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A few swatted at the fires that consumed their friends. And died.
Some dropped to their knees and begged for mercy. They died, too.
Several of the Rovers abandoned the fight and ran for the closest section of woods. There, in the shadows beneath the trees, were two figures. A woman and a man, dressed in hazmat suits but without the hoods.
No one who went into those woods came out again.
***
The sniper in the back heard the screams and saw flames coming from the east, which made no sense. That wasn’t part of the plan. He signaled to his spotters and the three of them ran along the slope, hidden by the pines, hurrying to offer support to Big Elroy. They wanted to be part of the big push anyway.
They got about halfway there when they saw something coming down the slope toward them. Something that ran on four feet, but was an impossible shape. Like a dog but with spikes.
The sniper turned and raised his rifle, but he was one full second too late.
***
The army of the dead was burning.
Burning.
Dahlia stood on the wall. Her face was covered with soot, her eyes stung. Her mind was numb and she was half deaf from all the explosions. Out in the field, the whole mass of the living dead was burning.
Thousands of them.
Burning.
There was no sign at all of the Rovers. Not living ones, anyway. The bombs had done terrible work. The ANFO and the Molotov cocktails. The zombies had done the rest, killing even while they burned.
Dahlia wiped something away from her cheek. She thought it was going to be a drop of someone’s blood. It wasn’t.
She stood there for a long, long time looking at the wetness of her tears on her fingertips.
***
Mr. Church stood on the wall. The Pack and the helpers were still firing. The Rovers, those few that remained, were falling. Dying. Ending.
Far across the field, on a knoll, Church saw a big man on a horse. Another man was running toward him, wearing a hoodless hazmat suit with something strapped across his back. A sword of some kind, though the distance was too great to tell. It was almost certainly the man who’d thrown the fire bombs at the ladders. The one who’d boobytrapped the ladders. He was going after the mounted Rover with the axe. From what Church had learned over the last few weeks, he judged that the horseman was Big Elroy, leader of the Rovers. He had a couple of men with him, and they rushed to intercept the stranger. One of them had an automatic rifle; the other had a pair of long-bladed knives.
The running man drew a pistol and fired while running. A difficult shot, even for an expert. The rifleman suddenly sat down and then fell sideways, the gun sliding from his hands. Then the running man tossed his gun away—empty, apparently—and reached over his head for the handle of the sword, drawing it with a flash of silver fire. A katana, thought Church. The Rover with the knives tried to intercept him, to keep the swordsman from Big Elroy, but the sword swept him away, cutting the man’s head, shoulder, and right arm off with a savage diagonal cut. Blood geysered up.
Big Elroy charged down the hill, raising his axe for a murderous blow.
The swordsman feinted toward the right, almost into the path of axe and horse, then pivoted left, turning into a full circle so that he came up on the horseman’s left. The blade flashed again and Big Elroy was falling, his foot still in the stirrup but the leg cut through below the knee. The Rover fell hard, and Church watched as the swordsman walked over to him, paused for only a moment, and then made a single, final cut.
There was something about the man’s posture as he stood there looking down at the dead Rover. Something about the set of his shoulders, the way he turned to look back at the town.
Church straightened slowly and wiped his eyes with his black gloves, hoping to clear his vision.
“No,” he said softly.
EPILOGUE
— 1 —
The day wore on. Long and sad and bloody.
A few Rovers, not yet knowing they’d already lost, tried to climb the walls. Others—a scant few—fled into the woods and were never seen again. Or, if they
