ATPnovel Chapter 217: Chokepoints
Chapter 217: Chokepoints
Another army of infected was already on the way.
Inside Basa Air Base’s command center, the atmosphere had become grim.
The first wave was still fighting.
Thousands of soldiers remained engaged across Pampanga.
Aircraft were still dropping bombs.
Artillery was still firing.
The AC-130 was still orbiting.
The B-1 was still conducting strike runs.
And yet another wave was coming.
A larger one.
Potentially much larger.
The tactical display continued updating.
Red markers spread across the map.
Roads.
Highways.
Provincial routes.
Bridges.
Every possible approach toward Basa Air Base.
The infected were using all of them.
Adrian stood silently in front of the main display.
Several analysts waited nearby.
Ryan crossed his arms.
Nobody spoke.
Then Adrian finally pointed toward the map.
"Stop targeting the infected."
The room blinked.
Several officers exchanged confused looks.
One analyst frowned.
"Sir?"
Adrian pointed toward the road network.
"The infected don’t care about destroyed towns."
"The infected don’t care about casualties."
"The infected don’t care about losing a hundred thousand."
His finger moved across the map.
"But they still follow terrain."
That immediately caught the attention of several officers.
The operations chief stepped closer.
Adrian continued.
"They’re using highways."
"They’re using bridges."
"They’re using river crossings."
"They’re using elevated roads."
Ryan’s eyes widened slightly.
Then he understood.
"Oh."
The operations officer understood too.
The map suddenly looked different.
The infected weren’t moving randomly.
They were funneling.
Following infrastructure.
Following routes built for vehicles.
Built for people.
Built for civilization.
Adrian looked toward the air operations section.
"I want every major approach toward Pampanga identified."
The officers immediately began working.
Satellite imagery appeared.
Drone feeds updated.
Road networks highlighted across the tactical display.
Soon dozens of chokepoints appeared.
Bridges.
Overpasses.
Expressways.
Causeways.
River crossings.
The operations officer looked up.
"Sir."
Adrian nodded.
"How many?"
The officer stared at the screen.
"Twenty-three major chokepoints."
Ryan smiled.
"That’s a lot easier than killing a few million zombies."
Nobody laughed.
But he wasn’t wrong.
The analysts immediately began marking priorities.
Several roads stood out immediately.
The North Luzon Expressway.
Major provincial highways.
Critical bridge crossings.
The old expressway interchanges.
Destroy those.
And movement slowed dramatically.
The operations chief looked toward Adrian.
"You want to collapse the road network."
"Exactly."
The answer came immediately.
The room finally felt something resembling optimism.
Not victory.
Not even confidence.
But a plan.
And right now that mattered.
A lot.
Thirty minutes later.
The orders began spreading.
Aircraft already in the air received updated mission profiles.
Bombing priorities shifted.
The objective was no longer simply killing infected.
The objective was shaping the battlefield.
Controlling movement.
Creating delays.
Forcing bottlenecks.
Making the infected easier to destroy.
Far above Central Luzon, Viper Lead received the update.
The pilot looked over the new target package.
Then smiled.
"Now that’s interesting."
His wingman answered.
"What do we have?"
"Bridge demolition."
The fighter rolled slightly.
The targeting pod locked onto a major river crossing north of Tarlac.
The bridge stretched nearly two hundred meters.
And right now—
It was packed.
Thousands of infected covered the entire structure.
Moving south.
The pilot stared.
Then laughed.
"Perfect."
Target lock confirmed.
The fighter descended.
The bridge filled the targeting display.
Weapon selected.
GBU-31.
Two-thousand-pound JDAM.
The pilot released.
The bomb separated cleanly.
Then the aircraft climbed away.
Several seconds passed.
Then—
BOOOOOOOOM.
The bridge disappeared.
A massive fireball erupted from the center span.
Concrete exploded upward.
Steel beams twisted apart.
The entire structure folded into the river below.
Thousands of infected vanished instantly.
The survivors plunged into the water.
The crossing ceased to exist.
The pilot watched the destruction through the targeting pod.
The river immediately became filled with bodies.
Debris.
Wreckage.
Chaos.
The horde stopped moving.
Not permanently.
But enough.
Exactly what command wanted.
Farther north.
Another pair of fighters targeted an expressway overpass.
The elevated structure connected multiple highways.
Destroy it.
And several routes vanished simultaneously.
The lead pilot lined up carefully.
Target lock.
Weapon release.
Moments later.
The overpass ceased to exist.
Hundreds of tons of concrete collapsed onto the roadway beneath.
The resulting landslide buried thousands of infected.
More importantly—
It blocked traffic.
The horde split apart.
Movement slowed.
Drone operators immediately noticed.
One analyst inside the command center pointed toward the display.
"Look at that."
The infected formation began bunching together.
Congestion appeared.
Movement slowed dramatically.
Entire sections of the horde became trapped behind rubble.
Ryan nodded.
"Now we’re talking."
Meanwhile.
The B-1 Lancer received a new mission.
Not horde suppression.
Infrastructure interdiction.
The bomber’s targeting package contained multiple highway junctions.
Major intersections.
Strategic bottlenecks.
The pilot reviewed the targets.
Then whistled softly.
"They want to break the entire transportation network."
The weapons officer nodded.
"Looks like it."
The bomber approached the first target.
An abandoned interchange north of Pampanga.
Several highways merged there.
And unfortunately—
So did the infected.
The thermal display looked absurd.
Tens of thousands occupied the roads.
The pilot armed the payload.
The weapons officer confirmed.
"Ready."
The bomber crossed the release line.
Then unleashed destruction.
Dozens of precision-guided bombs fell simultaneously.
The interchange disappeared beneath overlapping explosions.
Support columns shattered.
Road sections collapsed.
Entire ramps folded inward.
The massive transportation hub transformed into a mountain of concrete.
Thousands of infected disappeared beneath the collapse.
The survivors became trapped.
Bunched together.
Perfect artillery targets.
Back inside the command center, several officers watched the strike live.
The operations chief smiled slightly.
For the first time all night.
"That’s going to buy us time."
Adrian nodded.
Time.
That was the objective now.
Not victory.
Time.
Every destroyed bridge bought time.
Every collapsed highway bought time.
Every blocked road bought time.
And time allowed aircraft to strike.
Artillery to reload.
Soldiers to rest.
Defenses to prepare.
Near San Fernando.
Staff Sergeant Javier Cruz watched another bridge collapse in the distance.
The explosion illuminated the horizon.
Several soldiers looked up.
"What was that?"
Javier checked his radio.
Then smiled.
"Command’s destroying the roads."
The machine gunner beside him blinked.
"...Can they do that?"
"They just did."
Another distant explosion rolled across the countryside.
Then another.
And another.
Entire sections of infrastructure vanished beneath precision strikes.
The infected continued advancing.
But not as quickly.
Not as smoothly.
Not as efficiently.
For the first time that night, the horde began losing momentum.
The effects appeared gradually.
Small at first.
Then larger.
Road congestion.
Massive traffic jams made entirely of infected.
Destroyed bridges forcing reroutes.
Collapsed highways creating bottlenecks.
The infected weren’t intelligent enough individually to solve the problem.
They simply piled up.
Thousands behind thousands.
Hundreds of thousands behind them.
Creating enormous concentrations.
Concentrations that drones immediately marked.
And artillery immediately targeted.
Far away, another HIMARS battery received coordinates.
The commander looked at the target.
Then laughed.
The infected had become trapped inside a collapsed interchange.
Nearly fifty thousand packed together.
Unable to move efficiently.
The perfect target.
The launcher elevated.
Coordinates locked.
The command arrived.
"Fire."
The rockets launched.
And somewhere in the darkness—
Another section of the horde disappeared beneath fire.
But even as roads collapsed.
Even as bridges vanished.
Even as bombers reshaped entire provinces—
Recon drones continued tracking movement farther north.
Farther south.
Beyond the battlefield.
Beyond the fires.
Beyond the destruction.
The next wave was still coming.
And command knew something unsettling.
They could destroy roads.
They could destroy bridges.
They could destroy highways.
But eventually—
The infected would simply walk around them.