by Rik Hunik
Chapter 4
Eddie and Sue looked at each other. Eddie could see the fear behind her eyes threatening to break out. He said, “You better roll another joint.”
She nodded and he set up the game for the new start. It took only a couple of minutes because not many pieces had been used. He made sure he shuffled the equipment cards thoroughly.
They started again. This time the door stayed closed and the first few turns went smoothly. They drew some fighters and had them positioned at the windows to help control the Zombie Warriors before any of the Zombie Champions showed up.
Sam screwed boards across every window and door, then prowled from window to window with a shotgun in his hands, peering apprehensively into the dark. He stopped at the table now and then to offer them a few pointers or answer a question.
Eddie drew the Voodoo Queen and she wounded his Truck Driver before the other heroes and fighters ganged up and killed her.
The next turn Sue drew the card for the Zombie Master. The instant she placed his figurine on the board glass shattered and sprayed across the hardwood floor in the living room. Sue screamed and Eddie knocked a candle onto the floor with his elbow. “I got it,” Sam shouted and ran to the broken window. He thrust the shotgun barrel out between two boards and pulled the trigger, blasting away the threat. Eddie picked up the candle and they got on with the game.
Eddie drew the card for the Zombie Captain and this time the sound of breaking glass came from the bedroom. Sam ran into the bedroom and they heard the shotgun blast twice.
They lost a couple of fighters to the Zombie Captain and, while they were dealing with him, the Zombie Master reached the vault and got the book. In four turns he would be out the door and they would be defeated again. From the frequency of shotgun blasts Eddie assumed they probably wouldn’t have a chance to play any more games. He studied the game board, trying to work out some tactics that would allow them to best utilize all their fighters and champions to hold back the advancing tide of zombies.
“We’ve got to stop the Zombie Master from getting out the door so we should move all of our fighters and heroes into the center to intercept him. The zombies will come to us.” Sue agreed and they began putting the plan into effect, but some of their fighters and one of the heroes were too far away with too many Zombie Warriors to fight their way through.
They managed to wound the Zombie Master, which put them one hit away from victory, but they had no more attacks and he headed relentlessly for the front door. Then their fighters had a bad round, killing only a couple of Zombie Warriors. “Seven misses in a row, five of them nines,” Sue complained. “What are the odds of that?”
Eddie didn’t answer. He counted the Zombie Warriors in the box and there weren’t enough to go around, even if all the heroes were successful with all their attacks. “We’ve used all the grenades and there are no cards left,” he said, fear clenching at his stomach. “We’re done for.”
Sam heard him and hurried over to look at the situation. “You have to shuffle all the cards you used, including the Zombie Champions you’ve already killed, and hope you draw a grenade, then pray that it works.”
Sue looked doubtful. “What if it’s one of the Zombie Champions?”
“Then you have to kill it again before you can win. And don’t forget about the ‘Zombie Free Move’ card.” He looked at the board and grimaced. “That would do you in right now, but the odds of drawing a good card are pretty much even. It can make you or break you, but you have no choice. You have to pull cards until you get one you can use and it has to work.” He went back to his patrol, his face grim.
Eddie quickly gathered the cards and shuffled them, then Sue cut the deck. Eddie moved the Security Guard to an empty square, licked his lips and took the top card. It slipped out of his dry fingers and he had to pick it up with a fingernail by a corner. It was a fighter who had been killed earlier, handy next turn but no help now.
He moved again and killed a zombie in the door square, but it took the Truck Driver to move in and clear the square to draw another card. Eddie’s heart thumped in his chest and blood roared in his ears. He felt like he was really fighting because so much was riding on the outcome of this draw. It was a grenade. He felt like cheering. He tossed it into a square that held three Zombie Warriors and rolled the die. It bounced off the Zombie Master and came up a seven, one number too high. The grenade was a dud.
Sue moved the Butcher into an empty square and reached for a card. The odds were increasingly against them. She paused with her hand on the deck and looked up to the heavens with her eyes closed. Neither of them was religious but Eddie couldn’t argue against prayer at a time like this. She flipped it over and then looked down at it. Her shoulders sagged with relief when she saw that it was a grenade.
She rolled the die and it bounced high and rolled right off the table. They scrambled around on the floor for half a minute to find it and she rolled again. It slowed and almost came up a nine but it seemed to Eddie that the intensity of his stare pushed it back so it came up a one, successfully clearing the square. The Butcher then used his shotgun to kill another Zombie Warrior and they had just enough for another round. The Voodoo Priest had a weak attack and a low defense but Sue pushed him into the Zombie Master’s square. His attack was successful but the Zombie Master defended and retaliated, wounding the Voodoo Priest.
The Zombie Master moved into the door square and suddenly a tumult began as real-life zombies assaulted the front door of the cabin. Sam went to defend while Eddie and Sue hastily placed the zombies on the board. If they didn’t kill him this turn nothing would stop the zombies outside from breaking in.
There was no sense killing Zombie Warriors this turn because if the Zombie Master wasn't killed he would step out the door and there would be no next turn. All the fighters that could reach stepped into the door square and attacked the Zombie Master. For a wonder every attack worked but the wounded Zombie Master, incredibly, defended against every single one.
With a splintering crash the door and the boards holding it broke open. Sam stood his ground, pumping the shotgun as fast as he could into the doorway.
Eddie turned back to the game. If they didn’t finish they were just as dead as if they lost. Hands shaking, trying not to look at Sam, he rolled the die for the Security Guard. A miss. He cursed and rolled for the Truck Driver. Another miss. He tore at his hair in anguish. The shotgun fell silent, empty. While Sue rolled for the Butcher Eddie took a quick glance at Sam. He was swinging the shotgun wildly like a club, smashing rotten flesh and bone, sending zombies reeling back out the door, but some were getting past.
“Son of a bitch,” Sue shrieked and pointed. Eddie saw an eight. Another miss. Their only chance left was the wounded Voodoo Priest, who attacked now with only a two. Sue’s eyes were wide, near panic. She knew the odds were seriously stacked against them. Eddie figured they were about seventeen to one.
“You have to use the Voodoo Priest,” Eddie said as he got to his feet and snatched up his chair to use as a weapon against two zombies now less then five feet from the table. The smell of mold and decay washed over him as he swung the chair, knocking the clumsy zombie off its feet, but not damaging it. He knocked the other one down too and glanced back to see Sue watching him. “Do it!” he yelled at her.
It broke her trance, she looked down, moved the figurine and rolled. Eddie swung the chair down at the zombie in front of him. The chair shattered and the zombie went down but two more were coming. They were slow and clumsy and not very strong, but relentless. He heard Sue shout exuberantly, “It’s a two, I hit him.” Weaponless, Eddie dodged the zombie’s clumsy arms and pushed it hard on the chest with both hands, knocking it off balance and sending it flying backwards to the floor.
Sue was rolling the die for the last time in the game but a zombie had circled around Eddie and was reaching for the table from the side to disrupt the game. Eddie ran and jumped and grabbed it around the neck, bringing it down like a c
owboy tackling a calf. Bones crunched and cracked under him and foul, viscous fluid soaked into his clothes. He scrambled to his feet and looked at the board. The die was cocked at a steep angle against the Zombie Master’s legs. His miniature grin seemed to be saying, “I win.”
Sue’s fingers blocked Eddie's view as she reached for the die to reroll it. Eddie looked to the door and saw that Sam was down under a mass of flailing limbs. A line of zombies three abreast advanced on the table. With a yell Eddie spread his arms and ran full tilt at them. They slowed and swayed back but they didn’t stop. Eddie felt his feet sliding as they pushed him backwards.
Sue shrieked, “It’s a nine! He’s dead. We win! We win!”
Eddie’s feet gripped the floor as the zombies quit pushing and he disengaged from them as they turned and shuffled out the door. The zombies piled on Sam also pulled themselves together and withdrew. Eddie didn’t try to interfere with their departure. Sam had a swollen lip, a bleeding nose and two black eyes but he pushed himself up to a sitting position. Sue ran to help him. “Are you okay?”
Sam took a while before he answered. “Yeah, I’m fine. I have about two thousand bruises and I hurt everywhere but I’m fine.” They helped him to the couch and Sue cleaned him up while Eddie poured everyone a shot of whiskey.
Sue set her empty glass down and said, “That game should be destroyed.” Now that the game was over she didn’t want to go anywhere near it, or even look in it's direction.
Sam nodded. “I could say, ‘Be my guest,’ but I won’t do that because I don’t want you to get hurt. It can’t be damaged or destroyed by any means I could think of in all the years its been in my possession. We can only hide it. I thought I had a good place but I guess it wasn’t good enough.”
Eddie said, “If you put it back and screwed the shelf down the game would be a lot harder to get out.”
“Good idea. I’ll do that.” Sam surveyed the shattered glass, torn curtains and broken boards in front of every window of his cabin.
Sue said, “I thought all the damage caused by the zombies would disappear as soon as we won the game, like in that movie.”
Sam chuckled and shook his head. “No, we have to deal with it, but the memory will fade quickly. Most people weren’t touched by it as strongly as we were so it wasn’t even an especially noteworthy day for them. Some people in some strange organization somewhere that keeps track of such things might notice that the spike was centered somewhere over the Central Interior of British Columbia but they’ll never pinpoint us. Lots of bad things happened today but the effects will be dealt with and in a few months the memory will fade, just another skirmish in the endless battle between good and evil.”
Sue said, “I’m pretty damned sure I’ll never forget this night.”
Eddie nodded emphatic agreement.
Sam said, “You were the prime players, right here in the center, at the heart of the conflict, so naturally you’ll remember the most, but try telling somebody a couple of weeks from now how you played a game that saved the world from the forces of evil, and then try to convince them that you’re serious. Remember, it took a zombie in your face to convince you.”
Eddie remembered the bones bouncing off the hood less than two hours ago, and how just minutes before that he had been going along for the ride just to indulge a friend. He nodded. “Good point. I’m going outside to grab me a piece of zombie for proof.”
Eddie turned on the outside light and Sam led the way with the shotgun but there was nothing to be afraid of. The lake and the woods were quiet and there were no zombies around any more. There weren’t even any pieces of zombie. “What happened to them all?” he asked Sam.
Sam shrugged. “How the hell should I know? I don't understand black magic.”
Sue came out. “Is it over?”
Sam nodded. “Yeah, all the zombies are gone.”
“Then let’s get out of here. It’s not very late yet and I’d rather sleep in my own bed tonight than in this mess.”
The men concurred. They hid the game, screwed the shelf into place, secured the cabin as much as they could, shut everything off, then piled into Sam’s SUV and drove back to town.
The End
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