Rise and Fall

by Michael Whitehead

  The undead finished their last prey and looked at the light coming from around the corner of the tunnel, it wasn’t bright but it may as well have been a burning beacon. It showed them a way out and they took it. On the streets of Rome was an abundance of flesh and fresh blood and even for these creatures of darkness, sunlight showed them the way.

  Chapter Twenty

  The world was screaming chaos. The Risen prowled the streets, scattering people before them. Blood flowed in every gutter. Most had never seen the rotting, spawn of Hades but everyone knew them on sight. The stories had been enough to keep grown men awake at night, childhood dreams of monsters brought to life.

  Chin Lee kept calm while the world around him turned to a panicking nightmare. His first thought was for his mother and grandfather, they were at home, he needed to get to them. He kept to the dark alleys and moved slowly. Each time he stepped into the open he did it with forethought and purpose. He hoped Vitus would be proud of him.

  Stepping out from behind a stack of crates piled up behind a shop, he ran toward the end of the narrow passage and toward the opening of the street beyond. Near the entrance was a doorway, he stopped and waited. Out on the street a woman ran, screaming, chased by a Risen who had once been twice her age. The old man he had been, before death found him, now moved with the speed of a teenager. He grabbed her from behind and tore her tunic down the back in an attempt to stop her escape. She fled, bare breasted, and blindly ran into the waiting arms and teeth of a second undead monster. The two tore at her with teeth and clawed hands.

  With their attention diverted, Lee passed within feet of the two creatures and into the new passage beyond. His home was no more than a two minute walk from here, but he took a second to gather himself and look around.

  His eyes drifted upward to the low, flat roof of the building opposite. He could make the climb but was it worth the effort? The passage was clear and there would be a jump to the next building at some point. No, stay on the ground and stay hidden. He slid along the wall, keeping to the shadows, the sounds of screaming were coming at him from all sides. Fear tried to find a home in his guts but he fought it off and let his head guide him.

  Down the passage and left, into an even narrower alleyway. So narrow that he would never usually use it, too easy to be cut off by gangs of bigger boys who were out for sport. His narrow eyes and golden skin made him a target for the local bullies but he had learned to keep himself safe.

  At one point, this passage became so narrow he had to turn sideways to avoid getting stuck but it brought him much closer to home and his family. From the passage he had just left, a man screamed in agony, it was almost the howl of a wolf and for the first time Lee felt a sting of panic stab at him. He whipped his head around but saw nothing.

  One final, wider passageway that Lee took at a run and the steps to his home were in sight. He was about to take them when a body dropped from the roof above him. The Risen landed heavy but got to its feet and limped toward him, dragging one leg.

  Lee fumbled in his belt for his knife, short bladed and inadequate for such a fight, he never the less held it before him bravely. Lee backed up slowly and waited for the attack, watching for the moment when the creature would leap at him. When it came it was slower and weaker than he had expected, the damaged leg must have hindered the jump.

  Lee stepped quickly to one side and the Risen hit the ground heavily in the place he had just been. He wanted to run, to seek sanctuary in his home but that would bring the monsters to his family. He stepped forward to stab his knife into the thing's head. As he did the Risen grabbed at his ankle, pulling him toward its open mouth, with an unbreakable grip.

  Lee fell backward and began scrabbling at the ground in a panic. His child’s body was no match for the strength of this creature. He kicked at its face with his free foot but the Risen was unaffected, even as its decomposing nose disappeared in a mess of black blood. The boy's heart was loud in his ears and so he didn’t hear what came up behind him.

  Had it been another undead he would have succumbed to his fate, but it wasn’t. A man stepped over him, with two short swords in his hands. Without a second's hesitation he drove one blade into the Risen’s head and the hand released its hold on Lee’s ankle.

  He looked up to thank the hero that had saved him and saw only his grandfather.

  “Come, get inside,” his grandfather said, holding out a hand to help the boy up. Lee took the offered hand, pulled himself up and followed his grandfather into their home.

  Lee’s mother, Handan, took him in an embrace so tight he feared she might suffocate him. It took his grandfather pulling at her arms to release the boy. She held his head in her hands and looked at him.

  “Are you hurt?” she asked earnestly.

  “No, mother. I’m fine,” Lee answered, pulling away from the barrage of kisses she was covering him with. He turned to his grandfather and stared at the old man.

  “I never knew you had swords,” he said.

  “Should an old man tell you everything?” Doctor Chin Naoki asked the boy.

  “Were you a warrior once?” Lee asked, excited by the prospect.

  “No child, I was a doctor, always. My father, your great grandfather, was a warrior. He fought for the local lord for many years. These are his swords.” It was more family history than Lee had heard in his whole life. His mother and grandfather spoke little of home and the time before they had fled.

  “But, you know how to use them?” Lee continued this flurry of questions.

  “A little, until today I have never killed anything, if that is what you are asking,” the old man said. Lee lost interest almost at once upon hearing this disappointing news.

  “We need to get to Domitius’ house, mother,” he said to Handan. His stomach sank as she began to shake her head but he continued. “Mother, the city is lost, the undead are everywhere, not like last time. If we don’t move now, it will only get worse. The plan is that we try to get to Domitius’ house and so does everyone else.”

  “Your grandfather will never make it that far, Lee. He does not move fast. He is safer here,” his mother argued.

  “For how long?” Lee almost shouted. He felt ashamed at arguing with her but he must make her listen.

  “The guards will come, they did last time,” she replied.

  “No, mother. No they won’t. I’ve seen it out there. There are so many of them, it’s not like it was before. They are everywhere, the guards will not win this time. We have to move now, we need Vitus.” Lee used the name of the centurion out of desperation. He knew his mother had thought of him often since the siege. He hoped it would be enough to persuade her that this was the right thing to do.

  “Enough of this arguing,” Naoki said from behind Lee. “The boy is right, we need to move now, before it’s too late.” Lee could have kissed his grandfather but instead stepped back from between the two adults.

  “You can’t make it father,” Handan said to the old man. “I won’t let those things get you!” She was almost crying.

  “The longer we delay the worse our chances become,” the old man said and the look on his face was one Lee had seen many times before. It usually appeared when Lee’s mother was trying to tell his grandfather what was best for him and the old man disagreed. It was a look that said, 'No matter how much you think you are right, I have lived a long time and I know better'.

  Handan visibly wilted. “Lee, go and get the bags. Fetch the weapons, be quick. If we have to do this I want to do it now.”

  ----------------------------------------------------------------

  Lucia watched through the shutters, the chaos that was gripping the city. There were fires in at least three different places, that she could see. If they had started in the wrong parts of the city, whole areas could be ash by the morning. Fire was one of the things the city feared the most. Tenements that were so close together you could step from one building to another using the top floor windows, meant fire could spread u
nchecked.

  She looked frantically up and down the street. They had all known this day would come but strangely, Lucia had assumed there would be some kind of warning. If the walls had been overrun there would have been horns or a signal of some sort. In this instance, the first sign she had seen that there had been a problem, had been the sound of screaming out on the street. She had looked out to see an old woman dragged to the ground and killed by three of the undead.

  Regulus was upstairs. She knew he hadn’t slept in days, although she didn’t know why. She had agonised over waking him but in the end she had decided he could wait until the others arrived before she disturbed him. There were hard days ahead and she wanted him as fit as possible before they came.

  Lucia’s aunt Flavia was with the slaves. They were busy gathering everything they thought might be useful. They already had packs ready with everything Vitus had said they would need. What her aunt was doing was no more than keeping busy because she knew no other way to handle the situation. Lucia had decided the best thing to do was to be ready to open the door as soon as it was necessary.

  Out on the street four men had gathered together and were holding makeshift weapons. A couple had kitchen knives and one had a table leg. The fourth had an actual sword but the blade looked dull and badly cared for. They stood in the street and waited for an enemy that Lucia couldn’t see from her window. The four were caught unaware by a group of Risen that attacked from behind, the noise of their approach was masked by the general noise and chaos that now gripped the city.

  Two fell instantly as the Risen leapt, knocking them from their feet. The other two reacted wildly, hacking at the writhing mass that was their friends and the undead attackers. It looked to Lucia that they may have done as much harm to their friends as to the Risen. While they fought to save their companions the two were run down by more undead. It was a massacre everywhere Lucia looked. The streets were full of people running blindly in search of help that simply would not arrive.

  At one end of the street she saw her uncle Domitius and Vitus. They were back to back but only Vitus held a sword, her uncle had a short knife in his hand that Lucia doubted he knew how to use. She rushed to the door and opened it so that a sliver of light entered the hallway. She put her eye to the crack and watched the two men approach.

  Vitus seemed to be shouting instructions to her uncle who, brave as he was, walked backward to guard their backs. Vitus sliced deep into the skull of a Risen as it jumped in to attack. It was a quick, efficient kill that Lucia had seen him perform more than once on their journey from Germania.

  There was a space in front of them and the two moved quickly to make up the ground. Her uncle shouted and in a move fit for the battleground, the two men turned while remaining back to back. Vitus met the charge of a female Risen by kicking out with a straight leg. She buckled under the weight of her own attack. Vitus shouted over his shoulder and the two men broke and ran for the door. The Risen gained her feet and charged at Vitus’ back. The centurion was ready for the attack, he turned at the last moment and backhanded his gladius across her face. The blow split her features in two, separating her nose and eyes from her mouth and giving her a gaping, shocked expression.

  Lucia threw open the door at the last moment and the two men ran past her. She closed the door and turned to throw herself into Vitus’ arms. She clung to his neck and tears rolled down her face.

  “You want to be careful,” a voice said from behind them, “I hear her boyfriend can be jealous.

  Regulus stood, half dressed, on the stairs. His hair stood up in bed-tousled spikes and he wiped sleep from his eyes. Lucia had never seen him looking so tired.

  “It’s started then? Why did no-one wake me?” the teenager asked with complete calm. His injury had done a lot to cause him physical harm but his sense of humour was still intact.

  “I was about to,” Lucia said and smiled. “How do you feel?”

  “Like I’ve been beaten with an olive staff,” he said, referring to the cane used by centurions in the legions. “Who else is here? Who’s missing?”

  “I was about to ask the same thing,” said Vitus, looking around.

  “Flavia and Atia are in the back, and the staff,” Lucia answered.

  “Fuck,” said Vitus. “Not Lee or his family? Not Garic?” he asked.

  “I’ve sent Tatius and Gallus out to find the Chin family,” Lucia said. “Did I do the right thing?” she asked.

  Vitus nodded. “Absolutely, they can look after themselves well enough. I think I need to go looking for Garic.”

  “I don’t think so, Vitus,” said Domitius. The Praetor was shaking his head and looked stern. “There are people in this house that need you more. Now is the time when we are supposed to be gathering together, not splitting up.”

  “He’s our friend,” replied Vitus.

  “Yes, and so are Lucia and Regulus. They are in as much need as Garic. He may be out there and the rest of us in here but it’s all relative safety. We won’t survive long in here, we need to prepare ourselves for whatever comes next, we can’t do that if more people are leaving the house than arriving. Garic is in a strong place, he may decide to stay there and you will risk yourself trying to travel both ways for nothing. He would thank you to stay here and keep his wife and child safe.” Domitius pointed to another of the downstairs rooms that Flavia had turned into a residence for Atia and baby Tulius.

  Garic’s wife was a quiet, almost insular person, who rarely spoke to anyone. Flavia had done everything she could to make the woman happy but in the end she seemed to be in mourning for her husband, who she considered to have abandoned her.

  “And if everyone else gets here and Garic hasn’t arrived? Do we leave without him? Do we take his wife and child and just leave or worse still, leave them here?” Vitus asked, his voice almost a shout.

  “We wait, that’s all we can do,” Domitius said. Keeping his voice as calm as he could. “We wait and see who makes it back to us. We have to be ready for the idea that not everyone will. There is nothing we can do, right now, but bide our time.”

  “Right, we make sure we are ready for when they arrive then. I want people upstairs checking the shutters,” Vitus said.

  “The house is secure, sir,” Regulus said from half way up the stairs.

  “Then check it again!” Vitus shouted at him. Regulus didn’t hesitate, he turned and made his way upstairs to do as he had been asked. Lucia walked past Vitus to join him.

  “We are all under stress here,” she said as she made her way onto the bottom step.

  Vitus had no time for being nice, his world was falling to pieces and so many people were depending on him. He watched the two young people go and turned back to Domitius.

  “We need all of the slaves on watch, don’t leave anyone you don’t trust on the doors.” He was remembering the siege, when one of the young girls had opened a door and nearly killed them all.

  The Praetor nodded his understanding. Political rank meant nothing at this point, neither did the ownership of the house. Domitius had relied on Vitus to guide and protect them all in the past weeks, now he had to trust him completely. The centurion had proven himself trustworthy and brave, almost to a fault. The Praetor had won the argument about Garic but he had to concede that what was to come would be in the hands of the military man. He watched Vitus stalk into the house in search of anything he could do to improve their chances of survival and thanked the gods for his presence.

  Chapter Twenty One

  “More men on the walls, now centurion,” Ursus ordered as the man passed by. The centurion saluted and immediately began bellowing orders to the men nearest him. Ursus scanned the scene and a brief but bone-deep feeling of despair filled him.

  He had returned from Ostia earlier that morning. The river had been a place of quiet and solace after weeks of demand on his time. The burden of the thousands of undead in the cages had finally become someone else’s problem, he had completed his part of the work
. They had left two full centuries in Ostia in case the worst happened and the Risen began to turn around and head back to the port. It had been six hours after his return that the first Risen had appeared in Rome.

  Had he really thought that the undead turning around and heading back to Ostia would be the worst thing that could happen? Naive as it may seem to him now, yes, he had. The tunnel was well built, by Roman engineers, the thing should have been flawless. There was no way in the world that the Risen should have been able to break out of that tunnel. They just didn’t have the brain power for a start. No-one seemed to be able to tell him what had happened. There had been guards posted at all of the access points inside the city. Each entrance to the underground tunnel that passed under Rome had been boarded up and then watched from the outside. No-one had been near the tunnel except his men.

  Ursus watched two men fall off the palace walls. The first man, dragged from his place by undead hands from below, grabbing at the man next to him as he went, pulling them both to their doom.

  It would do no good to even try figuring out how it had happened, the fact was that Rome was being over-run. Wishing things were different was a fool's game, Ursus had known that from as long ago as he could remember. Even as a child he had known that the only way to achieve anything in life was to accept any situation for what it was and act on that knowledge. Too many fools spent their lives wishing for change instead of making it happen.

  “Sir!” a legionary ran up to him saluting and speaking before his feet had come to a stop. Ursus nodded to the man and waited for his report. “Sir, the main gate is closed and secure but in danger of being over-run. Centurion Prandus requests backup, sir.”

  Ursus gritted his teeth. “Tell the centurion that he has as many men as I can spare at the present. Tell him he is doing a fine job and I will need him to hold out a little longer. There are reinforcements expected from elsewhere in the city and he will receive the first to arrive.” The man saluted and turned on his heels, he left at a run.