The massive, heavy shield wall made by the Brute zombies slowly split open in the very center. The giant monsters stepped aside, creating a gap ten feet wide. "Get ready!" Kevin yelled. He drew his compound bow. He knocked a steel-tipped arrow. He aimed it directly at the gap in the shield wall. "They are going to charge!" But the monsters did not charge. A group of normal, unarmored zombies walked through the gap. They wore dirty rags. Their bodies were thin and rotting. They marched forward in two perfectly straight lines. They reached the edge of the deep, thirty-foot-wide trench that separated the forest from the Sanctuary. At the bottom of the trench, the sharp, heavy wooden spikes pointed straight up, waiting to impale anyone who fell. The zombies did not stop at the edge. They did not look down. They did not hesitate. The first two zombies marched directly off the edge of t

The massive, forty-pound iron sledgehammer swung through the freezing air. Jonah hit the first giant Brute zombie directly in the chest. The heavy iron head of the hammer crashed into the thick concrete armor worn by the monster. The concrete shattered. Gray dust exploded into the cold night. In the past, this blow would have knocked the monster backward. The monster would have fallen off the bridge of dead bodies. But the rules of the world had changed. The Brute zombie did not fall back. Instead, it stepped forward. It leaned its massive, heavy body directly into the hammer. It took the terrible damage on purpose. It trapped Jonah’s sledgehammer against its own broken chest. Jonah frowned. He tried to pull the hammer back. But before he could pull it free, the second Brute zombie moved. The second monster did not swing its weapon blindly. It stepped to Jonah’s right side. It raised its rusted steel shield

Jonah did not stop. He walked forward, his boots crushing the frozen dirt. He waded deep into the fray. He became a flawless, unstoppable engine of destruction. A fast Leaper jumped at his face. Jonah didn't even look. His System Merge gave him perfect reflexes. He flicked his wrist. The heavy sledgehammer swatted the monster out of the air like a tiny fly. The Leaper shattered into blue dust. Two zombies tried to flank him. Jonah spun the hammer in a wide circle. Both monsters were instantly crushed. He was breaking their perfect coordination. The Hive Mind could not calculate his speed. It could not predict the magical shockwaves. Jonah was winning. He was clearing the courtyard. But General Silas was not a fool. The supercomputer running the Dead Zone was incredibly fast. It analyzed the new data. It watched Jonah’s silver light. The Hive Mind adapted instantly. Jonah swung his hammer

Jonah was falling. He was a giant, silver meteor dropping out of the dark, freezing sky. The gray ash whipped past his face. The cold wind screamed in his ears. Below him, the sea of monsters waited. And in the very center of that sea stood the Conductor. The Conductor mutant was a small, fragile creature wrapped in a dirty blanket. But its head was a massive, swollen globe of clear glass. Inside that clear head, a bright white light pulsed. It was the living radio antenna. It was the brain that controlled the entire army of the dead. It received orders from General Silas miles away and sent them to the zombies. The Conductor looked up. The white light inside its head flashed rapidly in pure panic. It knew it had made a terrible mistake. It had forgotten that the giant could fly. Jonah gripped the thick wooden handle of his forty-pound sledgehammer with both hands. His arms were fused to the weapon. Glowing silver veins ran from his skin into the wood and iron. He poured every si