ccnovels Chapter 207: QRF Part 2
Chapter 207: QRF Part 2
And somewhere beyond the darkness, something was driving them forward.
Far above San Fernando, Pampanga, Reaper One banked sharply through the night sky.
The A-10 Thunderbolt climbed away from its first attack run while the pilot studied the tactical display mounted inside the cockpit.
The infrared picture looked insane.
He had flown close air support missions for Atlas for months.
He had wiped out hordes before.
Entire towns before.
But this?
This was different.
The infected stretched across kilometers of terrain.
The targeting screen almost looked broken.
Everywhere he looked, there were heat signatures.
Thousands.
Tens of thousands.
Moving toward the same point.
Moving toward Outpost Echo.
"Jesus..."
The pilot zoomed the display.
The image only became worse.
Fields packed with infected.
Roads packed with infected.
Drainage channels packed with infected.
The infected weren’t wandering.
They were marching.
The realization sent an unpleasant feeling through his stomach.
He keyed his radio.
"Command, Reaper One."
"Go ahead."
"I’m seeing organized movement patterns."
The operations officer remained silent briefly.
Then answered.
"We’re seeing the same thing through drone feeds."
The pilot frowned.
That wasn’t good.
Not good at all.
He rolled the aircraft back toward the battlefield.
Below him, Outpost Echo looked tiny.
Just a handful of floodlights surrounded by darkness.
A tiny island.
And surrounding that island was a sea of infected.
The pilot shook his head.
"Alright, ugly."
He pushed the nose downward.
"Let’s do this again."
The A-10 descended rapidly.
Altitude dropping.
Speed increasing.
The targeting computer locked onto another concentration.
This one even larger.
Several thousand infected packed together while moving across an open field toward the outpost.
Perfect target.
The pilot lined up carefully.
The aircraft stabilized.
The pipper settled directly over the horde.
Then he squeezed the trigger again.
BRRRRRRRRRRRRT.
The GAU-8 Avenger roared.
The entire aircraft vibrated violently.
Thirty-millimeter rounds poured downward like a stream of molten metal.
The effects were immediate.
Rows of infected vanished.
Bodies exploded apart.
Heads disappeared.
Torsoes ruptured.
The attack run carved another enormous path through the horde.
A path nearly twenty meters wide.
The pilot pulled upward sharply.
Fragments of infected bodies scattered across the field beneath him.
Several hundred infected had died in less than three seconds.
And yet.
The horde continued moving.
The pilot stared down through the canopy.
The gap was already beginning to fill.
"That’s unsettling."
Back at Outpost Echo, the soldiers cheered again as another section of the infected disappeared beneath the aircraft’s guns.
The morale boost alone was worth something.
Seeing a Warthog overhead made people feel invincible.
Even if reality disagreed.
Machine guns continued firing.
M240s.
M2 Brownings.
M4 carbines.
Every weapon along the perimeter worked nonstop.
The walls shook continuously from gunfire.
Spent brass covered bunker floors.
The smell of burned gunpowder filled the air.
Sergeant Reyes watched through binoculars.
The aircraft was helping.
Absolutely helping.
But it wasn’t enough.
Not against these numbers.
Then the radio operator suddenly looked up.
"Sir."
"What?"
"The drone feed."
Reyes stepped closer.
The operator pointed toward one of the monitors.
A Predator drone high above Pampanga was transmitting live imagery.
The screen showed the battlefield from several thousand feet in the air.
The sergeant froze.
Because from the drone’s perspective, the infected looked endless.
The horde wasn’t a horde anymore.
It was becoming a migration.
An ocean.
A moving black mass spreading across the countryside.
And more were still arriving.
The operator swallowed.
"Sir..."
Reyes didn’t answer immediately.
Because he was busy noticing something else.
The infected weren’t moving randomly.
The streams were converging.
Different roads.
Different directions.
Different settlements.
Yet somehow all of them were moving toward the same target.
Toward the outpost.
Toward Basa.
The sergeant slowly exhaled.
"They know where we’re at."
Nobody replied.
Because nobody wanted to admit it.
High above the battlefield, Reaper One switched weapons.
The cannon was devastating.
But ammunition wasn’t infinite.
He selected another option.
Hydra rocket pods.
The targeting computer updated immediately.
Several clusters of infected appeared highlighted.
The pilot smiled.
"Let’s spread some democracy."
The aircraft rolled into another attack run.
This time he fired rockets.
WHOOSH.
WHOOSH.
WHOOSH.
Multiple Hydra 70 rockets streaked downward.
The battlefield erupted.
Explosions ripped through the advancing infected.
Dirt.
Blood.
Body parts.
Smoke.
Everything launched into the air.
Entire sections of the horde disappeared beneath overlapping blasts.
The explosions illuminated the night for kilometers.
Soldiers inside Outpost Echo cheered again.
One machine gunner laughed.
"That’s what I’m talking about!"
The rockets continued impacting.
More explosions.
More destruction.
More dead infected.
The pilot climbed away again.
Then checked the results.
The smile faded slightly.
Because despite all that destruction...
The horde still existed.
Massive sections remained untouched.
The infected simply moved around the craters.
Around the corpses.
Around the destruction.
And continued advancing.
The radio crackled.
"Reaper One."
"Go ahead."
The pilot immediately recognized the voice.
Operations Command.
"We’ve launched additional assets."
That got his attention.
"What kind of assets?"
A pause followed.
Then the answer came.
"Everything available."
The pilot blinked.
Everything?
That wasn’t normal.
That was the kind of response usually reserved for major emergencies.
Then again.
Thirty thousand infected wasn’t normal either.
The pilot looked down again.
Actually.
The estimate looked low now.
Much lower.
The drone feed showed movement extending farther than before.
More infected were arriving.
Roads from Angeles.
Roads from Mabalacat.
Roads from abandoned settlements throughout Pampanga.
Everything seemed to be flowing south.
Toward Atlas territory.
Toward humanity.
The pilot suddenly felt cold.
Because he remembered the briefing aboard the LHD.
Akira.
The infected network.
Coordinated movement.
Strategic behavior.
The possibility had seemed distant then.
Theoretical.
Now?
Not anymore.
This looked coordinated.
Deliberate.
Intentional.
Something was gathering them.
Something wanted them here.
The pilot keyed his radio again.
"Command."
"Go ahead."
"I think this is a probe."
Silence followed.
Then—
"What do you mean?"
The pilot watched the horde below.
Thousands of infected continued converging.
Almost as if testing defenses.
Measuring responses.
Learning.
Then he answered.
"I think somebody wants to know how we fight."