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Major had wracked his brain long and hard about the best ways to try to convince the government not to give up on a couple million of its citizens, but had come up with nothing. The United States was more afraid of a spreading zombie virus than it was of nuking what was left of Seattle. They counted the zombies as no longer existing and the humans as an acceptable loss if it prevented further spread of zombie-ism. A group was coming to survey the place, ostensibly to see what it was like in New Seattle, but Major wasn't fooled. They were coming as a sop to those who would weep for the lost lives, to be able to say they had tried, they had wanted to help, but New Seattle was too far gone. He was down to probably days, maybe weeks if he was lucky, before they decided to reach for the nukes.

So, at last, he came around to the last-ditch plan: appeal to the humanity of the leaders. One leader in specific.

He called General Mills' daughter and her boyfriend into his office and laid out the pitch to her.

Sloane Mills was not biting. She stared at him as if he had grown a second head. "Seriously?" When he didn't blink, she leaned back on his couch. "Okay, let me get this straight. First, you kidnap me and turn me into a zombie. And now you want me to do Fillmore Graves a favor?"

"I want you to do the people of Seattle, zombies and humans, a favor," Major corrected her. "Look, I'm talking self-preservation here. Your dad wants to see you—"

She waved that idea away. "General Mills and I haven't been on speaking terms for a long time. He's not particularly open-minded."

"He's going to be here with the contingent from the US government. The man holds sway at the Pentagon. It's in our best interest not to piss him off."

Before Sloane could respond, Major's assistant came into the room without knocking, a sure sign of trouble. "Commander. Captain Bell just called from lockdown. Something about a break-in, then the line went dead."

Leaving Sloane and her silent boyfriend in his office to consider their options, Major went down to lockdown, where he found Hobbs had already arrived, but too late to stop the mass slaughter that had occurred down there. Bodies of Fillmore Graves soldiers, good people every one of them, lay scattered around, all with a single clean bullet hole in the center of their foreheads. Whoever had come in, they were very well-trained.

"It was quick and well-planned," Hobbs told him. "The intruders killed two outside, four in the break room."

"Why weren't they at their posts?" Major asked. That many soldiers in the break room at this time of night? Unusual. Highly unusual.

"Don't know. They took eight prisoners from the deep freeze," Hobbs continued. "All known Chase Graves loyalists. Enzo included. Oh, and Peters is missing."

"Peters?" Shocked by what he was seeing, Major couldn't bring the face to mind immediately.

"He was post at the entrance."

"He must have been their inside source. They had to have one." Then Major realized what was nagging at him, who was missing. "Where's Justin?"

Hobbs nodded and took out his phone, dialing Justin's number. They could hear it ringing somewhere in the building. Major felt a chill. Not Justin. His friend, the first person he had learned to trust here at Fillmore Graves. They couldn't have gotten him, too.

They followed the ringing into a disused hallway filled with discarded furniture and barrels, where they found Justin's body slumped against a wall. While they stared at him, shocked, he groaned and shifted. He was alive! Relieved, Major hurried to his side.

"Oh, buddy, am I glad to see you."

"What happened?"

"I was hoping you could tell us." But now was not the time. Justin needed some recovery time and some brains. Major and Hobbs helped him up and took him back to Major's office, where he got cleaned up, downed a brain tube, and took a quick nap to let his body heal its wounds.

Once he was up, they went over what he could remember.

The two of them looked over the schematics of lockdown, trying to figure out how this had happened. What leaped out to Major as he traced the path of the intrusion was how many soldiers were out of place. "If people had been at their posts, most of them would still be alive." So many of them, all in one night. Major remembered when there had been time for wakes, when the entire garrison would come together to mourn the loss of one soldier. The loss of all these would go unmarked, unmourned, because they couldn't spare the people for a wake. He looked at Justin. "Any idea what drew them away?"

"Boredom?" Justin shook his head. "I was afraid of that. I kept trying to drill them, keep them sharp."

"Where were you when you got shot?"

They both bent over the map and Justin pointed to his location. "There. They must have thought they'd got me in the head."

"You get a look at 'em?"

"Yeah. Not our guys. I don't know who they were. They were efficient, though. They've had some training."

That had been obvious from the clean headshots, other than Justin's, and the precise entry plan.

"Best guess? Dead Enders," Justin concluded. "They're getting bolder."

"Dead Enders?" That sounded off to Major. "Yeah, they pulled eight of our most militant soldiers out of the deep freeze. What purpose would Dead Enders—"

"You asked for my opinion." Justin's tone was sharp, surprising Major, until he remembered that his friend had been shot and left for dead. That surely bought him the right to some testiness.

Still, though, that hadn't been exactly what he'd said. "I asked if you saw them." He frowned at the map. "I know you don't want to think Peters could be involved. You trained him, right?"

Justin nodded. "He's a good guy. Lousy soldier, though."

"Capable of planning an operation like this?"

"Oh, god, no." They both laughed a little, thinking of the perptetually late snack food junkie that was Peters trying to plan a precision strike like this.

But Major couldn't quite dismiss the idea that easily. If not Peters, it had to have been someone, and it was awfully suspicious that they hadn't found his body.