The sand tasted of oil and blood.
Marcus coughed, spitting grit. The spotlight pinned him like an insect.
"Don't move," a voice crackled from the dunes. It wasn't human. It was a loudspeaker, distorted by static.
Marcus tried to stand. His legs were jelly.
He looked left. The wreck of the Neptune lay on its side in the surf, a dying whale. Refugees were spilling out of the broken hull, screaming as the waves battered them against the steel.
"Galen," Marcus rasped.
"Here," the physician groaned. Galen was on his knees next to him, retching seawater.
Between them lay Narcissus. The cyborg was a heavy lump of wet metal. His chest light was dark.
"Identify," the loudspeaker boomed.
Marcus squinted.
The dunes weren't empty. Figures stood on the ridge.
They looked like scarecrows. Ragged uniforms fluttering in the wind. They stood perfectly still. Too still.
"We are Romans!" Decimus shouted from the surf, helping a woman onto the beach. "Refugees from the West!"
The figures on the dune didn't respond.
A mechanical whir.
The spotlight shifted. It illuminated the figures.
Marcus's blood ran cold.
They weren't men.
They were corpses.
Their skin was gray and leathery, stretched tight over bone. Their eyes were replaced with glowing red optical sensors. Metal cables snaked in and out of their rotting flesh.
They held rusted Kalashnikovs and jagged scrap-metal swords.
"Hollow Men," Marcus whispered. The UI flashed the name.
[TARGET: REANIMATED INFANTRY]
[FACTION: HAN-PARTHIAN AXIS]
[THREAT: SWARM]
"Fire," the loudspeaker commanded.
The dune erupted.
Muzzle flashes lit the night. Bullets kicked up sand around Marcus.
"Cover!" Marcus yelled.
He grabbed Narcissus's strap. "Pull!"
He and Galen dragged the heavy cyborg behind a jagged rock. Bullets chipped the stone above their heads.
In the surf, the refugees weren't so lucky.
Bodies fell into the water. The sea turned red.
"Form the shield wall!" Decimus roared. He rallied the few legionaries who still had shields. They locked them together, protecting the women and children huddled against the Neptune's hull.
"They're charging!" Valeria shouted, firing her pistol from behind a piece of driftwood.
The Hollow Men swarmed down the dune. They didn't run like soldiers. They loped like wolves, silent and terrifying.
One of them rushed Marcus's position.
It wore the tattered remains of a Parthian uniform. Its jaw was missing, replaced by a metal vox-grille.
It raised a rusted machete.
Marcus tried to draw his sword. It was stuck in the scabbard, jammed with sand.
The Hollow Man swung.
Marcus dodged. The blade sparked against the rock.
He kicked the creature in the knee.
CRACK.
The bone snapped. But the Hollow Man didn't scream. It didn't even flinch. It just pivoted on the broken leg, raising the blade again.
"It feels no pain!" Galen shrieked, scrambling back.
The UI glitched.
[TARGET: BROTHER]
[DO NOT ENGAGE]
The face of the zombie flickered in Marcus's vision. For a split second, it looked like Narcissus.
"It's a trick!" Marcus yelled, fighting the hallucination.
He grabbed a heavy stone from the sand.
He smashed it into the creature's face.
Crunch.
The red optical sensor shattered. The creature collapsed, twitching.
"They're machines!" Marcus yelled. "Aim for the head!"
"There's too many!" Decimus cried.
The beach was filling with gray bodies. A hundred of them. A swarm of the dead.
And behind them, something bigger crested the dune.
A tank.
It was a monstrosity of welded scrap. A diesel engine bolted to a tractor chassis, covered in rusted iron plates. A turret mounted on top swiveled toward them.
"Armor!" Valeria screamed. "Do we have rockets?"
"We have rocks!" Marcus shouted. "Lucilla! Hack it!"
Lucilla was crouched behind the hull, tapping furiously on her wet datapad.
"I can't!" she yelled back. "It's analog! No computer! It's just a diesel engine and a cannon!"
The tank's barrel lowered. It aimed directly at the Neptune. Directly at the huddled refugees.
Marcus looked at his belt. The flare gun was empty. His sword was jammed. Narcissus was a paperweight.
He stood up.
"Hey!" he screamed at the tank. "Over here!"
He waved his arms.
"Look at me!"
The turret paused. It slowly turned toward him.
"What are you doing?" Galen hissed.
"Drawing fire," Marcus said. "Get Narcissus to the water. Maybe he'll float."
"He sinks like a stone, Marcus!"
The tank fired.
BOOM.
Marcus dove.
The shell hit the rock he had been standing behind.
Debris rained down. The shockwave rattled his teeth. His ears rang.
He looked up, dazed.
The tank was reloading. He could hear the clank of the breech.
The Hollow Men were closing in. A circle of red eyes in the dark.
This is it, Marcus thought.
He gripped the hilt of his jammed sword.
"For Rome," he whispered.
Then, the sky whistled.
It was a high, shrieking sound. Like a banshee.
It came from the cliffs above the beach.
Three green streaks arced through the night air.
They slammed into the dunes. One hit the tank directly on the turret.
FWUMP.
There was no explosion. Just a burst of emerald light.
Liquid fire splashed over the tank.
It was Green Fire. The chemical napalm Marcus had invented in Rome.
The metal of the tank hissed. It began to melt. The driver screamed—a human scream, finally.
The green flames spread instantly, consuming the Hollow Men clustered around the vehicle. They didn't burn like wood; they dissolved. The fire ate their dead flesh and fused their metal parts.
"Friendly fire!" Decimus shouted, pointing to the cliff.
A horn blew.
Deep. Resonant. A Roman Cornu.
A section of the sea wall, hidden by camouflage netting, slammed open.
"Cavalry!" Valeria yelled.
But it wasn't horses.
Engines roared. High-RPM whines.
A squadron of vehicles burst onto the beach.
They were motorcycles. Dirt bikes scavenged from the ruins, painted blood red. Riders in mismatched armor—some wearing Roman galeas, some wearing modern tactical vests—hung off the sides.
At the lead was a heavy ATV. A gunner stood in the back, firing a mounted grenade launcher.
THUMP-THUMP-THUMP.
More Green Fire grenades arched into the Hollow Men. The horde broke. The zombies couldn't feel pain, but they could break apart.
The ATV drifted sideways, spraying wet sand over Marcus.
It skidded to a halt.
The rider dismounted.
She was tall. She wore a centurion's breastplate over dirty fatigues. Her helmet was gone. Her hair was chopped short, utilitarian.
She held a sawed-off shotgun in one hand.
She walked up to Marcus.
She kicked a crawling Hollow Man in the face without looking down. She shot another one that was trying to stand up.
BLAM.
She stopped in front of him.
Marcus stood up, swaying.
He looked at her face.
It was Marcia.
But the softness was gone. The concubine who loved silk was dead.
This woman had a scar running from her ear to her jaw. Her eyes were hard, scanning the perimeter, not looking at him with love, but with assessment.
She looked at the wreck of the Neptune. She looked at the dead refugees in the water. She looked at the comatose Narcissus.
Finally, she looked at Marcus.
She didn't smile. She didn't cry.
She racked the slide of her shotgun.
"You're late," she said. Her voice was raspy, like she had been screaming orders for weeks.
Marcus managed a weak grin.
"Traffic was bad," he said.
Marcia didn't laugh. She pointed to the red transport truck rumbling up behind her.
"Load the wounded," she barked at her men. "Leave the dead. The tide will take them."
She turned back to Marcus.
"Get in the truck, Caesar," she said.
She pointed to the East, where the sky was glowing with a dull, rhythmic pulse.
"The Wall is falling in ten minutes. If we aren't inside the perimeter by then, we burn with the rest of them."
She grabbed Narcissus's other strap. She didn't ask for help. She just pulled.
"Welcome to the meat grinder."