▪︎ Chapter 105 ▪︎ “Point Twelve, respond.”

Michael sat on an ammunition crate with his rifle leaning against his leg, staring toward the treeline a few hundred meters away.

He hadn't realized a forest could look quite so disconcerting in the middle of the afternoon.

The sun was still well above the horizon, and the open ground between the defensive position and the trees was brightly illuminated, yet very little of that light seemed capable of penetrating the forest itself. 

The canopy was extraordinarily dense, layered branches and leaves overlapping until the woodland beneath existed in a perpetual shadow. Every so often, Michael thought he saw something moving between the trunks.

Then he'd stare at the spot and find nothing.

The defensive point wasn't anything particularly impressive.

Several military vehicles had been arranged to create cover, supplemented with barriers and whatever else could be moved into place quickly. 

Ammunition crates sat open behind them, and fifteen soldiers had been assigned to hold the position.

Oakridge itself was several miles behind them.

Michael looked back toward it briefly.

From here, the city still looked normal.

He could see buildings in the distance, the occasional vehicle moving, and signs of ordinary human life continuing despite everything that had happened over the last couple of weeks.

First vampires and werewolves.

Then the planet got bigger.

Now apparently the forest wanted a turn.

"Just treat it like hunting."

Michael glanced sideways.

Harris sat nearby with his rifle across his knees, looking considerably less concerned than Michael felt. The older soldier nodded toward the forest.

"I've gone hunting with my son plenty of times. It's easy."

Ramirez rolled her eyes from where she stood beside one of the vehicles. "If you've gone hunting, I'm guessing you came back empty-handed."

Harris looked offended. "Excuse me?"

"You're too dumb to find the deer."

"I have killed deer."

"You probably hit it with the truck."

Harris stood and gave her a playful shove with one hand. Ramirez barely moved, laughing as Harris hefted his weapon and gestured toward the forest.

"You'll be begging me for help once they get here."

"Absolutely. I'll be terrified of all the rabbits."

Michael cracked a smile.

He'd been about to add something when a shout came from farther down the defensive line.

"Movement!"

Every trace of humor disappeared.

Michael grabbed his rifle and stood. Fifteen soldiers shifted almost simultaneously, weapons coming up as they moved into their assigned positions behind vehicles and barriers.

Michael pressed his rifle against his shoulder and aimed toward the trees.

At first, nothing happened.

Then branches shook.

Something pale moved through the darkness beneath the canopy, followed by several more shapes.

A deer exploded from the treeline.

Michael's finger tightened around the trigger without firing.

It was enormous.

The animal stood close to six feet tall at the shoulder, its body thick with muscle as it bounded into the open. Another followed it, then another, and within seconds an entire herd had emerged from the forest.

A stag came behind them.

"Holy shit," someone whispered.

The stag stood nearly seven feet tall at the shoulder. Its antlers spread almost six feet across, branching upward and outward into a crown large enough that Michael couldn't imagine the animal moving easily through a normal forest.

Yet it had.

The deer didn't stop after leaving the trees.

They charged directly toward the defensive position.

"Open fire!"

Gunshots ripped across the field.

Michael fired.

The nearest deer jerked as rounds struck its chest and shoulder, but momentum carried it forward several more strides before its front legs collapsed. It hit the ground hard enough to throw dirt into the air.

The others kept coming.

Michael fired again and again, shifting targets as soldiers around him did the same. The afternoon filled with the violent crack of rifles, interrupted by heavier weapons and shouted corrections.

A deer stumbled.

Another rolled across the ground after its leg gave out.

A third continued charging despite blood streaming down its side until several rounds struck its chest in quick succession and dropped it.

Ten seconds later, only the stag remained.

Michael stared at it in disbelief.

Its hide was covered in blood. One front leg wasn't working properly anymore, forcing it into a limping, uneven run, yet it continued toward them as though nothing mattered except reaching the city beyond.

"Why won't it stop?"

Michael fired several more rounds.

The stag's head jerked. It stumbled, recovered, made it another few yards, then toppled forward. Its antlers dug into the earth and twisted its enormous body sideways. The animal kicked several times before finally going still.

For a moment, the only sounds were ringing ears and the settling echoes of gunfire.

Harris stared at the dead stag.

"Okay," he said. "That's not hunting."

Ramirez breathed out something that might have been a laugh.

Michael lowered his rifle slightly.

Then the treeline exploded.

There was no other word for it.

The entire forest seemed to come alive at once.

Deer burst through first, followed by wolves, rabbits, bears and animals Michael couldn't immediately identify. 

Large cats bounded between smaller creatures. Boars tore across the open ground with their heads lowered. 

Birds erupted from the canopy overhead in such numbers that Michael instinctively looked upward before forcing his attention back to the field.

"What the fuck?"

"Fire!"

The defensive line erupted.

Michael pulled the trigger until his rifle clicked empty, dropped the magazine, slammed another into place and continued firing.

There were too many targets to prioritize properly.

A wolf went down.

Michael shifted to a boar.

Three rounds struck its shoulder. Two more hit somewhere near its neck before another soldier's fire joined his and the animal collapsed.

He moved immediately to something else.

A bear.

He fired at its chest until it staggered, then shifted his aim upward. The bear dropped after several soldiers concentrated their fire on it.

More animals simply moved around the body.

Michael had been told the Diverged wildlife was larger than normal. He'd been told it was stronger, more aggressive and potentially dangerous.

The briefing had not adequately communicated what thousands of pounds of living muscle charging across an open field looked like.

Rabbits darted between the legs of deer. Wolves ran beside prey animals they should have been hunting. Bears ignored everything around them. 

None of it made sense. Predator and prey moved in the same direction, driven by whatever impulse had seized them after the strange wave passed through the region.

Toward Oakridge.

Toward them.

Michael lost count of how many times he switched targets.

Magazines emptied and were replaced.

The ground between the defensive point and forest gradually became littered with bodies. Animals stumbled over other animals, sometimes falling before scrambling back upright and continuing forward.

Yet the line held.

For a while, at least.

Reports came through intermittently. Other defensive points were encountering the same thing. Some requested ammunition. Others reported manageable numbers and then, minutes later, requested immediate support.

Michael barely heard most of it over the gunfire.

He fired until his shoulder ached from recoil.

Another deer fell.

A wolf made it within fifty meters before Ramirez dropped it.

Harris shouted something triumphant that Michael couldn't hear, and despite everything, Michael felt some of the tension beginning to leave his body.

They could do this.

The animals were dangerous, yes, but they were still animals.

They had rifles.

They had ammunition.

They had vehicles.

The military had aircraft.

If they maintained their position and kept killing anything that crossed the field, eventually—

Something tore through the air.

Michael barely registered the sound.

A blur passed beside him.

Blood splashed across his face.

A soldier collapsed.

Michael jerked around.

"What—"

A hawk swept upward, its wings spreading wide as it banked.

It was enormous.

Not enormous in the way the stag had been enormous. The bird was still recognizably a hawk, simply larger than anything Michael associated with the species, with talons that suddenly looked far less like something meant for catching rodents.

Blood covered them.

The soldier on the ground didn't move.

The hawk folded its wings slightly and dove toward the next man.

He saw it coming.

The shotgun blast went off at almost point-blank range.

The hawk seemed to disintegrate into feathers and blood before hitting the ground in a tumbling heap.

Michael stood frozen for half a second.

Then he wiped blood from his face with his sleeve.

"What the fuck is happening?"

Nobody answered him.

Michael turned back toward the field.

He'd woken up one morning and discovered vampires existed.

Fine.

That hadn't actually been fine, but humanity had adapted remarkably quickly. Vampires existed. Werewolves existed. The world continued.

Then the planet doubled in size.

That one had been considerably harder to rationalize.

Now a bird could kill a trained soldier in the middle of an armed defensive position before anyone even realized it was attacking.

A scream sounded to Michael's left.

He spun immediately, rifle raised.

Then he froze.

Something red moved across the ground.

Not something.

Thousands of somethings.

No.

More.

Countless tiny red shapes poured from the grass, spreading outward in a crawling mass.

"Ants?"

The word sounded ridiculous even as Michael said it.

They weren't enormous. Compared with everything else charging from the forest, the ants were almost disappointingly ordinary. Each was perhaps twice the size of an ant Michael might have found crawling across his driveway.

There were simply so many that the ground itself appeared to move.

Michael watched a rabbit veer sharply away from the swarm.

Then a wolf did the same.

Even the larger animals avoided entering it.

His stomach dropped.

"Fall back!"

Someone shouted the same order almost simultaneously.

Michael stepped backward and grabbed the radio. "Forward Point Twelve to command! We're being overrun! We have a swarm—ants, massive swarm of ants moving toward our position! We need to fall back!"

Static answered.

"Command, do you copy? Forward Point Twelve is being overrun!"

Something struck his ankle.

Michael flinched.

Then came the pain.

It was sharp at first, followed almost instantly by a burning sensation that raced upward from his foot.

Michael looked down.

A snake had emerged from beneath one of the vehicles.

For a fraction of a second, his mind refused to understand what he was seeing.

The animal had to be sixteen feet long.

Its thick body remained partially concealed beneath the vehicle, while its head was clamped around the lower portion of his leg.

Michael shouted and stomped.

His boot came down on the snake's head.

Again.

The skull gave beneath the impact.

The snake released him.

Michael staggered backward, staring at the punctures in his ankle.

"Michael?"

He opened his mouth.

Nothing came out.

The burning sensation had already reached his knee.

His fingers loosened around the radio.

Someone shouted his name again.

Michael tried to answer, but his tongue didn't seem to work properly. The world tilted violently to one side, and for a confusing instant he thought he'd stumbled.

Then he realized he was falling.

He struck the ground.

His rifle landed beside him.

Michael tried to move his arm and couldn't.

His vision darkened from the edges inward. His body twitched uncontrollably as the sounds around him became strangely distant—the gunfire, soldiers shouting, animals screaming, something striking the side of a vehicle.

His mouth opened and closed without producing a sound.

The last thing Michael saw was a mass of tiny red bodies beginning to crawl around the nearest tire.

Then everything went black.

Several miles closer to Oakridge, Major Ellis pressed the radio against his ear.

"Forward Point Twelve, repeat. Forward Point Twelve, do you copy?"

Static.

He adjusted the channel and tried again.

"Point Twelve, respond."

Nothing.

Ellis lowered the radio slowly.

Around him, the secondary defensive position was becoming increasingly frantic. Soldiers carried ammunition between vehicles, officers shouted coordinates, and several wounded men and women from the forward lines were being treated near the rear.

A communications officer looked toward him.

Ellis shook his head. "Forward Point Twelve has lost contact."

Nobody needed him to explain what that probably meant.

It wasn't the first.

Three defensive points had already fallen back. Two others had stopped responding entirely, and reports from the northern side of Oakridge suggested another line was being repositioned after animals broke through.

Nobody had expected this.

That was the part Ellis couldn't stop thinking about.

They'd prepared for animals.

Large animals, certainly. Dangerous animals. The Diverged Lands were full of them, and everyone sent toward the outskirts had been warned not to underestimate the enhanced wildlife.

But they had still thought of it as wildlife.

Bears could be shot.

Wolves could be shot.

A charging herd of deer could be shot.

Nobody had planned for every ecological niche in an impossible wilderness to apparently decide that Oakridge was where it needed to be.

Birds attacked from above.

Snakes moved through grass and beneath vehicles.

Predators charged beside prey.

Insects were beginning to appear in reports.

It wasn't a migration.

One soldier had started calling it the Tide over the radio.

The name spread within minutes.

Ellis hated how appropriate it felt.

"How far back is Point Twelve?"

"About seven miles from the outer residential districts, sir."

Ellis stared toward the distant forest.

Seven miles.

Not enough.

Not remotely enough if the forward points couldn't slow the advance.

"Get another drone over Twelve."

"We lost the last one."

"Then send another."

"Yes, sir."

Ellis turned toward a map spread across the hood of a vehicle. Markers represented defensive positions around this section of Oakridge. Too many had already been moved backward.

At the rate things were going, they'd be fighting inside the city before nightfall.

The thought made his jaw tighten.

Fifteen armed, trained soldiers with prepared positions and military weapons had just disappeared from the radio network.

What happened when the animals reached civilians?

People had firearms, certainly, but most weren't trained to maintain a defensive line. Families would panic. Cars would clog roads. 

People would try to flee without knowing where they were going, and if enough large animals entered residential neighborhoods at once—

Gunfire cracked nearby.

Ellis ducked instinctively.

A bird spiraled from the sky in the distance, one wing flapping uselessly before it struck the ground.

"Another one!" someone shouted.

Several rifles tracked upward.

The aerial attacks had been intermittent here. They hadn't received the worst of them yet, but birds had already injured several soldiers farther north.

Ellis looked toward the sky.

He'd never considered the possibility of needing air defense against wildlife.

One of the officers standing near the map stared toward the distant gunfire and shook his head. "How much longer can this possibly go on?"

Ellis didn't answer.

The officer looked toward him. "Seriously. How many animals have we killed already?"

"Thousands across the perimeter, probably."

"And they're still coming."

"Yes."

"How?"

That was the question nobody could answer.

Oakridge was large, but there shouldn't have been an endless supply of wildlife close enough to reach it this quickly. Even an unusually dense ecosystem should have begun thinning after this many animals were killed.

Instead, aerial reconnaissance continued reporting movement through the forests.

More animals.

Always more.

A radio suddenly flared to life.

Static filled the channel, followed by distorted shouting.

"—Point Seventeen! We're falling back! Repeat, we're falling—"

Ellis grabbed the radio. "Seventeen, report!"

A burst of gunfire drowned out the response.

Then a voice returned, panicked and breathless.

"Spiders!"

Ellis stared at the radio.

"What?"

"Big fucking spiders! They're coming through the trees! They're climbing over the—"

More gunfire.

Someone screamed in the background.

Ellis pressed the radio closer. "Seventeen, fall back! Do you copy? Withdraw to secondary positions!"

"We're trying!"

Something crashed on the other end.

The transmission became a mess of shouting, gunfire and static.

"How big?" someone near Ellis asked quietly.

He ignored them.

"Seventeen, respond!"

A soldier on the other end shouted something Ellis couldn't understand. Another voice yelled for everyone to get away from one of the vehicles.

Then came a strangled scream.

The radio fell silent.

Ellis kept it against his ear for several seconds.

Nothing returned.

He slowly lowered it.

The officer beside him no longer looked confused about how dangerous animals could be.

Ellis stared toward the shadowed treeline in the distance.

The Tide was still coming.

And they were running out of ground to give it.