Highcross did not become silent after the Broodmother died.
Vehicle engines continued rumbling between the buildings. Soldiers called from storefronts and parking ramps, while Engineers moved through the secured roads and marked sections damaged badly enough to endanger the recovery teams.
The gunfire had stopped.
Hans remained inside the Armored Command Truck and looked through the feeds from South One and South Two.
The main avenue no longer resembled the road he remembered.
Infected bodies covered the lanes between abandoned buses and private vehicles. Some had fallen where the Vanguards and Guardian APCs caught them in the open. Others had piled against the wreckage until the pavement and lower sections of several storefronts disappeared beneath them.
The operation had begun with more than one hundred thousand visible contacts.
That number had only covered the outer blocks.
