Legion of the Undead

by Michael Whitehead

  The air was full of water, it fell in torrents. Harold looked down to see a swirling tumult of white foam rushing up to meet him. At the last moment he remembered hot summer days jumping off high rocks in to the sea outside the village and put his feet together, bracing his knees against the shock.

  He sank deep into a thundering, roaring storm of water. He was thrown about so that he had no idea which way was up. Sucked one way, then another, he had no way of knowing where he should be trying to swim. His lungs begged for the air they had been denied so many times already today, but his arms and legs had no fight left in them.

  He saw his father, as he had been the last time he had been with him. He was hugging Harold, kissing him, telling him that he was proud of him, but then the hug became a death grip. His father’s arms encircled him, smothering the breath from his lungs. He fought and fought, trying to free himself but the embrace was too strong.

  Suddenly he broke the surface of the water. He was assaulted by a wall of noise as he gasped in air. He turned to see a thundering waterfall looming high above him. He lay on his back and kicked his legs, forcing himself from the swirling white water at the base of the fall.

  It was as he lay back that he saw the demons. As he watched, one of them threw itself off the cliff at the side of the waterfall. It was followed by another and another. They fell through the air, not flailing their arms or seeming to panic as they did. Instead they simply toppled forward, falling head over heels and smashed themselves on the jagged rocks below.

  Harold saw the place where they landed was already a bloody charnel house of black blood and rotting flesh. Their bodies were breaking apart from the force of the impact, leaving behind just a memory of the shapes they had been.

  “They followed Gervin off the edge,” Horst said from behind Harold. He turned to see the bigger boy, having almost forgotten about his friends in the shock of seeing the dying demons.

  “What? How?” Harold asked, looking around and seeing Gervin treading water a few yards away. As he spoke another two of the demons seemed to step into open space and simply drop like stones.

  “I jumped into the water when I saw you were about to go over the fall. I thought it was better than being caught by those things,” he pointed toward another of the falling creatures. “I guess the nearest ones to me must have followed me over the edge and the rest just kept following.

  At the bottom of the cliff, Harold could see that some of the bodies were still moving. They twitched and spasmed, but their broken bones meant that they were unable to follow their prey. The three boys watched as another of the monsters dropped over the edge, hammering into the ground.

  “Come on,” Horst said, turning and swimming toward the bank. The other two followed him, arms and legs sluggish and exhausted. They crawled onto the dry ground and fell on to their backs. Away toward the waterfall the demons still fell. For the longest time the boys simply breathed and stared at the ice-blue sky between the trees.

  Finally, the demons seemed to have stopped falling. Harold didn’t know if that meant that they were all dead, or if there were more to come. He sat up and looked around. At another time, this place might have been close to perfect. The rush of water over the fall was quiet enough now to be soothing, the river was wide and clam, the forest smelled of life and promise. Then his eye was drawn back to the blood-blackened rocks.

  “What do we do now?” He asked, turning first one way then another, looking at his friends. Gervin shrugged, turning to Horst.

  Horst smiled and got to his feet.

  “We go. We’ve got this far, and I still want to win this race.”

  The Fort

  By

  Michael

  Whitehead

  Previously released in The Reanimated Writers – Undead Worlds

  The Fort

  “Sir, why don’t they just attack?” One of the legionaries asked from up ahead. Decanus Marcus Crespo looked to see who had spoken, he thought it might have been Lepidus, but whoever it was had turned away to look ahead.

  The seven men around him were moving as fast as they could, but their injured man was slowing them down. Sweat ran from inside Crespo’s heavy helmet and down his neck as he jogged along. The Roman’s sandaled feet kicked up dust on the hard dirt road. Even if the enemy weren’t keeping them in sight, they wouldn’t be hard to track.

  “I don’t know,” he answered honestly. His men were almost as experienced as he was, and lying to them would do no good. “We keep moving, the fort is five miles ahead.” It was all he could think to say.

  The fort sat in the centre of the Gaulish province and had seen no trouble in years. The odd fight between the local tribes had to be settled from time to time, but nothing serious. In fact, the posting was considered to be one of the easier jobs in the legions. That was, until a few weeks ago.

  News of the Risen had reached them before the actual undead themselves had appeared. Word had been sent from Germania, which was rumoured to be the centre of the undead uprising.

  The men had laughed at first, sure the messenger had been part of an elaborate hoax. Then they had seen the first of the grey-skinned, dead-eyed monsters.

  It had been a patrol, very much like this one, that had first encountered the Risen. Two of the creatures had attacked the eight man contubernium, while out in the forests around the camp. The creatures had been destroyed, but not before one of the men was bitten.

  The messages from Germania had warned them of what would happen to the man, but no-one had come out and suggested he should be put to death. In the end, the legionary had turned, and most of the men in the fort had seen their first Risen.

  In the weeks since that first sighting the local tribes had become more and more desperate. A couple had sent envoys to persuade the Romans to allow them shelter in the fort. Tribune Avitus had refused.

  It wasn’t a big fort, and the Romans were there to keep the peace, not to protect the local tribes, he had argued. The chiefs had spread the word and Roman patrols had started to go missing. When men left the fort, it was now never in units of less than eight.

  An arrow landed close to Crespo’s feet. He glanced back and saw a group of maybe fifty tribesmen. They had halted in the road and a number of them had bows drawn but they weren’t firing.

  A sick sense of dread started to form in Crespo's stomach. There was something up ahead that these man wanted them to reach, it was the only explanation he could think of for why they weren’t attacking.

  The remaining miles to the fort were a nightmare of harassment and intimidation. At random intervals the tribesmen would appear at the side of the road, throwing stones and other non-lethal objects.

  Horsemen would appear out of the trees and ride past close enough to knock legionaries off their feet, then ride away laughing. All the while there was the constant presence of the large group behind them.

  Finally, the fort had appeared over the crest of a hill. Crespo knew there was something wrong immediately, the gate was open. In normal, more peaceful times, the fort would never be left open. At times like this, it would have a double guard on duty at all times. There was no sign of life on the walls, either. Even from a distance, the camp should look full of life but to Crespo’s eyes, it looked dead.

  A full volley of arrows fell no more than six feet behind Crespo’s heels. The message was clear, go in. He turned to his men and saw they were all thinking the same thing that he was, they were walking into a trap.

  Galba, the injured man, tried to stifle a cry of pain but it escaped his gritted teeth. The arrow protruding from his shoulder made his pauldron stick up on that side, giving him a lopsided look.

  The sound made up Crespo’s mind. They had little choice, it was stay here and be killed, or enter the fort and face whatever was waiting for them in there. They pushed the gate open wider and Crespo was the first inside.

  Every man in the unit had seen battlefields. The blood and death never left you. The sounds and smells were, in
many ways, worse than the sights. The screaming of men and horses, and the smell of the blood and shit of dying men. Nothing he had ever seen in war prepared Crespo for the sight that waited for him inside the fort.

  Around the walls, more than a dozen legionaries had been hung with the stretched arms of crucifixion. They had been chained to the wall by their wrists, to suffocate under the weight of their own bodies. The air slowly forced out of their lungs, never to be drawn back in.

  Before it had happened, they must have been infected with the undead blood because it was Risen that hung there, not truly dead men. Dead men would have been much better. Each man was dressed in his uniform, in a parody that was meant to taunt whoever saw it.

  “Someone close and bar the gate,” he called over his shoulder. “I want two men on the walls. Put an end to those fucking things and cut them down,” he ordered.

  Men began to move around him. The two legionaries who carried Galba waited, while a third dragged over a table. They lifted the injured man and laid him down, he grunted with pain as his head lay back on the wood. One of the legionaries began slowly unbuckling Galba’s armour so that they could get a better look at the wound.

  “Sir, these chains won’t come free,” one of his men shouted from above him. The soldier had removed one of the undead creature’s helmets from above and had put an end to it with his sword, now he was trying to pull the chain from the wall.

  Crespo sighed and closed his eyes in exasperation.

  “The man is dead, Julius. I’m sure he won’t feel it if you cut his hands off.”

  Julius looked at him for a second, evidently trying to decide if his senior officer was being serious. Seeing no hint of humour in Crespo’s eyes, he took up his sword once more and cut the hanging man’s wrist with one stroke. The corpse dangled for a moment by one wrist before Julius stepped over and repeated the procedure.

  Crespo turned to the remaining men, who were standing and watching this most gruesome of tasks.

  “Gather the bodies into the corner, they’re still our brothers. When we have the chance, we will dispose of them properly.”

  The legionaries started the work without hesitation. Crespo took the time to look around the fort. Every door he could see was closed, no need to guess what would be waiting behind each one. The patrol had been out for four days, plenty of time for the Gauls to prepare a number of surprises for their return.

  He wondered how many other patrols were still out, and would they be allowed to return, or was this a one time surprise that Crespo and his men had been lucky enough to stumble into?

  It took the best part of half an hour to clear the men from the walls. The task was made harder by the fact that, if they looked closely, most of the corpses were known to the men doing the work. They learned not to look too closely.

  With the work done, Crespo stood the men down and told them to drink while he checked on Galba.

  “How is he?” He asked the men who tended him. Galba himself was either asleep or unconscious, a film of sweat coated his face.

  “Not good, sir,” the man answered. “He’s reacting like he’s been bitten and the arrow wound is starting to look necrotic. I think those bastards out there have been coating their arrows with Risen blood.”

  Crespo winced. “How long does he have?” He asked.

  “Hard to tell. The arrow head went straight through one side and out the other. The tip wasn’t in him for more than a second. It’s hard to tell how much of the poisoned blood was left in him. Either way, there is nothing we can do for him.”

  Crespo made a decision, an officer's decision. “Go join the other men, get a drink and rest for a bit.”

  The legionary looked at Crespo, knowing what was going through the officer's mind.

  “Are you sure, sir?”

  Crespo took the man’s hand in the over and under grip of the legions.

  “You’ve done all you can for him, let me do the rest.” He waited until he was alone with Galba before drawing his knife.

  He looked at the blade, he had found it during the Jewish revolt. He’d been with Galba on that day as well. They had been dispatched under the command of, soon to be Emperor, Vespasian to put down an uprising in Judea.

  Both of them were fresh-faced legionaries, with ideas of wealth and glory. It had been a bloody campaign with whole towns destroyed and thousands of Jews put to death. It had been after the sack of one of those cities, for the life of him he couldn’t remember which one, that he had found the blade.

  He and Galba had been drunk and celebrating the fact that they were still alive. Galba had been in an alleyway, throwing up from too much drink and Crespo had seen the glint of steel in the gutter. He’d bent to pick up a fine blade, with an ornate handle, that lay next to the hand of a dead Jew. He’d kept it with him every day from then until now. Today it would be used to put his friend to death.

  He leaned down towards Galba’s ear, the flesh of his face gave off an unnatural heat.

  “I don’t know if you can hear me, my friend.” He paused, hoping for an answer, but none came. “I hope you’re satisfied with the life you’ve had, because you’ve lived it all the way from beginning to end. I’m proud to have shared it with you.” He straightened back up and whispered a prayer to Jupiter that his father had taught him. When it was finished he said one more thing to Galba.

  “Wait a little while and I think we might all be joining you, goodbye friend.”

  With that done, he punched the blade deep into Galba’s temple. He had killed hundreds of people in his career, never had a blade hurt him when he had put it into someone else’s flesh, this one did.

  Galba arched up off the table for a moment then fell back dead. Crespo withdrew the blade and cleaned it on the hem of his own tunic. He looked once more at the dagger and placed it on Galba’s chest.

  “Find something to cover his body,” he said without turning to his men. He wasn’t ashamed to let them see his tears, but for a moment longer he wanted them to remain his own.

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

  “They’re still out there, sir. In fact, I think it might be the whole tribe. I’m sure I can make out women and children amongst them. I think we are being used as entertainment. They look like they’ve got cooking fires going.” The lookout on the wall shouted down.

  Crespo turned to the rest of his men.

  “I guess it’s time we gave them what they want. We can’t stay out here all night, we are going to have to see what’s waiting for us in there.”

  He pointed into the main building of the fort. There were smaller stone buildings that contained sleeping quarters, but most of the fort was set in the one main block. The tribune’s office, quartermaster's store, weapons stores, and most importantly the Culina. Without the food stores, they would only last a matter of days.

  “We go room to room, in the narrow space we shouldn’t have to worry about the jumping attack they do. We need to use our advantages, shields to block the corridors and spears over the top, I think. If anyone has any other ideas, speak up now.”

  He looked around at the faces of his men. They had been through a lot. Normally after a four day patrol the least they could expect would be good food, a decent night’s sleep and a day off. Not one of them spoke, so he nodded and stood up. The men followed him without a murmur of dissent.

  The main door would be the easy one. Two men held shields, locked into the world’s smallest shield wall. Crespo leaned in to turn the handle and throw open the door. The two men rushed forward and blocked the doorway, bracing themselves for attack, it never came, the corridor was empty.

  The Gauls must have been thinking the same as Crespo, it was a waste to have the Romans face the undead where they had plenty of room to retreat. The legionaries looked at each other, relief mixing with fear on their faces. Crespo didn’t want them to lose heart so he ordered them forward.

  The next door was the Tribune's office,
the smallest of the rooms along the corridor. The two shield men stood ready at the door. Again the door was opened and again, nothing attacked them. The door seemed to stick against something and was only half open, but nothing tried to get through the opening.

  “Step back,” he ordered the shield wall.

  He drew his sword, then stepped through, as he did he felt the pressure of a tripwire snap against his ankle. A shard of ice went through his heart as he saw a shadow above him. An undead had been attached to the ceiling in a feat of engineering of which the Romans would have been proud. By catching the tripwire, Crespo had set it falling onto him.

  He twisted to deflect the weight and managed to get out of the way of the worst of the attack. He fell back against the Tribune's desk and kicked out at the Risen on the floor.

  By its clothes, Crespo knew it was the Tribune himself. The creature grabbed at his foot and there was a moment of panic when Crespo though it might get his flesh to its mouth.

  As quickly as the fight started, it was over. Julius was standing over the still figure of the dead tribune, with his sword in the back of the creature's head.

  “I think I just shit myself,” he said to the legionary.

  “Me too, sir. Me too,” Julius replied. There was a round of laughter that broke the tension among the men.

  “Go down the corridor, doing the same thing in each room,” he said to his men. “Take your time and do the job properly, not like I just did.”

  There was another short round of laughter but tension was starting to grip the men again. Crespo waited until the men were out of sight before leaning back against the Tribune's desk. His heart was beating like a galley drum at charging speed. He breathed deeply and felt calmer.

  The next three rooms were empty.

  The strain was becoming unbearable. The one thing a legionary couldn’t stand, was an enemy that refused to fight.