Day 1 to Day 10
(Military POV)
The fall of high command wasn't announced. It wasn't clean. It was quiet first—too quiet.
Fort Westbrook's radio transmissions degraded slowly, like a heartbeat fading away. At first it was minor delays in signal. Then came the static. Then came the silence.
Captain Elias Rivas, field leader of Echo Company, felt it in his bones before anyone confirmed it. The base hadn't just lost power.
It had lost its people.
Drone recon footage was the final nail. Fort Westbrook's gates were cracked open like broken teeth. Burned-out APCs smoldered at the outer perimeter. Inside, bodies lay scattered across the asphalt, some still twitching. The aerial view caught movement—not of survivors—but of the infected.
And among them, former officers.
Wearing half-torn uniforms.
Grinning.
Some still had tags. Some still carried empty rifles slung across their backs like toys.
It was a mockery of command. A mockery of every oath they'd taken.
---
On Day 2, the west evac convoy went silent.
They were supposed to be picking up civilians from a hospital zone, only two clicks from Echo Company's forward camp.
The transmission ended mid-sentence, followed by shrieking feedback and the wet, crackling growl that every soldier now recognized.
Captain Rivas ordered recon to follow their path. Private Ochoa was the one who returned—bloodied, half-limping, missing his helmet.
"They were torn apart. No survivors," he said. "They—they crawled up from the drains, sir. The drains."
A medic said Ochoa had claw marks down his side and bite marks on his pack—but not a scratch on his skin.
Somehow, they hadn't finished the job.
---
By Day 3, Echo Company stopped setting up camp.
They started setting up kill zones.
Barricades. Narrow alleys. Lines of sight.
They didn't sleep in barracks anymore. They slept in circles, backs to each other.
At night, the sounds came. Sometimes soft, like a dog wheezing in the distance. Sometimes loud.
Sometimes the infected shrieked as they leapt from rooftops, limbs flailing like broken puppets, landing in the center of squads and exploding in a frenzy of teeth and nails.
It wasn't just horror. It was chaos.
There was a night when Lieutenant Hayes saw one leap from a water tower. It didn't survive the fall. But it didn't have to.
Because five more came after it.
One night, Corporal Jinks was dragged screaming into the shadows.
All that remained of him was a shredded boot and a crushed comms headset.
Sergeant Lowe tried to retrieve his tags.
He didn't make it back.
The bodies they brought back were missing faces. As if something wanted to erase their identity.
---
On Day 5, they fought tooth and nail to secure a three-block zone around a fuel depot.
The infected came in waves. Not just shufflers now, but runners. Twisted ones. Some leaped over vehicles. Some used broken fences as ladders. Some scaled walls with inhuman grace.
Rivas saw a private get dragged under a Humvee by one of them, blood splattering across the wheel as she screamed. Her hand beat against the undercarriage until it stopped moving.
They pushed them back with flamethrowers and concussion grenades.
The depot became a red-soaked field of spent shells and smoldering corpses.
But victory didn't feel like victory.
It felt like breathing for one more hour.
---
By Day 7, they turned a suburban strip—half garages, half nail salons—into a makeshift HQ. It had three intact fences and a generator rigged from two motorcycle batteries and a gas oven.
They didn't salute anymore.
There was no time.
They patched wounds with duct tape and spare gauze. Ate from civilian pantries. Took shifts on the rooftops, watching the streets with binoculars and rifles.
Private Sierra started painting kill-count marks on her boots.
Sergeant Drew kept a tally of names in a weathered notebook, crossing out the dead in pencil.
They learned to shoot twice—once in the chest to stop momentum. Once in the head to end it.
Echo Company was no longer Echo Company.
They were just who was left.
Captain Rivas watched his soldiers load mags and clean weapons in silence. He no longer saw uniforms. Only names. Only eyes that refused to give up.
And he knew, deep down, that if they didn't adapt—if they didn't become monsters in spirit, if not in flesh—they would be overrun by the ones that already had.
Some already had.
---
Day 11 to Day 14
The first thing Captain Rivas did after the HQ was secure was walk the line.
He moved through the barricades, past sandbags and overturned cars, past makeshift tripwire traps made from coat hangers and duct tape.
Every hundred feet, he nodded to a soldier. They didn't salute anymore. That ritual had died with the brass. But the nod carried the weight of loyalty.
Private Sierra was stationed at the pharmacy rooftop. She didn't smile when he passed. Just raised her rifle, tilted her chin toward a distant alley.
"Movement in the shadows. Might be rats. Might be worse."
Everything was worse now.
Echo Company—down to only 27 soldiers—divided into five fireteams and pushed outward. Block by block. House by house. They learned to fight like guerillas, not an army.
They used what the dead couldn't: strategy.
They avoided major roads. Too exposed. They avoided sewers. Too risky. They swept strip malls and parking lots, fighting in silence, muzzle flashes illuminating the dark.
---
Day 12 was the bloodiest.
Fireteam Bravo hit an ambush near a post office. The infected had nested inside, using mail bins as cover. The first soldier through the front door—Private Nolan—was swarmed in seconds.
They pulled him back, but not fast enough. He didn't scream. Just thrashed as blood pooled on tile and dragged down his vest.
It took three of them to put him down after he turned.
They burned the entire building after that.
Captain Rivas stood in the parking lot, watching black smoke curl into the sky.
"No more hesitation," he said. "We clear. We secure. We move on."
That night, they fortified six new buildings. Marked them with green flags and UV paint. They called the zone Echo Ring One.
But it was never quiet.
---
Day 13 brought the new types.
The ones that waited.
Not all infected charged blindly. Some stalked. Hid. Learned.
Fireteam Delta lost their medic, Ross, to something that climbed into their position during shift change. It didn't snarl. It didn't groan.
It waited until Ross turned his back.
Then it snapped his spine and bit off his face.
Rivas put a new rule on the board: "If it waits, it thinks. If it thinks, don't let it."
---
Despite the losses, they advanced.
Echo Company had cleared twenty-one buildings by morning. A school, two hardware stores, four homes, a laundromat.
They began organizing supplies: batteries, canned goods, medical equipment.
Private Bell created a color-coded inventory chart. It was the most paperwork they'd seen in weeks. It felt almost normal.
That night, they ate canned chili around a lantern.
Sergeant Drew toasted with a cracked canteen:
> "To the ones still breathing."
And for once, nobody died before sunrise.
---
Day 14 arrived with silence—and with it, a message.
Private Chen picked it up on the field radio, embedded deep in a tangle of static and civilian chatter.
"...Node Point... repeat... sanctuary in movement. Transmitting irregular intervals. Confirmed survivor network. Node Point is real..."
Half the squad gathered around the receiver.
"Another ghost story?" Sierra asked.
"Sounds like a cult op," someone muttered. "Too convenient."
Rivas stayed quiet.
He played the message again.
And again.
Then shut the radio off.
"We mark it. But we don't chase it."
"Why not?" asked Chen.
"Because Node Point isn't calling for soldiers. It's calling for people who need saving. We focus on the ones who can't broadcast."
And that was that.
They moved out again, southbound.
There were civilians nearby.
They'd seen signs—chalk arrows, tied cloth, smeared messages like "Alive inside" on a broken van.
The dead might take the roads. But Echo Company would take the spaces between.
---
Day 15 to Day 17
By now, Echo Ring One had expanded. The Company held thirteen blocks. They set up perimeter alarms using scavenged baby monitors and motion lights. Every soldier could now navigate the area blindfolded.
Rivas started drawing maps by hand. Updating locations of safehouses, threat zones, abandoned supply caches. He called them "battlefield sketches," but they looked more like survival art.
They recovered more civilians.
A woman with a dog who hadn't barked in days. A man with a broken leg, hiding under a flipped-over school bus. A child who refused to speak but held a note that simply read: "Don't let the ones that smile in."
It was cryptic. But not unfamiliar.
They'd heard rumors.
Of some infected that didn't lose their humanity right away. Of survivors who smiled too wide, even when danger was near. There were whispers about a girl and a man who walked through death as if it were routine.
Echo Company had dismissed those.
But after the child's note, Rivas quietly added another line to the whiteboard of standing orders:
Avoid entities exhibiting persistent smiling behavior. Do not engage. Do not approach.
---
Everything was holding.
By the evening of Day 18, they had enough supplies for a week. Medical triage was functioning. They'd rigged water filters using old aquarium parts. The streets were cleared and marked.
Hope, fragile as it was, began to root.
The civilians who joined them weren't soldiers. But they were tough. They listened, followed orders, learned quickly. They didn't hesitate to carry stretchers, dig trenches, or keep watch while others slept.
Some even volunteered to go beyond the line.
That morning, Rivas split the group.
Half of Echo Company, paired with twenty armed civilians, was sent west-west—to clear out the farther blocks near the shopping strip and warehouse district.
Rivas remained behind to coordinate from the center, trusting Sergeant Drew to lead the push.
"Sweep, secure, reinforce," Drew said, repeating the motto like a prayer. "Sweep. Secure. Reinforce."
---
Then, just after midnight, the first melody played.
---
At first, it was faint.
A chime.
Then a tinny version of "Do Your Ears Hang Low?"
It drifted on the wind like a ghost nursery rhyme.
Private Bell stopped in her tracks.
"That's not possible."
But then headlights flickered to life beyond the barricade.
And an ice cream truck rolled into view.
Bent frame. Smeared with red. Its speakers warbled.
And behind it...
Dozens.
Hundreds.
The infected came surging forward, not in chaos, but in formation.
Like a procession.
The truck stopped at the intersection. Its music slowed.
"Do your ears hang low…"
Rivas stepped onto the rooftop. Through binoculars, he saw something that made his blood run cold.
The lead infected were dancing.
Twisting. Jerking. Mimicking the beat.
"Positions!" he shouted. "EVERYONE TO THE WALL!"
---
Machine guns opened up. Flares launched. Tripwires snapped. Claymores detonated.
The first wave dropped like wheat. The second climbed over them. The third breached the east fence entirely.
The soldiers and civilians fought side by side like veterans.
Sierra was pulled from the second floor and vanished beneath the horde.
Private Chen was bitten twice before he detonated a satchel charge at close range.
Bodies stacked. Rounds ran dry. But they kept fighting.
The truck didn't move.
It just played its tune.
And smiled.
---
By dawn, only twelve of them remained in the base sector. The west-west team hadn't returned.
The truck was gone. The dead were gone.
But they had left a message.
Painted in blood on the side of a building:
> "Smile more. They like it."
---
The Day after Day 19.
The smoke had barely cleared.
Twelve soldiers and a handful of civilians stood where a base once thrived. The barricades were broken, the fences half-collapsed, and the radio tower was speared through with something sharp and bone-white.
The music had stopped. But the echo lingered.
Captain Rivas walked past the crater left by Chen's satchel charge. He didn't speak. No one did. They were waiting—hoping—for the western team to return.
By noon, three staggered survivors made it back.
Sergeant Drew was missing an eye. His team had been ambushed mid-sweep. The infected came not from the front—but from underneath.
Through the storm drains.
He said half the civilians held the line while the soldiers escaped.
He didn't say what happened to them. He didn't need to.
---
By dusk, the camp was shifting.
They burned the eastern street. They blocked the southern alleys. They packed up non-essentials and prepped for relocation.
"We're not staying here," Rivas finally said. "They know this place. Too well."
Private Bell asked, "Where do we go?"
"We burn the road behind us," he replied. "And we find somewhere they haven't danced yet."
---
That night, the guards shouted from the northern post.
Two figures were walking calmly down the street.
One man. One… something else.
The man was covered in scrapes, his jacket torn, but his walk casual.
He was dragging a rolling cooler and holding a fishing rod like a staff.
Beside him, waddling like it owned the pavement, was a fish.
In a tiny red wagon.
The man saluted lazily.
"Hiya," he said. "I think we took a wrong turn at Albuquerque."
Weapons were raised. No one smiled.
"State your name and intent," barked Rivas.
"Name's Delgado. This here's Peppino."
The fish wobbled in response.
"We're looking for somewhere that doesn't play creepy music. Preferably with snacks."
There was a long pause.
And then, for the first time in days, someone in Echo Company laughed.
---
Delgado and Peppino were screened and cleared. Civilians, somehow. Survivors, definitely.
Delgado had been wandering the city with his aquatic companion for nearly two weeks, dodging zombies with a mix of dumb luck and weirder instinct.
Peppino, for reasons no one could explain, always seemed to point toward the safest path. Or maybe people just liked believing that.
They joined the camp.
Not as fighters. Not yet.
But as reminders.
That not everything strange was dangerous.
And not everything dangerous wore a smile.
---
At sunrise, Echo Company moved.
They packed light.
They burned their old maps.
And as the last soldier crossed the edge of their old perimeter, Captain Rivas stopped and looked back.
The words were still painted on the wall:
> "Smile more. They like it."
He set it ablaze with a flare.
Then turned away.
The road ahead was quiet.
But not for long.
---
End of Chapter 21 – What Remains of Order
> The line between soldier and survivor is gone. The march continues—not toward safety, but away from the songs and the smiles.
Echo Company moves forward.
And behind them, the roads burn quietly.
---