"So this death knight, the one that you killed, what do you remember about it?" Finley said.

It was just after lunch. Everyone was getting used to their new cards. Finley and Anthony were holding counsel with Bob.

"Besides it being intelligent? Mork told me that I would probably get something special from defeating it. And I did. But the big difference between Dunnamore and here is how the zombies were organized. They're all their own here. Back there? They had the horses readied to go on the offensive. Now, I'm not sure what that means but as far as what I got from Mork, it could not have been good."

"So the death knights are intelligent and they had some kind of plan. Do you think that they were going to go after the other chosen?" Anthony said.

The herbal tea that had been found in the mansion steamed up between them. The table they were using was an ornate one. It had been dragged slowly out of the house. The chairs were rocks. Still, they were the most comfortable thing that Bob had sat on in a while.

"The more that I think about it, they were probably preparing to go capture more chosen. Something probably tipped them off about either you and Finley or me. It's what they had been doing with everyone else."

"Did you find anything? When you went back there?" Finley said.

"Nothing useful. The death knight had some stationery and was clearly going to use it but everything was blank. Perhaps he was a new addition?"

The group took a second to ponder this. Only Bob had direct combat experience against a death knight. Everyone else had been captured by other controlled undead.

"Would it be easy to kill another one? Or should I say simple?" Anthony said, before putting his teacup to his lips. He breathed in the vapors, closing his eyes as he did so.

"If it was alone, yes. But I think they're going to have too much time to prepare. If they expect us coming, then it doesn't matter what card powers we have. We don't have the numbers."

"Are you saying that we need to go on the offensive?" Anthony said.

"I don't know the answer to that. All I know is what Mork told me. I can always see them. This little icon in my view. It tells me their direction but not how far they are. We could go after them. We could die. We could win."

This little detail had not passed Finley's notice. Bob could always see them. Finley only had the vaguest sense of how that would work.

"Well that's not part of my plans," Anthony lowered his teacup down. "Our plans."

"Once we have enough to last a few weeks, it's time for us to start moving south. If the zombies don't kill us, the cold will. We won't be able to grow anything in the cold. And even if we can hunt, most the food here will spoil," Finley said. He liked to think that he would be going south no matter what they said. Being in a group had changed things.

"The grain will be good though, right? Oh we have to feed the horses don't we?" Anthony said. "All right. We need to get to that supply warehouse. Then we need enough time while we are there to pack everything we need and load it up."

The three of them all sighed at the same time. Horses needed to eat and this was a simple thing when the sun was warm and there was a stream nearby. When the sun played its disappearing game for more of the day, it became trickier.

"If we are able to clear out more zombies then this will be easier. We could even consider continuing this wall to entirely encircle the city. I wonder if zombies can live indefinitely," Bob said.

"There isn't that long until winter. Anthony, we can't stay here for the week that it would take. We've killed maybe a hundred zombies here, if that. The monks said that further in it's very packed."

"We're not going to win this city. Even if we did, the cleanup alone would be astronomical. My one and only goal is to survive for long enough that it will be possible to win the war. One more day here, two at most and we will move on. If anyone has a better idea, I would love to hear it."

The two men and the elf waited for a long moment.

"Well enough about the big picture stuff. Tell me what we need to know about this wagon and the warehouse."

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Finley had done the last rites for another tinker twice. Once for an elf he trusted with his life; someone that molded him into who he was today. The other time was for an elder who had passed away. He was the eldest in the caravan at the time. Elves were particularly long lived. Had he been born an elf, he would have been one of the youngest.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Somewhere in Plainsmount, there was another Tinker. That person, whoever they were, had died here. He ached to put them to rest. One day, when all of this was over, he wanted to return.

He might not be able to bury them all himself. He would bring friends. He would give their last rites. The goat lord would see him through.

Moving the other reclaimed wagon was his first priority. Chances were that he would find the body nearby. Then he would be able to cook two root vegetables with one pot. Lacking the time to cook a soup, he had to let Stella take that duty.

He had the best animal control of everyone. If they found that the wagon needed animals, he would usher them there.

He expected the wagon to have a spot for one horse, rather than the two that his had. He had inherited the vendor caravan. Regular tinker wagons all had similar smaller sizes. If so, he had a horse in mind. The main reason that he hadn't gone on a mission with Bob was that nobody knew what would happen if he left. If the horses were no longer in the range of his animal handling skill, would they stay?

They might run away. Then the caravan would need to dig in.

That they had stayed so long baffled him, but what other choice did the horses have? They were little more than targets out in the wild. Monsters would be sure to make a comeback following the lack of adventurers.

It was still possible for them to survive.

It was still possible for them to make it through.

There would never be another tinker he would meet in the wild. It was still possible for him to honor the dead. Survival without change would not be sufficient.

So, using his newfound accounting card for the first time ever, he planned out his return trip. He would take his time going through every little town to find every tinker and their wagon. If he survived, that meant that there would be no zombies left. His entire continent, the place he had lived his entire life on, was vast. He began to write down how many months of supplies he would need to start that journey.

It was a welcome distraction from his current problem.

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"The more that you move them around, the more chaotic they end up. It's like herding cats but the cats want to eat you," Brandon said.

"So exactly the same. I never really liked cats. I always thought that given a chance they would eat their owners. Plus, all that disease and shit," Sonya said.

They were on top of the wall as far as they could get from the staging area. With her enhanced bond now working far better than she ever expected, Sonya was able to finish off some of the details of the maze. She had played a few tower defense games before, so had a work knowledge of how to defend a fixed point. She'd never expected to actually use it. And it would have been very useful to be able to see the maze from the top down.

Fortunately, Anthony was able to recreate it on another large piece of parchment.

They were looking it over from the roof of the second mansion. As they were visible, they were able to answer one of Anthony's main questions. That being 'do zombies look up?'.

The answer, through trial and deliberation was that zombies were far more likely to go after something that was on the ground. Brandon and his monks had been trying to prove it by bringing zombies to run the maze. In so doing, they would thin out the zombies next to the warehouse they were looking for. The warehouse was only five blocks away. Three blocks south, and two blocks west.

Sonya was supremely grateful that the dwarvish city planners had made their blocks about what she had expected. It wasn't exactly the same as Regina, but similar enough. It made her wish that there was some sort of book about dwarvish urban planning. She would take that book and curl up with it and a good drink and wait out the apocalypse. Unfortunately that was not an option for her.

"I really appreciate what the dwarves did here with Plainsmount. It's so well laid out. If we ever make it to the human kingdom, I expect it to be way more chaotic," she found herself saying. "Do you think that we can use some ramps?"

"When you say ramps are you talking about like zombie skateboarding or something? Because that would be sick."

Sonya snickered.

"They are made of flesh and bone right? There's only so much damage they can take from falling before their bones break. This is why a pitfall would be effective."

"If you just want to do that, we could just make a big hole somewhere. Then I guess we could like run across a bridge? Or push them in? You run the risk of one of us falling in. But if we had a ramp then you're opening up a possibility that the zombies will chase us up the ramp."

"Maybe like a ramp and a zip line?"

"I think we should bring Andrew in on this. You can make a giant dirt pile. Then we can smooth it out. And what like have a zip line running down?"

"This is definitely getting too complicated."

"I completely understand. Maybe we need to speak to your boyfriend about this."

The side eye of it she returned to him was enough for him to back down a little bit. He had to reclaim his footing on the roof and then sat down.

"I don't think we need to put a label on that right now. Maybe we should just focus on the mission."

"Right. Right. Well I can see the warehouse from here. It's large enough. If you start raising dirt walls going southward then we can cut the zombies moving east to west out. Then we can go another block south of that and start going west. Then we'll have only a reduced amount of zombies to deal with. That is the ones that got cut off. But if my monks do what they're supposed to do, then we'll have led them all south by that time."

"That will make it a hell of a lot easier, eh?"

"The ones that remain? They will be fish in a barrel."

"I always hated that metaphor. How about we just call it what it is. Zombies in a tower defense."

"Zombies in a tower defense? I can dig it."

Sonya mentally modeled out how she was going to do that. Moving south, she would raise a wall to cut off the zombies moving east to west. Then she would take a long rest, conserving her mana. That would give the monks a chance to lure these zombies away.

Then she would continue, encircling a safe zone that would extend to the warehouse. She couldn't fully circle around it because they would need a way to leave. That seemed to be one of the key problems as well. If there's a way for them to leave with their wagons, there was a way for zombies to enter. Of course for this, she had Anthony and the watch.

All of the people that had not been tasked to specifically do this would be on standby.

"This had better be worth the trouble," she grumbled.