The clock was finally reaching 0600, our go time, when a voice called out for me from behind.
"Alan! You got a call; it's important!" Captain Seller shouted, drawing my attention as I marched closer.
A call? I don't even have a phone, so who could be calling me? And in the middle of this?
Questions plagued my mind as I grabbed the phone from her gloved hand. The phone weighed more than it looked like it would, especially considering it looked like a brick, which was pretty hard.
"This is Alan," I answered, holding the phone to my ear as a husky voice came from the other line.
"Fuckin' hell, Casper, you sound like shit," He chuckled, his voice immediately telling me who it was, Ethan.
"Yeah, man, tell you what, you should be glad you aren't here right now. I take it surgery went well?"
"Oh, I know. Been watching the news in between operations. The surgeries are going well, got another one in about an hour, so that'll be fun."
"Sounds like it," I laughed, sitting down on the tree stump behind me as the clock neared closer to the time we were leaving.
"Listen, come back alive, alright? I lost too many teammates last time, don't make me outlast you too," He whispered, his voice choking as the words came out.
Part of me knew on instinct that he was trying not to cry; the pain he must have been in had to be something else, yet he was still looking out for me.
"Do I seem that weak? I survived hell week, old man. I'm not dying here either," I replied, keeping my voice as steady as I could.
I knew just as well as everyone else going into this shit, there was going to be a chance I wouldn't make it back, the only luxury soldiers have is knowing that death could come any time, but we always go back into the crucible so others can survive as well.
"Alan, let's go!" Seller called out, drawing me from the call.
"I have to go, man. Stay alive, would you? I'll see you after this op is over," I told him, hanging up the phone as I joined my squad.
The sun had taken its place behind some of the darkest clouds I had ever seen, hanging warily in the sky as I lined up beside Noah and Xavier.
Fog had already rolled in not far from us, getting thicker as the seconds ticked on. Briefly, I could see Leon talking to a few of the soldiers under his command, patting one of them on the shoulder as he put his helmet on.
"You know the rules, let's go! Stay close to Team Six, don't lose each other in the fog. We cover their 9 o'clock!" Seller shouted, raising her rifle to her chest and pushing forward out of the gate as we followed.
Seal Team Four, or what was left of their members, guarded Team Six's 3 o'clock. The protection plan is for both teams to cover their sides to ensure the survival of the soldiers, regardless of their lives.
We moved like tan shadows bleeding into the fog, our boots sinking into the mud with every step. The air was damp, full of rot and dew. It clung to my uniform as if it wanted to come with me. Even the sound of footsteps felt wrong, too loud in the quiet, too spaced out to feel unified.
Nobody talked as the gates behind us shut with a hollow clang, and that was it. No more turning back. We were committed to whatever would happen, for better or for worse.
Team Six moved with their typical precision, a ghostly column ahead of us, their gear swaying with each motion, but never out of rhythm. You could tell who they were by how they moved; they were the only ones who seemed confident, like they'd rehearsed this exact march a hundred times.
I kept my eyes on the road ahead, but even that seemed uncertain. The terrain around Hereford wasn't kind to convoys. Cracked pavement melted into patches of overgrown road where nature had started to take back what war hadn't already stolen.
Faded signs leaned like dying trees, their lettering smeared with smoke and age. One barely read "A438 → Ledbury," the arrow dangling at a tilt, instead pointing toward the ground, like it had regretted originally showing the way.
The A438 was about half a mile ahead, half a mile of exposed terrain, open fields flanking both sides, hedgerows barely tall enough to hide a dog, let alone a man. No cover, no elevation, and no backup. At that point, it was expected that nothing would work in our favor.
No one said that out loud, but I caught Xavier glancing toward the fields more than once. His head would shift just slightly to the left, his eyes dragging across the horizon before snapping back to formation like he hadn't done it. That's how I could tell the fear was real, not just from the silent looks.
One of the Marines, a few rows back, stumbled for half a second, catching himself with the butt of his rifle. I recognized him, James, maybe. He still had the black mark from the earlier scuffle last night. His helmet wasn't sitting right, too far back on his head, and his gait was off. He kept adjusting the strap around his thigh like it wasn't secure, though it was.
Seller noticed, and so did Eli. Her head twitched slightly his way before she refocused, catching Eli's focus as he glanced back. There wasn't a callout or reprimand; he lowered his hand to signal that he should stay low.
The fog thickened as we reached the edge of the field, now only fifty meters from the turn onto the A438. I could barely see the Humvee ahead of us, its antenna trailing like a spider's leg through mist.
The trees around the bend were stripped bare, ash-colored trunks twisting upward like the bones of something long-dead. A few burnt-out cars sat on the roadside like graves left open. One still had a shredded European Union flag flapping from its side mirror.
"Keep it tight," Seller muttered, not shouting this time, her voice only loud enough to carry to our squad. "Visual is dropping."
No one responded, but we shifted in closer. Leon's squad drew more even with ours now, flanking slightly left to maintain the wedge formation around SEAL Team Six. I caught his eye for a second through the fog; he looked steady, but wrong.
His jaw was clenched, his teeth grinding against each other. His jaw was so tight it could probably stop a bullet on its own. The atmosphere was getting to him and his squad as well.
The road under us finally met the A438. Cracked asphalt widened here, enough for the front of the convoy to pick up speed, but no one did. Every engine was kept at a low idle; everyone was watching the trees.
As we turned east onto the A438, a low noise echoed from somewhere behind us. Not thunder, surprisingly, not gunfire either. Just movement, a long, hollow dragging sound, like a heavy tarp across pavement.
Seller raised her fist and halted the column. Not a single boot moved, radios stayed quiet. Only the fog moved, creeping along the convoy as if it were studying us.
The silence stretched, then a bird cried out overhead. Just a bird, nothing more, nothing less.
Seller dropped her fist as quickly as it was shot up, and we resumed our pace.
But I clocked it in that moment, the fear wasn't in the sound; it was in the way every person reached for their weapon the same second, down to the T. It was in the way James dropped his hand to his holster like it was muscle memory, it was in the way even Leon had tightened his grip around his rifle. Nobody believed we were safe, not for a second; that's what keeps people alive in war.
We kept marching, going through the bends and slight hills of the A438, past broken signs pointing toward Ledbury and Coddington. A few of the houses here still stood, tilted skeletons of stone and timber that had probably stood since the 1800s. Now, their windows were smashed, their chimneys had collapsed, and the paint peeled back like blistered skin.
At one point or another, we passed a car, an old Jaguar, maybe a 2006 model. It had been pushed off the road into a ditch. No license plate, bullet holes punched through the trunk, clean through the rear windshield, and the doors were missing. Oddly enough, there wasn't any blood or bodies, as if it were put up on display.
Xavier looked over at me, but I didn't say anything; he didn't need me to. His jaw set tighter, and he adjusted the strap on his vest again. That's how I knew the tension was getting to him; he only adjusted that strap when he didn't want his hands to be idle.
We passed the two-mile mark on the A438, somewhere near Tarrington. At least, that's where the ruined signage claimed we were. The fog hadn't let up; if anything, it had gotten worse, now swallowing the trees on both sides of the road. What little traffic lines left on the pavement had faded to white scars across black skin.
SEAL Team Six's pointman raised a fist and signaled to halt. Another fist went up in the rear, and we all froze, raising our firearms toward the fog.
Something moved again, but this time it was in the trees. I raised my rifle just a fraction, eyes locked on the branches, yet nothing came.
When we began moving again, nobody talked. Whether that was because of the fear or something else, I wasn't sure.
We continued marching past the broken mile markers, where weeds clawed through the concrete, as if they'd been waiting for the war to finally give up. Overhead, the power lines sagged low between the poles, buzzing faintly in the mist. One wire had snapped clean off and coiled on the ground like a dead snake. Nobody mentioned it, but I saw one soldier step wide around it, anyway.
The convoy kept moving, but slower now, like even the vehicles could feel the air thickening. The farther we moved down the A438, the more it felt like the world had emptied itself and left nothing behind but cracked pavement and the ghosts of drivers who used to trust these roads.
Team Four's flank was starting to fall slightly out of rhythm, not bad enough to call out, but enough to notice.
One of their men kept looking up at the trees as if he were trying to spot a sniper that hadn't been confirmed. His finger hovered close to the trigger guard, but no one stopped him. Neither Seller nor Leon even looked his way.
"Hey," I whispered quietly, pointing to his rifle. "Keep it cool, man. Don't give our position away."
That worked somehow because he took his finger away from the trigger and kept a closer eye on our surroundings. Feeding into his thoughts a little had snapped him back to reality, luckily enough.
A drizzle started almost immediately after, not a proper rain, it just turned the mist thicker. It didn't make much noise, but we could all feel it soaking into our gloves, spotting optics, and turning every breath into fog.
The fabric over my ribs began to stick, and I adjusted my sling so it wouldn't drag against the pain climbing up my leg again. Xavier glanced at me for a moment, but he didn't say anything. Instead, he handed me a microfiber cloth from one of his belt pouches and kept moving.
Not far ahead, we passed an overturned flatbed truck; it looked like it had been there for years. Its tires were half-sunk into the mud, its chassis rusted through in places, and its engine torn out.
Fire had burned the driver's cab, and what was left of the windshield hung like teeth from the top frame. There were dark stains on the seat; it could've been anything, but we didn't stop or slow down to check.
Two crows scattered as we passed, taking flight from one of the open crates in the back. One of them had blood on its beak.
Further down, the road began to curve more. A slow bend that led past the remains of an old bus stop, its glass shattered and its sign warped beyond reading. The bench had melted plastic draped across the backrest like skin.
There was probably more to investigate or check out, but a voice came through the radio. "Movement left."
Captain Seller responded without hesitation. "Hold the line, eyes up. Do not fire unless gunshots come our way."
Those were the rules, after all. We had to follow them.
The bushes to our nine shifted again; it could've been an animal, could've been a drone, but no one saw enough to call it in for real.
Luckily, it must have been a rat, because nothing came of it.
We passed a barn on the right, or what had been one. The roof collapsed inward, the walls buckled, and almost completely collapsed. A tractor rested on its side in the mud; someone had sprayed a symbol across the metal siding in red, three lines crossed in an uneven triangle. I didn't recognize it, but the fresh color made my chest tighten.
My chest began to tighten, the space around my heart filling in with a stabbing pain as I paused, staring at the liquid. Then, it dawned on me; it wasn't paint, it was too thick, too dark, it was blood.
"Hold, everybody stop," I called out, catching Leon's eye as he gave me a dirty glare. "There's blood on the tractor. It's still fresh."
Almost as soon as I called it out, a loud bang bounced around the fog, embedding itself in a sharp outward dent in the metal of the tractor door.
"We got hostiles, take cover and return fire!" Leon called, raising his rifle over the overturned tractor roof and firing through the fog where the gunshot had come from.
Immediately, all of Team Three, including me, went to the side to complete our primary objective, being guard dogs for SEAL Team Six.
Seller waved two fingers forward, the sign for me to take cover by the barn and call out enemies for her to take out.
Without waiting, I charged and barely slid to the barn as a bullet impaled into the dirt next to my foot. "ALAN!" Seller shouted as bullets rained down from the roof of the barn.
I knew what was going on; it clicked in my brain as fast as the bullets were coming. This was a planned ambush, possibly one of many. They were expecting us, but the question was how.
I found a ladder to the roof and began to climb, my gloves sliding against the humid, soaked, rusted-out rungs.
A soldier poked his head over the top of the ladder and spotted me, aiming his gun down, but I managed to draw my Glock and put a bullet in his head first. I didn't have much time, so I threw myself up the ladder as fast as possible and used my Glock to shoot the soldier who was coming closer.
The wooden roof creaked loudly, shaking with the combined weight of eight soldiers on top of it, but they locked eyes with me faster than I could take them out.
Gunshots came in my direction as I shouted into the comms, "THROW A FUCKING GRENADE!"
Before any backup could come, the already weak roof had given out, shuddering with a loud, final creak as it collapsed and sent me and the other soldiers spiraling down about fourteen feet.
I slammed hard into a hay bale, causing a deafening crack to ring through my ears, but I raised my Glock with my left hand and shot at the surrounding soldiers.
Most of them had broken a few bones in their feet or legs, some both; it was obvious from the screaming, and as the final bullet echoed from my chamber, I collapsed off the yellow, scratchy horse-feed.
"Casper, are you alright?" Eli called out through the comms as banging came from the barn door.
"Yeah, pretty sure I dislocated my shoulder, but I'm alright. I don't know how, but I wasn't shot," I answered back, standing up with a loud pop as I corrected my right shoulder.
I managed to stand and stumbled over to the door, opening the large barricade so my teammates could enter. Like everything else in the barn, it had a personal problem with being quiet and screeched loudly as it opened.
"You alright?" Captain Seller asked, slapping me on the shoulder I had just relocated.
"Yep, yep, yeah. I'm good, not a scratch," I managed, keeping my voice as steady as possible while the unfathomable pain spread through my shoulder.
First, it had been shot, healed, then was shot again, and while still injured, I had dislocated and relocated it. It was starting to be a little obvious that the universe had a problem with my shoulder not being injured.
"Alright, let's rest for ten and push forward right after!" She called out as the soldiers took a seat inside the barn, resting on hay bales or some of the wooden steps.
None of the soldiers had been shot by the ambush, surprisingly, which struck me as odd considering how easy it was to take them down as well. Normally, we'd have been shot fast and barely collected ourselves, but instead, it was like we were the highly advanced and trained teams we were supposed to be.
While it sounds like a good problem to have, there's also an issue with that. Russian soldiers are highly trained, some would argue more harshly trained than American troops, which begged the question, why were they so easy to kill?
"I don't think these guys were trained," Leon called out, piecing the information together faster than I had.
"The reason Afghans and Iraqis didn't take out so many SEALs as these fuckers have is because they weren't very well trained; don't get me wrong, they still killed a lot of American soldiers, but they never did it as efficiently as possible."
Leon paused, realizing everyone's eyes were on him, which led him to continue. Finally showcasing he wasn't just some brazen idiot and had a shred of intelligence in him.
"However, the Russian soldiers have fought on par with American troops, sometimes better, which is why we've won through strategy, not weaponry or numbers. These guys fought like Afghans. They weren't trained; they were firing guns like complete idiots."
Leon stopped this time, seemingly replaying his words in his head and nodding. It did make the most sense; it was what I had been figuring out as well. He just did it faster.
"So, there's a chance we may wind up fighting soldiers who fight like insurgents rather than trained soldiers the closer we get?" Noah asked, using the stock of his rifle to stand up as our break got closer to being over.
"It's the most logical conclusion," I answered instead, getting a nod from both Leon and Seller.
This meant the war would also be further in our favor the closer we got, if Leon was correct in his theory. However, that meant some of us would be at a further disadvantage, since neither I nor some of our squad had been in the service long enough to fight them intelligently and with the highest efficiency.
Some of the squad could wind up slowing down as their methods got purely survival-driven, rather than country and training-driven. It would be a good advantage, yet also a costly disadvantage.
Finally, Seller raised her hand and pointed out of the barn, signaling we were going back out into the fog and toward A449 from our current route, A438.
The second we stepped back outside, the temperature felt like it had dropped ten degrees. Whether that was just the fog playing tricks or the air itself getting colder, no one said a thing.
The road ahead was barely visible, swallowed up by a wall of white haze that danced between trees like smoke that never finished burning. The rain hadn't come back yet, but it felt like it was somewhere overhead, waiting for the right moment to come down on us.
Our boots hit the asphalt again, this time moving in a tighter formation. Seller's hand stayed close to her rifle, her index finger twitching near the trigger guard every few steps. Her eyes didn't blink much. Like the rest of us, she was expecting trouble.
I kept my rifle at a low-ready, glancing behind now and then to count helmets. Everyone was still there, still breathing, and still ready for the fight. When that would come was a coin toss.
The road curved slightly to the left. Ahead of us, scattered fencing and brush framed the sides like brittle ribs. We passed a road sign halfway buried in the ditch. Even though almost all the lettering had been scraped off, I could still see the faded arrow that pointed toward Worcester. The A449 wasn't far now.
Eli let out a quiet breath behind me, the kind that gets stuck halfway through your chest. I didn't turn; if he needed to breathe like that to calm down, it wasn't for me to interrupt.
Just ahead, the ground changed texture slightly. Less paved, more gravelled, with cracks spider-webbed beneath our boots. Someone tripped slightly, didn't fall, and somehow just staggered.
We reached what looked like an abandoned service station, or what remained of one. A sign dangled from rusted chains, broken glass covered the area near the pumps, and two Humvees from Team Four moved forward to sweep the perimeter.
"Movement, second floor," Someone called through the comms.
"Negative," Another voice replied. "Just wind and reflection."
I found myself near Leon again. He walked with his head slightly cocked now, scanning the tree line like it would morph into an enemy squad or something.
"You know," He muttered low enough that only I could hear, "Every time it gets quiet like this, I get the itch."
"What kind of itch?" I asked cautiously, scanning the surrounding woods.
"The kind that means we're about to see someone die."
He didn't elaborate. And as much as part of me hated him, I understood what he meant, because I felt it too.
We cleared the station, and the fog dipped slightly, enough to see that the road was beginning to straighten out. The trees had thinned, and we were back on asphalt that had somehow survived most of the chaos. It was probably the clearest stretch we'd seen all morning.
"I don't like this," Xavier whispered beside me, and I almost missed it.
I didn't blame him at all, especially since I didn't like it either. We had just gotten out of a firefight and could wind up in another anytime, any second. It made sense to be on edge.
Even without enemies in sight, the silence itself was hostile. The way our boots echoed just a little too loudly, the way nobody laughed anymore, not even ironically; the way some of the younger soldiers had stopped wiping the fog off their optics and just stared through the blur.
It was wearing on us, all of us, slowly but surely.
I caught sight of Seller again. She tapped two fingers against her temple, then held them out in front of her. A signal to scan wide, watch for recon units, and check if we were being watched. If we were, they weren't making it obvious.
Just as we passed the remnants of an old bus shelter, the metal bent, the glass roof collapsed, and already halfway taken back by weeds, someone stumbled behind me again.
"Foot caught," They said, brushing it off with a cough.
Leon tightened the strap on his chest rig and adjusted his helmet like he was trying to shake something loose from the inside of his skull. But his pace never changed.
We were getting closer now. A road sign up ahead, barely visible through the mist, said 'A449—Worcester' with an arrow pointing northeast.
The junction was coming up soon in another fifteen, maybe twenty minutes if we didn't run into another firefight.
But nobody believed we'd make it that far clean. Even if they didn't say it, I could feel it in the way every single pair of boots moved quietly, in the way rifles tilted just a little more forward, and in the way Seller didn't even look at Leon for directions anymore.
The sign for the A449 was rusted through at the edges, the lettering nearly peeled off by time and neglect. Green paint flaked with every gust of wind, dancing across the road like dying leaves that had nowhere better to be. Behind it, the junction stretched out in a wide, shallow curve, dipping into a patch of cracked tarmac that had once been a roundabout, now just a half-eaten crater.
Beyond it, the tree line folded back in again, thicker this time. Somehow even denser than before.
The mist and fog stayed tied to them, winding around trunks and branches, rolling in waves that seemed to retreat and return with every step forward. It didn't feel like fog anymore; it felt as if it were alive, like the fog itself was waiting to ambush us.
Something about the trees looked wrong, out of place. The branches twisted unnaturally, too sharp, like broken fingers trying to reach into the road. Bark peeled in strips, as if something had clawed through it, and every few feet, there was another tree with its top snapped clean off.
Either it was lightning damage, which I was hoping for, or it was the remnants of a very powerful, very dangerous machine gun.
The birdsong behind us had disappeared entirely, replaced by the low hum of distant vehicles and the occasional cough of one of our own. When we passed a ditch full of rainwater and burnt tires, the smell hit us hard, a mixture of sulfur, oil, and rotting vegetation, like nature itself was melting in protest.
"You hear that?" Noah asked quietly.
"Hear what?"
He shook his head. "Never mind. It's probably nothing."
But I heard it too, just faintly, like footsteps that weren't ours, always a little behind, always stopping when we did. Even with the sound, no one looked back; we all knew it was paranoia.
A light wind pushed through the road, barely enough to stir our vests, but somehow cold enough to cut through the seams. It carried with it a metallic tang, like blood in the back of our throats.
Xavier reached up and tightened his collar, eyes darting from one side of the road to the other. His grip on the front of his vest was white-knuckled now, and he hadn't spoken in a full twenty minutes. I noticed him blink slowly, almost as if he had to remind himself to do it.
It wasn't just the forest or the fog anymore; it was the road itself. Every inch we walked felt like we were being allowed forward by something, not pushing through it. Like the fog could change its mind and decide to kill us.
The path ahead turned slightly again, sloping down into a narrow funnel of trees on both sides. We were officially on the A449 now, but it didn't feel like a transition. It felt like walking from one coffin into another, just with better camouflage.
Mud had swallowed the shoulder of the road, trapping cars in thick bushes. The forest pressed in tighter, branches reaching low enough to scrape helmets, their tips brushing against the backs of our necks like they were trying to make sure we were real.
"Let's speed up, right now. I don't like this place, there's too little cover," Seller ordered with a whisper, and all of us sped up instantly.
The further we went, the worse the air smelled, with a mix of mildew, charred plastic, and something faintly sweet. It almost resembled the scent of a freshly cleaned hospital. Or a morgue.
I spotted another road sign nailed to a bent pole. The plastic was blistered from a fire and warped so badly that the letters had curled. But it pointed toward Worcester still.
Seller's voice finally came from in front of me, even though I couldn't see her, much less my hand, through the dense fog. "Let's keep the formation tight. Do not separate for any reason and stay off the embankment."
As we passed another narrow bend, I caught sight of a civilian car lodged in a tree just off the road. It had to have been there at least a while; it had vines curled up through the shattered windows, mold blooming across the seats, and in the back, something had scratched lines into the inside of the door.
We were about to continue when I caught sight of a glare from the sun hitting the fog just above us, even though we were surrounded by trees. "STOP!" I shouted to the soldier in the front who had just swatted the fog out of his way.
A loud bang rang through the treeline as a sea of red splashed onto my face and dripped down my vest.
I dropped to the ground, finding cover as low as possible to decrease my chance of being spotted, and everyone else followed suit immediately.
"FUCK, GET UP!" Leon shouted, gripping the stained camo vest of the soldier who had just exploded in front of us, his knuckles whiter than the fog as it dawned on him that the soldier no longer had a head. "FUCK!"
"RETURN FIRE!" Seller shouted as her gloved hands wrapped around my vest, searching for a bullet hole as she looked into my eyes.
"Fire with them, I'm fine!" I shouted over the barrage of gunfire next to us, wiping the blood off my face with my gloves. It didn't come off.
She nodded and raised her 9mm to where the glare had first come from, but no more gunfire came from the enemy, not that second.
"Hostile down!" Someone yelled, and for a few seconds, it was quiet. Was.
The loud rumbling of gunfire came through the fog, blasting through two of the Marines who were still standing upright, not having dropped with everyone else. Red and pink tore apart from their bodies, guts dropping to the floor as the gunfire ripped them in half.
I knew what gun it was from the sound alone, since very few were capable of not only the destruction, but the rumbling belonged exclusively to the Kord 12.7mm Heavy Machine Gun.
I raised my SCAR-H to where the main barrage had come from and let it rip, squeezing the trigger and preventing the recoil from putting a dent in my helmet.
How did Ethan handle this damn thing?
For another few seconds, the gunfire was over, until the trees around us exploded in a mix of sawdust and woodchips.
Someone behind me—I couldn't see who—screamed so loudly that it seemed to draw my attention straight into the battle. It was James, who was clutching where his left hand was a minute ago, and then his brain exploded in front of me.
Not again...I won't watch more soldiers die in front of me!
"CAPTAIN, WE NEED ORDERS!" Xavier yelled over the metal rain, holding his side, which was already bleeding profusely. One thing all soldiers know is when they won't be coming back, and when I saw his injury, I knew he would die of blood loss if we didn't get a moment to rest.
"FIRE BEYOND THE TREELINE!" I shouted, taking Seller's place as I ran forward in that brief pause between spurts of gunfire.
I slammed into a tree almost immediately, impaling wood fragments into my cheek, but dived for the ground after, barely dodging slamming my head into a root.
"Alan?" Seller questioned me from behind, but I couldn't see her. I needed to focus forward or I would die.
"OVER HERE YOU RUSSIAN PIG!" I screamed, forgetting they couldn't speak English. "СЮДА, ТЫ РУССКИЙ УБЛЮДОК!" That one translates to Russian bitch instead.
Unfortunately, my taunt worked, as immediately, gunfire was focused on my area, but I was still on the ground, below their aiming range.
The second it finished, I spotted where they were firing from, a small hill just barely higher than the fog. That was why they could hit us and we couldn't hit them, and why they couldn't see us unless we were standing or crouched.
I raised my Glock, but it didn't fire; it was jammed. "Fuck me," I mumbled.
Without hesitating, I grabbed my SRK and stabbed the one on the back in the thigh, gripping his mouth closed and pulling out my knife to stab it into his neck, killing him.
I kept his body in front of mine, pulled out his sidearm, and then shot the rest of his teammates in the head, all without them noticing I had even found their location. All it took was a single gun, and my teammates wouldn't have died. Fuck.
I spoke into the comms, trying my best to ignore the blood all over my vest and face as I spoke. "Hostiles down, I repeat, hostiles are down."
It took a few moments, but Seller's voice came back to reply. "Roger that, Alan."
We met up back on the route, and almost immediately, she had her canteen open and splashed it on my face, wiping the blood off of me. "You saved a lot of lives just now," She told me, finishing up as she rejoined the others.
"Not nearly enough," I whispered to myself, partly questioning what had just happened.
"Let's move, now! Our enemies may have heard gunfire!" Seller shouted as we all got back in formation.
We moved quickly, but not with immediate urgency. The fog hadn't lifted, but it had thinned slightly, enough for silhouettes to reappear. Just outlines of trees and soldiers, smeared in dull gray.
The sun was up somewhere above us, but it didn't matter. Light couldn't get through the clouds, much less the smoke hanging in the trees. Something smoldered up ahead, maybe an old tractor, maybe a shack. Either way, it stained the sky with a haze that smelled like burning rubber and sulfur underneath.
We passed another sign, 'Worcester, 8 miles.' Just under an hour and a half if we high-tailed it and stayed alive long enough to reach it.
A few of the guys kept looking up, probably trying to catch a drone or a glint off a sniper scope. Luckily, or maybe at that point, unluckily, it was only fog, rot, and a world too quiet for war.
Nobody, especially Leon, spoke. We all preferred silence to trying to speak. I glanced at my gloves, and he did too.
I saw him walking just behind Xavier, whose limp was getting worse by the step; he wasn't going to be going much longer, we all knew it, even with Noah's help, he had hours left at most. The side of his camo pants was soaked red now, dark and clinging. We were all trying not to acknowledge it. Even he was trying not to focus on it. It was like saying it out loud would confirm something we were all trying not to believe.
Further ahead, I watched Eli slow his pace just a little, enough to look behind and count heads.
Then again, once more, slower, and then I saw the realization on his face as his eyes went darker.
Captain Seller caught it, too. She said nothing, but I saw her jaw tighten.
Every hundred feet or so, I kept expecting another shot to tear through the fog. Every cracked branch made my hand jump toward the SCAR-H, and every crow overhead made someone duck.
We passed what looked like a long-abandoned rest stop, just a skeleton of a building now, roof long gone, walls blown open by time and war. Moss-covered tables sat tilted on their sides, and a rusted petrol pump leaned forward like it was bowing to us.
The ground was littered with wrappers, dog tags, and boots, single boots, never pairs. The odd thing was that all of them were combat boots. Eli paused, bent down, and picked up one of the tags. I didn't ask him what the name was. I don't think he wanted to know.
"I think we're on the edge of Worcester County now," Seller muttered more to herself than to us. "Stay alert."
The trees thinned out as we went. Not by much, just enough that the fog had room to rise a little higher off the ground. I could see everyone's knees again, which felt like progress until I realized the mud had risen, too, thicker, darker, and much more like sludge rather than soil.
It clung to the boots, dragging every step just enough to make my legs burn. No one complained, somehow, but complaining meant we had energy to spare. None of us had that.
There were no more birds, no more bugs, only the faint sound of wet gear, a few coughing soldiers, and the scrape of mud against metal.
We crossed a small bridge not marked on any of our maps. The water below looked wrong. It barely moved and had an oily sheen on top, like whatever flowed through it had stopped the flow of water completely. The river banks on either side were pitted with bullet holes and something else, shovel marks.
All of us knew what it was immediately; it was a grave for whoever's boots we had discovered earlier.
"Look ahead," Leon muttered, nudging my arm and pointing toward the bend ahead. On the shoulder of the road, just past the curve, was a burned-out APC. American, judging by the turret and paint under the soot.
"Any bodies?" Seller asked, raising her rifle just an inch higher, as if she were expecting a fight to find them.
"Not outside of it," Leon answered, edging closer.
Xavier looked up at that, swaying slightly. "Then they're inside."
Seller got close to the window and paused, gagging as she turned around to face us. "That's the missing three-man recon team, the only ones who didn't return."
Leon wasted no time throwing the door open and getting their dog tags, which was for the best as the smell was bad enough that my eyes were watering from fifty feet away.
The further we got, the more Worcester started to reveal itself, not in full, but in parts. A torn-down fence, a fire-damaged billboard, and a metal sign bent so badly it pointed down instead of forward.
Then, the buildings appeared far ahead, barely visible through the fog. Tall, rectangular shadows. Office blocks or apartment complexes, probably abandoned. But there was no guarantee they were.
Seller raised a closed fist, and everyone froze.
I scanned ahead, but I didn't see movement. Then again, I hadn't seen the last ambush until it was too late either.
A low rumble echoed off the buildings in the distance. A tank? There were no tread patterns or vibrations. A generator, maybe, that made the most sense.
"Eyes up," Seller whispered.
"Eyes forward," I added, mostly to myself.
We were almost there, but that wasn't exactly a fun thought. We had been "almost" somewhere earlier and just about wound up dead.
The outline of the city thickened the deeper we pushed. What started as distant silhouettes gradually hardened into the jagged remains of office buildings, shattered glass storefronts, and crushed city buses frozen in place like rusted relics.
The fog didn't let up, but it shifted, rising higher as the buildings created narrow corridors of cold air that funneled it upward. It clung to the tops of signs and curled between lamp posts like it had been waiting here longer than we had.
Worcester wasn't empty, not exactly; it was abandoned, half-dead, and barely holding onto its skeleton. In some spots, the pavement had craters, and in others, it had caved in, with warped manhole covers poking up like broken teeth. Streetlights flickered dimly above us, not fully off, but not offering any real light either, like they didn't know which side they were on.
We moved closer together as the buildings closed in. This was the kind of terrain that bred ambushes, especially considering what had happened earlier. There were tight lines of sight, plenty of high ground, and too many alleys to count. The silence wasn't peaceful; it was crouching just ahead of us, waiting to see what it would spring on us next.
A few of the guys kept checking their six every ten seconds, not out of habit, but like they expected to see someone right behind them. I caught Eli doing it more than once, his eyes scanning low windows and rooftops before flicking to the street again, sweat already gathering under his eyes despite the cold.
Leon hadn't said a word since we crossed the bridge. I could tell he was chewing something over in his head, but whatever it was, he wasn't going to say it yet. His rifle stayed tight to his shoulder, barrel sweeping across the buildings with every slow step.
The first car we passed had been scorched black, melted into the street. Inside, glass still clung to the frame of the steering wheel. The passenger seat was soaked with something brownish-red, hardened with time. Nobody said anything about it. The less we acknowledged it, the less real it became.
As we turned onto a side street to avoid a collapsed overpass, we passed a stretch of townhomes, most of them boarded, some torn open like cardboard boxes. A few doors were still open, swaying just enough in the wind to tap against the frames. One had writing scrawled across it in white paint, shaky and fast: "WE HAVE NO FOOD. PLEASE DON'T KILL US."
It didn't look like anyone had listened.
At the far end of the block, a body lay curled in the middle of the road. They were turned away from us, arms tucked under their chest, legs pulled close like they'd just gone to sleep and never woken up. The back of the shirt was soaked with dark patches. Nobody moved to check if they were alive; we knew without getting closer.
"Is there even a chance MI6 is still operating?" Mathers asked, but nobody answered him. Most of us didn't want to make that answer real.
Ahead at yet another detour, Seller raised two fingers, indicating we'd split slightly and regroup at the next intersection. I veered left with Eli and two others, crossing a narrow alley between an old bakery and what used to be a pharmacy.
The alley stank of garbage and chemical runoff. Something had spilled here weeks ago and never dried. My boots stuck with every step, making a slow suction noise I couldn't muffle, no matter how I moved.
I flicked my eyes up, but didn't spot anything. Rooftops and windows were clear, at least for now. It was almost as if the soldiers had eradicated all life and moved on.
When we regrouped with the others, Seller was crouched behind a broken wall, her radio pressed to her ear. "Local comms are scrambled," She whispered. "Might be interference, or someone jamming our signal. Be ready for blackout conditions."
We moved out as the city opened slightly ahead. Not wide, but just enough to see what used to be a roundabout and a small park, hemmed in by leaning street signs and stripped trees. There were metal benches surrounding a dried-out fountain, its centerpiece still intact, somehow. An angel missing one wing, leaning sideways like it couldn't bear to watch anymore.
We moved through it quietly. The wind changed. A sharper cold rolled in from the north, and with it came something worse: ash.
Not smoke or fire, just ash. It rode low on the breeze, like a memory burnt too long ago to trace, and clung to our vests, smearing into the grime already caked on our gloves.
Seller pointed forward. "There," She said quietly. "Next junction connects to M5. Once we get there, we split again. Our team and Team Six continue toward the underground hub, and Team Four holds the north stretch."
I looked back once, just to make sure no one had fallen behind. Everyone was still with us, though I wasn't sure for how much longer, especially considering Xavier was slowing down by the minute as we moved forward.
I looked down at my hands. They were trembling slightly, not from fear, but from everything else. We needed a break soon, but I didn't want to request one, not while we were still in the city. I tightened my grip on the SCAR-H and nodded to Seller.
"Let's finish the push," Leon called, propping Xavier up on his shoulder as he switched to his sidearm for his main weapon.
She didn't respond, just gave a sharp nod and started forward again, and we followed, one foot after the next, toward whatever waited at the edge of the city.
The further we pressed into Worcester, the more everything around us looked like it had been half-digested by time.
Piles of trash were banked up along curbs, some frozen stiff from the cold, others half-sunk in standing water. Buildings leaned at angles no structure should have survived, their windows shattered inward like something had screamed through the glass instead of out. Rusted-out buses sat sideways across the roads, their wheels bare and sunken into the asphalt.
A collapsed bank entirely blocked off one intersection, with cinderblocks and insulation guts pouring into the street like the building had been turned inside out. We doubled back down a narrower path, ducking beneath a dangling streetlight that swung just enough to set off the motion sensor on a nearby door.
A sharp beep echoed down the road, and we froze immediately, every rifle going up in unison. I caught the light blinking through the cracked door of a long-abandoned corner store. The beep chirped again, just a sensor, probably still wired to some backup battery. But for a moment, we all expected something worse to answer it.
As the sound died out, we kept moving. The fog had mostly lifted by now, giving way to the dull grey light of morning, but it didn't help all that much. If anything, the clearer view just confirmed how far the city had collapsed.
There weren't bodies anymore, at least not as many. What we saw instead were signs of escape. Burned-out trucks jammed up on the overpass, suitcases left abandoned and looted. One sedan had a smashed windshield and the entire back seat torn open, its interior covered in dried boot prints, some small, some too small.
Leon scanned it, his eyes narrowing before he turned away without a word.
None of us said anything; we were too focused on the road ahead and staying as quiet as possible. Which is harder than it seems, with someone who couldn't walk anymore being carried along.
When the sprawl of buildings finally gave way to open road again, it didn't feel like relief. Just exposure.
We spotted the highway marker at the far end of the road, planted crooked between two cracked concrete barriers: 'M5 Southbound → 1 mile.'
Seller motioned for us to fan wider, spacing out into a staggered wedge as we moved toward the ramps. We passed a police blockade just before the junction. The cars were empty, both marked and unmarked, doors hanging open, light bars broken.
Blood trailed down the white hood of one of them, dried in long, rust-colored streaks. One of the rear seats was caved inward like someone had tried to hide there, then failed.
I kept my eyes ahead, boots crunching through loose gravel as we pushed up the on-ramp. The wind hit harder the higher we climbed, colder now, less like a breeze and more like something trying to peel the skin off our faces.
Down the center of the ramp, a motorcycle lay sideways in the divider, keys still in the ignition. The helmet was twenty feet down the road, cracked down the middle following a large circular hole in the middle.
"See that?" Eli muttered near me.
"Yeah," I answered, although I didn't want to.
We crested the ramp, rifles raised, eyes scanning both sides of the highway. Nothing moved. The world felt like it had stopped a few seconds before we arrived, holding its breath to see what we'd do.
Seller checked her compass, then pointed right.
"M5 southbound. Stay alert. One more push after this, and we set up a safe point just outside of London before pushing forward again."
We began to move again, but something about the way everyone walked had shifted. Like we were waiting for something to go wrong, and we'd all agreed not to talk about it out loud.
The fog was gone now, burned off by the rising light, but somehow it felt darker than ever, even without the pitch-black clouds that had swarmed us miles ago.
We'd only been on the M5 for maybe fifteen minutes when the silence finally snapped.
A burst of gunfire cracked through the far side of the overpass, sharp and tight. Three shots, then another four, followed by shouting in a language that didn't need translation. I recognized the sound of panic when I heard it.
"Cover left!" Seller shouted, her voice already hoarse from wind and fatigue. She ducked behind a barrier just before a flashbang exploded near the shoulder of the highway, spraying dust and ash into the air.
The echo turned into a roar as the rest of the enemy squad opened fire from a nearby maintenance tunnel running parallel to the road. They had cover and high ground, and we had open pavement and shattered concrete. Horrible odds again, anyone?
"MOVE, NOW!" Leon barked, his rifle already hot as he unloaded into the edge of the hill. "THREE ON THE RIDGE, TWO BEHIND THE CONCRETE!"
I dove behind an abandoned van, scraping the knee part of my pants open as I slid across the broken pavement. A round punched through the side panel inches from my arm. The metal hissed where it melted in, searing hot.
I can't decide if I'm lucky or unlucky today…
Eli and Xavier followed, taking flanking positions behind a tipped semi-trailer. From there, I could see them, half a dozen of them at least, dug into the slope like ticks. With Russian vests and makeshift barricades made of concrete blocks, one had a belt-fed RPK balanced on a window frame.
The bullets zipped overhead in bursts, sparking against broken glass and the remnants of overhead signs. One of our guys took a round in the calf and dropped without a sound, clutching at the torn muscle while Noah dragged him behind a guardrail.
Seller was already moving, sprinting from car to car like her life depended on it, which, frankly, it did. She vaulted a divider, shoved one soldier out of the path of an incoming grenade, and rolled into cover like it was instinct. It probably was.
"Suppressing fire! Alan, left flank!" she shouted.
I nodded, shouldered the Scar-H, and popped off three shots toward the gunner with the RPK. The first missed, the second grazed the barrier, and the third caught his shoulder, spinning him backward just as Eli tossed a grenade over the ridge.
The explosion cracked through the ground like someone ripped a tree out by its roots. Probably because of how used we had all gotten to the silence.
A small clump of dirt and some smoke flooded the air, and the firing stalled long enough for us to reposition. I bolted forward, sliding behind a jagged chunk of broken asphalt. My heart was hammering through my ribs like it wanted out, but my hands were steady, the Scar-H already braced for the next shot.
A voice screamed something in Russian as another gunman stepped into view.
I didn't give him time to aim. I put two into his vest and a third into his neck, watching the blood spray behind him as he collapsed. His rifle clattered down the slope.
Leon was already climbing the side of the embankment with three others. He had blood on his teeth and was bleeding pretty heavily from his forehead, and he didn't need an order. He was looking for payback; I could tell from the absolute fury burning in his eyes.
Two of the enemy fighters tried to break from cover, one bolting toward the woods. He barely made it ten steps before a shot from Noah's M4 took him in the spine. The other went down in a blur of steel and screaming as Leon buried his SRK knife straight into his ribs.
One more popped up, sprayed wildly with an SMG, and caught one of ours, Mathers, across the shoulder. He screamed, fell, rolled behind a wheel well, but didn't get up.
"Mathers down!" Xavier called.
"I'm going!" I shouted, moving toward him. I ducked low and ran, heart screaming, bullets chewing the edge of a wrecked Toyota. My boots hit oil and nearly sent me into a slide, but I managed to reach him, grab his vest, and yank him behind the bumper.
Blood ran down his arm in thick sheets, dark and fast.
"Stay with me!" I hissed, ripping a bandage out of my pouch and pressing it to the wound. "Just fucking breathe, okay? I got you!"
He nodded, dazed, but breathing. That was enough for now.
The last of the enemy squad broke as we overwhelmed the ridge. Leon came down breathing like a beast, knuckles split open and bleeding, his eyes wide with blood collecting on the side of his beard. "Clear," He muttered into the comms, panting.
Nine dead on their side. I checked back on Mathers, but he had already died in my arms. I knew immediately, we didn't have the equipment to revive him. He was gone.
I slammed my fist into the car and dented it pretty badly, before grabbing his dog tag and standing up to meet Seller, my eyes as dead as I felt. She knew before I said anything; we had both seen how he was shot, and there was never a chance to save him.
We didn't speak, but she called out for us to reload, clean up as best we could, and dress the wounded. I used that time to bury Mathers.
Seller gave us twenty minutes to get the injured properly wrapped up, and the gear sorted. No one argued.
I kept one eye on the treeline as I reloaded. This was supposed to be a clean stretch and a straight path to the M40. But that was the thing about our plans, none of them ever went right. Lady luck had something out for us. Every mile that we got closer to the end, the plans just unraveled a little more.
We reformed at the edge of the road, silent again, stepping over shell casings and blood-streaked concrete. The sky hadn't changed. It was still dark grey, cold, and the wind was pulling at our gear like it wanted to warn us that something worse was coming.
We moved quietly now, the silence almost more suffocating than the firefight. I kept thinking about how Mathers looked before he died, like he was still trying to hold on for someone else's sake, even when his body had given up. That look hadn't left my head, and I didn't think it would anytime soon.
We pressed on down the M5, boots crunching over scattered glass and gravel, shattered from abandoned cars whose alarms had long since gone quiet. Most of the civilian vehicles were coated in a fine layer of dust, tires flattened, and metal eaten away by rust. Some had been shot up, windows broken from the inside, not out, which told me more than I wanted to know.
The road ahead wasn't clean, but the fog had pulled back a little more, now more of a fine mist, but in its place came that kind of wind that never stopped. Whistling just low enough to sound like someone whispering.
I glanced over my shoulder more than once. So did Eli, even Leon, though he tried to pretend he didn't. No one said a word about it, but we all felt the shift. It was in the air, in the pacing of our steps, in the way every second man checked his corners too many times.
As we pushed farther east, traffic signs leaned sideways or lay crumpled on the shoulder. One green metal sign, crushed under a collapsed light post, had directions for Birmingham and Warwick scribbled over in red paint. Someone had marked a skull beside the M40 arrow. I tried not to linger on that; they had no idea what had just transpired there.
Seller kept the formation tight, using hand signals more than her voice. I stayed toward the front, just behind the point, with Noah off my left. He wasn't limping as badly anymore, but he'd been quiet, more than usual. I figured it was the same for all of us.
The highway itself was cracked in places, split down the middle from years of neglect and half-buried debris. At one point, we passed what had once been a police roadblock. The barricades were still there, but the vehicles behind them were skeletons, picked clean and burned. One still had a melted light bar fused to the hood.
"Should we clear it?" Xavier asked, stopping just short of the outer car.
"No," Seller replied firmly. "We don't have the time or the manpower."
"How will we get the Humvees across then?" Leon questioned, getting a long sigh followed by a quick, 'Fuck.'
We continued after deciding we should leave them and a decent chunk of soldiers behind, so they could clear it with time and catch up in the vehicles. We climbed over the shredded barricade instead. My boot slipped on a broken radio mic as I stepped across. When I looked down, there was a discarded uniform balled in the corner of the seat, stained dark from shoulder to hem.
Around the next bend, we saw tire marks, fresh ones. Not military. The treads were too thin and narrow. Civilian-grade, maybe a pickup or a car, but something had moved through recently, no more than a day before. Seller spotted them too and motioned for us to tighten up even more. Close quarters now, no mistakes.
We passed the remains of a fuel tanker, charred black and split in half. The ground beneath it was scorched, the asphalt melted into rough, uneven ridges that made our boots unstable. It reeked of something chemical, still lingering even after days.
Eli muttered something under his breath as he stepped over the remnants of a scorched fire extinguisher, but I didn't catch it. Neither did anyone else. I think he said it so he would remember what his voice sounded like. I didn't blame him, I was getting less sure I had a voice as we went. After that, we marched in silence.
Somewhere after the bridge near Droitwich Spa, the wind picked up again, this time bringing the smell of wet rot and something older, like dried blood that had been soaking in earth for too long. We passed a row of trees growing right out of the median strip, their trunks twisted unnaturally, bark peeled off like it had been clawed at.
"Eyes on the ridge, to the right," Seller whispered into comms. "Could be nothing, or it could be more than that."
I scanned the slope, keeping my finger resting over the trigger guard. There were shapes up there, half-hidden by leafless branches. It could've been movement. It could've been my eyes playing tricks. Either way, I didn't trust it.
Leon adjusted his grip on the rifle, switching from full auto to single fire. I caught the motion in my peripheral vision and matched it. Neither of us spoke, but he let out a testing shot and nailed what turned out to be a dummy straight in the head.
For better or for worse, nothing came of that, luckily.
We took a short break under a ruined overpass. Rain started to mist through the cracks above us, cool and bitter against the grime on my skin. Some of the soldiers sat down, backs to the wall, hands resting on their knees like they weren't sure whether to relax or stay ready.
"You think we'll get hit again?" Eli asked me after a few minutes, voice low.
I didn't answer right away.
"I think we'll keep getting hit until someone runs out of bodies," I finally said.
He didn't ask whose side that would be; I wouldn't have had an answer if he did.
By the time we reached the edge of the interchange that led onto the M40, the sun was beginning to break through, barely. The clouds were still thick, but light was pushing through the seams as if it were forcing its way in. Shadows stretched long across the road ahead of us.
There was a billboard on the side of the hill, barely holding together, but the slogan was still readable: 'The Future Is In Your Hands.' A cracked blue baby handprint sat underneath the text. Someone had shot the handprint twice and left the rest alone.
Seller raised her fist, signaling the final turn.
The M40 stretched ahead of us, wide, grey, and empty, at least from what we could see. But it wouldn't be for long.
We entered the M40 like ghosts slipping into the last stretch of a dying world. The highway was straighter than the others, wider too, but that didn't mean safer. The fog was finally pulling back for real now, not fully, but enough that the horizon opened up in pieces, like curtains pulled one thread at a time. It made us more exposed, more vulnerable. We had spent so long in the fog, even seeing further than ten feet felt like walking without armor.
We moved in columns, formation still tight, gear still heavy. My shoulder throbbed with each step. I'd gotten used to it, but that didn't mean it hurt any less. Now and then, someone would cough or shift their pack, and we'd all tense up like that was the shot to start another firefight.
On either side of the highway, the land had opened into empty sprawl. Hollowed-out rest stops and derelict warehouses lined the edges, windows dark, doors left hanging open like open mouths mid-scream. Some buildings had spray-painted warnings scrawled across them or markings that were just numbers.
Coordinates? Body counts? I didn't want to know; there were too many things on my mind already, and we had yet to completely meet back up with SEAL Team Four.
Eli walked just ahead of me, his rifle tucked tight to his chest. He kept glancing up, eyes scanning the rooftops. I knew why. This stretch was perfect for an ambush. High ground, multiple exit routes, cover in every direction.
Xavier was holding up better than I expected. The bleeding had stopped, but his skin still looked pale under the dirt. Seller kept checking back on us every twenty minutes, silent looks and nods doing most of the talking. If anyone was starting to crack, they were keeping it to themselves.
We passed the remnants of a fuel station, its pumps torn out, roof caved in on one side. A broken sign hung at an angle, flickering once like it still had a bit of charge left, then dying again. The pavement was stained dark brown in places, and the air smelled faintly of diesel and ash.
We didn't stop to scavenge.
Later, we came across an overpass with cars jammed underneath it, rusted out and stacked like someone had tried to build a barricade, but never finished. A shopping cart was tangled in the mess, filled with empty cans and what looked like an old rifle with a snapped barrel. The wheels creaked as the wind pushed them slightly.
A sound came from somewhere inside the tangle. Low, metallic. We stopped.
Leon signaled for silence, then raised his rifle. For a second, we all stood like statues. Then a bird launched from the wreckage and flapped off into the sky, wings ragged, trailing feathers.
No one laughed; we just exhaled and moved on. I heard someone choke back a sob in the back. But I didn't bring it up.
The closer we got to the outskirts of London, the more signs of war crept into the margins. Cratered sections of road, scorched tree lines, and half-buried shell casings where the dirt had been turned over too many times.
The last few houses we passed weren't just abandoned, they were gutted. Front doors off the hinges, windows shattered, interiors hollowed out and blackened from the inside. One had a stuffed bear nailed to the front with a sign that read, 'WE WAITED.'
By then, I think we all wanted to say something. Just one word to remind us we weren't walking to our deaths. But no one did.
Finally, around midday, the ruins of Greater London showed themselves in the distance. Not the glass skyline most people imagined. That was long gone, scorched down, or evacuated. What we saw was low and jagged, industrial skeletons, broken rail lines, and grey clusters of half-standing structures.
The perimeter fencing was already marked on our maps: Zone Echo-4. A temporary staging point just outside the real battle lines, where we would wait for Team Four and the Humvees to re-meet with us.
Seller raised her hand and signaled to veer left, down a crumbling offramp where wild grass had broken through the concrete. A rusted road sign half-buried in weeds confirmed it: 'Welcome to the London Borough of Ealing.'
We made it maybe half a mile more before we found the site.
A skeletal building, once a school, stood like a warning at the edge of a flat field bordered by trees and old playground fences. The walls were still mostly intact, with some windows shattered, and the rooftop partially caved in. Someone had already cleared a perimeter: barbed wire strung sloppily between posts, a fire pit ringed with gravel, two Humvees half-covered in camo netting.
"Looks like someone beat us here," Eli muttered, eyeing the abandoned vehicles.
Seller raised a fist. "Clear the zone."
We spread out without needing orders. Eli and Leon took left; Noah and Xavier covered the rear. I moved center, scanning the interior through a broken doorway. Dust kicked up in faint plumes with each step. Broken desks, cracked whiteboards, empty backpacks. It felt like walking through someone's dream that had gone stale.
"Clear," I called out, hearing the same echoed from the others.
Seller stepped inside, checked her watch, and then nodded to us.
"This is home. Two hours max to set up a staging area. After that, we move on to recon and prepare for the assault briefing."
We dropped our packs, and I knelt beside a shattered window, pulled out a folded photo from my vest, and stared at it. My sister, the only photo of her I had with me. Still waiting for me. I slid it back into my chest rig, just underneath my dog tags, just behind the armor plate. If it came to it, I wanted that to be what they found first.