Jones shook his head and said, “Countermeasures. What bullshit. They’re just old fashioned traps and tricks. I have limited confidence that they’ll do jack shit against those zombies.”
Jo said, “But we have to try, don’t we?”
Jones looked her in the eye and admired her ability to push down her grief and look for hope in a hopeless situation. He wished he had more soldiers in his command with her attitude.
“That we do,” he said as her confidence buoyed him. “That we do.”
Chapter 56
The First Wave
“There they are!” Mason said in the same way a child might say a parade was coming down the street, only there was no delight in his tone.
He wasn’t the only one to say this or something similar when the zombies appeared. It was a refrain along the top of the wall.
The front edge of the horde crested the hill some one hundred and fifty-feet in front of the Sanctum walls. Initially, they didn’t look all that threatening. The way the hill fell away behind them proved deceptive, but then the zombies following behind them quickly made their presence known. They filled in the gap between two buildings, pressed together, rambling forward, elbow to elbow. To the people on the wall, it was as if a whole pro football stadium of the undead had just let out.
“Hold your fire until I give the signal,” Eli yelled from fifty-feet to their right.
“I just want to take one shot,” Mason said as he brought up his rifle and took aim.
“No,” Donovan said from beside Mason. “We’ve got the wait for the first set of attacks, first. Besides, we have to save our ammunition until later.”
Mason reluctantly let his rifle fall. “They say waiting is the hardest part,” he said, slowly shaking his head. “Do you think what's set up will actually work?”
“I sure hope so,” Donovan said. “It may take out some, but those things will be at the walls soon rather than later.”
A hum of tension resonated among the people on the wall like an extended bass note being drawn out excruciatingly long. Some gripped and re-gripped their weapons. Others checked their ammunition supplies, making sure they were stacked and within reach. And some of the others prayed.
Even though it was a cool morning, a sheen of sweat covered many of their faces in a slick patina. Mason mopped some sweat off his forehead, but Donovan’s brow was dry. He had been to war and met the enemy. Not that it made this oncoming ordeal any easier to meet, but he had faced death before, and it gave him a small degree of comfort.
When the front edge of the zombies crossed the hundred-foot line. Donovan brought up his rifle and held the scope to his eye.
“I thought we weren’t shooting yet?” Mason asked.
“I’m scanning for one of the smart ones,” Donovan said. “Not that they look all that different from any of the real deaders.”
“So, you think they are leading this mob toward us?” Mason asked.
“Maybe, or maybe not,” Donovan replied. “They could have just led the zombies to the top of the hill. Once the zombies get a sight of all of us on the wall, they’ll just keep heading our way.”
“Any luck?” Mason said.
Donovan answered by lowering his rifle. “No.”
A man down the wall said, “Are you guys going to try to talk them to death?”
Mason shot the man a heated stare, and the man flipped him the finger. Mason took a step toward the man, but Donovan shot out a hand and grabbed Mason’s shoulder.
“Our fight is for them,” Donovan said, nodding toward the undead headed their way.
The leading zombies were seventy-five feet away and marching in that shambling way they did. More and more came over the crest of the hill, covering the ground like dark floodwaters. More than anyone on the wall could count.
A light breeze carried their rank odor ahead of them. It was like drawing in the smells from a freshly filled morgue.
“Oh my God, what is that smell,” a woman down the wall said as she covered her nose.
“That’s the stink of the dead,” Mason said.
Donovan leaned in close to Mason and whispered, “These people haven’t seen a lot of the undead. Not like we have.”
“That is not a good sign,” Mason whispered back.
Down near the gate, Eli shouted, “Light up the moat!”
Donovan looked down at a liquid-filled trench in the turf just in front of him. It led away from the wall for about fifty-feet until it intersected with a five-foot-wide opening in the ground. Identical trenches led out from the wall at regular intervals.
Donavan smelled something burning behind him, and when he turned, he saw a tall man with a sour face looking at him and holding a flaming torch.
“Do you mind?” The man asked, his mouth twisted in a scowl.
Donovan stepped aside, and the man leaned over the wall and seemed to be measuring the distance. A moment later, the man lifted his arm out from the wall, the torch held in a trembling hand. As if there was some unspoken countdown that hit zero, the man let the torch go, and it tumbled end over end and fell into the trench.
There was a whooshing sound as the liquid in the trench caught fire. Flames leaped out of the trench, and a line of fire burned toward the intersecting gap in the ground. Once the fire hit the intersection, the real fireworks started. Fire exploded out of the track in the ground, and as the moat exploded as the gasoline ignited.
A literal wall of fire appeared, burning fifteen feet in the air, and it spread across the front of the Sanctum in both directions. A wave of heat rolled off it, and the fire seared its brilliance into Mason’s eyes, causing them to water.
“I’m so sure about this,” Mason said.
“The dead don’t like fire,” the tall man with a sour-looking face said. “They’re afraid of it. They won’t walk through it.”
“That’s not going to burn forever,” Mason said.
“It’ll last long enough,” the tall man said, and he walked back to his spot on the wall.
Everyone locked their attention on the approaching sea of undead coming their way. They couldn’t help but notice that the zombies paused, afraid of the flames.
“It’s working,” some helpful fool shouted.
“Shut up,” someone else yelled back. “You’ll jinx it.”
The helpful fool shot back, “This isn’t magic or shit like that. That’s a damn fire.”
Everyone on the wall knew there was only so much fuel in the moat around the wall. The other reality was that the moat only ran around half of the Sanctum. There were more than enough zombies on the other side of the flaming moat to encircle the place two to three times over. So, they all knew that the moat was a half measure. A hopeful ruse.
That tentative thread of hope everyone was clinging onto held as the zombies stayed back from the flames, so the ruse was working.
At least it did for ten minutes.
Something happened at the back of the zombies off to the right of the main gate. There was a bulge in the line of undead, pushing toward the Sanctum. The zombies began to move forward as if some force were forcing them onward. Their body language didn’t seem eager, but neither was it reluctant. The leading edge of the zombies slowly moved forward.
“They’ll stop at the fire,” a man down from Mason said. “They sure as hell will. I’d bet my ass on it.”
To Mason, it sounded like the man was trying to convince himself.
Despite the heat rippling off the flames, the zombies continued to advance on the fire. They certainly didn’t speed toward it, but their progress was steady. Although, they did slow down as they got closer to the flames. Just like a living and breathing human, they put up their hands to ward off the fire and slowed to a near crawl. The front row did not want to head into those flames and came to a stop.
“Look!” Someone down the wall shouted. “They’re stopping.”
The zombies at the front of the crowd did start to dig in their heels and shirk back from the flames. Too bad
for them. The ones behind them continued to press forward. Despite digging in their feet, the leading edge of the bulge of zombies was being forced closer and closer to the flames. Some even collapsed to the ground and began to paw at the zombies behind them. Even on all fours, the zombies pressing on them forced them forward.
“Oh my God,” A woman to Donovan’s left said as she put a hand to the side of her face.
That front row went into the fire and sunk into the fuel, igniting like humanoid candles, their hands flailing in the air. What made the scene even eerie was the fact they didn’t scream or yell.
The second row toppled into the flames, forced by the crush of zombies behind them. The third line of zombies went into the inferno and ignited, convulsing in the flames, just dark forms in the brilliance of the fire.
One made it through the flames and fell out to the ground on the other side of the moat. It was fully engulfed in fire, crawling on the ground toward the walls of the Sanctum. The woman next to Donovan gasped. The burning creature made it fifteen feet before it collapsed and didn’t move again.
Behind the burning remains of the zombies, the fourth wave hit the flames. Most toppled into the moat, but the fire flickered down in a couple places. Once the next wave hit, more of the fire was quenched, and the flames dimmed more.
“They’re going to fill up that moat,” Donovan said. “They’ll come over the bodies of the ones burned up in the fire.”
“Like a human bridge,” Mason said, quickly coming to the same realization as Donovan.
“Oh shit,” the man standing next to Donovan said.
Donovan whipped up his rifle and started firing into the zombies on the other side of the flames, burning through his first magazine. Mason joined him and fired unrelentingly at the zombies. The man next to yanked up his rifle and started firing.
“Hold your fire!” Eli yelled down the line, but by then, others had joined Mason, Donovan, and the other man, and the war was on.
Chapter 57
Second Front
The echoes of gunfire floated on the cool morning air to the back walls of the Sanctum. The shots made crisp snapping noises. Bonds had his back to the wall, looking back into the Sanctum, and something in his body language looked wrong.
“Bonds looks scared shitless,” Molly said as she turned to look into the direction of the gunfire.
“That he does,” Henry said, then added, “and I’m not far behind him.”
“Come on, Henry,” Molly said. “We’re going to kick ass and take names.”
From behind them, Ellen said, “Don’t get overconfident, girl. We’re in for the fight of our lives.”
“Better to be overconfident than scared witless like that limp dick,” Molly said, pointing Bonds’ direction. “Besides, we can afford to be confident. All the fighting is at the front half.”
“It’s a pretty good bet that they’ll be here in time,” Ellen said. “Maybe soon.”
The shooting increased from the front gate with sounds of automatic weapons and single shots mingling together. Every few moments, something boomed deeply and rolled their way, mixing in with the other gunfire. Henry guessed the booms came from the mines situated around the front of the Sanctum, catching shambling zombies and blowing them to bits.
“As long as they're firing out there, things are going well,” Henry said. “It’s if, or when they stop…” Henry trailed off.
“Then what?” Molly asked.
“We know we are in trouble,” Ellen said.
“Do you think it will come to that?” Molly said, dropping her voice and looking lowered brows at Ellen.
“We’ve made every precaution we can, but there are thousands of zombies headed our way,” Ellen said. “As I said, we are going to be fighting at some point.”
A high pitched voice came from close to the back gate where Bonds was standing. “Ohhhhh. My. God.”
When Henry looked toward who uttered those words, he saw a middle-aged woman with thick curly hair staring off into the area beyond the back gate. Henry whirled to look in that direction, and when he saw what the lady saw, he felt exactly the same.
“Fuck me,” Molly said.
Ellen said, “It looks like we’ll be fighting sooner than I thought.”
Off to the east, shuffling down one of Athen’s city streets was another horde of zombies. Their numbers were uncertain as many of them were blocked from view by buildings and trees. They spanned down the street as far as the eye could see and filled it from side-to-side. As was always with the undead, they came in various shapes and sizes and different stages of decomposition. All of it frightening as hell.
“That is an actual shit ton of zombies,” Molly said.
“It is,” Henry said.
When Henry looked at Bonds, he saw a man completely paralyzed by fear with his mouth hanging wide open.
“Bonds!” Henry yelled, but Bonds didn’t move. He stood as still as a statue. “Bonds!”
A man next to Bonds broke from his own trance and punched Bonds in the arm. That brought Bonds out of his paralysis. Still, he looked like a man lost at sea.
“Bonds,” Henry called out. “You need to call the front gate.”
Bonds shook his head as if something were buzzing inside it, and he had to shake it off.
“Call Eli!” Henry said.
It took Bonds ten more seconds to slip out of his stupor and grab the walkie-talkie attached to his belt. He lifted it to his mouth with trembling hands and started to talk.
“Where did all these undead assholes come from?” Molly asked, pointing a rigid finger at the approaching zombies. “They sure as shit didn’t come from out front.”
“I don’t think that matters,” Ellen said, “because they are here.”
“We aren’t ready,” Henry said. “We put all our countermeasures out front.”
The zombies coming from the east marched down the street and filled the grassy field next to the Sanctum.
Ellen said, “Then we’ll have to do it.” She clicked the safety off on her gun. “Go tell Bonds to get his people ready because I don’t think he’s up to this.”
Henry did as he was told and made his way to Bonds as the zombies kept marching toward the walls.
Chapter 58
Zombie Bridge
Flaming zombies stepped over the bodies of the undead brethren filling the trench. The sheer numbers of the bodies had put out the flames from the moat over a fifteen-feet span, becoming the bridge that Mason had predicted. Several zombies slipped off the charred bodies of the zombies in the moat. They fell into the flames and immediately began to burn. Others fell onto the pile of burned bodies, further squelching the fire. But some made it through with only their legs on fire or not burning at all.
These zombies, drawn in by the firing of weapons, started toward the group of people firing from the wall. Donovan knew if this trend continued, this zombie bridge was about to become a superhighway for the zombies ready to make their way to the walls and then inside.
“Eli, we need to pour fire on that spot,” Donovan yelled toward the front gate where Eli stood beside Lassiter. None of the people around the front gate were firing their weapons but instead looked on like gawkers.
Zombies fell from the blistering fire from the people on the wall, but it seemed as if for everyone the shooters took down, three took its place.
Donovan broke off from the group shooting on the zombies coming through the flames and ran down the catwalk toward Eli. When he got there, Eli turned and looked at him as if he had grown another head.
“What are you doing here?” Eli asked. “I told you not to fire. We have countermeasures planned.”
“The smart zombie is behind this,” Donovan shouted. “He’s got to be pushing those zombies through the fires.”
“What are you talking about?” Eli asked.
When Donovan looked at Eli’s face, he saw a man who liked boxes. The plan they had made was his ‘box.’ He couldn’t imagine devi
ating it from it. It brought him comfort, but Donovan knew that boxes could get you killed. Battles were never neat and orderly. If you didn’t improvise on the fly, most likely, you would end up losing. In the case of the siege just starting, losing meant that everyone inside the walls of Sanctum could die. He had to get Eli to break out of his box.
“There are few things zombies are afraid of, and fire is one of them,” Donovan said. “Something is pushing them through the flames.”
An explosion sounded outside the walls, and everyone around Eli ducked down, including Donovan. When Donovan whirled to see what had happened, he saw a blackened and smoking crater in the ground. Zombies were strewn about, their bodies ripped apart, with limbs and torsos torn apart littering the ground. Blackish-red blood splattered the grass around the bodies.
“See!” Eli said. “Our mines are working.”
A part of the plan had been to place landmines around the perimeter of the Sanctum. Their supply of mines was quite limited, though, at no more than fifty in total. This forced them to spread them wide apart. Most had been concentrated around the front gate, with a few spread wide around the exterior of the wall.
“You’re not getting it,” Donovan said. “That smart zombie is out there. We need to focus our fire on where the zombies are getting through. It may already be too late.”
It was as if a light went on behind Eli’s eyes. He turned and yelled, “Start firing. Concentrate on the zombies coming over the moat.”
And fire, they did, laying on shot after shot onto the spot where the zombies had sacrificed themselves to make a bridge. It was both a horrifying and spectacular sight as bullets rained down on the zombies in the area where the zombies were penetrating past the moat. Zombies fell one after the other with coronas of blood spraying in the air, painting the zombies behind them, but still, they came.
Eli snatched the walkie-talkie off his belt and yelled into it, “Jones, are you there?”
Almost immediately, Jones responded, “I’m here. What do you need?”
The Deadland Chronicles | Book 4 | Siege of the Dead: Page 26