One of the soldiers approached another sedan.
Its windshield was shattered.
The driver's door had been bent backward almost completely.
The soldier stopped.
"Jesus."
Hanson immediately looked toward the feed.
"What?"
The helmet camera moved closer.
Deep grooves ran across the driver's door.
Not scratches.
Gouges.
Four parallel trenches had been carved directly through the metal.
The soldier slowly raised his flashlight.
"Command..."
His voice became quieter.
"You seeing this?"
Hanson stared.
"Yes."
The soldier placed a gloved hand beside one of the marks for scale.
Each groove was wider than his fingers.
The metal surrounding them had curled outward.
The major stepped closer to the screen.
"What could do that?"
Nobody answered.
The soldier crouched.
"Looks like something tore into the door."
Hanson's eyes narrowed.
"Mechanical?"
"Doesn't look like it."
"Collision damage?"
"No, sir."
The soldier ran the flashlight along the gouges.
"They're too clean."
He paused.
"And they're spaced evenly."
Another member of Beta stepped beside him.
"What are you thinking?"
The first soldier stared at the marks.
"I don't know."
He lowered his hand.
"But I don't like it."
General Hanson remained silent for several seconds.
His eyes stayed fixed on the screen.
The blood.
The empty vehicles.
The gouges carved through steel.
The abandoned road leading directly into FairHaven.
Every instinct built over thirty years of military service told him the same thing.
Something was wrong.
Not unusual.
Not unexplained.
Wrong.
The kind of wrong that demanded caution.
But also answers.
Hanson reached for the microphone.
"Beta Actual."
The team leader answered immediately.
"Go ahead, General."
Hanson's expression hardened.
"Mount up."
A brief pause.
Then—
"Sir?"
"You heard me."
Hanson looked toward the map beside the main display.
FairHaven sat less than a mile ahead.
A dark patch on the regional grid.
Silent.
Dead.
Waiting.
"You've confirmed signs of violence."
He glanced back toward the screen.
"Multiple abandoned vehicles."
"Blood."
"Structural damage."
"And no civilians."
His voice became flatter.
More deliberate.
"That's enough to rule out simple traffic abandonment."
The major beside him looked over.
Hanson continued.
"But it's not enough to tell us what happened."
The General pressed the transmit key firmly.
"Beta Actual, continue into FairHaven."
The command room went silent.
On the radio...
The team leader hesitated only a moment.
"Copy."
Hanson added quickly—
"Slow advance."
"No unnecessary dismounts."
"Keep your formation tight."
"Thermals active."
"Weapons ready."
"Do not engage anything unless it presents a clear threat."
Another pause.
"And maintain continuous video."
"Understood."
Hanson's eyes narrowed.
"If you lose contact with command for any reason..."
He paused.
"...you turn around."
"Immediately."
"No exceptions."
The team leader answered.
"Roger that."
Hanson released the microphone.
Onscreen...
The soldiers began moving back toward the vehicles.
Doors opened.
Boots struck pavement.
Engines revved higher.
One by one...
Team Beta remounted.
The first vehicle pulled forward.
Slowly.
Carefully.
Its headlights swept across the abandoned cars as the convoy maneuvered around them.
The child's backpack disappeared beneath the edge of the camera frame.
Then the bloodstained sedan.
Then the vehicle with the torn door.
One after another...
They were left behind.
The road opened ahead.
Dark.
Empty.
Leading into FairHaven.
Hanson stepped closer to the main screen.
No one spoke.
The convoy passed the town marker.
WELCOME TO FAIRHAVEN
The sign had been damaged.
One wooden support leaned at an angle.
Something dark stained the bottom edge.
The lead vehicle crossed the municipal boundary.
The telemetry changed.
FAIRHAVEN CITY LIMITS
The command room seemed to tighten around the words.
A captain quietly folded his arms.
The major leaned against the edge of the operations table.
Several communications officers removed themselves from unrelated channels entirely.
Every available eye shifted toward Beta's feed.
Hanson watched the road.
"Give me every camera."
A technician responded immediately.
"Yes, sir."
The main display divided.
Four separate feeds appeared.
Lead vehicle.
Rear vehicle.
Helmet cameras.
Forward thermal.
Different angles.
Different perspectives.
All showing the same thing.
Nothing.
Empty road.
Dark houses.
Streetlights that no longer worked.
Occasional abandoned vehicles sitting beneath the trees.
Hanson frowned.
"Where is everybody?"
No one answered.
The convoy continued deeper.
A neighborhood appeared.
Mailboxes lined the road.
Porch lights sat dark.
One garage door remained open.
A bicycle lay on its side in a driveway.
Another house had its front door standing wide open.
No people.
No movement.
No animals.
Nothing.
One of Beta's soldiers spoke quietly over the radio.
"Command..."
Hanson immediately answered.
"Go."
"This place feels abandoned."
A second soldier added—
"Not evacuated."
The team leader looked toward him.
"What's the difference?"
The soldier's camera shifted toward a nearby house.
The front door stood open.
A car remained in the driveway.
Groceries had spilled from a torn paper bag across the walkway.
He replied—
"People pack when they evacuate."
The command room went quiet again.
The soldier continued.
"They take cars."
"Food."
"Kids."
"Pets."
His camera moved toward another home.
A television flickered weakly through a living-room window.
Still powered.
Still playing.
No one watching it.
"These people left everything."
Hanson's expression tightened.
The major muttered—
"Or something made them."
Nobody responded.
The convoy rolled forward.
Slowly.
Deeper into FairHaven.
Hanson placed both hands against the edge of the operations table.
His eyes never left the feeds.
Only hours ago...
Richard Whitmore had told him the town was gone.
That monsters moved through the streets.
That the dead themselves hunted the living.
Hanson hadn't believed it.
Not really.
He had believed Richard believed it.
That was different.
Shock.
Trauma.
Fear.
Any of them could distort what a person thought they saw.
But blood didn't hallucinate.
Steel didn't tear itself apart.
Entire towns didn't simply disappear.
Something had happened here.
Something severe enough to silence every institution in FairHaven at once.
Police.
Fire.
Hospitals.
Civilian communications.
Everything.
Hanson slowly straightened.
His eyes moved toward the widening darkness on the screen.
Toward the empty streets ahead of Team Beta.
Then he spoke.
Not loudly.
But every person in the command room heard him.
"Keep them moving."
The major glanced toward him.
Hanson's jaw tightened.
"We came here for answers."
His eyes stayed locked on FairHaven.
"So let's get them."
A long pause.
Then—
"Let's find out exactly what we're up against."
Team Beta kept moving.
Block by block.
Street by street.
Deeper into FairHaven.
The farther they went...
The worse it became.
At first, the destruction had been scattered.
A broken window here.
An abandoned car there.
A front door hanging open.
But as the convoy approached the center of town...
That changed.
Completely.
The lead vehicle rounded a corner.
And every soldier inside went silent.
The town center came into view.
Or what was left of it.
Main Street looked like a battlefield.
Storefronts had been ripped open.
Entire sections of brick façade had collapsed into the road.
Traffic lights hung crooked from twisted poles, one still blinking weakly red over an intersection choked with debris.
Cars were everywhere.
Crushed.
Burned.
Overturned.
Some had been thrown onto sidewalks.
Others had been smashed into buildings hard enough to bury their front ends beneath brick and glass.
The old diner on the corner was gone.
Not damaged.
Gone.
Half the building had collapsed inward.
The bakery across from it had been gutted by fire.
Black scorch marks climbed three stories up the building beside it.
Windows were shattered across nearly every storefront.
Street signs had been torn free.
Power lines sagged dangerously low.
And in the middle of it all...
The town fountain had been split completely in half.
Water no longer flowed.
Only dark sludge filled the basin.
Team Beta slowed.
Nobody had to order it.
They simply did.
Inside the command room...
General Hanson stared at the screen.
The room around him had gone still.
No one whispered.
No one moved unnecessarily.
The image spoke for itself.
The major beside Hanson exhaled slowly.
"Jesus Christ."
Hanson didn't respond.
Onscreen...
The convoy entered the town square.
Tires crunched over broken glass.
The sound carried strangely far through the empty streets.
CRRRUNCH.
CRRRUNCH.
CRRRUNCH.
Every storefront they passed looked abandoned in the middle of disaster.
Tables overturned.
Doors hanging open.
Bloodstains across sidewalks.
Discarded phones.
Shoes.
Bags.
A child's stuffed rabbit lying face-down in the gutter.
One of the soldiers in the second vehicle looked out the window.
"Where are the bodies?"
No one answered.
Because that was the part none of them understood.
There was enough destruction to suggest hundreds of casualties.
Enough blood.
Enough wreckage.
Enough evidence of panic.
But almost no bodies.
The team leader raised the radio.
"Command."
Hanson answered immediately.
"Go."
"We're at the town center."
"We see you."
The soldier looked out through the windshield.
"Sir..."
He paused.
"Whatever happened here wasn't a riot."
Hanson's eyes narrowed.
"What makes you say that?"
The team leader didn't answer at first.
His camera turned toward a city bus lying on its side across the street.
The roof had been peeled open.
Not cut.
Peeled.
Like a can.
He spoke quietly.
"Because people didn't do this."
Silence filled the command room.
Then—
A sound.
Faint.
So faint it almost vanished beneath the idling engines.
...scrape...
One soldier looked up.
"Hold."
The convoy stopped.
Engines remained running.
Weapons came up.
The command room immediately sharpened.
Hanson stepped closer.
"What is it?"
The team leader raised one fist inside the vehicle.
"Quiet."
Everyone listened.
For several seconds...
Nothing.
Then—
...scrrrape...
Closer this time.
Metal against pavement.
One of the soldiers in the rear vehicle glanced toward an alley.
"You hear that?"
"Yeah."
Another soldier turned toward the opposite side of the street.
"Direction?"
"Can't tell."
The sound came again.
SCRRRRAPE.
Then stopped.
The team leader opened his door.
"Two and Three, dismount."
Two soldiers stepped out.
Then two more.
Boots hit glass-strewn pavement.
Rifles immediately swept outward.
"Left clear."
"Right clear."
"Upper windows clear."
"Alley clear."
One soldier moved slowly toward the center of the intersection.
His helmet camera gave the command room a wide view of the square.
Nothing moved.
Then—
Something flickered at the edge of the frame.
The soldier stopped.
His head turned.
Too late.
Nothing there.
He stared toward the mouth of a narrow alley beside the ruined pharmacy.
Darkness pooled between the buildings.
"Did you see that?"
Another soldier looked over.
"See what?"
The first didn't answer.
His rifle slowly rose.
"I thought I saw movement."
"Where?"
"There."
He pointed.
The alley.
Everyone shifted toward it.
Flashlights clicked on.
White beams cut into the darkness.
Trash.
Broken crates.
A fallen bicycle.
Nothing else.
The soldier frowned.
"Could've been a shadow."
Another soldier muttered—
"Yeah."
But he didn't sound convinced.
The first lowered his rifle slightly.
Then caught it again.
Movement.
This time behind him.
At the far corner of the intersection.
A shape slipped between two abandoned cars.
Fast.
Too fast.
The soldier spun.
"Contact!"
Every rifle snapped toward the movement.
The command room tensed.
Hanson leaned closer to the screen.
"Visual?"
"Negative!"
The soldiers spread out.
One took cover behind a burned-out SUV.
Another moved beside a concrete planter.
The team leader stepped into the street.
"Eyes up!"
The first soldier's breathing had changed.
He knew he had seen something.
Not clearly.
Not enough to identify it.
But something.
He kept scanning.
Window.
Doorway.
Alley.
Car.
Shadow.
Nothing.
Then—
At the edge of his vision...
Again.
A figure.
Standing inside the darkened entrance of a clothing store.
Watching him.
The soldier turned.
The doorway was empty.
His breath caught.
"Command..."
Hanson answered.
"Go."
The soldier didn't take his eyes off the storefront.
"I've got something moving around us."
The major frowned.
"A civilian?"
"Don't know."
The soldier slowly advanced.
His flashlight beam moved across broken mannequins inside the store.
One had been snapped in half.
Another lay facedown.
Shattered glass covered the floor.
Nothing else.
Then—
Tap.
The soldier froze.
A sound behind him.
Not loud.
Just...
One footstep.
He turned.
Nothing.
His flashlight swept across the street.
Then—
A whisper of movement to his left.
His head snapped toward it.
Still nothing.
The team leader raised his voice.
"Everybody back to the vehicles."
The soldiers began moving.
Slowly.
Covering one another.
The first soldier took three steps backward.
Then stopped.
Because in the reflection of a shattered storefront window...
Something stood behind him.
Tall.
Thin.
Motionless.
His eyes widened.
He spun around.
Empty street.
But the reflection—
Gone.
His voice dropped.
"Sir..."
Hanson's grip tightened on the operations table.
"What?"
The soldier swallowed.
"I don't think we're alone."
For half a second...
Nothing answered him.
Then—
THUNK!