The tires of two cars screeched to a halt for the third time on this blasted trip, as the streets were severely damaged and blocked by vehicles from every direction.
"We're two minutes out," Kave shouted, looking through the front window. "I'm sure I hear gunfire."
"Fuck this shit!" Adam slapped the steering wheel before impulsively opening the door, taking his shotgun with him, and jumping down. "We'll continue on foot."
"Alright, assume formation." Sergeant Elena gave the command, and everyone began surrounding Adam. But as Kave joined the group, Elena stopped him. "You will protect Asset Tommy."
"No, I will…"
Kave wanted to protest, but he incurred the wrath of Sergeant Elena instead.
"YOU ASSUME THE POSITION I TELL YOU TO, SOLDIER! DO YOU UNDERSTAND?"
Kave had never faced Elena's foul mood in the same way he just had, so he simply nodded and saluted, his only instinctive reaction.
"Stay with Tommy, but move the van around this place. We may need to escape fast," Adam said, with a much more reasonable tone than Elena's.
"Right." Kave replied as he pushed Tommy back to the van.
Ivan's group also descended from their truck, leaving one guy behind the wheel and converging with Adam's team. As the group surveyed the area beyond this point, they needed a single protocol to follow.
Upon agreeing, they started moving in a single file on the sidewalk, with Adam's men-at-arms spearheading the formation. Adam was their VIP, so they covered him as best they could, but he was more alert than any of them.
Every ruined car they passed had the potential for Gobzkin to jump out, wielding their rusted blades and crude spears. However, that didn't happen until they reached the vicinity of Harper Campus, as it seemed the place had been previously fortified but was left abandoned and was now infested with Gobs.
The team engaged in melee with the first few Gobs they met, fearing that a loud approach might attract the larger Gobzkin variants. Adam and Elena made the best effort. Elena had a bionic arm that could kill Gobs with a single punch to the head, whereas Adam used his size advantage to kick, disarm, use Gobs as meat shields, and snatch their weapons to kill them with. The other four men-at-arms had their combat knives fixed to their weapons as they acted in a single formation, taking down large numbers of Gobs with extreme efficiency.
This was the welcome party each Gob horde stationed so that they could spot any enemy that might approach them. Making sure that none of these Gobs would run back to the main bulk of the horde was essential to strike them while they were distracted.
Luckily, as they advanced, the entire southern fence of Harper Campus was clear of Gobzkin, and the group approached as silently as they could, turning right with the road at Harper Square. There, Adam could finally see the pointy spire of the church through a street riddled with burnt cars, destroyed buildings, and a green horde of man-eaters in between.
BANG! BANG!
Shots were fired from the tower of the church; two loud bangs, with a reverberating echo, indicated a large-caliber rifle discharging its payload. In the middle of the horde, one large green creature was moving with vigor, crossing from one cover to another, and on its back was a Gobzkin the size of a Hobgob.
The shooter moved the barrel of their rifle, trying to get a good shot at it, but the creature managed to hide behind the walls of the building to the side. The remaining horde seemed to be trying to rush at the church, but the moment they exited cover…
BANGANGANGANGANGANGANG!
A deafening automatic discharge of a large-caliber firearm tore through green flesh, metal, stone, and anything organic or inorganic in its way.
"COVER!"
Immediately, Elena jumped over Adam, pulling him down by his coat, then dragging him to the side of the street. Everyone followed suit, crawling on the ground and taking cover, with the men-at-arms solely focused on covering Adam.
"Shit! That's an LMG?" Ivan shouted, almost pissing his pants from what had just happened, looking back as the LMG's bullets began making holes through the broken-down cars.
"We won't be able to push through here," Adam said, looking at the situation. "The survivors over there are on edge; they wouldn't let us close if we didn't assist them."
"What do we do then?" Ivan asked.
"First, give me one of your radios. Buzz's radio will distract him from fighting." Adam held out his hand.
"Take mine." Yuki said as she passed hers.
"Alright. We'll stay here and engage the Gobzkin from behind. Our fire will alert the survivors of our existence, and so long as they are friendly, they'll coordinate their fire with us. Ivan, you take your team and go back towards Harper Square, take two right turns, and you'll arrive at the church from the side. I believe there's an alley that leads right to the church's door."
"Alright."
"Once you are in position, notify us and we'll start firing. You flank them when they engage us."
"Got it! Moving out."
Adam's leadership seemed to have rubbed off on the students, who grew accustomed to how men-at-arms were being bossed around by Adam. They didn't question his plan and moved immediately. As for Adam, he had to devise his own plan.
"Sharp, can you tell us what is there?" Adam asked.
"Well…" Sharp leaned back against the wall of the broken-down building and looked through the gap between the cars, making a headcount of the Gobzkin. "Over 50 contacts; there are three significant movements among them. The rest are small and insignificant."
"Not with such numbers." Adam shook his head before asking, "Can you identify where they are focused?"
"Yes. There are two cover areas. One is 23 meters over there, and the other is 40 meters beyond that burnt-down bus."
"Sergeant, do we have enough blazer cells to detonate?" Adam asked.
"Just two. The rest are essential as ammunition," Sergeant Elena replied.
"Prepare them. Once Ivan gives his signal, Sharp will throw them at…"
"Ehehem!"
As Adam was about to lay out the rest of his plan, Buzz, who was squatting down and listening, interrupted him by clearing his throat. Adam turned to him with a frown:
"What's wrong, Buzz?"
"Nah, Commander. Not much. It's just tossing things around… that's my specialty," Buzz said, as if he were hurt by how Adam was relying on Sharp.
"Are you sure?" Adam asked. "We need those cells to land perfectly where Sharp indicated."
To that, it was Elena who replied:
"Buzz is the radio operator, sir. He's the one responsible for throwing beacon bombs for orbital bombardment."
Adam was taken aback, as, in Wartopia's character cards that come with the miniatures, such an ability was ranked as very rare for a man-at-arms to have.
"Go for it, Champ." Adam completely approved, giving the responsibility to Buzz, who took the blazer cells in his hands with excitement, waiting to deliver some hand-delivered bombardment.
A minute later, the Gobzkin tried to advance once again towards the church, but bullets began flying again, and it was then that the radio in Adam's hand buzzed with Ivan's voice:
"In position!"
"Fire away!"
Adam immediately gave the order to Buzz, who threw the blazer cells one after the other, very effortlessly. Everyone ducked down and covered their ears as Buzz made a countdown, and…
BOOOOM!
BOOOOM!
The entire western side of Harper Campus shook so hard from the blast that many Gobs were launched into the sky before falling in pieces, and right then and there, the madness began.
Adam and his men-at-arms emerged from cover, blasting anything in their way with the terrible sound of blazer guns tearing through green flesh and bones. The Gobs were immediately demoralized by the blast, and those of them who could run set off running.
GRAAAAH!
But in the middle of the green tide, three special-case Gobzkin stood tall. One, a Gobzkin Brute, was large enough to be the size of a Star Paladin. Another was a Hobgob, wearing many totems and holding a staff—a Shaman. And the last was a freak even by Gobzkin standards: a quadrupedal Gobzkin the size of a Brute but with the hybrid physique of a gorilla and a dog. As for its face, it was the same as Gobzkin's, but with a mouth so large and teeth so pointy, it looked like something out of a nightmare.
This was a Muncher beast, a type that was considered a beast even by Gobzkin's standards. Such a beast was being used as a mount by the Gobzkin Shaman, who used it to traverse the battlefield easily while causing the ground to twist up into walls and spikes to hinder the sniper's fire.
On the other hand, the Brute was taking one side, dealing with the LMG fire by literally holding up a car for cover and trying to get close by pushing it towards the shooter.
From the other side, Ivan began attacking while coordinating with the survivors inside the church, and they focused on killing as many of the small Gobs as they could. Adam's team also focused fire on the Gobs, but as soon as they cleared the place, Biscuits aimed her blazer at the Gobzkin Brute and fired the shots in rapid succession, but the blazer barely scratched its skin.
GRAAAH!
Enraged by the attack that hit him from behind, the Brute was fueled with the absolute power of rage, and with an unfathomable energy, it twisted its body and hurled the destroyed car around, before letting it fly backward in a precise arc aimed right at Biscuits.
"NO!" Hammerhead shouted, trying to run towards Biscuits as fast as he could.
"DUCK!" Elena cried, hoping Biscuits would dodge the car by doing so.
Biscuits heard her comrades shouting as they urged her to react, but all she could feel was the world slowing down around her and around two tons of iron and steel descending five feet from her face.
She closed her eyes and accepted it, but before she could fully close them, the world suddenly went black as if it had lost power all by itself.
There was darkness everywhere, and she stood there in this cold void of nothingness with a single thought in mind.
She knew she wasn't alive, but once she saw a glimmer of light coming from the other end of the darkness, she walked to it, knowing that it was her next destination.
Still, she could swear she heard Adam uttering something right before she left the place, something that felt too compelling for her to ever deny.
✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧
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