People watched as the soldiers left with mixed feelings. Some wanted to follow, but warnings and platitudes stayed their hands and feet. While some muttered words of desperate pleas, others bid them good riddance. It took a while until the procession of fighters finally disappeared down the road.
During this time Major Dureal had assembled his fighting force. Every group arrived to receive their placements.
Surprisingly this step was the quickest, fighters had already been briefed on what to expect and moved to their respective areas. The plan was to get across the Brooklyn Bridge by the end of the day. If they could get there, their problems would be significantly less.
Next was what Sam had been working on. Ava, Chris, Franklin, and many more showed up driving an array of civilian vehicles and buses. Mark first wondered where they had gotten them all, but it turned out they had been gathering these vehicles the whole of yesterday as a way to transport the young, old, or injured. They had gone all out for this, as Mark counted no less than a hundred different vehicles.
Civilians had been appointed to drive the vehicles and as a bonus, it even offered those inside some protection.
This would act as their core.
The able-bodied would make up the next line of defense. They would fight if needed, but primarily, these men and women would take on a wide array of tasks, such as communication, medics, and scouts. Lastly, the fighters would act as the outer band of protection; their job was simultaneously the simplest and the hardest.
Their strategy was similar to Major Liam’s, in that they would rotate, but hopeful the soldiers passing through ahead of them would lessen the pressure greatly.
Gathering all the civilians probably took the biggest chunk of time. Organizing where they all needed to go was a nightmare, but eventually, it was done
Mark had been helping a blind man into a jeep when Jonathan contacted him through their link.
“Mark, man, I need your help.”
“Whatsup?” Mark responded,
“The Doc had to go with the first group, so we are missing a medical lead, I was hoping you could head that area up. It's a bright yellow school bus near the front of the formation”
A couple of large vehicles would act as mobile hospitals. Giving the healers a place to treat patients on the go.
It wasn't ideal, but it only made sense for these vehicles to remain near the spearhead of the formation. Meaning he’d been at the forefront of the battle nearly constantly.
Exactly where he wanted to be.
He’d be focusing on directing their healers but with Mark's mobility, it wouldn’t be difficult to dip into battle and then retreat when his Mana was exhausted.
Grinning Mark sent confirmation down the link, and headed straight to the vehicles. All around him, people nervously kept busy. They were already half an hour behind the soldiers, and by the time they left, it could be a solid hour’s difference.
It was still doable, but they had to hurry.
When Mark arrived near the front there were four buses that he was in charge of. Climbing onto the first he was met with the sight of Tom, Oliver, Abby, and an older man from Henry's group. There were a few others in here, such as the medic he had once given tips to and some civilians. But, as a whole their healers were sparse, Major Liam had taken most of the newly trained healers. However there was no use in complaining, they would do what they had to.
Mark also noticed that the bus had been modified and in a rather savage way. Someone had physically ripped out half the seats to make room for patients to lie down and installed a narrow set of cupboards at the very back of the bus. Abby was actually busy stocking medical supplies into them.
As Mark climbed the stairs to the vehicle, several sets of eyes fell on him. Taking charge of everyone there was easy as they either knew or had seen him around. The only one that Mark didn’t know was the healer from Henry's group, his name was Eugene. The guy was probably in his late seventies and had liver spots all across his bald head. Seeming nice enough, Mark learned Eugene had been a nurse years prior, but had since retired. Having someone who had in-depth knowledge of the field and could directly assist him was a huge bonus. From there Mark moved to the other busses, introducing himself to his team, and walking them all through the processes he expected them to follow when dealing with intakes.
Mark would travel between the vehicles during the trip to monitor their situations.
Suddenly a loud beeping sound went up nearby.
That was a sign for them to get moving. The engine roared to life, and moments later the driver pulled off at a crawl.
They were heading out.
Stepping off the bus, Mark lifted into the air. Turning, to see the line beginning to move. Gradually their front section left the safety of the wall, Mark watched as almost two thousand people embarked on a trip, with a destination they might never see.
It was always an impressive sight to see this many humans gathered together. Mark noticed familiar faces dotted throughout the crowd. Some people, he knew directly while others he had only met in passing.
Turning towards the front Mark saw their fighters, a keen look of focus touched their features. Chloe, Sam, and the Major were near the front, currently discussing something. Then Mark felt Chloe send down the link.
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“We are moving out and following this path”
An image flashed through Mark's mind and gave him a sense of where they were heading. He hadn’t thought of sending whole images, but apparently, it was possible.
The morning chill was still hung in the air, as they left their refuge for the last time.
Setting off was thankfully uneventful.
As a precaution, casters were sent to ‘shut the door behind them’ as it were. They raised a three-meter-high wall of stone to patch up the hole in the section. Their thinking was that, with no remaining humans behind the walls to attract the Corrupted, it would naturally keep them out of the park. This was the hope, but no one was holding their breath.
Focusing on the first leg of their journey, Mark noticed that their plan was working fairly well.
The soldiers up ahead were acting as a heat shield, clearing a path for them to pass through. The few Corrupted that had wandered back into the gap were easily removed.
As they continued to tread the same path cleared by the soldier, they could see evidence of a devastating battle up ahead. A group of humans that size probably drew the hoards in from all over.
What their group was dealing with was bearly the runoff that the soldiers missed.
It was exactly because of this, that everyone was on their toes. Getting complacent in this situation could wipe them all out. Scouts were constantly sending reports from up ahead and Chloe kept up intermittent use of her [Forsee] spell.
As the hours of travel blurred into themselves, their problem became evident.
They were perhaps halfway when everyone started to notice the measured increase in the number of Corrupted appearing.
Not only that, but it looked like the soldiers ahead of them were picking up their gradual and methodical pace.
Scouts were seeing signs of an increase in distance, meaning that an order went around for them to speed up, which was manageable at their current rate of engagement.
As of yet, barely anyone had needed to use the busses due to injury, but it was just a matter of time.
It was only hours later when they had traveled three-quarters way of the journey, that they spotted the first smattering of bodies.
Soldiers lay abandoned on the side of the road, some of them awakening as corrupted themselves. They looked like they’d been through a lot, with hundreds of small wounds adding up.
Up until now, the group had seen a constant trail of Corrupted corpses but these were some of the first losses on the human's side, but from then on out it was a constant loss of lives.
It was grim but they had to keep moving, already the scouts saw signs of further acceleration up ahead. In fact, their direction and pace had become errant and frankly rushed.
Chloe had not said anything yet but Mark could see something was bothering her.
All the while, the number of obstructions was increasing. Corrupted began to gather faster and in greater numbers.
The first serious injuries started to appear and Mark began to focus on treatment. Everything they did was done with the absolute minimum use of energy. Medical supplies were dolled out freely and while they didn’t fix things, they saved lives. Mark was purposefully treating the wounds with the bare minimum energy.
Supplies could be bought from the system, so they were the first thing Mark leaned on. Their Prana had to be kept for later, to save lives. They used just enough energy to make sure their Prana was always regenerating, but other than that they bandaged up the wounds and sent people back out.
This went on into the late afternoon.
Mark was moving between the four buses and guiding where he could, but by now, the real fighting was underway.
Without even looking up from his work, Mark could tell their speed had slowed down by the number of patients he was seeing. He didn’t even need to look up to know the number of Corrupted was still climbing.
Messages between the leads bounced around the network; they were making proper use of his newest spell.
The evening was rapidly approaching.
Mark had just finished pulling Prana through the staff and into a man's neck wound when he heard Chloe through the network.
“Stop! Code red! We can’t approach here! Fall out of the slipstream. I repeat everybody disengage and take the upcoming highway!”
Now before they even left, Chloe and the Major had come up with a system to rate her predictions. The color denoted the chance that their convoy was in danger. Green was 25% or lower, Orange was 50%, and Red was 75%.
While green and Orange were still fairly safe, Red was treated as if it was going to happen.
Because if an event had a 75% chance of occurring, then they needed to treat it like a forgone conclusion.
Her code red meant something up ahead had a huge chance of wiping them out. So she was trying to steer them away from whatever it was.
Knowing this, all the leads began to change direction as the message rippled out by radio and word of mouth.
They needed to dip out of the soldier's trail to have the best chance at survival. The moment they did, the pressure on the front of their formation increased exponentially. Carving out a new path forward was a completely different ordeal.
It soon became impossible to conserve their energy any longer, as new injured arrived, as fast as they could send them back.
The formation rotated through fighters and a significant threat came from their flanks, as places they had passed seemed to draw Corrupted from other areas.
Mark focused on the task at hand and treated whatever injury was put in front of him.
Two strenuous hours passed like this before Chloe suddenly pulled them back on course.
He heard her thoughts come across the network once more.
“Alright everybody, listen. I’ve run the spell three times now, this is our only chance. We need to merge back into their slipstream and whatever you do, try to keep everyone quiet for as long as you can”
Mark frowned, keeping this many people quiet was nearly impossible at this stage. What was going on?
All the while his hands never stopped working to repair the acid damage on his current patient's face and eyes.
At that moment it was as if they had broken through the Corrupted and there was a lull in the fighting. As the bus turned the corner onto the silent highway Mark got an uneasy feeling.
Looking up, he saw they had switched to the route the soldiers would have no doubt taken, and there, ahead of them, hell waited.
The main force had long since passed through here, but the corpses of soldiers and Corrupted lay twitching in the road, abandoned where they fell. The damage to the surrounding buildings from bullets, spells, and explosives had actually collapsed some of them. Above all of this, what caused Mark’s hands to slow, was the unmoving collections of Corrupted.
Pillars of conjoined bodies sat silently on the main road like gravestones. Mark recognized them immediately, and by the looks of it, their numbers were no less than before.
Now he knew why she said to keep quiet. Totems of merging Corrupted sat squirming in the silent street. The last time Mark had seen these, the Titans had been born from them. Their saving grace last time was their group size. The fact that a small group could move quickly and quietly, had saved them. Mark turned back to look at the approaching line of people behind them and dread settled on his shoulders.
They were in the middle of an active Influx.