Kevin did not guess the wind. His System instantly calculated the distance, the speed of the wind, and the drop of the arrow. A tiny, glowing blue dot appeared in Kevin’s vision, showing him exactly where to aim. Kevin let go of the string. TWANG! The arrow shot through the cold air with terrifying speed. It flew over the heads of the survivors. It cut through the falling snow. THUCK! The arrow hit the running raider perfectly in the back of the knee. "GAAAAH!" the raider screamed. His leg gave out. He crashed face-first into the deep snow, unable to run another step. Kevin did not smile. He did not celebrate. He was a protector now. His hands moved in a total, beautiful blur of speed. His Agility stat made him incredibly fast. He reached over his shoulder. He pulled another arrow from his quiver. He knocked it. He pulled. He fired. TWANG! THUCK! Another raider fell to the ground, his foot pinned to the dirt by a steel-tipped arrow. TWANG! THUCK! TWANG! THUCK! Kevin rained

The raider looked up at Jonah. The yellow parasite on his neck pulsed faster. Pulse-pulse-pulse. "You think the cold is just weather," the raider whispered, his whole body shaking violently. "You think the Cryospheric Collapse just froze the trees and killed the birds. You think the pale blue ice zombies are the worst thing in the snow." The raider swallowed hard. He licked his cracked lips. "The ice zombies are just the scouts, giant," the raider explained. His voice dropped to a terrified, shaking murmur. "They are just the tiny fingers of the beast." "What beast?" Kevin asked. His one good eye was wide open. "We call it the Glacier Horde," the raider answered. The name hung in the freezing air of the concrete room. The Glacier Horde. It sounded like a myth. It sounded like an old ghost story. But the fear in the raider’s eyes was absolutely real. "We lived in a strong camp fifty miles north of here," the raider told them. Tears poured down his dirty face. "We had thick stee

The concrete room was warm, but Jonah’s heart felt like solid ice. He stared at the glowing blue map on the wall. The massive red blob was creeping slowly southward. It was eating the land. It was eighteen miles away from the ruined town, and it was moving steadily. "I need to see it," Jonah said. His deep voice cut through the quiet, fearful room. "Dad, you just saw the map," Kevin argued. The young giant stood next to the wall, his single good eye full of worry. "The System showed us the truth. The red wall is coming. We need to go down to the valley and save our friends before it hits the town." Jonah slowly shook his head. "A map is just lines and numbers, Kevin. If I am going to lead you into the path of this thing, I need to know exactly what we are running from. I need to look it in the eye." "You cannot walk eighteen miles and back in time," Lisa said. She sat in her wheelchair, pulling her thick wool blanket tighter around her crushed ribs. "The snow is too deep. You wil

Marcus frowned. The old man gripped his pipe. "But giant, you said we were the Heavy Vanguard! We made these weapons! You taught us how to shatter the ice!" "The weapons are good for the small monsters," Jonah said firmly. "But they are completely useless against what is coming." Jonah pointed his thick finger out the door, toward the North. "I saw it," Jonah said softly. His eyes stared blankly at the wall, seeing the nightmare again. "I looked through the glass. The raider did not lie." "Dad, what is it?" Kevin asked, stepping closer to his father. "Is it an army?" "It is not an army," Jonah said. He looked deeply into his son's eye. "It is a mountain." The survivors gasped. "It is a glacier," Jonah explained, his voice growing louder, forcing them to understand the sheer scale of the horror. "It is a moving wall of ice, two hundred feet high and ten miles wide. It is made of millions of frozen dead bodies glued together by the white vapor." Elena covered her mouth. "Million

A new blue box appeared in the center of Kevin’s vision. The numbers inside the box were turning bright red. [CONVOY SPEED ESTIMATE: 0.5 MILES PER HOUR.] Kevin gasped. His heart stopped beating for a second. "No," Kevin whispered. "No, that can't be right. Do the math again!" He blinked his eye, forcing the System to recalculate. But machines do not lie. The numbers did not change. [HORDE SPEED: 1.2 MPH.] [CONVOY SPEED: 0.5 MPH.] [TIME TO INTERCEPT: 72 HOURS.] [SURVIVAL PROBABILITY: 0.00%] Kevin felt a cold, terrible sickness in his stomach. The trucks were too heavy. The snow was too deep. The frozen oil in the engines made them incredibly weak. If they drove South, they would only move at half a mile per hour. They would crawl like sick turtles through the deep snow. And the Glacier Horde behind them was moving more than twice as fast. The moving mountain of ice would catch them. It would not take a week. It would take exactly three days. In three days, the massive ice