The Steam Age: Gears and Bones

Chapter 49

But the zombie horde did not stop.

The infected in the front row were pierced by the earth spikes, while the infected in the back row bypassed the earth spikes without hesitation and continued to rush forward.

Looking out from where Perfitt was, the open space between the earthen mounds and the trenches was still crowded with infected people.

There is no other way.

She pulled her cane from the center of the formation, took a deep breath, and channeled her spiritual energy back into the frozen ground beneath her feet.

An invisible repulsive force emanated from the center of the magic array, and several ring-shaped earthen walls rose from the frozen ground, each one higher than the last, pushing the infected who had already crossed the earthen cone array and trenches and were about to reach the barrier outwards.

The innermost infected creature plowed two shallow furrows in the ground with its feet, and the speed increased as it pushed outwards—so fast that the entire infected creature rolled and crashed into the spikes of the earthen cone array, and was crushed into black, bloody, and indistinct pieces.

The remaining infected were squeezed into the gaps between the earthen cone array by one earthen wall after another, and pinned to the spot by the spikes.

The subsequent impact and inertia caused them to crash layer upon layer onto the same array of earthen cones, like broken algae being pounded on reefs by the tide. One layer broke off, and another layer pressed up, until the space between the earthen cones was filled with black remains, and there was no more room for them.

The wilderness fell silent for a while.

It wasn't completely quiet—new infected were still arriving in the distance, but the area between the earthen mounds and the trenches had been temporarily cleared.

The advance of the zombie horde attack was contained in the short term.

"Don't stop firing! Reload, keep firing!" Chertsov stood atop the rampart, his hoarse voice piercing through the smoke.

His military flag still fluttered overhead, but the rubble beneath his feet, loosened by the bullets and explosions, was falling piece by piece.

Perfit stood in the center of the amplification array, his staff still pressed against the array's core.

Her face appeared deathly pale under the red light; the effects of the mental energy stabilizer were fading, and a dull pain was spreading again from deep within her skull.

But she stood there, completely still.

"Hold on until dark," she said. "After sunset, the temperature will drop sharply enough to significantly slow down the spread of infection. Then we can try to break out."

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Night fell sooner than Perfitt had anticipated.

The days in Ross are short in winter; the sky darkens at a visible speed as soon as the sun dips below the horizon.

After the last ray of grayish-white sunlight disappeared through the gaps in the clouds, the temperature in the wilderness began to drop sharply.

It wasn't a slow descent, but rather as if someone had turned on an invisible valve, and the cold air surged up from the depths of the frozen earth, refreezing the ground, which had been muddied by artillery fire and hordes of corpses during the day, back to its rock-hard state.

The soldiers' breath formed a thin layer of frost on the gun barrels, and their fingers would go numb from the cold after only a short while on the trigger guard. They had to keep moving their knuckles to keep firing.

The infection rate has indeed slowed down.

Looking out through the firing ports of the ramparts, Perfitt saw that the horde of corpses that had been surging forward at near-sprint speed were now treading on sticky mud with every step.

Their joints become stiff at low temperatures, and the reaction speed of their muscle tissue decreases significantly. Some infected individuals slip on the frozen ground and fall, finding it difficult to get up again.

But she could see clearly that it wasn't just the low temperature that slowed down the zombie horde.

The trench had been filled in with the bodies of the infected.

It's not a metaphor; it's a literal meaning of filling in the blanks.

The first trench she had built with her own hands was now unrecognizable, replaced by layers of black corpses piled one on top of another—broken limbs, crushed torsos, and remains pierced by earth spikes, all stacked together, rising half a foot higher than the ground outside the ramparts.

The infected behind them continued to rush forward, stepping on the corpses, but with each step they took, they would sink into the gaps in the pile of corpses, slowing their pace by at least half due to the mountain of bodies.

The infantry guns have stopped firing.

It wasn't because they ran out of ammunition—the two boxes of shells that were brought out of the basement were still half full, piled up next to the gun carriage, covered with a tarpaulin—but because the gun barrel was overheated. The heat emanating from the cast iron gun body distorted the surrounding air, and the snow that had just fallen on the gun barrel melted into water and then evaporated into white vapor.

The gun crew poured the last few buckets of water onto the gun barrel to cool it down, and hissing steam rose into the night, but they dared not reload, as there was a risk that the gun barrel would explode if they fired any more.

The Ross soldiers were still firing their flintlock muskets, but the frequency of their volleys had decreased.

Although there was still plenty of ammunition left, the soldiers' stamina was rapidly depleting, and their reloading speed had dropped from two or three rounds per minute to barely one round per minute.

Their shoulders were bruised from the gun butts, their wrists were swollen from repeatedly plunging the gun with the cleaning rod, and some of their fingers were cut by the cleaning rod, with blood seeping from the frostbitten wounds, leaving dark red fingerprints on the gun barrel.

But they were still firing.

Because Chertzov was still standing atop the rampart, the golden double-headed eagle banner still fluttering above his head, and a thick layer of frost on the brim of his hat, but he did not retreat an inch.

Then, the infected stormed into the fortress.

It didn't flip over from directly above the fortress—knights always guarded the top of the fortress, the gray knights' shields and swords and the rose knights' longswords forming an insurmountable defensive line for the infected.

They squeezed in from the flanks.

During the back-and-forth struggle with the zombie horde, several of the earthen cone formations were pushed askew, revealing a narrow gap just big enough for one or two infected to squeeze through sideways at the same time.

By the time Perfitt discovered the breach, it was too late—the first infected had already scaled the trench through the gap, pounced on the Ross soldier closest to the breach, and bit him in the shoulder.

The soldier let out a short scream, then was pinned down by the infected. Black and red blood gushed out from beneath them, seeping into the cracks in the frozen ground.

The second infected person squeezed through the gap, followed by the third, and then the fourth.

Ludwig was the first to react.

He flipped and leaped down from the top of the ramparts, his gray armor drawing a dark arc in the air. He landed with his knees slightly bent to absorb the impact, and his knight's sword was already in his right hand. With a horizontal slash, he severed the cervical vertebrae of the second infected.

His gray-armored knights followed closely behind, forming a melee formation inside the fortress, with shields in front and swords behind, separating the infected pouring in through the gap from the soldiers inside the position.

The flag captain, along with the knights of sword and rose, leaped down from the right bulwark. The silver light of their swords flashed continuously in the night, and with each leap, an infected person fell to the ground.

But infected were still pouring out of the gaps. The gray knights' shields had been hit too many times, the shield surfaces were dented inwards, and several rivets on the edges had broken off. The entire shield formation was being overwhelmed by the number of infected.