Inside the command center, several operators immediately leaned toward their screens.

The tactical map updated rapidly.

What had once looked like a single advancing swarm was now becoming something worse.

Multiple converging waves.

Entire roads that had briefly cleared after the bomber strikes were filling again with movement. Drone feeds showed infected pouring out from side streets, villages, forests, and ruined urban blocks like floodwater escaping through cracks.

"Where the hell are they all coming from?" one analyst muttered.

No one answered him.

Because nobody knew anymore.

Adrian stared silently at the widening red sectors across the map.

The earlier bombardment had absolutely devastated them.

Entire sections of the swarm had been erased.

But the numbers behind them were still overwhelming.

"Updated ETA?" Adrian finally asked.

One of the operators recalculated quickly using the newest movement data.

His face changed immediately.

"...Two hours, sir."

The room went quiet again.

"Repeat that."

"Estimated time to outer engagement range now approximately two hours."

Adrian narrowed his eyes.

"That’s impossible. Earlier estimate was five."

"Yes, sir," the analyst replied nervously. "But their speed increased after dispersing. They’re bypassing destroyed highways and moving through open terrain now."

Another operator switched to drone footage from the countryside south of Manila.

The sight was horrifying.

The infected no longer moved only through roads.

They flooded through rice fields.

Forests.

Subdivisions.

Industrial zones.

Entire waves of bodies sprinted northward beneath the burning night sky while artillery explosions continued detonating around them.

And somehow, they were getting faster.

"Jesus Christ..." one of the officers whispered.

Adrian immediately turned toward the artillery command channel.

"All batteries continue bombardment. No cooldown periods. I want nonstop fire missions until they enter direct engagement range."

"Yes, sir!"

Outside Basa Air Base, the artillery crews looked exhausted beyond words.

Their uniforms were soaked in sweat and dirt while their ears rang continuously from the endless firing. Empty shell casings covered the ground around the M777 batteries like piles of brass debris.

But nobody stopped.

"Round loaded!"

"Fire!"

Boom.

The howitzer kicked violently again, another 155mm shell screaming southward through the night.

Across the artillery line, dozens of guns continued firing in rotating patterns to prevent complete barrel overheating. Crews swapped active guns repeatedly while cooling teams poured water and applied emergency maintenance procedures between firing cycles.

Still—

The bombardment never ceased.

Further back, the HIMARS batteries prepared another launch sequence.

The launcher commander looked toward the updated target grids.

The infected were too spread out now for concentrated strikes alone.

"Switch to area denial patterns," he ordered.

"Copy."

New coordinates uploaded instantly.

This time the HIMARS launchers targeted wide terrain corridors instead of highways exclusively.

The launch pods elevated.

"Fire."

The rockets erupted upward again.

Dozens of guided rockets screamed into the sky, leaving trails of fire behind them before curving southward across the dark horizon.

Inside the command center, the live drone feeds tracked the impacts in real time.

The countryside exploded.

Entire agricultural fields vanished beneath firestorms as the rockets detonated among advancing infected formations. Dirt, bodies, and burning debris blasted upward while secondary explosions rippled across nearby fuel stations and abandoned vehicles.

One rocket strike landed directly beside a crowded evacuation center already overrun earlier in the night.

The resulting explosion collapsed the entire structure instantly.

The infected around it disappeared beneath fire and concrete.

"Direct impacts confirmed," the operator reported.

But another analyst shook his head slowly.

"They’re still advancing."

Because they were.

Even through the explosions—

The infected kept charging northward.

Thousands died every minute beneath artillery and bomber strikes.

But tens of thousands more replaced them.

Back in the air, the B-1 Lancers began another bombing run.

Inside Lancer One, the weapons officer stared at the targeting feed with disbelief.

"They’re everywhere now."

Below them, the battlefield had become almost impossible to fully comprehend.

The southern provinces looked like they were actively at war.

Huge fires burned across highways and towns while artillery flashes illuminated entire sections of countryside continuously. Smoke climbed into the atmosphere in massive black columns while swarms of infected continued flooding north through every open route they could find.

"Approaching release corridor," the co-pilot said.

The pilot adjusted the bomber slightly.

"Open bays."

The bomb bay doors beneath the bomber opened again.

Rows of heavy ordnance became visible beneath the fuselage.

This time the payload included cluster munitions.

Weapons specifically designed to annihilate wide-area troop concentrations.

Perfect for this nightmare.

"Release in five."

The bomber stabilized.

Then—

"Mark."

The cluster bombs dropped.

One after another.

The bombs fell silently at first before descending into the advancing masses below.

Then they opened mid-air.

Hundreds of submunitions dispersed outward across enormous areas before detonating almost simultaneously across the ground.

The effect was catastrophic.

Entire fields erupted beneath chains of explosions as fragmentation ripped through massive groups of infected. Drone feeds captured bodies being thrown apart across roads and open terrain while secondary detonations rolled through nearby structures.

The cluster strikes expanded outward for kilometers.

And the other bombers followed immediately.

Lancer Two and Three released their payloads seconds later, saturating additional sectors beneath overlapping explosions.

The night sky pulsed continuously from the bombardment now.

From above, southern Luzon no longer looked like a populated region.

It looked like a continent-sized battlefield.

Inside the command center, the tactical display fluctuated wildly again as huge portions of the swarm vanished beneath the bombing runs.

For several moments, the red mass visibly shrank.

"Good hits!"

"Massive reductions in Sector Seven!"

"Southern flow disrupted!"

One of the drone operators switched camera feeds toward the main highways again.

The footage shook violently from nearby detonations, but the scene was still visible.

Entire roads had disappeared beneath craters.

Collapsed overpasses blocked sections of expressways.

Burning buses and civilian vehicles littered every lane while the remains of the infected piled into blackened mounds across the asphalt.

And still—

Movement continued.

The swarm simply flowed around the destruction.

Like water adapting around rocks.

"Sir, western groups are bypassing the kill zones!" one analyst warned.

Another overlay appeared across the tactical map.

Thousands of infected were now spreading through nearby towns instead of continuing along predictable highway routes. Some moved through rivers. Others flooded through subdivisions and industrial complexes trying to avoid the heaviest bombardment sectors.

"They’re fragmenting into smaller attack streams," the analyst continued.

Adrian’s jaw tightened slightly.

"That makes them harder to hit."

"Yes, sir."

Another officer looked up from the logistics board.

"At current expenditure rate, artillery stocks will begin reaching critical levels if this continues for several more hours."

Adrian looked back toward the map.

Two hours.

Maybe less now.

Outside Basa Air Base, the defensive preparations intensified even further.

Rows of M1 Abrams tanks settled deeper into defensive positions facing south. Their thermal sights scanned the darkness continuously while loaders stacked additional 120mm sabot and HEAT rounds inside the hulls.

Nearby, M2 Bradley IFVs established overlapping kill lanes beside trenches filled with infantry.

Machine gun crews mounted M240s and M2 Brownings behind sandbags and concrete barriers while engineers stretched concertina wire across secondary approach corridors.

The entire base perimeter now looked like a modern fortress preparing for invasion.

Further behind the front sectors, soldiers unloaded more ammunition from transport trucks under floodlights.

Crates everywhere.

5.56.

7.62.

.50 caliber.

40mm grenades.

Javelin missiles.

Mortar rounds.

Everyone is preparing like this is a fucking war, though literally it’s a war!