Bunny jumped as the thing outside roared again, closer now. She stowed the radio, knowing Marco was too busy trying to escape to talk, and she should be as well. Focusing on what lay directly in front of her, she let everything else fall away and began walking then running, towards the Colonel's command tent.
He was already standing in the door when she got there, shouting orders over the radio. Seeing her coming, he waved her over. "We've got a problem."
"Noticed that," she said. "I got Tanner organizing as many soldiers as he can to get people moving to the Blackhawks. We need to start evacuating now."
Williams nodded. "We can't get them all out on those. We'll need to move a lot of them towards the vehicles, pack them up, and make a run for it."
Nearby, that awful bellow echoed to them. "I don't think we can outrun this," Bunny told him.
"Then we die trying," Williams said. "Head for the motor pool. I'll meet you there."
She nodded. "Good luck."
"Same to you," he said then returned to directing his troops.
Bunny turned to head out but froze in her tracks. A block away, a building shuddered, and she saw it. Slowly, it turned the corner, and stepped into sight, and for a moment, her ability to think fled her.
Overwhelmed by sheer panic and pure terror, Bunny stared at the thing in the street as it bellowed. Easily 20-feet tall, the misshapen, humanoid thing was impossible not to tremble before. That it was one of the dead was clear, its one giant swollen yellow eye set close to another, smaller one making it nothing else. It had no nose that she could see, but the mouth was enormous in its bulbous head.
Set atop a spindly neck, it turned back and forth, looking down at them. One arm was stunted, while the other was oversized and far too long. A torso that looked to be made of rotten flesh was carried by legs warped and too grotesque for Bunny to gather the right words to describe.
It came forward, bellowing, its mouth insanely large and filled with teeth that seemed to fold out as it roared. Gripping a building, it ripped a chunk out of the structure and tossed it away like a child would a toy. She didn't know what it was, or how such a thing could exist, but it was here, and she knew, it had come for them.
"Open fire! Shoot that God-forsaken thing!" Williams yelled at the platoon of soldiers gathered near a vehicle with a heavy gun on it.
"Which one?" the sergeant yelled back as he pointed northeast.
Bunny turned her head slowly, every muscle in her body feeling frozen, to see a second emerging. It too paused, looking down into the Park with a malevolent gaze, and seemed to smile, its impossible maw rippling in anticipation.
It was nothing, however, compared to the small, solitary figure that caught Bunny’s eye. Atop a building across the street from the Park, she saw him, watching the nightmare unfold, and felt as if she might truly lose her grip on reality and sanity. She didn’t even need to see his face to recognize his expression.
Pete was smiling.
"Fuck me," Williams muttered.
Bunny started running, without thinking, for the motor pool. It was the only chance she would have to do anything about this. Even then, she had her doubts she could do much against this. Whatever Pete had done, however he’d done it, they faced a scenario now where there was no escape.
Then it happened, the one thing that somehow she'd not seen coming. One of the monsters reached down and scooped up one of the dead in its oversized hand, and simply threw it. She watched it happen as she pelted across the wet grass, a flash of lightning illuminating the small form as it flew through the air.
It landed only feet from her, hitting the grass and rolling before jumping up and hissing at her. A Bouncer; the damn thing had thrown one of the fast-moving dead into the camp. Already, it had another in hand, and behind her, she could hear the soldiers opening fire on both of the giants, but it was too late. They’d been breached.
Everyone in Bunny's immediate area flew into a panic as the dead thing ran and jumped the nearest person, biting deep. Ripping at the flesh, it sent the man to the ground, then immediately turned on another, grabbing them with its insanely fast hands and pulling them to the ground to bite their leg.
Bunny stared in horror. It wasn't trying to eat them, it was just biting them. It was trying to infect them. The thing was like a dog, a rabid dog.
A really clever, rabid dog with thumbs. These weren’t Bouncers. They were something worse.
Gripping her sidearm she yanked it free and shot the thing as it reached for another. Her aim was off, though, striking it in the back, but getting its attention anyway.
It snarled and rose, staring at her with its yellow eyes. She leveled her gun as it came at her, impossibly quick. A squeeze of the trigger, and it was down, but it was already too late. Two people had been bitten and were infected.
Behind her, she heard screams and turned to find another was already attacking people. She cursed as she shot that one as well, but the giants outside was catapulting more into the camp, and as near as she could tell, the soldiers weren't having any luck putting it down.
Then Bunny saw the third one. Coming from the northwest, it joined its fellows in tossing the
