by Ember Lane
Merl scrambled about, grabbing at his ax. He brought it up and chopped downward at Froad’s legs, hamstringing one and lopping the foot of the other. He screamed as the soldier grabbed his arm. Billy’s ax flashed past Merl’s periphery vision and sank into the soldier’s head, parting his milky eyes and splitting his nose then tongue in two. Merl jerked upward as his tunic was yanked from behind. He suddenly found himself on his feet.
“There you go Merl,” Billy hissed. “Try to stop day dreamin’, like. Not really the time or place.”
“Will do, Billy,” Merl barked back, and returned to the business of zombay slaying with renewed vigor.
Before long, they were just left with piles of heads and arms and torsos, as well as a heavy silence, like the press of a fat quilt on a cold winter’s night.
“There’s still ale in the jugs,” Billy said, rounding the counter. “Though there’s bits of zombay floatin’ on the top, like.”
“Yer can scoop it off an’ it’ll be right as rain,” Merl replied.
He fancied an ale. Ale gave him courage, and just looking at the door to the backroom told him he needed all the courage the world could give him. The door was shut, but that didn’t matter. Shut doors were worse sometimes. It was like when you were on your own and you heard a noise outside. That noise meant nothing if the door was open—it was just another noise; shut the door, and it became heck of a load more sinister. The backroom door was like that. He knew what was behind it, but not seeing it made it all the worse. Billy scooped the zombay guts off the top of the ale and poured, then took a long slug.
“Got a bit of body to it,” he said, and spurted a gobfull back out. “Man, that’s foul.”
Silence fell for just the smallest of moments before Frank started laughing. Merl laughed too, but without quite so much gusto. It was good though. Frank passed him the tin flask. Merl took a draw on it. Tasted like fiery liquid courage.
“Let’s do this,” Merl said, but Frank held him back.
“Are you sure you’re ready?”
Merl nodded. “You sure he won’t get any better?”
“He won’t.”
“You know more about this than you’re letting on.”
Frank nodded. “He isn’t getting any better.”
“Can’t we just leave him?”
“No.”
“But you’ll tell me why?” Merl pleaded.
“Yes. Later.”
Merl nodded and handed him the tin flask. He turned and stepped toward the door, but Billy jumped in the way. “No, Merl. I can’t let you go in first. Friends don’t do that.”
“Friends don’t,” Merl agreed.
Merl let Billy open the door.
It was gloomy inside, and silent until Billy went in. It was when he stepped through the threshold that the groaning started. Merl’s heart started pumping hard. He’d only been in the backroom once or twice. It was a small room, not much more than twenty by twenty, and only had one window. That let a dim shaft of light in. A single door led into the alley out back.
“Why didn’t we go into through the back?” Merl asked, though Billy didn’t answer.
They crept in.
Billy blocked out most of the room, standing in the way, scythe in hand, but Merl didn’t need to see to know that both his dad and Walinda were in there. The groans had a slightly different pitch, though he wasn’t sure whose was the highest.
“It’s your dad, Merl,” Billy said, softly. “And Walinda.”
Merl stepped out of Billy’s shadow. He stifled a sob as his eyes glazed.
His dad and Walinda Alepuller were trussed up like lambs on killing day. Each had been tied to a chair, and then the chairs had been tied together. Walinda’s belly was actually slightly bigger than Merl’s dad’s, but only slightly.
“Dad?” Merl’s voice broke halfway through the word. His father just groaned and moaned. He had a bite out of his hand, that was all, just a small bite. “Is that all it takes?”
“Just takes a nibble, maybe even a scratch,” Frank said.
Merl and Billy checked their hands and arms. Once they concluded they were untouched, Billy raised his ax, but Merl’s dad strained at his ropes.
“Mmmmmurrl.”
Billy jerked back. “Did he just speak?”
“Impossible,” Frank said. “Their heads are soft and their brains are mush.”
“Mmmmmurrl.”
Merl darted forward, but he took a fast step back when Walinda lunged for a bite. Merl wondered if she didn’t look better as a zombay. It seemed to suit her. He shook his scattered thoughts out of his head.
“Mmmmmurrl.”
“No, he said it. Yes, Dad! Yes!”
Merl surged forward again, but Frank grabbed him.
“No! Billy, deal with the other one.”
Billy didn’t hesitate. He swept his scythe right through Walinda’s neck and parted her ever-so-slightly-prettier head from her body.
Frank let Merl get a little closer to his dad. Merl’s dad didn’t look so good. His skin was all gray and had black veins running through it. Big, bruised bags sat under his eyelids, and red surrounded their milky orbs. Drool dripped in long strands from the corners of his mouth and green snot flowed from his nostrils.
“Dad?”
“Mmmmmurrl.”
“What, Dad?”
Merl swore his dad’s eyes became clearer, but then milked over until they were properly white.
“Naw.”
“Naw what, Dad?”
Merl clasped his hands in front of his chest, wringing his fingers hard.
“Naw ure daad.”
Merl heard the words, but didn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t, understand them.
“Yes, you are, Dad, yes you are. You’re my dad, Dad, and you always will be.” Merl tried to shuffle closer, but Frank held him firm. “Dad! Dad!” Tears streamed down his blood-soaked cheeks. His lips trembled, and his hands shook hard.
Merl knew his father was done.
The forcing of his last words had been too much for Merl’s dad. His eyeballs split, dripping clear fluid down his cheeks, and his mouth sagged open. Black blood flowed out as his head slumped forward.
“Dad!” Merl wailed.
Then Merl’s dad looked up and stared at Merl through his sightless eyes. He let out a feral growl and gallons of blood gushed from his mouth, down his front, and over his belly.
“He’s gone,” Merl said, but said nothing more. He’d given them the permission they needed.
Frank dragged Merl out the back door as Billy hooked the scythe round the back of Merl’s dad head and yanked it forward. Merl sobbed. He looked up at the bright, silver moon and wondered why—why the hell things had gone so tits up.
Billy tore out of the door, scooping up Merl and dragging his friend with him. The three of them raced down the alley that ran along the back of the tavern. Merl’s legs powered forward as if a bear was chasing them. They hurdled empty barrels, piles of rancid hay, and heaps of shit, scooting around the tavern’s corner and coming back to the road.
“Why come back here?” Frank asked. “We should have torn across the fields and into the forest.”
“More than just zombays that’ll kill you ‘round here,” Billy told him. “We’ll get some meat from the butcher and then head up to Saul’s place. It’s the closest, an’ he won’t be needin’ it no more.”
“We’ll all get them big carbuncle warts,” Merl said, trying to find some humor through his tears. He was relieved his father was dead, well, not a zombay, while being devastated about it too. The mix of emotions was odd. It was like having your favorite meal in front of you, only to find out it had gone bad.
“Carbuncles aren’t warts,” Frank pointed out.
“Did you know him, then?” Billy enquired.
“Who?” Frank asked, jumping out into the street and lopping Maddy Logsplitter’s head off, then kicking it into the river.
“Saul Carbuncle,” Billy said, joining him in the
middle of the road as Maddy gushed out her last drops of blood.
“No, it’s just a name for a big cluster of—”
Billy slapped him across the back before he had a chance to finish. “Just messin’ with you, Frank, just messin’.”
The three of them walked to the butcher’s. Billy kicked the door in and strolled out back. “Meat’s in the pit. Pit’s down the stairs.”
“In the pit?” Frank asked, clearly confused.
“It’s a big hole,” Merl explained as Billy lifted a hatch and listened.
“I know what a pit is,” Frank said through clenched teeth. “I just don’t know why the meat’s in it.”
“It’s colder,” Merl crowed, chuffed to know more than Frank.
“No groaning coming from down there,” Billy said. “Anyone got a torch?”
Merl grabbed one from behind the butcher-table and tossed it to Billy, who lit it with his strike. He vanished down below.
“Should we follow?” Frank asked.
“Nah, Billy’s screwed if there’s a zombay down there. Bite his legs fer sure.”
“Then shouldn’t we help?”
“Only room fer one,” Merl told him.
The wizard was an outsider, and outsiders didn’t know those sorts of things. Outsiders wouldn’t know that Saul’s was the closest place that had four walls and was isolated, because outsiders wouldn’t know that Saul was not only ugly and dirty, he was a horrible bastard too. There was nothing about him someone could love, so he lived alone. An outsider wouldn’t know that you kept meat fresh in a pit by packing it with ice from the winter’s fall. Sometime outsiders were dumber than dune dogs but thought they were as smart as dune cats.
Billy came back up. He was holding a load of parcels wrapped in hay and smothered with wax. “Meat,” he explained. “It’ll last as long as we will, though that ain’t sayin’ much at the mo. Get a sack, Merl, there’s another load yet, like.”
Merl went out back of Roger’s place and through into the killing room with the gulley in its floor. A stack of woven sacks sat in one corner next to a pile of hooks. Merl hesitated. He stared at the hooks, wondering if they’d be any good at killing zombies, but then he remembered Roger’s cleaver and decided that was what he needed.
“Where is he?” Frank asked, sneaking up behind Merl and scaring the life out of him. “The butcher?”
“Roger Cleavermeister? Think he was in the tavern. Can’t be sure, it was a bit of a blur. But where else would you go after work? These any good?” Merl pointed at the S-shaped hooks.
Frank grabbed a couple in the middle and then started doing some fancy movements with them. Merl swore he could hear the hooks swish through the air.
“Be good in a bar fight. Rip the face right off your opponent,” Frank said.
Merl watched, gobsmacked, as the strangest of things happened. The hooks vanished, and Frank tapped a black ring on his finger and winked at Merl while making a clicking sound with his tongue. “In the ring,” he said, and walked back to the front of the shop.
“That wizard’s got some fancy magic,” Merl muttered under his breath. “Fancy bloody magic indeed.”
By the time Merl got back to the hole, Billy had stacked up a bunch of the meat parcels. Merl stashed them all in two sacks, and then dumped in Roger’s cleaver inside for good measure. Frank helped Billy out of the hole.
Billy rubbed his hands together. “Chilly down there, like. Now, all we want is a decent cart and a good, solid nag to go with it.”
Everyone knew that Fred the Quarryman had the best horses and carts. There was nothing harder than quarry work, and only the toughest horses could haul stone.
“Fred’s,” both Billy and Merl said at the same time.
“Is it on the way to Saul’s place?” Frank asked.
Billy barged out of the butchers, scythe in hand like The Reaper. Merl clapped Frank around the shoulders. “And you thought I was as dumb as a dune dog.”
“What?” Frank asked, following Billy up the empty road.
“Why would anyone put a quarry on the way to a pig farm?”
4
Saul’s place was a little dilapidated, but then Saul had never been proud of bugger all. Merl knew that but couldn’t understand it. He liked to be proud of stuff he’d done. Mind you, most of the stuff he’d done revolved around sheep and herding, but that was okay. Saul hadn’t had a care in the world, so Saul had never worried about a thing, because he didn’t care. But that wasn’t all good at all, because it had turned Saul miserable. He’d never seen the joy in anything, and if he did comment, it was always bad. If you told him that it was a nice day, he’d tell you that it’d rain tomorrow. If you told him you’d had a bumper harvest, he’d tell you it’d turn bad before you sold it. Merl had thought Frank a bit pessimistic at first, but Frank just had a dry sense of humor. Saul hadn’t got any humor about him. Plus, he hadn’t loved anyone, and so no one had loved him. Merl didn’t want to be like Saul, but he was rapidly running out of folk to love and that worried him.
There was no humor in Saul’s place. It was made for killing pigs and that was that. Saul had left a nice lump of pork in a pot of water, so Billy had set the stove and let it boil while they slept. It was hard to tell how close it was to dawn when they’d arrived at Saul’s, but it was safe to say, they hadn’t had a long night’s sleep. Merl had slept on the floor, still sure carbuncles were contagious. Frank had slept in Saul’s chair right by the stove, and Billy had taken Saul’s flea pit of a bed.
When Merl woke and stepped outside, the sun was just peeking over Three Face Mountain. It meant they’d lost half the morning and still hadn’t taken a step toward Fred the Quarryman’s place. Then it struck him that he didn’t have a clue if they were in a hurry or not, because they had no plans apart from going to get a horse and cart.
“What level is this piggery?” Frank asked, walking out onto Saul’s stoop.
“Dunno. Didn’t look.”
“You mean to tell me that in the middle of the night you didn’t see glowing green letters.”
“Nope,” Merl shook his head. “I saw it alright. I just didn’t notice it at all, if that makes sense. They’re everywhere, so I skip over them. It’s a bit like you askin’ me how many buildings there are in Morgan Mount. I dunno, I jus’ know they’re there.”
Frank jumped the steps and landed on the dry mud that made up most of Saul’s yard. He carved a symbol in the ground with his heel. “This, Merl, is an E. You see? An E. Now, you know the luh and the vuh, so, slot the Es in, and you can read your first word. It says level.”
Frank clapped his hands together and rubbed them clean of all the caked guts. He beamed a bright white smile. Merl had never seen teeth so white. He was fairly sure it must be something to do with magic and briefly wondered what color his own teeth were.
“Say it, then,” Frank urged.
Merl couldn’t help but think Frank was getting a bit excited about him learning one word. As far as he knew, there were a gazillion words to learn. He’d been hoping for some trick so that he could learn a bucketful at a time, though one was a start, he supposed. He couldn’t help but feel a little downcast.
“Level,” Merl eventually repeated, and instantly felt excited that he could, actually, read one word.
Merl hopped off the stoop, and then twisted his body around so he could see the words above Saul’s piggery’s roof. “That one at the end, it’s like an E the wrong way around.”
“That’s a three. I’ll show you.” Frank grabbed a stick and carved nine symbols in the mud. “These are numbers. That’s a one, a two, and all the way to nine. Try and memorize one, two, and three. That’ll be a fine start,”
Merl grabbed the stick and traced the one a few times. He thought it quite an easy number, being just an upright stripe. Two was a little more difficult, but he decided it looked like one of the swans that patrolled Five-Sided Lake. Merl didn’t trust those swans—they were nasty bastards, them. The wrong-way-aro
und E, he knew that one. It was a three.
“Stripe, swan, wrong-way-around-E.” Merl nodded.
Frank patted him on the back. “We’ll concentrate on the other numbers later. Whenever we go past a building, you tell me the level. If you don’t know, I’ll tell you, and then you’ll learn your numbers. You’ll know building levels.”
“What does it matter?” Billy asked, emerging from Saul’s and yawning a jaw stretcher. “Building’s a building. Besides, I can’t see nothing.”
“Merl’s got a talent, but quite what it is, ‘fraid I don’t know. Like I told you, I’m not a very good wizard.”
“Then how come you’re not in school or somethin’?” Billy handed around plates of pork. “Surely you should be in wizard’s school, like.”
“I am. They sent me to Morgan Mount as a test. One of the head wizards had sensed something. He had a feeling, and he said if I could guess what the feeling was and act on it, he’d teach me The First Ward of Arthur14579.”
“Had a feeling?” Billy repeated. He screwed up his nose like Frank’s words stank. “And he sent you all the way here jus’ coz he had a feelin’? I have feelings sometimes, but I don’t send buggers all over the place coz of them, do I?”
“You haven’t got any buggers to send,” Merl pointed out.
“’Sides the point. If I did have buggers, I wouldn’t send them everywhere, would I? So, why’d he sends you here? What feelin? Did you have to do it, like?”
“I do what I’m told, and he was right—the feeling was right. The Tzeyon Bay sickness was here. That’s gotta be it.”
It didn’t matter to Merl why Frank was here. He was a damn fine fighter and a not-so-good wizard. He knew stuff too. It occurred to Merl that Billy and Frank might just be the only folk left in the world, and it also occurred to him that he couldn’t have picked a better two if he’d have tried.
“Where are we going next?” Merl asked.