Lazar excelled in each area during his training, but he was especially gifted as a sniper.
He had all the qualities required.
Perfect visual acuity, foolproof patience, and concentration, as well as a keen sense of analysis to gather as much information as possible in each situation he encountered.
On top of that, even his small size was a positive point.
Although his ability with a sniper rifle is no longer useful, the other skills he had developed during his training would continue to serve him.
The sniper being the eyes of his unit, he is the central element around which each strategy on the ground is built.
Because of this, he already knew what to do and was establishing his plan of attack.
"I am alone, it will not look like a war properly speaking but rather guerrilla warfare."
Attacking these monsters head-on was a stupid idea, he knew it. It was enough that 2 packs of the same size as that of Diane put against him so that he gets killed with his current strength according to him.
His only chance of winning was to strike quickly, hard and without them seeing it coming.
For this, he intended to clean each district of Boston one by one of the presence of these monsters and he wasn't going to choose them at random.
During his training, he was taught what were the different factors to take into account before embarking on an elimination mission.
'You have to know the number and strength of the enemy, but also be able to estimate the time it takes for them to get reinforcements.'
It wasn't a war like any other, there were many more variables to take into account, much more uncertainty.
Now that a pack had been massacred, they were bound to be extra vigilant.
'Barely 1 minute after I eliminated them, around thirty of them had already arrived on the scene. It's already an extremely short time-lapse but I must also take into account the fact that they didn't feel threatened at that time. The situation has changed, I should expect them to be faster next time. '
Their total number was also a mystery.
'Thousands for sure... and it will increase if I let them transform humans. However, seeing how my body gets stronger every time I increase my stats, after a while, they will no longer be a problem for me. But that's only if we are talking about Beta and Omega.'
The most disturbing variable was the Alphas. A pack controlled by an Alpha had to be a threat of a whole other scale.
'Even if Leo had protected himself with two other Betas, the truth is that it hasn't changed anything. They were cut on the spot and barely braked my attack when he had almost survived it. If the difference in resistance between a Beta and an Omega is already so high, what could it be between a Beta and an Alpha?'
He wondered, looking at his weapon at his waist.
'For the moment I must at all costs avoid them.'
Lazar was methodical, he crisscrossed the whole map of Boston to delimit the city in a totality of 28 zones of roughly equal sizes and whose surveillance was manageable for him.
He assumed that the most powerful packs should be in the most populated areas and had delimited them according to that.
'They operate by the law of the strongest, so the most advantageous 'hunting zones' will obviously be occupied by the strongest packs.'
He took out pencils from one of his drawers and used 3 color codes to make a cross on each area of the map.
15 areas were marked with a yellow cross, indicating that he considered them the least dangerous areas. They represented the somewhat isolated parts of Boston and would be the firsts he will attack.
10 zones were marked with an orange cross, He would attack them in second. They corresponded to the surroundings of downtown Boston.
Then there were the 3 red zones, those of critical danger, surely the territories of the Alphas. This was his final goal.
He had spent hours thinking about the strategies he was going to implement, fine-tuning every detail.
Based on the possibilities of escape and the proximity to other risk zones, he had just chosen the first yellow zone he was going to attack tomorrow.
'The sunsets...'
His watch indicated 7:56 p.m, it was going to be dark soon and he was less and less able to distinguish what he was writing on the notebook he had taken out so as not to forget any information.
It had been two days since he had a decent night's sleep and the headache the brick he had received in the forehead had given him didn't seem to subside over the hours.
He definitively needed to rest.
"I'm going to get up at dawn, I might as well sleep now."
He got up to close the shutters of his room and set an alarm clock for 6:00 am with his watch.
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The Ganipotes and the Garaches didn't remain in their respective territories that night.
The Alphas had asked that all the packs gather in the same place for an announcement.
At Franklin Park Zoo.
Nearly 5,000 of them were there.
Individuals from different packs chatted together, surrounded by the greenery of the park and lit by the light of campfires.
Recruits who were human before had shown them how to light them with lighters.
Some of them saw their whole families being shredded before their eyes by the same ones with whom they were laughing, but the transformation had such a devastating effect on their personality that as soon as they became one of them, nothing other than their pack was important.
They chose this place because they all appeared here from the beginning of the Apocalypse, it was a sign of unity. At that time, they killed all the animals in the zoo to have a temporary food source.
Subsequently, the meat of the zoo animals was replaced by that of the captured humans whom they considered the weakest.
The atmosphere looked cheerful at first sight but it was only a facade, the assimilation of humans was a source of constant discord.
If even only one human was to transform into an Alpha, the entire balance of power would be upset and the current 4 Alphas feared internal warfare if that happened.
Fortunately for them, an opportunity had arisen when a pack was completely decimated earlier in the day.
A common enemy had just been served to them on a tray.
The attention of the packs will turn to this threat as soon as they will make their announcement tonight.
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Lazar was awakened by the insistent beep of his watch.
His headache was gone and his sleep was very restful, he was in great shape.
He opened the shutters of the first floor to have a minimum of visibility in the house and had a good surprise to see that the bump he had on the forehead since yesterday had disappeared during the night by looking in a mirror.
He went downstairs and opened the kitchen cupboards to see what he could eat.
'She had gone to the supermarket for my arrival.'
It was useless to make an inventory of the food, he told himself that he just needed to take the reserves of those who had run away if he ran out of something.
15 minutes later
Lazar was finishing his breakfast, a bowl of cereal with milk and two kiwis.
'Huh?'
VVVRRRROOOOMMMM
He heard the noise of many vehicle engines, he knew that they were far too powerful to be those of cars.
He went to open the kitchen shutters which gave directly towards the front of the house.
"Damn, don't tell me that..."
Dozens of trucks had parked one behind the other on the street.
Trucks that Lazar knew well, since he saw them passing by every day at Fort Benning.
These were military troop transport trucks, each filled with about 30 soldiers.
"They don't seem to have come just to rescue civilians."
The arrival of the army was a boon for Lazar, if it were to interfere with what was happening in the city, it would greatly change his plans.
He could maybe finish in a few days what he planned to finish in several weeks.
An officer was walking to his door...