This time, they’ll be the second company, with another taking the lead. As before, they’ll play leap frog as the infected are drawn out of the distant city. Four gunships swing into position, two on each end of the line. The chill penetrating the protective gear is refreshing. That and the adrenaline coursing through his body keeps him alert even through his exhaustion. He’s ready to get this shit over with.

Sooner started, sooner done.

The waiting for something to happen is often worse than the event itself: there’s no greater enemy than your own mind. Jennings ambles off the road and across the grassy ditch, placing his MK20 on a fence post and sighting in down State Highway Y. In the distance, helicopters float above the ground, firing their Gatling guns and rockets into targets. After firing, they turn to reorient a little closer and fire again. Above the middle of the highway, another chopper slowly crawls along the pavement, leading any remaining infected out of the city.

Taking his eye from the scope, Jennings surveils his surroundings. The smoldering remains of a few demolished farmhouses can be seen across the fields. Parts of the roof and timbers from the walls of the nearest one lie strewn throughout the yards with wrecked outbuildings adding their debris to the mix. Farming machinery has been smashed and lies in twisted, charred hulks. Rows of large, rounded bales of hay lie under coverings, the tarps dotted with shrapnel holes. The advance gunships did their work well, systematically seeking out and destroying everything that might have housed any infected.

As the helicopters drawing the infected slowly nears the leading company, Jennings wonders if any of the farmhouses had any survivors holed up in them before they were blasted into oblivion. He thinks the sound of helicopters in the area would have drawn them out, but the gunship crews wouldn’t have been able to distinguish between the living and the infected. The survivors might have come out and started waving their arms, leading any of the crews to believe they were infected trying to reach them.

That’s if they even took the time to distinguish. This was a fast-moving operation that gave little opportunity to conduct extensive searches. Although Jennings can’t see how anyone could have survived in cities with so many infected prowling the streets, surely there could have been a few in the countryside. Some of these folks rarely ventured off their farms and may not have come into contact with anyone carrying the virus. However, it had seemed to spread almost everywhere. Farmers coming into town for a meal or for a myriad other reasons during the three-week incubation period would most likely have come into contact with at least one carrier. The odds dictated that a random few wouldn’t have, though.

Jennings jerks his thoughts back to the present. Those kinds of thoughts can lead down a very dark road, and this is neither the time nor place for that. He’s sure that once he and the others establish themselves, they’ll conduct searches for survivors; after all, the forces in the west have already sent ships to recover personnel from several remote areas. There will most likely be survivor casualties in the contested zones of operation, but the timetable dictates that they secure their bases and immediately begin operations to make sure the power plants don’t blanket the eastern continent in a radioactive cloud.

Rain showers continue to drift slowly across the plain, the rainfall angling downward. Some of the showers don’t quite reach the earth, evaporating before they come into contact with the ground. Jennings doesn’t give it much thought. Modern avionics and weapons aren’t constrained by clouds or rainfall. But he hopes that none of them fall on him, because being wet and fighting in the rain sucks.

“Lead company is engaging.