More than a thousand soldiers stood shoulder to shoulder before the reinforced perimeter of the underground bunker.
Nobody spoke.
Nobody joked.
Even the veterans, men and women who had survived months of fighting against creatures once thought impossible, kept their eyes fixed on the horizon.
Rows of sandbags stretched for hundreds of meters, reinforced with concrete barriers, steel hedgehogs and armored vehicles positioned at carefully calculated intervals. Heavy machine-gun nests overlooked every possible approach while mobile anti-air missile systems had been repurposed as anti-personnel launchers. Self-propelled artillery waited several kilometers behind the frontline, already locked onto coordinates transmitted by reconnaissance drones circling high overhead.
Missile trucks lined the rear.
Rocket batteries stood ready.
Mortar crews waited with shells already loaded.
