"Enough to keep this war going."

And that was exactly what happened.

The battle around Basa Air Base continued for three more days.

Three straight days of nonstop gunfire, explosions, bombardments, and bloodshed.

The infected never stopped coming.

Even after the bombers flattened entire roads.

Even after artillery batteries turned fields into craters.

Even after thousands upon thousands of infected bodies littered the highways leading toward the base.

They still came.

But now the defenders had enough firepower to answer back.

The resupply changed everything almost immediately.

Throughout the night, long convoys of military trucks rolled across the base carrying fresh ammunition and fuel toward the frontline sectors. Soldiers who were moments away from rationing bullets suddenly found themselves surrounded by towering stacks of ammunition crates.

Fresh 5.56 magazines.

Fresh 7.62 belts.

Fresh artillery shells.

Fresh rockets.

Fuel tankers.

Replacement barrels.

Medical supplies.

The exhausted infantrymen inside the trenches stared at the supplies like they were hallucinating.

One soldier opened a crate filled with linked machine gun belts and let out a shaky laugh.

"Where the hell did all this come from?"

Another grabbed fresh rifle magazines and shoved them into his vest immediately.

"I don’t care anymore. Just keep feeding us ammo."

The southern perimeter came alive again.

The artillery batteries resumed full bombardment without hesitation.

The M777 howitzer crews worked nonstop beside their guns, loading shell after shell while fire missions continuously streamed through the radios.

Every few seconds, another 155mm shell screamed into the sky before disappearing southward toward the infected masses.

The ground constantly shook beneath the recoil.

Smoke covered the artillery lines.

Spent shell casings piled beside exhausted crews who no longer cared about sleep.

Behind them, the newly deployed K9 Thunder self-propelled howitzers joined the fight.

Unlike the towed artillery, the K9s moved between firing positions rapidly, unloading devastating barrages before repositioning again.

The infected never had time to adapt.

Entire roads vanished beneath artillery fire.

Burning vehicles flipped across highways.

Concrete shattered.

Buildings collapsed.

Every kilometer south of Basa Air Base slowly transformed into a wasteland of smoke, craters, and burning corpses.

Still, the infected continued charging.

Day One became a brutal war of attrition.

The swarm smashed against the perimeter over and over again while the defenders answered with overwhelming firepower.

The M1 Abrams tanks became monsters on the battlefield.

Their cannons fired nonstop into the densest sections of the horde while the coaxial machine guns swept through infected trying to reach the barricades.

Every time a canister round fired, entire sections of the swarm simply disappeared.

One Abrams crew reportedly fired so many rounds that the loader’s shoulders bruised from repeatedly slamming shells into the breach.

Still, they kept firing.

Nearby, M2 Bradley IFVs hammered advancing infected with 25mm Bushmaster fire while infantry squads fought from trenches reinforced with fresh ammunition and heavy weapons.

Whenever Hunters appeared, the response became immediate.

The moment a fast-moving thermal signature appeared inside the swarm, every nearby sector redirected concentrated fire toward it.

Heavy machine guns roared. 𝒻𝓇𝑒𝘦𝘸𝑒𝒷𝓃ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝒸ℴ𝘮

Automatic grenade launchers detonated around them.

Tank cannons blasted entire streets apart trying to kill them.

The Hunters were still terrifying.

Still fast.

Still capable of ripping soldiers apart in seconds.

But now the defenders knew how to deal with them.

They answered every Hunter with overwhelming violence.

Above the battlefield, the Lockheed AC-130 gunship continued circling endlessly through the smoke-filled night sky.

The defenders below began calling it the Angel of Death.

Whenever one section of the line began collapsing beneath infected pressure, the AC-130 responded immediately.

The 40mm Bofors cannon fired first.

Explosive rounds ripped through the infected masses with horrifying effect.

Then came the 105mm howitzer.

The gigantic shells landed directly inside the densest concentrations of infected, vaporizing entire groups in a single blast.

The explosions were so powerful that soldiers inside nearby trenches felt the shockwaves slam through their chests.

Then came the Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II aircraft.

The Warthogs screamed low across the battlefield repeatedly throughout the first and second day.

Every soldier along the perimeter recognized the terrifying sound of the GAU-8 Avenger cannon.

BRRRRRTTTT.

The sound echoed across the battlefield like a chainsaw ripping through metal.

Every time it happened, another section of the swarm vanished beneath streams of 30mm depleted uranium rounds.

Burning infected bodies exploded apart across roads and trenches while the A-10 pilots continued making gun run after gun run without stopping.

The battlefield slowly began changing.

During the first day, it felt endless.

The infected stretched across entire highways and fields.

By the second day, things became different.

The attacks were still massive.

Still dangerous.

But no longer impossible.

The defenders noticed it first.

The infected no longer packed every section of terrain completely.

There were gaps now.

Huge empty spaces between attack groups.

The artillery crews noticed it too.

They no longer had to fire blindly into dense masses.

Now they could target individual concentrations because the swarm had begun thinning out.

Inside the command center, the analysts continuously updated the enemy estimates.

"Ninety thousand remaining."

Hours later, the number dropped again.

"Seventy-four thousand remaining."

Then lower.

"Sixty-one thousand."

Adrian watched the numbers silently while the bombardment continued across the tactical map.

The infected still vastly outnumbered the defenders.

But Basa Air Base no longer looked like it was losing.

Day Three became the breaking point.

The infected still attacked relentlessly, but the pressure had weakened noticeably.

The trenches no longer drowned beneath endless bodies every few minutes.

Tank crews reported cleaner firing lanes.

The artillery batteries began spacing out fire missions because the targets were no longer dense enough to justify nonstop bombardment.

Even the AC-130 operators noticed the difference.

Their thermal displays no longer looked completely saturated with movement.

The infected had lost too many numbers.

The bombers accelerated the slaughter even further.

Freshly armed Rockwell B-1 Lancer bombers conducted repeated saturation strikes against retreating concentrations south of the battlefield while HIMARS launchers fired guided rocket salvos into every remaining dense cluster they could detect.

The explosions never stopped for three straight days.

By the evening of the third day, the entire southern horizon burned beneath thick smoke and fire.

The land itself no longer looked recognizable.

Forests burned endlessly.

Roads had collapsed into cratered ruin.

Entire sections of terrain looked flattened by constant bombardment.

And across all of it lay mountains of corpses.

Inside the command center, one analyst slowly looked up from his console.

His face looked exhausted.

But there was disbelief in his eyes too.

"Sir..."

Adrian turned toward him immediately.

"What is it?"

The analyst checked the numbers again before answering.

"Latest estimate places remaining infected in the operational zone at approximately ten thousand."

"Well goddamn, we should clean them up," Adrian said.