When Adam thought about it, he had, in the past, seen the sewers in the East crawling with feral ghouls. Back when he was escaping from the Corvega assembly plant he had narrowly avoided being swarmed by locking a gate shut. If they were still underground, using the sewers to navigate even a fraction as much as they were above ground then it would not be impossible for them to hit them so hard from behind.
But this was not possible, there were no easily accessible sewer outlets nearby, no sewer pipes that could easily be walked out of, the only way out of the sewers anywhere close was through the sewer grates, but climbing ladders and moving the heavy sewer grates was far too much to expect from the dexterity lacking feral ghouls. Even if they could do it, which perhaps they could, they were not smart enough to, they were feral ghouls after all. This made no sense. Even as the realization dawned on Adam the fact they could pull this off seemed incredibly unlikely. Even if he could go back in time he would not have even considered that an attack in this manner was possible. Everything he knew about feral ghouls was that they were unintelligent and more like animals, to successfully do a flanking maneuver there was only one explanation… there was an intelligence behind them.
Up until now, no one had a clue why the feral ghouls were gathering, the ghouls who did investigate just saw feral ghouls as far as they could see, there was nothing of note in the area to be found. However since the cause was unknown and the fact that the feral ghoul swarm seemed to be using some measure of tactics this seemed to be the only reasonable conclusion. Especially when you add in the fact that the swarm of feral ghouls had seemed to speed up to the point that all previous estimates of a battle timeline were shattered outright. They had arrived too early. Which means if he could somehow find and kill the intelligence controlling the feral ghouls the swarm might stop, or at least stop being such a concentrated force and return to being mindless beasts.
However, even knowing all this it did not change the situation, it was taking all he had to keep the Eastern line from falling, he did not have the luxury to try to somehow find whatever was controlling this swarm and kill it. Let alone the fact he didn't have the first clue what he was looking for. It could be another feral ghoul, it could be a super mutant, hell, it could be some weird rogue AI there simply was no way to know.
The situation seemed to be getting worse by the minute. The casualties were beginning to mount and with a four front fight everyone was in constant combat, there was hardly enough time to reload. In addition the melee fighters such as Deccanus and the knights were beginning to show signs of fatigue. Even one of the Mr. Gutsy that the Talon Company had brought with them had been torn apart by ghouls.
Things were looking bad, made worse by the fact that the ferals coming from the west seemed to only be growing in number, perhaps they were finding other sewer exits to swarm out of, there was no way to say for certain, but the army was losing now, surrounded, this was going poorly. They needed a dynamic shift.
"Milla!" Adam called out loudly over the chaos of the battlefield to the Hunter leader who was a handful of men away, still on the eastern wall too.
"WHAT?" She screamed back, a mix of adrenaline, anxiety, and anger.
"Your plan? Is it ready?" Adam shouted back before popping back over the cover of the sandbag wall to lay down more laser fire until his energy cell ran dry, throwing the empty cell to the side and replacing it in one smooth action a moment later.
"Yes… I mean no. I mean… We couldn't ensure the collapse will go smoothly!" She shouted back as she fired off some shots of her own. "As you warned the collapse can't be controlled, the dust might cover the battlefield, we don't know for sure how things will end up!" She warned.
"At this point we need everything we got!" Adam shouted back, commandingly. "Order the destroyer to lay on the shells and collapse the building, I'd rather not block the eastern entrance but we will get wiped out at this rate, we need to handle the ones at our back, we need the breathing room!" Adam shouted over the sounds of his own laser fire.
"SHIT!" Milla yelled loudly before holstering her pistol and then running over to a nearby folding table where she had placed the mobile ham radio.
"This is Milla in the East fighting Famine. We have a code Red. Requesting immediate fire support! You have your coordinates! Fire for effect!" She shouted into the microphone.
Adam couldn't stay and watch her, he had his own killing to do, he could only hope for the best. He did not know if this was the right call, but he knew if nothing changed they would be killed, this was a paradigm shift. A change drastic enough to hopefully swing the battle back in their favor.
A moment later, like a heaven sent divine message the sound of the heavy destroyer cannons could be heard off shore. It was hardly noticeable over the sounds of chaos but Adam heard it, he recognized the sound.
Then the shells connected with the middle part of the left most building near the eastern entrance to the parking lot, the explosion violently rocked the building, immediately destroying several support struts. A moment later Milla pressed down the wired detonator next to the sandbag wall that connected to the building's explosives and blew the lower support struts too.
Like a house of cards the building began to crumble under its own weight. The sight of it was beautiful, the huge chunks of concrete rubble began to fall from the sky raining down on the hordes of ferals swarming the parking lot crushing them instantly. The rubble mostly fell east, just as he had hoped, but some did fall west, and of course, as he had assumed, a huge dust cloud was kicked up in its wake. But just before the cloud obscured vision Adam could see a pile of rubble fall into place at the entrance to the Eastern entrance, it was not massive, not impenetrable, but it was a blockade, it would buy them the time they needed. Now he just needed to capitalize on it.
As the first bits of dust started to overtake the front of the eastern wall, Adam whipped around and began to lay down heavy fire into the western flank ghouls that were still hammering the forces from behind. The knights were no longer in a shield wall, fighting independently now, some with sword and shield, others with spear, two with glaives, one with a lance, and one even with a meteor hammer. The ferals from the east were cleaned up by the other forces for the moment as most of the attention turned to the west. However the stream of ghouls was not stopping, it was far too many. The only way they could stop the rush of ghouls from the west was to seal the sewer exits.
"FOR HIS HOLINESS!!!!!" A battlecry rang out from the far West as a sea of purple cloaked figures began to pour onto the battlefield cutting into the swarms of ferals with fervor.
"THIS IS A HOLY WAR! LET NOT THE DEAD WALK UPON THIS EARTH!" One figure, dressed in a robe that had inverted colors, a green robe with purple trim and colors at the bottom cried out.
If there was any time to process the situation, then Adam would be stunned. The situation was evolving incredibly quickly, far too quickly for his liking, but this was without a doubt the Cult of Pestilence. Their arrival was not a bad omen, but the greatest boon he could hope for, they had begun to push back the ferals once more. The tide was turning again.