"I doubt it," she looked back towards the broken stain glass windows. "We really need to get out of here."
I nodded. "Yes; that I totally agree with."
Suddenly the double doors burst open, sending shattered glass flying everywhere as dozens of corpses started pouring in.
3
When facing an oncoming tidal wave of the undead, I don’t think there’s anyone out there who wouldn’t forgive uttering an expletive or two.
Dani and I uttered a stream of them. In fact, Dani used a few I hadn't even heard before. After that, we ran to the opposite side of the chapel.
We darted through a side door that led to a cramped corridor. Behind us the corpses stumbled around mindlessly, but managed to move in a collective mass after us.
As we raced down the hallway, I said to Danielle, "Next time we do something like this, we double date."
Danielle did a double-take. "I beg your pardon?"
"Well," I explained, between gasps for air. It was a long corridor, however, it seemed to be on a decline, "The idea is that we'd have some people for the dead guys to, you know, go through, before they got to us."
Dani thought about this for a minute, keeping pace alongside me easily—actually, I think I might have been slowing her down. She nodded. "Hmm. That makes sense."
The hallway took a sharp turn and we found ourselves in a large underground room, complete with giant cobwebs.
"Oh look," I said as I came to a stop, "this cemetery is equipped with its very own crypt. Isn't that sweet?" I muttered. I staggered forward, bracing my hands on my knees. I was going through some serious oxygen deprivation.
"Oh yeah, this is what I'm talking about," I heard Danielle say, her voice practically dripping with drool.
I looked up from between my legs and saw her standing a few feet away, in front of a rocky-looking wall. She turned around holding a bronze-handled broad sword. Her eyes were glazed over as she admired the sword.
I straightened up. "Ok, Dani, I see you're having a moment, but we do have a mass collection of dead guys coming after us."
"Sorry," she said and turned back to the wall. She pulled off a large battle-axe and tossed it to me.
"Whoa!" I exclaimed, catching the axe by the wooden handle. "Careful with these things, you could poke someone's spleen out," I held it with both hands. Jeez, it was heavy.
With that, the first of the corpses came bursting into the crypt. Instinctively I swung the axe around. Rotting bones crumbled immediately beneath the sharp blade and the corpse they had belonged to collapsed to the floor.
I stared at the corpse. Then I stared at the axe. Then back at the corpse. Finally I said, "Wow."
More corpses started streaming into the crypt. Danielle jumped on them, wielding her sword rather impressively. I almost would've sworn I heard the blade whistle as she whipped it around.
However, it soon became apparent that no matter how good Danielle was with a sword, for every corpse she took down, there were a dozen more to take its place.
I grabbed Dani's arm as she yanked her blade out of a fresh corpse. "Come along, darling, we don't want to over stay our welcome."
We were soon sprinting through the old crypt, with the Corpse Corps none too far behind. We ran into giant cobwebs at every turn. The wooden floorboards beneath our feet rattled violently. Behind us, I heard the never ceasing stamping and groaning of a whole lot of dead guys.
It was a depressing situation.
We passed through a large opening and found two large wooden doors on either side. We swung them closed and dropped a thick wooden block into the appropriate slots. At nearly the same instant, we heard the Corpse Corps crash into the doors from the other side.
The wooden doors shook violently, but held.
"Well," I said between gasps of breath, "that takes care of that."
Dani tapped me on the shoulder. "Ah, Mikey, you might want to turn around."
Actually, I was pretty sure that I didn’t want to turn around, but I did anyway. My sense of overwhelming dread was not unwarranted. We had, as they say, gone from the frying pan and into the freaking bonfire.
Dani and I found ourselves in a giant circular room that was lit by multiple giant wall torches. A shaft of moonlight shown down through a single hole in the ceiling and focused upon one figure that stood on a raised altar of sorts: James Wolfe.
Wolfe was now dressed in some funky brown colored, ceremonial-looking robes and looked no less dead than he had a short while ago. Although it struck me that he looked remarkably good for a guy who had lived to be a hundred and died twenty-three years ago. Sadly he was not alone. He was in the center of the largest collection of animated corpses I had ever seen and I had just seen a pretty big collection of them only seconds ago.
They were everywhere. Fresh corpses and not so fresh ones. And there were a lot of them. They were kneeling. They were standing. They were clinging to the ceiling. They were crouching. They were standing on each other. They were everywhere.
"Damn,” I said, “that is a lot of dead people.”
“Yep,” Dani replied, “sure is.”
We took a step back and ran to the wooden doors, which, incidentally, were still shaking. In other words, we were trapped.
"This is not good," Danielle said, gripping her sword tightly.
"What do we do?"
"I am fresh out of ideas. Unless you just want to go around bashing heads, which, you know, I'm totally up for, I’ve got nothing."
I swallowed nervously, switching the axe from hand to hand. "Maybe we could go around moaning 'Imhotep,' in a monotone voice. Sort of blend in with the crowd?"
"I don't think that’s going to work, Mikey."
Wolfe pulled out a fresh cigarette and stuck it into his lipless mouth. "I wouldn't worry about how you're going to get out of this one, kids, 'cause you ain't." He lit the cigarette and then reached into his robes. He pulled out a heavy-looking vial of murky, red liquid and a large, and I mean large, ruby.
"Ooh, look at the pretty ruby," Dani said.
I sighed and rolled my eyes.
“I hope you've made your peace with God; not that I believe in him or anything," Wolfe said. He didn't have to speak very loudly. The mass of corpses stood motionless and silent. "Which isn't to say I don't believe in a higher authority, which I do. I mean, how else do you explain all these animated dead folks?" He set the vial and the ruby down beside each other. "I'd go into my gods and all that, but we really don't have the time. If we don't get this ceremony done before sunrise, it'll be another twenty years or so before we get another chance. So…" the remaining skin on his face kind of stretched back. I think he was trying to smile. "Let's get this party started, shall we?" He reached back into his robes and pulled out a smaller vial, this one was filled with an icky looking brown liquid.
Dani tilted her head towards me. "You wouldn't happen to have a plan yet would you?"
"I'm working on it," I replied.
"Oh," she said, nodding her head. "Well, no pressure, but if you could come up with one before they sacrifice us, I'd be eternally gratefully."
“Exactly how eternally gratefully are we talking?” I asked.
“How grateful do you want me to be?” she replied.
“Grateful enough to never bring me to another cemetery.”
“I think I can agree to that,” she said.
Wolfe released the brown vial so it hit the stone floor and shattered into a thousand pieces. The contents were released in smoky haze that billowed around the room. There was a tense moment of absolute nothingness and then, the corpses surged forward as one, all groaning the same bone chilling tune. I felt like I had stepped into a chorus scene from Night of the Living Dead.
I twirled the axe a little. It was now or never. "Ok, here's the plan: Move for the altar."
"Move for the altar?” Danielle shouted back, knocking off a bony arm that had been trying to grope her, "Then what do we do?"
I swung the axe at
an elderly woman who apparently had died from a gunshot wound to the head. I know you’re supposed to respect your elders, but there’s a line, you know? Usually that line starts around death. "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it!"
4
Bones and dead skin flew everywhere, floating past me in an odd sensation of slow motion. When did this become my life?
Most of the older corpses, the ones that had been dead for a while and were mostly bone, crumbled easily. It was the fresher ones that were the problem. My battle-axe kept getting stuck in their skin. One of them still had some blood in him and when I brought my axe down across his chest, the blood squirted onto my clothes.
"Oh, gross," I muttered.
The mass of corpses swarmed around us, like killer locusts from the Bible. I swung the battle-axe wildly. I so hated graveyards.
From behind me I heard Dani scream. At first I thought she might have been hurt. Then I realized it wasn't a scream of pain, but one of pleasure. She was enjoying herself. Of course she was.
I shook my head as I swiped my axe through a grungy-looking corpse that was, for some weird reason, wearing glasses. I really had to do something about my taste in women.
We progressed faster than I thought we would've. The corpses were incredibly easy to take down. The only real problem was that there were so freaking many of them.
I brought my axe down hard on an arm that belonged to a leggy blond who must have been very attractive before she had died from what appeared to be a traumatic injury to her face. It looked like someone had dropped an anvil on her.
We reached the altar.
I gave Danielle a hand up, cutting down corpses with the axe in my other hand. I think I was starting to get the hang of this.
Wolfe tried to smile again. Up close he looked incredibly disgusting. I was pretty sure I saw a maggot crawl through his nose. But when he tried to smile, for some reason he just looked really funny. I didn’t laugh, though. No reason to antagonize him further, you know.
"This is what I like to see: Eager young people, ready to lend a helping hand," he pulled out a weird knife, the kind where the blade was all twisty. "Who wants to go first?"
I rolled my eyes. "Oh, shut up."
I whipped the axe around and then let it fly.
The axe sliced through Wolfe's neck and landed on the wall across the room. Wolfe's head, however, fell to the bottom of the altar and shattered into a thousand pieces.
"That might have not been the best use of your weapon," Danielle said, looking from Wolfe's body to the sea corpses that surrounded us. Strangely, none tried to come onto the altar.
"I know," I said, "but he was really starting to get on my nerves."
The corpses shuffled restless around the altar, groaning their collective tune. I'm sure if these guys put their minds to it, they could’ve probably broken into the music biz big time.
"Well," Danielle asked, switching her sword from hand to hand, looking eager to hit something, "now what do we do?"
"I'm thinking," I glanced up at the hole above us. It was too far up to reach without some kind of assistance.
"Well think faster. I don’t like the way these guys are looking at me.”
“How are they looking at you?” I asked.
“Like I’m a piece of meat,” she replied. “But, you know, not the eating kind, more like the sexing kind.”
I did a double take. "Ok, that’s really disturbing."
Looking up, I noticed that the ropes that were strung together across the ceiling appeared to be tied off along the walls. If we could get one of those . . .
"Michael!"
I looked down. One of the corpses was trying to pull himself up onto the altar. Danielle brought her sword down, splitting the corpse's skull wide open. Some kind of green stuff oozed out of the open skull and the corpse fell away.
I carefully snatched up the twisted knife from Wolfe's still upright, headless body. I hoped it was as sharp as it looked. Then, as an afterthought, I pushed his body back off the altar. It was just too disturbing to see it standing there.
Holding the knife by its tip, I flung it towards one of the ropes.
The knife flew sharply through air and sliced the rope before lodging itself in the wall. The rope began to slowly swing towards us.
"Here, give me your sword."
"Hey," Danielle said, keeping the sword out of my reach, "I gave you a weapon, you're the one that lost it."
"Dani, now is not the time!" I reached forward and snatched the bronze-handled sword from her small hands. I staggered for a moment. Damn. It didn't look very heavy when she was holding it.
A brave corpse jumped onto the altar, waving its decomposing arms threateningly. I slammed the flat end of the sword into its head, shattering it. The rest of the corpse fell back.
"When the rope is within reach," I quickly explained to Danielle, "grab it and climb up to that hole. Think you can do that?"
The rope was closer now, but the corpses were growing braver.
Danielle nodded.
Another corpse jumped onto the altar.
"Then go!" I shouted, as the rope came into reach. Danielle jumped up and grabbed the rope.
I swept the sword in a wide arc, slicing the corpse into two parts. Another jumped in its place.
I glanced up at Danielle, she was moving pretty quickly. She had almost reached the halfway mark.
I swiftly cut the new corpse in half only to have it replaced by two more dead guys. Jeez, these guys were persistent.
One of the corpses managed to get its decomposing hands around my neck and tried to choke me. I twisted sharply, cutting the sword across the other corpse and was rewarded with an unnerving tearing sound.
I turned to face the corpse that had been choking me and discovered his hands were still around my neck, but his hands weren’t connected to his body anymore. The corpse was an elderly man who appeared to have died from a chest wound. He stared dumbly at the ripped stumps just below his forearms.
"Sorry about all this," I said, ripping the dead hands from my neck. "It was my girlfriend's idea to come here in the first place."
I slammed the handle of the sword into the dead man's face and he fell back into the sea of the dead. I looked around and saw that more of the corpses were ambling their way onto the altar. I glanced up to see Dani was safely above ground.
"Time to go, Mike," I muttered. But first . . .
I snatched up the vial containing the red liquid. What's the worst that could happen? I tossed it and the vial smashed against the far wall. A red mist began to spread quickly around the room. The corpses began to scream in agony.
I turned to grab the rope, but discovered it had drifted away. I was going to have to make a leap for it. I looked over my shoulder, the red mist was getting closer and from the sound of it was going to hurt me big time if I didn't move soon.
I took a running jump and barely managed to grab the dangling rope with my left hand. My grip, however, wasn’t as firm as I’d thought it was and I began to slip towards the collection of corpses down below
5
My life was dangling by a thread, or a by rope as it were, and I did not possess enough physical strength to pull myself up one handed. I was, as my girlfriend had previously pointed out, Captain Sissy Boy.
I hoped they wouldn’t put that on my tombstone.
The rope slipped through my hand and I dropped towards the collection of hungry corpses. The red mist from the vial was gathering around them and working them up into quite the mad frenzy.
I needed both hands, which meant I was going to have to drop the sword. I hesitated only because I knew Danielle would kill me for losing the sword. But it was either that or be killed by reanimated corpses. I decided I could live with death by a loved one.
I dropped the sword and quickly pulled myself up to freedom with the red mist licking at my heels. If only my gym teacher could see me now.
Dani reached down and helped me through the
tight hole, which turned out to be a grave that belonged to someone named Richard Iomes.
She looked at my empty hands, puzzled. "What happened to the sword?"
I looked around, avoiding her gaze. I hoped I didn't look too guilty. "A corpse snatched it from me." I lied.
"Mike! That's two weapons you've lost!"
"Excuse me!" I said. "Can we please focus on the positive here? We got away from the creepy, ugly, dead guys."
Dani frowned. "Not for long through." She pointed to pale hands that were struggling out of dirt graves all around us.
"Damn," I muttered. "I was kind of hoping that by killing Wolfe they wouldn't be so...determined."
"Well, Wolfe did say that they had to sacrifice a young couple in order to be free of the cemetery, right?" Danielle asked.
I nodded.
"So, then, if we can get out of the cemetery, we'll be okay."
I nodded. "That’s a reasonable conclusion."
"Thank you."
"Of course, there’s a lot of graves between us and the edge of the cemetery,” I said.
Danielle brushed a strand of hair out of her face. "Don’t be such a pessimist." She got to her feet. "Come on, I've got a shotgun in my car that'll make things little easier."
I did another double take. "What in the world are you doing with a shotgun?"
"I'm holding onto it for a friend," she replied, nonchalantly.
"Oh," I said with a raised eyebrow. "Is this friend no longer on parole?"
I heard a now familiar groaning sound and looked over my shoulder. There were about a dozen corpses shuffling their way over to us.
"Break time's over, sweetie," Danielle said, pulling me to my feet. "Time to run like hell, since you lost all our weapons."
With the full moon high in the sky, the cemetery looked as creepy as ever. Everywhere I looked, I saw dead people crawling out of their graves.
Behind us the groans rose to a fever pitch as the corpses actually started exploding out of what was supposed to be their final resting places.
Graveyard Romance Page 2
