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The defenders on the wall had no arrows left and were throwing rocks. Rocks, for god’s sake. That’s all they had to fight with. The Rover handlers, emboldened, walked right up to within thirty feet of the wall. Outside of the effective range of a heavy stone. Fearless in their sure knowledge that the people inside were all going to die.
Gutter, the head of the field team, stood closer than anyone. He was laughing as the mound of dead finally fell forward, filling the trench and bridging the gap between them and the shattered wall. The dead surged forward. A huge cheer went up from the Rovers all across the field, and they ran in close to be ready to follow the zombies into the doomed town.
***
“Now,” yelled Dahlia as she grabbed a red gasoline can by the handle, lit the fuse with a Zippo lighter, shot to her feet and hurled it over the wall. She’d risked a short fuse because she didn’t want to give it time to land.
Then she flattened down a split second before the ANFO bomb exploded.
***
Gutter saw the red can and laughed at that, too. He thought that it was a last-ditch attempt to do damage. Throwing any old shit they could pick up. What was next, he thought, a porta-potty?
That was the thought in his mind when the ANFO bomb detonated with such force that it stripped the hazmat suit from his body and most of the flesh from his face. The spinning shrapnel of nails and screws and pins scythed through him as if he was made of paper. All around him Rovers and zombies were caught in the blast.
Only the zombies survived. In pieces, but they survived.
The next bombs came arcing over the wall toward other groups of Rovers.
Then thin-walled plastic bottles filled with alcohol and trailing blazing strips of cloth smashed down amid the zombies. The fragile plastic burst apart or was stepped on, and the fires leapt up to bite into torn clothing and withered skin.
The flames shot hot into the sky. They were visible for miles. And certainly visible from around the corner, on the east side of the wall.
***
Big Elroy grinned. Gutter and his boys had done it. They were breaching the walls. He could see the flames licking at the sky and it made him feel like Napoleon. Like Genghis Khan.
He raised his axe, paused for a moment, and then swept it down.
The forest seemed to burst apart as hundreds of Rovers ran out in a weird, ghastly silence. No cheers, no battle cries. This was the real attack. Cold and precise and silent. While all eyes and ears were drawn to the sniper, the ladder teams on the west and the big assault at the front door, the army of the Rovers raced across the open lawn to where their ladders were hidden beneath blankets of loose sod. It was clockwork. Three men flipped aside the sod; four men grabbed the ladders and rushed the walls; teams of shooters knelt and trained weapons on the wall in case anyone was up there. They needed only thirty seconds to do this and then the wall would be theirs. Once they were inside, they had the numbers and the training, and the town would fall.
This, Big Elroy knew, was how battles were won—training, nerve, imagination, and discipline.
The ladders rose. One, two, three, four . . . all the way up to twelve. Big men took up positions to brace them as other Rovers swarmed up, weapons slung, ready to take and own the wall.
If any of them noticed the stink of alcohol or gasoline on the rungs of the ladders, there was no time to stop and check it out. There was no time to comment on it. They had to move fast, fast, fast.
Only a few of them saw the two handlers in white Hazmat suits stand up from behind a hillock. Those few saw the Molotov cocktails and did not understand. Was that part of the assault? If so, when was that added to the plan? And why?
And why were the handlers throwing the flaming bottles toward the base of the ladders instead of trying to lob them over the wall?
From his hill, Big Elroy saw this with a clearer perspective. He felt the blood drain from his face.
“No,” he said. But he said it to himself, and he said it too late.
The bottles broke and splashed flames everywhere. On the lawn, where the Rovers clustered, waiting for their turn to ascend. On the ladders themselves, which were doused with accelerant. On the men crowding every rung of each of a dozen ladders. Everywhere.
The whole eastern wall became a sheet of flame.
In the space of five seconds, seventy-nine of the Rovers were burning. In the space of five more, the spilled gasoline on the turf chased down many more.
Big Elroy watched a third of his army burn.
And then above the flames, all along the walls, there were people. Men and women. Even from that distance, Big Elroy could hear the crackle of gunfire.
The Rovers tried to run. And died.
They tried to fight back. And died.
