John turned to look behind him as he heard wood creaking. Seline was hurrying over while crouched.

“You got a better angle on the walker.” She held out the gun she named Bertha. “Aim for the leg joint. If you hit it right, the thing will go down. And even if you don’t it’s going to make it stumble.”

He accepted the hefty rifle. The barrel on it was nearly half the size of the one-pound cannon on the ostriches, so he knew it was going to kick like a mule.

Seline ducked as the shooters inside the walker finally started to fire at the barn. The thick wood walls did a lot to slow the rounds, but he could still hear bullets ricocheting down below. They hadn’t yet figured out the fire was coming from up in the loft. It wouldn’t take them long to realize their mistake.

John hefted the rifle and took aim. Whoever was piloting the walker had stopped to allow the people inside a stable platform to shoot from. It also presented him with an easy target. He pulled the trigger and grunted as the buttstock pushed hard against his shoulder.

There was the sound of metal on metal as the round hit its intended target. For a second, the walker jerked wildly, then seemed to settle. John was readying for a second shot when there was a loud metallic pinging sound.

In the weak light of the lantern, he saw the right leg of the walker fold over and the entire thing tipped over like a falling tree, crashing to the ground with a large boom that shook the area and sent any animals, that had bothered to hang around, fleeing in terror.

The fancy armored box atop the walker wasn’t designed to survive a fall from fifteen feet up. It partially collapsed in upon itself. Everything was quiet for a bit before the square hatch at the top of the walker was pushed open from inside.

One man attempted to crawl out of the wrecked interior, only to get shot by Blackwood, who had repositioned to where Seline had been firing from. Another person tried pushing the now-dead body out of the opening, but the hatch was in clear sight of the barn.

John handed back the rifle. “Keep them pinned inside the walker, I’m going to take care of the man inside the house.”

Seline nodded and took John’s spot next to the window.

He made his way to the ground and took a wide path around and to the far side of the house. The man trapped inside was firing at the barn, but he couldn’t tell where the windows were in the dark. And now the dust kicked up by the walker was making it even harder for him to see as it reflected the weak lamp light on the porch.

John found a cellar door and opened it as quietly as he could. There were screams and shouting coming from the men trapped inside the walker and the man in the house, but not enough to hide a squeaky hinge. By some miracle, the door didn’t squeak as he opened it. He made his way into the cellar, moving quietly until he was standing directly under the man shouting orders at the people trapped inside the walker.

“Just keep shooting! There can’t be many of them inside the barn.”

John aimed his rifle at the floorboard above his head and pulled the trigger. There was a grunt of pain from above, but he knew immediately his shot hadn’t killed the man. He ducked out of the room only moments before the man upstairs fired multiple times through the floor.

“Fucking rats!” the man coughed wetly. “Come fight me like a fucking man!” Either the man had a second pistol, or he quickly reloaded his first, because he fired another series of shots into the basement at random.

John was already back outside by that point.

He raced around to the front of the house and as soon as the man fired his pistol for a third time, John simply kicked in the door.

The wounded man inside the house was quick to react, but not quick enough. John already had his rifle up when he kicked in the door. The round hit the surprised man right in the head.

With one threat dealt with, John grabbed the small oil lamp and carried it over to the walker. He was careful to approach from its blind spot but even so, someone must have noticed the light growing closer and some shots got close to him.

He stopped just a few feet away from the crumpled metal and wood cage that trapped an unknown number of people. “How many people came aboard the airship?” he asked, not beating around the bush.

“More than you can handle, you ambushing piece of shit. Even if you kill us, the rest of our people are going to string you up slowly and make you suffer before putting an end to your miserable existence.”

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“Maybe,” John admitted, “maybe not. Right now there are what? Four or five of you trapped inside this box?”

There was no answer to his question, not that he had expected one. “You have two choices, answer my questions and come out with your hands in the air… or I dump this lantern fuel over the wood and watch you burn.”

“Three hundred!” someone yelled hastily.

“You fucking traitor,” another man hissed. John heard something hard connecting with bone. There was silence for a bit after that before the first man spoke up again. “You think you can scare us, fuck you. We knew we were dead the moment you took down the walker.”

The man was right, John had no intention of letting these men live. At least he now knew how many men Hensely brought. If each team had ten men and a walker, that wasn’t great.

“I’ll give you the option of dying like cowards or real men then, John stated as he stepped back from the walker. “Don’t shoot them as they exit!” he yelled. “We’re going to have a shootout.”

John watched silently from forty feet back as the body was pulled out of the opening and three men crawled out. It seemed the fourth man hadn’t made it. John would double-check that he was indeed dead before they left.

What John was doing was rather dumb, he knew that. It wasn’t that he had any qualms about burning the men alive. He just didn’t want to create a bonfire to alert any more possible enemy scouts in the area. At least not yet.

The men dusted themselves off and arrayed themselves in front of the walker, facing him. “How you wanna do this?” the man he had been speaking to asked.

“I’ll toss a coin in the air, as soon as it hits the ground, we fire. Fair enough?”

He could see the three men nod. In one hand, John still held the lantern, so there was no way the three couldn’t see him clearly. In his other, he already held a coin. He flicked it into the air, and before it even left his hand, the men reached for their sidearms like he knew they would.

Even then, John was faster. His arm snapped down like a cobra as he brought one of the borrowed pneuma pistols up and fired three times. One of the men managed to clip him in the leg and John grunted as the bullet ripped through the skin and muscle, but all three men crumpled to the ground a moment later.

“You ok?” the Sheriff asked from the barn window.

“I’ll be fine in a few minutes. They didn’t hit anything vital.”

He put the pistol away again and walked over to the bodies, collecting their weapons. Then he hobbled over to the walker and crouched down to look inside. The last man had a large gash across his throat and a surprised look on his face frozen in death.

He looked over at the sound of crunching gravel. Wyatt had come out of the barn.

“You planning to do more stupid shit like that?”

“No,” John stated as he stood. “but we couldn’t sit here all night having a shootout with them. And if I torched the walker, it would have alerted everyone for miles around. It was bad enough luck that this group was close enough to hear the animals.”

“Someone’s going to come looking for this lost patrol eventually. What’s your plan then?”

“Then we set it ablaze and use the ostriches. My plan was always to do something to lure a large group here. I just figured I would set the house on fire. This way is better.

Blackwood sighed. “You’re just making shit up as you go, aren’t you? I can’t believe I agreed to this idiotic plan.”

John chuckled quietly. “It’s not dumb if it works. Setting the walker on fire will probably work better, you heard how angry these men got when one of their own betrayed them.”

“Still, we can’t take on two hundred and ninety more mercenaries. Especially with only three ostriches.”

“We need to hit them hard, take out as many walkers or armored suits as we can, and vanish before they can respond. If we harass them enough, maybe they will turn around and leave.”

“Unlikely,” the Sheriff snorted. “Let's get back inside, I feel exposed out here.”

John nodded and snuffed out the lantern. If there were any other patrols nearby, they would have already come to investigate the noise.

They were going to wait a few more hours before he initiated the next step in his plan.

The wait was dull, but John was used to waiting. As soon as he spotted the slightest lightening of the sky, he made his way back outside and lit the walker, turning it into a roaring bonfire within minutes.

While the other two waited below in the ostriches, John watched from the loft in the barn. It didn’t take long for him to spot the first walker in the distance, silhouetted by the brightening sky. Three more followed shortly after from other directions. He started to worry when he saw the seventh one.

He had hoped to only draw in a few, relocate to the next closest farm, and try the tactic again. Assuming the people fell for it a second time. Maybe this was better, only time would tell.

“We have seven walkers inbound,” he called down.

“That’s more than you said there would be, John,” Wyatt reminded him pointedly.

“Don’t miss your shots and we’ll be fine,” he stated as he climbed down the ladder.

A few minutes later, they heard the first clomping footsteps. John waited beside the bullet-riddled door to throw it open. Since he was the fastest one here, he could mount up and get moving quicker than the other two could.

He watched as the first walker paused beyond the gate. It was indeed flanked by a group of five armed men. They were actively scanning the area with their rifles at the ready. He would have been surprised had they not been. Some even pointed to the barn, but nobody approached.

The second and third walkers appeared shortly after. The fifteen men on the ground started moving forward while the walkers spread out to cover them. John nodded and put up three fingers, then gestured in the direction the walkers were heading.

It was Seline and Wyatt’s job to take out the flanking walkers, John would deal with the one by the gate. They only had a short window until the other four arrived, so they needed to do this quickly.

He made a fist to let them know it was time and threw open the barn door. There was a shout of alarm but the Sheriff and Deputy burst out of the barn moving faster than the gunmen on the ground anticipated. John ducked back as a few rounds slammed into the wall near him. As soon as the weapons fire split off after the two peacekeepers, John made his move.