Chapter 78: Go Down and Keep Him Company
"Logan Sawyer! I was the first one to support you and your brother!"
Leonard Miller shrieked in terror, his hands clawing desperately at the parapet bricks, his nails on the verge of tearing off.
Logan Sawyer paid him no mind. Gritting his teeth, he pulled out a dagger. With a quick SLICE, he cut through the shoulder straps of the backpack—a bag full of Leonard Miller’s supplies—and tossed it behind him with a CLANG.
The sudden lack of weight made Leonard Miller’s body feel light. Standing on the parapet, which was only a few inches wide, he lost his balance and nearly fell. He trembled like a leaf, his face drained of all color.
Logan Sawyer bent his knees, gathering his strength, and said coldly, "Weren’t you and my brother close? Then go down and keep him company!"
With a grunt, Logan Sawyer kicked the wall-clinging Leonard Miller off the building.
"Logan Sawyer! I hope you die a horrible death!"
His curses grew faint, ending in a dull THUD as he landed amidst the swarm of cockroaches.
Below, the massive army of cockroaches and the horde of zombies roared with excitement at the sudden special delivery and lunged straight for him.
Hungry!
They were so, so hungry!
The zombies scrambled over one another, desperate to get to him. Leonard Miller couldn’t even let out a full scream before he was torn limb from limb, gore splattering everywhere.
The blood never even hit the ground. The cockroaches swarming below devoured it completely, not wasting a single drop.
The five people on the roof saw cockroaches still crawling up through cracks in the wall. They had no time to celebrate cheating death; instead, they each pulled out a dagger and began to hack away frantically.
Luna Dawson watched the entire little drama unfold with a calm expression.
’Not a big group, but plenty of drama.’
With an icy glint in her eyes, she went back to focusing on killing the cockroaches with the others.
The front ranks of cockroaches crashed into the group’s wall of fire, an unending stream of them burning to death and piling up within the flames. A few dozen that managed to avoid the fire scrambled over the corpses of their kin, slipping through gaps and blind spots with astonishing speed.
Even the normally composed Evan Olson found his breath catching. Gritting his teeth, he summoned countless whirlwinds to sweep the surrounding ring of cockroach corpses off the roof.
"Nice one, Brother Evan!"
Aaron Palmer yelled, simultaneously launching a serpent of fire at the gap.
Luna Dawson pursed her lips and pulled an incendiary bomb from her dimensional storage. She hurled it toward the base of the building where the swarm was advancing from, managing to slow them down and alter their path slightly.
The moment they saw the cockroaches crawling in, Rollo and Little Tiger instantly grew in size and began stomping on them with their massive paws.
"CRUNCH! CRUNCH!"
A few sickening squelches followed, the kind of sound that set one’s teeth on edge. Each stomp burst two or three cockroaches at once, a sight that made everyone’s skin crawl.
Logan Sawyer and his group stood on higher ground, their eyes as wide as saucers and their jaws hanging open. ’I... I’m not seeing things, am I? When did they bring Aberrant Beasts?!’
Only then did they get a clear view of the entire rooftop—two helicopters were parked there!
A chill ran down their spines as they celebrated inwardly. ’Thank god we weren’t stupid enough to fight them head-on. We wouldn’t have even known what hit us!’
Meanwhile, Luna Dawson’s group had already formed a circle. The outer ring was responsible for fending off the swarm, while the inner ring wasn’t idle either.
Grandpa Olson wielded a machete with surprising skill, his eyes bright as he muttered, "Come on, you little bastards! Watch me work!"
Whenever a cockroach breached their defenses, he would bring his blade down with a single, clean strike.
Mrs. Dawson was just as decisive. Wielding her own machete, she followed right behind him. Any cockroach that poked its head through was instantly cleaved in two. "Wendy! Hector!" she called out crisply. "Pay attention! You take care of any that get past us!"
Rhonda Dawson and Hector, bayonets in hand and their eyes determined, replied in unison, "We know!"
If any slipped through, the two of them would immediately deliver the finishing blow, showing no signs of fear.
Everyone knew. This was the apocalypse.
Like the cockroaches, all they wanted was to survive. They would face situations like this again and again. They couldn’t retreat; there was nowhere left to run.
Wayne Dawson guarded Hector and his mother. A flame flickered at his fingertip, and a small fire serpent shot out, instantly roasting a few cockroaches that had slipped through. They fell to the ground as charred lumps with a soft CLATTER.
"Don’t worry. With me here, not many will get through."
Miles Dawson, however, looked utterly disgusted, his skin crawling. "Holy crap, these cockroaches are disgusting!" he complained, all while blasting them with a flamethrower that HISSed continuously.
Despite his complaints, his hands never stopped moving. He conjured Fireballs and hurled them at the edge of the rooftop, desperately slowing the cockroaches’ advance.
Luna Dawson kept her flamethrower going while simultaneously extending her spiritual power like a radar, locking onto every last cockroach that made it through the wall of fire. She rapidly formed tiny Water Blades at her fingertips, shooting them down with a few precise SWISHES.
A glance downward made her gasp. ’Have all the mutated cockroaches in the city come for us? The more we kill, the more of them there are!’
In the distance, mutated plants continued to topple over, clearly being steamrolled by the cockroach swarm.
’It’s a good thing we stocked up on flamethrowers and incendiary bombs. If we were relying on superpowers alone, we’d all be dead today!’
Aaron Palmer also sensed something was off. He quickly adjusted his flamethrower, widening the spray of fire and increasing its intensity.
He shouted, "I’m widening the flame to plug the gaps! But this scorched smell... it’s gonna make me puke!"
The scorched smell in the air grew stronger. Blake Blue held up his nearly-empty flamethrower and said urgently, "This war of attrition is a bad idea! It’s like these cockroaches are endless!"
Kevin Keane immediately made a decision. His tone was sharp and decisive. "Old Man Forrest! Leo! You two take one of the helicopters and drop incendiaries on them. Completely break their formation!"
"Right!"
Lynn Shelby and Aaron Palmer shouted in unison and sprinted toward the helicopter.
A moment later, the helicopter’s rotors began to WHIR. Loaded with incendiary bombs, it slowly rose into the air and headed toward the cockroach swarm below.
Meanwhile, Kevin Keane raised his hand and launched a Thunder Net into the distance. An entire patch of cockroaches was instantly charred black, their movements ceasing.
For a moment, a dazzling array of superpowers flew about the rooftop.
The helicopter flew low, hugging the perimeter of the building from a few dozen meters out, dropping one incendiary bomb after another.
With a WHOOM, flames shot into the sky. A huge swath of cockroaches was engulfed in the inferno. Their forward momentum was finally suppressed, and a large portion of the zombie horde below was incinerated as well.
Luna Dawson cursed under her breath. ’It’s a good thing Kevin Keane’s group of four has a well-stocked arsenal. Otherwise, at the rate we’re using these incendiaries, we would’ve run out long ago!’
While they had managed to suppress the cockroach swarm, the roar of the helicopter had also attracted countless zombies. The hisses and roars of the horde mingled with the SKITTERING of insect legs and the grotesque sound of zombies chewing on cockroaches. The cacophony grated on everyone’s nerves.
It felt like they had one foot in a zombie’s mouth. Every one of them was on edge, their nerves stretched taut.
Everyone looked into the distance. It wasn’t just their building that was surrounded by a raging inferno. More than twenty separate fires were burning from the city center to the suburbs, a dense constellation of flames that turned half the sky crimson.
"Holy crap! What is that?!" Miles Dawson pointed into the distance, his voice filled with shock. "I hear planes, too!"
No sooner had he spoken than several WHOOSHES tore through the air. They could faintly make out fighter jets streaking across the skyline. Immediately after, a series of distant BOOMS echoed, making the ground tremble slightly.