by Thomas Head
A wounded horse was running, three-legged, across a low side of the hill.
His forehead throbbed as a swath of tracks appeared, the hooves of a dozen more horses that had meandered into the odd hills ahead of them. They had been walked over by the unmistakable, broken tracks of shado. Zombie footprints reminded one of the tracks of man-like creatures, not men, for they had a habit of chewing each other’s toes off.
But these were not normal shado track, either. The strides between them were eight or ten feet. Which meant that this band of them were particularly strong and fast.
The tiny hairs on the back of his neck rose. He rubbed his neck. He pinched the bridge of his nose, and they all knew not only that these were the prints of some evolved sort of shado, creatures so strong, fast, and vile that they could down the horses they chased without any weapon but the bony shards that were their teeth. The fact that a horse was left alive meant it was likely left alive on purpose, as a trap—which smacked of an intelligence in the creatures they had not yet encountered.
And the beasts that had done it were somewhere out there, perhaps looking at them right now.
They doubtless already know that they were here.
“Kill them as you would a normal shado,” Rocco whispered to him.
Uncle Jickie added, “Just make certain, boy, that you kill them twice as much!”
Chapter 47
As they descended further into the vast and stony way, it became more difficult to maintain any real sense of direction. The high, rolling thunderclouds overhead let eerie squirts of sunlight through, and the moving shadows made the sheer piles seem to lean, an illusion of motion that was sometimes real, as towers of rock sent pebbles scrabbling down beside them while they picked their through gap after winding gap.
They had traveled only some six hours more before Tyler paused. He made a motion for them to halt.
He pointed silently to a distant ridge, which was some three hundred yards to the south.
There they witnessed a pair of goats, moving swiftly across the stones.
“Flushed from the north,” he whispered.
Noises like snaps and whistles could be heard echoing in the distance as they crept along, ever cautiously. They all thought of the unseen voyeurs out there in the scree, perhaps waiting in ambush already, perhaps salivating at the sight of them.
But no one cared to think about what the noises sounded like… communication.
They moved more slowly, more silently after that. They paused often, looking around.
Now the vertical rolls of loose shale were less steep. But it was as if they only offered a better view of things merely to show that they were in an endless sea of the glassy stones. A hill that cast them all in shadow looked like a wave of it jagged trash, melted into the hillside.
It felt like you could drown in this place. More than once, Doc felt disoriented and dizzy. They were was always leaning, always trying to avoid the deep and scattered cavities that may or may not have led straight to frozen depths of hell.
Then the hillocks became steeper again, and more numerous. They began to hear the distant, unmistakable yelp of the shado. It was both wolfish and owl-like at once, and three times louder than either.
“Take care, boys!” His uncle whispered to them. “We’re not long for a fight!”
Always, they took draw of their samurai blades at the sound of the crumble of stone. And in time they were looking behind them as much as they were looking ahead.
All day, they could never see far off, not until they crested a rise, and by then there would be no sound or movement, just the undulating ocean of stone.
And now there was a fog rising from the valleys and troughs.
* * *
Night came in a shroud of misty fog, and in this unpleasant habitat of hell-things, Doc could not always hold his panic at bay. They stood back to back in a circle, forming a shield wedge. They all gripped their swords, holding riot shields aloft.
Stillness underscored the moving fog. Soon, again, they heard the distant yelping of zombies.
There was a nearby thump, then a crumble of stone.
“Ooh, thundering fuck…” Jickie whispered.
He looked around.
Then Doc saw his eyes widen.
“Run!” he squalled.
Hairs rose on his arm, and before Doc could make out what he had seen, his feet were carrying him in mad darts across the stones.
Yelps were rising now here and there throughout the stony way. Shado, gruesome and brutal, were emerging from everywhere, from every nook and pit, as if the earth was spitting them out.
Doc followed the fellows as they darted across the rocks. All the while, forms scurried in the dark and in the fog, following them with a mad chorus of yelping. The bleak landscape alive with motion, Doc ran, struggling to catch up with the fellows. They allowed him the central position, and no sooner had Doc gained his spot than he finally saw some of them.
Five of them, stared, unmoving. Feral, covered with mangy hair even though they looked vaguely reptilian, their terrible heads were sullen with the deep gazes of predators. But, deep inside him, Doc sensed something in them that he calculated as more than a predatory danger. Doc could feel the ancient blackness of their hate.
Just as they had expected, these were not normal shado.
They were not even normal offspring.
These things were a whole new human-animal. They were just standing there. Then they squatted, readying themselves. Each was strapped about the ankles and wrists with thongs of horse hide. They were their equal in height, but they were lithe and sinewy. They flashed terrible, growling mouths and brandished primitive clubs of bone and rock.
They ran toward them, crying out the crazed, human bellows of war.
Then fear hoisted the boys back a step in their shield wedge. They trebled. At the last possible moment, the commandos each leapt, crashing down on the zombie skulls and upheld arms with the mighty chops of their sword. And no sooner had they cut through them than they swung back, splitting their jaws or ripping the gray leathery hide of their bellies.
But even as they ran past them, the strange shado yet followed, hobbling like mad along the rocks, squalling.
With each step closer, they yelped and growled.
The commandos dashed onto a massive, high stone that was encircled by a stream, tracing its edge.
They halted, the zombies coming still. Tyler fell behind them. He pulled the bandana off and wrapped it around a large bite the back of his arm, wrapping, growling as the zombies scampered up the rock.
The first of them fell on broken legs, tripping the next two. Then one leapt over them all. Doc chopped sideways, bringing his blade across its scar-pocked chest.
Tyler emerged and ripped him again, across the throat.
The body rocked back and forth, clutching crazily for a head that was no longer attached. Then it collapsed and the others leapt, not for the fallen alpha, but for the commandos.
Roaring, Doc rolled around on and came down hard enough on the first one to shave off its arms. Back on its heels, the next bit at Mighty Kenzo, only to go flying away from them in two halves. Uncle Jickie cut with surprising strength too, sending the other two without their hands, then rattled at them to run as he split one of their faces on the rocks with the pummel of his sword.
Quick as that, they ran again for higher ground.
They were coming from everywhere now. With help from Tyler, they scalped two, even as they ran together, zigging up the crumbling stones of a steep landslide. One stabbed at him with a pointy shard of stone fixed to a horse’s thigh bone, and Doc landed his axe in the back of its neck. Then he ripped the blade in a deep awkward gouge across the spine. The zombie’s body seized and fell away. It was jerking as it rolled downhill.
Still others came, rising toward them in leaps.
Before Tyler could turn, one leapt on him. As he ducked, rolling with the beast, he planted his foot and grabbed it by th
e arm. Then he flung it, even as he grabbed his sword and swiped across the creature’s ass as it flew. The move was off and weak. It bounded back in the next instant, and it came down on top of Rocco. As he fell backwards, Rocco’s lips were curled in pain. He had to chop toward his own body, which he did deftly enough to cleave the zombie without chopping himself too deeply. He scrambled to stand, the shado’s blood smeared and dripping down Rocco’s camo. The beast was still grabbing at him, and Tyler turned, hacking it nearly in half. As it dropped, they ran again, chopping backwards, severing shado spines and heads before they turned at the summit to gut and behead more of them from their high vantage.
One gripped Doc’s hair, sending him crashing down. Dale was down too, holding his split cheek. And they both saw an army of zombies approaching. Doc roared as one clamped down on his foot and shook terribly, undulating as he grabbed his ankle and tried to snap it. Dale growled as the body flopped around, and chopping down, sent the headless body fish-rolling down into the lower rocks.
Doc stood again, and winced with the viscous pain.
A brute of a zombie bounded ahead of the others. It was gigantic, a monster, crushing several of the other as it rushed up the hill. The others halted and fell to their bellies, groveling before it as it passed.
It roared.
As did Doc.
It kept running.
Fear gripped him, thrusting him into the insane action of running right at it. Doc barreled sideways into it, his knees slamming its face before it tossed him some ten feet behind his fellows. Dale hacked into its shins, only to find his sword kicked away. But Doc saw Dale yet rise and leap towards it, only to fall short. He chopped from the ground, and missed.
Uncle Jickie and Rocco slashed wildly, cleaving into is ribs and belly. But it flung them aside like dolls before biting at Mighty Kenzo, who recoiled, but came up from a squat, splitting its jaw before he spun and chopped once more, lopping off the top of its skull, which fell to the ground like some gruesome cup.
The massive horde was still groveling, whimpering now like beaten dogs as they sunk into the black crags and scampered away. The enormous beast seemed to heave a moment. Then the great mass of it fell backward, landing on its back with a gravelly crunch.
The brain rolled out with a fleshy bounce.
All of them were panting, impossibly exhausted.
Kenzo clasped Rocco on the shoulder and sheathed his bloody sword.
He shook his head, and wiped the blood from his glove on his shirt. “I’ll be damned, Frobbie old boy! That big one wanted me worse than Addly’s sister!”
Rocco made a disgusted noise, then the desolate hills exploded with their wild hoots of laughter.
Chapter 48
The morning found them sore, and soaked with so much sweat and blood that they glistened. Tyler and Dale, badly bitten, went immediately about washing their wounds. And Doc had no idea how they even did that much. He struggled to keep upright, so utterly spent that he worried Doc might pass out. It was almost fortunate, he mused, that he had been bitten on the ankle, for it meant that he could sit to clean the wound.
The light also revealed that they had run through several camps of the beasts. But calling them “camps” was being generous. Doc sat, tenderly scrubbing his wound, looking about: They were just nests of stone and hide, really, with bones and dung scattered everywhere. Every nook and cleft and cranny was filled with them.
Though the hillsides were abandoned, the wind was still stinking with the smell of the creatures themselves, a musky, sulfuric scent. Rains were gathering and starting to dampen them, adding to the odor as they once again walked.
It was a light rain, but noisy weather for all the flat rocks and the echoes of the hillside. It felt good on their grimy faces.
In time the rains picked up, and they trotted a tree line tree escape the cold downpour. There were several small pits with stinking, empty nest at the bottom. They all stood wet and motionless, their adrenaline still pumping through their veins.
Some of the fellows sat, and as a few of them settled in for a smoke or a nap, Dale and Doc crested a nearby hill as lookouts.
First, they had to sink slowly deeper into a hollow before the ravine rose again, bringing them up the opposite slop. Crooked, shrubby pine jutted across their path. The needles were black with some moldy disease. They pulled themselves along a fallen tree, sitting, holding their axes close.
There were a dozen or fourteen young zombies staring at them from a distant hill. They were more halted than the others, and much smaller. They looked around often.
Through the better part of the morning, Dale and Doc waited there, watching them, breathless and dripping from the intermittent fall of rain. The day was a long affair, being so stiff, so very well exhausted, and cold. Nearing afternoon, the young zombies began to sit or leave. Some just kept staring. Others pulled their supplies in brown fiber packs beside them and slept.
Dale and Doc took turns sleeping, watching with great care, but under the bleak and rainy skies, he had to admit, he dozed off a few times on his watch.
Once, when he woke, the young zombies had disappeared
Panicking, he looked around for them and saw nothing. Doc turned to see the older fellows, snoring away blissfully under the tree line. But there was no sign of the young zombies.
They might have just slinked off to build new nests. But Doc had a peculiar feeling.
Then movement exploded from behind him like a nightmare. Everything blurred. His heart raced. He could only vaguely sense being surrounded, and no sooner had Doc realized it than arms, fists, and steel were whirling in every direction. Swords flashed in impossible sweeps; it was impossible to distinguish the bite of one from the sting of another. Dale bore his teeth, lunging into the confusing mayhem before he was even awake. The fearsome thwacks and pings were chorusing his own grunts now as Doc recognized his foe—they were humans. Females. The barmaids from Beergarden roared with animalistic wailing.
As Dale went tearing his way through the tumult, chopping, his sword was pulled from his hands, and the strength gushed out of his legs as one thwacked him atop the skull.
Then, with the abruptness of a startled animal, Doc regained consciousness—just in time to see one of them telling the others to hold.
* * *
Being bound, then dragged along the gravels like a carcass, Doc looked up at the backside of a woman with long black hair and legs as powerful as a mule. She had a muscular ass and was growling rubbish about how much Doc weighed.
His fellows, readying their bows, halted when the saw the barmaids’ prizes, namely Dale and Doc, hog-tied by their wrists and ankles.
“Merry Commandos, Shadohunters, hear us!” the one carrying him called.
“Thundering fuck!” Uncle Jickie roared. “Now what’s all this!”
“In Beergarden, your own Mister Gig decreed that if any among us were stout or clever enough to down anyone of you, then we would be allowed to accompany you on your mission!”
“The one you speak of, the man who uttered that decree, is buried in the black grasses of the wild folk.”
“As one of your warparty, are you not bound by honor to keep his word?”
“Pah! And who the fuck are you to question the bounds of honor?”
“The ones who took not one, but two of your best men!”
“Best!” Mighty Kenzo thundered. “You’ve done nothing, you stupid bitches, but unburden us of our horniest fools!”
At which all the fellows had a hard-earned and much-needed round of laughs.
The woman looked down and eyed him suspiciously.
Doc looked up at her, shrugged, then winked.
She growled. “Stubborn old fucks!” she roared back them. “Do you have anything resembling a plan?”
“Quite so!” Uncle Jickie called, waving them in. “Why, my dears, already we’ve caught you girls with our bait, now haven’t we?”
Chapter 49
Doc was stunned to
see the old boys welcome the barmaids so readily. Indeed, as they went crookedly up the sandy rocks, the rain a full-blown storm now, a volley of howdies and hellos greeted the barmaids like long-lost friends.
No hearty greetings escaped the barmaids’ lips, however. Twenty of them, the full score of them, lofted a zombie head each upon the ground to send the snarling, lifeless faces crashing down the stony hillsides.
“I am Ollief,” the one that drug him said. “And these, his honorable fellows, are the Barmaids of Beergarden. Each of has lost a child to the longmongers. They are at your service, old men!”
“Rocco McCarthy, at your service!”
“Jickie McCarthy, at your service!”
“Tyler McCarthy, at your service!”
“Kenzo McCarthy, at your service!”
“I am Dale Stonebreaker, at your service!”
“And I am Doc Ludeman, at your service, and feet!”
“Hello,” she said, and rolled her eyes down toward him.
The one that drug him motioned another to her side, and she told her to unbind Dale and him.
In the next instant, a thousand voices seemed to call out, but it was only the maids as they gave such a high-pitched, lilting war cry that made Doc jump with a start.
“Craaaazy bitches!” Mighty Kenzo thundered, then squalled laughing.
As laughs poured like beer from the rest of the old, boys, the barmaids did something that surprised him. Doc got a little dizzy as Doc stood, watching a dozen of them break off into pairs, and each pair picked out a man and approached.
Ollief nodded.
“We know where there’re some sturdy ruins. Not far from here. They’re on the shore of Percy Priest Lake. Let’s go. Let us groom you merry old boys for battle.”
Chapter 50