The wall came down like a dying god.
Concrete split. Metal screamed. A dozen bodies poured through the breach, dead heads stacked shoulder to shoulder, crawling over one another with wet hunger. Grim's men opened fire immediately. Muzzles flashed. Shells hit the dirt. Screams followed. Gunfire did what gunfire always did. It called more of them.
Men died left to right. One dragged down. Another torn open. Another screaming until teeth filled his mouth.
John stood in the middle of it.
He dropped to his knees.
The dead walked past him.
Hands brushed his shoulders. Rotting fingers grazed his hair. No one touched him with intent. He wasn't prey. He wasn't food. He wasn't anything they recognized.
A ringing grew inside his skull. Louder. Louder. His vision smeared into light and shadow. Tears slid down his face without permission.
He was tired.
So goddamn tired.
All he wanted was to lay down and let Death wrap its arms around him. Just for a moment. Just to rest.
His shoulders began to shake.
Then his body twitched.
A sound crawled out of his throat. A laugh. Broken. Wet. Wrong. It grew louder until it snapped into something manic, echoing through the chaos.
John stood.
His spine straightened in sharp jerks, like something pulling him upright from the inside. The ringing vanished. The world snapped back into focus. One eye burned red. The other watched, cold and clear.
Grim.
John turned, scanning the compound. Burning towers. Falling men. No Grim.
A shriek cut the air.
Something streaked past him.
Impact.
His arm vanished in a burst of heat and force. Pain detonated through him, a white flash that stole his breath and ripped a scream from his lungs. He stumbled, dropped, screamed again.
Then the bleeding stopped.
Not slowed. Stopped.
John looked down at the cauterized ruin where his arm had been. Smoke curled from it. His breath came fast. A laugh bubbled up again, sharper now, edged with disbelief.
He pushed himself up.
And ran.
He tore through fire and bodies, shoving the dead aside with his shoulder, trampling the living without seeing them. Bullets snapped past him. One tore through his side. He didn't slow.
Above him, on the cliff edge, Destroyer staggered back, blood pouring from his mouth.
"John," he coughed, laughing weakly. "We would've been good, John boy."
John looked up.
Destroyer smiled through red teeth. "But you had to fuck it up."
The detonator clicked.
The world broke.
BOOM.
The cliff vanished in fire and stone. The shockwave threw John forward, slamming him into the dirt. Heat rolled over him. Debris rained down. Screams cut off mid-syllable.
When the smoke cleared, the cliff was gone.
So was Destroyer.
John pushed himself up again. Shaking. Breathing hard. One arm. One red eye. Alive.
He stood in the burning remains of Grim's compound as the dead fed and the living fled. Fire painted everything orange and black. Ash drifted like snow.
Somewhere in the chaos, Grim was still breathing.
John turned toward the darkness beyond the flames and started walking.
Slow. Steady.
The nightmare hadn't ended.
It had just learned how to stand back up.