A second person came out of the woods, and this one wore painter’s coveralls, similarly smeared with infected blood, and a similar head covering. He too was blowing a whistle.

“Oh . . . shit,” said Dahlia. She and John exchanged a frightened, knowing glance. They knew what was coming. Five more of the Rovers came out of the woods, each of them dressed similarly. Then ten more. More and more. They were spaced out in a wide line at least two hundred yards wide. All of them blowing whistles. Some of them walking backward and waving their arms.

“What are they . . . ?” asked someone, but the words trailed off as the whole front of the forest suddenly trembled and the dead came stumbling, walking, shambling, lumbering into the sunlight. Following the whistles.

Dahlia’s mouth went dry.

This was not an army.

This was an ocean of the hungry dead.

She wanted to scream. She wanted to turn and run through the town, climb the rear wall and run away.

Instead she looked up and down the length of the wall. Everyone stood staring in shock. In terror. In helplessness.

Smaller groups of Rovers, similarly dressed, came out of the woods along a game trail. They were pushing big green carts on fat, low-pressure tires. Dahlia recognized the carts as the kind used at a chain of big home and garden centers. She squinted through the sun glare and tried to make out what the carts were filled with. Bottles . . . ? No, it was worse than that. Each bottle had a piece of cloth stuffed into its mouth, with the edges bouncing as the carts rolled over the uneven ground. Dahlia fished for the word for this, but John supplied it.

“Holy god,” said the man. “Molotov cocktails. They’re going to burn us out.”

The Rovers pushed the carts forward, running between masses of the dead. A few zombies took weak swipes at them, but the black gore on their clothes kept the Rovers safe from any real attack.

More and more of the dead poured out of the forest. There had to be a couple thousand of them. This was no random attack. That was obvious. The Rovers must have been planning this for a long time. Gathering supplies, working out details, and meticulously planning the siege. She could hear the people on the walls begin to buzz with nervous chatter.

“Hold fast,” she bellowed. “The dead can’t climb the walls. We got this. We . . . ”