Cells at Work: Ebola

Chapter 6: Betrayer

The battalion sub-commander scrambled forward toward the archtraitor macrophage immediately after witnessing his commander getting decapitated by her hands.

"Comrades! We are betrayed!" He roared as he unsheathed his gladius from his scabbard. "Kill them all!"

A hundred blades and a hundred throats answered his call as the rest of his battalion charged forward with swords and shields at hand.

Like an unstoppable upheaval of stomach acid, they clashed with the cloaked macrophages' line with a frenzied zeal and unbridled fury.

The traitorous maids responded with a blur of their own attack and counterattack as they unveiled together their unholy weapons of war for everyone to despair. Halberds, broadswords, maces, great-axes, and warhammers... They wielded these weapons of war with elegant mastery and finesse, and they battled the surging KT cells with an unnatural glee for carnage.

Screeching and crackling of blades echoed throughout the plaza, with the two battle lines quickly descending into a brutal fight the world had never seen before.

--0--0--0-

The KT sub-commander clashed with Lady Em as he allowed his rage to fuel his attacks. A blade master by his own right, he fought the archtraitor with a flurry of thrusts and slashes of his sword, but she parried each blow with ease.

After decapitating the head of his commander, the linen wrap that covered her weapon fell off, revealing a large retractable scythe with an obsidian blade and an unholy name...

Plagueharvest.

He ducked a wide arching swing aimed for his head, immediately shifting his footing to deliver a hit trained directly at Lady Em's chest. The traitorous macrophage swerved to her right, barely evading his blade before quickly launching her own counterattack. Sword and scythe both shriek and clang each time their metallic edges kiss.

"You fight well, sub-commander," Lady Em giggled. She twirled Plagueharvest as if it weighed no less than a stick. "Your commander will be proud of you."

"Talk is cheap, traitor!" He snarled as he lunged himself again towards her.

The macrophage leader responded with a high-pitched cackle.

--0--0--0--

The battle between the two immune cell factions would serve as a preview of the carnage that would yet unfold in other parts of the world.

Battle lines were drawn by the heaps of corpses of the first of the attacking KT cells piling up under the boots of the cloaked macrophages.

Bouts of deranged laughter could be heard coming out from the ranks of the battle maids, but their beefed-up muscled enemies responded with their own roars of rage. The macrophages held their ground, with each maid fighting three or more opponents at a time, swinging and pummeling their heavy melee weapons, and shattering shields, blades, and membranes in their wake.

The macrophages appeared to be invincible, but the KT cells were determined to prove to everyone that these traitors still bleed. Retreat and cowardice did not exist in a KT cell's vocabulary, and those first to die did so fighting them with ruthless abandon.

"Death to traitors!" bellowed a KT cell before a battle maid cleaved him in half with her broadsword, his riot shield regrettably useless in stopping her onslaught, but barely useful enough to delay her recoil for a millisecond.

The infinitesimal delay cost the macrophage her life, the first to fall of her kind, as four KT cells descended upon her from all directions, stabbing her repeatedly with their gladius swords.