“Zombies don’t have much in the way of brains, minds, or anything else between their rotting ears,” Jiminy said. “They’re dead, and they only care about two things. The first of those is following their bokor’s orders.”
“And the second?” asked Dunk.
“Slaking their unholy hunger by feasting on the flesh of the living.”
“Glad I asked.”
“Give in to Death!” Baron Somebody said. He cackled viciously as his undead minions stumbled forward at their breathing targets. “Death forgives all! It puts you beyond caring about your sins.”
One of Edgar’s branches slashed out at the bokor, but the man ducked beneath it. He proved far faster and nimbler than Dunk would have believed, given the man’s bulk.
A zombie grabbed the branch and bit into it. In return, he got a mouth full of splinters. Edgar flicked the creature off his arm and tossed him into the sea.
The zombie landed in the water with a splash that instantly transformed into a hiss. The water all around it burst into steam, and it howled with an unearthly pain that Dunk didn’t think could apply to breathing creatures. He couldn’t have replicated the zombie’s cry if he’d tried. It would have torn his throat apart.
“Salt water still destroys them,” Jiminy said. “They just buried themselves in dry sand.”
“So, all we need to do is fight our way through them to the sea, and we should be free and clear?” Dunk said.
“An excellent strategy,” Baron Somebody said. “You should try it. Bang! Bang! Bang!”
As the bokor spoke, the beach between the players and the surf erupted once more. This time, Dunk could not see the waves for all the sand thrown up into the air before him. When it started to settle, he could see the zombies listing about between him and the salt water.
They stood at least five deep, and there had to be hundreds of them. This batch looked even more rotten than the first, as if they’d been buried under the sand for far longer, with what little clothes they wore even more damaged and tattered. Crabs of all shapes and sizes scurried in and out of their bodies, wondering why their homes had decided to get up and start moving around after offering them shelter for so long. Snails tumbled from positions to which they had thought they were rooted. Dead fish peeled away and tumbled to the ground, some of them flopping about as if stuck out of water, despite the fact they’d stopped breathing long, long ago.
“I don’t think getting to the sea is any longer an option,” Slick said from above.
Dunk had to agree with the halfling. While they might be able to battle their way through the undead horde, they’d be sure to lose one or more of them in the process. Dunk thought of having M’Grash toss everyone else over the zombies’ heads to land in the sea, but that struck him as both bad for the ogre, who would be left behind, and horribly dangerous for everyone else.
“Play Gamma Sutra!” Dunk called out. “South! Hike!”
The Hacker players with him burst into action. They’d drilled this play over and over, just like they did with all their plays, until performing it had become second nature.
As a game, Blood Bowl didn’t allow for much in the way of plays. It was too chaotic, too violent. The players often found themselves scrambling to survive rather than somehow get into position to pull off a set play. Still, sometimes they managed it, and when it worked it was a thing of beauty.
“Gamma sutra” was one of the easiest plays to run. In it, the smaller players lined up behind the bigger ones and charged forward, punching a hole through the opposing line. The tag “south” meant that the team should head in the opposite direction to which they would normally go.
On the Blood Bowl pitch, “north” meant straight ahead towards the end zone you wanted to reach. This held true no matter which direction you were geographically heading in. South was back towards the end zone you meant to defend. Most plays were called north, north-west, north-east, or some variant of those directions. South or any variation on it meant retreat, and few teams liked to go backward, even when it was the smart thing to do.
Right now, it seemed like it was the only thing to do.
Spinne dragged Lästiges around from where they’d stood on the opposite side of Edgar and M’Grash from Dunk and joined him, Dirk, and Jiminy Then, as Baron Somebody grinned at what looked to him like a desperate attempt to press towards the sea, the biggest Hackers spun on their heels and charged into the jungle.
M’Grash and Edgar shoved aside the few zombies that stood between them and the plant cluttered green beyond. Dunk saw the creatures spill over and then pull themselves back to their feet a moment later, shrugging off blows that would have maimed living men. He shivered despite the tropical heat.
“Where are we going?” Dirk shouted as they plunged into the thick undergrowth, shoving their way through the dense mixture of vines, trees, ferns, and other plants, as the denizens of the jungle darted out of their thunderous way.
“Away from the zombies,” said Dunk.
“Don’t you think we might need a better plan than that?”
“We follow Edgar and M’Grash until they run into something that won’t move, or they run out of steam. Then we figure it out from there.”
“Some plan!”
“It beats Plan A.”
“Which was?”
“Hard to say, but every variant on it seemed to end up with us getting torn to pieces before we reached the sea.”
“Good point,” said Dirk. “Keep running.”
The plants and trees gave way before the ogre and treeman’s incredible onslaught, crunching and crashing down like hapless tackling dummies placed in their way. Dunk risked a glance backward and saw the zombies chasing after them. The creatures barely kept pace with them, despite the obstacles M’Grash and Edgar had to overcome. Although they were slower, they seemed to be growing in numbers as they moved along. The line of them spread out wider and wider, but never seemed to lose any depth.
“Are there more of them?” Spinne said. “It seems like they’re picking up more zombies as they go.”
“How many people have died on this island?” Lästiges asked.
“Well,” Jiminy said, his grin not quite as easy and natural now, “I hear tell this used to be called the Island of the Damned, but that was back before.”
“Before what?” asked Slick, still bouncing along in Edgar’s upper branches.
“Before the zombies killed everyone who called it that.”
The halfling shook his head. “Now that’s what I call controlling the message.”
“Any idea where we might be heading?” Dunk asked.
Jiminy grimaced. “I don’t really get over to this part of the islands as much as you might think.”
“Probably has something to do with all the walking dead around here.”
“You’d be surprised how fast the mere sight of such creatures can ruin your whole day.”
“Getting chased around the jungle by them’s not doing much for my attitude either.”
“Knock off the bloody banter and figure us a way out of here,” Edgar said. “My bloody branches feel like they’re about to crack off.”
“Tired!” M’Grash said. “So tired!”
Dunk knew he only had minutes before the ogre and treeman’s incredible strength gave out. Before that happened, he had to come up with a way out of this. Unfortunately, nothing seemed to leap out at him. They were barging through a treacherous landscape that their foes knew far better than they ever could. The only thing he could think of was to keep running in the vain hopes they’d run into some kind of a saltlick.
That’s when Dunk saw something poke out of the top of the jungle canopy. “South-south-west!” Dunk said.
“Is that thinking of the direction we’re facing as south, or should we be thinking of the way we’re going as north?” Edgar asked.
“We’re going south. Veer right!”
Dunk pointed at the top of a triangular structure just poking out over
the top of the canopy. It couldn’t be too far away. “Veer towards that!”
“What is it?” asked Spinne.
“I don’t know,” said Dunk, “but we’d all better hope it’s something that could save our lives!”
23
As the top of the structure grew closer, Dunk saw that it was not a triangle but a pyramid formed by a series of stepped levels that grew smaller the closer they were to the top. Enojada had regaled them with tales of such massive buildings on their voyage. They’d supposedly been built by the lizardmen or the slann, a bloated race of elder beings older than even the elves, or so Enojada claimed.
Great birds circled in the air high above the pyramid, which the jungle had nearly claimed. Vines reached up from the lower sections, like long, ancient tendrils striving to pull the great stones down and reduce the pyramid to a pile of moss-covered rubble.
Dunk wondered how many such pyramids lay out in the larger jungle, and if any of them were still occupied by their builders. Visions of scale-covered men floated in his head as he charged through the jungle behind the two massive Hackers. If any such creatures remained near this pyramid, they’d no doubt hear the Hackers coming from several miles away.
Edgar and M’Grash weren’t being subtle, but that was a luxury they didn’t have. A quick glance backward informed Dunk that the zombies were still on their trail and closing ever so slowly. It wasn’t that the creatures were getting faster, but the jungle had got thicker, and M’Grash and Edgar were starting to tire.
“Go for the pyramid!” Dunk said.
“We don’t know what’s bloody there,” said Edgar. “Could be full of dragons, or fire-breathing lizards of some other bloody kind.”
“If we don’t figure something out soon, the zombies will run us down. They never get tired. How about you?”
Edgar couldn’t turn back to glare at Dunk. To do so would have required him to stop moving, which he could not do. Still, Dunk could feel the treeman’s frustration rolling off him.
“Bloody fine,” he said. “You want to hide like rats, go right ahead. I don’t have anything to bloody fear from these bits of rotting meat.”
With that, Edgar veered off to the left, in the direction of the pyramid. M’Grash turned with him, like a pair of oxen yoked to the same cart. The jungle, it seemed to Dunk, started to thin a bit.
Within minutes, the jungle gave way to a clearing around the pyramid, and they were out from under the canopy formed by the ancient trees. The land around the pyramid had once been cleared of vegetation, Dunk guessed, but a thick circle of fast-growing palm trees bearing bright-yellow coconuts now surrounded the place. Mossy vines ran from their trunks all about the place, and strange creatures greeted the strangers with horrible howls from the darkened shelter of the trees’ fronds.
“There has to be a way in,” Dunk said.
“I don’t want to go in there,” said Lästiges. “You don’t know what’s in there!”
“Can it be worse than an army of hungry zombies?”
“Good point,” Dirk said. He grabbed Lästiges by her hand and hauled her after him. He’d bickered a lot with Dunk about this trip, but in the clutch he was just the kind of man that Dunk could count on. Dunk felt proud to be able to call Dirk his brother.
“Up there!” Spinne said, pointing towards the top of the pyramid. “I see a door!”
Dunk followed her gaze and spotted the black hole that gaped in the middle of the gigantic block that made up the top level of the pyramid. There was no way to know where it might lead, or even if it led anywhere, but he didn’t see any other options. If they tried to make a stand on the side of the pyramid, they might be able to hold off the zombies for a while, but they’d be much better off if they could find some sort of fortifications behind which they could make a stand.
Dunk had no desire to be devoured by an army of the dead in some strange land, thousands of miles from the place of his birth. He wanted to die old, in his bed in the family keep, with his helmet off and Spinne by his side. Of those details, he only had Spinne. Should the worst happen, he knew that would be enough.
He reached out and took Spinne’s hand, and they ran.
In the middle of the wall of the pyramid facing them, Dunk spied a long staircase that led straight up the side of the structure. It stood tall, cracked and crumbling from one end to the other, but scrambling up it would have to prove easier than trying to haul themselves up the sides of the massive blocks that made up the sides of the pyramid.
As they reached the base of the pyramid, M’Grash and Edgar slid to a muddy stop. They stared up at the top of the pyramid as if the heavens had opened up and started firing angry godlings down at them.
“Go!” Dunk said. “Go! What are you waiting for?”
“Well, it’s a bloody long way up there, innit?” said Edgar uneasily.
“Hole too small,” M’Grash said, pointing up at the gaping entrance at the pyramid’s top.
Dunk smacked himself in the face. “I-I forgot. I didn’t think about how big you two are.” He glanced back at the zombies, who were closing on them fast. “We’ll try something else.” His voice fell. “I just don’t know what.”
“Go,” M’Grash said. He put a massive hand on Dunk and Spinne, and pushed them in front of him. Then he reached back and did the same for Jiminy.
Dunk had almost forgotten about the singer, who’d been bringing up the rear the entire time. He puffed and wheezed, bent over and holding his knees. “Whew!” he said. “I thought I was in decent shape, but you Blood Bowl players put me to shame. Where’d y’all learn to run like that?”
“The threat of death is a fine teacher,” said Spinne as she helped him stand up and catch his breath. “In our line of work, we have to run, or be run over.” She glanced over his shoulder at the zombies getting closer. “Kind of like now.”
Edgar pushed Dirk and Lästiges in front of him and then set Slick down on the stairs above them.
“The ogre’s bloody right,” he said. “Go. Without you lot slowing us down, we should be able to get away from that bloody lot.”
“You use ‘bloody’ as if it’s a comma,” said Dunk.
The treeman shrugged the best he could. “It’s not?” Then he swung a branch to point straight up the stairs. “Get your bloody arses up there,” he said. “Don’t you worry about the ogre and me. We’ll be fine.”
“You can’t know that,” said Lästiges.
Edgar laughed, a low rumble from deep in his trunk. “Of course, I bloody can! I’m bark and sap, no good to zombies of any kind. As for the ogre, you hear what those bloody blighters keep moaning.”
Dunk cocked his ear for a moment to be able to make out the words. He realised then that the zombies had been chanting a single word the entire time they’d been chasing them through the jungle. The pounding of his heartbeat in his ears had drowned it out.
“Brains! Brains! Brains, Brains, Brains!
“Brains! Brains! Brains, Brains, Brains!
“Brains! Brains! Brains, Brains, Brains!”
The treeman thumbed a twig at M’Grash with a smile. “The big, bloody ogre ain’t got any. He’s safe.”
Dunk laughed despite himself, and then realised how near the zombies were. He clapped M’Grash on the arm and said, “Take care of Edgar for me, M’Grash. We’ll meet you on the other side of the island, on the beach facing Amazon Island.”
“Bye, Dunkel.” The ogre looked scared, as if he might cry. Dunk knew that M’Grash had no fear for himself, but it terrified the ogre to think that Dunk and the others might be killed. If Dunk asked him, M’Grash would turn and fight the zombies, giving the others plenty of time to get away. But if he did that, the ogre would die.
“Don’t you worry a moment about us, big guy,” Dunk said, Spinne already pulling him up the steps after Lästiges and Dirk, who’d bounded up into the lead. “We’ll see you on the other side.”
Dunk turned and raced after the others, pausing only long enough to
scoop up Slick and toss him into the piggyback position before giving it all he had. As he reached the top of the pyramid behind the others, he turned back to see Edgar pulling M’Grash along behind him, moving off to the pyramid’s south.
The mass of the zombie horde ignored the two massive creatures. They reached the bottom of the pyramid, and began clambering over each other to reach their warm-blooded prey, which now stood closer to them than they had since the hunt had begun.
Dunk looked up at the darkened doorway through which the others had already disappeared. “Ready?” he asked Slick.
“If it’s zombies or the unknown, put me down for the unknown, son.”
Dunk charged forward into the darkness. “The unknown it is.”
“Shut the door,” Dirk roared.
Dunk whirled about. “What door?” He spied a slab of stone that stood to one side of the open doorway, and Dirk and Spinne were already working to slide it into place. Dunk moved to lend a hand and put his shoulder into moving the thing.
The massive hunk of stone ground forward slowly, but it went. As it did, Dunk could hear the zombies outside, scrambling up the long, crumbling steps.
“Brains! Brains! Brains, Brains, Brains!
“Brains! Brains! Brains, Brains, Brains!
“Brains! Brains! Brains, Brains, Brains!”
“That’s the worst damned tune I’ve ever heard,” Jiminy said as he slipped in next to Dunk and helped push against the door.
“Let’s just hope it’s not the last one you ever hear,” said Lästiges. Dunk glanced over his shoulder to see her standing back to record the entire incident. A blazing light sprang from the top of her camra, zipping back and forth on a glowing piece of thin metal that arced over the top.
“What the heck is that?” Slick asked as he clambered down from Dunk’s back after realising that he wasn’t helping with the door any.
“Firewire,” the reporter said. “All the latest daemonic camras have it. Check out the interface.”
[Blood Bowl 04] - Rumble in the Jungle Page 17
