The undead had stopped their futile attempts to break down the wall, and there weren’t enough left on this side of it to pile on top of each other like they’d done at first. They had formed a solid stack of undead corpses that kept climbing over each other until they had made a ramp. Numbers too massive for the townspeople to defend against. The milling dead had stopped and were staring at the newcomers now, at the machine sounds that might mean fresh blood. The crows circled and cawed, alarmed at the noises, and squawked their displeasure at their meal being interrupted. The turkey buzzards still feasted on the broken open heads of the gunned down dead, ignoring the feast that was walking around, and keeping a wary eye on the noisy machines.
“Man, that’s a lot of zombies,” Scratch said. “You want to shoot ‘em, or lead them off?”
“Need a semi to take out that many,” Gunny said. “A pack like that might tear the cars up. Scratch, see if you can get them to follow you out of town, lead them on a chase and circle back. We’ll find the gate and see what’s going on inside.”
“Roger that,” he said, turned on his loudspeakers and turned up his favorite band. Brutal Retort blasted their death metal screams and blistering guitars into the afternoon, and like a siren’s call, the zombies came running. He took off up the road, leading them back toward Saint Louis. The other cars waited until the last of the hobbling stumblers were out of sight, chasing the noise that meant food.
Gunny eased out the clutch and continued to follow the line of trailers, looking for an opening. In ten minutes, they were back where they started from, having circled the whole compound. It was a solid wall, no way in. The townspeople hadn’t built any kind of gate.
“Guess we’re going to do this the hard way. Griz, pull up close, we’ll have to climb,” Gunny said, as the rest of them started strapping on armor and spare magazines.
He parked the panel van as close as he could and one by one they scrambled to the top of the trailers. The townspeople had about ten square blocks walled off. They’d enclosed the area with all the retail stores, gas stations, and supermarkets. There were dozens of small businesses and at least a hundred homes inside the barrier. There was plenty of everything to last them through the winter. It was a pretty good layout. That is, until they were overrun.
Griz was the last one up, tossing can after can of ammo to them and finally his M-60, before he heaved himself to the roof. He stood and looked to where the rest of them were watching. A circling of crows and buzzards were dipping and diving near the center of the protected area. Feasting on the moaning dead.
“Crap,” he grumbled. “It couldn’t have been near the wall, could it? We couldn’t just pick them off from up here, could we?”
“Might be enough of them to stack back up, to get over the top and over run us if we draw them all here.” Bridget said.
Gunny found what he was looking for a few trailers down. There was an aluminum ladder near one of the guard shacks. He checked the next one and saw that it, too, had a ladder.
“We really are going to have to do this the hard way,” he said. “Let’s go in quiet, see what we’re up against. If things go bad, if we get chased, look for the shacks.”
He pointed at the ladders near each one. “That’ll get us back up here, at least. It’ll take zed a while to pile up. We can make a stand but it there’s too many, we’ll have time to make it down to the cars.”
They nodded, loaded up the extra ammo, and started down. The crew slipped quietly down the streets, staying hidden when they could, crouching and dashing when they couldn’t, mindful of their battle rattle. They followed the circling birds, the keening of the undead, and the awful smell that was getting riper and riper the closer they came. Three blocks later Hollywood pointed out a Victorian style house with a third-floor cupola that had windows facing the direction of the moans. They were close, it would give them an overview of their battlefield.
The door was unlocked, kitchen cabinets hung open. The townspeople had already cleaned it out of any supplies they needed. The four of them made their way up the stairs, sniffing the air for hints of the dead, but it only smelled musty, like a house that had been closed up for too long without any fresh air. Gunny approached the window slowly, not wanting sudden movement to draw attention, and sighed when he saw what they were up against. He heard a sharp intake of breath and knew Bridget had seen it, too. The church was completely mobbed. There were hundreds, maybe thousands, gathered around it. All lethargically milling around, pounding on the doors.
“Survivors inside,” Griz said. “Otherwise they wouldn’t be trying to get in.”
“Agreed,” Gunny said. “Looks like they’re keeping quiet, hoping the mob will go away.”
“Wire Bender said they were out of food and water,” Bridget said, trying to estimate how many people could cram into a city block surrounding a building. “They must not have had a backup plan. Must have thought their walls couldn’t be breached.”
“Yeah,” Hollywood agreed. “I’d a had that church stuffed full. Enough ammo to kill everything, enough food to last a month. Hell, they don’t even have a way out of town. There’s no gates.”
“Guess they hadn’t anticipated a horde big enough to go over the walls,” Gunny said. “This place is so far out in the sticks, I bet there weren’t enough of the zeds within a fifty-mile radius to do it.”
“Yeah, well, now we gotta deal with it,” Griz said. “You
