Two things make a group of individuals an intimidating sight. The first is its size - the larger the army, the more powerful. They may not have good weapons or training, but they have a lot of bodies. That's what made the Soviet and Chinese armies so intimidating. The second is structure and coordination. Even a much smaller force, if it is well-trained, can be an intimidating presence in any combat scenario.

Our group was neither of those things. Now we’d added the church civilians, we lacked the numbers to keep attacks at bay, and we lacked the coordination to effectively hold off any attacks. I knew this the moment we started moving down the street away from the cathedral. The children would not shut up, no matter the hushing from mothers or stern looks from the few fathers left. It was this fact that made me realize that it wouldn't just be the elderly and infirm that would suffer the highest casualties in this new world. If the children had any say in it, and they loudly did, the losses would be near 100%.

I assumed that within several blocks, the tantalizing presence of easy targets would cause the mana-twisted population to overwhelm us. This is why I was so damned worried when not a single wight showed its face along the six blocks between the church and 6th. When we passed Washington Park, an ideal spot for a clan of killer squirrels to make their homes in the trees, I thought for certain we would have to engage with the vermin. However, the park was ominously silent.

When we reached the intersection of Madison and 6th, I looked ahead to where the street seemed to dead-end into a white wall.

"What's that?" I asked Chavez next to me.

"City Cemetery," he said shortly.

"You gotta be fucking kidding me," Andy growled. "With all the shit that's going on, we shouldn't be within a mile of a cemetery. Who knows what kind of twisted things will come out of there."

"We didn't get to pick the route," I said. "Hence, snafu."

"Damn straight," Andy said.

"At least we saved the civies," Chavez said. This is why I hate optimists. Looking on the bright side, even when the bright side was the reason you were up to your neck in the first place.

"That will mean a whole lot to the civies when their faces are eaten by some undead monster," Andy said, shooting a glance over his shoulder at the group of civilians.

We did not continue toward the white wall in the distance. We instead took a turn down 6th at the pace of a five-year-old. The only reason we could move that quickly was that the youngest children were carried by their parents, while the older children walked.

When we reached a high chain-link fence, I stopped, staring in awe. Multi-colored energy was shooting up into the air above the city. I'd never seen a super tornado in person before, but I imagined this was what it would look like from too close. Every color I'd come to associate with mana swirled in a spiral around a point about fifty yards behind the fence. I'd always thought tornadoes ripped houses and animals off the ground and threw them into the air. What was happening here was that the mana was spiraling down, diving/flying straight toward the ground. The most concerning part of it all was the darkness within the vortex. I could see black mana coursing through the other elements, feeding on them and growing.

"Forrest... what are you looking at?" Andy's voice cut into my slack-jawed musings.

"A magic tornado?" I said.

"The tornado is made of magic, or magic is creating a tornado?" Chavez asked.

All I could do was shrug. "No idea."

"Sitrep!" Hogan's voice called from behind us.

"Uncertain, Commander," I called back. "There's a magic tornado."

"Is it blocking the way?"

"Not exactly, no sir."

"Then let's get a move on. We still have a half-mile to go."

"Yes, sir!" Andy answered for me. Once the commander was back with his group, he added in a lower voice, "Keep an eye on the magic tornado. If something changes, we need to be ready to change something too."

"Yes, sir," I answered.

We did as the commander ordered, making our way along the fence. The fence itself was eight feet tall, with slender, brown panels running vertically between the links. While good for privacy, they were downright inconvenient at the moment.

"Hey Chavez, what's on the other side of this fence?" I asked.

"Just the zoo."

"You mean a place where they keep exotic and potentially dangerous animals?" I asked, keeping my face blank.

"Yeah, that's what a zoo is." The man clearly didn't understand what I was getting at.

"So when all the animals are going crazy and evolving into terrifying creatures, we just walk past the location with the most dangerous of these?"

"Oh."

"First the cemetery, then the zoo," I spat in frustration. The level of incompetence in planning the route by Commander Hogan was galling.

We continued on our path near the zoo, and the entire time I couldn't help thinking a barrel of monkeys would come leaping over the fence to overrun us.

"Relax, Forrest," Andy said. "You're too tense."

"Oh, right." I tried to do as he said, settling my shoulders even as my eyes strained for the faintest signs of movement through the chain-link fence.

My feeling of discomfort only increased as we went. Neither my eyes nor my mana sight added anything to alarm me, but the hair on the back of my neck stood on end by the time we cleared the fence and reached the zoo parking lot.

I caught the first signs of movement just moments before the guns began firing. Mutated creatures were flooding from the entrance, their numbers so tightly packed that I couldn't see the ground under them.

It was an army of monkeys, the smaller and faster primates in front, their lean bodies eating up the ground. I saw a species I couldn't recognize in the mix, some with completely black fur, while others had white fur with black only on their chest. I recognized spider monkeys, about twice the usual size, and their distinguished tails whipping through the air behind them and breaking the spell of their usually small and innocent-looking bodies. Behind them were three gorillas, lead by a silverback the width of a pickup truck. Finally, a party of chimpanzees and orangutans came. What frightened me the most was how organized the group was, keeping pace with each other in their bounding from hands to feet. Oddly enough, these, in particular, did not seem so different from what I remembered when taking my girl to the zoo. We were still too far away for me to make out any details with my mana sight, but I had no doubts that multi-colored animals were filled with dark energy.

All of these details I took in before checking the source of the gunfire. I gestured for everyone to get down and hunker behind the abandoned cars in the lot. Then I watched in fascination as the tide of primates made a mad dash across the street toward a set of buildings across the way. It was from the buildings’ windows that the bullets were flying.

"Status report," Hogan said when he joined our group, though his own team stayed a respectful distance back.

"Shots coming from that building, sir," I said, pointing to the brick-sided building. The windows were high off the ground and horizontally placed. The larger apes wouldn't be able to get through the openings, though I supposed the gorillas could simply tear the walls apart on their way through. "We also have hostiles." I pointed to the monkeys, because I’m helpful like that.

"Damn, look at the size of that thing."

I could see his eyes transfixed on the silverback as it charged across the road.

"Sir, we should help," I said.

He shook his head. "We wait."

"What?" Andy broke in.

"We wait, Lieutenant," Hogan answered. "We wait to see if the other group can hold out, then we go in. We haven't been spotted yet, so there's no point risking the lives of the civilians with us."

"Sir, that's a school," Andy said in a flat voice, which meant he was trying to keep his temper in check.

The commander did not immediately answer. Instead, he looked back at the whole group, his gaze lingering on the children and softening slightly. Finally, he said, "Take your group. I won't commit all the way. We have civilians too.” Then he added as an afterthought, “And you can only take volunteers."

"I'm in," Chavez said.

"Me too," Carter cut in as well. I hadn't heard her come over, so that surprised me.

"Then we have to go now," I said. "Let's move."

"I'll focus on the gorillas," Andy said as he followed me at a trot down the road. "My .45 has a better chance of doing serious damage over those 9 mils you all carry."

"The rest of us will focus on the chimps and orangutans in the back," I said with finality. I was grateful that no one objected. "Move!" I broke into a sprint right as we cleared the row of parked cars and rushed down the road at the back of the animal hoard.

The mass of creatures was so focused on their destination that they did not notice as we flanked them and began pouring lead into them. Despite the large size of the creatures and their increased strength and speed, our projectiles tore into them the same as any other flesh. The gorillas certainly took the most rounds to bring down, and in the end, I helped focus fire on the smallest of the three.

"You know," I said when everything was dead and unmoving, "I used to be all about saving endangered animals from going extinct. I'm wondering if we aren't the endangered ones now."

"Hello there!" a voice called from the high window of the school building. "You with the National Guard?"

"Not quite," Carter shouted back. "We're with Border Patrol. We were hoping to meet up with some of the reserves here."

"Come on around to the front. We've got some time to talk."

"Well, we killed all of them, didn't we?" I yelled.

"We got one wave, yeah. But there are four more coming."