CHAPTER 62: THE QUARANTINE ZONE [1]

They reached the next ridge just before midnight, a low spine of cracked earth that gave them a clear view of the world ending and refusing to lie down.

Beyond the Hollow Plains, the quarantine zone rose out of the dark like a blunt promise.

The wall was taller than anything they’d seen since the cities fell, reinforced concrete poured over old military bones, plated with Rift-metal that drank moonlight and exhaled a faint, oily sheen.

Watchtowers punched into the sky at regular intervals, each a caged lighthouse of steel and teeth.

Floodlights raked the kill zone between wall and wasteland, combing the night until shadows had nowhere left to hide except inside monsters.

And monsters obliged.

The first wave hit the light like a tide, F-Rank Razorbacks; low, sloped brutes plated in bone like welded shovels.

They came on in a clattering, grunting mass.

Behind them sprinted Pack-snarlers, gray-furred things with too many elbows and mouths that split to their ears.

And above, Char-moths pinwheeled through the beams, wings shedding ember-dust that set dead grass twitching into fire.

The wall answered.

TATATATATA...!

Turrets spoke in hammered sentences.

The stutter of heavy guns stitched incandescent lines across the front ranks, popping razorback plates like cracked ceramic. Snarlers crumpled mid-leap, and Char-moths turned into tumbling cinders.

"Hold," Reid murmured, mostly to himself.

His voice was the low anchor under the storm.

Holt slid prone and sighted down his rifle out of habit. "Range too far," he said, eyes grim as if apologizing to the scope.

Travis peered over the lip of the ridge and whistled. "Okay, so... big guns, turrets, lights, very official. What else? Anyone else feel underdressed right now?"

"Shut it." Jonas grunted, one hand folded over his ribs.

Kara didn’t speak.

She watched the rhythm of the turrets, the rise and fall, reading the wall the same way she read a sparring partner’s shoulders.

Ethan drank it all.

The Wheel pulsed in his head like a reluctant heartbeat; watching, recording, and waiting. He traced the kill lanes with his eyes; the arcs where fire walked, the dark seams where monsters poured to test the gaps.

And up on the towers, silhouettes moved with trained discipline; a defender’s calm pivot, a brace against recoil, a hand signal snapped and answered with disciplined speed.

And then, the first wave broke.

Bodies made drifts that glistened in floodlight glare as smoke rose into the sky. The air tasted like hot pennies.

But it was not yet over, the second wave came smarter.

They moved in a staggered curtain, this time led by E-Rank Wall-gnashers

that loped at the centerline. These bad boys were taller, narrow-bodied things with mantis forelimbs and beaks like bone shears.

They wore the shredded cage work of old shopping carts like armor, welded around their torsos with fused glass.

With them ran Ash-threshers. These monsters were as sleek as cats, long tails ending in mace-knots of hardened spines that whistled when they spun.

Behind, bulking into view, came an E-Rank Slab-ogre. This guy had shoulders like slabs of poured concrete and a spine webbed by plates of Rift-glass.

The sheer scale of it all boggled the mind.

Watching it and the brutal scale of it all, it was safe to say that they all felt a chill crawling down their spines.

"They coordinate with each other," Mira said softly, voice grim, the breeze tugging at her hair. "They’ve learned the turrets".

As if to prove her right, the wall-gnashers hit the kill zone’s outer edge and started cutting in a frenzied assault. They weren’t trying to climb, rather, they were trying to carve apart the blockade.

Their mantis limbs scissored into the smeared remains of vehicles and barricades abandoned in the first weeks.

Two worked in tandem, ripping a twisted flatbed into pieces. Ash-threshers collected the scrap with bright eyes and whip-tails, lashing it into crude shields for the oncoming pack.

"Clever bastards," Jonas muttered.

"Not clever," Holt said. "Adaptive."

Their voices all had a grim undertone as having survived a week and since the apocalypse started, they understood the terror of what they were seeing.

The slab-ogre roared, a sound like a cement mixer choking on rebar, and swaggered forward with awful patience.

Floodlights painted its glass veins the color of lava. It leaned one massive palm against the wall and pushed, and concrete boomed like a low drum. Turret rounds slapped its hide, chipping plates, shattering glass veins into bright sprays.

On the tower to the right, a defender raised both hands and then...

BZZZ!

Lightning laced his fingers, met in his palms, and leapt as a spear.

It struck the slab-ogre in the center of its chest. The monster convulsed, stumbled, and went down to one knee. The wall breathed as the turrets moved in concert, chewing at the joints.

"That one," Reid said, nodding toward the lightning-caster. "The ranged elementalist, the crew’s covering him like a captain."

"Not a captain," Ethan said without thinking. "A node".

"They’re fighting as a circuit. Power where it’s needed, everything else diverts."

Reid glanced at him and nodded once.

Far to the left, another tower glowed.

Heat shivered the air around a crouched figure. He rose with arms out, and the floodlights bent as if made of cloth.

His heat mirage flexed like a lens, then focused.

The wall-gnashers’ scrap shields melted and sank like warm wax under his special ability. The ash-threshers whipped in fury, their tails cracking the air and making nothing of the gun smoke that lingered.

Then a bullet found each throat in quick succession.

"That’s a marksmen with talent," Holt said, approval raw in his tone.

"Like you," Travis offered.

Holt said nothing, but the corner of his mouth moved.

At that moment, the Char-moths regrouped again and dove as a black sheet, ember dust falling in curtains.

But wind screamed up the face of the wall and knocked them into disarray.

Somewhere on the parapet, another Awakened painted arcs with both hands, drawing invisible currents through the air. The moths pinwheeled, collided, and scattered in a snowfall of smoldering wings.

Mira’s eyes narrowed, mirroring the motion with her own wrists. "F-Rank gales. They’re clean and controlled, she doesn’t overpush".

In that moment, a siren suddenly whooped...