Somewhere across the lake, the roar of a bear shook over the ice. It was answered by several more of the bloodthirsty beasts.
Maybe it was already too late.
“Dohi, lead us back to base,” Fitz said.
They began the trek southeast, jogging through the snow. They didn’t have time to cover their tracks with how quickly the snow was falling. Fitz merely hoped they made it to base before the enemy did.
His breath plumed out in an icy mist as he ran.
Every step strained his already agonized muscles. They had been tracking through the woods all night, and now even the adrenaline of seeing the enemy could not assuage the exhaustion seeping through his injured body, conspiring to slow their retreat.
A gunshot suddenly cracked into the night, the sound ricocheting between the trees.
Fitz dropped low instinctively, his rifle rising immediately. The others sheltered behind the trees. More shots exploded from somewhere to their east, bullets punching into the wood. Bark sprayed over Fitz.
“Agh!” Sherman cried. He fell backward into the snow. Neilson began to crawl to him but more bullets tore into their position. Sherman jerked from the impacts, and the snow around him began to turn red.
Fitz swung his rifle around toward the gunfire. Between the shadows of the snow-covered trees, he saw two men or Chimeras—he couldn’t be sure. All he knew was they had his team pinned down.
“Dohi, cover me!” Fitz commanded.
Dohi put down a blanket of suppressing fire and Fitz hobbled to a better position, a few yards out from his team. He had a clear line of sight now into the flanks of his enemy. Both were still focused on the Canadians.
Fitz opened fire. The first soldier went down with a yelp of pain. The second started to turn, but Fitz caught him too. Blood sprayed from the man as bullets riddled his side and neck. His head flipped backward as he fell into the snow, and for the first time, Fitz saw the face of the scouts who had caught up to them.
His targets were monsters, but they weren’t Chimeras. They were men. Collaborators.
More gunfire rang out, somewhere just south of them. Fitz adjusted his aim and fired. Bullets pounded against the tree trunks where he spotted three more collaborators. They wore dingy gray and white clothes, a patchwork of military-issue uniforms and old fatigues that looked as though they had grabbed them from an apocalyptic thrift shop.
One of them went down, but the other two ducked behind cover.
Fitz couldn’t get a clean shot.
“Ace, flank them!” he called out over the comm.
Ace acknowledged the command with a curt affirmative.
Fitz trained his rifle on the three collaborators and squeezed his trigger, letting out a long burst. That gave Ace just enough time to rush to a new position between the trees. He opened fire and caught all three collaborators unaware.
They crumpled into the snow, steam rising off their still forms.
“Clear!” Dohi yelled.
“Clear!” Neilson replied.
They had killed the last of the collaborator scouts, but the short battle felt nothing like a victory. Toussaint and Neilson knelt next to Sherman, checking his pulse as if by some miracle he might still be alive. The vacant stare told Fitz that Sherman was gone.
Neilson started to lift Sherman with Toussaint’s help when a chorus of distant howls erupted into the night. There was no time to move the man.
“Run!” Fitz yelled.
***
The odor of death still lingered in Timothy’s nostrils from the brief battle in the Houston suburbs. Late-morning sunlight bathed the neighborhood. He had thought that after killing those Chimera scouts, his time outside the gates of Outpost Houston was done for the day. But he was wrong.
Once again, he found himself in the neighborhood where the battle had taken place with Ruckley, Wong, and Boyd.
This time, they were not alone in the ruined neighborhood. Four other teams of soldiers swept the fields and parks nearby for more landmines. They might be able to risk the additional abandoned explosives, but the team wasn’t here just to look for them. Their secondary mission was to search for more intel, anything that the dead Chimeras might’ve left behind.
Most of the men had bitched about coming back out here, but Timothy thought about what would happen when the outpost was safe again and expanded back into the rest of Houston. Maybe it was too soon, but he imagined a future where he and Tasha grew up down here and raised a family. How horrific would it be if one of their children wandered into this park, looking for a place to play without knowing what terrible traps were waiting just beneath the soil?
Wong swept a metal detector to locate any more planted mines. Timothy, Ruckley, and Boyd covered him while he searched in silence. They hadn’t slept much. Everyone was on edge because of the attack and the potential for more mines.
It didn’t take long for the metal detector to beep.
Timothy froze, holding his breath.
Wong bent down and picked up a spent shell casing, then flipped it to Boyd. The larger man stuffed it into a bag.
“So many false positives,” Timothy said. “This is going to take forever.”
“Better it takes forever now than the split second when one of these explodes again on a patrol, or a kid,” Boyd said. “If those Variants come back, I’d rather face ’em knowing we found all these things instead of trying to tiptoe around, hoping we don’t explode.”
A shout echoed across the park from near a rusted playground.
“Mine!” a soldier called, marking his position with a small plastic flag.
An explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) team rushed over from their position and began the delicate process of setting up a controlled explosive to detonate the mine. After they ensured everyone nearby was far enough away, the EOD team detonated the mine with a resonating thud, dirt and grass chunks puffing into the air.
Wong continued waving the detector over the grass. Timothy followed cautiously, stopping when his
