Black Market Merchant

“Form the line across the end of the dam!” Lisa ordered from above on her perch. “Take your shots carefully at my signal and try to conserve ammo. There are a lot more monsters to come!”

The smaller of the Twisted were already coming across at them at full speed in droves. It would be moments before they finished crossing over and attacked the defending humans. On the upside, the wounded baby Hoard Mother was currently staying behind the cover of the Land Octopus’s near the woodlands edge. It had split up its forces so that the smaller Twisted attacked those on the dam while several of the Plain Striders chased after Party Badger, who had disappeared by now. There was no telling if she was all right, but Dixon was still calmly floating above the battlefield, so she must have been.

“Stand shoulder to shoulder.” Lisa called out as she walked briskly behind the human forces. As she spoke, they responded to her voice. “Raise your weapons to your shoulder. Pick a target directly in front of you. On the count of three, pull the trigger to shoot three times.”

Lisa paced behind them from one end of the dam to back where she had first given her speech. As she went, she adjusted their positions to be packed closer together. Any that were standing behind the line she made sure they fit. Everyone had to be ready to shoot.

Lisa leapt up to her perch on the dam wall and overlooked the Twisted hurtling at them. Everyone now was waiting with bated breath as Lisa slowly counted down. She was waiting for the opportune moment and the suspense was suffocating for everyone. Their aim was wobbly, knees were trembling, breathing was shaky and sweat rolled down their brows but still they waited.

“One…”

The Twisted were already halfway across the dam. There was so many crossing at once that occasionally a Twisted was knocked off the dam into the lake or over the dam itself. If someone missed their shot it would be a miracle. Tentatively a few began tapping their triggers eagerly hoping to shoot before they were attacked.

“Two…”

At this distance they could now see every mortifying detail of the Twisted. The Night Hounds rows of fanged teeth, their long, slender arms tipped with fearsome claws. The Logos Cutters leapt about at distances that no man could ever hope to outpace and being equipped with knifelike claws only made them even more terrifying.

There were only meters between the two sides now. At any second someone’s nerve was about to break and start shooting. The Twisted were almost upon them!

Lisa then shouted at the top of her lungs, “Three!”

There was a unified blast of gunfire as the humans attacked with their first trigger pull. Bullets whizzed hotly from the guns muzzles before tearing through the flesh of the monsters with devastating effect. The closest of the Twisted seemed to rip apart as black blood sprayed from every area struck.

The humans fired two more rounds as instructed, though many of them shot more. Unswayed, the Twisted following didn’t slow down even the slightest. It seemed like their numbers were unending and the humans attack did nothing at all.

There was a slight pause before Lisa shouted, “Again, fire!”

A second unified volley of bullets riddled the oncoming hoard. The next wave of monsters was killed so quickly that they fell on top of the bodies of the previous slain Twisted. The humans this time were unable to hold back, and everyone shot until their magazines were emptied.

Lisa was expecting this to happen and just as most were fumbling about trying to reload, she turned to yell back at the powerhouse building’s entrance. “Do it now!”

Yin was standing at the entrance, and she immediately turned around to yell inside. “Now Sadie!”

Sadie was standing inside the main control room at the main computer. She had been waiting here for the signal with her hand hovering just above the ‘Enter’ key on the keyboard. Hearing Yin’s call, she pressed down hard.

The command was immediately accepted by the computer and the main part of Lisa’s plan activated. Electricity shot along the power line that Tayvon and Willis had laid out on the dam’s road. Any Twisted that now stood on the line, or even touching the ones that were on the line, were instantly zapped with a voltage that no human could ever survive!

Twisted screeched and wailed all along the dam as they were struck into a painful paralysis. Many were unable to stop running in time and collided into these stricken beasts to then be shocked as well. The entire hoard came to a confused standstill as the electricity broke their ranks into isolated packs.

The humans continued to shoot and kill all those Twisted that were still coming at them until only the electrified monsters remained. All this had happened without a single human casualty. Seeing the Twisted being stopped and vulnerable the human’s, bolstered by confidence, started to advance, and shoot at them. It was then Lisa called out.

“Stop moving out of position and quit shooting! You are wasting your bullets on dead creatures!” Lisa then jumped down from her perch and forced a few people nearby to lower their weapons. She continued going down the line until everyone had ceased attacking.

A lone Logos Cutter jumped over the closest line of electrified Twisted to strike at Lisa from behind. Without giving much effort into it, Lisa curled her wrist upwards so that her katana stabbed the Logos Cutter right into its middle. The limp body of the Logos Cutter slid down the blackened blade some before Lisa flicked it away to splatter against the dam’s wall.

Then turning to face and point at the closest Twisted, Lisa addressed the humans with the next step of her plan. “As soon as the electricity is stopped the Twisted will figure out the lines are dangerous and attack us again. In that moment we need to be ready. I want all of you to move up to the dead monsters piled here and push them on top of each other more. This is so that you can use them as a rest for your guns and provide some barrier for you.”

Though careful at first to touch the once dangerous, now dead, Twisted, the humans started to pile the bodies at least three high. There were plenty of corpses to do this and in moments the bloody wall was made. As they did this Lisa continued to explain the situation.

“We can’t keep the electricity going forever, the transformer is already weak. Any prolonged activation will short out the breaker. I can only do this attack three more times at the most. Judging from the number of Twisted still on the other side, I can say it won’t be enough. The bigger Twisted are probably too big to be killed by the shock too.”

Lisa pointed at the baby Hoard Mother that was peering cautiously at the frozen smaller Twisted. “That big white monster can extend its neck extremely far and it might be able to reach all the way over here. Those other octopus looking Twisted probably can too. We are going need to watch out for them coming our way, so be ready to run.”

“Are you ready for our support?” Dixon called from above on his Hover Bike. 56 too was looking down at Lisa with an amused expression on his face. Alongside him was Orville, recording all that was going on.

“Yes, you have those canasters of napalm ready?” Lisa replied while ignoring 56’s smirk.

“Sure do, and you want us to drop it on the Land Octopus’s right now?” Dixon asked.

Lisa shook her head, “I’ll tell you when. Just keep giving us air support until then.”

Dixon gave her a thumbs up. “You got it.”

Lisa turned to shout at the rest of the humans. “Everyone loaded and ready? This next part is going to be dangerous, so shoot at will. We will hold this spot until the packs of Twisted we have now separated by the electricity turn into the main hoard once again. Until the transformer cools off enough to turn back on, we cannot retreat!”

Yin let out a shrill whistle.

“The time is up! Get ready to fight!” Lisa shouted.

Everyone looked up at the electrified Twisted expectantly with guns at the ready. All was silent, save for a few agitated Twisted snarling in the distance. Then, as if some unseen force was letting go of invisible strings, the shocked Twisted fell onto the road all at the exact same time. Sadie had now turned off the powerlines.

In that very moment the baby Hoard Mother let out another rumble and the whole hoard surged to resume attacking. They were immediately confronted by the humans bullets and the monsters were getting cut down in staggering numbers. Though taking losses the Twisted were gaining ground.

Everything was going as Lisa planned. It was slowly starting to seem like they actually might drive the Twisted away. As long as their ammo lasted long enough to cause the baby Hoard Mother to worry about taking on too many losses, if it did even care, and retreat.

Suddenly someone tapped Lisa’s shoulder. Turning around Lisa saw it was the lookout, a young teenaged girl, Bell had told left to watch the western side of town. From the heavy breathing from running and the scared look on her face the news was going to be bad.

“What’s wrong?” Lisa asked urgently.

“T-Twisted are coming out from the town! They are chasing people right now too and they are headed this way!” The young girl stammered.

“Zane! What’s coming from behind us?” Lisa shouted as she checked the back of the property fence line for any sign of danger. For the moment there was none.

Lowering his weapon to look back, Zane saw coming out from the town were two distinct groups of people being chased by Night Hounds and Logos Cutter. His eyes widened with worry as he recognized someone within those groups. Zane turned his sniper around to confirm his suspicion using the sniper scope.

Zane yelled back down to Lisa, “Its John and Hanna, along with a bunch of others that were here before. The Twisted are hunting them down! They need out help!"