TWD: Saving Merle First - Chapter 84: Nighttime Walker Ambush 3.0 (Patreon)

Merle might not always be the sharpest guy around. His mouth was foul, his temper was short, and he usually preferred throwing punches to talking things out.

But there was one thing nobody could deny.

When it came to combat, he knew exactly what he was doing.

From the moment he spotted the shadows to the moment he confirmed what they were, less than three seconds passed.

On the fourth second, he raised his weapon and fired a warning shot.

“Night attack! Get ready!”

Gunfire and his roar rang through the camp three times in rapid succession.

Then Merle immediately ducked down inside the watchtower, crouching low enough that only half his head remained exposed as he watched the approaching threat.

What if those shadows weren’t walkers?

What if they were people?

Standing upright would just turn him into a target.

A few days earlier, Andrew had installed steel plates inside the watchtower with the help of T-Dog and Otis.

Nobody knew exactly how good the steel was, but they had layered it thick enough to reach a full centimeter.

In theory, that should be enough to withstand most conventional gunfire.

Of course, if somebody started throwing explosives at them...

Well, then there wasn’t much else to say.

Jim reacted a little slower.

But the moment he saw Merle crouch, he immediately dropped down too.

Well...

If Merle was doing it, there was probably a reason.

The thunderous gunshots and shouted warning instantly brought the camp to life.

It was like someone had wound up a war machine.

One armed man after another rushed out, already dressed and carrying weapons as they hurried toward the defensive positions at the front of camp.

“What’s going on?!”

Merle kept his weapon trained on the darkness less than two hundred meters away.

A massive cluster of shadows was slowly moving toward them.

“No idea where the hell they all came from, but there’s a whole damn horde heading straight at us! At least two hundred of them!”

“Fuck! I’ll...”

“WAAAAAAAH!”

A piercing howl suddenly tore through the night.

The entire camp froze.

For a moment, it was almost as if someone had pressed pause.

The cry was incredibly sharp, but there was also something strangely mournful about it, like whatever made the sound was calling out to something.

Daryl frowned.

“Fuck! What the hell is that?! A walker that can fucking call out?!”

Wade said nothing at first.

His expression darkened.

“Doesn’t matter what it is. Find it and kill it. Otherwise, it’ll keep drawing more walkers here!”

He immediately ran toward the watchtower, raised a pair of binoculars, and began scanning the massive horde.

His gaze moved constantly as he searched for the Mutated Walker responsible for the howling.

“Fuck that! How the hell are you supposed to find one thing in that mess?! Can you even see anything?!”

Wade ignored the comment and kept searching.

With his Perception at 7, his senses were sharp enough to conduct a search even in such poor lighting.

That piercing howl acted like a beacon to ordinary walkers.

The noise would naturally draw them toward it.

Which meant the creature making the sound should be somewhere near the densest part of the horde.

Following that logic, Wade focused on the darkest, most tightly packed clusters.

He checked one.

Then another.

Then a third.

Finally, in the fourth dense concentration, he spotted something unusual.

A female walker.

Its posture was strange.

Its neck was stretched forward, its head jutting slightly out, while its body remained hunched low.

Several larger male walkers were directly in front of it.

If Wade hadn’t been standing this high up, he probably would never have spotted it.

“Found it! Two o’clock! There’s a dense cluster shaped almost like an arrowhead. It’s crouched right inside!”

Wade lowered the binoculars.

“Don’t shoot yet. Let them come closer. No point wasting ammo.”

“Holy shit! Are you an owl or something?!”

“I think he’s full of shit...”

Two joking voices rose from below.

The oppressive atmosphere eased slightly.

Fear often came from the unknown.

Once that unknown had a face, some of the fear naturally disappeared with it.

The horde continued advancing.

As the distance closed, the uneven footsteps of hundreds of walkers became clearer.

The endless shuffling scraped against everyone’s nerves, like a blade slowly being sharpened.

A walker horde at night was several times more intimidating than one during daylight.

Nobody could see what was behind it.

Nobody knew whether another hundred walkers were following farther back.

Glenn’s hand trembled around his weapon.

Cold sweat spread across his back.

He swallowed hard as the color gradually drained from his face.

T-Dog and Jimmy weren’t doing much better.

Sweat poured from them until they looked like they had just climbed out of a swimming pool.

Marcus noticed.

He reached into his pocket, pulled out several hard candies, and offered them over.

“Suck on these.”

They were candies he normally kept around for Cathy.

Now they had somehow become emergency medication for nerves.

Funny how things worked out.

Glenn and the others bit open the wrappers and shoved the candies into their mouths, wrapper and all.

“Thanks,” Glenn mumbled.

Marcus grinned.

“Don’t be scared. They’re just a bunch of brainless corpses. They’re not getting through these defenses.”

Glenn managed a smile.

Maybe it was Marcus’s reassurance.

Maybe it was the candy.

Whatever the reason, the tension genuinely began to fade.

His hand stopped shaking.

Wade estimated the distance.

Less than thirty meters now.

He looked down at everyone below.

“Get ready... FIRE!”

“Bang! Bang! Bang!”

“Rat-tat-tat!”

“Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!”

The night exploded into a symphony of gunfire.

A dense wave of bullets tore into the area Wade had pointed out.

At this distance, they didn’t even need Wade’s directions anymore.

They could locate the howling creature by sound alone.

The large walkers at the front of the formation were shredded almost instantly, collapsing like torn-up rag dolls.

A second later, the howling Mutated Walker was exposed.

It lasted barely an instant.

The concentrated fire tore it apart on the spot.

Its scream vanished as suddenly as chalk being wiped from a blackboard.

The Mutated Walker was dead.

Wade grinned.

“Free fire! Try to keep them away from the trench! If too many fall in there, hauling all those bodies out tomorrow is going to be a nightmare!”

His M4 immediately began firing controlled shots.

Round after round flew precisely into walker skulls.

Each shattered head became another Experience Point.

The others stopped hesitating too.

Weapons shifted toward new targets.

Among them, Ryan and Abraham clearly stood out.

The two veterans practically entered a different mode altogether.

Even under poor nighttime visibility, their accuracy remained frighteningly high.

Whenever either of them emptied a magazine, a small section of the horde would usually be left noticeably thinner.

Daryl, Marcus, and the others weren’t quite as efficient as those two, but they were still moving fast and performing well.

None of them were overthinking the situation.

Their logic was much simpler.

If Wade said they could handle this, then they probably could.

For Glenn, T-Dog, and several of the others, this was their first time fighting on such a large scale.

Their hearts were pounding so hard it felt like motors had been installed inside their chests.

But after pulling the trigger again and again, watching one walker after another collapse...

They gradually calmed down.

Maybe this wasn’t as impossible as it had looked.

A few minutes later, the walkers finally reached the trench.

Quite a few stumbled straight into it.

The number still standing in the open field began dropping rapidly.

The massive horde gradually broke apart into scattered clusters instead of the solid wall of bodies they had faced earlier.

Everyone’s nerves eased.

They continued firing methodically, cleaning up what remained.

Click.

Click.

Empty weapons began falling silent.

Those accustomed to carrying handguns, such as Rick, Ryan, and Abraham, immediately drew their sidearms and kept firing.

Most of the others, however, gradually ran dry.

Fortunately, there weren’t many walkers left standing.

Wade and Merle still had spare magazines up in the watchtower, allowing them to keep thinning out the remaining targets.

The battle seemed to be coming to an end.

Then Wade caught sight of something.

A dark figure.

Moving fast.

Far too fast.

It was rapidly closing the distance.

“Fuck!”