Across the burning fields of Pampanga, the fight only grew worse.

The armored battalion held.

Barely.

Tanks continued firing from the centerline while Bradleys and infantry covered the flanks. The ground in front of them was no longer soil or asphalt. It had become a carpet of bodies, burned vehicles, and craters filled with blackened water.

The infected still came.

The first wave had already been gutted by artillery, aircraft, missiles, tanks, and machine guns.

But the next wave was now approaching.

Larger.

Denser.

And moving with purpose.

Far north of San Fernando, the recon drones tracked the new mass advancing through the ruined corridors left by destroyed bridges and collapsed highways. The infrastructure strikes had slowed them down, but not enough.

They were spreading out now.

Moving through open fields.

Using riverbanks.

Crossing shallow waterways.

Passing through dead towns and broken neighborhoods.

The infected had lost the road network.

So they made their own.

Inside the command center at Basa Air Base, analysts watched the screens with tired eyes.

One operator zoomed out from the northern drone feed.

Then zoomed out again.

The horde still filled the display.

He stared for a moment before speaking.

"Sir, northern second wave is entering projected strike corridor."

Adrian turned toward him.

"How dense?"

The operator hesitated briefly.

"Dense enough for strategic bombardment."

That answer made several officers look up.

Ryan slowly turned from the map.

"Strategic?"

The operations officer nodded.

"The B-1 package is airborne."

Outside, the night above Basa Air Base shook again.

Four B-1B Lancers had already launched.

Not one.

Not two.

Four.

Their engines roared across the sky as they climbed east before turning north. The bombers moved like dark spears through the night, wings swept back, fuselages heavy with ordnance.

Each aircraft carried enough guided bombs to devastate an entire district.

Tonight, they were not hitting buildings.

They were hitting population-sized infected formations.

Inside the lead bomber, call sign Bone One, Colonel Jason Reeves studied the battlefield display with a hard expression.

The aircraft flew high above Central Luzon, beyond the smoke and flames covering the province below.

The targeting screens showed the strike corridor ahead.

It looked impossible.

A mass of infected stretched across multiple kilometers.

The formation was not a line anymore.

It was a wall.

A moving wall of bodies.

The weapons systems officer leaned closer to his screen.

"Target area confirmed."

The co-pilot looked toward him.

"How many?"

The officer checked the density estimate.

Then quietly answered.

"Too many."

Nobody laughed.

Bone One joined the strike channel.

"Bone flight, check in."

"Bone Two, green."

"Bone Three, green."

"Bone Four, green."

Colonel Reeves looked toward the target display one last time.

Then keyed the radio.

"Basa Command, Bone One. Strike package established. Request final clearance."

The reply came after half a second.

"Bone One, Basa Command. You are cleared for strike. Priority objective is maximum reduction of northern second wave. Confirm no friendly forces within blast zones."

The weapons officer checked again.

"No friendlies in target box."

Reeves nodded.

"Copy. Bone One commencing."

The bomber leveled out.

The bomb bay doors opened.

Cold night air rushed past the aircraft.

Inside the weapons bay, rows of precision-guided bombs sat ready.

The release timer counted down.

Ten.

Nine.

Eight.

Reeves kept the aircraft steady.

The horde below continued advancing.

Seven.

Six.

Five.

The weapons officer placed his hand near the release controls.

Four.

Three.

Two.

One.

"Bombs away."

The first wave of bombs fell.

Then another.

Then another.

A long stream of guided weapons dropped from the belly of the B-1 and began falling toward the earth.

Bone Two released next.

Then Bone Three.

Then Bone Four.

The sky above Pampanga filled with falling steel.

Far below, the infected marched through abandoned farmland, ruined roads, and shattered towns.

They did not look up.

They did not understand.

Then the first bomb hit.

BOOOOOOM.

The ground erupted.

The blast swallowed hundreds of infected instantly.

Then the second bomb hit.

Then the third.

Then ten more.

Then dozens.

The entire northern strike corridor vanished beneath overlapping detonations.

Explosions marched across the landscape in a rolling pattern of fire and shockwaves. Fields disappeared. Roads cracked open. Buildings collapsed inward. Tree lines were shredded into burning splinters.

The horde was not merely struck.

It was carved apart.

The first impact zone became a crater field.

The second became a burning wasteland.

The third disappeared beneath smoke so thick that the drone feed briefly lost visual clarity.

Inside Bone One, the weapons officer watched the battle damage assessment update in real time.

"Good hits."

Then he paused.

"Very good hits."

Bone Two’s payload struck farther east.

A cluster of infected had been moving through an abandoned town, using the streets to funnel south. The bombs landed across the entire urban block.

BOOM.

BOOM.

BOOM.

The town disappeared in sections.

Rows of houses exploded.

A school building collapsed.

A gas station detonated and sent a fireball into the sky.

The infected packed inside the streets died by the thousands.

Bone Three struck west.

Its bombs landed across a river crossing where the infected had begun forcing themselves through shallow water. Explosions turned the riverbanks into mud and fire. Water blasted upward in enormous columns. Bodies scattered across the surface.

Bone Four targeted the rear concentration.

The densest one.

The one that had not yet reached the broken roads.

Its payload fell into the center of the mass.

For several seconds, the drone feed showed nothing but white light.

Then fire. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

Then smoke.

Then nothing moving.

Inside the command center, the room went silent.

Everyone watched the aftermath.

The northern second wave had been struck by four heavy bombers in one coordinated pass.

The result was beyond anything the tactical officers had seen that night.

A huge portion of the horde had simply vanished.

The thermal map changed.

Red areas disappeared.

Gaps appeared across the formation.

Huge gaps.

One analyst slowly looked up.

"Estimated casualties?"

The drone operator checked the feed.

Then checked another.

Then another.

His voice sounded almost disbelieving.

"Initial estimate, seventy thousand plus."

Ryan blinked.

"From one pass?"

The operator nodded slowly.

"Yes."

Nobody spoke for several seconds.

Then another analyst added.

"Movement on northern second wave has dropped by forty percent."

That mattered.

That mattered a lot.

For the first time since the battle began, a major horde front had not merely slowed.

It had fractured.

Bone One banked away from the strike corridor.

Inside the cockpit, Colonel Reeves looked down through the sensors.

The devastation below stretched for kilometers.

Fires burned everywhere.

Smoke columns rose into the night.

The horde that had once moved like a single body was now broken into scattered groups.

Still dangerous.

Still large.

But no longer unified.

The co-pilot exhaled.

"That did it."

Reeves did not answer at once.

He kept watching the thermal display.

Then small pockets began moving again.

Not thousands at first.

Hundreds.

Then more.

The survivors were reorganizing.

Slowly.

But they were reorganizing.

Reeves keyed the radio.

"Basa Command, Bone One. Strike successful. Northern second wave heavily degraded."

The command officer answered.

"Copy, Bone One. Can you re-attack?"

The weapons officer checked payload status.

"Bone One still has ordnance."

Bone Two reported next.

"Bone Two has remaining stores."

Then Bone Three.

"Bone Three ready for second pass."

Bone Four followed.

"Bone Four ready."

Reeves looked toward the target display.

The surviving infected were beginning to converge around the edges of the destroyed corridor.

He tightened his grip on the controls.

"Bone flight, prepare second run."

Back on the ground, soldiers along the northern defensive line felt the explosions before they saw them.

The earth rolled beneath their boots.

Windows shattered in abandoned buildings.

Dust fell from concrete barriers.

Corporal Daniel Santos looked toward the northern horizon as it turned into fire.

For nearly a full minute, explosions continued walking across the land.

When it finally stopped, the distant horde looked thinner.

Much thinner.

Daniel lowered his machine gun slightly.

"...Was that the B-1?"

His assistant gunner nodded slowly.

"I think so."

Daniel stared at the burning horizon.

Then looked back at the corpses piled in front of their position.

"Can we get more of those?"

A nearby rifleman laughed once.

Then the laughter faded.

Because through the smoke, more infected were still appearing.

Not as many.

Not as dense.

But enough.

Daniel raised the M240 again.

"Back on the gun."

The assistant gunner pulled another ammunition belt forward.

"Gun up."

Daniel squeezed the trigger.

BRRRRRRT.

The machine gun resumed firing.

Above them, Bone flight circled for another attack.

Across the province, artillery continued falling.

Helicopters continued firing.

Tanks continued pushing.

Destroyers continued launching.

And in the distance, the surviving fragments of the northern wave tried to reform.

The B-1s had culled the horde.

But the battle was not over.

Not yet.