• “Incoming!” 25-year-old Sergeant Sam Brody cried, “Get…”

    An anti-personnel missile screamed by overhead and exploded behind him, causing a nearby wall to crumble and collapse. Brody carefully peeked past the massive boulder he was taking cover behind, only to be met by a hail of gunfire. “Torst!” Brody said to the muscular soldier across the street through the COM, “Did you see where that missile came from?”

    “Yes, sir.” Corporal Jack Torst replied, “Just a few yards to our right on the roof of that restaurant. Looks like those meatheads are flanking us. We’d better fall back before they decide to fire another one of those rockets.”

    Brody adjusted his half-face mask, “Good idea.” He said as more rounds ricocheted off of a wall, “Fall back to Position Blue. I’ll cover you.”

    Torst broke from cover and made a beeline for their secondary fallback position. Brody broke from cover as well and squeezed off a few more shots with his CS-6 Assault Rifle before sprinting after his comrade.

    Two years ago, scientists in Russia were working on some sort of retrovirus, designed to eliminate all disease on Earth. After working on this “miracle drug” for quite some time, the Russian scientists thought they had made a breakthrough. They couldn’t have been more wrong. One night, when the workers had gone home for the night, the vile that contained the retrovirus was accidentally left open. The night air caused the mixture to bubble over and leak into another liquid below it and made the retrovirus a more lethal version of what it was meant to destroy, a virus.

    The Russian scientists were presumed to be the first to be infected by the new virus. After that, it quickly spread into the public, despite the Russian’s best efforts to contain it. Some of America’s best scientists studied the virus for many weeks, trying to find out how the virus infects the host and transforms them into, quite literally, zombies. What they discovered was that the virus enters the body through the mouth or nose, like a normal virus would. Then it multiplies and attaches itself onto organs and tissues and kills them while leaving the body intact and alive. Unfortunately, those brilliant minds were killed minutes after they presented their findings by a suicide bomber, but what they found echoed in the minds of the few remaining survivors left on Earth.

    Brody and Torst dove behind a burned-out blockade of vehicles as they reached the secondary fallback position. “Just out of curiosity,” Torst panted, “How did those guys get the drop on us like that so quickly? I mean, in every horror movie I’ve seen, the zombies are always the stupid ones walking around saying, ‘Brains!’”

    Brody shrugged as he slipped another clip into his rifle, “I guess the more military personnel this virus infects, the smarter the zombies get.” He keyed his COM, “O’Niel, Roberts, fall back to Position Blue, over.”

    “Copy that, sir.” Corporal Vincent O’Niel, the most skilled marksman on Brody’s squad, replied, “We’re on our way, over.”

    Torst gazed up at the crumbling remains of the city around them, “Hard to believe that this was once New York City.” He said.

    “Yeah.” Brody remarked, “It looks like a war zone now.”

    Torst chuckled, “Funny how that is.” He joked.

    Footsteps were heard behind them and Brody whirled around, only to see the rest of his team making their way towards his position. “That took you long enough.” Brody told them once they joined him.

    “Sorry.” Brody’s medic, Dr. Jacob Roberts, spoke up in a heavy French accent, “It was very slow going.”

    Before Brody could respond, he heard the whump-whump of helicopter blades rising over the ruined city and a Stryyker Attack Helicopter morphed out of the fog. While it was landing a few feet away from Brody and his squad, it’s heavy machine gun turret let loose a barrage of bullets towards an advancing zombie horde, mowing them down in seconds, unfortunately not killing all of them. Another squad jumped out of the cargo hold and opened fire at the rest of the zombies with automatic machine guns and rocket launchers. Taking this chance, Brody and his squad bolted for the cargo bay door, followed closely by the other squad. They sat down and strapped themselves in just as a man walked in, his face shielded by a flight helmet, “Sergeant Brody.” The man said, “Sorry about dropping in on you like that, but we couldn’t risk the smart zombies intercepting our transmission.”

    Brody shook the man’s offered hand, “No problem, Colonel. What’s this about?”

    “You’re being reassigned.” The colonel replied, “The President himself has personally requested you and your team for a special mission.”

    “Sir,” O’Niel spoke up, “can you tell us what this mission’s about?”

    The colonel nodded, “I sure can.” He said, “The fate of the world.”