And as the tent flap closed behind Acevedo, Solomon was left with the echoes of their conversation, a gnawing sense of unease settling in his stomach. Kovach had become more than an adversary; he was a specter of death, always looming, always just out of reach.

  Solomon knew the truth—he was no longer the hunter. In this deadly game, he had become the hunted.

  The mere act of aligning with The Order had repulsed Solomon, but after a serious injury, The Order had made an offer, and his body had not just been healed, but vastly improved. The last few months he'd been repaying that debt. A debt that he now doubted would ever be canceled.

  Solomon, face etched with lines of stress and determination, stepped out of the tent into the harsh light of the wasteland. The camp around him was a hive of activity, his militia moving with a sense of urgency, fueled by a mix of fear and loyalty. He needed to rally his forces, to prepare them for what was undoubtedly going to be a brutal pursuit of Kovach and his team.

  Climbing onto a makeshift platform, Solomon surveyed his assembled fighters. They were a motley crew, hardened by life in the waste, each bearing scars and stories of recent survival. “Listen up!” he bellowed, his voice cutting through the din. “We’ve got orders to track down Kovach and his Banshee Team. They’re heading deeper into the waste, and we’re going to make sure they don’t come back out.”

  Murmurs rippled through the crowd. The name Kovach was known to all, a symbol of defiance and a challenge to their dominion in the waste. The bodies of those who had listened to the drop-trooper’s lies now fed the Furies.

  As Solomon rallied his troops, Acevedo slipped away, his figure disappearing into an AirCar. The vehicle lifted off with a quiet hum, a stark contrast to the chaos of the camp below. Acevedo turned to the other man in the car and gave a quick update. Somehow neither man expected it to go as planned.

  After the rally, Solomon found Tara, his most trusted lieutenant. She was a fierce fighter, her reputation almost as formidable as Solomon’s. “Tara,” he began, his tone serious, “you and your fire team have a special role in this.”

  Tara nodded. She already felt betrayed by the Master Sergeant. “What do you need us to do?”

  Solomon looked out over the camp, ensuring no one was within earshot. “You’re going to flank Banshee Team. Drive them straight into the teeth of our front lines.”

  Tara frowned, her tactical mind working through the plan. “And how do you propose we do that? Kovach is no fool. He’ll see a trap a mile away.”

  Solomon’s lips curled into a sinister smile. He'd promised Acevedo that he would only watch Banshee Team, but they both knew that had been a lie. “We purge the waste with fire.”

  Tara’s eyes widened in understanding. It was a ruthless strategy, one that would not only flush out Kovach but also lay waste to anything and anyone in their path. It was a scorched Earth approach that left no room for subtleties.

  “And the collateral damage?” she asked, though she already knew the answer.

  Solomon’s gaze was steely. “Acceptable losses. We can’t let Kovach uncover what he’s after. The Order wants him gone, and we’re going to deliver.”

  Tara nodded, her expression hardening. She knew the stakes, the dangerous game they were playing. “Consider it done. We’ll be ready.”

  As she left to prepare her team, Solomon turned his gaze back to the waste, the setting sun casting long shadows over the land. This was more than just a hunt; it was a war, one that he intended to win at any cost.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-TWO

  As we trudged through the increasingly hostile terrain of the Red Zone, the mood of the team was a mix of vigilance and sheer exhaustion. Okay, exhaustion isn’t technically a mood…but it should be. The area was a chaotic mess of devastation, and with each step, we saw more and more of the same.

  "Hey, Kovach," Riker called out, breaking the silence. "You ever wonder if we'll find a place in this damn world that doesn't look like the backdrop of a horror movie?"

  I chuffed out a small laugh. "Keep dreaming, Dude. I think the last picturesque spot was blown to hell about the same time as everything else. Besides, what’s not to love about this place? Mutant monsters, radiation levels off the chart, killer vines that will dissolve your flesh. I mean, come on, this is an oasis of horror in a desert of normal. Enjoy the fucking ride, man!”

  Riker grinned, his pulse rifle slung casually over his shoulder.

  I glanced at him, still unsure of our recently adopted team member. “So, what’s the rest of your story?” We'd already covered some of his rather spooky Native American heritage, but I was curious about the man himself. He was a damn fine soldier and had not lost his cool a single time in this effed-up journey.

  He shrugged, “Not much to tell, just an old army guy, trying to survive.”

  He’d already told us that he never served in combat, but his skills were sharp. "So, what were you doing before the shit?"

  “Ehh…came back here a few years ago to work on a friend’s farm. They were a testing ground for the John Deere Agrobots, the commercial ones, you know. Big mothers that could handle a few thousand acres like it was nothing. Had a girl... she, she didn’t make it.” His voice broke.

  I wasn’t sure if he meant girlfriend or daughter but let him continue when he was ready. Everyone had a horror story now. A personal journey through hell. Sadly, it was not a shared apocalypse, it was unique and darkly special to every individual. No two tragedies the same, so each one became lost in a single collective memory that was sheer agony but meant nothing to anyone else.

  "We had to make a run into Des Moines, pick up some new control boards at the factory. Got caught there when the power went out. The first couple of days were okay. I mean, she was scared, and what news was getting through was all bad, but we assumed no one would want to take out anything in Iowa, I mean shit, look around. It’s a whole lot of nothing even before Last Day.

  “We holed up in a hotel. Over the next few days, I kept going out farther and farther for food. About a week into it, I came back to find the door busted in. Shelly was gone, blood everywhere. I searched, man. Shit, I searched for days, and then once I found her body, I wished I hadn’t.

  “Took me a while to get my shit together after that. Then I went hunting.”

  I caught the man’s meaning, along with the horror behind the words. “We all fight the battle, man,” I said. “The war is the same for each of us, but in different ways.”

  Riker nodded, his gaze scanning the ruins around us. "Guess we're all just trying to find our way in this new world."

  The conversation shifted as I then moved up beside Priest, who was slowly regaining his strength. "Priest, how you doing, brother?"

  Priest's eyes were distant, haunted. "I'm okay, Prowler, I can do what is needed."

  I knew that already; he was a Tier-1 Drop Trooper. I was more concerned about him as a person. He'd been through some shit, still was going through it. His body was barely stitched together, and I had him on a 150-mile hump through the badlands. He wasn't talking much, and that wasn’t like him. I still didn't think he'd remembered everything that went on aboard the ship before he dropped.

  As we continued our trek, we saw signs of others who had come before. Burnt-out camps, hastily abandoned equipment, and the occasional distant echo of engines. I expected they were out there, hunting us, or maybe just keeping an eye on us. See how long we could hold out. I kept giving out the anti-rad drugs, and even the girl seemed to accept it as necessary. I wasn't sure how long it would help.

  "Ada," I called out, "any updates?" I knew her algorithm had been processing the massive data dumps looking for patterns and anything we could actually use.

  Ada's voice chimed in my earpiece, "Still compiling data, Kovach. The references are cryptic, but there's a partial pattern emerging. It's like they were researching something…" She trailed off. "Something either ancient or just beyond our current understanding. I know that is not that helpful, but the context of a lot of this information is missing or misleading. I think the parties involved were often trying to mislead those in charge, maybe those paying the bills.”

  That seemed plausible. I also recalled again Xero’s explanation of our technology exceeding our known capabilities. The mention of 'ancient alien tech' sounded like something out of a sci-fi movie, yet here we were, chasing down leads that felt straight out of a fantasy. The world had indeed turned upside down.

  As evening approached, we found a defensible spot amidst a cluster of crumbling buildings. We set up camp; none of us wanted to be here another night, but the path through hell was apparently somewhere between Iowa and Montana.

  Riker, setting up our perimeter alert system, looked over at me. “You think we’ll ever get the full picture, Kovach? Of what really happened?”

  "Does it matter?" I responded.

  I gazed into the fading light, the shadows lengthening around us. “I don’t know, Riker. But we’ll keep digging until we find something concrete. We owe it to ourselves, and to those who didn’t make it this far. Hell, maybe we can still save some of us. That's why we keep pushing. The Order wants to wipe the planet clean and start over. I can't begin to guess as to the 'why,' but we can't let it go any further.”

  "I'm not sure there’s any stopping it, Kovach."

  He turned and moved off, Sumo walking the patrol with him. The man wasn't wrong. It might already be too late.

  As the darkness enveloped our makeshift camp among the ruins, the sense of unease was palpable. We were far from safe; every stone and shadow could hide something new. Our campfire offered a small comfort, a little warmth in the cold wastelands.

  Then it began to snow. Shit just keeps getting better and better, I thought. I'd lost track of the months and the seasons but assumed we were in mid-fall. Winter must come early to this part of hell.

  Ada's voice broke the silence, bringing me back to the stark reality of our mission. "Kovach, one of the maps from the NORAD command center's intel references a series of other outposts roughly running south a few hundred miles this side of the mountains.

  I leaned forward, intrigued. "Facilities? Like the other one we found?"

  "Unsure, but assumption is yes," Ada replied. "Their purpose is still unclear, but they seem to be part of a larger network. If we can access more of them, we might be able to piece together what The Order was truly doing."

  Honestly, I didn't want to stay here one minute longer than I had to. I was curious, but we'd been out here fighting too long. I also kept recalling Voss's warnings that the Nightmare Factory wasn't alone. Other facilities had been producing the machines and the mutants. Maybe that was what the outposts were.

  Still, the information was something, a potential path to understanding the chaos they unleashed on our world. "That will be our next move, then," I finally decided. "We find the source of this dampening field, and if no answers there, we head south, check out these facilities." Our path was taking us up into the high country of Montana. The nights were getting to be downright cold. As if in response, snow began to fall even harder.

  "What about the Witch?" Priest asked groggily. I knew what he meant. She was out there in a flimsy dress; this cold didn't care if she was a mythical Oracle or not. Meat freezes, and to the elements, that’s all she or any of us was.

  "I don't know, man," I answered truthfully.

  "The Camels," Lux offered. "We put some emergency blankets in there."

  "Good thinking, kid!" I checked the beacons and found that one was less than five kilometers away.

  An hour later, we got the girl a blanket, which she promptly wore like a cloak. Although the cold didn't seem to be affecting her, she did seem grateful. I couldn't help but think there was something human still deep down inside. I watched as she wove her fingers through the blowing snow like someone casting a spell.

  We slept in shifts, always ready for whatever might come out of the darkness. But beneath the ever-present threat of danger, I stayed fixated on the enemy and what they were still doing to our world.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-THREE

  As we ventured south, deeper into the heart of the Red Zone, the sun began to set, casting long, ominous shadows across the ravaged landscape. The air grew colder, and an unsettling quiet enveloped us. I knew from experience that this was the calm before the storm; nightfall in the Red Zone was anything but peaceful.

  Lux, piloting his Warbot with a steady hand, suddenly tensed. “Hey…ummm, I’ve got movement on the sensors,” he said, his voice offering an alarming degree of anxiety.

  The team snapped to attention, weapons at the ready. The darkness around us seemed to come alive, and then they were upon us—mutant creatures, grotesque amalgamations of flesh and nightmare, borne from the chaos of a world turned upside down.

  I had assumed the girl could keep the Furies at bay, or maybe they would not be as prevalent here in the heart of the Red Zone. I was totally fucking wrong. They did avoid her, but came after the rest of us with a vengeance.

  The battle was frantic. The creatures moved with terrifying speed and ferocity, their forms barely visible in the dim light. We fought back-to-back; a well-oiled machine honed through countless skirmishes. Lux’s Warbot roared, its weapons tearing through the night, while Riker and Koog picked off the creatures with lethal precision.

  I fired round after round; each shot a desperate attempt to hold back the tide. The creatures were relentless, but so were we. We weren’t going to retreat from raiders, or mutants, or the end of the fucking world itself.

  I braced myself as the creatures swarmed from the darkness, their claws and fangs glinting in the moonlight. The girl's protection could only do so much against a coordinated attack.

  "Backs together!" I barked, swinging my rifle up. Riker and Koog immediately moved to flank me, a well-practiced maneuver. The creatures rushed in, hissing and shrieking, a writhing mass of twisted flesh and fury.

  I sighted down my Mark-4 and fired, the energy pulse echoing through the night. A creature's thigh exploded in a spray of ichor. One down, too many left to count. Riker had picked up an ancient Marine weapon in the command center. I had no idea why he wanted to drag it across hundreds of miles of badlands, but now I understood. The SAW thundered on full auto, scything through the horde like God's own sling blade. Koog snapped off bursts from his Rattler, calm and collected even in the chaos.

  A beast lunged at me, rubbery jaws gaping. I ducked its swipe and jammed my knife upward, burying it to the hilt under the thing's chin. It gurgled and thrashed as I ripped the blade free in a fountain of purple blood.

  "How many of these ugly bastards are there?" Riker yelled over the din. I didn't answer, too busy driving my knee into a creature's midsection before crushing its skull with the butt of my rifle.

  There was a sudden, deafening boom as Lux opened up the Warbot's main gun. The mass-driver round obliterated a whole swath of the creatures, buying us some breathing room.

  "Stay together, keep firing!" I ordered. We were holding them off, but only just barely. The creatures kept coming, their shrieks and howls mingling with the staccato bark of our weapons.

  I was breathing hard, my suit coated in blood and gore. The damn things were everywhere, flowing around us like a dark tide. Riker went down under a flurry of claws before I could blast the beast off him. Koog dragged him back to his feet, shoving a painkiller stim into the man's thigh.

  "How you holding up, Prowler?" Priest asked tightly, snapping off another burst.

  "Never better," I grunted, though in truth, even I was starting to fade. We couldn't keep this up much longer.

  Just then, Lux's Warbot stomped forward, mini-guns spooled up. The roar of the guns was deafening as it scythed the creatures apart, pushing the horde back through the sheer volume of fire.

  "Hammer them while they're suppressed!" I yelled. We poured everything we had into the creatures, throwing them into disarray.

  Finally, the tide began to turn. The horde wavered, then broke apart, individual creatures fleeing back into the darkness. We kept firing until the last mutant vanished from sight.

  I sagged back against the Warbot's leg, adrenaline still surging through my veins. We'd survived, and that was saying something. The team was battered and bloody. Riker gave me a pained grin, still amped up from the fight.

  "Now that's what I call a party," he quipped. I just shook my head, too exhausted for a retort. It was going to be another long night.

  As Koog checked the fallen, silence descended once again. We were left panting, our breaths visible in the cold night air. The aftermath of the battle was a grim sight—the ground littered with the remains of the mutants, a testament to the brutality of this new world.

  I looked up at Lux hanging out of the cockpit, staring down at us. I raised a gloved fist up which he punched with his own. “You did good, kid. We all did.”

  Lux’s voice came through the comm, a mixture of exhaustion and resolve. “Thanks, Kovach. It’s just...all this. It’s a lot, you know?”

  I nodded, understanding all too well. “It is. But we’ve got each other’s backs. That’s how we get through this.”

  The kid deserved a better life, and I wanted him to have one. Surviving was the main rule right now, though. We fight through the suck and just maybe some of us or some part of us makes out the other side. Sumo came up and buried his head into my chest. The husky was coated in the purplish blood of the creatures. He was a mess, too, but he was my mess. I had no idea what he'd been fighting, but I knew he'd put himself between the fight and the Witch. That told me volumes.

  The night wore on, and soon we were on the road again, each step taking us closer to the source of the dampening field and the coordinates Priest had provided. My mind was a whirl of thoughts—the upcoming challenges, the mystery of Project Revenant, and the haunting image of the creatures we had just faced. Also, somewhere out there, I felt sure raiders were watching…waiting. There were no friendlies out there.