“What we gonna do now Jay, our Squad is gone? What we supposed to do now and where is the aircover?”
“I don’t know, maybe it had to refuel or it ran out of ammo?” Jason replies.
“Come on man, you’re the Team Leader, what we gonna do now?”
“We’re too exposed out here, we got to get off the street, regroup and see if we can raise somebody on comms,” Jason says, his wits returning.
“Let’s try comms now,” Tyrone suggests.
“No, we got to get off the street and find cover first!”
Jason gets to his feet and joins Tyrone low against the wall, and he starts looking for possible shelter they can make use of. Nothing presents itself; he won’t go knocking on any doors, asking the residents to help them, he won’t put them at risk any more than they already are, so he is looking for an empty property.
“Let’s try going back down Barnard Road, look for an empty house or something,” Jason tells Tyrone. He doesn’t want to go back down there, but the alternatives are worse.
The two men only catch a glimpse of the Fast Jet as it flies at a tremendous speed overhead of them, down the main road towards the battle and the Warrior, the roar of the jet as it passes confirming to them that they didn’t imagine it.
“Take cover!” Jason manages to shout seconds before the immense explosion hits. Both men drop, hitting the pavement, their arms going over their heads to try and protect themselves from the explosion. A bright flash of light pierces through their feeble defences immediately, very closely followed by the sound of the deafening explosion and the shockwave that shakes the very ground beneath them. The resulting gale-force wind assaults them as the atmosphere around the area is forced away from the impact faster than the speed of sound.
The wind dies down and Jason turns his head slightly, daring to look at the impact from beneath his arms. He cannot see the impact though; all he can see is smoke and dust that rises into the air in the shape of a mushroom.
“Are you okay?” Jason asks Tyrone.
“Yeah man, I think so,” he says into the ground.
“Stay down, the flying debris hasn’t hit yet,” Jason orders.
Even from their distance, the debris comes down, chunks of rubble and metal raining down onto them; thankfully, they seem to be far enough away to be out of range of the big chucks and it quickly subsides to be replaced by dust and ash.
Jason moves as soon as he feels it is safe; they have definitely got to retreat now, and if any of the of Zombies survived the explosion, there is no telling in which direction they will be going.
“Let’s go,” he tells Tyrone urgently as he gets to his feet.
Both men are up on their feet ready to evacuate the area. They struggle to move, however, they just stand there on the corner of the junction, looking at the devastation spread out before them.
Thick smoke and dust hang in the air where the bomb hit like a death shroud hanging over it, blurring their view. The two men stand there like tourists on a beach waiting for the sun to set as they wait for the smoke to dissipate. They can see the damage the bomb has caused all the way up the road from the epicentre, and all but a few of the windows in the houses they can see are shattered, blown inwards and debris covering the road, pavements and front gardens, up to and far past their position. And dust rains down all around.
Their attention is drawn back to ground zero as the smoke does eventually start to thin somewhat and the devastation there is almost total. A crater sinks deep into the ground where the Warrior was; it has been vaporised completely and the area around the crater is scorched completely from the searing heat, almost completely burnt to black.
It is the houses on either side of the road in the immediate vicinity that shake them to their core. The front facades of at least five or six of the houses on both sides of the road are absolutely demolished and the damage continues inside to the inner or even back walls of these houses. Any residents hiding and taking shelter in those houses were doomed. The damage to the houses continues up the road, diminishing the farther away from ground zero they are, but their damage is still extensive. Black smoke rises from them as fires burn in the remnants of the buildings.
“There had to be people in those houses,” Tyrone says, “families, children! How could they bomb it?”
“Collateral damage, I’m afraid,” Jason replies, solemnly.
“Look!” Tyrone says, pointing, “are those survivors?”
Jason’s eyes flick back to the epicentre and through the smoke, there are figures appearing slowly from the devastation. There are survivors and more getting up from the ground constantly; these survivors are not human though. Even from their distance away, it is obvious. Unbelievably, even around the area close to the crater that is burnt to black, the ground moves like black tar, as slowly the creatures attempt to raise themselves, their burnt skin indistinguishable from the singed black ground.
Bodies raise up closer to them too, the shockwave having blasted them all the way up the road. Jason and Tyrone can see these clearly, can see the injuries they have sustained that, if they were human, would be incapacitating or terminal. Bodies are broken and arms are missing. Even the creatures missing lower limbs are coming back to life and moving any way they can, the horrible injuries not stopping these
