Big Trouble

by Andrew Seiple

  “My fault?” Anger spurred her forward, as her willpower finally gave. She shook off Greta’s grasping hand, and stomped up to Thomasi, shaking her finger in a way that she’d learned very well from her mother over the course of many years of misbehavior. “How is any of this our fault! You summoned the clowns that are out there trying to eat my family right now!”

  Thomasi’s mustaches flared, as he pointed right back at her. “You were supposed to go tell people to evacuate! I’d hoped and prayed that you’d do the sensible thing and go back to town and do just that. When we got here and found the village empty, I thought my prayers had been answered! But no. But no! Here you are, and here you’ll die, damn it all.” The anger seeped out of him, and he collapsed down into the pew, folding into the halven-sized seating with clumsy difficulty. He stared down at his hands, then reached toward the bottle again. “Damn it all.”

  Chase lowered her shaking hand.

  Then she picked her way between the pews. A few of them had been toppled, she noticed. And the rug was bunched up, here and there. The crackling roar of the now-raging fire echoed through the broken windows, and a light was illuminating the northern side of the church. There were far fewer zombies outside the inn now, she noticed. Was that good? Chase didn’t know. Couldn’t stare at it. The fight at the inn wasn’t her problem to solve. Fights weren’t her specialty. Her specialty was people, and right now, she had one in front of her that could maybe be the solution to everyone’s problems.

  If she could only find the right words.

  That’s what I’m good at, isn’t it? Chase thought. And oh, how many lovely tricks I’ve learned today, to help me with that.

  Except…

  Except he was a Grifter too, according to his peers. He was probably a very, very good Grifter. He’d probably told lies that made hers look like child’s play.

  Any attempt at manipulation, any attempt at lying, would be risky. She didn’t have the leverage or the background knowledge to risk alienating him.

  The Knight of Clerics card flashed in her mind’s eye, reminding her of the reading. This was the ally she needed, she was sure of it. An imaginative man. Romantic? Not so much. He was older than she, and a human, to boot. Appealing to that angle was out… and manipulative in its own way, for all that men and women had been dancing that dance forever. No, she wouldn’t try that route.

  Without lies, what then?

  Honesty, she realized. Honesty and the knowledge that he’s deeper than he looks. He’s a thinker. Shallow people don’t keep journals and read books. Speaking of which…

  “I found your journal,” she opened with and watched him hesitate, just as the bottle met his lips. “In Pandora.”

  He moved the bottle aside, briefly. “So, you did go there.”

  “I did. We did.” Chase glanced over and found Greta next to her, drew reassurance from her sister’s solid presence. “We had to get our father back. And all the town’s fighters, too.”

  “Are they the lot at the inn, then?” Thomasi sighed. “Why the hell did you ever think a last stand would work?”

  “It’s our home,” Greta said.

  Chase nodded. “More than that, we had no time left by the time we got back. It took awhile to sort the other playas out.”

  Thomasi put the bottle down, eyes narrowing as he scrutinized her.

  “Yes, I know that word,” Chase confirmed. “Like griefer. I don’t know exactly what they mean. I don’t know all the details. Your journal is hard to read, and I didn’t have the time to browse through all of it.”

  “That’s a dangerous word for people like you,” Thomasi said. “Entire game— entire worlds have been destroyed when people like you got too close to it. Got too contemplative. Started noticing too many differences.” He heaved a sigh. “When the tech got too good, and the ethical questions got too much to ignore.”

  “Dijornos told me to think of you and people like you as demigods from another world. He said that you walked among worlds, that this was one of many. He was telling the truth, then?”

  Thomasi rubbed his chin, covering his mouth.

  “I can do that too!” Chase snapped. “You’re not the only Grifter here.”

  He paused, and coughed, eyes shifting away. With exaggerated slowness, he uncovered his mouth.

  “I haven’t, though,” Chase said. “I’m new to the job. I just took it today because we needed every edge we could get. But I’m not lying to you now. I haven’t used any of its skills on you.” She looked up at him and saw the sadness in his eyes. “I took it to try and stop the Necromancer. But I don’t think it’s going to be enough, though. Not alone.”

  Thomasi blinked. Then he closed his eyes. “I can’t help you. Not against him.”

  “Why not?”

  “Have you looked outside lately?” He picked up the bottle again and glared at the inn, as he took a drink. A timber collapsed, sending a spray of flames and sparks skyward. “I’m sorry. I’m pretty sure that your Father is dead.”

  “No. He’s got a way out of there.”

  “Oh?” Thomasi’s mustaches twitched, and he looked back at her with a spark of hope… that faded, as he stared down at the bottle again. “Doesn’t matter. Wherever they escape to, Vaffy… the Necromancer will just hunt him down. He’s got undead. He’s patient. They’re… experience to him. Just experience, and souls, and corpses for spetsa… specialized undead.” Thomasi’s words slurred, just a bit. Chase didn’t need to use her diagnose skill, she could tell he had left tipsy behind and started in on getting properly drunk.

  “Then let’s stop him,” Chase said, moving closer and grabbing the bottle. Grabbing at the bottle, anyway, as Thomasi displayed superior dexterity and managed to keep it away from her clutching fingers.

  “It’s… complicated. He. I can’t. Can’t kill him. Well, I guess… I mean I could. But he’s way better at peavey pee than I am.”

  “What was that?” Greta asked, nose wrinkling. “I’m sure I heard it wrong.”

  “Imma Arrpee guy. He’s peavey pee. Be like… A chihuahua versus a dire wolf.” He took another shot, despite Chase’s best attempts to grab the bottle. “Well, multiple chihuahuas if you helped. But… more than that…” he gently pushed Chase away and took another pull. “Morven at, if it’s his last deff… last death. That. If it’s that, then… he’s not coming back.” He stared at her.

  And something about the horror in his eyes made her step back.

  “He might not respawn.” Thomasi said, slowly, struggling to be clear. “And I will be damned if I send him to a fate worse. Than. Death.”

  Chase lowered her hands. Thomasi killed the bottle, then upended it, sighing as nothing more came out.

  “Please,” Chase said. “Is there nothing you can do? We don’t have to kill him, but he has to stop this. Is there no way to do that?”

  “Mmrf.” Thomasi stared for a bit, then shook his head. “He’s… got me hat. Insizted I give it him for this. Izza magic item. Letzem use… some Ringmaster tricks. Can refocus people’s attention on stuff. Super… stealthy, way he usez it.”

  “That’s how the zombies got so close to the buildings, isn’t it?” Chase realized.

  “No real trickz to use on ‘em.” Thomasi shrugged, with that slow, overcareful motion that heavy drinkers had. “Be a diff’rent story if I had my wagonz.” He sighed again, the Scumble in his breath making Chase wince. “But I couldn’t get in ta get’em. They kept the room too well guarded. Even while I waz… ass scaping…”

  “The wagons!” Chase burst out. “I have your wagons right here!” Chase pulled her pack off, then remembered a minor, inconveniencing detail. “No. No I don’t,” she sobbed with frustration. “Speranza’s minions took them!”

  “Wait. Wagons?” Greta asked.

  “Yeah. Miniature circus wagons. I got into the confiscation room and stole them.” Chase frowned. “I’m not sure why. It seemed like a good idea at the time. But they might as well be on the moon, for all th
e good they do us now. They’re back in the prison somewhere.”

  “No, they’re not,” Greta said.

  “What?” Chase turned to her sister.

  “Gadram has them.”

  “What?” Chase said again, eloquence departing her at this entirely unexpected revelation.

  “I saw him take a bunch of toy wagons off a prison guard back when you were having that four way standoff in the pump room. Everyone else was distracted, and he was just looting the bodies. He just popped the wagons in a bag, along with everything else he grabbed.”

  “Greta, this is great! All we have to do is wait here! Gadram will either kill the Necromancer, or he’ll show up here with the wagons, and Thomasi can use them to… to, uh… hey Thomasi, what exactly were you going to use those wagons for?”

  Thomasi answered with a snore.

  Chase turned, ears curling down, knowing what she’d find. And sure enough, the ringmaster was slumped in the pew, head lolling back, in a drunken stupor.

  “Oh. Fuzznuts,” Chase swore.

  Greta gasped. “You can’t say that in church!”

  A heavy thump of wood behind them, and the sisters spun around, expecting the worst.

  What they saw was an open hole in the floor, as Millie Wheadle shoved the trapdoor to the side of the altar open and hissed “You shouldn’t be saying anything in church! I can hear you shouting from the cellar!”

  Chase and Greta blinked.

  Then they looked at each other.

  Then they looked at the broken windows, and the two wights glaring blue-eyed through those windows, and all the zombies behind them, that had obviously been drawn by the noise.

  CHAPTER 21: REGROUPING

  The advantage of having a sister who you grew up with and involved in pretty much every shenanigan you’ve ever shenaniganed, is that sometimes, words are quite unnecessary.

  This was one those times.

  Chase gave Greta a slap and ran, not bothering to look behind her, hearing the crunching of dead flesh on glass as the last of the broken windows gave, hearing the unearthly howling of the wights as she fled. But none of those noises mattered now, because under them all, Chase could hear Greta scrambling behind her.

  In front of her, Millie Wheadle’s eyes grew bigger and bigger, until they were visible under her shelf of bangs. The little halven groped for the handle of the fallen trapdoor, tried to haul it up and shut...

  ...but not in time as Chase dove to the ground and slid, bowling Millie over and down the wooden stairs. “No, you don’t!” Chase shrieked.

  And then they were tumbling down in a storm of red numbers. Fortunately, most of them were pretty low, but when they hit the bottom in a groaning heap, Chase gave herself and Millie a few Lesser Healings with no regret or remorse.

  You have healed Millie Wheadle 25 points!

  You have healed Millie Wheadle to full!

  Your Lesser Healing skill is now level 26!

  You have healed yourself to full!

  Well, that was nice.

  Millie immediately rose and started shouting, and Chase slammed a hand over her mouth and looked backward.

  And to her vast relief, she saw Greta on the stairs, closing the trapdoor and sliding the bolts into place. Immediately the trapdoor shook, as someone dove onto it, and Greta flailed, but managed to catch her balance. The big girl bounded down the stairs as fast as she could.

  Then and only then did Chase let go of Millie’s face. Chase spoke rapid-fire, “We’re even. You tried to lock us in there with the undead and I pushed you down the stairs. Good? Good. Come on, let’s go find Dad and the others.”

  She turned her back on Millie, trusting Greta to intervene if the girl tried a rabbit punch, knowing the odds were high. But there was a church full of undead up there and that trapdoor was starting to shake in an alarming way, so Chase had other worries right now. She glanced around, and picked up a lit lantern that lay next to a packet of opened cookies. Then it was off into the darker recesses of the cellar.

  To her surprise, she didn’t hear Millie scuffling with Greta.

  Instead, two sets of little feet fell into step with her, as Chase walked past the empty spots where the festival decorations were normally stored. Normally the place was a maze of junk and boxes full of mysterious and occasionally useful things. Halvens tended to hoard, never throwing out something that could someday be useful again, even if only once.

  Of course, the problem with that idea was that you had to find the useful thing again, once you’d stored it away. And if you did that year after year, decade after decade, well...

  The end result was towering walls of boxes and crates and barrels, extending up to the high ceiling of the cellar. Once the three girls were past the open area where festival stuff normally sat, it turned into a labyrinth. Corridors twisted and turned through the mess, with the occasional set of shelves trying to lend some order to the chaos.

  Chase was glad for the lantern, otherwise the gloom would have been pretty much impenetrable.

  But only for a little while. As they went, she caught flashes of light from up ahead. And the sound of shifting feet and a rattling noise as metal scraped against a crate. That one came from fairly near, she thought.

  “It’s me!” she shouted. “It’s Chase! I have Millie and Greta with me!”

  “Oh, thank gods,” a familiar voice came from ahead, and a shadowy figure stepped into the light. Benjy Lapin smiled, and sheathed his sword. “Come on, I’ll walk you in.”

  Behind her, Chase heard wood crack and winced. “We’d better run. They’re not going to be far behind us.”

  Benjy’s face whitened... part of it. Chase took another, closer look, and saw that half of his face was covered with a mask of dirt— no. Blood.

  But then he was trotting forward, and Chase ran with him, trusting the other two to keep up. “What happened? Is everyone all right? We saw the inn burn.”

  “We did that,” Benjy said. “There were too many undead to fight. The inn couldn’t keep them all out, so we fought in the kitchen while it burned, right up until it was ready to go. Then we fled down here. We hoped that it would get them all, and the Necromancer would think we were dead.”

  “Yeah. I didn’t think he’d have this many zombies. Or wights.”

  “Wights?”

  “The blue-eyed things.”

  Benjy shook his head. “Those things were terrifying. Hold on, let me get you past the traps.”

  “We have traps?” That was very, very surprising.

  Then she heard wood splinter, from far back in the cellar, and the triumphant groans of the hunting zombies, and suddenly the fact that they had traps was very, very reassuring, instead.

  “What was that?” Benjy asked, straightening up from a tangle of ropes at the edge of the lantern-light.

  “They’re coming in from the church,” Chase said, glancing between him and the darkness behind her. “So I hope you’ve got a lot of traps.”

  “Not nearly enough. Grummer!” he called out, holding the ropes aside so they could pass...

  …and Chase sighed in relief as they passed out of the last of the maze, entering into a neatly-ordered wine cellar, full of kegs and barrels. A set of human-sized stairs led up to the sturdy, oaken door into the inn’s kitchen. And between Chase and the door stood the survivors of the Dew Drop Inn’s last defense.

  For a second, Chase dared to hope that everyone had survived. But then she realized that there were faces missing, and as she focused in, she realized that it had been pretty bad on this side of things.

  “The Dijettos? Old Man Carver?” She asked Benjy, but it was her father who answered.

  “Dead,” he said simply. “And that adventurer, Moira.” he gestured to the other red-haired human woman, who was huddled on the stairs, arms wrapped around her knees, staring at the wall. “Maddie’s taking it hard.”

  But it was more than the humans. Chase counted no less than four missing faces among the halvens who had
stood to defend the Inn. All told, they had lost one full party.

  “Where’s Renny?” An oddly deep voice snorted from around her legs, and she looked down to see the pig knight staring up at her.

  “They’re fine. Uh, I think. Hang on. Party Screen.” She studied it, then nodded. “He and Gadram are still alive. They were going to try to hunt down the Necromancer and kill him...” she slapped her forehead. “...but that was before we ran into Thomasi. They don’t know he took Thomasi’s hat.”

  “Thomaaaasi’s haaaat?” Father Gronk hopped up, bulging eyes staring down at her. Chase blinked a bit, nonplussed by the enormous frog. She’d seen him before, of course, but it was a different matter when that swampy breath and that enormous maw were mere feet from her.

  “Yes.” she glanced back. “Thomasi’s in the church, passed out. His hat is magical; it lets the Necromancer control attention. He’s sneaking around somewhere out there, coordinating the groups of undead.”

  “Groups. Yes,” her father said, straightening up from where Greta and Millie had been talking to him, their arms waving frantically. “I’m glad you’re alive. I’m not glad you led the undead down here. This is going to be dicey.”

  “Sorry. We didn’t exactly plan to do that,” Chase said, looking around the cellar with sudden worry. “Wait. Where’s Mom?”

  “I sent her home before this started.”

  Chase decided to be relieved, and focused back on the matter at hand. “What are we going to do?”

  “You’re going to stay here and heal. We, on the other hand... we just got a level or two from that fight, most of us. We’re going to head into the maze and ambush the heck out of the undead that come this way.” Stem Berrymore took a deep breath. “And I hope that’s going to be enough.” He waved his shield toward the dark alleys of junk. “Terriers! Let’s go!”

  Without a word, the surviving halvens grabbed up their weapons and filtered into the maze. Chase watched as Soli Jerbean clambered up on top, then caught lanterns as Baconator, the pig knight threw them up, one by one. She lit them and hurried off on top of the precariously-leaning piles, leaving lanterns here and there to light the stacks below. Only then did Baconator follow them, snout twitching.