The walker horde was moving faster than expected.
Calista and her four companions had to carefully control their speed and direction, steering around major obstacles and ensuring the main flow of the horde didn't split apart.
Her heart pounded relentlessly, yet a strange calm settled over her.
This was the method of the apocalypse. Brutal, but effective.
She glanced back toward Rock Fortress, then turned forward again, her gaze firm.
Death was on the move, and she was its guide.
Lorenzo… could your "Order" withstand this most primal tide of death?
...
Five figures, like rotting envoys crawling out of hell, moved slowly but steadily within the endless walker horde.
This march of death had already lasted for hours.
Since leaving Blackberry Ranch, they had acted like shepherds, guiding the vast and terrifying "flock" behind them.
The route had been carefully planned to avoid survivor settlements and major blockades, winding through barren fields, dried riverbeds, and abandoned back roads.
At first, the process was slow and grueling.
The walkers shuffled along at a dragging pace, forcing Calista's group to maintain extreme patience. They couldn't move too fast and lose the connection, nor too slow and let the horde lose momentum.
Her nerves were constantly on edge.
Even though both prior knowledge and her own tests proved the method worked, being surrounded by hundreds of decaying undead was another matter entirely. Every cold bump, every hungry growl brushing past her ears pushed her mental endurance to its limits.
"Keep the spacing. Slow down. Turn left," Calista murmured, her voice barely escaping her throat, perfectly masked by the horde's groans.
She mimicked the walkers' unsteady, aimless gait, while her eyes remained sharp, scanning ahead and around.
Leah stayed tight on her left, ready to react at the first sign of trouble.
Carver held the right flank, using his size to subtly keep the densest clusters from pressing too close.
Mike and Bossie brought up the rear, constantly making small adjustments to keep the main body from drifting apart.
"God… this smell… I swear my lungs are rotting…" Carver muttered, his voice thin with discomfort.
"Shut up, Carver. Stay focused," Leah whispered, though her own stomach churned just as badly.
Along the way, scattered walkers were continuously drawn in by the movement of the massive group. They staggered out from behind abandoned houses, wrecked cars, and thick brush.
Like streams feeding into a river, they naturally merged into the moving horde.
The group grew larger and larger.
What started as a few hundred at Blackberry Ranch had swelled past a thousand by the time the crumbling outlines of East Knoxville came into view.
A dense, black mass writhed and howled, forming a suffocating flood of death.
"It's big enough," Bossie assessed in a near-inaudible voice. "If we pull in more, turning it later might get out of control… it could affect…"
His gaze flicked toward the industrial park in the distance, the one they had scouted earlier. A still-operational factory there held enslaved workers.
Calista understood immediately.
Their target was Lorenzo's Red Scarf Gang stronghold, not innocent people.
She carefully adjusted their direction, guiding the main current of the walker horde to deliberately bypass the industrial park and surge instead toward the commercial center where Lorenzo's base was located.
...
At the same time, inside the Knoxville Joint Trade Center.
Wagner and his team were preparing to set out.
No one noticed, or perhaps no one cared about, the unusual movement slowly appearing at the far end of the street in the distance.
In a world overrun by walkers, small roaming groups were nothing unusual.
The sentries focused far more on potential human threats. Walkers had long since become something they instinctively ignored.
...
Calista and her group had already led the horde into the streets at the edge of the city.
The buildings were denser here, the roads narrower. The horde became more congested, slowing slightly, but the presence it created was far more terrifying.
Thousands of dragging feet and broken limbs scraped against the ground. The constant low groans echoed and amplified between the buildings, creating a disorienting, almost maddening resonance.
"Right at the next intersection. Two more blocks after that, and it's the building," Carver and Bossie muttered, struggling to keep their bearings.
The plan had reached its most critical point.
Like a virus, they were delivering death directly to its target.
...
On the rooftop of the Trade Center, a Red Scarf Gang sentry finally realized something was wrong.
The dark mass in the distance was too large.
He raised his binoculars.
At first, he thought it was a trick of the light.
But when he adjusted the focus and saw the endless, tightly packed horde of walkers, slowly but relentlessly flooding street after street and heading straight toward them—
his face went deathly pale.
"God… oh God!!!"
He screamed, his voice breaking with terror, and grabbed the alarm, slamming it repeatedly.
"Woo—woo—woo—!"
The shrill alarm tore through the dead silence over East Knoxville.
Downstairs, Wagner and his team froze.
Inside the building, chaos erupted instantly.
"What's happening?!"
"The alarm! Maximum alert!"
"Where's the attack coming from?!"
"It's walkers! So many walkers! They're coming straight at us!!"
The rooftop sentry shouted hoarsely into the radio, his voice filled with panic.
Wagner's expression changed instantly as he rushed to a window facing the incoming horde.
When he saw the scene outside, even this cold, battle-hardened former special forces soldier felt his pupils shrink.
Everywhere he looked—streets, open spaces, abandoned vehicles—everything was swallowed by walkers.
There were far more than he had ever seen.
Like a slow-moving landslide, they devoured everything in their path, heading straight for the building.
"This… can't be…" he muttered, unable to comprehend it.
How could the walkers attack in such a coordinated, massive, and precise way?
In the early days of the apocalypse, no one had ever seen a horde of this scale.
"Seal all exits! Reinforce the doors and windows! Everyone—Level One combat readiness!" Wagner roared, reacting instantly and trying to impose order.
But panic had already begun spreading like a disease among the undisciplined Red Scarf Gang members.
Crying, shouting, curses, and frantic footsteps filled the building.
At that moment, as the vanguard of the walker horde slammed into the outer defenses and threw everything into chaos, Calista and her team quietly broke away from the main flow.
They slipped into a nearby abandoned office building, quickly moving inside.
From the upper floors, they looked down coldly at the death feast they had orchestrated.
The plan had succeeded.
...
Get early access (40 chapters ahead) plus other series available only on P@treon
[email protected]/GhostParser