by RW Krpoun
Trotting down the street, the night painted in shades of orange from Shad’s improved night vision spell, Derek saw men and women fleeing on either side amid the sounds of doors being smashed up ahead. This was different than the Red Dragon uprising in which looting and generalized destruction was as much a goal as the failed overthrow of the government: up ahead was slaughter for slaughter’s sake, and the Ronin couldn’t wait to get to blows with the Undead. After all their plotting, talking, marching, and hiding they were going to get to sword’s-length of the actual Death Lord plan, and he for one was ready.
Derek had drifted into the National Guard on a whim, but one thing that had stuck with him from the recruitment material was the idea that the Guard was there to help. Floods, tornadoes, rioting scumbags, whatever came, up to and including war, the Guard was there to stand between innocent people and chaos. A lot of that stick stuck with him; more than the others he was drawn to the concept of being a hero, of protecting others. It was important.
There they were, a cluster of animated corpses battering at the door to a shop. Derek flowed into their ranks, Nightwing (as he had christened his katana) flickering out of its scabbard like an adder’s tongue. Two heads dropped from shoulders before the zombies even knew he was amongst them and three more fell before they really knew they were in a fight. More Undead spilled in from a nearby alley, attracted by a hissing wail one zombie sounded, and Derek’s world closed to only an orange-hued dance, from hassan to nuki to showmen to wakigamae to yokomen and on, the wondrously light black steel sliding through dead flesh like paper and unliving bone like chalk.
He was in the place where he had always wanted to be: defending a family in its home from the terrors in the night, a hero holding back evil in the defense of the innocent. It was beautiful.
“What an idiot,” Jeff snarled as he fought his way into the ever-growing crowd of zombies attacking Derek. The damned Radio Shack manager had rushed straight into the biggest bunch of zeds he could find and more were coming in, attracted by the sounds of fighting. Derek was fighting like a berserker but he wasn’t falling back to the others, and even with that enchanted blade and nine levels of bushi under his belt he wasn’t going to last long.
Fortunately for the Shop teacher the zombies were slow to transfer their attention, so Jeff was going through them like a lawnmower cutting grass, but that would not last forever. But unless someone broke through and got Derek’s back they were going to lose the Ronin.
It happened faster than he expected: he parried a knife thrust with his left sword and split the attacker’s skull with his right hand blade when a halberd was swung out of nowhere. He saw the heavy blade’s parabolic arc moving in slow motion and knew he was dead; his armor charms might stop the halberd from caving in his chest, but the kinetic shock was going to lay him out flat no matter what. Prone, he would be nothing more than a zombie buffet.
The halberd struck the turtle shell he had strapped to his center chest and the weapon’s hickory shaft snapped like a dry twig. Instead of knocking him flying the impact registered as a mild nudge, the sheer surprise causing the Shop teacher to stumble a half-step. Even the nearby zombies seemed a touch nonplussed at the result.
“That’s right, bitches,” Jeff bellowed as he caught his balance. “Turtle shell! In your face!”
The dragonbone club was incredibly light, but it hit like he was swinging an I-beam, Fred found as he fought his way to where a trio of teenagers hid beneath an abandoned cart. Skulls crushed like damaged eggs with each swing, dropping zombies permanently. “Come on!” he shouted at the hiding kids. “Time to move!”
“Stay behind me,” Shad advised the serving girl, who seized the back of his harness and held on for dear life. Jeff moving up to support Derek and Fred going off to rescue some teens had left the two of them alone, but the warder wasn’t concerned.
“Hey! Over here!” he shouted at a group of around a dozen zombies coming out a side-street, drawn by the sound of fighting. “Don’t worry,” he assured the girl as the Undead closed in. “I work best up close and personal.”
As the zeds closed he tossed a pair of coins down, and the erupting circle snuffed out the necromantic arts that powered them. “It’s more dramatic in daytime,” he advised the dazed girl, whose hair now stood out from her head as if she had been electrocuted, the tips crinkled with heat. “Sorry about your hair; I don’t know why the orb is doing that. I must have the focus up a bit too high.”
Catching up a bloody mallet he moved from corpse to corpse, using the wood hammer to drive the steel rod of his jitte into each skull in turn. Wiping his jitte clean on the tunic of the last corpse, he started drawing runes around the body as Fred came up with three teens and an older couple in tow. “We really need to work on group formation,” he observed mildly.
“It was Derek’s fault,” Fred leaned on his club. “Jeff’s bringing him back, looks like they got the last of them. This club is really light, but there were a lot of the bastards. What are you doing?”
“Looking for answers.”
“What happened to your hair?” the big healer asked the serving girl, who just stared at him.
“Side effect of my orb spell,” Shad sat back on his heels. “Static discharge. Not sure why.”
The corpse suddenly twitched, and then the milky eyes opened. Shad leaned forward and added a few neon lines to the runes he had drawn.
“You need that put down?” Jeff asked as he and a battered Derek came up.
“No, it’s in a cage.” Shad stood as the zombie climbed clumsily to its feet, and began to draw more neon symbols at eye level. “Derek, don’t go running off again.”
“Look, there were these people in the shop…”
“Derek!”
“All right!”
“Man, this turtle shell rocks,” Jeff rapped on it with his knuckles.
“It brings out the blue in your eyes,” Fred grunted, watching for more zombies.
“Seriously, it saved my butt out there.”
“I’m thrilled.”
“Bite me.”
“What are you doing, Shad?” Derek asked, wiping Nightwing with a fold of rice paper.
“Can’t you use a dead guy’s shirt like everyone else?” Jeff demanded. “Litam is suffering enough without you littering.”
“You clean a katana with rice paper.”
“Why?”
“Because…well, just because. Style, I suppose.”
“That is stupid.”
Derek flipped Jeff off. “So Shad…”
“I caged it once it reactivated, and now I am going to fry it,” Shad didn’t wait for Derek to finish. “If I am right, it will establish a mental link that should give me an insight into what is going on.”
“Cool. Then let’s go kill more zombies.”
“We’re heading for the walls. You’ll have to be satisfied with what we encounter along the way.”
“We could make a difference here,” the Radio Shack manager protested.
“We could end up dead,” Fred shook his head. “These aren’t just Undead, they’re a plague. They are going to end up growing in numbers no matter what anyone does. We stick around, we’re goners. We need to get out of the city pronto.”
“That’s what I think, too,” Shad nodded, applying the finishing touches to the runes. “Once I light this bastard we need to beat feet.”
“This battle has been lost,” Jeff agreed. “And the war is going to be a lot tougher than the Empire expected.”
“We might have something to say about that,” Shad murmured as he flipped a coin against the floating runes. “This dance has just begun.”
Chapter Sixteen
The zombies were in small groups, mud-clotted dead that had been buried within the city, and increasing numbers of drenched Undead who had clawed their way out of the trenches and come in via the river.
The walls had been fully manned and the defenders were raining stones and bolts from their catapults an
d ballista into the trenches, smashing and maiming zombies even as they clawed their way out of the ground. The rest of the garrison hunkered down in their fortified barracks and held, waiting for daylight before taking the fight to the enemy.
The zombies were completely leaderless, roaming the streets in search of victims, most of which quickly became new recruits for the swelling Undead army. The downside for the Death Lords was that after the uprising and subsequent disorder the city’s population was half what it had been.
Derek stayed on point, Nightwing in hand, as the Black Talons and a growing number of uninfected people headed for the walls. The zeds were awkward when first animated, getting more spry with time, although they never had any sort of skill or cunning, simply rushing any uninfected person they encountered. In the open street a bushi had only sheer numbers to fear, and so far the zeds were just in smallish groups. With Jeff watching his back Derek was an unstoppable engine of zombie destruction.
It was the fulfillment of all his Samurai dreams; he wasn’t just an expert swordsman, he was an expert swordsman fighting in the defense of the innocent: Samurai and knightly ideals rolled into one running fight.
“He keeps getting too far ahead,” Shad complained, ducking a wild hoe-swing and chopping the zombie’s skull in two. “They keep getting in behind him and reaching us.”
“We can’t take him anywhere,” Fred grunted, pulping a zed’s skull. “You notice we’re acquiring more people?”
“Yeah.” In addition to the frazzled-hair serving girl (who was still clinging to his harness) and the five they had rescued at the first fight, there were a dozen more people following the Talons. “Where was this love when we were buying stuff?”
“About five more blocks,” the healer stove in the skull of another Undead. “I hope they let us up on the wall.”
“That is the weakness in our plan,” Shad admitted, flicking coins that dropped two zeds in their tracks. He gestured and a hiemin in night clothes hurried forward and used a mallet and chisel to puncture each’s’ skull. “I do not enjoy burning coins just for a temporary put-down. This business really undermines the entire warder experience.”
“It is a game-changer,” Fred agreed, checking the rear and flanks. “Looks like we are temporarily out of zombies.”
“That won’t last. Derek, what did I tell you about sticking close?”
“Sorry.”
“Let them come to you. No one is going to steal your kills.”
“OK.”
“I’m serious, next time you get too far you’re catching a volley of Magic Missiles.”
“OK!”
“Relax,” Jeff cautioned Derek. “You get stressed over every little thing.”
“Bite me.”
“You know, if they took those two words out of the language we would hardly say anything,” Fred observed.
“Especially if they pulled ‘this place sucks’, too,” Shad scratched his cheek as he examined their surroundings. “We need to pick up the pace.”
“There are old people and kids who can’t keep up,” Derek protested.
Shad walked backwards as he studied the street behind them. Turning forward again he shook his head. “Once again I have to question the planning behind this entire operation. Whoever set it up made a lot of assumptions about our ability to get out of a zombie outbreak alive.”
“I guess they figured whoever had the…tooth, would be bad-asses,” Fred observed. “Plus they couldn’t have anticipated a zombie outbreak.”
“What is the point of long-range planning if you don’t anticipate necromancers coming up with a zombie horde?”
“Point. Still, their plan for the Lance is like the Geneva Convention: the enemy doesn’t adhere to it, it does nothing but hinder us, and we can’t get rid of it.”
“Don’t remind me. Four blocks to go.”
“Well, this blows,” Shad shook his head. “Derek, this is your fault.”
“Me? Why me?”
“You’re the Samurai.”
“Yeah, Derek. Way to go,’ Jeff intoned.
The Ronin shot both the finger.
“Now that blame has been assigned, I move we entertain discussion on solutions,” Shad eased back down the alley.
“Seconded,” Fred grunted.
“The ayes have it. Ideas?”
“Can’t you just blast through them?”
“No. There has to be a hundred zombies hunkered down in the last block to the walls just waiting for someone to try to get to safety. The accumulation of inert bodies shows they can’t take the walls, so they are doing the next best thing: laying siege and waiting for more zeds.”
“We could keep moving south,” Jeff suggested.
“We’ve side-stepped six blocks and there has been no sign of a gap in the zombie line,” Fred muttered.
“Fred’s right: either we try our luck going across town to the river, or we just fight our way through,” Shad sighed.
“We’re long on non-combatants and short on fight,” Jeff pointed out. “We’ve cut our way through small groups up to now, but they’ll swamp us by sheer weight of numbers.”
“OK,” Shad rubbed his scar. “What about a distraction? We get the zeds’ attention, pull them in one direction to create a hole so the non-combatants can make a run for it?”
“Possible,” Fred scratched his nose thoughtfully. “Tough to coordinate, and no guarantee the zeds will fall for it.”
“We could set a whole block on fire. That ought to create some chaos.”
“Do zombies fear fire?”
“They don’t want to get destroyed, and fire will do the job,” Shad didn’t look up from re-applying wards to Nightwing.
“No, I mean, if you hold a torch in front of them will they avoid it or just bore in? They aren’t afraid of regular weapons.”
The warder paused and considered that. “That, I do not know. Why would they be afraid of fire?”
“Because the older ones have been dead for a couple weeks. They are leaking grease as their tissue breaks down and their fat dissolves, and it should be soaking into their clothes like a wick.”
Shad stared at the healer. “That is pretty cunning. There is one way to find out: let’s find a small group of zombies and see if they burn.”
“Too big of a group,” Jeff sighed and ducked back into the alley. “There is never a single zombie around when you need one.”
“This is dragging on longer than a Taylor Swift playlist,” Derek shook his head.
“You notice she has tons of songs about guys dumping her, and not one verse about oral sex?” Shad observed. “I think there’s a connection.”
“Makes sense,” Fred nodded. “You know, maybe fire isn’t the way to go.”
“What? Fire was your idea,” Shad rubbed his scar.
“What about moving carpets? Are zombies smart enough to figure that out?” the big healer pointed to a carpet-weaver’s shop at the far end of the alley.
“You want to drape a carpet over you and hope that a zombie won’t find that strange?” Jeff asked, an eyebrow cocked. “That is weak.”
“No, drape them over a framework on a cart so you basically have a big box of carpet. Like a tent.”
“Man, that could go horribly wrong,” Derek observed.
“Actually…maybe not,” Shad drummed his fingers on his harness.
“What are you thinking?” the Ronin asked. “Usually when you got that look on your face, you had figured out another way to get around the rules of engagement.”
“Which time?” Jeff grinned. “He found every possible loophole and invented a couple out of whole cloth.”
“You guys just won’t let anything go.”
“You gotta admit, putting a round of .50 through an engine block and calling it a warning shot was insane.”
“Amazing how much he got away with. If the Battalion CO hadn’t been certifiable we all could have ended up in Leavenworth,” Fred agreed.
“Gross exag
gerations. Article 15s, tops,” Shad said without heat. “I simply exploited the known qualities of the tactical situation.”
“One known quantity being that Lieutenant Colonel Eric Hammer was a psychopath?”
“He was extremely motivated for the units under his command to close with and engage the enemy.”
“Or anyone who looked like the enemy, which meant the entire population of Iraq. He almost got us into a shoot-out with Marines that one time,” Derek observed. “And now I hear he’s wearing a star.”
“You guys want to hear about my plan, or you want to stroll down memory lane for a while longer?” Shad demanded. “I think Fred’s idea could work because I think it might be possible to put anti-Undead protection on his tent concept.”
“You mean the stuff you put on buildings?”
“Yeah. It wouldn’t be as efficient, and the movement might let one or two through, but as Undead go the zombies are weak, the bottom of the food chain. I think my wards would still generate enough impulses to hold back the main force.”
“And if you are wrong?” Jeff asked.
“Maybe we fight our way clear. More likely we die.”
“Yeah, that’s one of our plans for sure,” Jeff nodded. “How big do you need the framework to be?”
Jeff’ expertise and the supply of workers quickly produced a vehicle consisting of four handcarts fastened together and supporting a simple box-like frame, the structure roughly the size of an RV. Carpets were nailed to the frame, enclosing the whole. “The kids ride, the adults push using the horizontal bars,” Jeff explained.
“How do you steer?” Derek wondered.
“A slit in the front carpet, and easing off the pushing on one side or the other. I figure we assembly it in the center of the street about five blocks before the zeds’ area and chain the front axles in place. It shouldn’t require much steering if we take that street we crossed four blocks back: six blocks to the wall, straight as an arrow.”
“If Shad’s wards don’t hold we are trapped in a sack,” Derek pointed out.
“We’ll mow them like wheat for as long as we last,” Fred shrugged. “I bet I’m the last to fall.”