Gamma Nine (Book One) Read Free Page B

new armour like beacons to those around them. Bodies
of the enemy were heaped up around the areas were Titans were
locked in combat with the Beast. They had little difficulty in
dispatching the human-sized infected, bigger and bulkier infected
were downed by squads working as one. None fell during the first
few hours of the Battle for Arkelis, and slowly but surely they
were proving that they could be our saviours. Kill counts and
reports flooded the battlefield networks all confirming one thing,
that the count of enemy dead was in the thousands and climbing all
the time. Soldiers fighting with the Titans witnessed acts of great
valour on the battlefield. The tide had finally started to turn in
favour of the humans fighting on Arkelis. Within a few hours they
had the Beast on the back foot and reeling from their surprise
assault. Already they were becoming legends.
    One squad in
particular fought tirelessly to break the back of the beasts they
faced. They protected the soldiers around them with fervour, not
letting one single soldier die while they still drew breath. The
officers and soldiers that fought in close proximity to this
particular squad all reported the same thing. A snarling white
wolf, painted on the upper arm of every member of this squad, could
be seen blazing as they fought. These Titans fought in silent
tandem as they obliterated everything around them, pushing the
beast further back as they were cut down by bullet and blade. They
had fought hard and had pierced deep into the Beast’s lines,
eventually reaching a plateau overlooking the battle lines. From
the elevated plateau they had the perfect vantage point of the
surrounding areas. It was there that the legend of the Grim Wolves
was forged in blood and courage.
    The Grim
Wolves, their name bestowed upon them by the survivors of Arkelis,
rallied all of the soldiers around them to their new vantage point.
They fought off wave after wave of Beast assaults, their elevation
making them a prime focal point for the enemy’s wrath. The dead
piled up as the Titans fought on, normal soldiers were dying as the
Grim Wolves could not protect all of them while trying to keep the
monsters from overrunning their position. Dead soldiers and Beast
alike heaped up on all sides, yet they fought on. The Grim Wolves
were reaping the mutated lives of the infected as easy as
smothering a candle’s flame, their kill count now lost in the fury
of battle. When their ammunition was no more they fought with
blades, when their blades were broken they fought with their
armoured hands.
    They lost all
sense of time as they fought the enemy, not realizing that the
battle around them had begun to wind down. They never heard the
scream that had spread through the Beast horde signalling the time
to turn and run. Other squads were now converging on their position
as well, squads that were able to move more freely now that the
Beast was in retreat. The Beast had been broken by our new weapon.
By the time the surrounding Titans had reached the top of the
plateau eight of the Grim Wolves still stood, one knelt and another
had fallen. Silence gripped the squads that found them, as the dust
settled the true carnage that the Grim Wolves had inflicted became
clear. The height of the plateau had been raised by a dozen or more
feet, the dead forever tangled together to form a new mountain peak
on the continent of Evodus.
    For eleven
hours they had fought without pause, without rest. From the moment
they had deployed, they had slaughtered their way through the Beast
horde, killing thousands in their path to victory. Of over the two
thousand Titans that fought during the battle on Arkelis, only
three hundred had fallen, with half of that injured or
incapacitated. Deaths recorded by regular military units were
deemed within acceptable levels by military command. The number of
soldiers that lost their lives on Arkelis was never released, it
was rumoured to be close to four million lives spent defending