4d6 (Caverns and Creatures)

by Robert Bevan

  “Yeah, that fucking job,” said Tim. “So what is it? You need us to rough up some dudes behind on their payments? Go out and collect protection money? Sabotage a rival agency’s trash collection cart?”

  “Hold on,” said Julian. “I don’t want to do anything like that.”

  The half-orc behind the desk looked confused. “Rival agency? Sanitation is controlled by the Cardinian city government. It’s a public service.”

  “Oh,” said Tim. “Then what’s the problem?”

  “No one knows how it started, but this place has become overrun with wights.”

  “That doesn’t sound so bad,” said Cooper. “Hell, where we come from, that’s a sign of a good neighborhood.”

  The half-orc squinted at Cooper like he was trying to look directly at the sun. “And where do you come from?”

  “Gulfport, Mississippi.”

  It was too early in the day for this shit. Tim needed a drink. He mustered up what patience he could and looked up at Cooper’s stupid face. “He’s talking about the undead.”

  “What, like zombies?”

  “Yes, Cooper. Like zombies.” Tim turned back to the half-orc behind the desk. “Not a problem, sir. We’ve dealt with the undead before. We can kill a few wights.”

  “Whoa!” said Julian. “Wait just a second, Tim, and think about what you’re saying. Zombie or not, what sense does it make to discriminate based on race? I mean, would you honestly feel better having your face gnawed off by a Central American or Sub-Saharan African zombie?”

  “Goddammit!” said Tim. “Wight. W-I-G-H-T. Okay?”

  Cooper hung his big half-orc head and frowned. “Not cool, man. You know I can’t spell.”

  Julian folded his arms. “That’s okay. Neither can Tim.”

  “These are no mindless zombies,” said the half-orc. “Wights are far more powerful and dangerous. You would do well to fear and respect them if you wish to survive.”

  Dave stepped forward. “Sir, I understand that you may have had some unfortunate run-ins with whites in the past. But is it as bad as you’re making it out to be? I mean, look at yourself. You don’t appear to be missing too many meals, you’ve got a nice government job, you –”

  “For the love of fuck!” cried Tim. “Would all of you please just shut the fuck up for two goddamn minutes?” He turned back to the half-orc. “Please excuse my friends, sir. They’re... um... What’s the polite word for retarded?”

  “Your mother?” suggested Cooper.

  Tim ignored him, keeping his attention focused on business. “It’s been a while since I looked at the Monster Manual. Can you explain to my friends exactly what a wight is?”

  The half-orc nodded solemnly. “In days gone by, the term ‘wight’ simply meant ‘man’.”

  “Like, before the Civil War?” asked Cooper.

  Tim squeezed the handle of his crossbow and glared at Cooper, then turned back to the half-orc behind the desk. “How about just giving us a brief rundown on the differences between zombies and wights?”

  “A zombie will simply tear you limb from limb until you die. A wight will turn you into one of their own, which is why we have a problem.”

  “Cultural assimilation,” Julian whispered.

  “Okay, that’s it.” Tim turned around and held up his crossbow, but didn’t point it at anyone just yet. “I swear to god. The next person who speaks is getting shot in the face.”

  “You gentlemen seem well qualified for the task,” said the half-orc. “My name’s Mung. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” From behind his desk, he produced a large square of folded burlap cloth. “This is for the heads.”

  “You want us to put their heads in a bag?” asked Julian.

  “Proof of kill. You collect five silver pieces per head upon your return.”

  Cooper snorted. “We’re getting paid loose change for head. Finally we can know what it feels like to be Dave’s mom.”

  Tim and Julian shared a chuckle. Even Mung joined in.

  Dave turned red in the face. “Your mother’s so –”

  The office door swung open, sparing Dave the embarrassment of an almost certain terrible retort.

  Two human men stood in the doorway. One wore armor that looked like it was composed of pieces fished out of this very junkyard. His thick brown mustache poked out of both sides of the mask of his cylindrical helmet. He looked like the Tin Man in an underfunded middle school production of The Wizard of Oz, except he wielded a war hammer in one hand and a bargain-basement coaster of a holy symbol in the other.

  His companion wore a simple leather tunic, though it was perhaps a size too small. His broad muscly body threatened the stitching at the seams. The only possession he carried on his person was a long wooden spear with a steel head full of barbed serrations.

  The armored man took a step into the already crowded office. He smelled like canned meat. “I, Morgan Flynn, Cleric of Dionys, Defender of Truth, Harbinger of Justice, and my companion, Balroth Stonefist, answer the city’s call to arms!”

  “I’m confused,” said Cooper. “Did you just introduce, like, six guys? Or –”

  “Silence, cretin!”

  Mung cleared his throat. “Will you all be working together, or would you prefer to act as two separate parties?”

  “We do the gods’ work!” said Morgan. “We did not come here to babysit women and children.”

  That was all Tim could stand. “Who the fuck are you calling women and –”

  “Enough!” said Mung, slamming a fist on his desk. “I have work to do. Common sense dictates that you would be wiser to work together, but –”

  When Tim glared over at Morgan, Morgan was making a thumbs-up gesture over his crotch, with his thumb pointed toward Tim. It was a bizarre and unfamiliar gesture to Tim, but one that he could only interpret as disrespectful.

  Tim pointed at Morgan. “I will end you, motherfucker! I will piss on your fucking corpse!”

  “Ahem,” said Mung. His fake throat-clearing was not excessively loud, but he had a certain presence that made him difficult to ignore. “As I was saying. If pride and petty squabbles mean more to you than survival, so be it.” He tossed another folded square of burlap to Morgan’s silent henchman. “But I suggest you all direct your hostility toward the wights.”

  Julian shook his head. “That sort of thinking doesn’t lead to progress.”

  Mung slid open a large door opposite the entrance, revealing a five-foot by ten-foot cage of thick steel bars. Beyond the cage was a stadium-sized walled enclosure which Tim found to be cleaner than he’d expected for a place meant to contain all of the garbage of a city the size of Cardinia. There were piles of refuse scattered here and there on the barren ground, but not nearly as much as Tim thought there should be. The air didn’t smell too bad either, aside from Cooper’s contributions. Maybe Cardinians were big into recycling.

  “Do not open the gate on the far side until after I’ve closed this gate.” Mung pulled up the near gate by a horizontal bar attached to it. Smoothly, the gate slid open, revealing the sharp points on the bottom ends of the vertical bars, which would be buried a good six inches when the gate closed. “Everybody in.”

  Cooper was the first to walk into the cage, followed by Dave, then Julian. Tim took his group’s rear, but was followed into the increasingly crowded cage by Morgan Flynn and Balroth Stonefist. Balroth’s spear was too long to fit in the cage, so he had to poke the top of it through the bars of the roof.

  They were all stuffed in so tightly when Mung pulled the gate back down that it was difficult to move. If wights were to reach through the bars and attack them right now, they’d truly be fucked.

  Tim put his small halfling stature and his rogue stealthiness to good use by tying Morgan’s boot laces together.

  “What are you waiting for?” said Morgan. “Open the gate already!”

  “I can’t figure out how the latch works,” said Cooper.

  Dave grunted, and his ass was suddenly in
Tim’s face. “Let me try. Unnnnngggg... shit. I can’t reach it from this angle.”

  Tim ducked down and squirmed his way through a forest of legs until he reached the gate on the far side. “Do I have to do everything for you guys?”

  “What the hell is that?” cried Julian.

  Tim poked his head between Julian’s legs and looked outside the cage. A monster far more grotesque than his vague recollection of the Monster Manual illustration had prepared him for scuttled toward the cage. The pointy-toothed grinning freakshow appeared to have once been human, judging by the scraps of rotted clothing hanging from its twisted limbs. Yellow-grey skin stretched tight around its face, topped by a filthy crop of Don King-style hair.

  “Shit,” said Tim. “It’s a wight.”

  “Good luck, gentlemen,” said Mung as he slid the office door closed behind the gate.

  Dave and Cooper were frantically arguing at the gate on the other side. Tim crawled over to see what the holdup was.

  “Pull up on the handle!”

  “I’m trying! It’s stuck.”

  “Then try pushing down.”

  “It won’t budge.”

  Tim squeezed himself upright against the gate bars until his head met something hard and inflexible. “Ow. Fuck, that hurt.” He re-positioned himself with the side of his face pressed against Dave’s ass, which appeared to be everywhere at once, to get a better look at what he’d hit his head on. It was the gate handle. “You dumb bastards. You’re on the side with the hinges!” He reached out and gave the handle a tug, spilling himself, Dave, and Cooper outside of the cage.

  Morgan pressed his back against the opposite side of the cage as the wight reached both hands ind its long pointed tongue through the bars. Morgan fumbled with his holy symbol while Balroth struggled to get his spear in fighting position.

  “Know the power of Dionys and flee, foul creature!”

  Tim didn’t know if Morgan had rolled a piss-poor turning check, or if he was just a shitty cleric, but the wight now appeared to be grabbing at the holy symbol, managing to graze it with one finger.

  “How dare you defile this... this... bwaaaaahhh!” Morgan grabbed the wight’s wrist with one hand, pressed it back against the bars, and smashed the elbow with his hammer.

  Balroth, by this time, had maneuvered the base of his spear shaft through the bars on the side of the cage opposite the wight and pulled the head in through the roof bars. He plunged the head deep into the wight’s chest. The wight screamed as it stumbled backward, leaving behind what Tim guessed were tendrils of lung hanging from the barbed spearhead.

  It’s scream turned to a gurgle as brown blood spilled out of its mouth, covering its chin and mingling with the blood flowing out of its chest wound. Showing more intelligence than a zombie, it chose not to re-engage the people in the cage, but rather focused its wild eyes, burning with icy blue hatred, on Tim.

  Tim shivered as the creature’s gaze met his own. It only had time to take a single step in his direction before Tim pulled the trigger of his crossbow. His hands were shaky, and he barely managed to hit the creature in the upper part of its already-damaged arm.

  The wight stopped screaming and snarling, and collapsed like a sack of moldy fruit. It must have been down to its last Hit Point.

  Tim grinned at Morgan. “Guess that’s a kill for us.”

  “Back away, halfling!” said Balroth, shifting the gore-coated spearhead two inches in Tim’s direction, but he was unable to point it directly at him because of the bars.

  “So Fabio can talk after all.” Tim pulled his bolt out of the dead creature’s arm. It barely even had any blood on it. He doubted he had ever seen so superficial a wound. He looked back up at Balroth. “This is our kill. If you want the head, you can come and take it from us.”

  Balroth was trembling with anger, which impeded his efforts to remove his spear from between the cage bars. “I shall take all of your heads in the service of Dionys!”

  “Calm yourself, Balroth,” said Morgan. “Let the fools have their ill-gotten victory. I’ve a feeling we’ll be collecting their heads before long.” He sneered at Tim. “You and your friends would do well to stay out of our way.”

  Tim placed his bolt over his crotch and wiggled it at Morgan and Balroth as they exited the cage and walked away in search of more undead prey.

  “What a dick,” said Cooper.

  Ravenus peeked out from under Julian’s serape. “What is that wonderful smell? Has someone prepared breakfast?”

  Now that undeath was no longer binding the wight’s body together, the poor bastard really started to reek.

  “Well well,” said Tim. “Look who finally decided to wake up.”

  Ravenus looked at him blankly.

  Tim knew the bird couldn’t understand anyone but Julian unless they spoke with a British accent, but Tim was only concerned with Julian understanding him. “He’s getting fat.”

  Julian stroked Ravenus’s feathers. “I know.”

  “If you keep letting him sleep until he smells food, he’s going to be too fat to fly.”

  Ravenus cleared his throat. “I’m terribly sorry to interrupt. But does anyone else want the eyes?”

  Tim shook his head. “They’re all yours.”

  “No,” said Julian. “We need its head in-tact.” He turned his head away from his familiar. “And you need some exercise.”

  Even Tim’s callous heart was saddened to see Julian denying his familiar its favorite thing in the world. “I’m not saying you have to start starving him right out of the gate. Let him eat the eyes. I think the wight’s head will still be plenty recognizable as such.”

  Julian looked down at the horrifying remains of the dead creature at their feet. “But what if he gets White Disease or whatever? I don’t want him turning into a seagull.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Tim. “Everything you just said is... I don’t even have the words for how stupid it was.”

  “Okay, Ravenus,” said Julian. “Make it quick.”

  The wight’s eyes had shriveled down to raisins by the time Ravenus finally got to eat them. Tim looked away and was relieved that they didn’t make that horrible slurping sound. They probably just snapped right off the rapidly decaying optic nerves.

  “Not much of a meal,” said Ravenus. “But I rather enjoyed the texture. More chewy than usual, but lacking that satisfying juicy burst.”

  Dave looked back at the wight, winced, and turned away again.

  That was good enough for Tim. He didn’t look back. “Cooper, can you chop that thing’s head off and kick it into the bag?”

  “Sure thing.”

  THWONG

  That might have been a chop, but it sounded too far away, and more like the release of a large amount of tension than an axe chopping through a neck.

  “The fuck was –”

  Dave collapsed under a pile of garbage-studded excrement about the size of a small car, which had just fallen straight out of the sky.

  “Dave!” cried Tim. “Are you okay?” The shit-pile landed with a splatter, so parts of Dave were visible through the top, meaning it wasn’t yet necessary for Tim to go digging for him.

  Dave struggled to roll himself over and rise to a sitting position. “I think so.” He spit some shit out of his mouth. “What just happened?”

  Cooper looked up at the sky. “I think God just took a dump on you.”

  Tim laughed.

  Julian cupped his hands over his mouth and lowered his voice. “Do you believe in me now, Dave?”

  “Everything’s a big joke to you guys,” said Dave, wiping shit out of his beard. “Look at me. I almost get killed by a flying ball of shit. Do you wonder how that might have happened? No. Try to think of ways we might avoid getting killed by flying shitballs in the future? Of course not. Your first instinct is always to laugh at Dave. Ha ha ha, Dave’s covered in shit again. Ha ha ha, Dave got kicked by a horse again. Ha ha ha, Dave–” His eyes widened as a blob of transparent jelly
slopped over his mouth and nose.

  “Ha ha ha,” said Cooper. “Dave’s coughing up splooge again.”

  Tim’s eyes adjusted. The jelly blob was attached to a jelly arm, which was pulling Dave backward into some giant wall of jelly. The splattered shit on the ground dissolved into the slowly-approaching wall.

  As Tim stepped back, he got a view of the whole thing. It was at least ten feet tall, and just as wide. A perfect cube of living digestive slime, with Dave’s unconscious or dead body suspended in the middle of it.

  “Gelatinous cube!” cried Tim. He had no idea these things were so big.

  “That’s really what it’s called?” asked Julian. “Who’s in charge of naming stuff in this game?”

  “Would you shut up and – FUCK!” Tim tumbled out of the way as a pseudopod shot out of the cube at him. He caught it with one hand as it slowly retracted, drew a dagger with his other hand, and sliced off the appendage. Even as it melted into lifeless jelly, Tim felt the pins and needles of numbness in his palm and fingers. At least Dave probably wasn’t feeling any pain.

  “FUCK YOU, JIZZBOX!” said Cooper, tearing into the cube with his axe.

  The gelatinous cube shot four pseudopods at Cooper’s face, chest, leg, and crotch.

  “Flgbbghffgb!” said Cooper as his whole body was pulled into the cube. Poor Cooper must have made his Saving Throw vs. paralysis, because he continued to struggle once inside.

  The cube stopped advancing. It waved pseudopods lazily at Tim and Julian, but didn’t lash out like before.

  “Cooper!” said Julian, cautiously jabbing at the cube with his quarterstaff. “What do we do?”

  “You’re a sorcerer, fuckwit!” said Tim. “Use magic!”

  Julian held his staff in the air with one hand and thrust his other hand toward the cube. “Magic Missile!”

  Two bolts of energy flew out of Julian’s palm, causing two sections of the cube to burst like giant zits. The cube reformed into its proper shape almost immediately, but Tim thought it looked smaller than before. And it was definitely slower. Maybe Cooper was too gross to digest... or too big.