Rim of the Earth

Chapter 1: "Kaplan Kain"

*The City of Vulcan*
Three Days before Kaplan's promotion...

Sirens. Screams. Gunfire.
Many things could be heard lingering on the echoes booming down city streets and back alley streets.
Civilians were retreating in wide-spread panic, the dead were launching their first attack against the living.
The air was choked by smoke, and fire guarded most of the exits from the city.
Tactical Support and Rescue troops were holding the front line in the center of Vulcan, a division in the military given authority to use special weapons and advanced tech to effectively maintain control and safety in high-danger environments.
They were called TSR Troops for short.
Two choppers landed in the expanse of a courtyard where the backup was badly needed.
Bodies of fallen TSR troops littered the pavement left and right.
Scattered between the bodies were broken limbs and corpses of the dead.
Most of the dead lacked the physical stability and morality of living humans, but stronger dead were extremely intelligent and went after key military bases holding advanced armor and weapons.
They geared up and ruled over the dead like chieftains.
Kaplan's leader at the time, a man named Joseph Kron, was finishing the debrief on the situation just outside.
TSR units were to engage all hostile targets human and otherwise.
Civilian lives were the TSR's primary objective.
And any remarkable tech was to be recovered as a secondary objective.
When the debrief ended, the soldiers cocked weapons and ran out into the courtyard in two single file lines from each chopper.
One of the soldiers clustered with the rest, was Kaplan Kain.
Kaplan was a man of silence, and only spoke when spoken to.
He excelled in combat training and double majored in Advanced Maintainence and Psychology.
He can fix most damages and strike out problems between his squadmates.
Aiming over the shoulder of his friend Ghili, Kaplan covered him as TSR forces walked out into the open street swarmed by fleeing civilians.
Kron issued the first command over the screams that reverberated from the walls.

"Alright troops, we're here to save civies and establish control. Alpha, you're on me. Bravo, see if you can't barricade the street with a couple vehicles. Charlie, you're on the rooftops. Give us some cover fire. If things go red, we regroup at the city hall. Move out!"

Kaplan and Ghili were assigned to charlie team, with three others.
Eric. Hoss. And Kimberly.
Alpha moved down the street to clear while Bravo set up roadblocks to block the enemies' routes.
Charlie circled around to the back of a grocery store and climbed the ladder to the top.
As they were regrouping topside, their radios began ringing off the hook and gunfire spilled out into the street.

"All teams, hostile engagement on alpha, requesting fire support!"

Eric and Kimberly ran to the corner of the roof and set up their designated marksman rifles before taking shots at the running zombies climbing over the barricades.
Kaplan and Ghili were the snipers of charlie, and carried bolt action rifles capable of piercing light armor vehicles.
They set up position at the other corner and glanced down the advanced ACOG sights of their rifles.
Hoss set up next to them with an ammo bag and enough C4 to level the entire city.
Alpha held their ground against the zombies, as bullet casings rang across the broken pavement.
Bravo team was using a couple of riot shields to push back the wall of zombies quickly filling the street, but were being knocked back.
Ghili and Kaplan prioritized their targets and simultaneously shot the gas tank of two cars, blasting a wide range of zombies to pieces.
The two laughed and bumped knuckles before looking through their scopes and quickshotting zombies before they could stand. Kimberly and Eric were quickly tearing up the outter edge of zombies, while Hoss used his toolkit to make a potent explosive they could use in the street or to knock down a heavy wall.
Bravo began to panic, two of their riot shields went down and the whole line broke.
Zombies tackled Bravo to the ground and tore them apart in seconds.
Their hopeless screams filled the street, and Alpha was forced to retreat while avoiding fire from the burning cars.
Joseph gave the second order.

"Bravo's down, time to move back! Charlie, plan B. Regroup at town hall. There's too many zombies to get over to you so we'll take the alley. There's a winding path that should take you there the long way. Good luck soldiers."

"Yes Sir, Charlie's moving out."
Eric acknowledged.

Charlie quickly slid down the ladder and quickly moved down the route they were given. Zombies began dropping out from the windows around them and chasing them.
Hoss covered their six with a shotgun, running backwards in between shots fired with the gear bag on his shoulder.
Eric and Kimberly switched their DMRs to burst fire and then cleared the forward path in a hurry.
While moving forward, two zombies busted a door open which hit ghili and knocked him down.
He used the door as a shield while Kaplan blasted the zombies.
The wind begun to pick up, and a high pitched sound echoed through the air that the teams could not recognize, but they sensed danger.
The street ahead was covered in slow zombies, but looking behind them was an alley overflowing with hungry, fast running zombies.
Kaplan led the charge and dashed across the street, the others covered him.

"We've gotta shake these freaks. We're not gonna be able to assist TSR if we're on the run like this the whole time. We'll lose them through that hotel, we'll meet up on the second floor and rapple down the back. Keep up, there's no room for error people."
Kaplan strategised and everyone agreed in "yes sir's".

The team changed their running trajectory and Ghili kicked in the front door and his team ran inside.
He closed the door and grabbed his machete, sliding it into the doorhandles.
The zombies began crashing into the door in a crowd, it began to stretch inward about to burst.
"Move, MOVE!!" Ghili shouted, and the team took the stairs to get to the second floor.
No sooner had they disappeared upstairs, the machete bust in two and flew out to the sides and zombies began to shriek into the hotel.
Eric ran to the end of the hall and cleared a room, then got his team in it and closed the door.
Kaplan opened the window and began setting up a rappling hook, which gave soldiers the ability to climb out of buildings and safely slide to the ground via cables.
The zombies made loud footsteps that were coming quick.
Eric went first.
Ghili followed him.
Hoss went next, and then Kaplan got ready to rapple down.
The door burst open, and zombies filled the room.
Kimberly screamed and opened fire, Kaplan was knocked from the window by the other zombies and fell several feet before the cable caught him and his weight smacked his head against the stone wall.
Just then a military chopper was being overrun by infected marines and was spinning out of control.
It crashed against the hotel with an explosive boom which pulled Kaplan into a spin, and then caught some of his weight before dropping him many feet to the ground with a loud thud, leaving him dazed and looking up at the window.
Kimberly hung out of the window half way, screaming for her men not to leave her while she used her gun to hold zombies off her.
Her words were interrupted by a zombie tearing her throat out and then the creatures yanked her body back through the window, giving up the chase on Charlie.
Eric began to run back to the hotel in panic but Ghili stopped him.

"We gotta go back for her, we can't just leave her in there!"

"Eric stop it! Decisions like that will get us all killed, she's dead do you understand me? She's gone man.."
Ghili said, shaking eric to his senses.

Eric and Hoss remained silent, while Ghili helped Kaplan to his feet and looked for any injuries.
Kaplan had hit the ground and his head pretty hard, but didn't break any bones.
With no zombies chasing them, Kaplan recommended silencers to fit the situation.
So everyone screwed silencers to the barrel of their guns.
Hoss noticed eric's shakey hands, and reminded him where he comes from.
And that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.
Kaplan took the lead and just across the road at the end of the alley was a strange structure being overtaken by a living vine system covered in bloody flowers.
Inside, they could possibly find advanced tech that could change where they stand in the battle.
Kaplan charged into the building and charlie followed.
But within the tower, something very bad would happen that would change Kaplan's heart at its core.
Though no one dared say it, all four had a gut feeling that something bad was going to happen in there.. but the town hall was just two blocks behind the tower.
If they could survive, they could effectively cut the time of their rendezvous with alpha team in half by shooting their way through the infested tower halls.