THUD-THUD-THUD-THUD!
Ten thousand pairs of dead feet pounded against the stone surface of Highway #1 like ten thousand iron hammers.
In the front five rows marched the five thousand Iron-Bone Zombies. Each one stood over seven feet tall, their rotten muscles swollen with black corpse-gas and wrapped in rusted plates of heavy infantry armor. Behind them ran the five thousand Undead Skeletons, their bleached white ribcages rattling as they waved jagged bone clubs and rusty longswords.
A group of Clear-Brook militiamen standing on the earthen embankment beside the highway fired a test volley of heavy steel crossbow bolts into the front rank of the zombies.
CLANG! CLANG! TINK!
Twenty thumb-thick steel bolts struck the chest of the lead Iron-Bone Zombie. Sparks flew into the air, and nineteen of the bolts bounced right off its blue-black skin! Only one bolt managed to pierce half an inch into its collarbone, where it hung loosely without drawing a single drop of blood. The zombie did not even slow down. It simply reached up with a stiff, blackened hand, snapped the steel bolt in half like a dry twig, and kept marching forward with its dead eyes locked on the town gates!
“Mother of mercy!” Brigadier Zhao gasped from the observation hatch of the Command Tank. “Those are Heavy Armor-Piercing Crossbows that can punch through three layers of ox-hide shields at two hundred paces, and they didn’t even leave a scratch! Even if our Spirit-Tanks run over them, their iron bones might jam the…
