by Stead, Nick
“Oh good, zombies. Just when I was worrying things wouldn’t get any more interesting.”
“Maybe you should go first then,” I said.
“Afraid I wouldn’t be much help in a fight at the minute, Nick. When it comes to quick wit and puzzle solving, I’m your guy. But I’m too weak to fight right now.”
“Then you’ll make good cannon fodder.”
“We’ll take the lead,” Zee interjected. “You and the human follow behind us. Come on, Nick.”
Heat and pain surged through my flesh as I gave myself over to the transformation, skin itching from the fur that sprouted along my body and bones aching where they stretched outwards to become lupine. I stopped it halfway again, revelling in the combined power of human and wolf that came with my hybrid form. At least it looked like I was going to get the bloodshed I craved, even if it was the less satisfactory blood of the dead. And I was counting on the chance to feed again and replace the energy spent on shifting between forms since I’d last eaten. I was too eager for the coming fight to argue with Zee, though I still liked the idea of letting Gwyn take the lead – maybe it would actually shut him up if the dead rose and attacked him.
I wanted to bound forward to the promise of the new skirmish, but I forced myself to keep to Zee’s side. We moved at a quicker pace than we had when approaching the various other traps the Slayers had set for us, knowing that they would probably have their necromancer resurrect the corpses at a specific moment. Creeping along with caution probably wouldn’t help us much. We could have tried to run through the cadavers, but if the Slayers wanted to make us fight again then they’d only keep us locked out of the next section and force the combat on us anyway. So we advanced at a steady pace, not rushing into the combat like I would probably have done if I’d been on my own, but not bothering to move slow and stealthily either.
We rounded the corner to find there were more than just a ‘few’ corpses as Gwyn had suggested. Bodies lined the walls like grisly statues, some lying in piles of rotting body parts, others propped up so that they could almost have been sleeping, if it weren’t for the strips of ragged flesh hanging loosely from ruined faces and shredded torsos. Strangely, one of the fresher looking corpses was missing its clothes, completely naked, unlike the others. There were dozens of them, like in the first chamber we’d come to; more than enough to overwhelm us if that was the necromancer’s will.
I might have said something to Gwyn, but my anger was becoming wordless rage. He’d only irritate me further if I goaded him into more of his annoying sarcasm. And he was quiet behind us, which was probably for the best. The last thing we needed was to be turning on each other when we were likely to be attacked at any minute.
We prowled through the narrow walkway between the corpses, my senses focused on those still forms. Some were fresh enough to make my mouth water and it took all my willpower to keep moving, my stomach growling loud enough it seemed that alone would wake the dead. Twice I came to a stop, convinced I’d seen movement among the bodies. But our decaying audience remained still and lifeless as we passed through them. Dead eyes stared at nothing, their jaws slack and their limbs limp and harmless. I was sure it was only a matter of time before they were reanimated though.
About halfway along the passage, our fears were finally realised. Well, perhaps fears wasn’t the right word, except maybe in Hannah’s case. I was falling too far into my inner darkness to fear the sheer number of enemies we’d face if every single one was raised as a zombie. Zee might have been more concerned about the threat they posed, but I doubted he was truly afraid. As for Gwyn, I had no idea what he might be feeling. He had a heartbeat like the human he appeared to be, and it was slow and steady compared to the rapid thundering of Hannah’s heart rate. I vaguely wondered how vulnerable he really was. He’d claimed to be too weak to fight but did the zombies pose any real threat to him? I couldn’t even begin to guess what type of undead he was so I had no idea. He certainly wasn’t a zombie or ghoul himself and he was no vampire, nor a werewolf, which left ghosts and wraiths, or some other type of undead I had yet to learn about. But from what I’d seen of wraiths, they were like a ghostly, incorporeal type of ghoul. And unless ghosts were completely different in reality to the way they were portrayed in stories, then he couldn’t be a ghost either. So what was he?
A sigh passed through the bodies and they began to stir, driving all thoughts from my mind but those of ripping through dead flesh. But as much as my heart yearned for the coming battle, I would have to wait just a little longer. Zee had enough sense to realise we couldn’t make a stand in the middle of the passage, where they’d quickly surround us, and he somehow kept us moving. It was easy to see why he’d been made captain of his pirate crew, an air of command about him that even I found myself obeying.
“Keep going!” he urged us. “We don’t stop till we’ve made it all the way to the end of this tunnel, then we fight.”
Rotting fingers reached for our ankles as we ran through the bodies, trying to drag us down to a bloody end. But we managed to stay on our feet, even Hannah, and the end of the passage loomed ahead before the first of the zombies had pulled itself up. To our dismay, it appeared to be another dead end, though there had to be at least one hidden door through which Gwyn had come from, somewhere along the tunnel. Whether it was at this end remained to be seen, but at least we had the narrowness of the passage to our advantage again, channelling our enemies in waves of three and helping negate some of their advantage of numbers.
“You two, get behind us and look for a way out,” Zee barked at Hannah and Gwyn. Then it was time to engage the walking corpses lurching towards us. The fight had begun.
CHAPTER NINE
Death’s Angels
The zombies were no match for our might. Zee’s sword was an intricate blur of deadly steel, slicing through flesh and bone with a speed and precision human swordsmen could only dream of. Ruined bodies fell to the ground, reduced to a grisly jigsaw of twitching, bloody pieces.
My teeth and claws might have been somewhat slower but I was equally as ruthless, ripping and tearing the walking corpses into as many bits as I had time for. Blood and gore splattered our bodies and splashed across the stone around us, cold and stinking of decay. And yet, for all our supernatural speed and strength, it still wasn’t enough to keep up with the sheer number of them. Not when the only way to truly stop them was by severing the flow of dark magic acting as a surrogate life force.
I grabbed another of the zombies and decapitated it with my bare hands, dropping the severed head on the growing pile of body parts at our feet. Eyeballs rolled in its skull, looking up at me from the floor with a hatred that I imagined was pouring through from the necromancer controlling them. Its body kept on coming, until I pulled its limbs off as well. And still its arms continued to crawl across the floor in their quest to end my cursed life.
More of the walking corpses surged forwards and I was forced to turn my attention to them, grabbing one in my jaws while I held another at arm’s length. I sank my fangs into the cadaver’s neck, shaking my head and dealing devastating damage.
The rotting flesh tasted foul but I kept going. Another severed head fell to the ground, and the force of it sent the corpse flying backwards into the rest of them. They were packed so tightly in the tunnel that they all stayed standing, and the headless zombie lunged forward again a moment later.
I felt more blood splatter against me, just as I was about to disable the enemy I’d been holding off. The weight of its body was suddenly hanging from my arm, and I turned to find my hand wrapped around nothing more than the lower half of a head and a torso. Zee had taken care of it for me by slicing through its limbs and skull. Only the lower jaw remained, its tongue writhing like a slug doused in salt.
I dropped the mutilated corpse and faced the next of my challengers, dispatching them in a similar fashion. More body parts fell to the floor, and the gruesome heap grew higher.
Cold fingers wrapped arou
nd my ankle. Teeth sank into my calf, this corpse missing only its legs and still very capable of dealing significant damage. I roared in pain and tried to shake it off. Another set of jaws clamped round my arm a moment later, and I turned to find one of the zombies still standing latched onto my limb.
Zee could see I was in trouble and he shouted out to Gwyn and Hannah “Have you found anything yet?”
“Nothing,” Gwyn answered.
“We need to get out of here, now!” I yelled. “We’re not going to hold them off much longer.”
“What about the door you came through, Gwyn? Don’t you remember roughly where it was?” Zee said.
“It’d mean fighting our way back through.”
A wave of desperation crashed over us. It was doubtful we could get back down the tunnel in one piece. But carrying on the fight with our backs up against a wall wasn’t going to end well for us either. We really needed some kind of escape route to open up, or we were doomed.
I ignored the agony of teeth pulling away chunks of my flesh and craned my neck to look over the zombie horde, scanning the walls for something, anything, that might hint at a way out. We hadn’t been paying much attention to the stone as we passed, too busy rushing to reach the end of the tunnel before the cadavers rose and attacked. Maybe there’d be something we’d missed.
My gaze fell on a slight crack in the wall. Was that the vague outline of another hidden door, or was I seeing things?
I ripped the zombie still working at my arm away from the limb. It cost me another chunk of my bicep, and I roared again as I started forward, dragging the reanimated cadaver on my leg along with me. More zombies grabbed hold of my furry body but I could only deal with so many at once. It felt like I was wading through a sea of teeth, blood leaking from the wounds and dripping from my pelt in crimson threads. I kept going, struggling through the throng with the same mindless determination as our enemies.
“Nick!” Zee called after me.
“I think I see a door over here.” I didn’t bother to turn round, my eyes fixed on that section of wall as though the outline would disappear if I looked away for even the briefest of moments.
“You’ll never make it alone, you fool!”
I ignored the vampire as well. If I could just reach the door and find a way to open it, there was a good chance some of the zombies would follow me through, giving Zee a chance to cut down his assailants and attack the rest from the rear. At least that way any parts we hacked off wouldn’t be immediately at our feet where they could still do some harm, and if there was another passage to run down we might find refuge in the next chamber. It seemed our best option so I tuned out the cries of the others and pushed on, trying not to think about what would happen if the door stayed shut, or if it turned out I’d been seeing things.
The hidden panel was almost within reach. More decaying hands grasped my arms and legs, pulling me off balance, and I didn’t so much step up to the hidden panel as I fell into it. Then the mechanism rumbled to life and it began to open, though this one slid from the side rather than upwards. That was the last thing I’d been expecting.
I just had chance to turn and look back at my allies. Zee was no longer faring so well, despite his speed and skill with a blade. A severed arm reared up by his leg and struck like some monstrous snake, sinking nails into his calf instead of fangs. The attack caught him off-guard, distracting him long enough for the next wave of zombies to surge forward and grab hold, leeching off his precious blood as teeth tore through clothing and into flesh. It looked like he was going down and there was nothing I could do about it, trapped in the stream of walking corpses as I was. Then I was falling through the doorway, unable to regain my balance in time to keep my feet.
I landed heavily on the floor with several of the zombies on top of me. My head smashed against a section of stone jutting up, smearing it with blood. Blackness came in an explosion of pain, and I knew no more.
Pain, pulsing in a steady rhythm of white hot agony through my skull, as though some sadistic blacksmith were using my head as an anvil. There was also the throb of wounds elsewhere on my body, but it was no more than background noise in the deafening roar resounding through my cranium. My thoughts were sluggish and I struggled to remember why I was lying on a hard, uneven surface with some kind of weight on top of me, in more discomfort than in any other place I’d tried to sleep since leaving home. Opening my eyes would probably shed some light on the situation, but the ache in my skull was enough to persuade me to keep them closed.
I became aware of death’s perfume slinking across my nostrils in the sickly sweet smog of decay. It was unappetising even to my lupine hunger. I vaguely wondered why the scent was so strong, but it didn’t seem that important with the constant assault on my brain. The sensation was too immediate and intense for me to take much notice of my other senses, and whatever I could smell rotting was too far gone for me to feed the hunger with. It was of little interest.
Blacking out again wasn’t happening, as blissful as that would have been. Somewhere in the back of my mind was the thought that I should get up, and it was only growing more persistent as the minutes ticked by. I forced my eyelids open with a groan, and instantly regretted it.
Milky eyes stared back at me, wide and unseeing. Jaws grinned between greying skin, receding into skulls. Death’s angels. The shock of it sent my heart pounding as I fought to free myself of the decaying corpses. They rolled limply beneath my thrashing limbs, still wearing their morbid grins as though they found the situation highly amusing. Memories of the fight in the passage came flooding back. It only made my head throb harder, my stomach churning with another wave of nausea. Or maybe that was the increased blood flow pumping out from my thundering heart.
But my headache was the least of my worries. I was cut off from my allies and surrounded by enemies, and I kept my eyes on the cadavers as I got to my feet, expecting them to move at any moment.
The corpses stayed still and silent. It looked like the necromancer had released them back into the eternal sleep of the deceased, but I remained wary, not trusting them to stay down.
The sight of Zee falling to the onslaught of zombies replayed in my mind. I wouldn’t leave him to die, even if I didn’t much care for Gwyn or Hannah. But I was going to have to risk turning my back on the corpses if I wanted to help my friend.
Still in my hybrid form, I kept my ears pricked for any sounds of movement while my eyes roamed the door I’d fallen through and the stone around it. The panel must have slid closed behind me, and there were no obvious levers or buttons to get it to open again. My hands couldn’t find anything either, so I dug my claws into the panel and tried more brute force. At least I knew which way it was supposed to open this time.
I heaved with all the strength I could muster. Muscles strained beneath my fur, but the door refused to budge. I was forced to submit, panting heavily with the effort. Fresh blood leaked out from the chunks of missing flesh where I’d been bitten, and I had to use more energy to heal the worst of the damage, bringing a fresh wave of exhaustion.
After taking a few minutes to recover, I tried throwing my weight against the stone, even though I knew it was likely to be as futile as my previous attempts to break through these thick dungeon doors. My only reward was a selection of new bruises and a fresh wave of pain, and I resorted to beating my fists against it and screaming Zee’s name. Not that he could hear me. No noises carried through from the passage beyond, the dungeon well sound-proofed. Finally I had no option but to turn away from the door and continue onwards, defeated and forced to accept that if Zee wasn’t already dead, he probably would be soon. The others wouldn’t be far behind once he fell, especially if Gwyn was really as weak and unable to fight as he’d claimed to be.
A sense of doom settled back over me. It looked like I would be alone when it came to facing that dread thing stalking the dungeon. Had that been the Slayers’ plan all along? I couldn’t hear it moving in this new passage, but maybe I was n
earing the end of this game and heading unwittingly to the ‘final boss’ fight. What other choice did I have though? I wasn’t about to give up and surrender myself to the hunger, driven to madness as I slowly wasted away in the gloom. And there was nowhere else to go but onwards, the passage stretching straight ahead for as far as I could see. There was no evidence of any other passages connecting to it, no more rooms for me to explore. The only way to go was forward, and I did so with a heavy heart.
Like the other passages I’d already been down, this one ended in another chamber. And like the other chambers, there was something waiting for me inside, though it wasn’t the bloody conclusion I’d been expecting after all.
I couldn’t tell exactly what was in there at first. The door slid open and I tensed, expecting more enemies to come pouring out. Nothing happened. Whatever new challenge the room held, it seemed I was meant to go to it.
Something was waiting for me on the far side of the chamber, but it was wreathed in shadows. I wasn’t quite facing the complete blackness where the apparition lurked, but the lights were much duller inside than in any of the other lit areas of the dungeon I’d been in, or perhaps there were just less of them. I could only just make out a shape at the other end of the room, the darkness much thicker in that area and unwilling to give up its secrets, even to my superior night vision. But it was the impossible scent I sensed first, a scent I’d never expected to smell again; a scent from my past, which couldn’t truly be there now.
Feeling sure I was walking into another trap, I crept inside, trying to force the shadows to reveal whatever dangers they concealed. But even with the anger burning in my amber gaze, still the darkness was unyielding. And then my eyes picked up a shape they’d almost missed, hunched on the floor and smelling of that impossible scent, strong in my canine nose, even with the overpowering stench of death and decay. It brought me to a standstill while my brain tried to process the information, and make sense of what simply couldn’t be. I realised there was only one explanation, even though I was sure I’d cured myself of that problem when I’d fully accepted my lupine half. It seemed I was hallucinating again.
