A couple of hours after their meeting on the carrier’s deck, Reece was chatting with Karina, Aika, and Capt. Schwarzenegger when Micah and Pasha came running up to them from the carrier’s control tower. Micah got there first but almost keeled over from running so far.

“We just got… an urgent message… from the Madagascan contingent,” gasped Micah between breaths. “It sounds like they are under attack… from the ocean and… are requesting help.”

“How far out are we?” asked the captain, concern in her voice.

“Still over two hours, ma’am,” replied Micah, having caught his breath.

“I can get a few of us there in ten minutes,” cut in Pasha. “Just give me the go-ahead.”

“Alright,” Capt. Schwarzenegger agreed quickly, knowing time was of the essence. “Feel free to grab whomever you need and go.”

“Dobře*,” answered Pasha. “As easy as falling off a log. Karina, Aika, Reece... grab Ciera, Bjorn... oh, Hank and Dmitri too, and Aspen. Have them grab their gear and meet me at the Phoenix in five. I’m launching in eight.” (*okay in Czech)

Pasha clucked his tongue twice and turned to jog back to the Phoenix and prep it for take-off. Karina and Aika zipped off to fetch the others, leaving Reece to go and change into his goddess-gifted outfit. After slipping it on, Reece could feel the power emanating from it. He felt energized as he sprinted out of the room and down the hall towards the flight deck and then on to the Phoenix. By the time he got there, Bjorn and Hank were laughing and joking as they walked up the Phoenix’s ramp together. Once aboard, Reece saw that he was the last to arrive and Pasha started raising the ramp and taking off before Reece had finished climbing to the top of it.

“Quickly find a seat,” called out Pasha from the cockpit as the Phoenix lurched forward. “Here we go.”

Reece grabbed the nearest seat and fell into it when the jet sped up. He was able to get buckled before Pasha altered course and really took off.

“I guess that’ll teach me to be the last one aboard,” he barked out to no one in particular.

Giggles and chuckles erupted from all around him, and he couldn’t help but join in with their mirth. He just shook his head as he continued to smile.

“Don’t sweat it, love,” called out Karina from her seat a couple of meters away. “By the way, you look good. I never had a chance to comment on your outfit. It looks much better than your light blue one.”

“Huh?” asked Reece, tilting his head questioningly.

Looking down, he noticed his white outfit was now a steel grey. It didn’t get past him that it was the same color as the inside of the Phoenix. And the last time she had seen him in it was above decks. Reece quickly deduced that his outfit had chameleon-like qualities. That was another nugget Reece tucked away into the back of his head.

He glanced over at Ciera as she chatted with Naeva. Her outfit was also the same steel grey color as his. He looked back over to Karina and smiled. She was dressed to kill, literally. Clad in dark green and black from the bottom of her chin to her toes, Karina was a picture of utility. A dark green ribbon had her hair tied back and her long platinum blonde hair was tied into a long braid.

“Thanks, hon,” he said, playfully keeping the fact that he was wearing the same outfit to himself. “You don’t look so bad yourself.”

Aika, who was sitting next to Karina, looked over at Reece and raised an eyebrow. Her suit was similar, but where Karina wore dark green, Aika wore a dark red. Both were dressed for business, prepared for things to get messy. Based on what they had been told by the Madagascans, things were probably going to get very messy. He almost felt sorry for the Order’s minions and lackeys. Almost.

“Hey, you both look good,” laughed Reece. “I wouldn’t want to be on either of your bad sides.”

Karina leaned over and whispered something to Aika. The vampire’s red eyes glanced briefly at Reece before quickly looking away as she chuckled at whatever Karina had said. Knowing they wouldn’t tell him what was said, even if he asked, he simply rolled his eyes at them and remained smiling. Aika leaned over and whispered something back to Karina. To her credit, Karina kept her eyes on the floor as she nodded and smiled at their little inside joke. Reece was about to protest when the jet suddenly slowed down. Pasha’s voice echoed out over the Phoenix’s internal comms system.

“We’ve arrived and we’re coming in hot,” he announced. “I see fighting on the beach. Get ready to hit the ground running.”

The jet had slowed to a near hover and the ramp started to open. Both Aika and Karina had their buckles off and had already collected their weapons by the time Reece had undone his first buckle. Aika hopped out of the Phoenix and Karina was about to follow when she noticed Reece struggling to keep up. Zipping over to him, she had him unbuckled in a flash and pointed over to his left with her spear, winking at him.

He looked where she had pointed and smiled. His twin pistols and hand-crafted sword were hanging off a cargo net. He didn’t second-guess how they had gotten there, instead opting to thank his lilitu lover. When he looked back at her, she was already gone. The others were right behind her, leaping from the ramp one after another. Taking the hint, Reece fetched his weapons. Two holsters appeared from his outfit, and he placed the guns within them. A scabbard also grew at his right hip, but he chose to keep the sword in hand.

Running to the ramp, he noticed that Pasha was hovering about two meters off the ground. Reece slid down the ramp and landed heavily in thick sand. He looked around and saw that they were on a beach that stretched in both directions for as far as the eye could see. It was about one hundred meters wide, bridging the divide between the ocean and the jungle with a large mountain range off in the distance.

It didn’t take Reece long to locate the battle. Hordes of water-logged zombies hauled themselves out of the ocean and crawled, scurried, or limped onto the beach. A barricade made from sharpened logs and tree branches ran the entire length of the beach which the undead simply threw themselves against. The barrier had already failed in a couple of places, zombies climbing over each other to get through the gaps. All had been efficiently dispatched; a quivering pile of bodies that reached to the top of the barricade. More zombies climbed over the pile, whether out of hunger or a need to follow orders, Reece could only guess. Aspen stood in the nearest gap and skewered any zombie that got within a couple of meters of breaching the defensive perimeter.

A ragtag line of defenders stood behind the barrier and dispatched the zombies with machetes, heirloom spears, bows, and guns. Reece noticed a pair of behemoth zombies that must have been dispatched earlier by the defenders, but the victory had cost them. Numerous humans lay dead or dying across the sand, all the splattered blood around and beneath their corpses showing that they were freshly killed. The fresh horror stood in stark contrast to the zombies whose blood had long ago bled out or coagulated. Their unmoving husks were a welcome sight. Reece sneered while his gaze moved on.

Karina and Aika were working as a unit to take down a behemoth that had recently risen from the sea. They worked together like they had been doing it for years. Reece watched as Karina turned her spear sideways, level with the ground, and Aika jumped aboard the flat of the blade. The view was almost comical since Karina was smaller than Aika.

With a mighty feminine grunt, Karina hefted her spear and launched Aika straight at the head of the waddling behemoth. Aika hit it with both katanas. Slicing them both through its neck from either direction. As soon as she struck, she planted her feet on the thing’s chest and leaped back off, flipping through the air to land back on the beach and clear of the thing’s reach. The stubborn monster took two more lumbering steps before swaying drunkenly and falling over, the last strip of skin that attached its head to its body ripping apart. As the body slammed into the sandy beach, its head rolled back into the ocean to rest in half a meter of frothy red surf.

Meanwhile, Ciera’s knives were flying in every direction as the dark beauty flung the deadly instruments with near-magical accuracy. Zombies dropped around her by twos and threes. While she spun, let a knife fly, then lunged back to stab a zombie in the eye socket before turning and flinging the bloody blade into the forehead of another of the creatures, Reece marveled at how graceful she was. It reminded him of the way Karina fought with her spear, but the two women clearly danced to different tunes.

Where Karina seemed more like a macabre ballerina with her dance, Ciera came across as an expert stripper, exuding sexuality with each movement. Truth be told, everything that Ciera did, exuded a certain amount of sexiness. Reece couldn’t help but grin at the woman. Despite her grace and sexual appeal, she was a consummate professional. So far, not a single zombie had been able to escape her reach to get at him. He wondered if he had even needed to come on this mission. Hank’s cry answered that question for him.

“Reece... look out!” came a growly yell from behind him.

Reece turned to see Hank and Dmitri further inland, fighting off a dozen zombies that had made it past the first line of defenders. Bjorn was with them, and the massive berserker was busy rending zombie after zombie with a wicked-looking sword. A long wide blade, it had a subtle curve, making it ideal for slashes; and Bjorn was slashing through the zombie’s bodies with ruthless efficiency. Hank was pointing his massive paw towards the ocean and Reece followed his outstretched hand to the shore.

The thing that stood there made his stomach do flip-flops. The Order had obviously “upgraded” the behemoths by making them bigger and replacing their heads with that of a giant mutated shark. To say they were gangly and mishappen would be an understatement, but that just added to the horror of what they were. Reece glanced down at his sword and chuckled darkly at just how ineffective it would be. Even Karina and Aika would be hard-pressed to do much damage to the monster in a reasonable amount of time. Reece had a different weapon, though...a better weapon.