“I have a bad feeling about this.”
“A bad feeling?”
“Yeah, kinda…”
“You worry too much,” Nyx reassured him. “Look, I’m nervous, too. I mean, I know we’ve fought daemon’s before and killed them, but this is a Night Lord. So, I get it. I understand. This feels different, even though it really isn’t. It’s only different in your head. We’ll be fine. We can do this.”
Nero nodded. “I know we can,” Nero answered, looking at the floor as he took those doubts and shut them away. They didn’t help them right now, so it was pointless worrying about them.
“Zomboids, dead ahead,” Nyx exclaimed to him in a hushed tone.
Nero looked up and saw the shambling creatures emerging from the darkness up ahead. There were seven of them, maybe eight? Nero reached down and pulled his dagger out, twirling it in his fingers to get a feel for it. Using his shotgun, which was strapped to his back, was out of the question. It was too loud and would echo throughout this valley. Of course, when they had made it to the tower, the gloves would be off, but they still had to pass by the settlement first, so stealth was key.
Beside him, Nyx readied her blade and picked up the pace, striding forward. As she neared the first zombie, she swung her sword in a deadly arc.
Nero followed suit and moved to one of the closer zombies to the right of Nyx, and lunged in, past the creatures grasping hands, and slammed his blade into the skull of the undead monstrosity.
It dropped, and Nero moved quickly to the next one. He rammed the dagger into the forehead of the second zombie, and as another approached on his right, shifted his weight and killed that one with another swing of the weapon.
Beside him, Nyx was a whirling dealer of death, cutting the bulk of the zombies down, quickly and easily.
The altercation passed in a matter of moments, and by the time that Kat, Cryptus, and Runt had reached them, there were no more undead left standing.
“Good job,” Cryptus complimented them.
“Thanks,” Nyx replied. “Let’s keep going.”
“Let’s hustle a bit, just in case anyone noticed this and is coming to investigate,” Nero suggested.
They set off at a lazy jog and kept up that speed for the next ten minutes before they slowed as they began to pass the encampment. The walls were a long way off. Maybe a few hundred meters? It was tough to tell in the darkness, but Nero could make out a few lights in the night, marking the location of the camp. They passed it at a walk, moving at a steady pace, but without rushing. Now was not the time to attract attention.
They passed the camp without any trouble. Nero could hear noises coming from the settlement, but they were hard to define. But, so as not to take any chances, talking had been kept to a minimum, just in case anyone heard them.
They continued on.
***
The camp was behind them now, and Nero knew they would be nearing the slope that led up to the tower, but before they reached it, Kat raised her voice to speak to the group.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“What? Where are you looking?” Nyx asked.
“Keep your voices down,” Nero advised them. “We’re still close to the camp.”
“Sorry,” Kat replied. “But look there, up ahead.”
Nero peered into the night, and as they walked, saw some shapes begin to materialise from the darkness. At first, Nero thought they were more zombies, and so did Nyx from the way she was holding her sword, but they didn’t seem to be moving.
As they walked closer, the reality of what they were looking it emerged from the darkness.
It was a forest of eight or nine-foot-tall stakes that had been driven into the ground, each with at least one impaled human on it. They were all, as far as Nero could see, fully dead rather than zombies, and they were all in various advanced states of decay.
Moving with the group, Nero stepped into the field of stakes, walking between the unfortunate souls who had fallen victim to whoever had done this.
Nero wondered who these people were. Could they be uninvited visitors who’d found this valley? Or perhaps people who lived in the settlement who had broken some rules? Or maybe they were something else entirely. There was no way of knowing as there was nothing here to explain it. Whatever the case, it seemed like this field was designed as a deterrent of some sort.
A warning for those who transgressed here as to what would await them.
Nero had seen some gross stuff over the years, and while this warning might not stop him from continuing on to the tower above, he had to admit that it did make him feel uncomfortable.
He wondered if any of these people had been alive when they had been impaled, and how it would have felt to have a stake rammed up, between their legs, through their body and out through their mouth.
Nero felt a shiver run down his spine and quickly refocused his mind away from those thoughts. He continued on, filtering through the stakes until they reached the far side. They kept going, and a short distance beyond the stakes, the ground started to rise, and they were on an incline, moving up the side of the mountain that the Whisperer’s tower perched on top of.
The slope grew steeper, and it wasn’t long before Nero and the others were starting to use their hands to help them navigate the terrain, clambering over rocks and up slopes.
Nero ended up leading the way, but as the going got tougher and the ground steeper, he began to wonder if they shouldn’t find a place to stop and wait until the morning light began to filter over the horizon.
Climbing over the next rock, Nero suddenly found himself on a patch of flat ground, standing before a cave entrance.
“Oh, wow,” Nero said as he heard the others get closer.
“What have you found?” Nyx asked him as she began to crest the same rock that Nero had just traversed.
“Looks like a…” Something thudded against his chest, something white and glistening that stretched off into the darkness of the cave. Just as suddenly as it had hit him, the white sticky stuff suddenly yanked him off his feet and into the shadows. Nero yelped as he flew through the air. For a moment, he was airborne, weightless, but with some powerful G-Forces working on his body making it feel like he’d left his stomach back at the cave entrance.
The ground rose up and hit him hard, making him tumble as he crunched into it. He managed to stop himself from getting too hurt, and quickly braced himself against some of the larger rocks that jutted out of the cave floor as something screeched further inside.
Nero had seen this sticky, stringy stuff before, and quickly whipped out his dagger and cut at it. He was only partway through when the thing on the other end of the webbing pulled again. The cut he’d made worked in Nero’s favour, though, and the webbing snapped off him, whipping into the black depths just as footsteps ran up to him from behind.
“Nero, what the hell was that?” Nyx asked.
Getting to his feet, Nero backed off and moved over to Nyx. “I think it’s another of those mutant spider things,” he answered quickly, and pulled out his shotgun, racking the foregrip.
“Is that wise?” Nyx asked, nodding to the gun. It was really dark in here. Not totally pitch black where they were standing, but a little deeper in it was.
The pair of them backed off a touch, stepping backwards as they heard Kat and the others calling out behind them.
Something moved in the depths of the cave, and suddenly a huge, dark, utterly inhuman shape scuttled out of the shadows, charging right at them.
Nero didn’t wait to get a better look at it. On instinct, he levelled his gun, aimed and fired as Nyx swung her blade. The shotgun blast was deafening in the confines of the cave, but Nero didn’t stop as legs, countless legs with wicked claws whipped out of the darkness at them.
BOOM, rack. BOOM, rack. BOOM, rack, roared the shotgun in the darkness as the creature screeched, squealed, and flailed around desperately. Nyx, meanwhile, hacked at it with her blade, hammering the thing until it
eventually stopped moving, it’s many legs pointing up into the air at random angles, a couple of them still twitching.
Kat ran up behind them, huffing and puffing. “Damn, missed the party again,” she gasped.
“Sorry,” Nero replied between deep breaths of his own. “We asked it to wait a moment as not all out friends were here, but it wouldn’t hear of it.”
“Smart ass,” Kat replied with a smile.
“Everyone alright?” Cryptus asked.
“We’re fine,” Nero answered as they moved towards the cave entrance.
“Good. That’s good,” Cryptus answered, peering into the darkness at the dead mutant. “Damn, you destroyed that thing.”
Nero stood at the mouth of the cave and looked down at the camp below. It didn’t seem to have changed. No lights had come on, and Nero couldn’t see any additional movement, making him hopeful that they might have actually gotten away with it. Nero turned and looked up the slope. It did not look like it would be easy going from here on out, but as he scanned the rockface, he suddenly noticed what looked like the end of a large waste pipe, jutting out of the rock, dripping dirty water down the cliff.
“Alright, I think we’ve found our way in,” Nero said.
“Oh? Where?” Nyx asked.
Nero pointed out the waste pipe a short distance above them. “Do you think we can make that in the dark?”
Kat was with them now, looking up. “Yeah, I think so. Look, head up that way, over those rocks and come at it from the right side, I think we could get there without too much difficulty.”
“Hmm, yeah, I think you’re right. That looks like the best route to me, too,” Nyx agreed.
Nero thought so as well. “Cryptus, Runt, we’re going to head up to that waste pipe up there. Any objections?”
They both agreed that they thought they could make it, so without further discussion, the group set off, following Kat, who volunteered to go first and find the best way up.
Nero let Nyx go up second while he followed after, and while the climb wasn’t easy, it wasn’t as hard he thought it might be, and within another fifteen minutes, Nero was pulling himself up and into the pipe. It was big, and he found he could quite easily stand up in it while dirty water flowed around his feet. It stank of human waste and rotting flesh in here, which, while not terribly surprising, was not at all pleasant.
Once in the tunnel, Nero turned back and helped Cryptus and Runt up and into the tunnel as well.
“Ugh, Runt not like bad smell. Yuk.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty bad,” Nero agreed and peered down the tunnel. It was very dark down there. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out his battered old torch.
“Is that a good idea?” Nyx asked.
“I won’t use it all the time, just when we need to,” Nero explained, and set off down the tunnel, the acrid water splashing around his ankles.
There were a few offshoots from the main exit tunnel they had climbed in through, but they didn’t go far, and the whole complex was not complicated at all. It was thankfully devoid of anything trying to kill them. Wandering around, they found three ladders that led up to heavy looking grates above. Nero scouted all three, and from the little he could see through them, there didn’t seem to be much to choose from. Either a stone room or another stone room. In the end, they picked a random ladder and climbed up. Nero took the lead, being probably the strongest and most able-bodied of them all. On reaching the top, he heaved the grate out the way, sliding it over the floor.
Nero tried to do it quietly, but sliding metal over stone was never going to be completely silent.
With a gap big enough to climb through, Nero moved up into a vast room that was maybe three times as long as it was wide. The width of the room was easily enough to fit his Charger in twice over, end to end. Along the long walls on either side were large circular portals that were barred, like jail cells, with a good-sized room beyond each of them. Water ran out of these cells and down onto the floor, which Nero noted was not flat, but instead set at an angle leading to the lowest point in the middle of the room. The water then trickled down the centre of the room, and through the hole in the floor they were climbing through.
Nero crouched near the grate and waited for the others to follow him up as he scanned the room some more.
Looking at the cells on either side of him, he noticed they were both occupied, and could easily make out a figure in each. One of them sat curled up in the corner of their cell, the other lay on the floor in a foetal position. Both were naked and looked malnourished. Nero didn’t like what he was seeing at all. These were prisoners, and they looked like they’d been in here for a long time.
Behind him was a wall, just a few meters away, but at the far end of the room, on the opposite wall, was an open doorway, which looked better lit than this cell block.
“What is this?” Nyx asked.
“Prisoners, by the looks of things,” Nero answered as he helped Cryptus and Runt up.
“These cells are bare; there’s nothing in them, not even a bed,” Kat exclaimed, horrified.
Nyx gave Nero a meaningful look, and Nero knew that Nyx was keen to check out every single one of them to see if any held her mother.
Nero nodded. “Go on,” he said.
“We could free all of these people,” Kat said.
“We could?” Cryptus asked.
“Well, yeah. Look, there’s no guards in here at all.”
The moment she said it, Nero heard a deep, basso rumble coming from the far end of the room. Nero turned slowly and looked in that direction, getting a really bad feeling about what he was about to see.
At the far end of the room, its body thrown into shadow by the light behind it, a huge daemon dog stalked through the doorway; it’s two eyes glowing red from within as it stared at them.
“You had to say it, didn’t you,” Nero muttered as the thing drooled, baring its cruel teeth at them.
Chapter 16
Nero
“Nyx,” Nero called out to her. She was over on the left side of the room, peering into another cell.
She looked up at him.
“We’ve got company,” he added as he pulled his shotgun from his back and took a step forward, his eye’s locked on the daemon dog.
“We’ll let you two handle this,” Cryptus said, taking a step or two back.
Nero nodded. It made sense. He and Nyx were the only two in the group who could take these guys on anyway. As Nero stepped forward, he noticed two more dogs pad into view behind the first. All three were bigger and meaner looking than the brutes that Queen Latrix had been using, and Nero wondered for a moment if these were the parents of those others.
Raising his gun, Nero aimed at the first.
Off to his left, he spotted Nyx, her sword drawn, also advancing on the dogs. The lead one made its way towards Nero, its head low, its eyes fixed on him as the beast moved slightly to one side, making as if to flank him.
Nero moved in the same direction, not giving it the option. Nero wanted to face the thing head on and get a good, solid, point blank hit on it.
Without any warning, the dog suddenly shot forward, its muscles tensing and releasing as it leapt forward and flew towards him.
Nero adjusted his aim as he tried to remain calm and squeezed the trigger. The gun bucked in his hands and fired, its muzzle flash lighting up the daemon dog’s face a fraction of a second before it exploded with blood.
The dog’s momentum carried it forward, but it wasn’t trying to gore Nero any more. Instead, it hit Nero on his left side and sent him sprawling to the floor. He rolled over backwards and landed as best he could, picking up some cuts and grazes along the way.
Nero ignored them and scrambled to his feet as the dog pawed at its face, making some horrible noises. It was trying to look up and around, but the left side of its face was just a mass of raw, bloody flesh and bone that was bleeding everywhere, including into its one good eye.
Nero raised his gun ag
ain, stepping forward as Cryptus and the others backed away from the beast as best they could.
Nero fired again into the side of the dog’s chest, his gun’s enchanted buckshot ripping a massive hole in the thing’s side. Racking the grip once more, Nero loosed another shot as the dog turned to face him, roaring in pain.
The gun boomed again and bit even deeper into the thing’s head. This time, the dog dropped to the floor and twitched for a moment.
“Nero!” yelled Kat in warning. Nero turned to look for the third dog, just in time to see it flying at him. He dropped to the floor onto his back, his shotgun at his hip, and fired.
Blood and gore flew everywhere and sprayed against him as the dog flew over the top of him and crunched to the floor behind him. He got up as quick as he could and wiped the blood from his eyes in time to see the dog roar at Kat, who was standing in front of Cryptus and Runt.
“Hey, fucker, come here!” Nero yelled at the beast as he lifted his gun and aimed. He fired again and hit the thing in its shoulder. It barked in pain and turned to face Nero, where it got a face full of buckshot like his friend.
It ran at him, but its gait was unsteady and slow, and it seemed to have a hard time seeing him. Nero fired again, and this time the daemon dog dropped to the floor a short distance from the first.
Nero walked up to it, pressed the end of his gun against the thing’s head and fired twice more, just to be sure. He did the same to the first one as well.
Nearby, Nyx had dispatched hers without issue, carrying just a few scratches from the scuffle. Nero wandered over.
“Well done on taking two of them out; that’s impressive,” Nyx complimented him.
“Thanks,” he said, and put two more rounds into the one Nyx had killed as well.
“Always best to be sure,” he said.
“Hey, you, daemon killer, can you get us out of here?” asked a weak sounding voice from nearby.
Nero looked over to see that it was one of the prisoners who was speaking to him, only to notice that most of the others in here were also at their cell doors and looking on in wonder at what had just happened.
Wasteland Road Knights Trilogy Page 48
