Ah. Rovers. Nice people. Bet they’re great at family picnics with Grandma and all the kids.

The fact that Rovers were here, dressed like this, and splashed with zombie blood made a lot of things make sense. The whistles and moans had a clear logic to them now. It was a smart plan, and there was a damn good chance it would work, especially considering how goddamn stupid the people manning the walls of the town were last time I checked.

I shifted around so I could see past them, and my heart sank. Out in the field between the forest and the town was a fucking war. Other Rovers, dressed just like these three, were leading masses of zombies toward the town. The walls of the town were smoking and there were two big holes. How had the Rovers accomplished that level of damage?

The answer came with the sound of a gunshot. A heavy-caliber rifle. I took out my binoculars and saw zombies swarming over a badly-injured man. Other men stood with him and they carried shoulder-mounted RPGs. Well, hell. That wasn’t good. From the carnage around them, though, it was clear someone from the town had returned fire and the fresh blood had trumped the protective clothing. Either a lucky accident or a smart plan.

There was a second shot, and a third. In each case the victim was wounded rather than killed. In both cases there was a lot of damn blood, and that’s not a happy thing for them when you’re surrounded by an army of flesh-eating ghouls. I watched with some amusement as the living dead tore into the wounded Rovers, and anyone else splashed with their blood. I waited for more shots from the walls, but there were none.

Even so, whoever had fired those shots was a cold and clever bastard. Shame he or she was a resident of Happy Valley. It’s hard to admire talent in someone who is otherwise a total rat bastard.

The three Rovers near me were watching all this, too.

“Shit,” said one of them. “Those dead cocksuckers are going batshit.”

“No,” said another, pointing. “The handlers are working them. See?”

And it was true. The flurry of murder did not last long, and from what I could tell it accounted for only about eight or ten of the Rovers. There were many others, and they ran along the ragged lines of the dead, blowing their whistles and shoving them toward the town. I saw several more carts like the one near me, and some of the Rovers were reaching into them and removing bottles. One person at each cart lit something—a torch of some kind—and the other Rovers leaned toward the flames, lighting cloth streamers stuffed into the necks. Molotov cocktails without a doubt. Then they ran and hurled the bottles, smashing them onto the ground. The oil or alcohol in each splashed out and the flames leaped up.