, wave of zeds.”

“How many?”

“As many bullets you can give. Don’t aim too shabby out there.”

The banter continued for long, easing the growing tension in their hearts. The southeastern area, though sparsely populated, remained a dangerous territory for these soldiers to go to.

Buildings thinned as they pushed to the east. Towers gave way to boxy concrete blocks, then to long stretches of shuttered storefronts and empty fenced lots.

This wasn’t part of Grefort’s lovely postcards during the holiday seasons. It was where the city exhaled what it couldn’t afford to build.

The Light APC in front halted before an intersection. Cars piled up, blocking the southern road that stretched for kilometers into the barren grasslands.

The once lush scenery turned desolate, a starkly different reminiscence of its past beauty.

“You think someone made it out there?” Lukas, another Army Soldier, asked.

“Doesn’t look like it,” Ryan, Hans’s first Army Soldier, frowned. “Pray we don’t join them.”

One could imagine panic-stricken people when the apocalypse hit. Vehicles were left behind; alongside the belongings they once had painstakingly purchased.

Now, all these memories lie buried in a graveyard of cars. And corpses.

A group of Scouts retreated.

One of them stepped over a body slumped against a crushed sedan. Boots scraped dried blood from the asphalt as he checked the intersection.

No movement. No sound.

Just heat shimmering above metal and decayed bones.

“How’s the area, Echo Actual?” Bulldog One buzzed through the comm.

“Clear,” Dmitri, or rather, Echo Actual, muttered into the comm. “Boarding now.”

The others followed, quick and practiced, before peeling toward the Light APC and the armored SUV. There was no sense of wasting energy crawling through wreckage or admiring the scenery.

They’d hitch a ride over the flyover and redeploy on the other side.

With the engine’s roar, the convoy moved forward, into the flyover. The ambient sound silenced as they reached higher.

The subtle winds raged, overlapping the street’s noise. By the time they arrived at the top, the scenery had long changed.

The machine gunner rotated his barrel up north.

Industrial spines stood straight in the distance. Beside them were empty, silent cranes several stories high.

The large hooks had fallen, leaving scaffolds to endure the rough atmosphere in a stark-naked fashion.

And even if the hooks were there, nobody remained alive to operate such a gigantic machine.

Despite their unsurmountable height, endless skyscrapers in the central area overshadowed their dominance.

The machine gunner whistled in delight, covering his eyes with his hand.

“Won’t you look at that?”

The marvel of human infrastructure, now reduced to empty large blocks. Or rather, a comfort housing for the undead.

“That’s a lot of zeds over there.”

The Scouts looked over. Right between the broken windows, zombies idly stood in place.

One loud gunshot, and they might easily attract thousands of them at once.

The machine gunner cringed at that thought, hoping not to alarm those things that were far away.

Among the structures, power grids zipped across the horizon. Though they remained upright, their wires had long been unlit.

The hanging wires trailed southward, limping like an injured dog as they connected to a mess of collapsed poles and open land.

Beyond the flyover, the city didn’t rise anymore. It thinned. Roads stretched longer, straighter—unbroken by intersections or shelter. The buildings there were shorter, farther apart, their shadows unable to overlap.

“No cover,” the army soldier murmured, unsure if that was a good thing or the other way around.

The driver eased off the throttle without being told. Out there, sound would travel far and wide. Movement would snowball.

Whatever that might be stirred would not hit only once. It would keep coming, endless like the tides of the sea.

“Hit the ground,” Dmitri tapped on his squad member’s shoulders. He re-adjusted the optics on his MP7A1.

“What’s the timeline?” Echo One’s squad leader asked.

“Earlier than expected,” Dmitri replied. “Echo Two, see if that zed wave to the north is still clustered. Echo Three, check south.”

“Roger that, Echo Actual.”

“Bulldog and Escort, stay here. Everyone else, follow me.”

Dmitri clicked his gun’s safety to fire, furrowing his brows as he gazed to the east.

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