Spitter

The soldiers on the high wall erupted into cheers as they watched the missiles launch. For most, nuclear weapons were little more than a concept—an abstract force of destruction they didn't fully understand. Amid the celebration, however, a few began to feel uneasy. "Where are those missiles targeting?" Scott shouted, his voice trembling. His expression was one of pure horror—greater even than when he faced the tide of millions of zombies earlier.

As the commander of the city's defenses, Scott knew what nuclear weapons were capable of. If one was detonated too close to the base, it wouldn't matter how many zombies were killed—everyone in Washington DC would perish. "Go! Find out where they're targeting!" he barked.

A squad of soldiers, nervous but determined, broke into the control room, braving the blood-soaked carnage within. What they found chilled them to the bone: a room filled with mutilated corpses, blood pooling on the floor, and a satellite map displaying flashing red markers. The scene was transmitted back to Scott. For a moment, he froze, staring at the red icons. Then, after a few seconds of silence, he laughed hysterically, relief washing over his face. "Haha! We're safe! The targets are hundreds of kilometers away!"

The yield of the nuclear bombs wasn't particularly high, and at that distance, the base was out of immediate danger. Radiation clouds would take time to drift over—if they reached the base at all. "Wait… hundreds of kilometers?" Scott's face suddenly turned pale as a horrifying realization struck him. Whoever took control of the nuclear missiles wouldn't waste them on empty land. If the targets were hundreds of kilometers away, it could only mean one thing. "The zombie tide stretches for hundreds of kilometers!?" he screamed, finally grasping the true scale of the threat they faced.

On the battlefield, Zack didn't waste time after issuing the command to launch the missiles. "Ego, how long until the Avalon arrives?" Zack asked.

"Three minutes, sir," Ego replied.

"Good. I'll bring the Fearless Warriors back. Let the mechanical beasts hold the line for three minutes," Zack ordered.

The seven Fearless Warriors, drenched in blood but unbroken, began to fight their way out of the horde. Their once-pristine armor was now coated in gore, making them look as though they had emerged straight from the depths of hell. Yet, not a single one had fallen. As they retreated, the mechanical dogs and Spiders surged forward, their melee units taking up the fight. The two Goliath, having emptied their second ammunition chains, lay down once again, unfolding their electromagnetic railguns and carving through the tide with line after line of devastation.

Even so, the endless wave of zombies pressed on, threatening to overwhelm the defenses. "I'll hold them off!" Erza shouted, flames already dancing at her fingertips.

"Air support will arrive in two minutes and thirty seconds," Zack replied tersely before activating his thrusters and soaring toward the rear of the horde.

Lillian joined the retreating Fearless Warriors, guiding them onto the Aegis, which took off to follow Zack. Mid-flight, Ava and her unmanned armors joined the formation.

As Zack led the charge, Ego's voice rang out. "Sir, be careful!" Before Zack could respond, a blinding white light erupted on the horizon. A dozen mushroom clouds rose in unison, their fiery brilliance momentarily turning night into day. The nuclear bombs had detonated.

For a moment, Zack was struck by the sheer magnitude of the explosions. This wasn't the controlled devastation of cloud bombs or missiles—this was destruction on a godlike scale. It was as if a dozen suns had descended to Earth. "Check the radiation shielding!" Zack shouted into the comms.

"All systems functional," Lillian replied.

"Shielding intact," Ava added calmly.

"Perfect condition," the Fearless Warriors said in eerie unison.

BOOM—!

The sound of the nuclear explosions reached them long after the initial light, a deafening roar that shook the air itself. The infrasound and ultrasonic waves rippled through every frequency, followed by a hurricane-force blast. Even though Zack's team was well outside the primary blast radius, they still felt the impact as a physical force. Inside the true zone of destruction, the effects were apocalyptic. Millions of zombies, along with vehicles, buildings, and every trace of the landscape, were obliterated. The ground was gouged out into a dozen craters, each several kilometers wide. Shockwaves sent waves of earth and debris crashing outward, leveling everything in their path.

When Zack and his team finally entered the nuclear zone, the destruction had settled, but the towering mushroom clouds remained—a grim testament to the devastation. Even hundreds of kilometers away, civilians could see the clouds rising into the stratosphere. "Stay clear of the dust clouds," Zack instructed, carefully navigating around the fallout zones.

Despite the power of the nuclear strikes, their impact was limited. The dozen bombs had wiped out tens of millions of zombies, but this was only a fraction of the overall horde. What remained of the tide was still massive, though now divided into smaller groups of a million each by the lingering mushroom clouds. "Divide and conquer," Zack muttered, a faint smile playing on his lips. "The wisdom of our ancestors." With that, he dove toward one of the divided hordes, where the suspected leader of a million-strong zombie wave awaited.

As Zack dived toward the horde, thousands of mutated zombies with swollen, toad-like jaws turned their heads skyward, as if sensing his presence. "Tch they again? Spitter…" Zack muttered, immediately recognizing the peculiar zombies. These were the same long-range attackers he had encountered while testing the cloud bombs, their primary weapon being bursts of compressed air shot with cannon-like force.

But something felt off. "This isn't just compressed air…" Zack realized, his sharp eyes catching the unnatural way the Spitter zombies' jaws swelled like overinflated balloons. Suddenly, the S dropped to the ground, their distended chins inflating rapidly. Moments later, thousands of them opened their mouths simultaneously.

Boom! 

The sound of compressed air rupturing filled the battlefield as black spikes shot from their gaping maws. These weren't the harmless air bursts Zack had encountered before. Each spike was a sharpened bone spur, its pointed tip designed to pierce and kill. At the tail, squid-like appendages flared outward, stabilizing the projectiles mid-flight. "What's the point of zombie evolution?" Zack muttered, baffled by this adaptation. But there was no time to ponder.