The handlers in the field blew their whistles and used their poles and lit their fires exactly as they’d drilled a hundred times. It worked perfectly. The dead, drawn from all over this part of the county, followed the noise and avoided the flames and went for the living people they could see and smell on the walls.

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.