Weapon System in Zombie Apocalypse-Chapter 260: New Directive

The air inside the command center was unusually still.

No alarms. No urgent calls. Just quiet movements—boots over tile, fingers on keys, tired eyes scanning monitors for patterns that no longer mattered. Thomas Estaris stood at the center of the operations floor, arms behind his back, watching as Keplar finalized the targeting grid. The Bloom perimeter in southern Luzon was lit up in red.

"We're ready," Keplar said. "All targeting data confirmed. Fire mission can be authorized on your mark."

Thomas gave a curt nod. "Execute."

Far across the archipelago, five precision cruise missiles launched from naval silos stationed in Subic. Four more followed from aerial platforms—stealth-capable drones that had been silent until now. No fanfare. No speeches. Just the quiet hum of death.

They weren't nuclear.

But they didn't need to be.

Thermobaric penetrators, each designed to collapse and ignite air into fire, rained down across the known Bloom sites: Iriga, Echo-5, the geothermal ruins, the singing forest above Fort Calinog. Dozens of nodes—no longer growing, no longer singing—were reduced to molten craters and ash.

Phillip watched from the side screen, expression unreadable.

Sato entered moments later, tablet in hand. "Contact lost with the Singer."

"You mean it died?" Thomas asked.

"No," he said. "I mean it just stopped. The waveform flatlined. No cry, no twitch. The song just... ended."

Keplar turned from the main screen. "We're not getting any neural echoes either. Not even feedback loops."

Phillip crossed his arms. "So it's gone?"

Thomas looked around the room. "No. But it's forgotten."

Same Time — Fort Calinog, Northern Ridge

The sky glowed orange on the horizon. Dust settled over the treeline where the largest Bloom node had once stood. The forest looked... normal. No fungal growth. No towering stalks. No mouth-shaped wounds in the hills.

Just silence.

Lira Morales stood near the observation platform, eyes on the clearing.

"It's quiet," said one of the rangers beside her. "Too quiet."

"Enjoy it," she replied. "We won't get many days like this."

A light rain began to fall—soft, cool, untainted. It smelled like soil and pine.

For the first time in weeks, Lira lowered her rifle. frёewebnoѵēl.com

Same Day — MOA Complex, Deep Analysis Chamber

The cryo tank was drained.

The Singer's body had been incinerated—protocol demanded it. Nothing organic was to be kept. Nothing recorded. No song samples. No genetic materials. Not even images. Thomas made sure of it.

The logs were wiped clean.

The data cores from PHARMAX-21 were melted down with plasma cutters. Sato personally oversaw it. Cruz didn't speak for hours afterward. He just sat with a cup of black coffee and stared at the empty shell of the server rack.

"Some knowledge," he muttered once, "should stay buried."

Thomas agreed.

In the end, they didn't broadcast what they'd found. Not to other enclaves. Not to international survivors. Not even to internal science divisions outside Tier Zero. The name "Bloom" was purged from Overwatch's internal files. Replaced by nothing.

A silence in the database.

Like it never happened.

June 15, 2025 — Luzon, Eastern Corridor Roadway

Three JLTVs rumbled along the repaired asphalt leading toward the coast. Workers were already clearing paths for the next phase of reconstruction. No one mentioned the forest that used to be alive. No one asked why Overwatch surveillance drones never flew north anymore.

A child in the back of one of the transports asked her mother why the trees seemed thinner here.

The mother smiled and said, "Storms, maybe."

No one corrected her.

June 16, 2025 — MOA Complex, Private Quarters

Thomas sat in his dim office, the lights off, fingers steepled as he stared at a black terminal screen.

Nothing played. No alerts. No system pings.

Just a blank slate.

Phillip entered quietly. "The region's secure. Patrols are on standby. Agricultural zones are being rechecked."

Thomas nodded slowly.

Phillip didn't leave.

Eventually, Thomas asked, "Do you think we made a mistake?"

Phillip shrugged. "We ended something that didn't belong in our world. That's not a mistake."

"But we didn't understand it."

"No," Phillip agreed. "And that's why we had to destroy it."

Thomas stood, walked to the window, and looked out over the city.

Children were playing again in the MOA courtyard. Merchants were setting up shops. Power lines hummed. Order—fragile and fleeting—was holding.

"It's over," he said.

Phillip didn't respond. He didn't need to.

Three Weeks Later — Outside Mindoro, 48 Kilometers Offshore

In the depths of the South China Sea, a salvage drone deployed by a Korean deep-sea research team pinged an anomaly beneath a sunken freighter.

It found a root. Hardened. Fossilized. Silent.

It glowed—only faintly.

No one retrieved it.

No one marked the coordinates.

Just an image, later deleted, with a note:

"Unusual formation. No movement."

Epilogue: Internal Memo, Overwatch Tier Zero – Not for Distribution

Status: Bloom Entity – Decommissioned.

Directive: Memory Protocol 01-A. Full Wipe. All Related Terms (Bloom, Singers, Mouth Variant) removed from operational vocabulary. Research threads terminated.

Public Narrative: Localized mycotoxin bloom neutralized in Fort Calinog sector. Biological risk negligible.

Priority Moving Forward:

Focus on civilian recovery and power grid stabilization.

Renew contact with remaining Visayas and Mindanao enclaves.

Prepare for monsoon rotation and potential flooding risks.

Archive closed. Do not reopen.

– End of Directive –

Two Months Later — Somewhere Beneath Metro Manila

It was dark.

Not the kind of darkness that came from lack of light—but the kind born from depth, from age, from something ancient and buried that should've stayed that way.

A tremor rippled faintly through the forgotten tunnels below the capital—an old section of subway never completed, left abandoned when the first outbreak swept through. Dust hung in the stale air, unmoved for years. Rodents had long since fled.

Something shifted.

Not violently. Not abruptly.

Just a slow swell. A breath in reverse.

Beneath the collapsed concrete, a patch of fungal matter—greyed, cracked, barely alive—twitched.

Then stopped.

And for a long time, nothing happened.

Until a single droplet of condensation fell from the ceiling and struck the mycelium below.

It shimmered.

Softly. Faintly.

And the root stirred once more.

Same Time — MOA Complex, East Wing Nursery

A baby girl wailed in one of the nursery cribs. The attendant on duty, a middle-aged woman named Miriam, rushed over and gently lifted the child into her arms, bouncing softly to soothe her.

"There, there," she whispered, rocking side to side.

As the infant calmed, Miriam smiled and glanced toward the other cribs.

The rest were sound asleep—except for one.

A boy, barely a month old, stared at the ceiling with glassy eyes. His tiny fingers twitched as if to a rhythm unheard by anyone else. His lips parted slightly.

And for just a moment—no more than a second—a faint hum escaped his throat.

Barely audible.

Soft.

Melodic.

Then silence returned.

And the boy closed his eyes.