d6 (Caverns and Creatures)

by Robert Bevan

  “Hey Cooper,” said Julian. “I haven’t been completely honest with you.”

  “No shit.”

  “It wasn’t actually a truth serum. The label said ‘Fire resistance’.”

  “You really are a piece of shit.”

  Julian smiled. “Yeah, I guess I am.”

  Cooper shook his head and laughed. “Come on. Let’s get back to town before we’re missed. My head hurts. I need a drink.”

  The End.

  ZOMBIE ATTACK!!!

  A low level Caverns and Creatures mini-adventure.

  (Original Publication Date: October 4, 2012)

  “Well,” said Tim. “That ought to just about do it.” He ran a finger lightly along the rope, feeling the tension. It was stretched as tight as a bowstring. His eyes followed it up to where it was tied to the tree limb above. The knot was partially hidden with pine needles, but the whole branch was bent just short of its snapping point, which didn’t look natural at all. This trap would be obvious to anyone with a mind to look out for such things, but that didn’t matter. The creatures they were hunting today had no minds at all. “Now everybody, take a step back. Whatever you do, make sure you don’t step on this circle of leaves. Anything heavier than a rabbit that steps on this is in for a nasty surprise.”

  “Impressive,” said Dave, taking a step as far back as his short dwarven legs would allow. “I didn’t know you could do that.”

  “I can’t,” said Tim. “Just like you can’t magically cure wounds or grow a proper beard in the real world. But we’re not there. We’re here, stuck in this stupid fucking game where I look like pedophile bait and know how to set a trap.”

  “Sorry, man. I was just saying --“

  “Cooper!” Tim shouted.

  “Huh?” said Cooper. He had a finger so far up one nostril that he might have been scratching his tiny half-orc brain, and he was stepping dangerously close to the snare.

  “What did I just say?”

  Cooper pulled out his sticky, snot-covered finger and wiped it down his chest. “I wasn’t listening. You were bitching about how hard your life is or something?”

  “Fuck you, Cooper. Just stay away from the trap, will you?”

  “Oh, right.” He stepped back.

  “Go on, Ravenus,” said Julian, lifting his arm for his big black raven to perch on. “Scout the area. Come back if you see anyone or anything approaching.”

  “Very good, sir,” said Ravenus, and took to the air.

  Julian walked over to Tim. “Something on your mind, dude?”

  “I just don’t like this,” said Tim. “I wish I hadn’t let you guys talk me into it. I mean, it was Cooper’s idea, and he’s a complete idiot. No offense, Coop.”

  “None taken,” said Cooper.

  Julian leaned on his quarterstaff and tugged at one of his long pointy ears. “We’ve got a slim chance to get back home if that little gambit of yours even works. But we need to level up some before we even attempt it. You said that killing monsters is the most effective way to do that.”

  “I know,” said Tim. He pulled his cloak tight around himself, holding a shiver at bay. “But does it have to be zombies?”

  “We’ve fought zombies before,” said Cooper.

  “Yes,” said Tim. “I’ve also had my face shoved into your armpit before, which gives me firsthand knowledge of why I never want that to happen again.”

  “We were unprepared for them last time,” said Dave. “This time we have a lot more going for us.”

  Tim folded his arms and glared up at Dave. “I’m listening.”

  “Um, well,” Dave stammered under the spotlight. “We’re at full strength, for one. Also, we are choosing where we fight this time. We have a nice defensible position. It’ll be impossible for them to surround us like they did last time.”

  “We’re on the edge of a cliff,” said Tim. “Who knows how far up we’ve climbed. We’re looking down on the tops of clouds, for Christ’s sake. A pessimist might say we’re backing ourselves in a corner.”

  “Just stay quiet,” said Julian. “If we don’t make too much noise, we shouldn’t have to fight more than a couple of zombies at one time. And if we get lucky, we might get a lone zombie to spring that trap of yours.”

  Cooper grinned. “He’ll just hang there defenseless while we beat the shit out of him like a meat piñata.”

  “Or we could get unlucky, and have swarms of the living dead wash over us and rip our faces off.”

  “You’re really a fucking downer today, dude,” said Cooper. “Lighten up. Zombies aren’t social creatures. They’re mindless shitheads. There’s no way they’d be swarming together unless --“

  “Somebody’s coming!” said Ravenus, flapping excitedly to the ground.

  “Okay,” said Tim. “Action time. Everybody behind the tree trunk.”

  Julian vaulted over the trunk on his quarterstaff, landing almost silently on the ground behind it. Cooper simply stepped over it and ducked down. Dave, weighed down by his armor, struggled to climb over it. He looked like a turtle trying to climb a ladder. Cooper grabbed him by the breastplate and yanked him over the log. Tim was small enough to crawl under it. They had already packed leaves, dirt and sticks into the gap between the log and the ground to keep themselves hidden. Included in the gap-stuffing were four lengths of bamboo so that each of them could see what was going on on the other side.

  The four of them lay on their stomachs, each with one eye searching for something through their bamboo tubes.

  “What the hell is that?” said Tim.

  “I don’t see anything,” said Dave.

  “I don’t either,” said Tim. “I hear something. Julian, do you hear it?”

  “Yeah,” said Julian. His giant elf ears were even keener than Tim’s halfling ears. “It sounds like someone singing.”

  “And laughing,” said Tim.

  “Are you sure we’re in the right haunted forest?” asked Cooper.

  Tim sat up straight. “What the hell is going on?”

  “I hear it too!” said Dave. “Shit! Tim, get down. I think I see something.”

  Tim lay flat on his belly and squinted into the bamboo tube again, focused in the direction of the hooting and laughing and singing. Whatever it was appeared to be on fire.

  No, now there were two flames. They waved about wildly as they drew closer. It wasn’t long before Tim could clearly see a man running toward him waving two lit torches over his head.

  “What the fuck is that jackass doing?” asked Cooper. The man stopped, turned around, and waved his torches at something in the direction of where he was coming from. He was naked but for a deerskin loincloth and a leather satchel slung over his shoulder.

  The approaching man’s voice was clear now. “Hoo hoo! Haa haa!” he shouted. “Come and get me, you dead bastards! Woogie woogie! Boogie boogie!”

  “He’s out of his god damned mind,” said Tim. And then Tim saw what he hoped he wouldn’t but knew he would. The first of the zombies stumbled into view. “You were saying something before, Cooper? I think the last word you said was ‘unless’? Did you want to continue with that thought?”

  “I’m not taking the blame for this,” said Cooper. “How could I have known some crazy ass fuck would purposely try to lead every single zombie in this whole fucking forest straight to us?”

  When the first line of zombies got within ten feet of the crazy asshole with the torches, he moved back, still taunting them, still screaming nonsense. “Hoo haa! Hoo haa! Hoobily boobily boo!”

  “We have to get out of here,” said Tim.

  “There’s nowhere to go,” said Julian. “The whole area is crawling with zombies. Look, there are dozens of them.”

  Tim shook his head. “I knew this shit would happen. It doesn’t matter. We’re just going to have to fight our way through and make a run for it.”

  “Julian’s right,” said Dave. “We’ll never make it.”

  “Goddammit, Cooper!”

/>   “Chill the fuck out, dude,” said Cooper. “And keep your voice down. Let’s just lie low and see if this guy has some sort of plan.”

  “Are you fucking with me?” said Tim, straining to keep his voice to a whisper. “Does that fucking lunatic look like he is acting according to any sort of plan?”

  The fucking lunatic ran forward another twenty feet, turned around, and shouted some more taunts at the zombies. “We’re almost there, you hell-spawned fiends! Prepare yourselves, for true death awaits you all!” He waved the torches above his head, waiting for the zombies to catch up to him again. He looked over his shoulder, and Tim followed his gaze. There was no mistake. He was looking at the cliff’s edge.

  Tim was no psychologist, but he didn’t think the man looked crazy. His blond hair was windblown and sweaty from all the running he’d been doing, but it could hardly be considered wild or filthy. His grey-green eyes looked to be filled with determination rather than madness.

  “I think I know what he’s planning to do,” said Tim.

  “So you don’t think he’s crazy?” asked Julian.

  “I think he’s batshit insane,” said Tim. “He’s going to jump off the edge and hope that they follow him like lemmings.”

  Julian’s eyes went wide. “We’ve got to stop him!” He started to push himself up to his feet.

  Cooper pushed Julian’s face into the dirt. “Fuck that guy,” he said. “If he wants to jump off a cliff, it’s not our place to stop him. His retarded plan might be the only thing that lets us get out of here alive.”

  “Wiggy jiggy poo ha haa!” sang the man as he ran forward another twenty feet. “Down to the depths of hell with you all!”

  He turned around again, and Tim caught the glint of gold on his left hand. A ring. Great, the idiot is married. A story began to form in Tim’s mind. Dude probably had a wife, a couple of kids, a golden retriever… all eaten by zombies. Must have broken the poor fucker’s will to live. That was a sad story to think about, but it was the only explanation Tim could think of that made any sense.

  The smell of rotting flesh swept over them as the zombie horde drew ever closer. These zombies were in some pretty rough shape. The ones he’d seen last time looked like your garden variety movie zombie. Just a grey dead dude walking around. The ones approaching now looked like they’d been through a number of deaths. Some of them dragged their intestines behind them. Most had huge gouges of skin missing from various parts of their bodies. And almost none of them wore more than a shredded scrap or two of clothing. Males shambled forth with their junk swinging between their legs. Females that hadn’t had their tits bitten off had them out on display as they reached out their arms in search of one more life to extinguish. Cooper was most likely boring a hole into the ground with his erection.

  The man with the torches slowed his pace now that he was nearly at the cliff’s edge. He walked backwards, waving the torches like he was signaling a plane to land. Tim and his friends pressed themselves as flat as they could against the ground as he walked past their position. They didn’t dare to breathe.

  “Behold!” the man shouted, raising the torches so that he looked like a flaming letter Y. “For today marks the end of your tortured existence. The beginning of your eternal slumber. Today you will find rest. Today you will find pea--”

  The trap sprung as he stepped on the trigger panel. The rope tightened around his lower leg and swung him up into the air. The tree limb bounced him up and down a few times before he settled, hanging upside down, his head a mere two feet from the ground.

  “No!” he screamed. “This can’t be! What fool’s game is this?” He struggled and writhed as he bounced up and down on the rope. But his efforts brought him no closer to freeing himself from the snare. Tim could only lie still and helpless while the zombies closed in around him.

  He clung desperately to the torches he had impressively managed to keep a hold of. His screams were no longer fragments of silly rhyming gibberish. These were screams of terror and disbelief. Tim couldn’t believe that this was a man who was ready to die.

  But Tim wasn’t in a position to do anything to help. The approaching zombies that Tim could see numbered at least thirty or forty. Considering the limited field of view from his current position, the actual number could easily be three or four times that many.

  The dangling man swung his torches wildly at the first two zombies to approach him. A completely nude one-armed corpse batted the torch out of his right hand with ease. He caught a female zombie’s hair on fire, causing her to stumble away from him blindly, and apparently in a lot of pain. Tim watched her stagger over the edge of the cliff. By the time he looked back, three more zombies had taken her place, the second torch was gone, and the man’s screams had either subsided or been drowned out by the sounds of fist pounding flesh and the tearing of skin and leather.

  Julian turned to lie on his back. “What the fuck are we going to do?”

  “You’ve got all those scrolls in your bag, right?” asked Dave. “Do you have anything that might help us here?”

  “They’re all first level spells!” said Julian. “There’s like a billion zombies over there. What use are any of these going to be?”

  “He’s right,” said Cooper. “Our only hope is to stand up and fight.”

  “Fuck you,” said Tim. “That’s not a hope. That’s suicide. Julian, look through your god damned scrolls and find something useful. Now is the time to use your imagination.”

  Tim kept a careful eye on the carnage while Julian rummaged through his bag. He pulled out a bunch of rolled up parchments.

  “No… no… no,” said Julian as he looked over each scroll and tossed them aside. “There’s nothing here. Oh man we are so fucking fucked.” He looked over another scroll, gave it some thought, and tossed it into the growing reject pile. “No… no… no… wait.”

  “What is it?” asked Dave excitedly.

  “Ventriloquism,” said Julian.

  Cooper hung his head. “What? You think you’re going to impress them with a vaudeville act?”

  “Shut up, Cooper,” said Tim. “What do you have in mind, Julian?”

  “If I can make them think there’s someone over in the opposite direction, they might start moving away from us.”

  Tim shrugged. “I’ve heard worse plans. Today, in fact. Give it a try.”

  The zombies began to quiet down. Tim looked through his bamboo tube to find only a severed piece of bloodied rope dangling from a broken tree branch. This was all that remained of his former snare. The zombies were dispersing, having presumably beaten all the life they could out of that poor crazy bastard. He looked at Julian and mouthed the word “Now”.

  Julian nodded, and then silently read over the parchment one more time. He rolled it into a conical tube, closed his eyes, and spoke. Tim could see Julian’s lips moving, but the sound was coming from the other side of the zombie horde.

  “Oh my heavens!” said Julian’s disembodied voice. “I seem to have pulled my big meaty hamstring! However will I deliver this basket of raw human flesh to the orphanage?”

  Everyone looked at Julian. His face was covered in sweat and his hands were trembling. He gave a weak shrug and kept talking.

  “My sweet fat sister!” the voice continued. “Please shoulder this burden on your thick, elephantine legs. Be swift!”

  “They’re buying it!” Tim whispered. The zombies, which had until that point been walking around aimlessly, were once again united in the direction they traveled, and it was toward Julian’s phantom voice. “Keep talking!”

  Julian’s eyes darted back and forth as he scrambled for something to say.

  He started talking again, only this time in a poorly imitated, high-pitched, female voice. “I cannot leave you, my brave brother. We have come too far only to fail now! The feelings I have for you can no longer be ignored. Come, make sweaty meaty love to me here in this wood, my beloved darling!”

  “What the fuck, dude?” said Cooper
.

  “Shut the fuck up, Cooper!” said Tim. “Keep talking, Julian. They’re going.”

  The walking corpses had all cleared out of the snare trap area. One corpse remained, mangled and bloody. Tied to one of its legs was a length of red sticky rope. Tim turned his head away and threw up.

  “Speak you the truth, my dear portly sister?” Julian’s voice continued in the male voice again. “For many years I have longed to bury my face in the soft folds of your neck. What joy it does bring me --“ As Julian continued to speak, his voice originated once again from within his own body. “to hear you say --“

  Cooper clapped a giant clawed hand over Julian’s mouth. “Your spell just tapped out,” he whispered. “Shut up.”