I heard whimpers, which was strange as nothing could be heard at all over the infernal growling, similar in quality to the biblical buzzing of a plague of locusts. It took me a long while to realise they were my own.
“Archers, fire!”
In the time it took others to aim and shoot, I released three arrows. All lost in insignificance.
“Snipers!”
Spectres freezing in the air at the front lines and toppling to the ground. More climbing over them. A pile of corpses rising like a hill at the base of the peninsula. Furies scrambling over it to reach us, angry and mindless, toppling down to their demise.
“Bombs!”
Einar threw more grenades in between the ensuing rain of Molotov cocktails, the glass bottles glinting dully in the sun that had begun to tilt westward in the skies.
Make them stop coming. Please, please, make them stop coming,I pleaded, not knowing with whom, as I released more arrows on command, all supplied and re-supplied by a flushed Monika with eyes round like saucers.
I didn’t know how much time had passed when my plea was finally answered. The sun had been merciless in its efforts to set the hair at the back of my head on fire, and my brain undulated with pain as if it had been fried.
Was I imagining it? I squinted hard at the curve in the road, disappearing between the hills. Was their throng less densely packed than before, more light showing in the cracks of the wall of limbs and bodies?
“Archers!”
Upon Einar’s command, his voice notably hoarse by then, I fired and missed, cursing myself. Then I looked up to where the road to the town disappeared around a bend in the hills. I gasped. A short while before, the tarmac had not been visible at all beneath the legions of feet. That was no longer the case.
Others were already pointing fingers and murmuring excitedly. The crowd was thinning out at last. The tide was turning.
Looking down into the dying inferno, it was hard to tell the real, pre-existing slope from the hill of charred, mutilated bodies that had grown at its base. As more roamers tried to climb over it, dislodged body parts occasionally sent them flying back down in a most macabre landslide.
“They’ve stopped coming, look!” I said unknown to whom and unheard by anyone, and yet true in my statement, for only a few last stragglers limped from behind the bend.
I was beyond exhausted, my limbs heavy and aching, and my head throbbing. I reached down for my water bottle and took a few gulps; only so many so as not to have a full bladder later. I also grabbed a granola bar, fumbling with its wrapper awkwardly. Once I had successfully wrenched it out, I shoved it whole into my mouth.
“Archers!”
Nearly choking on pieces of sweet oats and dried fruit, I fired, arms protesting. The infected I shot fell back, taking the other three with it. But some were getting over that morbidly obscene mound of shredded, charred flesh and reaching the wall, scratching at the stone angrily in a disorganised effort to climb up.
“Snipers, get the climbers!”
Einar himself picked up his semi-automatic and aimed over the rim of the wall, killing a dozen infected in rapid succession.
Blood coated the wall and seeped onto the road below, and the incoming roamers slipped on it as they fought their way forward. The smell of my own sweat was almost as sharp in my covered nostrils as the stink of burning meat.
The basin was gradually emptying, and no more infected were pouring into it. Our victory was as good as assured. But by then, I was fighting a different battle. One against my own body, rebelling against my every move, against staying conscious at all. I moved as if in a feverish daze, seeing my own movements from afar, the signals from my brain slow and blurry. I looked to my right and saw the same mortal exhaustion written in everyone else’s face. Even Einar’s steps were strained as he continued his relentless march between us, and his excruciatingly raw voice sounded like the caw of a crow.
I realised with a jolt that we were starting to resemble furies, their distorted movements and their vacuous yet unbreakable will to always advance forwards, to never give up that purposeless, unwinnable battle of their own. With a paranoia characteristic of a tortured brain, forced to concentrate unfalteringly for far beyond its limit, I felt a genuine fear that we were somehow all turning into them, that the price for defeating them was that we would take their place instead. I shook my head vigorously to interrupt its haywire musings.
“We’re in the last stretch!” Einar croaked. “Bombs and napalm and just keep on throwing them till we’re through. Archers, snipers, pick off whatever’s left.”
The fury numbers dipped into the lower hundreds.
The fingertips of my archery glove were worn and frayed from use. I swayed on my feet, thinking how absurd it would have been to just let up then, let them invade and take us. I don’t know how I managed to hit any of my targets, but I did; as one of the few, most of my peers were too fatigued by then to achieve the necessary precision.
Hundreds turned into dozens.
“Ren, sweetheart.” Einar’s hand grabbed my calf from below to alert me to his presence. “Walk along the length of the wall and shoot them at will. I don’t want to use up more of the bombs and ammo than necessary. And most other archers don’t have it in them to aim anymore.” His voice was pained and feeble, but he smiled up at me tremendously, the fatigued lines in his face fading in the light of victory that shone merrily in the pale blue of his eyes.
I obeyed wordlessly and as if in a trance, rushing to and fro like he had all day, as fast as my feet would let me, shooting at roamers that had slipped through the net of explosives hurled at them. Most were impotently unable to move forward anyway, slipping on blood and guts scattered on the ground, tripping over corpses.
Other archers, snipers, and bomb throwers stepped out of my way to collapse on the raised platform beneath the wall, basking in the last warmth of the sunset. I longed desperately to join them, my whole body screaming for me to lie down.
