Bring On The Dead

by Robert Harterman

  He could dull fear, by damn.

  __________

  Zombies were fewer and fewer in these parts, but napping out on the open road was still about as smart chewing on the barrel of a loaded shotgun. So when Chase neared Gintypool, his home, dawn graying all but the deepest pockets of forest, he was footsore and bleary-eyed from thirteen hours of walking. He was feeling almost drunk. Very soon, though, he’d be able to catch a little rest—which of course meant he’d be wide awake. He would be feasting with his family, celebrating his mother’s birthday. He would be drunken and stuffed. Perhaps later he’d be stuffing his mother’s handmaiden, Brickelby or giving it proper to ol’ Frieda 400. Depends on if he was up to it. He was blessed, either way. A hunter’s life was a good life. But good thundering shit if he wasn’t more ready to just get his feet in front of a fire and drink away the strange feeling in his head. It clung like a helmet of insects.

  Growling several large yawns, he trekked another mile to the crest of Nameless Hill. Leaning on his walking cudgel, he swayed a bit, almost snoring. Then he righted himself in jerks.

  He looked around, sleepily. Rolling up to his feet were prime river bottom fields, dotted with barbed pits and wrapped by a heavily guarded, lazy bolt of the Gardenwater River.

  At the edge of it all was Gintypool, a jumble of thatched brick and barbwire houses along the water with the audacity to call itself a compound. From here, the predawn blue made the homes and shops appear little different than a knot of sleepy cattle, jostling at the water’s edge for a drink. Easing down the long, wet slope, he could feel the soil beginning to soften. The itchy familiarity of home began to set in. He could see the open, slate roof of that incorrigible oaf who called himself a gunsmith. Beyond it was his own little herb patch, where a beast named Cool Laney had been digging up his onions. He thought briefly about her, about how a child could be so obsessed with onions. It was a mystery to him. Truly, it just boggled his mind beyond damned boggling.

  Then he squinted, noting a peculiar fog. He traced its path to his own little corner of the grain field. It was strangely fast. He watched it flow downriver just as quickly.

  “What the shivering fuck?”

  Even as he asked, he knew. It was not fog—and the bizarre fact of this wormed into his mind slowly.

  It was smoke.

  But damn it to the depths, it was coming from the water.

  The smoke rolled from Gardenwater River to curl through the scattered gardens. It made islands of the shit piles, which stood as high as the two-story gristmill. A burnt-bread smell began filling his mouth. He glared past the village once more to the river. He understood the grain barges must be aflame, but they were docked across the river to prevent exactly that. Chase sidled down the long slope, his stomach tightening. Shrieks carried across the fields. Sneering, he watched the distant forms of neighbors as they began to stream from their homes. They went scattering in uncertain directions. As he jostled further down, some of the forms were gathering beside the sentinels along the river. A few were nude despite the chill, their junk flopping, clutching robes or woolen blankets around their old shotguns. Others carried swords or farm tools.

  He halted on a rocky outcrop. Here, he could see that he was right. The grain barges were half-sunk, rolling over as they burned. Sparks rose like hellish bugs from a year’s worth of food to swarm across the river onto the gristmill.

  The last of the stores began to smolder.

  “Rot my fucking eyes… Run! Run, you idiots! Get some water on that fire!”

  But as the flames sprouted, the men stood on the bank. Transfixed. They were staring out into the river. Chase ran toward them, the field seeming to stretch like in a dream. People were fleeing now out into the fields. Others were running his way.

  He ran to them.

  Midway down the slope, he saw a familiar figure. Well ahead of everyone, the swineherd was holding a brace of piglets in his arms. His eyes were panicked. Several of his sisters were following.

  “Barclay, what the hell is going on!”

  He froze, startled.

  Just as suddenly, recognition washed over him. “Chase! Run, dude.” He began waving him up the hill. “Ye need to scoot!”

  “Why! What for?”

  In the next instant, a tight cluster of thumps resounded all around. Chase ducked, spinning in every direction to pinpoint the noise. Shock tingled through his core when he noticed the arrows. They flowered the ground all around him. One stuck from the frosty mud, just inches from his boot.

  Back downhill, the women were screaming.

  Chase growled in anger, turning to see them alongside the pigger, face-down. White fledged arrows, of a sort he immediately recognized as handcrafted, were jutting from their backs. Endless training reminded himself to think, to locate the archers before he moved. But his head was burning in anger. He ran to kneel amid the writhing wounded. Grimacing, he retrieved the dirk from his boot and snapped off the protruding shafts. There were nine of the wiggling sisters, an enormous task as they crawled or stood to run, only to drop again in agony. Chase kept scampering to help, shaking his head to a chorus of pained, pitiful noises that ranged from yelps to screams. Then he growled at them to clutch each other.

  “Hold firm on the wounds, girls!”

  It proved impossible.

  Having to abandon them to their misery, he looked toward the compound. His father was nowhere amid the smoke and confusion. Still crouching, he moved toward it, low and irregular to stay in the smoke.

  Then he paused, hearing something.

  Was that?....

  A motor.

  Atop the river, a great aluminum longship was surging through the smoke. It was a strange sight on the relatively shallow river. Massive but sleek, the vessel revealed its full length as it lunged between the barges. Archers were wading in the vessel’s shadow. Chase fixed a narrowing eye on them, unsure who they even were. Their movements were far too controlled to be zombies; they wore the amphibious helms of the Ancient SEAL Teams, but their upper bodies were armored in plates of metal, almost like knights, a concept as foreign to most of humanity these days as these men were to him. He shielded his eyes and looked again. Then it hit him. These were longmongers, a group of former zombie hunters who gave up The Good Fight for gold, whoring their blades and bullets to any merchant or warlord with enough of it, and plying those weapons on as many men as they did monsters. Which made them worse than the monsters. And if half of what heard about them was true, then demons would hide under hell from the bastards.

  As he drew closer, there was no question of it—they were longmongers. But who the thundering fuck would hire them to attack Gintypool? The muddy little dung pile had fewer holdings than a good prostitute.

  He shook his head, and spat.

  As the boat slowed between the docks, they pounded on the hull and a series of oars withdrew as if slurped. Bands of the same sort of warriors leapt over shields that hung on the gunwale. Flanked by the archers, they stomped ashore carrying shotguns or axes.

  A few of Gintypool’s men had gathered into a band. Most carried only knives or sickles. They kept their tight wall, their shield wall, like zombie commandos, but these were men they faced.

  Chase drew a tight breath, running.

  “Run, you damn fools! Run like you hear the devil’s hoofs behind you!”

  His voice was lost in an echo of growls. A sudden wash of smoke tumbled over their forms. The sounds of yowling and crying rose and cut short to the thunder of guns. There were long oohing noises in the reverberating echoes. And with a turn of fire-driven wind, everything cleared.

  Still running, he saw the nightmare he feared. Dark blood lurched from the wounds as his neighbors were axed down, scooting away. They were begging for their lives. When the strangers finished the butchery, they fanned out enter homes, bursting into the pub and the church.

  When they emerged, they carried nothing.

  They are looking for something… or someone.


  Closer now, smoke billowed toward him without end, blistering his senses. He dodged Cool Laney, the poor girl crying and naked as she dug obsessively in his herbs. Her mother wailed as she scooped her up, hurrying into the ankle-deep mud of the fields. Arrows began to stud the ground around them.

  He saw one of the archers, very near.

  Suddenly Chase’s toes wrenched the edge of the courtyard. He tripped, skipping at first. Then the impact of the pavingstones slammed him. He rolled over, wheezing.

  When he looked up, he saw a behemoth.

  The man was smirking. Under the SEAL team helm, a single eye pivoted downward. The man raised his elongated axe, drawing down on him with other hand, which held a rusted 45.

  In the same instant, Chase hopped to his feet, jabbing upward with his long walking cudgel. The man lurched, his head rocking back. As he brought the gun up, he collapsed. His jaw was dislocated, freezing his face into the look of a silent howl. The axe and gun fell beside him. Gasping for air, Chase bashed him twice more. He spat, recognizing a chunk of his tongue in spittle. Blood was sheeting out of his mouth as he bent to gather the gun. But he stayed bent over—another man was running at him, growling, just a split second away. He reached for the dirk in his boot instead, then lunged into him, sideways and balled-up. The blow sent them both to the ground. As they grunted and rolled, both gained their footing. But the stranger dropped the instant he stood.

  Chase nodded, seeing he had landed his knife under the Kevlar shirt—firmly into the man’s kidney. He stepped on the man’s neck to cut a long moan short. Then he felt more blood coming from his mouth. His chin and chest was red.

  An arrow whisked under chin, parting his long beard.

  Chase ducked and ran. The archers were appearing from everywhere now, their helmeted heads turning to him. But they did not fire.

  Ahead, an older man was approaching.

  He was smaller than the others, with a more ornate helm. The man wore a cape, clasped together with an unmistakable golden clip. It was rimmed with odd, random clusters of stars that encircled a strange symbol, which looked look like a pointed, upside-down fleur de li. There was no doubting it now; these folks were longmongers. And the rumors about them seemed true as well. They had the disciple of veteran campaigners. With something like a salute, the old man ordered the bowmen to lower their weapons.

  Then he nodded toward the gun at Chase’s feet.

  Chase cocked an eye.

  A dozen men were approaching from his right. Three more emerged from the vessel, hefting shields from the gunwale. He could see an axe that had been dropped, and he grunted, understanding that he could not even bend to collect it. Everything became slow, and he knew: this was it.

  The inglorious it.

  The man halted, waiting.

  Chase became intensely aware of the river. The sparkling, pleasant sound of it. The high, thin tickle of the morning sun. Life was a nasty, magical thing and he had made of it what it he could.

  He licked his teeth and spat on the man’s foot.

  As the man looked down in disgust, Chase felt a hot punched rip into the back of his thigh. He’d been hit. It was an arrow... a fucking arrow. Fire spread from the wound, locking the leg in place. But he did not fall. He couldn’t. The leg was rigid, shaking.

  Once more, the arrows ceased.

  Baring his teeth, Chase turned. The three from the ship said something he could make out. They were focused and grim, stepping over bodies as they closed in. It was almost laughable that they moved to surround him.

  Without warning, a noise reverberated from his father’s house. Chase hobbled just to get turned. Blue spots began radiating across his vision from the pain. It was useless to remind himself not to look directly at it, because the noise resounded.

  Then his father rushed, bursting from the door in his long underpants.

  “Oh hell’s depths no…”

  The enormous old man chuffed like a lion, mad with fever. He ran toward the livery of armed strangers, his locks bouncing with his odd gait.

  The longmongers turned to the odd spectacle, laughing as they drew their bows.

  Chase limped to his father. But as they fired, he halted. A cold sensation slapped over his skin.

  Every shot had thudded into its mark.

  Alfurd, hedge-hogged with arrows, remained upright. He just stood, seeming to digest his situation.

  “Well, my rollicking God!” he grunted. “Isn’t this a spot?”

  Then he continued coming.

  Chase hobbled to meet him. When their eyes met, the father blinked. At first, his father’s deep green gaze did not take him in with any sort of welcome. Then the old man straightened his back. He touched Chase’s shoulder, and he smiled.

  They said nothing.

  As they embraced, his father’s cold breath went through his shoulder. Their knees were grinding together. They began to fall backwards. Chase grunted and heaved, trying to twist before they splashed onto the stones. But his leg gave way. In the next breath, his head was wedged between the paving stones and his father’s great folds of flesh. He was turned awkwardly. The arrow in his thigh was joined now by the steel heads of four others that protruded from his father.

  He was stuck.

  “No, pops. This is a spot.”

  While the final breath left the massive father, an enormous clap of laughter rose, and Chase could see the longmongers staring as they chuckled. The smoke was rolling behind them. As a few more bent down to gawk, someone said something that made the others laugh again. Then they went silent. One of them, the largest, shook his head no. He said something that caused a great deal of debate. Chase convulsed, perplexed as they began tying him with heavy rope to his father, binding him with far more strength than he had in him.

  Finished, they made their way toward the ship. None of them carried plunder. They had taken no women. Nor slaves as farm muscle. But they were not fleeing—their actions were steady and assured while they assumed stations along each side.

  The pain in his head began growing in surges.

  Chase shut his eyes.

  “Heave, Heave,” resounded, echoing back from the hills.

  Then the motor fired up, and only then did he realized they had left him as food for the zombies that were no doubt on their way. His reddening eyes scanned the courtyard. All around him were two hundred dead, frozen in their animate poses. Thinner and thinner plumes of smoke were pouring over the contorted frames. Crows were already at work on the wetter parts.

  And at the edges of the forested hills, something else stirred.

  Chapter 2

  __________

  Chase faded and came to. It was just a blink, but already he was unsure if he had if he died, if he were in a nightmare, or just hell. Stuck under and bound securely to his massive, dead father, he only knew that he was fading again. And he was still unable to move. Quite fucked, he mused.

  He shoved upwards, straining until the edge of his vision started to fuzz again. Then he shivered and shook his head. It took all the effort in the world, and nothing came of it but more exhaustion. He stared at the clouds a moment. Every gasp was bringing less air. He tried to scoot and understood he might be worse than stuck. He might have lost the use of his legs.

  Then he saw them: Twenty or two dozen heps, naked zombies, well-muscled and crossing the fields now like excited apes, their calls and growls like the sounds of bulls being castrated.

  “Brickelby!” he bellowed, and a giant invisible fist of pain squeezed his lower back.

  The bitch’s handmaiden did not respond, but the pain had brought air. He gasped while he was able, panting and wondering if he had even made a noise when he called out. Nausea was starting to balloon in his chest, which felt somehow positive.

  “Brickelby. Where in damnation are you!”

  The slide-and-peek on his father’s door rattled opened. At last, he could feel living eyes on him.

  “Chase?”

  “Yes, woman.
Hurry.”

  The handmaiden exploded outside, naked except for boots and carrying only a knife. She pushed his enormous father off him with embarrassing ease. Then she put her hand in front of her chest. Cold shock crumpled her face. Alfurd lay strangely bent, backward atop his own arm. A film was beginning to glaze the eyes. Chase tried to get up, but his leg jerked straight.

  She began crying.

  “No time for that,” he gasped, pointing to the onrush.

  They were whooping, rushing on all fours.

  There was a massive pain, like a bolt of magma shooting from his knees to his neck as he tried to move. He could not. He drew his samurai sword. Then he felt colder.

  In the next instant, Brickelby ran and squatted. She gathered the rusty pistol, firing. Downing the foremost hep, the alpha, with a brilliant headshot, she bought him a half a minute, at least. The rest of the beasts responded in an instant, spinning the hep on its belly despite its instinctual clutches and biting.

  Now back in front of him, she bent over in front of him.

  “No time for that either.”

  “Shush ye filthy mouth,” she commanded and lifted him over her shoulder.

  His fist balled. He tried to keep silent, but his breath escaped in a shaky, loud squall as the pain slammed him. His vision filled with red. Then splotchy blackness. He began to shiver, his breathing like hiccups now as she ran with him into the cottage. The moment stretched into a murder of eons before he was put on the floor, where he drew a real breath.

  When the shaking slowed, a wave of agony pressed through his body, washing away the denser hurt.

  He watched her heft the enormous metal bolster against the thick iron door.

  “Get up,” she said.

  He could not. Not right away.

  “Piss off,” he said

  She folded her arms. “I’m going to piss alright. Right in ye damn mouth if you don’t stand up,” she growled.

  He nodded. But when he tried to stand, she had to help him.

  “I need to you to get this arrow out of his leg.”