Only a warfreak would charge headlong into a horde, thinking their superior firepower was enough to take care of it.

The deployed Alliance forces included 82 Wolves, 18 Saber-M’s, 4 Saber-G’s, and 16 LACs, which carried a total of 580 Assassin-K’s and 57 Assassin-E’s. Despite these numbers, they were not enough to confront 5,000 Alphas in a head-on fight.

To the north and south of Library Uno were parallel tracks of the Oval Road, from both sides of which a driveway branched out and cut into the “front” of the library, facing the west. Further west of that driveway was a steep 5-meter drop into an arboretum, sparsely populated by thick and thin trees spaced at least 10 meters apart from each other so it was possible to see 300 meters deep. The only safe way down to the arboretum was a wide set of stairs, aligned with Library Uno’s main doors, that led down to an even wider promenade, about 20 meters wide, that cut through the middle of the arboretum into the west, stopped by a footpath that ran parallel the driveway.

To the east of Library Uno was the Sunken Garden, a field of green that was about 10 meters lower in elevation compared to the Oval Road, and it was big enough that two football games could be held side-by-side. There were vegetable patches there, now trampled underfoot by zombies that pushed against the library’s walls.

In summary, Library Uno was bounded on three sides by roads, and on the last by the Sunken Garden. Further to the west was also an arboretum after an abrupt drop.

Generally as well, the Oval Road was on an uphill incline towards the east.

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Coronel led the group into a parallel side road to the south of the Oval Road. They passed behind the the arts and sciences college, where the advanced bot detachment there was sweeping for stragglers before they joined at the head of the advance. From the shadows and windows of the college’s many annexes and floors, tired survivors reeled in shock at the sight of people riding on the backs of Sabers, watching for only a few seconds before the storm passed just as it had come.

At around the same time, bot detachments from the north, having mopped up their work, began traveling eastward to reach the edge of the Sunken Garden, encountering only light resistance.

The two groups arrived, from the north and south, setting up positions on the sidewalks overlooking the Sunken Garden. The Wolves formed the vanguard, while the 18 Saber-M’s and 4 Saber-G’s took the high ground at the edge of the Sunken Garden. They had clustered into two fireteams to bring the horde into a crossfire smack in the middle of the field. The LAC’s meanwhile clawed their way up ancient trees, perched there and ready to send death below.

The Saber-M’s were their machine gunners. Each had a six-mount of hydrogen guns; each gun had a fire rate of 75 RPM, giving the electronically-synchronized six-mount an effective fire rate of 450 RPM, and with 18 Saber-M’s, the force had a reliable firing volume of 8,100 rounds per minute. Against 5,000 Alphas, they should win in under a minute—only if each and every shot landed a kill.

The starter shot was fired by one of the Saber-G’s: a 50mm airburst grenade right at the edge of the horde. The explosion caught the attention of the horde, stirring them up so bad that it had sounded like a fire extinguisher had caught on fire.

It was a massacre. The Saber-G’s acted as mortar artillery, and despite there only being four of them, the blood mists and carnage that came with every barrage made the survivors in the library feel as if there was an entire artillery regiment shooting down into the horde. The blasts freely resonated throughout the halls, and even for those survivors in the distance, it was a terrible thrumming that spelled uncertainty.

Those blasts may have been killing zombies, but they were from an alien force, who could as well turn those guns towards them, next.

Now dismounted, Coronel watched on from the rear of the force’s right flank, his line of sight obscured by a row of blue muzzle flashes, each gunshot snapping at the air, and so many of them at once, hosing down the horde beyond with deadly, calculated accuracy.

Their victory was already assured, but he couldn’t feel at ease from it. The Kartesh would send a substantial Lanan infantry squad next—or even a whole platoon. If that were to happen, this survivor community would be instantly wiped out, and even the forces they had built up here wouldn’t stand a chance.

“Behind!” Aurelia shouted.

Mini-hordes were drawn in by the gunfire from the side roads. A rear guard of Wolves started engaging, but it was clear that there were too many for them to handle. The LAC’s sent down Assassins next, but the distance was closing rapidly, and the humans themselves would have to fight.

Coronel, Saito, and Eliso all lined up and opened fire with their laser weaponry, switching on and off with impossible speed and dumping entire kilojoules into every shot. The air itself rippled and burned, as the dust kicked up from the fighting was caught in the beams, glowed, then burned into nothing.

Aurelia had her own troubles. She could hear cries for help coming from somewhere…the economics college?

“I can hear a survivor!” she shouted.

“Deal with it on your own!” Coronel replied. “Saito, Eliso, shore up the left flank!”

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Aurelia gritted her teeth. What nice fucking allies she had—but she did, at least, feel that she could do it alone.

She held her sword with two gauntlet-covered hands, and faced the horde before her. Some of the zombies were dropping dead, sniped by Wolves, bled dry by Assassins, or exploded under laser fire, and yet, the horde was still coming closer.

And all she had was a fucking sword.

As the horde drew close, one of her gauntlets dissolved into a cloud of SMR’s, which moved into the sword, building it up, growing its length until it was two meters long.

She had no idea what triggered that, but it was a welcome change.

She dashed forwards. Inhuman, she thought in that moment. She dashed forwards too fast, and now she was in the horde’s faces. In adrenaline-stricken panic, she heaved the sword around, cleaving from left to right. A 2-meter arc in front of her was instantly cleared, and half a dozen torsos flew into the air, arcing over her.

It’s not enough, she thought. Two meters wasn’t a long distance for a runner to bridge. She followed through on the momentum and made another sweeping cut, dispensing with more enemies, but still, it wasn’t enough!

Another glove dissolved, and her sword was now three meters long. The resistance behind each cut grew all the more massive, but she was strong. She couldn’t understand how any of this was happening. She was spinning like a top and cutting through the horde like a blender.

“They’re getting in!”

Right. The survivors.

Between her cuts, she spotted a particularly fast flow of zombies running into the economics college. It wasn’t even a large building: just one story, twenty-one classrooms, and one way in after a small parking lot. She cut her way through the parking lot, and when she started to grow tired, she spotted the concrete roof of the covered walkway, thought it was a good place to rest, and she jumped.

She arced up high over the heads of zombies and landed on concrete. She looked down at the clambering undead, who were already starting to pile up on each other to reach her, and she thought—I can fucking jump!

Still, she was tired. Go figure, when she’d been killing hundreds of zombies on her way here. She looked down at the growing zombie pyramid, particularly at the hand that was already beginning to grasp the edge of the roof, and she thought back to when she was…eating an arm.

That revitalized her well enough, after all. The idea didn’t spark any particular revulsion in her, but that, in itself, weirded her out.

But she was tired and surrounded by zombies, so if eating zombie meat gave her a power boost, now would be a good time to test it out. She grabbed the hand and yanked at it, tearing it clean off.

She didn’t think that would work, but it did, apparently.

After staring at the hand for a second…she began to nibble at a finger—and oh wow this was better than she’d thought. A well of power began to fill her chest, tentatively confirming her suspicions.

Next thing she knew, she’d finished the hand. She wasn’t even conscious of it, it was just gone.

She heard the screams.

She cut through the horde once more. The indoors were cramped, and after destroying a support pillar, her sword shrank down, and she got two gauntlets back again.

She followed the gunshots. She followed the fighting. She followed the…laughing and power drill noises. They might be okay, after all.

Still, she rushed to the opened door. She killed everything in her way, and she killed everything behind her that dared rush to fill the zombie void.

“Luis!” she shouted. “It’s Aurelia! Luis!”

She killed the last one for the next ten meters, and she rushed through the door. In slow-motion, she saw a whole-ass fucking ballista bolt get shot straight at her. If she weren’t some hyped-up superhuman-zombie hybrid thing right now, she would’ve fucking died.

She dodged to the side. The bolt skewered a half dozen zombies down the hallway behind her.

“Luis! You fucking fuck!”—and other profanities she had never profaned before.

“Oh my God! Aurelia! No!”

“We gotta put her out of her misery!”

Something wasn’t quite right there. Now that Aurelia looked more closely, this was the room where Luis kept all his projectile projects, wasn’t it?

A crossbow bolt struck her hip from an odd angle. “Motherfucker!” she shouted.

“I missed!”

“Don’t put her through all that pain, you idiot!”

She was inclined to agree.

“You gotta put her down in one shot!”

Getting shot in the head wasn’t a comfortable experience. She would know.

“You fuckers! What zombie swears at you and”—another bolt got her in the arm—“fuck!”

She stumbled into the room, unamused and unhappy. She yanked out the crossbow bolts and threw them to the side. A few panicked survivors shot more bolts at her, and a ballista was even fired, but she dodged all those and even caught one of them with her hands.

She had been swearing this whole time. The only rational explanation she had left for these idiots’ behavior was a bad case of tunnel vision, to the point that they were hearing what they just wanted to hear.

The survivors were running out of bolts, but Aurelia dropped to all fours. The survivors thought they were finally wearing down this new super-variant of zombie, but really, it was just her giving up on humanity as a species.

Zombies flooded through the door. Panicked survivors fired what last bolts and rationed bullets they had left. Just as it seemed that they would all finally say goodbye to this cruel world, an avenging angel erupted from not-zombie Aurelia, summoning a demonic sword, one blacker than night, and zipped around the room at an impossible speed, turning zombies into abstract art.

Until there was nothing coming through the door anymore.

In the eyes of the religious people in the room—about half of them—a bloodied Aurelia was standing on a pile of corpses with a backdrop of bloodstains on the walls, almost perfectly streaked to look like wings emerging from her back. They dropped to their knees and began begging for forgiveness from whichever version of God they knew.

Aurelia only wished that they were saying sorry about shooting at her. There wasn’t realistically any space left to not stand on a corpse, either, and that sort of diagonal blood streak pattern tended to happen when you had a sword.

A couple of Marias banded together and held up a cross, pointing it at Aurelia.

“I’m not fucking dead, goddamnit,” Aurelia said at last.

“Wait…” Luis pointed at her. He was this lanky dude with too many scars around his arms and face from bad workshop practices. “What’s that, then?”

Aurelia looked down at the multiple other broken stubs of crossbow bolts sticking out of her. She just didn’t notice.

She began plucking them out, watching her wounds regenerate with fascination. “What’s what, then?”

Luis froze. This snarkiness was exactly Aurelia, but, man, what was going on?

The Marias were coming closer, chanting something in Spanish. One of them was already holding a wreathe of herbal leaves.

Aurelia desperately searched for a way to explain things…but there was none. A good scout, however, always considered retreat a viable option.

“I’ll uh…take care of things outside.”

Luis was still frozen. The Marias were convinced they managed to dispel the demon.