Day 16.
The Eastern Wall.
Sauget, Illinois.
16:45 Hours.
The timeline is a flat circle, but today, I was going to break it over my knee.
I stood on the reinforced catwalk of the Eastern Wall. This was the spot. In my first life, this was where I died. This was where I watched Travis scream as a Pus-Bomber melted the flesh off his bones while I stood paralyzed by System Sickness and bad math.
"Atmosphere is heavy," Helen rasped, standing beside me. She was cleaning her fingernails with a scalpel. She looked frail, her skin paper-thin from the rationing, but her eyes were sharp. "Barometric pressure is dropping. Storm's coming."
"Not a storm," I said, staring at the tree line. "A wave."
My Decay Sight was throbbing with a headache-inducing intensity. The red threat markers weren't pulsing anymore; they were solid.
`[EVENT IMMINENT: THE SIEGE (WAVE 1).]`
`[THREAT LEVEL: TIER 3 DETECTED.]`
`[TIME TO CONTACT: 10 MINUTES.]`
"Get everyone to the wall," I ordered into my headset. "Except Dan. Leave him in the Gutter. If he wants to live, he shovels faster."
The crew scrambled. They moved with the sluggish, jerky rhythm of starving people running on adrenaline.
Miller limped up the ladder, his good hand clutching his pistol. He looked at me, then at the forest.
"You feel it too, don't you?" Miller whispered. "The Reaper is coming back."
"Vance is licking his wounds in the city," I said. "This isn't the Red Faction. This is the rent coming due."
I looked down at the courtyard.
Travis.
He was standing by the secondary barricade, shirtless despite the cold. His skin was grey, hard as stone, mapped with the glowing orange circuitry of his veins. He was eating a raw potato—one of the few things harvested from the Lung before they were fully ripe.
He looked up at me and grinned. It was a terrifying expression. His teeth looked too big for his mouth.
"Ready to smash, Boss," he rumbled.
My stomach twisted. In the other timeline, he was dead in twenty minutes.
"Travis!" I yelled down. "Hold the center! Do not engage the big ones until I give the order! You hear me? You wait for my signal!"
"Loud and clear," he grunted, hefting his telephone pole.
Then, the trees began to shake.
It started with the birds taking flight—a black cloud of crows screeching into the grey sky. Then came the smell.
It wasn't the dry, dusty smell of the Shamblers. It was the sharp, stinging scent of ammonia and rotten eggs.
Acid.
"Here they come," Yana said, uncloaking beside me. She racked the slide on her pistol.
They broke the tree line.
It wasn't a pack. It was a carpet.
Hundreds of Shamblers, stumbling over each other, driven by a singular hunger. And weaving through them were the Runners—twitching, screaming horrors that moved on all fours like spiders.
But in the center of the horde, towering over the rest, was the thing I had been waiting for.
The Pus-Bomber.
It was massive—easily eight feet tall and round as a wrecking ball. Its skin was translucent, yellow and distended, pulsing with fluid. It didn't have a face anymore; just a gasping hole where its mouth used to be, drooling green sludge that hissed when it hit the grass.
It waddled forward, its bloated belly swaying.
`[TARGET: PUS-BOMBER (TIER 3).]`
`[ABILITY: ACID BURST.]`
`[VULNERABILITY: RUPTURE.]`
"Open fire!" I roared.
The Silo erupted.
The Flamethrower Turret at the North Gate spun, its pilot light flickering. Boyd hit the switch from the Command Deck.
FWOOSH.
A stream of napalm arced over the wall, splashing into the front ranks of the Shamblers. It was efficient, brutal area denial. The zombies caught fire, their fat rendering, turning them into walking torches that ignited their neighbors.
But the fuel gauge on my HUD blinked red.
`[TURRET FUEL: 15%.]`
"Save the gas!" I shouted. "Short bursts!"
Miller and Ronnie fired from the wall. Miller was a good shot; he popped heads with a rhythmic bang-bang-bang. Ronnie, aiming with his one good eye, sprayed bullets wildly, suppressing the Runners.
"They're hitting the wall!" Paige screamed from the lower deck. She was throwing Molotovs—bottles of scavenged alcohol with rag wicks.
The Shamblers slammed into the concrete. They didn't climb; they piled up. A ramp of bodies began to form.
The Pus-Bomber ignored the fire. It ignored the bullets pinging off its thick, rubbery hide. It waddled straight for the Eastern Wall.
Straight for the weak point.
"It knows," I whispered. "The System is guiding it."
"Travis!" I screamed. "Get back! Fall back to the inner circle!"
Travis didn't hear me. Or he didn't care.
He saw the big monster. His Tank Class instincts kicked in. The orange glow in his veins flared blindingly bright.
"Big ugly!" Travis roared.
He charged.
He vaulted the barricade, landing in the mud outside the wall with a ground-shaking thud. He swung his telephone pole, sweeping three Runners aside like bowling pins.
"No!" I shouted. "Travis, no!"
This was it. The moment. The trolley problem.
The Pus-Bomber saw him. It stopped. It gurgled, its belly expanding, glowing a sickly neon green.
It was priming to burst.
If Travis hit it, he died. If he didn't hit it, it would breach the wall, and the horde would pour into the barracks.
I had seconds.
`[ROOT: LET HIM DIE. HE IS A TANK. TANKS ARE ABLATIVE ARMOR. SAVE THE WALL.]`
`[ADMINISTRATOR: CALCULATING... TRAVIS SURVIVAL PROBABILITY: 0%.]`
"Fuck the math," I snarled.
I vaulted the railing.
I didn't take the ladder. I jumped. A twenty-foot drop.
I hit the mud and rolled, the impact jarring my teeth. I triggered Regression Echo.
[ECHO ACTIVE: DAY 30 STATS.]
[DURATION: 10 SECONDS.]
The world turned grey. Time slowed to a crawl.
I saw the Pus-Bomber's skin stretching, the capillaries bursting as the pressure built. I saw Travis winding up for a swing that would kill him.
I sprinted.
My speed was unnatural. I wasn't running; I was glitching forward.
Ten meters. Five meters.
Travis began to swing the pole.
I hit him.
I didn't try to stop the swing. I tackled him. I hit him at waist height with the force of a hydraulic ram, driving my shoulder into his gut.
"Move!"
We went down. I drove him sideways, into the drainage ditch that ran parallel to the wall.
BOOM.
The Pus-Bomber detonated.
It wasn't an explosion of fire. It was a pressurized release of biological acid.
A wave of green slime erupted outward. It hit the Eastern Wall.
The concrete hissed. The rebar reinforcement—the stuff we had scavenged and mixed with bone meal—screamed as it dissolved. The acid ate through the wall in seconds, turning the fortification into grey sludge.
The splash hit the mud where Travis had been standing a microsecond before. The ground boiled.
We landed in the ditch, splashing into the filthy water.
The Echo ended. Time snapped back.
"Argh!" I screamed.
A drop of acid had hit my leg. Just a drop. It burned through my canvas pants and ate into my calf muscle like a hot coal.
Travis sat up, dazed. He looked at the smoking crater where the Bomber had been. He looked at the melted wall.
"Boss?" he blinked, his orange eyes wide.
"Get up!" I kicked him. "The wall is breached!"
The horde poured through the hole.
Runners scrambled over the dissolving concrete, shrieking in triumph. They were inside the perimeter.
"Breach!" Miller screamed from the catwalk. "They're inside! Fall back to the Command Deck!"
"No retreat!" I roared, ignoring the agony in my leg. "We hold the Gutter!"
I grabbed Travis. "You want to smash something? Smash the gap! Be the wall, Travis! Be the fucking wall!"
Travis looked at the hole. He looked at the monsters pouring through.
He roared.
He grabbed a section of the collapsed wall—a slab of concrete weighing at least a ton—and lifted it. He slammed it down into the breach, crushing two Runners.
He stood in the gap, a glowing orange giant against the tide of grey death. He swung his fists, pulping heads, holding the line with his body.
"Yana!" I shouted into the comms. "Flamethrower! Turn it around! Burn the breach!"
"Jack, the fuel!" Boyd cried. "We're at 5%!"
"Use it all!"
The turret spun. The nozzle aimed inward, toward our own courtyard.
FWOOSH.
The last of the napalm sprayed across the breach, walling Travis off in a ring of fire. The zombies trying to flank him caught light.
I stood up, limping, drawing my Fang .45.
A Runner broke through the fire, its skin peeling. It lunged at me.
I didn't dodge. I stepped in and jammed the barrel under its chin.
BANG.
It dropped.
"Hold!" I screamed. "Hold!"
For five minutes, it was chaos. Gunfire from the catwalks. Travis roaring and smashing in the breach. The smell of acid and burning meat choking us.
And then, it stopped.
The wave broke. The Shamblers, mindless and slow, wandered into the fire and died. The Runners, lacking a leader now that the Bomber was gone, scattered.
Silence fell, heavy and ringing.
I leaned against a support pillar, gasping for air. My leg was throbbing with a chemical burn.
Travis stood in the breach. He was covered in black blood and green slime. He was panting, steam rising from his skin.
He was alive.
In the first timeline, he was a puddle of melted meat by now.
I looked up at the catwalk.
Miller was staring down at me. His face was unreadable. He had seen me move. He had seen the Echo.
He knew I wasn't human. Not anymore.
"Status!" I called out.
"Clear," Yana said, appearing from the shadows. She had a gash on her forehead, but she was standing. "Breach contained. Fuel empty. Ammo critical."
"Casualties?"
"Three Nulls injured," Helen yelled from the infirmary door. "Acid burns. But alive."
I looked at Travis. He turned to me, the orange glow in his eyes dimming.
"Thanks, Boss," he rumbled.
"Don't thank me," I said, looking at the melted ruin of the Eastern Wall. "Fix the wall. Use the truck if you have to. Seal it."
I limped toward the Command Deck. My hands were shaking. The Sanity meter in my vision was blinking red.
`[TIMELINE DIVERGENCE CONFIRMED.]`
`[TRAVIS: ALIVE.]`
`[COST: EASTERN WALL DESTROYED. FUEL RESERVES DEPLETED.]`
`[SANITY: 72% (CRUELTY ACTIVE).]`
I had saved the Trolley. But I had derailed the train.
And now we were defenseless.
FOUNDRY PROTOCOL - DAY 16
SECTOR 1 (JACK MONROE) █████░░░░░ 5/10 Nodes
STATUS: BREACHED / SIEGE PAUSED
Defenses: Eastern Wall (Gone), Turret (Empty)
Asset: Travis (Alive/Tank)
Threat: Enclave Blockade / Horde Wave 2