Bring On The Dead

by Robert Harterman

  “Who is this? Who is this who dares speak to the Heir of This World with such comfort, such foolish familiarity?”

  Behind him, Chase could hear them readying their stances for battle. Well behind the Liernes creature, yet another helicopter stood at the ready—no, it was the same one; arrows jutted from the tail, and its windows and belly bore the pocks of numerous gunshots.

  Damn it to hell, but they had not even crippled the machine.

  Chase leered at it, then her. “I am called Copterkiller!”

  “Copterkiller?” it mocked, and it began cackling, as deep as an echo in a bottomless well. “I assure you, Copterkiller, that this girl will recover quite fully from the scratches you and your little companion will put on her—just soon as she has… eaten.”

  At that, Billy’s arrow whipped through the air, striking the creature that so resembled Chase’s mother between the eyes. But it merely pulled the missile from the course, blackened skin and threw it aside.

  The ease of it made their skin crawl. Chase’s heart rose up into the roof of his mouth.

  The creature approached, smirking.

  And they all charged.

  There was a strange crackle in the air as the creature raised its arms out to either side. But it managed nothing before Chase reached it. Roaring, Chase hacked into the creature, but it pulled the blade out of its chest with a slow, audible breath, waving its hand before them.

  Thunderous noise ripped through his skull, and all of them were sent splashing back away from it.

  Dinga fire another arrow, hitting it in the chest.

  But again, the strange thunder splashed across their minds and they were sent aloft, thrown back another ten feet. There were the sounds of groaning now, and Bik’s arm appeared broken. The creature was smiling with Liernes’ ruined head as it waved its arm yet again. And again, they were knocked into the walls and against each other.

  It happened again, and as Chase was sent tumbling toward the mouth of the tunnel, he clipped his back against Dinga’s bald head, sending them both into awkward sprawls. Everyone was facing different directions.

  She managed, somehow to shoot her bow again. Her next shot was quicker, lower. It nearly decapitated his mother’s form before it roared out a deafening boom, and pinned them against the roof with its unnatural force.

  “Now…” It said. “You will look upon the rocks that will end you!”

  And it flipped them upside down.

  Chase began neighing.

  “What is this!” it roared. “This is how you meet your doom?”

  Dangling there, Chase motioned for the others to join him in the odd sounds of neighing, and no sooner had they begun than a doorway at the far, far end of the long, cavernous hall exploded.

  They were dropped on their heads.

  The walls were trembling as an enormous, mechanized devil emerged, thundering. The ground shook with every thud of its blades.

  The creature turned to it.

  “Nooo, my lovely!”

  Yet the helicopter came. They kept neighing, louder now. It roared toward them in thunderous crashes, clipping the walls. Bik and Dinga were scampering to hide themselves over the ledge while Billy, Uncle Jickie, and Chase stood to face it.

  The Liernes-creature ran to it, but the body was flattened in a single trounce, dropping without a sound.

  Billy grunted.

  The chopper came, ripping straight at them, just as quickly as ever. The floor was collapsing in like a web of black. Chase thought he heard a lion, but it was his Uncle Jickie. He dug a small knife in Chase’s thigh and pushed him into Billy, just before the machine would have flattened them both.

  As Chase spilled to the floor beside it, the blades made a large whomp whomp to either side of his body, and it launched itself after his uncle. There was a great thud overhead as it clacked against falling stone.

  Just as it went over, a massive chunk of the metallic rock falling upon it, Chase saw the edge collapse, and he saw his uncle flattened against the front of the machine.

  The floor, cracking right in front of him, was so close that Chase saw over the edge, saw his uncle falling, tumbling with the helicopter.

  Chase saw him, laughing, just before they both exploded—the machine in a great burst of flame, and his uncle, in a great splash of red on the rocks, far below.

  Chapter 37

  Chase breathed, so exhausted he was unable to do so much as flinch. He had thought about this moment a long time, about life without his old uncle. But he had no idea that he would feel nothing. There was nothing in his heart, or his head, but exhaustion. It was so utterly complete that for a moment more he could do nothing but continue to lie there, breathing.

  In time, he could move his head.

  Then his body.

  Struggling not to pass out, Chase turned to find Billy reaching over to him with wheezing grunts. As cold wind blasted in on them, steam swirled from his exposed gut—he had been mangled by a chunk of the large falling stone, cut nearly in two. As he pulled off his helmet, blood sheeted from his mouth in rusty splatters. He dropped his eyes, looking out at nothing.

  Chase pulled himself to his side, openly tearful.

  “I will find them, friend. I swear it. I will find them. And I will bring them home.”

  Billy breathed. But he was otherwise as motionless as the dead, staring off at nothing, or perhaps at some winged barmaids of legend, swooping down from the Heavenly Halls to swoop him up.

  He made no gesture to signify that he had heard him. He just became still.

  And he stopped breathing.

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  Deep in the silence of the mountain, Chase descended. It was harder going than he had expected. The inner workings of the mountain were hand-hewn, but they were awkward and what should have been steps were worn slick the effects of time and poor drainage. Chase dragged himself down, deeper and deeper, for what felt like a quarter mile. He was guided by the blackish glint of the strange lighting.

  There , and in a sinister nest of webs, Chase found the two Chase had come for.

  The mother, Shiri, was no more. She was long dead in fact. Chase put his helmet back on and looked around the great stone room, rimming the edge of large, evil-looking hole. They were all dead in here, some three hundred corpses. Their sightless eyes were black or else no longer in their sockets. Their bodies had been drained as if by vampires.

  The three nearest him now were river rats, wetwomen.

  Then Chase heard a whimper. Tenderly, Chase unclasped the babe from a tangle of sticky fibers that held him fast to the wall alongside yet another woman. It was Brickelby. She had somehow managed to free herself of the netting, just enough to offer her breast to the little fellow—the only reason he was still alive.

  Little Cullfor looked up at him.

  Then he squalled, crying.

  He still wore his own little commando’s helm.

  Chase reached down and hugged him, startled to feel the bones in his little back. He could do little for him pat his back, tenderly, and stroke his silky hair as he drank water from his canteen, finishing it off before he nibbled on some jerked pork Chase had in his shirt.

  The three nearest him, the river women, were somewhat free of their netting as well. It was plain to see that they had helped Brickelby free herself long enough to breastfeed the child. Someday, Chase would come back and take them to their burial grounds. He would give these people the respect Chase had not given them in life.

  Today, though, Chase would pull Cullfor’s little helmet down over his eyes. And they would make their way to the fresher air outside.

  He picked him up, just looking around another moment.

  Then he began to carry him.

  His concern was the lad in his arms, and the woman to whom Chase hoped to return. He looked around as walked, moving ever more swiftly.

  Chapter 38

  They left out of the strange mountain by way of an old flake-sto
ne causeway, one built from refuse and rubble. The way was small and hidden.

  Just a few miles outside, not far from the lake, they came to a spring that rolled up from the blackened weeds and broken stone with undulating dollops of cool, clean water. Chase thought he should have tested it first, but little Cullfor was so slaked with thirst that he dropped to his knees and plunged his cracked lips into it, drinking for far longer than seemed possible.

  Chase walked up a small rocky knoll and stood, looking. Far beyond the Lair was the ruins of the little building they had sheltered in before the attack. He should call it the ruins of ruins, he thought, as it hardly been standing beforehand. Now, as Chase looked, it seemed hardly more than just another rocky knoll, or a pile of rubble.

  There was something else. The air was somehow different. Lighter. Chase have never been one gifted with any manner of special “sight”, as they call it, but it seemed that the evil that had infected this place had lifted.

  When he looked back to the east, however, back to the zombie-infected hills through which he knew Cullfor and he must somehow pass, he could again sense the stagnate blackness. It was as difficult to describe as it was easy to sense. The best Chase can say is this—it was if the clouds were somehow slower, more morose, not to mention lower to the ground, like ghosts, or the souls of mothers, searching for lost children.

  Whatever evil had transformed this place into this black desert had not been vanquished by their merry band. It had only been uprooted. And now it was making its way out of here.

  Chase looked around, hoping the longmongers had done the same.

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  For an hour after Cullfor drank, they just rested. Chase was looking for some trail amid the stones, but he finally had to admit there was no clear way home but through the impossible reaches that they, grown men all of them, had not all survived. Chase wished desperately there was some way to get him home by boat. He could sleep while Chase rowed. But that, of course, was impossible.

  Chase reached down and patted his head, and this was enough to warrant a small cry from the lad. He could hardly keep his feet under him.

  “Stop your nonsense, there!” Chase wanted to say, just as his uncle used to whenever Chase felt weak or sick. “What’s wrong?”

  But of course Chase said nothing of the sort to the lad. Instead they sat again.

  “Hullo, there,” Chase whispered, rubbing his back more tenderly.

  “Uncle Chase,” he whispered back.

  Chase nodded

  “Bring me home,” he said.

  Chase nodded again. He turned and looked east. It seemed impossible, but he could almost hear his uncle calling: “Now, Chase, what do you mean by this ‘impossible’ nonsense!”

  “Then let us get going,” Chase told Cullfor.

  His own words recalled the real reason of his presence in these lonely stretches. His quest been eclipsed, at times, by the fearful events of the trek here. But his quest wasn’t to kill longmonger or strange beings from their lair. His quest was not even to reach Cullfor.

  His quest was to bring him home.

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  As Cullfor napped that afternoon, Chase gathered some supplies from the corpses of his fellows, and, in all, managed a bow, a half a quiver of arrows, one great axe, one lesser axe, three skins of water, and maybe four pounds of jerked pork and venison.

  “How old are you, Cullie?”

  Chase was terribly surprised when he said, “Seven.”

  Thundering fuck, but he was small. Chase would have bet his ass that he had seen no more than three or four. Then Chase realized he was lying. He was, at most, five.

  “Uncle Chase?”

  “Yea?”

  “I can carry the arrows if you like.”

  That would be preposterously dangerous, for reasons Chase would teach him from the safety of home, should they ever reach it.

  “No, my boy. The meat will do. But do you want to keep one of the water cans?”

  “Yea.”

  “Very good.”

  Chase placed one of the canteen’s straps on his bony shoulders, and almost thought better of it, but Cullie tugged back when Chase made to return it to his waist.

  Well then, little Cullie Stonebreaker would carry the meat and one water, Chase grunted to myself. And he almost laughed, but as Chase looked at him, and once more at the trail ahead, the whole scene was repugnant beyond endurance. His mind’s ears were so filled with the death cries heard in the afternoons before that Chase had to focus on his little face to keep from weeping. It was a strange wonder, he though, that such acts as killing zombies merit the crude recitals of what seems to the listener as a glorious conquest.

  Chase could not rid his mind of the commando’s dying faces.

  But just then, Chase saw something that made his heart soar. A horse. It was one of the packhorses, and it was still laden with supplies. His legs freshened with the very sight of it, and the tumult in his head dissipated. It was unsafe to leave the lad to go chasing after it, so Chase called to it in the whistling grunts the wildmen used.

  The beast pricked its ears, and almost immediately made a detour of the rocky fields in order to reach them. It disappeared down a slope , then came trotted spiritedly up yet another toward them, slowing as Chase made clucking sounds for it to halt.

  Chase might have saved himself the trouble, though; every object lashed to the creature—from the water skins to the primitive axes—had been put there by a monster. These were zombie supplies. And they stunk of the beasts. The reigns were made of bark-string, yet the horse was friendly enough. He couldn’t pass up the opportunity.

  Unburdening the creature of its vile cargo, Chase reined him parallel to a small hill and let Cullie climb atop its bare back.

  It was unsafe to let the boy ride alone with him walking so Chase climbed in front of him and told him to not to let go of the remnants of his camo.

  ________________________________________

  They set off. It was nearing night, and they went riding along what looked like the remains of a wooded river trail. Posts, or stumps, jutted at regular intervals alongside a flat, road-like way of flat stone. He shivered to think that zombies might actually be building things now.

  After dark, Chase struck out a bit more briskly and still followed the path parallel to the stumps or posts.

  When they reached the old zombie nests, Chase was first apprised of their whereabouts by his horse pricking forward his ears and sniffing the air uncannily. Chase tightened rein and touched him with his heel, but he snorted and jumped sideways with a suddenness that almost unseated them. The beast then came to a stand, shaking as if with chill. This was definitely not a zombie horse, Chase decided.

  Suddenly, something skulked across the trail and gained cover in the stones. With a reassuring pat, Chase urged his horse back towards the dry creek bed, for the camps were pitted with festering holes; but the beast reared, baulked and absolutely refused to be either driven, or coaxed.

  “Wise where men are fools,” Chase whispered, dismounting.

  Bringing the reins over his head, Chase tried to pull him forward to get Cullie; but he planted all fours and jerked back, almost dragging him off his feet.

  If ever horror were plainly expressed by an animal, it was by that horse. Legs rigid, head bent down, eyes starting forward and nostrils blowing in and out, he was a picture of terror.

  “Are you possessed?” Chase whispered.

  Something wriggled in the rocks. The horse rose on his hind legs, wrenched the rein from his hand, and just after Chase pulled Cullie from its back, scampered up into the rocks across the pitted black hills. Chase pulled back his bow, and nearly sent a shot into the dark when he heard a sudden snarl and a scurrying through the night air around them.

  “Wolf!” Cullie shouted.

  “Pretty damned bold wolf!” Chase said, still not seeing it. “And I never saw a horse act that way
over a wolf before!”

  Suddenly, Chase was gripped by Cullie. He might have just as well tried to catch the horse as to pry the lad lose, and Chase realized then he was being too open and honest, for his words sent the lad to trembling as he pressed against him.

  Chase offered him a little lie, saying, “Oh! Or perhaps it was! A dangerous horse-wolf! Good thing for us, they’ve got no taste for man or little man!”

  At that, the lad let go somewhat, gripping him with only a single fist, so Chase walked on. Suddenly, in the silver-white of a starry sky, Chase saw what had terrified the animal. Close to some burnt shrubbery, lay the stark form of a dead zombie, knees drawn upwards and arms spread out like the bars of a cross. Was that one of the ones they had killed? Chase rushed towards the corpse—but just as quickly turned away. From downright lack of wits, Chase forgot that the sight of such a creature, even in life, much less mutilated beyond semblance to mankind, would send cold chills down the boys back.

  Would that I had the strength and skill to be a father to the lad in this awful place: No child should ever have to see beneath the glory of the epics, to see the truth in the shedding of blood, the dead in their shame; for them, the pageant of war must not be stripped of all its falseness, revealing carnage and slaughter in their revolting nakedness.

  Chase could not look back to know if that were one of the first zombies, but walked with the lad aimlessly around it, toward the camps. As they approached, there was a great flapping of wings. Up rose buzzards, scolding them in angry caws and hisses at their interruption. A pack of wolves skulked a few feet off and eyed them impatiently, boldly waiting to return to their troll-meat as soon as they passed.

  The impudence of the wolves, the way they eyed the lad, enraged him. Chase let go half a pair of arrows, which sent them to a more respectful distance.