I Have a Modern Weapon Gacha System in the Zombie Apocalypse

Chapter 208: QRF Part 3

The F-16s came in fast.

Their engines screamed across the night sky above San Fernando, Pampanga, cutting through the thunder of machine guns and the endless howling of the infected below.

Outpost Echo was still firing.

The walls shook under the constant rhythm of heavy weapons.

M240s poured long bursts into the closest hordes.

M2 Brownings hammered the road approaches with brutal force.

Mk19 grenade launchers thumped again and again from elevated fighting positions, sending 40mm grenades into the packed bodies outside the wire.

Explosions flashed across the fields.

The infected kept coming.

They climbed over bodies.

They crawled through blood.

They pushed through razor wire until their own weight crushed the ones trapped beneath them.

Spotlights swept across the darkness and revealed more pale faces rushing through the fields.

Not hundreds anymore.

Not a few thousand.

The entire countryside looked like it was moving.

Reyes stood near the command post wall with his rifle raised, firing controlled shots at infected that made it past the first wire layer.

"North side! They’re stacking on the ditch!"

A gunner swung his M240 toward the irrigation ditch and opened fire.

BRRRRRRT.

The burst ripped through dozens of infected crawling through mud and water. Bodies jerked violently as rounds punched through torsos and skulls. The ditch filled with dead flesh, but more infected dropped into it from behind and climbed over the pile.

"Reloading!"

"Covering!"

Another machine gun took over immediately.

The sound never stopped.

Above them, the first F-16 rolled into its attack path.

Inside the cockpit, Viper Lead looked down through the targeting pod feed.

The image was insane.

Every road around the outpost glowed with heat signatures.

The fields north of San Fernando were packed so densely that individual bodies blurred into one massive moving shape.

The pilot adjusted the targeting cursor toward the largest group pushing through an open stretch of farmland.

"Viper Lead, in hot."

The command net answered.

"Cleared hot."

The F-16 descended.

Fast.

The aircraft lined up with the horde moving from the north.

The pilot armed a GBU-38.

The release tone sounded.

"Pickle."

The bomb dropped cleanly from the wing.

The F-16 pulled upward.

The bomb fell through the darkness, silent at first, guided by satellite coordinates toward the center of the infected mass.

Then it hit.

BOOOOOM.

The field erupted in fire.

A circle of infected vanished instantly beneath the blast. The shockwave rolled outward and flattened hundreds more. Dirt, limbs, ash, and burning bodies launched into the air. The explosion carved a wide crater through the center of the horde and briefly turned the night into daylight.

Outpost Echo felt the blast seconds later.

The windows in the tower rattled.

Several soldiers cheered.

Then the second F-16 came in from the east.

"Viper Two, in hot."

The pilot selected another target, a dense cluster moving along a cracked road lined with abandoned trucks.

"Rifle."

Two AGM-65 Mavericks streaked away from the aircraft.

The missiles dropped low, engines burning bright as they cut across the sky toward the road.

One missile slammed into the lead cluster.

The second hit farther back.

Two explosions ripped open the road.

Vehicles flipped.

Burning infected flew in every direction.

A fuel tanker abandoned beside the road detonated a second later, sending a massive orange fireball upward. The blast swallowed another section of the horde and scattered burning bodies across the highway.

The F-16 screamed overhead.

Reyes looked up briefly as the aircraft passed.

"Keep firing! Don’t watch the show!"

The soldiers returned to their weapons.

The southern wall was now under pressure.

The infected from that direction had reached the outer barricades and were forcing themselves through a line of wrecked vehicles used as obstacles.

A Mk19 gunner leaned hard into his weapon.

THUMP.

THUMP.

THUMP.

Grenades arced down into the packed infected.

The explosions tore holes through them, but the gaps closed again.

One infected climbed onto a burned jeep, missing half its jaw and both eyes. A rifleman shot it through the head. Another climbed over its body immediately.

"They’re at the vehicles!"

"South wall, increase fire!"

Two M2 Brownings joined in.

The heavy guns roared with deep, violent thunder.

.50 caliber rounds punched through infected bodies and continued into the ones behind them. Every burst tore long lanes through the horde. The front ranks collapsed in heaps, but the ones behind pressed forward without fear, without pain, without hesitation.

Above the battle, Viper Lead circled back.

He could see the outpost’s defensive line now. It looked like a small glowing box surrounded by fire, smoke, and endless movement.

The pilot’s breathing remained steady, but his eyes kept moving between fuel, weapons, and targets.

"Viper Lead to Command. North cluster hit. Eastern road hit. Still seeing mass movement from the west and south."

"Copy, Viper Lead. Engage western approach."

"Roger."

The F-16 banked hard left.

The pilot armed cluster munitions from the next station.

The targeting pod centered on a wide rice field west of the outpost.

The infected there were running now.

Not walking.

Running.

Thousands of them moved across the wet field, splashing through shallow water, trampling one another as they drove toward the outpost lights.

"Viper Lead, in hot west."

The jet dropped lower.

"Pickle."

The munition released.

It opened above the field.

Dozens of submunitions scattered across the horde like falling sparks.

Then the field exploded in sections.

Boom.

Boom.

Boom.

Boom.

The blasts walked across the infected formation in a brutal pattern. Water, mud, flesh, and bone erupted upward as the submunitions detonated across the field. Hundreds died in seconds. The shockwave flattened the rice paddies and turned the ground into a burning swamp.

Still, more infected came from behind the smoke.

Viper Lead clenched his jaw.

"Damn it."

The second F-16 passed over the outpost and switched to gun.

"Viper Two, guns."

The pilot rolled low over the southern approach.

The M61 Vulcan cannon fired.

BRRRRT.

The sound was sharper than the A-10’s cannon, but still deadly.

Twenty-millimeter rounds shredded the front ranks at the vehicle barricade. Infected bodies tore apart and dropped across the road. The aircraft swept the gun line across the horde, cutting a long scar through the southern mass before climbing away hard.

At Outpost Echo, the defenders used the moment.

"Push them back!"

"South wall, sustain fire!"

Rifles cracked from the parapets.

A grenade launcher thumped from the tower.

Another infected climbed over the outer vehicle line. Reyes shot it twice in the chest and once in the head.

It fell backward into the mass below.

The radio operator shouted from inside the command post.

"Sergeant! Command says additional ground QRF is mobilizing!"

"ETA?"

"Fifteen minutes!"

Reyes looked at the walls.

Fifteen minutes was better than nothing.

But the infected were already close enough to touch the barriers.

"Tell them to move faster!"

The western field burned.

The northern road burned.

The eastern highway burned.

Still the horde advanced.

The F-16s kept circling.

Again and again, they dropped ordnance into the thickest masses.

Bombs slammed into roads.

Missiles blew apart clusters.

Cannon fire stitched glowing lines across the ground.

The night became a storm of fire and steel.

The infected died by the hundreds.

Then by the thousands.

But the battlefield was too large.

Every time one group vanished, another appeared through smoke.

Every time a road cleared, a new stream of infected filled it.

Viper Lead checked his weapons page.

Two bombs left.

Low cannon.

Fuel decreasing.

He glanced toward Viper Two.

"Viper Two, status."

"Winchester on bombs. Cannon low."

"Copy."

The pilot looked down one more time.

The outpost still held.

But barely.

Several infected had reached the second barricade line now.

The walls were covered in blood and broken bodies. Floodlights flickered through smoke. The defenders kept firing, but their rates of fire were starting to slow.

Barrels were overheating.

Ammo teams were running.

Men were shouting.

The horde was still coming.

Viper Lead keyed the radio.

"Command, Viper Lead. We’re nearing Winchester. Need follow-on air support."

"Copy, Viper Lead. Additional assets are being prepared."

The pilot looked down at the glowing mass below.

Then at Outpost Echo.

Then at the last bomb on his wing.

"Not done yet."

He banked hard and lined up on the densest cluster now pushing toward the northern wall.

The release tone sounded.

"Pickle."

The bomb fell.

Viper Lead pulled up.

Below, Reyes saw the flash descending from the sky.

He instinctively ducked.

The bomb hit beyond the wire.

BOOOOOOM.

The blast swallowed the entire northern approach in fire.

The shockwave rolled over the outpost walls and knocked several defenders off balance. The infected packed against the wire vanished in the blast, leaving only a crater, burning bodies, and twisted metal.

For a few seconds, the north side went quiet.

No infected reached the wall.

No hands grabbed the wire.

No screams came from the smoke.

Reyes breathed hard.

Then he looked beyond the crater.

More infected were emerging from the darkness again.

He slowly raised the radio.

"Command, Echo Actual."

Static answered.

"Go ahead, Echo Actual."

Reyes stared at the moving horizon.

"Air support bought us time."

He swallowed.

"But they’re still coming."