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“Okay,” said Big Elroy. “Signal the teams. Light it all up.”
The lieutenant ran back to the edge of the woods where a runner was waiting. He waved his arms and them gave a fist-pump signal. Within seconds whistles began blowing in the woods. Not the same patterns as before, but a strident and sustained three-note signal.
***
The herding team outside of the front gate heard the whistle signal and everything went into high gear. They relayed the signals around the whole perimeter.
In the back, the sniper kept up continuous fire.
To the west, a team of Rovers rushed the wall with ladders while others fired guns and lobbed Molotov cocktails to give them cover. The attack had to look real, and so Big Elroy had picked forty Rovers who were too stupid to understand the concept of “cannon fodder.” They were given promises about first picks among any women captured inside, and other incentives; and they were amped up with amphetamines and cocaine, so they were wired to the gills. Like Viking berserkers, they bellowed and roared as they rushed the walls, throwing their ladders against the peach stucco and scrambling up.
Slow Dog was in charge of the west wall defense. He smiled as the berserkers rushed the wall. Five ladders with eight men per.
He raised the first bucket of gasoline and waited until the topmost man was almost up, then he poured it over him and let the rest splash down over the other seven. Then he scraped a kitchen match on the top of the wall and let it drop.
The others manning the wall did exactly the same.
The screams were terrible.
***
Mr. Church and his team knelt out of sight on the catwalk at the top of the east wall. He had sixty fighters and hoped that would be enough.
“Look,” said Bree, “what’s that?”
Church looked over the edge and saw two Rovers in white hazmat suits go running from a place of cover and bend over a piece of torn lawn. One of the Rovers was tall, the other shorter and clearly female.
“What are they doing?” whispered Thomas.
That was a good question. The Rovers had bottles tucked under their arms and seemed to be pouring the contents over sections of grass. Church studied the lawn out there and after a moment grunted.
Zack had his gun out. “I can take them both. From this distance it would be easy.”
But Church shook his head. “No. Pass the word. Leave them be.”
“Why?”
“Call it a hunch.”
As he said it he saw a movement in the woods nearby. An animal. When he shaded his eyes, he saw that it was a very large dog dressed in armor that was set with spikes.
“Now isn’t that interesting,” he murmured.
Dahlia worked furiously, mixing chemical fertilizer and soap flakes and gasoline in the exact amounts Mr. Church had taught her. ANFO, it was called, short for ammonium nitrate/fuel oil. A simple but powerful explosive. As she completed one batch she handed it to Neeko, who filled metal gasoline cans with it and then poured in handfuls of nails and screws. Another Pack member sealed each can and attached a fuse. They had seven of the little bombs and enough cans to make six more. Other Pack members filled gl
ass containers with any kind of flammable material they could find. The younger ones sealed them and carried them in batches to helpers on the wall.
Dahlia was sweating heavily, heavily, her brain swirling with a cocktail of adrenaline, fear, and fatigue.
“Let them come,” she said to herself as she worked. “Let them come.”
***
They came.
With a howl that shook the sky, the Rovers and their legion of the undead assaulted the front gate. The intention was clearly to create a ramp of the dead all the way to the breech and then let as many zombies inside the walls as could manage the climb. It did not matter to Big Elroy if the living dead got into the town. He had enough people to clear it all out, and the zombies would do a lot of the killing for them. Shock troops in the truest sense of the word.
The handlers in the field blew their whistles and used their poles and lit their fires exactly as they’d drilled a hundred times. It worked perfectly. The dead, drawn from all over this part of the county, followed the noise and avoided the flames and went for the living people they could see and smell on the walls.
