I feel like this chapter should have a trigger warning for "extreme tempting of fate" from characters thinking that: Maybe this won't be so bad. Murphy has never been so badly abused as he is being here.

Also, I'm aware I've kind of included a run-down of the anomaly twice but there is some extra info in the brief in this chapter, so it felt worth it to me.

Cover Art: Kirire

Chapter 29

There wasn't a peep of conversation either in the Bullheads that shuttled them out to an FOB situated in the forests a good mile or two out from Mountain Glenn, nor as they waited there as soldiers in Atlas uniforms searched them. The FOB looked to be something that had been around for a while because the barracks and other buildings were grown over with vines and plants, but the runways and parking lots for vehicles were swept clear. Chain-link fencing surrounded it, and within that stood numerous soldiers at attention. At the far end, Blake could see rows upon rows of truck-like vehicles with big missile pods on their backs, all of which were aimed at the city in the distance.

Mountain Glenn looked quiet and still, as broken down as the official stories said it was. It should have been a sad and sombre moment for her, to see a remnant of civilisation brought low. With added context, it was an ominous and terrifying thing that she knew might erupt at any moment. Blake couldn't take her eyes off it, but they were thankfully ushered inside a square brick building and down a long corridor, into a room set with steel chairs and a projector. There was a man waiting that Blake recognised immediately from her time in the White Fang. General James Ironwood. It didn't even surprise her that he would be involved in ARC Corp. Not much did nowadays. Blake took a seat next to Jaune, and Pyrrha sat on her other side with Terra and Saphron further along. She spotted Coral slouching down near the front, kicking her feet up onto another chair until Nicholas Arc roughly pulled it away. The woman huffed.

"This isn't a good day so I'll spare the pleasantries," said General Ironwood. He pushed a button and activated the projector, casting a top-down blueprint of Mountain Glenn onto the smooth far wall. "This is Mountain Glenn, Vale's first effort at urbanised expansion. Officially, the city was a failure due to the Grimm. Unofficially, the city was by all accounts a complete success, and would still be standing proud today if not for the actions of what is believed to be a singular anomaly – dubbed now as the Twilight City. Nicholas Arc?"

Jaune's father stepped up and took the button. His voice was raspy. "The Twilight City is a temporal based anomaly that traps anyone who dies within it in a 24-hour time loop. This loop does not impact memories, meaning that everyone caught is fully aware of the fact and able to adapt their circumstances over time. The twenty-four loop begins at 14:00 every day. Any subjects caught once in the anomaly, hereby designated as Twilight Citizens will be brought back to the place of their death. This prevents them leaving the city and is part of the reason why we believed the anomaly contained."

He clicked a button and a new slide appeared. This one appeared to be taken from atop the walls and showed a street in the ruined and broken city occupied by a rather large mass of people. It wasn't easy to make out the detail on such a grainy image, but she could tell they weren't just commuting or moving about. There were too many for that. It was closer to a parade, stampede or a protest, with people shoulder to shoulder forming a huge blob. At the far end of it stood a raised platform, as if someone was speaking to the crowd.

"The Twilight Citizens are considered hostile and highly dangerous," said Nicholas. "They have been driven mad – though you should not expect that to make them any less capable of violence. Over the decades of live, die, repeat, they have lost much of their humanity and recent drone footage suggests they are now fixated on indulging vices."

He clicked the button again and Blake was not the only one to retch. Voices were raised, some shouting, and Nicholas Arc waited patiently for it to run its course. The reason was simple: on the screen, the presumed drone had flown down from the wall to inspect the stage the crowd were watching. Upon it were three people – a woman, a man and a child – torn open. Their carcasses had been split apart, their ribcages exposed, and two masked people were pulling on their inner organs. The victim's faces were stretched wide in agony.

"My god…" whispered Pyrrha.

"Simple vices like sex, drugs and alcohol don't much stimulate them anymore. If they can be found at all with resources having run low. Immortality and a lack of consequence or any real threat to their existence has left them with more decadent and cruel desires. General Ironwood?"

The General stood up again. "Over the years since their confinement we have allowed very limited communications between ourselves and the Twilight City. This was done against the advice of ARC Corp and undertaken both as a means of cooperation and of gauging changes in their personalities. Through the items requested via trade, and what they offer, and simple conversation, we have been able to track changes that were at first subtle but now are anything but. Initial requests for trade goods were food, diapers, books and entertainment devices. The last trade request, dated sixteen months ago, was for barbed wire, electric batteries and live children."

The audience gasped, murmured and chattered. Blake just felt ill.

"Naturally, these requests were denied, at which point the denizens attacked our group and attempted to drag one of my men into the city. They were unsuccessful and the soldier didn't perish, but he could have. They could have easily killed him then and there and claimed him as a resident, but they sought to take him back to the city alive. We believe, given further drone surveillance, that outsiders to the city are considered delicacies. Likely because they only show real fear of pain, torture and death the first time, and that all subsequent times become muted."

"They like popping virginities," said a familiar voice. Coral. Of course it was Coral. "No one remembers their tenth time, but the first is unforgettable. I wonder if they auction off the rights to torture and kill outsiders, or if it's first come first served. The former would suggest some degree of organisation. Maybe even religion. Interesting. Those in the picture – are they performers? Masters of the art? Has it become theatre? I'd love to know more."

Several other members of the ARC family shifted their seats away from her, while Jaune's head had fallen into his hands. "Damn it, Coral," he muttered.

"That," said Nicholas, voice clipped and face harder than even when he looked at Blake, "is something we will unfortunately be seeing up close and personal. We are informing you of this not to raise curiosity or because we want answers, but to highlight the danger of the Twilight Citizens. No matter how they look, no matter how they act, no matter their age, they are dangerous and inhuman. Do not hesitate to kill each and every one of them. They will be trying to do the same for you, and should they succeed all that will await you is an eternity of suffering. Also, to note, there is no escape in death. Suicide will not save you. Should you succumb, your only hope of peace is to continue the mission and assist in locating and destroying the anomaly that is causing this."

"What will happen to the people in that case?" asked Pyrrha.

Or us, Blake thought.

"It is our belief that, without the anomaly to sustain them, they will either die immediately or lose their immortality and be susceptible to death via other means. I am afraid that no one caught in the anomaly will be spared in the latter scenario. There is too much risk they could act as carriers and infect another city."

"So, if we die in there?" asked another.

"You will be abandoned, yes." Nicholas didn't look even remotely unhappy or sympathetic about the fact. "Hence, I encourage everyone to exercise extreme prejudice on anyone they see within the city. I do not care if it is an eight-year old child running toward you. Kill it. The anomalies that reached Vale and were located by Director Jaune Arc were children between the ages of ten and thirteen. They have accounted for over fifty deaths. That does not mean we will be throwing you – ourselves, really – into the meatgrinder. General Ironwood is taking steps to make our job as easy as possible." He stepped down. "The General will explain further."

General Ironwood took to the stage again and brought up the top-down image. This time, there were numerous dotted lines converging on it from every direction. "You will be entering the Twilight City at 14:30 hours. At 14:00, we will commence an artillery bombardment on the city. We will repeat this at 14:02, 14:10, 14:15 and then finally at 14:25. This longer barrage will hopefully clear most of the people out the city and grant you the highest chance of doing your work unmolested. You will be entering with two armoured vehicles provided by us at the main gate here." He pointed. "You are free to determine your own search paths, as per your experience, but you will be drawing out of the city at 10:00 hours the following day. This has been agreed upon with Nicholas. You will then return to the FOB where we will commence a repeat artillery barrage the following day and allow you entry again. And so on and so on."

Okay. It wasn't an all or nothing approach, then. They'd be taking however many days it took them, and mostly exploring a ghost city. That wasn't as bad as she expected. Several others were beginning to relax as well now, once they realised it wasn't going to be them versus however many million residents. There were almost certainly going to be some who had hidden away and survived the bombardment, but assuming an armoured vehicle and all the firepower they had, it shouldn't be too much of a problem. She doubted the residents had much in the way of weaponry by now; ammunition, especially, should have run out or been destroyed years ago.

Maybe this won't be so bad…

/-/

In her time in the White Fang, Blake had experienced the dubious pleasure of witnessing Atlas' advanced military at work. She'd thought she had seen the worst of it. Watching the missiles fly up out the vehicles and arch toward Mountain Glenn told her otherwise. The sound of the rockets being launched was oddly high-pitched, a constant shoom, shoom, shoom of missiles leaving the pods, and then whistling sounds as they rose through the air. Blake had expected it to sound much more like burning jet engines and screaming.

The sound of the impact, too, was distant. Plumes of fire flew upward and the very air above the city warped as extreme temperatures made it look hazy and indistinct. The sounds were there, the roaring, but they were muted and distant, overpowered by the fresh launching. It had a detached feeling to it that Blake worried made it all too easy for soldiers to feel like it wasn't so bad as they launched missiles at other living people. Not that it could be helped here, but if there ever was another Great War then it was all too easy to imagine Mountain Glenn replaced with Menagerie.

The two vehicles they had been granted stood nearby. It had wheels instead of tank tracks, but they were massive things and there were six of them evenly spaced out. The sides were sloped out triangularly for sloped armour, not that they'd be hit with shells, and the front had a similar pointed tip to it. There was a hatch up top with an automatic weapon strapped to it on a rotating stand, and the back opened downward with a metal ramp to allow people in and out. The insides could account for about twenty people each – eighteen in the back, a driver and a passenger seat – but there was almost thirty of them in total, so they were being split evenly between the two.

That was good. Less good was the decision that the two APCs would be splitting up to cover more ground. Had they never seen horror shows? Didn't they know how this worked? Blake would have complained if she didn't know it was because they had a whole freaking city to cover, and because even a single APC ought to be just about impenetrable to angry civilians, cursed or not, after they'd had ninety-nine per cent their population wiped out by napalm.

Still, as the last missiles fired and no more came, Blake felt a nervous, cloying fear take over her. She wasn't the only one because other employees were looking at their scrolls, sending final messages and in one case even retching into a bush. It was good to know she wasn't the only sane person surrounded by nutcases.

"We're moving soon!" shouted Nicholas Arc. "Everyone to your respective vehicles."

Surprisingly, Jaune was the driver for one of them – which meant she got to ride shotgun. That was more than fine with her since Nicholas Arc was in the back, and she didn't want to be alone with him in an enclosed space. The driver and passenger cabin were a part of the APC along with the area filled with people, but there was a sound-proofed screen up likely so that the drivers could hear orders from a command post and not be distracted by a squad of soldiers discussing their own in the back. Blake settled into the large seats and strapped herself in. The window in front of them was some kind of tempered glass atop a metal grill of criss-cross pins that would act like a net and add a second layer of protection. Even if the window shattered, it was unlikely any shards would get through to them, let alone people.

We're pretty much untouchable in here, thought Blake. This really shouldn't be that bad. I have aura, they're civilians, I'm at the level of a huntress in training. What are they going to do, bury me under their bodies? I'll be fine as long as I keep moving, and I can always retreat to the APC and get inside. They won't be able to do anything.

The real risk was getting cut off and separated. Blake swore she'd keep the APC in sight.

"Can no one else in your family drive?" asked Blake once they were in place and ready to go. They weren't going to be the lead APC, so Jaune just had to follow.

"Everyone can drive. Even Amber has a license."

"Isn't she fifteen…?"

"Laws don't really apply to us the same way they do everyone else. As for why I'm our designated driver, it's probably because I don't have aura and am therefore the most useless outside the APC. Might as well have the strongest people able to go out first."

Logical. Also very reasonable, which wasn't a word she normally attributed to his family. "If you're the least useful here, I don't see why they didn't leave us in Vale instead of your little sister. You could continue ARC Corp as well if everyone died."

"Ah. Well." Jaune chuckled weakly. "I'm sure dad has his reasons for not wanting me taking over in the event everyone dies here."

They both knew what those reasons were, though they might have different understanding. Blake would say it was because of Jaune's status as a technical anomaly, while he might have just thought it was because his father hated him for wanting to contain anomalies, or for his having been responsible for the death of his mother. It was ridiculous that the truth was probably less emotionally scarring than what he believed to be the truth, and she couldn't even say anything or she'd be removed. Violently.

The first APC began to move and Jaune shifted the vehicle into gear. It lurched forward, jolting everyone in the back, and Jaune swore under his breath, not having expected the sheer amount of torque the vehicle had. "Sorry," he called through the intercom. "This thing doesn't do smooth."

Someone waved a hand in the back that she saw in the mirror. It didn't look angry, so she assumed it was just them understanding. The actual drive to the city itself was bumpy; the ground had been torn up by bombardment and had never really been smooth in the first place. The huge tyres helped minimise the problems where tracks would have probably gotten stuck long ago. The vehicle must have had some extremely rugged suspension because they were shaking and bouncing like a yo-yo, and that was with Jaune and the APC ahead taking active measures to drive around deep craters, fallen trees and the worst terrain.

"We're entering the city in ten seconds," said Jaune, through the intercom again. The huge gates loomed before them, like the gates to the underworld. Blake swallowed. "No visuals. I'm opening top hatch if anyone wants to take it."

This time, Nicholas signalled, and Jaune's father unstrapped himself and climbed into weapon mount. It was like a standing chair, with a padded seat to rest against, but forcing the person to stand as they gripped the weapon. The seat itself rotated as they turned the weapon, giving the person three-sixty manoeuvrability. A moment after he went up, the hatch on the APC ahead opened and Saphron stood out, taking the hint from her father. Blake wouldn't have felt comfortable exposing herself, but they all had aura, and there shouldn't be any guns left in Mountain Glenn by this point. There weren't many risks.

The cabin went dark as they passed under and through the gates. The sun was blocked out, stone and metal rose up on either side of them, and they bounced up onto the streets proper, which were smooth tarmac cracked and broken in places. It was still an easier ride than outside. Jaune shifted gears down suddenly and slowly braked as the vehicle ahead did the same. He wheeled them out and alongside it, because otherwise they'd have crashed into the back.

A convoy shouldn't be stopping suddenly like that, Blake felt. Up top, she heard Saphron and Nicholas talking. Discussing. Before long, the other APC revved its engine and peeled off to the left, down a street. Nicholas slapped his hand on top of the cabin and shouted, "Right." Jaune pushed the pedal down and took them that way, turning them ninety degrees down a wide road dotted with the charred and blackened husks of cars, vans and the occasional lorry. There was nothing left of them beyond skeletons after years and years of napalm. It struck her suddenly that the attacks weren't only to decimate the population, but also to lowly chip away at resources and equipment. Vehicles might have been useful for escaping Mountain Glenn, and Atlas had done its best to destroy all of them. A few might still exist in garages and underground parking lots, but they wouldn't be able to refuel. The dust stations would all have blown up long ago.

Blake stayed quiet as they drove. Partly, it was so they could hear if Nicholas Arc shouted anything out. Mostly, it was this sense of silence that had her thinking she might somehow draw the horde if she uttered a word. This feels like a zombie movie. It had the same hopeless, abandoned feel to it, and Blake kept expecting people to come streaming out at them. The APC wasn't loud by any means, but their engine was the only one in the city, and the clunking, bumping of their wheels on the tarmac must have been audible for a good distance.

Maybe everyone was dead.

Maybe the survivors just didn't care.

In a way, did that not make sense? If living here was a constant agony where the other citizens would capture and torture you for fun, then wasn't getting wiped out in a single moment almost a mercy? It couldn't hurt more than having your insides dragged out in front of a fascinated audience. Maybe they just didn't care about the bombs. Eh, I'm about to die in napalm. Oh well, I'll be back tomorrow. It wasn't hard to imagine them just letting it happen because it wasn't a big deal. When death meant so little, there was little point worrying about or avoiding it.

/-/

They drove on for another hour and a bit, as Blake settled back and watched tall buildings and hollowed-out fast food restaurants pass them by. Occasionally, they hit traffic and Jaune had to slowly creep them around downed vehicles, even using his own to nudge others out the way and make room. They came to a large intersection leading deeper into the city, and Nicholas Arc slammed the roof three times. Jaune brought them to a slow stop as his father crawled back down into the cabin and peeled the sound-proof window back.

"Nothing is standing out on the outer ring," said Nicholas. "We're going to need to search the city proper. Bring us in and find us a large open space to park in. No cover. I want open views."

It only took Jaune fifteen minutes to find somewhere that fit the bill. The roads in the city were narrower, only two lanes on either side, and the buildings turned from garages and fast-food joints to shopping areas, skyscrapers and even hotels. Jaune brought them to a halt in what looked to have been a plaza of sorts, situated in front of a bank. The large bank's roof had come down and the massive doors were missing, but it had an open parking lot to the front, along with a paved area that might have once been for pedestrians. Beside it was a row of independent stores, their front windows long shattered, and then a burnt-out park of dried mud on the other side. Bringing the APC into the car park, they had the bank to their backs and a good stretch of empty road to the front and right, and the devastated communal park to their left. The only place someone would be able to sneak up on them from was the bank, and that was mostly collapsed. The rest was open and exposed ground.

Blake waited for everyone to be out and around the APC before she even considered unlocking her own door and climbing out. Nicholas Arc was looking over the area, while the rest waited nervously. They didn't have Saphron, Terra or Pyrrha. Of Jaune's sisters, they had Coral and a pair of near-identical twins wearing tight-fitting black leather, and who had a pair of gas masks hanging from straps about their necks. The badges on their shoulders included flames. The Burn Office, was it? Blake had never met them, but she was sure she'd heard them mentioned once or twice. They had come with several employees, but they all stayed away from Jaune and her. It really did feel like the Containments Office was persona non grata.

"Spread out and check the buildings," shouted Nicholas. Blake really wished he could have been quieter. "You are looking for anything out the ordinary, anomalous, or strange in any regard. Be thorough but be quick. We have a lot of ground to cover and this is one street among thousands. Jaune, you keep the turret and watch the bank. Anything comes through there, you open fire. No questions asked."

Jaune saluted and rushed back to the APC. Blake wished she could join him, but she didn't have the excuse and she did have aura. That didn't mean she'd be going with his father, however. She made sure to watch which way he was going, and then to head off the other on her own. The rest were splitting into pairs or going alone to check the bottom floors of buildings. Blake approached one that might have once been a bakery or sweets shop. There was no way of telling as the furniture and signage had been destroyed, but she could see the burned out remains of a display case running alongside the counter. One of those things that food goods would be stored in behind glass for customers to look at. There weren't any tables inside to suggest it had been a place to stay at. Blake stepped through the smashed window. The glass had all gone.

Even shattered glass should have been laying around here somewhere. The force of concussive blasts would have certainly stripped the window clean of shards, but she couldn't see them buried in the far wall where she would imagine them to have landed. It's almost like someone took the glass. Big shards would make nice weapons…

Blake cringed and wished she hadn't thought of that.

Of evidence of anomalous material, she could see none. Everything was badly burned and incinerated, and all that remained was material resistant to fire. That was still black and charred, but the walls and some old metal devices that had probably once been ovens or microwaves stood. There were even two hollowed-out drink cabinets, the likes of which would have been refrigerated and stacked with soft drinks. They had been stripped clean both of the drinks themselves, but also the little metal shelves they would have been stacked on.

What did catch her eye was something fleshy and sticky along the outer wall as she came back out. It looked like the skin one would find between their fingers, that connecting tissue that would be webbed in amphibians. It wasn't alive or beating and was horrifically burned. Blake touched it with her foot and grimaced at how soft it was.

"it's not anomalous," said a voice behind her. Blake stiffened and turned, just catching one of the twin sisters as they came by en route to another building.

"What?" asked Blake.

"That." The first twin, with a shock of hair over her forehead dyed blue, nodded to the mass of flesh by her foot. "You're not the first to call it out. It's not an anomaly."

"Then what is it?"

"That's the results of people's bodies splattered against a wall and half melted."

Blake's stomach flipped. Her hand flew to her mouth, and she flew back from the fleshy mass. It… but… "How do you know?"

"We're the Burn Office. This isn't something new to us. Most people burn to charred husks and skeletons, but his with high enough temperatures in a sudden enough concussive force beforehand? It's a tricky thing to manage, but we've seen it before. Their bodies are destroyed first and then burnt second. That's why you haven't seen any skeletons lying about."

Because the bombs had destroyed people's bodies and splattered remnants across the walls and streets before the napalm reached them. Was that a mercy? Maybe so. The quicker death must have been the impact, and then no one felt the fire. It was just to cleanse anything left over and make sure dying became dead. Blake opened her mouth to ask more, but the girl had already walked away, done with the conversation. It's a good thing, Blake told herself. Horrible as it sounded, remains like this meant the bombing had worked. It meant they were safer for it. Blake looked back to the mass of burnt flesh and froze.

It was gone.

"Um. E-Excuse me!" called Blake. When the person didn't turn back, Blake rushed over and grabbed her arm. "You! It's gone!"

The girl clicked her tongue. "What is?"

"The flesh! The carcass! The remains!" Blake pointed back to where they had just been, and where the pavement not met brick wall at a perfect right-angle. "Why is it gone? It was right there."

"It should still be there," said the girl. "Unless it burned away." She pulled out Blake's grasp and turned around, looking back over the building and the streets. They were all looking suddenly just that little bit cleaner. "This doesn't make sense. It wasn't everywhere but it was regular enough. What is-" Her eyes widened. "Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. BACK TO THE APC!" roared the girl, breaking off from Blake. "BACK! BACK!"

Everyone turned to look at her, surprised. Blake didn't; Blake was already moving at a dead sprint. ARC Corp employees and the other two Directors outside the APC moved over quickly, questions on their faces, but the twin just kept waving her arm. Blake didn't fully know what was going on herself, but she'd learned one thing if nothing else in ARC Corp.

Run first; ask questions later.

"The time is wrong!" the twin shouted. "Or it's changed! It's happening now! It's already happened!"

Blake was running full speed, and then something was in front of her. It was sudden, instantaneous, even. The road ahead had been empty and clear, and then it suddenly wasn't. Blake struck the obstacle and knocked it over, falling herself and crashing down on top of it. There was a startled cry from something beneath her, and then a hand on her face. Blake stared down through someone else's fingers, as a woman with greying hair looked back up with rapidly mounting excitement and an evil, awful smile. Then another hand was on her neck, fingers and thumb trying to dig through Blake's skin and pull out her windpipe.

"Hello dearie!" said the old woman, voice brimming with excitement. "Are you new?"

Blake slammed her hand down into the woman's face without warning, then slid her other hand between her arms and twisted to break their grip on her. She kicked down into the old woman's stomach and used her as a springboard to launch herself up. The woman stayed down, stunned, but there were suddenly so many more people around them.

Hundreds.

They looked as bewildered to see ARC Corp as ARC Corp was to see them, the moment frozen in time as the freshly resurrected gathered themselves.

Kchak-Chack, went the mounted weapon atop the APC.

And then Jaune opened fire. Rows upon rows of people exploded into blood as the stream of gunfire tore through them. It was meant for armoured Grimm, the calibre larger and dust-powered instead of small arm. It didn't kill so much as shred. As the horrible sound intensified, Jaune swept it across the plaza and at the bank, where at least fifty people were beginning to stream out. Former staff, and customers, who had been at the bank at the moment their world ended. They had been resurrected there and were rushing out now for the APC. Suited men and women, bank clerks, customers in their casual clothes, businessmen, managers, even children accompanying their parents. They all charged forward and into a hail of fire that tore them to bloody chunks. Blake even saw a pram, no doubt with a baby inside, roll off the edge of the steps and fall onto its front.

No one cared.

Blake swept and ducked under a grasping pair of arms, jinked sideways to avoid a man that tried to diving tackle her, and then drew Gambol Shroud and cleaved an arm off at the wrist just as the hand grasped her hair. The hand remained on, clinging to the back of her hair as she raced away from the converging horde. All around them, ARC Corp opened fire, doing their best to gather back at the APC as so many people came after them.

Something had gone wrong. Blake couldn't imagine Atlas had just gotten the time wrong – that was stupid; comical, even – but something had changed in the modus operandi of the anomaly itself. The citizens had been brought back within the hour, or within two, rather than the twenty-four they were supposed to be. Had the Twilight City noticed their presence? Was this it fighting back against them? Whatever it was, it was new and it was unwelcome.

Blake shot out the knees of a teenager wearing a hoodie and leapt over his body, then ducked as a homeless man sung his sign at her, the bright paint still asking for food or money, but his bearded face ravaged with insanity. Spittle flew from his lips as he lunged at her with yellow teeth and tried to take a bite right out her arm. Blake caught him in the chin with her foot, shattering his teeth and flipping him onto his back, then shot down once into his chest. He still grasped for her legs as she ran by, reached up and yanked the hand out her hair, tossing the bloody limb behind her. The homeless man grabbed it and stuffed it into his mouth, his face transformed to bliss as he tried to fill a stomach left perpetually empty for decades, before he was trampled and killed by those chasing her.

Blake made it to the APC, yanked the cabin door open and smashed it into one man's chest, then jumped in and slammed it shut behind her. She kicked the lock into place with her foot and crawled over to do the same on the driver's side mere seconds before someone tried the handle, yanking on it furiously. Angry fists beat at the windows and door as they tried to get at her, and Blake huddled in the middle, on her back, eyes wide, panting for air and with her ears flat against her bloodstained hair. This was all her worst fears made manifest.

"Why the fuck did I not go home to Menagerie? What the fuck is wrong with me!?"

The rest of ARC Corp rushed for the vehicle as well, and Jaune's father reached it first, cleaving through citizens without stopping. He cut a swathe through them, while huge fires flew up and incinerated yet more. The Burns Office cast a path of fire that torched the street, covering other employees as they rushed, hobbled and limped to the opening at the back.

They crawled and stumbled inside. Several were badly injured, but they were alive. For now. Blake saw one through the mesh window be dragged down by the crowd screaming, and she knew he was dead. That view was taken away as people started to climb up onto the armoured front of the APC and beat at the windows with their fists, with rocks, with shoes and anything else they had. The glass cracked in places, but Jaune swivelled his gun and scythed them down, clearing the front as Coral and the Arc twins leapt into the back and dragged the door shut behind them.

"We're missing four!" shouted one of the employees in the back.

"They're dead!" roared Nicholas, beating a hand on the back of the cabin. "Drive, damn it! Drive!"

Blake had no license, little driving experience, and zero fucks to give. Let Mountain Glenn revoke her license; she really didn't care. She rolled into place, pushed the button to ignite the engine, ratchetted the gears so harshly that metal squealed under the vehicle, and then slammed her foot down on the accelerator.

Jaune had made it lurch before as it started moving, but she brought the front two wheels off the floor. The APC slammed into the people before it, striking them so quickly that they were swept under the wheels to crunch beneath horribly. If the ride had been bumpy before, the people streaming down the street toward them made it much worse, but the heavy tyres doggedly mulched their way over bodies and bones - rugged Atlesian engineering at work. The citizens had no sense of self-preservation and no fear of death, and so they flung themselves in front of her with manic smiles and excited faces.

Once the speed picked up, she went from dragging people under the wheels to killing them head on. Blood splashed over the windows and bodies practically exploded or were cut in half by the tip of the sloped armour. The entire windscreen was dyed red, and the automatic sweepers did their best to carve a triangular window for her to see through, sloshing blood, body parts and organs left and right with horrible scraping sounds. Some even oozed through cracks in the glass, the wire mesh doing very little to protect her hands from the viscera that dripped down over them. All the while, Jaune continued to open fire above, now aiming ahead of them to try and clear a path.

"Keep going!" shouted Nicholas. "Get us back out onto the ring road. Jade, contact Saphron now. They must be under attack as we are. Coral, try to patch through to Ironwood."

"There's no signal!" replied Coral. "Only… Something is blocking us."

"What!?"

Coral dialled up the volume on her scroll, which didn't do much with the horrible screaming, the bodies thunking against Blake's windscreen as she ran them down, nor the squeal of the tyres as she yanked the wheel left and right to try and dodge large groups of people, abandoned vehicles or large pieces of rubble in the road. Even so, Blake just about heard it. More so, she recognised it, and that let her brain fill in the blanks. Instead of a blank dial tone, Coral's scroll was playing a soft and haunting song.

"Hush you baby, don't say a word. Mama's gonna buy you a mockingbird. And if that mockingbird don't sing, mama's gonna buy you a diamond ring."

The lullaby was drowned out momentarily as Blake stared with panic into the face of a child, not six, who had been swept or thrown up onto her window. It was staring at her through the glass, its face dented and bloody. Weakly, it hit at the glass with a stone before the strong window wipers scraped it off and sent it tumbling off the side. Blake whimpered, eyes watering and ears flat, but she kept her hands, now slick with blood, on the wheel and refused to take her foot off the pedal.

"-and if that horse and cart turn around, you'll be the sweetest little babe in town. Hush, little baby, don't you cry…"

The song repeated until Coral ended the call. Blake would have loved to say only silence remained, but there was too much screaming, howling and excited shouting outside, not to mention automatic gunfire and bodies bouncing off their vehicle.

"Is it the anomaly?" asked one of the twin sisters.

"Likely," said Nicholas. "On scrolls? Radio tower, maybe. The CCT. That would explain how it's being broadcast."

"It could be a digital-based anomaly." said Coral. "Infecting devices across Mountain Glenn. Which would make it impossible to kill."

"If so, then the world really is doomed. I won't believe that until we have proof. Continue to try and reach the others in the city." He leaned into the cabin then and said, "And you. Get us out of here. We'll regroup, bomb the city again and then decide what to do from-"

He cut off, eyes widening, even as Blake's did the same. Her foot hit the brakes, throwing Nicholas Arc forward and causing everyone else to jostle in their seats. If it wasn't for his legs and midriff being in the vehicle, Jaune might have been sent out entirely. As it was, he was stunned enough to stop firing for a moment, and with good reason.

The road ahead was packed full of people. People not in their hundreds, but in their thousands. Potentially the tens of thousands. They were filling the street and turning it into an ocean, and so many of them were looking their way. There was just no way they could force the APC through that many people without becoming bogged down, or just bleeding momentum until the mass of bodies brought them to a stop.

"Good lord," whispered Nicholas, looking ahead even as their pursuers caught up and started beating at the doors and trying to force their way in. Blake couldn't take her eyes off the horde, even as people mounted the vehicle. Jaune ducked back under and yanked the hatch shut. Feet echoed above them, and it felt like they were trapped in a metal box being swarmed. It felt that way because that was exactly what was happening.

Blake yanked the stick back into reverse, again with a horrific screech from beneath and a reminder that the clutch existed and wanted her to know and stepped down on the pedal. This time, they went back, crunching through yet more people and dragging more under the tyres as they slowly – too slowly for her liking – backed away from the rushing horde. Blake threw the wheel left, sending them into a desperate spin that lashed out and side-swiped people out their way, all to bring their nose back the other way. The gearbox screamed again as she pushed it forward, then jumped once more as they punched into a smaller, but no less dangerous crowd. People fell off the roof behind them as they picked up speed, but it wasn't out toward the ring road and safety.

It was deeper into the city.

Welcome to Mountain Glenn. Leave your hopes and dreams at the door.

What's more terrifying than a zombie apocalypse? A zombie apocalypse where you have humans instead of zombies. Living, breathing, thinking, tool-using people who come in the same numbers, with the same ferocity and lack of fear, but who can plan, strategize and think.

Next Chapter: 14th November

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