Chapter 115 - A Fighting Chance

  I raced Sue over to where the others were already forming up defensive lines in the fields between the mall and farm. The place still looked mostly intact. There were a lot of broken windows and some other minor damage, but only one of the buildings was in ruins; the northernmost barn had burned down, leaving only scorched timbers behind.

  We dismounted, Kara sliding down next to me, and we jogged over to where Farnsworth stood, directing traffic and keeping things organized. I’d just ordered my undead to go with him and protect him, so they weren’t doing much to be productive. I sent all of them off to go grab chunks of the burned-down barn to bring this way. They wouldn’t be great walls, but anything we laid out could help slow and direct the flow of the undead horde coming after us.

  I glanced back toward the mall. The undead were still swarming all around the place, like a disturbed beehive. I felt confident they’d come after us once they were ready. The last bits of a rosy sunset still illuminated the western sky. The enemy was likely waiting until that was entirely gone before launching their attack.

  “What’s the situation?” I asked Farnsworth.

  “We made it out with fifty of the ratkin. The avians vanished when the zombies hit our rear and we began to withdraw, but five of them are still with us. They’ve staked out one of the barns over there as their base.”

  I looked where he pointed and spotted the avians on the barn roof.

  Farnsworth went on. “What’s the plan, Selena? You have a better idea what we’re up against here than I do. Should we fight or withdraw?”

  “That’s the question of the day, isn’t it?” I replied. I glanced back at the horde, still cooling its heels next to the mall. Were there more of them now than there’d been a few minutes before? I thought so. They were still pouring out of the mall, most likely. Still gathering their full numbers.

  We’d killed a lot of them. Hundreds, I felt sure. We’d also taken down one wraith, although we knew there were at least two more of those. How many zombies were we up against at this point? I was guessing there were already at least five hundred of them standing outside the mall, and they continued to come.

  The wraiths were even worse. Able to attack from the air and higher tier than any of us, they were the perfect skirmishers. In the darkness, they’d be able to swoop in from the sky and kill our more vulnerable rear ranks.

  Then there was the being in charge of this whole mess, whatever it was. We still hadn’t seen it, but I knew it was out there, and I felt certain it was awake now that the last light was fading away. Whatever it was, it was strong enough that the wraiths listened to its orders. What tier was the boss, then? Eight? Ten?

  I pulled Farnsworth a little away from the others so I could talk to him without everyone else overhearing. “Can we hold this place if they attack with all of that?”

  He looked over at the mall, then surveyed the area we’d picked to defend, and shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe? If I had a battalion of troops with functional rifles, sure. No problem. But with what we have right now, I just don’t know.”

  That wasn’t a great answer. “How do you see this playing out, then?”

  “They’ll rush across the highway, coming right at us. Nothing they’ve done so far indicates really complex tactics; they have numerical superiority and they like to use it,” Farnsworth said without hesitation. “But they have enough numbers that the lack of complex tactics may work out well for them. They’ll surround our lines, envelop our force, and then press in from all sides while the wraiths attack from above. That’s assuming the Domain ruler doesn’t make an appearance, and now that it’s dark I don’t know that we can make that assumption.”

  It was a good summary, and everything I’d been afraid of when I’d looked at the situation. “What are our options, then? If we can’t stand and fight, should we withdraw?”

  “We retreat, they’ll chase us,” Farnsworth said. “They move slow, so we might be able to all escape them if we start moving right away. Head west, maybe southwest, and try to just keep avoiding contact with them until dawn. They’ll retreat back inside the mall when daylight comes close.”

  “Maybe that’s what we should do, then.”

  Farnsworth shook his head again. “I’m not so sure they’ll follow us. They might. But if we retreat and keep going, the most dangerous action they could take would be to use a smaller force to keep us moving away, maybe led by a couple of those wraiths. Meanwhile, they could use the bulk of their zombies to strike the Guard base.”

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  “Can Turner hold those walls?” I asked.

  “Against five hundred zombies? No way in hell. He’ll stage a fighting withdrawal. It’ll mean losing the base entirely, but he should get out with at least most of the civilians in one piece. Without those walls, though, all of those people aren’t going to last long.”

  I shrugged at the man, frustrated. “What are you recommending, then? We withdraw, the base is probably toast and a lot of those people will die. That’s what you’re saying, right?”

  He nodded.

  “But we stay, and they kick our asses. We all die. The base dies tomorrow night instead of tonight.”

  Farnsworth ran a hand through his hair, then nodded again, slowly. “Yeah, it’s not a great set of options. If we stay, there’s a few tricks we can use to maybe even the odds, but it won’t be good. My advice, since you’re asking, would be to hold our positions here as long as we can. Tie up their entire force for as many hours as we can fight them off. Then before they overrun us completely, we retreat with what’s left of our fighters.

  “We do that, and the base is safe for tonight and maybe the next couple of nights as well,” he went on. “We can hurt the enemy badly enough to give the next raid a good shot at winning, especially now that we have more intel about the enemy. Good job spotting those tunnels. I’d been thinking about spraying the mall with gasoline and just burning the entire place to the ground, but that won’t do much if they’re dug in beneath the complex. Too good a chance they’d survive it underground.”

  “You’re asking for me to sacrifice everyone here, or at least most of the people here, to give Turner more time to beef up his defenses?” I asked. “At best, we earn him a few more days. Is that worth it?”

  “In a few days, we can rally more forces. Maybe contact more ratkin, or get the Colonel to give us more troops. Something will come up as an option. Sometimes, the best thing you can do in a losing war is just buy a little more time,” Farnsworth said.

  I didn’t like it, but he was probably right. If we ran, a lot of people were going to die, the zombie horde would get even larger, and the only semi-safe place I was aware of would be destroyed. It wasn’t a pretty scene.

  Neither was all of us fighting to the last against what was coming our way. I’d just had a close brush with death; I didn’t want another one. But this is what we came here to do: to defend people who couldn’t against the things that went bump in the night.

  “Let me talk to the others,” I said. He gave me a nod, then I took off into the air, hovering above our gathered troops. The living ones all stopped to listen to me. What to tell them, now that I had their attention? I went with honesty.

  “Folks, we have a world of hurt coming our way. There’s at least five hundred zombies gathering over by the mall, maybe more,” I called out. “The wraiths will be coming as well, most likely. Maybe even the thing in charge of this whole mess.

  “We can withdraw, but if we do, people will die. The horde will grow stronger, maybe too strong for anyone to stop. If we hold here, a lot of us may die. I can’t paint a rosier picture for you. It’s going to be a shitty, terrible fight. But if we can hold them for even a few hours then we can stop them from growing their horde, we can prevent them from attacking the Guard base, and we can take down a good chunk of their numbers, too.

  “I won’t ask anyone to stay who doesn’t want to, though. If you want to leave, now’s the time. No hard feelings. All of you fought like mad back there, and we did so much! But now it’s do or die time. They have us on the ropes, and either we stand and fight, or we flee and they win—probably for good. We leave now, we’re going to be running until we leave this place so far behind that it’s a memory. No guarantee whatever is in charge of this place won’t come hunting us down later, too. We stay, and we at least have a fighting chance, but if you want to go, I understand.”

  I hovered there a long moment, waiting to see if anyone would take the offer to leave, knowing that by all rights they should do that. Why stay and risk their lives when they could run and fight another day?

  Then Patches called up to me. “The ratkin stay! We fight for our kin in their burrows; they be killed by the dead if we not stop them.”

  The other ratkin around him raised their weapons and gave a loud cheer. Alfred sketched me a salute with his axe. “You know I’m not leaving until you do, Selena. I owe you my life and that of all the people who were with me. I stay.”

  More and more of the humans joined him in promising to stay and fight. I couldn’t believe it—these nutcases were all suicidal. But then again, so was I, offering to stay and fight like I had. Nobody was slinking off to flee the fight. “Guess we’re all doing this, then.”

  I landed again next to Farnsworth. “You said they suck at tactics, right?”

  “Well, I said they’re not using complex tactics. That’s probably because they don’t really need to, with their numbers, but…”

  “You think they might be confused if we tried using more complex tactics against them?” I asked.

  “Maybe. What did you have in mind?”

  “A lot. But we’ve got too little time for most of it,” I said, my mind racing with ideas. “Right now, I want to put my remaining Abominations to work preparing the battlefield for the enemy. If they come right at us, you’re right—they’re going to surround us, cut us off from escape, and then kill us all.”

  Well, most of us, anyway. I was acutely aware that at least the avians and I could flee by taking to the air. But how could I even consider leaving without my friends? Kara and Alfred were standing by me because they believed in me. I couldn’t abandon them. Farnsworth and Patches were special, too. I didn’t want to lose any of them, but I had a bad feeling in my gut that had nothing to do with the recently healed sword wound.

  “If we can redirect them though?” I said. “If we can control the flow of the battle and make them go where we want them to, then maybe we can hold them long enough to make a real difference.”

  “Tell me what you have in mind,” Farnsworth said. “I have a few ideas on that score myself. But we’ve got limited time before they come after us, so we need to make it happen fast.”

  “OK, here’s what we’re going to do…” I said.