“I don’t want to hear you’re sorry!” She lashed out at him, the venom and rage in her voice making him lean back and release her hands. Tears poured down her cheeks from red, puffy eyes that glared daggers at him. “My little boy is gone! You were supposed to keep us safe! Why are you still alive and Jeremy isn’t?” She lowered her head onto her knees and sobbed.
Allistor stoically took the blows, understanding Cindy’s words to be a reaction to her loss. He did his best not to take it personally. He wanted to tell her that he’d arrived as quickly as he could. That there had been nothing he could do to save Jeremy. But he also knew that she wouldn’t hear him.
Backing away slowly, he got to his feet and moved to another small group of survivors. One among them was a man with a face he recognized as being a former prisoner at the warehouse. He approached the man, a grim look on his face. “I know we lost Jeremy. Who else?”
The man swallowed hard, then took a breath. “Two more kids. Teenagers. We had given them quests to help out around the warehouse, to help level them up.” He tried to take another breath, but it was ragged, and tears began to form in his eyes. “We sent them in there to find some liquid fuel when the zombies started piling up on the walls. We sent them in there to die.” His voice was a hoarse whisper by the time he finished the sentence.
Allistor put a hand on the man’s shoulder and squeezed. “You can’t think like that. Believe me, I know. There was no way you could have expected them to come up through the ground in there. None. That building should have been a safe place, a fallback for when the enemy breached the wall. You were being overwhelmed, and needed every adult body on the wall with a weapon. Sending the kids was the right thing to do.”
The man didn’t look convinced, but nodded his head in acknowledgement of Allistor’s words. At that moment he and everyone else that had been inside the Outpost leveled up.
The ship stopped moving underneath them, and the guns went quiet. Gralen’s voice came over the intercom. “No more targets within the walls, or the immediate area outside, Allistor.”
“Thank you Gralen. Please take these folks back to the Stadium. Give me thirty seconds to hop off before you go. And keep an eye out for more of these things. We still need to find out where they came from.”
Allistor took one more look at Cindy, once again being held by one of her fellow survivors, then moved to the edge of the ramp and jumped. He cast Levitate on himself, the spell taking effect when he was about halfway to the ground. Slowly he maneuvered himself to where he saw Bob with Helen and the others, descending as he went. When he touched down, he saw the nearby corpse still holding its white flag, a large hole in its head.
Helen was first to report. “Two of the trucks are headed off that way.” She pointed. “Most of the undead seem to be coming from that direction.”
Bob added, “I should have guessed. Greenhill Cemetery, the old city cemetery is up that way, literally a stone’s throw from the Stadium. It’s the one with the potter’s field where they buried unclaimed or indigent bodies for more than a century.”
Allistor shook his head. “That could be… tens of thousands of bodies.” He looked around at the fully dead corpses piled around the wall and in the gate. “We killed a lot here, but there could be a lot more. How are they coming to life? Is this some new twist from the System? Are all the dead on Earth coming to life?”
Daigath stepped forward, his voice a low growl. “No, Allistor. This was the work of a necromancer. One who revives and controls the dead.”
“Seriously?” Allistor’s eyes widened. “Friggin necromancy is a real thing, now?”
“It is a class, like any other. One that is certainly less common or popular than most others, and frowned upon on nearly every world, as most have respect for their dead. I myself consider it an abomination. Most of those that embrace the necromancer class are worlds that thrive on slavery. They purchase live slaves, work them to death, then employ necromancy to bring their corpses back and put them to work doing simple tasks like swinging a mining pick or carrying things. They retain a certain amount of basic memory from their previous lives. Especially repetitive tasks. And you don’t have to feed or house the undead.”
“So has a human become a necromancer? Or did one of them come here as a settler?”
Daigath looked off in the direction Bob had indicated for the cemetery. He frowned, and produced a beautiful wooden sword from his inventory. It resembled the dagger that Harmon had shown him, the one crafted by Daigath himself.
“Let us go and discover the answer to your question.”
Chapter 7
Hel looked up from her work at the faint chiming sound that drifted through the mist to her left. It was her communications console letting her know that her message had been retrieved, and a response was incoming. Drifting over to the console, she used three of her tentacles to press the complex series of holokeys that unlocked that particular channel. A moment later the nervous face of a human appeared in front of her. From his end, he was not seeing her true image, but a representation of a female elf, instead.
“Report, human.”
“I did as you said! But it didn’t kill him. Barely killed anyone! And now I think they’re hunting me!”
“Calm yourself, fool. Of course they’re hunting you. Did you expect them to just accept an attack and cower before your might? Especially after you sent Allistor that ridiculous note, revealing your identity and taunting him? Where is your master?”
His face began to turn red with anger. “The lich is where he always is, in some graveyard raising more minions. We lost nearly all of the last group in the attack.”
“Should you not be assisting him?”
“Did you hear me?” he exploded. “I’m being hunted! We need help! I need to get away from here to someplace safe! Someplace where we can rebuild our army even larger than before.”
Hel made her species’ equivalent of a disgusted face, her tentacles twitching in annoyance. Yet she kept her voice calm. “Yes, yes. This is as expected. Your master and I have already formulated plans for just such a contingency. Neither of us had much faith in you or your ability to successfully command the force you were given. Alas, we work with the tools that we have. Go and report to your master, tell him that I have said the time is come. He will know what to do.”
Without waiting for a response she disconnected the link to Earth. The fool human had annoyed her more than enough since she began to follow his progress on the day Allistor banished him. In the beginning he showed a slight degree of promise, and a great willingness to adopt a class that most rejected out of hand. She had recognized a usable tool, and arranged for him to receive just enough assistance to survive the stabilization on his own. Now he had made himself useless to her, except maybe as bait. Still, he had served his intended purpose this day, putting yet more pressure on Allistor, while making an attack that would look like an attempt to bait him into a deadly situation.
Which in turn would further anger Baldur and Odin, and put even more pressure on her father.
And the lich had his instructions, which he would follow without fail. She had the ultimate leverage over him, after all. In a small compartment below that same console was a box containing the lich’s phylactery. Should he fail her in any respect, the lich knew she would smash the stone that held his soul, ending his existence. From what the half-witted human had said, the lich was already hard at work replacing the forces that his incompetent apprentice had thrown away. She had watched the battle, even smiled when the undead forces exploited the weakness she had pointed out and emerged in the center of Allistor’s Outpost. His direct interference prevented the bloodbath she had hoped for, but the end result was… satisfactory.
*****
Allistor and company had delayed their trip to the cemetery in order to loot and clear all the corpses from the Outpost, burning them where they lay. The stench was overpowering, and many humans lost their breakfasts onto the streets and sidew
alks.
The warehouse under which the undead had dug themselves access was now gone, Nigel absorbing and recycling whatever the bomb had not destroyed. While they worked, Allistor asked, “Nigel, how did they dig into the compound without you detecting them?”
Daigath spoke before the AI could answer. “I’ll take this one, Nigel. The AI, at its current level, has a significant sensor array and detection capabilities. Unfortunately, the sensors are keyed to detect things like heat, movement, and life energy. The undead do not possess life energy, nor do they produce a heat signature. Nigel was only able to detect them via their movement, and only once they’d broken through the floor and that movement was visible to his sensors. It is an unfortunate gap in his capabilities, and one only an individual familiar with the intricacies of the System would know to exploit.”
“So you’re saying Kyle had help.”
Daigath gave Allistor a look that made him feel like he’d grown a second head. “I should think that would be obvious, Allistor. Even you, the highest level among the Earthlings that we’re aware of, do not possess enough mana to raise so many undead in such a short period of time. There were at least ten thousand raised corpses here.”
Allistor shook his head, feeling foolish. “Of course. Thank you, Master Daigath.” He paused for a moment to access his UI. “I’ve just started repairs on the Outpost. We’ll leave some droids here to guard the place, and alert us if there’s another attack. I think it’s time we head over to the cemetery.”
They piled back onto the trucks, and Bob directed the lead vehicle toward their goal. Gralen had taken the Opportunity high into the sky and was moving to observe the ground ahead of them, ready to warn of any large groups of undead heading their way. The cemetery was close enough to the Stadium that Virginia had called a few thousand citizens to stand atop the walls and provide cover for Allistor and his team as they entered the grounds.
The cemetery was overgrown, having been neglected since the apocalypse. The grass was taller than many of the headstones, though little of it was left. Everywhere they looked, graves had been disturbed. Not dug up, like someone had recovered the bodies. Each one looked as if its occupant had burrowed its way out.
Allistor had decided to leave the vehicles outside the gate, and his people walked onto the cemetery grounds in groups of ten. There was a shrill whistle from atop the Stadium wall to the east, and Bob looked up with a smile to wave at Virginia, who was blowing him a kiss.
The group moved north and west, deeper into the cemetery. The groups were spread out, but only about twenty feet apart. They all stepped carefully, not wanting to fall into an open grave, or fall victim to something emerging up from the deep grass. Tensions were high, and no one spoke a word as they moved.
Eventually they reached the midpoint of the property, where a narrow paved road ran east-west across from end to end. At the center was a wide circle with a couple of abandoned vehicles still parked. Within the paved circle was a grassy area that featured a majestic old oak tree. Allistor was about to continue north, when he heard a muffled shout. His head, and every other head in the group, snapped toward the direction of the sound. A moment later one of the group that was closest to the tree called out, “Over here!”
Allistor and the rest converged on the sound, shortly finding themselves gathered around the large oak tree at the very center of the cemetery. The crowd parted for him as he approached, and moved a bit farther back when they heard him begin to growl at what he saw.
“Kyle. You sick piece of shit.”
There in front of him was the man he’d banished from the warehouse. He was a year older, and had gained some weight, but it was the same man. Only now instead of an insolent smirk and angry gaze, Kyle’s face held a look of sheer terror. He was bound to the tree with a length of barbed wire wrapped several times around his ankles, legs, torso, and neck. Whomever had secured him there had pulled the wire so tight that it cut through his clothes and into his skin in several places. His mouth was stuffed with filthy rags that smelled as if they’d been pulled directly from a corpse’s wardrobe. Gazing at Allistor, the man struggled briefly, but his efforts only served to cause the wire to bite more deeply into his flesh. Eventually, he stopped struggling and sagged against the tree, blood dripping from several deep cuts and gouges. He tried to say something, but the rags in his mouth made the words unintelligible.
Without even thinking about it, Allistor Identified the man.
Kyle
Human Necromancer
Level 22
Health: 3,492/9,000
Allistor motioned toward Bob, who stepped forward and punched the man in the jaw, causing his head to slam against the trunk of the tree. Shaking his head, Allistor said, “I meant pull the rag out so he can speak. But good shot.”
Smirking, Bob reached forward and used his pocket knife to snag a bit of the filthy rag and drag it out of Kyle’s mouth. Kyle’s face was blank, his eyes glazed after the double blow to the head a moment earlier.
“Looks like whoever your friends are, they got sick of your bullshit, Kyle.” Allistor motioned toward the barbed wire. “That looks really uncomfortable.”
Kyle shook his head, a little bit of focus coming back to his eyes. He spit several times, attempting to get the taste of corpse juice out of his mouth. “Water.”
“Nope.” Allistor shook his head, removed a water bottle from his inventory, and took a long drink before putting it away again. “You like to play with dead bodies, so we’ll just let that taste linger for a while. You just killed three of our people, Kyle. Three kids! You have to pay for that.”
“I didn’t take your stupid oath! You have no authority over me! No authority to punish me!” Kyle screamed at him, his voice raw. He once again strained against his bonds for a moment, then whimpered in pain. More blood soaked into his clothing.
“He’s right, you know.” Helen stepped up next to Allistor, taking a moment to spit in Kyle’s face before continuing. “We don’t have any particular right to punish him. In fact, I don’t think we should do anything to him. I vote we leave him just like this, watch him bleed out slowly, or die of thirst, whichever comes first.”
“Or maybe something will come along and nibble on him.” Bob added, a malicious grin on his face. “I’d be happy to sit back and watch.” Several of the others murmured in agreement.
“No! You can’t leave me like this!”
Allistor shook his head. “Kyle… you just said I have no authority over you. Someone clearly thought you deserved to be bound to this tree. Presumably so that we’d quickly find and kill you. Why’d they’d do that?”
Kyle’s mouth clamped shut, and he glared at Allistor, hatred plain in his eyes.
“Come on, Kyle. Speak up. We know you didn’t raise an army of undead all on your own. Tell us who helped you, and where they are, and maybe I’ll cut you loose. Give you a little drink.” Allistor retrieved the water bottle from his ring again, holding it up and shaking it slightly so that Kyle could hear the water sloshing around inside.
The man continued to resist for about half a minute, still just glaring at Allistor and the others. But eventually, he caved.
“It was the lich. Sent here by some elf woman. He found me a few days after you kicked me out, taught me the necromancer class, helped me level up. He’s the one that raised the army, not me. I can only raise and control two or three corpses at a time! Now give me some water!”
“Not so fast, Kyle. Where is the lich now? And how many more undead has he raised?”
“He left! He tied me up like this and left me here! Said he had orders to go back east. Orders from that damned elf woman! He has others raising corpses somewhere else. She told him to leave me like this, I know it!” He growled in anger and pain. “He… he had about a hundred corpses with him.”
“What level is the lich, Kyle?”
“What? I don’t know! Too high for me to be able to see. He had enough mana to raise corpse after corpse witho
ut stopping for days.”
There was a sharp intake of breath from Daigath. The old elf immediately stepped forward. “Did he use any kind of object to channel his spells? A staff, or a stone of some kind?”
Kyle spat again, a nasty glob of discolored spittle landing near Allistor’s feet. “He carried a staff, yeah.”
Daigath nodded, seeming relieved. He turned and walked away from the tree, passing through the crowd. Allistor turned from watching him leave, facing Kyle again.
“How do you get to be such an obnoxious ass that even an undead murderer can’t stand you?”
“Water! You promised me water!”
“No, I said maybe I’d cut you loose and give you a drink. And I’ve decided not to. We’re going to leave you right here to face the fate you’ve earned. I’m curious what will happen. I mean, the motes will keep trying to heal you, and gravity will keep causing that wire to cut deeper into you, once your legs give out and can’t hold you up anymore. So maybe you live long enough to die of thirst? Or even starvation? The energy that the motes need to heal you has to come from somewhere, right?”
Amanda stepped forward and was reaching for Allistor, but Helen turned to face her and blocked her path. The ranger shook her head, a grim look on her face. Amanda froze for a moment, trying to decide whether to take on Helen to save Kyle’s life. With a sad nod of her head, she stepped back.
Meanwhile Kyle had started to cry, begging for his life. “I’m sorry, okay! I was angry that you kicked me out! It’s all your fault, man. If you had just let me stay there where it was safe…”
“MY FAULT!?” Allistor roared at him, balling his fists and stepping forward as if to strike the man. “You refused to take a simple oath not to harm your fellow survivors. That was all you had to do! Just not be a dick and victimize others. But you couldn’t make that promise. How is that my fault!?”
Shadow Sun Unification: Shadow Sun Book Five Page 11
