Legion of the Undead

by Michael Whitehead

  No food was passed into the hold while they sailed to their destination. Once the hatch was opened and a bucket of water was lowered by rope into their midst. The men crowded about it like animals at a feeding trough. They scooped the water into their mouths, spilling more than they managed to drink. The pirates who had sent down the bucket laughed as they closed the hatch.

  After what seemed like a season in Hades, the men in the hold felt the ship begin to slow. They fell silent, listening hard to hear the crew speaking, but no sound carried down to them. Eventually the vessel came to a stop, nobody in the hold moved other than to turn their heads to the hatch above their heads.

  “That’s a beach, that is,” said the old sailor who had told Marcus to swallow his ring. A few men hissed for him to be silent, but Marcus thought the old man might been correct. He could hear the low, almost silent dragging sound of waves on pebbles or sand.

  Those that looked up at the hatch were disappointed. They heard the sounds of feet moving around the deck, but nobody came to check on the prisoners.

  “They’re going to leave us here to rot,” the old sailor said, sitting back against the curved side of the hull.

  One of the younger members of the crew rushed toward the old man, knocking Marcus to one side as he did. He grabbed the older man by the sides of his tunic and lifted him so that his toes were barely touching the boards.

  “Decimus, I told you to be quiet. You’ll bring curses down from the gods if you keep saying things like that.”

  Decimus looked abashed rather than scared, he took hold of the younger man’s hands and, without a word, gently pried them from his clothing. When the younger man stepped back, Decimus smoothed out his tunic and shook his head. Despite his age, he didn’t seem at all cowed by the physical threat of the younger men around him.

  “With a temper like that, Quintus, you won’t last five minutes. Have some patience man. It’s all part of their plan. They will leave us here to sweat, worry and shit in the corner.” He motioned to the far end of the hold to where the empty water bucket now sat, it was full to overflowing with waste and stinking hideously.

  “Why? Why would they do that?” Marcus asked, his voice rough through lack of water and the foul air in the hold.

  “Because it means we won’t fight back when they finally come to get us,” Decimus said with a shrug.

  “Then what do we do, just wait until they let us out?” Marcus asked.

  “You have a better idea, boy?” Decimus asked in return.

  The men slumped into silence, each trapped with his own thoughts. A couple of the men whispered to the man next to them in the darkness, but most sat in wordless misery.

  Caesius sat next to Marcus, his elbows on his knees and forehead resting on his arms. Marcus had never seen his master lose hope before. Across all the miles they had travelled, in every meeting to trade goods, in every flea infested room they had hired for the night, he had been a beacon of positivity. Now, here in this shit smelling hole, the old man seemed to have lost hope.

  Time seemed to drift away from them, losing all meaning, stretching out past the furthest reaches of their consciousness. So when the hatch was opened they might have been there for a day, or for a week, either way it took them all by surprise.

  Marcus was watching the thin slices of daylight that broke into their prison fade toward night when they heard the sound of feet on the boards above. At first nobody looked up toward the hatch, then they heard a bolt being slipped.

  Marcus caught a glimpse of orange torchlight as the cover was pulled from above, then the light was snatched away as it was dropped back into place. There was a heavy thud as something hit the deck, then the sounds of a fight. A man let out a cry of fear or pain and the scuffle continued.

  “What... What are you?” they all heard the same man ask, his voice soaked in terror. Then there was a final, heavy thud and silence.

  The men in the hold seemed to have stopped breathing. They all stared up at the place where they had heard the thudding noise, as if they might be able to see what had happened if they looked long enough. Nobody spoke, there seemed to be no reasonable thing to say. Eventually, Decimus broke the silence.

  “What in the name of the gods was that?” he muttered, barely more than a breath.

  “Do you think it’s over, whatever it was?” another voice asked from further back in the darkness.

  “Someone needs to have a look,” Decimus said. As he spoke the words he drew his eyes from the hatch and brought them to rest on Marcus’s face.

  “No,” he said. “No way am I putting my head up there.”

  “You ain’t got a lot of choice about it, boy,” Quintus, the man who had grabbed Decimus said, resting a hand on Marcus shoulder. “You’re the smallest of us, and we need to be able to lift you up to that hatch. Anyway, not a chance we would send up one of us when we can send you instead.”

  There was a round of low agreement from the other men in the hold. Marcus turned to Caesius for support, but even now he seemed to be lost. He hadn’t even looked up from his place when the hatch had opened. Marcus silently begged him to help, to come to his rescue, but he remained trapped in his own thoughts.

  “All you have to do is open the hatch a little and have a look around. It won’t take more than a second, then we will bring you down,” the man said, still resting his hand on Marcus’s shoulder.

  Marcus wanted to argue, but knew the battle was already lost. He nodded silently in the dark, but there must have been enough light for it to be seen because a few of the men let out a low sigh.

  Decimus turned into the gloom of the hold, “Alex, Cosmo, over here,” he hissed. Two strapping men stepped out of the gloom, carrying more muscle than Marcus had seen divided among three men. “Come over here and make a cradle.”

  The two sailors did as Decimus directed, standing opposite each other and linking their fingers to give Marcus a foothold. The boy put a hand on each man’s shoulder to steady himself and then stepped up into their combined grip.

  They lifted him into the air, his legs wobbling as they tried to compensate for the movement of the ship and the unsteady foothold. There was a moment of doubt when he had to let go of the sailor’s shoulders and reach up to brace himself against the frame of the hatch above his head. Eventually, he felt secure enough to lift the edge of the wooden cover.

  The ship was in a cove, surrounded on the three sides that he could see by steep, tree-lined cliffs. It was anchored a short way out to sea, off a small beach that reached down from the foot of the cliffs to slope into the water. On the sand there were lit torches that had been driven into the ground on long poles, small huts, and a bonfire, but no sign of life. Nothing moved on board the ship.

  Marcus lifted the hatch higher and lifted himself up so that his whole head was above the level of the deck. He stopped and waited, expecting to hear a voice cry out a warning that the prisoners were trying to escape. The night was still.

  “Push me up,” he whispered down to the men below. He felt himself begin to rise and lifted the hatch open, careful not to let it fall and make any noise. As soon able to clamber out on to his knees, keeping low in case there were lookouts posted on the shore.

  The air smelled so sweet after the putrid, fetid stench of the hold. There was a breeze that came off the sea that refreshed and woke him. Above him the stars were out in abundance, filling the sky with tiny pin-prick diamonds. He stopped and took a couple of deep breathes before turning back down into the hatch.

  “It’s safe, come up,” he said into the gloom. He saw in the low light that Caesius had finally woken from his stupor and was looking up at him eagerly. Anger rose in Marcus that he fought to quell. The idea that his master had left him to cope, only to expect help himself when Marcus was able to give it burned in him, heating his blood. He fought the feeling, berating himself for being selfish.

  The first of the crew put up their hand, wanting to be pulled through the hatch. Marcus reached down
and was grasping the man’s wrist when something heavy hit him in the back, tumbling him to the deck. He rolled to a stop, breathless and winded, looking back to see what had attacked him.

  The man, no, the creature that stalked toward him was dead-eyed and snarling. Bloody drool leaked from one corner of its mouth and it held its hands before it like claws. Marcus felt ice form in his veins, freezing his limbs so that he couldn’t stand, couldn’t fight. He tried to get away from the thing that wore the clothes of a pirate but looked like a demon. His feet slipped on the deck, gaining purchase then losing grip, then he realised his back was against the side of the ship and he had nowhere to go.

  The creature leaped at him, its mouth open and arms outstretched in an aspect of fury. Marcus rolled to one side, feeling the thing land next to him. He kicked out with scrambling feet, catching the thing across the jaw.

  The creature didn’t stop, its head rocked and snapped back into place with the speed of a cracking whip. As it came on, crawling on hands and feet like a stalking cat, Marcus saw his kick had torn the skin on its face so that the rotting flesh was visible beneath. The thing showed no pain, it just kept stalking forward.

  Someone stepped into view and drove down into the creature with something heavy. It was knocked face down into the deck, and whoever had hit it brought the weapon down on the back of its head, once, then over and over. The things skull cracked, then split open, spilling black blood and grey matter on to the deck.

  Marcus looked up and saw Decimus staring down at him with his hand outstretched. The boy took the offered hand and pulled himself to shaking legs. He looked down at the beaten and broken creature, and began to shake with the shock of it all.

  “Gods, boy, what was that?” Decimus asked, lifting the thing’s shoulder with his toe so that what was left of the face was exposed.

  “I have no idea,” Marcus said, his throat tight with fear. He looked around the deck, hoping to see a water barrel or a skin but there was nothing.

  “Do you think he was alone?” Caesius asked as he stepped up beside his apprentice.

  “I pray to Neptune he was,” Decimus said, letting the monster fall back to the deck. “That face, those eyes. It wasn’t human.”

  More and more of the men were joining them on deck. A few came close, kneeling down and prodding the creature, each expressing an opinion as to what it might be. Most had eyes for the pirates camp, however, and after a while Marcus drifted over to where Caesius was looking across the beach.

  “There are more of them out there,” he said, staring toward the huts.

  Marcus followed his master’s gaze, trying to see beyond the torchlight. He could make out the low, wooden dwellings but nothing else because the torches cast deep shadows in the darkness. Then, something moved, just a dark patch shifting against a darker one. Marcus relaxed his eyes, allowing them to see rather than forcing them.

  There it was, another of the creatures. It ambled aimlessly across the front of one the huts caught in the orange glow. Marcus wasn’t sure, but from as far away as they were, in the dim light, it looked like a legionary. It wore no helmet, which might have made it easier to identify, but he was sure he could see the armour and tunic of a soldier.

  “There’s another, I think that one is a woman,” Caesius said.

  “What would a legionary and a woman be doing in a pirate’s hideout?” Marcus asked, mostly to himself. These were outsiders they were looking at, not the pirates who had captured them.

  He began thinking about the trouble they had heard about, and wondered if these creatures might be the cause of it. If that was the case, those things might have spread down through the country while Caesius and himself were away from Rome.

  He watched as three more of the creatures came into sight, then another two. Now that his eyes were adjusting to the flicker of the torches he could see more and more of the grey-skinned, dead-eyed monsters.

  They were everywhere. Either they hadn’t been in sight when they had first looked, or the men on the ship just hadn’t been able to see them, but Marcus now counted nearly three dozen.

  “Over here,” one of the other crewmen hissed, a little too loudly. Marcus turned to where a group of the men were gathering. He walked over and looked down to where a body lay on the deck. His neck and chest had been opened up in a ragged wound to expose the flesh and bone beneath. Blood had soaked the boards and there was a look of horror on the man’s face. He was surely one of the pirates and Marcus was certain his flesh had been eaten.

  “We need to get out of here,” he said to Caesius, but it was Decimus who answered.

  “Not as easy as it sounds, boy.”

  “Why not?” Marcus asked, turning to where the old sailor had joined them.

  “Because, Hortius and his men were either very low on supplies, or they took them off when we docked. There is no food and no water aboard.”

  “So, we set off, then land somewhere else and take on supplies,” Caesius suggested.

  “Do you know this stretch of coast then?” Decius asked sardonically. “These men are staving and dying of thirst, so are you. If we set of and take a couple of days to land, we are probably done for. Then what happens if those things are everywhere?”

  “What do you suggest?” asked Marcus.

  Decimus turned and looked across the small bay to where the second ship was tied to a wooden jetty. It was smaller than the ship on which they now stood but Marcus, who knew little of these things, thought that might be good as it would take less men to crew.

  “What is better about that ship than this one?” Caesius asked, but Marcus could already see Decimus’s idea.

  “We might be able to restock that ship because it’s docked,” the boy said.

  “Exactly,” Decius added. “There is a chance that our friends were already making her good to set sail again, and even if we have to do the job ourselves it will be easier than trying to bring food and water to this ship by boat.”

  “How do we get there?” Marcus asked, but as the words came out he already knew the answer. Decimus smiled, tilting his head to one side.

  “Can you swim?” the sailor asked.

  “Me, why me?” Marcus asked.

  “Why not?” Decimus answered. “None of us are fighters, boy. We need all the help we can get, you aren’t a passenger anymore.”

  Marcus took a deep breath. The thought of facing another of those creatures filled him with dread, but Decimus was right, if not him then it would be someone else. Shame would stop him shirking his duty.

  “Yes, I can swim, when do we go?” he said, steeling himself.

  “Now, I guess,” Decimus replied. “Quintus, over here,” he whispered to the young man who had argued with him in the hold. Quintus turned at the sound of his name and moved toward the group at a crouch.

  “You fancy a swim?” Decimus asked. Quintus looked toward the jetty and the ship that was docked there. He smiled without asking what Decimus’s plan was and nodded his consent.

  A few moments later Marcus was being lowered into the water. His foot was in a loop at the end of a rope that twisted lazily as he made the decent. Quintus had been ready to dive from the deck but Decimus had warned that the sound might attract the attention of the creatures on the shore.

  The water was bitterly cold. The evening was warm and there was little breeze, which just made the sea feel like ice. Marcus felt his muscles tense and his balls tighten as he was lowered beneath the surface. For a moment he simply treaded water and waited for his arms and legs to recover from the shock, then he set off toward the far ship, following in Decimus’s wake with Quintus bringing up the rear.

  The water was still and waveless, hidden as it was behind the rocky outcrop, but Marcus still found the distance between the two vessels to be much further than it had appeared while on the deck of the first ship. By the time he was under the curved hull of the second, his limbs were numb and almost useless.

  Quintus quickly scaled the side of the sh
ip, using handholds Marcus was unable to see in the darkness. He waited in the water, feeling the cold robbing him of the little strength that remained in his arms. Then a rope ladder tumbled down the side of the hull and he began to climb.

  At first the ladder began to swing from side to side, and Marcus found it almost impossible to move his hands and legs up the rungs. Then the ladder became taut. Marcus looked down and saw Decimus hanging on to the bottom, putting tension on the ropes. The going became easier without the swinging, turning motion. Marcus climbed with more confidence and soon all three men were on board.

  “Do you see any of them?” Marcus asked as they huddled low on the deck of the second ship. The evening air was doing little to warm him after the freezing sea. He wrapped his arms about his shoulders and struggled not to let his teeth chatter. Looking out across the beach he could see dark shadows moving in the torch light. Out in the middle of the bay the remaining crew watched their progress.

  “There is one of them on the jetty,” Quintus answered with a whisper that was almost a breath.

  Marcus raised himself slowly so that he could see the low wooden platform and the monster that stood upon it. He looked like he could be one of the pirates, his dress was certainly familiar, and he was looking up to where a low cloud was passing over the face of the moon.

  “Do we kill it?” he asked.

  “Not unless we have to,” Decimus answered. “A fight will almost certainly attract the rest of those things. If it does, we’re finished.”

  “Wait here,” Quintus said, and gestured with his hands for the other two to stay low. Marcus watched as he inched toward the hatch that covered the hold. He lifted it, slowly, trying not to make any noise but in the still, silent night every sound carried. They held their breathes, unaware that they were doing it. Finally Quintus nodded and lowered the cover once more.

  “There is some water in there, but I see no meat or grain,” he said, when he returned to them.