Adrian stared at the screen for a moment, making sure that the monster was killed. Then his notification system popped up.

[Congratulations! You have killed Leviathan! You have received 5,000,000 points!]

Now with that notification, Adrian knew the monster named Leviathan was now terminated. He breathed a sigh of relief.

But, he couldn’t get too comfortable now as another screen showed a mass of zombies heading their way in such a speed it would take them five hours to get there at minimum.

"We have to prepare the land forces, tanks, IFV, APCs, everything," Adrian said immediately.

The command center shifted gears again.

The celebration that could have happened after killing the monster never came. Nobody inside the room was smiling anymore because the tactical display still showed the real nightmare moving northward.

The swarm.

Even after losing the giant airborne creature, the mass of infected continued advancing through the highways and cities below.

And now it was heading straight for Basa Air Base.

"How many hours before contact?" Adrian asked.

One of the analysts checked the projected movement vectors.

"At current pace, minimum five hours before lead elements reach outer engagement range."

"Five hours..." Adrian muttered.

Not enough.

But better than nothing.

He immediately turned toward the communication officer.

"Sound general mobilization."

"Yes, sir!"

The base-wide alarm activated seconds later.

A deep warning siren echoed across Basa Air Base, replacing the earlier air raid alerts with a sustained combat mobilization tone.

Outside, the entire base came alive.

Floodlights illuminated huge sections of the airfield while military vehicles started moving in every direction. Engines roared awake one after another across the motor pools and armored staging areas.

Inside the command center, Adrian began issuing orders rapidly.

"I want layered defensive sectors around the base perimeter."

He pointed toward the tactical map.

"Armor here, here, and here."

Blue defensive lines appeared across the roads leading south toward the base.

"Infantry fighting positions along secondary lanes. Heavy weapons covering the kill corridors. I don’t want those things reaching the runway."

"Yes, sir!"

Outside, armored vehicle crews sprinted toward their assigned platforms.

The first to move were the M1 Abrams tanks positioned inside hardened motor shelters near the western side of the base.

Their turbine engines ignited one after another with deep mechanical roars, heat exhaust blasting behind them as the massive vehicles rolled forward.

Crew commanders leaned halfway out of their hatches while drivers maneuvered the tanks into formation.

"Move! Move! Bring them to Sector Alpha!"

The Abrams tanks rolled across the concrete in staggered columns, their 120mm smoothbore cannons slowly rotating as targeting systems initialized.

Behind them came the M2 Bradley IFVs.

Their tracks rattled loudly against the pavement while the 25mm Bushmaster cannons elevated and depressed during system checks. TOW missile launchers folded outward into combat-ready positions as infantry squads climbed inside through the rear ramps.

"Bradley platoons moving!"

Further north near the logistics sector, rows of Stryker APCs began mobilizing as well.

Their eight-wheeled chassis rolled quickly across the base roads while mounted M2 Browning heavy machine guns and Mk19 grenade launchers were loaded with fresh ammunition belts.

The infantry aboard checked weapons repeatedly.

Magazines.

Radios.

Night vision.

Medical kits.

Nobody joked anymore.

Not after what they had seen tonight.

Inside one of the staging hangars, Adrian’s infantry force assembled rapidly.

Two thousand combat personnel.

Some wore standard infantry gear.

Others heavier tactical kits depending on assignment.

Rows of soldiers filled the hangar floor while officers moved through the formations shouting assignments over the noise of engines outside.

"Sector Bravo platoons this side!"

"AT teams load your launchers now!"

"Machine gun crews move to ammunition stations!"

Crates were ripped open across the floor.

Belts of 7.62 ammunition.

Boxes of .50 caliber rounds.

Javelin missiles.

AT4 launchers.

40mm grenades.

Everything started moving outward toward the defensive lines.

Adrian stepped out of the command center shortly afterward.

For the first time in hours, he saw the full scale of the mobilization personally.

The air base no longer looked like an installation.

It looked like a fortress preparing for siege warfare.

Convoys of armored vehicles rolled toward the southern perimeter while engineering crews reinforced barricades near the highway approaches.

Bulldozers pushed abandoned civilian vehicles into choke points.

Concrete barriers were repositioned.

Machine gun nests were constructed near overlapping fields of fire.

Further down the runway access road, soldiers unloaded heavy weapon systems from transport trucks.

M777 howitzer artillery batteries were deployed into firing positions near the northern sectors of the base. Crews immediately began calibrating firing angles while ammunition trucks unloaded stacks of 155mm shells nearby.

"Battery One operational in twenty minutes!"

Nearby, M142 HIMARS launchers rolled into hidden firing points behind hardened blast walls. Their launcher pods elevated slowly as crews uploaded targeting coordinates from the command center.

Adrian watched all of it quietly.

The scale was enormous.

And still—

He didn’t know if it would be enough.

One of the officers approached him quickly.

"Sir, infantry combat strength confirmed at approximately two thousand personnel. Armored battalions moving into assigned sectors now."

Adrian nodded once.

"What about ammunition reserves?"

"Large caliber stocks are acceptable for now, but Patriot interceptors are critically low after the air battle."

Adrian looked south.

Even from this distance, faint fires still burned on the horizon where the monster had crashed earlier.

And beyond that—

Somewhere in the darkness—

The swarm was still coming.

"How many zombies estimated now?" Adrian asked. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞

The officer hesitated briefly.

"...Still in the hundreds of thousands, sir."

Adrian stayed silent after hearing that.

Then another roar echoed across the base as additional Abrams tanks rolled toward the outer perimeter.

The ground itself vibrated beneath the tracks.

Rows of soldiers moved into trenches and barricade lines under floodlights while helicopters transported additional ammunition crates toward forward sectors.

One of the analysts suddenly ran out from the command building.

"Sir!"

Adrian turned immediately.

"What is it?"

The analyst looked pale.

"The lead elements of the swarm just accelerated again."

Inside the command center, the tactical screen updated rapidly.

The red mass moving northward had begun spreading wider across multiple highways and roads.