Just like many walls before it had fallen, the eastern Gate of the Gloucester now lay on the ground. Several choice explosions had enabled it to fulfill its greatest dream, at least its greatest dream in Anthony's eyes. Didn't every door want to be open?

For certain, the tall old wooden door, would not be closing anytime soon.

Anthony and the defenders waited out there looking to bait any dwarves into following them. Whatever zombies have been close to the door, we're not interested in anything that they were selling. Usually it was easy to sell zombies on some prime human rib.

You would just show up and then they would come right after you.

But today only a few made their way out. Anthony used this chance to exercise his favorite spell: Holy Bolt. He prepared his magical finger gun, lining it up then fired knocking its head off.

"Nailed it," he whispered.

They had so many specific rules about zombies. Some of them were stupid like don't bring a zombie home to meet your parents. But the most important, the most visceral rule that he had for himself was to not let zombies get too close to him.

Anthony wanted a few miles at least of a safe zone. He could do with less if he really had to in a pinch.

Bolts of lightning went around the battlefield, arcing close enough to offer him a drink.

Energy spells killed the other two zombies before he got a chance to even line up the shot.

So he sat, waiting for even more zombies to take the hint. It was an obvious feint. So obvious that it baffled him that it kept working.

His tedium warred with the pile of steaming corpses and the shadowy form of a cat that moved through the pile extracting cards and card pieces. That was a bit of a welome distraction.

It took about two minutes for the zombies to notice. Arrows and spells flowed freely as he had the defenders begin their slow ambling retreat.

On the side they were, the pinch between the promontory and the eastern part of the city, Sonya had made a little maze offshoot for them to funnel the zombies into. It was their job to be the enticing bait.

"Come on then!" He yelled at the zombies, who continued to pay no attention to any taunts. Just like a honey badger, these monsters didn't care.

A critical mass of zombies poured through the doors.

"Time to run!" He yelled, shifting into the next part of the plan.

Anthony and his team took off running. They had given it about a ten second before the mass of zombies had arrived to make sure that they weren't just running away where the zombies wouldn't even pay attention to them.

These zombies saw them and they were immediately thinking about their next meal. So Anthony, making sure that all his fellow defenders were with him and ahead of him, ran back to the molded earthen steps that led up to the maze. They were all up over the top by the time he arrived.

He turned back.

In essence, he was going to neg the zombies into showing up to the party. This whole setup had been there just to draw them in and gaslight them into dying down one of the maze paths. It was simple but effective.

"Oh look, I'm so delicious. Why don't you just come and have a bite? Oh it's terrible you can't reach us from there? Oh that's too bad. Why don't you come around the maze and see if he can reach us from there?" He yelled.

For everything they knew, these zombies either didn't care or wouldn't listen. Meaning it after at some point in time, he had to tackle with the issue that he was the one taunting the zombies. He was the only one who thought that there was any value in it, the entirety of that value being in his getting that negative energy out.

Once the defenders gotten up onto the wall, Sonya retracted the steps. Not even half minute later, the first wave of zombies contacted the packed dirt walls, most of those entering the maze.

The zombies arrived, turning into a line that they could start attacking. With three or four abreast, the ones that have been held in reserve took over.

A line on each side of about a dozen goat mages began to pepper the zombies. Unique in this design, Sonya had decided to do a very long hallway, followed by a break. About to hit roughly half of a port city, they expected the zombie bodies to pile up higher than normal.

So she had started widening the maze so they could take care of that as well as about half a mile in, she made a break in the maze in case the zombies were able to tile up so high that they were going to be on top of the maze. The walls were thick but at the end of that half mile stretch, she had them connected via magically enhanced two by fours.

There were specific spots along the way that they were going to use as points of no return.

Once they began, it became quite clear that there was going to be more zombies than they could deal with on this particular day. Far in the back, the orcs sounded the tone to retreat to the first checkpoint. Anthony yelled trying to get above the sound of all of the zombies.

"First fallback point!" He yelled.

And then he realized, that the people that were supposed to be falling back had already started moving. He smiled, joining them. As he passed by, he saw that the goat mages were making quick work of the zombies.

Rocks flew as the goat mages showered the monsters.

Unfortunately for Anthony, the rocks the goats summoned were actual rocks from behind them. This meant that once the rocks, which were pebble sized, hit, there was even more mass for the zombies to trample over. This had the long-term effect of creating a ramp out of zombie bodies.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Sonya had anticipated this.

Where he had spent his time waiting around playing tactical RPGs, Sonya had been playing tower defense games. She knew that there was going to be a clog because this wasn't a game.

Those zombies didn't just disappear when you killed them. They had mass.

By dying, each monster would help their brothers and sisters more than they could have otherwise individually. Sure, they were all still dumb and unfocused and only looking for some long pig, but now that long pig was technically available for them.

After about ten seconds of weaving past zombies that were trying to grab him, Anthony ran full force behind the goats and his defenders.

As it turned out, no one had decided to wait for him.

A hand shot out, arresting his movement. The iron grip from one of the zombies made him feel fully alive for the first time that day.

Anthony pointed his finger guns at the zombie they had decided to disrupt his chill.

"Fuck off," he said, blasting at the smithereens.

He hit the zombie in the head and had to shoot it again once to get in the hand off of him. Once he was gone, he was back up and running this time, this time without a tactical pause to look back for his Friends.

He was in it.

A critical mass of zombies that had piled up was behind him.

He was absolutely certain that one of them was going to get on top of the maze nearby him, most likely on his side of the wall, and then start to chase him. Once one of them got onto the wall, then others would. Thankfully, the walls were about as straight as a ruler, which meant that he could just pause and keep shooting down the wall.

He could pass a field sobriety test, just like zombies couldn't.

Anthony had never been a good runner.

Sure, he was in shape. He had to catch babies for a living. He was from the city where if someone asked him to run he would have looked in them like they had their own problems to deal with and what were they doing next to him.

With his enhanced card power making him stronger than he would have otherwise been, Anthony ran about as fast as a varsity cross country runner could. Maybe fast enough to win an award at a county meet. It still felt super fast to him.

He gave it his all.

Two by fours that were about six feet in length where the railroad tracks he was aiming for. The western wall of the maze had already retracted their boards.

Anthony was the last one across.

They were already threatening to pull it as he nearly jumped the entire way. With the average height of a dwarf being less than the break between the maze sections, this would stop any of the zombies queuing up to be maze runners. Once he was across, he paused taking a deep breath as he centered himself. He took aim at the one two zombies that were running on top of the maze wall.

"Hey asshole get down," Stella said, tapping him on his shoulder. "We're already set up. Stop doing main character business and let us fucking fire already."

Anthony sheepishly got into the prone, assuming a good push-up position.

"Sorry Stella!" He yelled but it was broken off by the sound of dozens of rocks flinging above him, impacting zombies both on and below the maze.

Rocks that hit into the packed dirt walls began to break it down. At least the wall that he have been running on was now full of pock marks. He had a strange inkling that perhaps the zombies would be deterred by this. But there was no logical thought behind their motion.

For a second he was reminded of the grip of the zombie on his leg. The moment passed, but he realized that this is going to be something that he was going to have to work through later. It had felt real at the time, like he had woken up from a deep sleep.

Another hand grabbed him, pulling him up.

"Get behind the lines, Caravan Commander."

He moved, letting himself be pulled in the direction that they wanted him to go. He wasn't going to be the one holding them back because he wanted the piece of the action. He would rotate back in. But for now?

He finally got to the back behind several people. It was time for him to get a lay of the land. The one thing that the Caravan did really well was when they had a lot of prep time?

Fuck shit up.

They were able to pull off amazing things. The promontory rose up, giving the maze a subtle upward tilt. From there he could see the whole thing going on in real time.

He also took a second to hone in on one of his least most favorite cards.

Rare class: Goblin Commander L2

Battlefield Surveillance L3

Command L2

Leadership L2

Influence L2

Enlightened beings that see you as a leader will have a bonus combat boon when within twenty span.

It was something that he had gotten by chance and that Finley had all but forced him to take. It made him a bit better at the job that everyone else didn't want.

Then the damn thing just proved to be far too useful, and it never made it out of his deck, cementing it's time in his soul deck.

From his new vantage point, he could see that the thing that the group was trying to do wasn't happening. They had wanted to flush out most of the zombies, but the mass that had appeared was definitely not all of those left in the city.

There was always another chance that they might draw some more out, but this time they wanted to do it without burning down half of the city. A bone dragons black flame had reduced but the other half the city of rubble. Some magical effect of the flame just kept burning until the thing that was burning turned to ash.

It was the same thing with the zombies from that side. In truth, it had taken more than a day for that half of the sea to burn down. There was a lot of things that they had wanted and could potentially have used that had just burned away. It felt so unnecessary, but at the same time, the entire continent being turned into zombies felt like someone's foolhardy errand that they were making everyone's problem.

Below him, the zombies finally reached the break in the wall. He smiled as the first of the the pack fell over, probably breaking their backs as they fell. The chances were that those ten feet would be very crucial, especially in depth. However, Sonya, had thought about this and made that part of the maze slightly deeper. Around the Gap, she had made the maze slowly ramp down until the space below was twenty feet from the top.

Then, Stella cast ice Magic over the parts of the wall that the zombies were climbing onto, making them fall all over the place.

The first time the Stella had used ice magic, she had created a nice luge. She had since then evolved a more contemporary understanding of how to use ice magic. Make zombies achieve the opposite of their objectives.

Now, she made sure that any zombie that could fall, would probably slip and slide on one of her floors. Than the ones that were intending to go further, would fall off the wall and probably break something.

The Caravan would wait. While Bob's summoned familiar went in and did the hard part of extracting cards from their bodies. It was the main way they got stronger, by using the cards that they got to enhance their decks.

It was for sure how he felt that they got stronger as they began to move from place to place, creating staging areas and more and more elaborate fortresses out of earthen walls until they arrived on their final design with which they had turned into a zombie death trap.

The death trap closed around the zombies that, as they got more before nightfall. The vigil carried on into the night, exhausting most of their guard shifts. Then the coats took over.

At first Anthony was skeptical about leaving all this to the goats, but they proved more than capable. What they did was takedown zombies in the dark with precision. He had half of mine to thank them all personally if he thought that they would listen.

It was almost certainly a fact of life that they wouldn't listen, unless they really really wanted to. Just talking to them was like pulling teeth because they were so slow on the uptake. They were still doing yes and no questions for interspecies communication.

The goats understood the common tongue, which is easy enough, but it was hard for them to respond back in any manner. That would have to change.