Gun Mage 3: Surviving a Post Apocalyptic Magic Earth

by Logan Jacobs

  “We do,” Sorcha replied. “On top of the granary.”

  “I’ll wait until we’re in place before I produce the rifles,” I added quietly.

  Freya nodded, then ducked back into the hall. I heard her light tread as she crossed toward Darwin’s door, and then his heavier tread joined hers as the pair walked toward the stairs.

  “Shall we go?” Sorcha invited as she stood up and claimed the bow and quiver that sat by the door.

  I climbed to my feet, and the two of us followed our companions down the hallway and then down the stairs. The kitchen boy was by the front door when we appeared with a basket in one hand and a faded blanket in the other. He handed me both items with a look of glee before he retreated toward the dining room.

  “Who does that kid actually belong to?” I asked.

  “I have no idea,” Sorcha replied. “But if we survive tonight, maybe we should ask him.”

  “At least find out what his name is,” I agreed. “I can’t keep thinking of him as the kitchen boy.”

  Sorcha gave a quick laugh as we stepped outside, then smothered it when we took in the somber looks of those still out and about. The whole town seemed desolate, with all the windows boarded up, and many of the doors as well. Most of the children had already been moved into the cellar below the town hall, and even as I watched, the kitchen boy slipped from the back of the inn and ran toward the old building.

  We nodded to a few people, but most seemed intent on reaching their posts on time, so we put a somber look on our own faces and trotted toward the granary. The town granary was one of the few buildings that looked like it was still well maintained. It was tall, but narrow, and had been built on a pre-magic concrete foundation. The original building had been built up several feet from the ground, and a set of steps in cast concrete led to the heavy oak doors that protected the town’s harvest.

  We pushed the doors open just wide enough to slip inside, then closed the doors and placed the heavy bar into place. Sorcha activated a mage light, and I got my first good look at the sacks of grain that had perfumed the air. It smelled of summer wheat and barley, as well as rye and corn. There were herbs and spices in the mix as well, and something that smelled vaguely like maple syrup.

  “The stairs are over here,” Sorcha whispered as she led the way around several piles of millet toward an almost invisible door in a far corner.

  We climbed to a smaller second floor where boxes of supplies had been stored and then to a loft with a low ceiling. There was a ladder nailed to one of the walls, and Sorcha led the way as we climbed up to the roof.

  The roof was sharply slanted except for a flat section near the front of the granary that had been added to the original structure. A pigeon coop had been placed on the new roof when the addition was constructed so the town could send and receive messages from outlying farms, but for some reason, no one had given much thought as to how one would get to the pigeons. Currently, the only way was to use the hatch in the old section of the roof, and then to walk sideways along a beam with a rickety handrail to sidle along the roof to the pigeons.

  “Cripes,” I muttered as I risked a glance downward.

  “I refuse to look,” Sorcha replied as she kept her eyes firmly forward.

  I heard the mage step down onto the flat roof and heard the pigeons coo at her arrival. I peeled my eyes away from the ground below and saw that I was close to the end. I sighed in relief, and then eased my way onto the roof with the basket of food.

  “No new messages,” Sorcha noted as she watched the birds.

  The pigeons watched my approach for a moment, then turned back to their own concerns. Sorcha made a few cooing sounds of her own, then pulled a tarp over the top.

  “I did promise I would cover them while we were up here,” she said when she caught my look. “Might as well do it now.”

  “There’s not much to sit on,” I noted as I looked around. “I guess that’s why we have the blanket.”

  “I vote we eat, before those things get here,” Sorcha suggested as she watched the last of the sun’s rays fade from the sky.

  I nodded and spread the blanket in a spot near the front of the roof with a view of the street and the entry we’d used the night before. I could see the guard on duty at the palisade, and another watcher on the building across the street, but other than that, the place looked empty.

  While Sorcha unpacked our dinner, I tried to decide which guns to produce. The goal was to fire the shots before the creatures could get close, so distance and accuracy were key. I also decided power would be a big part of what I needed, so I settled on the Winchester seventy and the M1 Garand, even though I hadn’t yet fired the Garand.

  I produced the Winchester seventy first and smiled as I took in its sleek form. The scope would be a bonus in this battle, and I remembered Darwin’s claim that he could hit a target from five hundred yards away with the Winchester on a good day. I wasn’t sure I could manage that on a dark night, but three hundred certainly seemed possible with the power of the rifle.

  Next, I produced the Garand, and the first thing I noticed was the extra weight of the gun compared to the Winchester. Yet that only gave the gun a sturdier feel, like it could survive in conditions that would leave other weapons inoperable. I’d tried to produce one with a scope, since Darwin had mentioned that they could be used on the Garand, but I was disappointed to see that the M1 I held was scope-free. Still, I had a decent range even without the scope, so I figured I could use it once the creatures were closer.

  Sorcha and I ate the food then, a collection of cold meats, small cheese pastries, pickled vegetables, and a large flask of hot coffee. We made small talk as we nibbled and watched the town wind down for the day.

  The first sign of trouble was a faint orange light near the edge of the field where the remains had been burned. It was the same eerie, flickering glow that had signalled the creature’s arrival the night before, and I tapped Sorcha on the shoulder, then pointed toward the field.

  “What do you sense?” I asked.

  “Definitely not human or mutant,” she murmured.

  “Will you still be able to use your magic on them?” I queried.

  “I think so,” Sorcha explained, “I wasn’t going to try to control them, there will be too many for that. I was planning on using a shield, I guess you could call it, to protect the town. I don’t think I can block the visions entirely, but I can make it seem like a scary story. You’ll see it, and you might get scared, but you’ll still be able to react and protect yourself.”

  “There’s more now,” I commented as I watched more lights appear in the field. “And they’ve all stopped near the bonfire.”

  Sorcha nodded, but I saw that she had closed her eyes, and her brow was furrowed in concentration. Whatever this shield was that she hoped to deploy, she had already started to work on it, so I turned my attention back to the field.

  A long, single shrill note went up from the field, and I saw the guard on duty duck back into his shack. I picked up the Winchester and pointed it toward the field, but the creatures blended in too well into the surrounding darkness and it was hard to find a target.

  “Crud,” I muttered as I realized I would have to wait for the things to move closer to the town.

  Sorcha let out a gasp then and nearly fell backwards. It wouldn’t have been much of a tumble since she was already seated, but I grabbed her arm to steady her anyway, and she gave me a quick smile.

  “They’re coming,” she warned. “Fast. But I’ve got a sense of how they work, so I think I can help. I’m just not sure for how long.”

  “Any idea of how many?” I asked.

  “It’s hard to read individuals,” she replied. “They all seem connected to each other. But I’d say at least ten, just in this first group. There are more nearby.”

  I nodded as the mage closed her eyes again and dropped her chin to her chest. I inched closer to the edge of the roof and found a reasonably comfortable position to fir
e from. As I waited for the creatures to move closer, I noticed that all the animals had gone silent, including the pigeons in their coop and the horses in the stables.

  The world went still for a moment, and then another shrill note sounded on the outskirts of the town. The guard in the shack never appeared, even as the sound of snapping wood echoed along the empty street and the orange light descended on the town.

  I watched for the first dark form to emerge from the night, and even though I knew what to expect, it was still a terrible sight to take in. Despite its boney appearance, it still looked like something that could swallow you whole, especially when the jaw seemed to unhinge so the creature could let out another ear piercing sound.

  A flood of terrible images started to filter into my brain then, scenes of my bloody and painful death, and visions of being eaten alive by these things. I shuddered even as someone in the town screamed, but I realized that Sorcha’s magic was working. Despite the threats, I wasn’t nearly as terrified as I had been the night before. I could still function and evaluate, which included the best shot to take with the Winchester.

  The crack of the seventy rang through the air, a sharp and clear sound that cut through the creatures’ weird calls with authority. As I peered through the scope, I saw a spume of black tar balloon up from the creature’s head, then erupt into a gooey spray even as the creature seemed to dissolve into a black liquid.

  The shrill call was taken up by more of the creatures as they paused just inside the palisade, and I had plenty of time to find my next shot. I spotted a larger creature that had turned toward the guard shack and raised a clawed hand as it closed in on the man inside. I pulled the trigger as the man started to scream, and then the creature’s head exploded like the watermelons we used to drop from the top of the barn when we were kids. Black goo splattered everything, but the screams stopped, and a moment later, the guard emerged long enough to fire a couple of crossbows.

  Unfortunately, the guard didn’t hit any of the creatures in the head and two more turned toward the man. He finally abandoned his post and started to run down the street into the center of town with the creatures right behind him.

  “More coming,” Sorcha grunted from her spot behind me.

  I did a quick scan and spotted more of the flickering orange lights approaching the other end of town, near the roof where Darwin and Freya were set up.

  “I see them,” I whispered. “Darwin and Freya will have it covered.”

  I turned back to the horde that approached our position and picked out another target, even as the visions in my head became more intense. I wasn’t sure if that was because Sorcha was now having to spread her magic even more or because the creatures were so much closer, but I forced myself to ignore everything else and take out my target.

  The one I was focused on seemed to sense that I watched it, much as the one the night before had. It let out a bone-chilling screech, then threw itself into the air in a line for the roof where I waited. I only let it get a few feet off the ground though before I fired, and the thing spun backwards as my shot caught it near the throat. I watched for a moment, and then the creature seemed to pull itself together as it peered toward the rooftop.

  “Definitely got to be a headshot,” I murmured as I heard the other Winchester rifle echo in the night.

  My target flew straight at me this time, faster than it had before. I was hard pressed to make sure I had a head shot when I heard another rifle boom nearby. It wasn’t the Winchester, I was sure of that. It was deeper, somehow, and seemed to roll around the town long after the bullet had smashed into the back of the creature that flew toward me.

  The creature tried to turn around in mid flight to identify its new attacker, and I used that moment to lock onto its head. I fired the Winchester as the creature hovered over the street, and saw the tarry globe flatten out at the impact, then disappeared in a shower of chunks that splattered as they hit the ground.

  The alarm bell started to sound in my brain, and I knew I only had one more shot with the seventy. I scanned the streets, where I was happy to see that more than a few arrows had started to find targets, and picked out a creature that still hovered near the edge of the town. It must have sensed someone watching it because it was focused on the upper floor of a building where I could just make out the edge of a crossbow. The crossbow shook as the creature locked its gaze on the person in the window, and I could easily imagine what sorts of horrible images the creature was using.

  The creature’s head suddenly swiveled toward me, and I realized it had sensed that I was watching it as well. A flood of terrors started to seep into my brain, but before they could overwhelm me, I pulled the trigger. The Winchester disappeared as soon as the bullet cleared the barrel, so I had to watch the creature dissolve into a puddle without the aid of the scope. I heard a triumphant cry from the window as I grabbed the M1 and figured the unseen archer was still in the fight after all.

  Despite the booming of the guns that still rang through the night, I realized that there were still plenty of the creatures on the road, certainly more than the ten that had originally appeared along the edge of the field. I quickly picked out another target, a smaller creature that had found the door to the cellar where the children hid. I could hear the kids’ panicked cries from the top of the granary, and even though Darwin had warned me that the Garand didn’t have the range of the Winchester, I knew I had to take the shot.

  I waited patiently until the creature moved away from the edge of the building and started to claw at the cellar door. The deep boom as I fired the M1 answered the question about what gun had saved me earlier, and I was actually surprised that the recoil didn’t knock me on my butt, given its basso voice and greater weight.

  But I was still upright, and I saw the bullet find its mark. Almost. The creature jerked back as a spray of tar billowed out from its shoulder. It looked directly at me, then, and despite the distance between us, I could feel the life-sucking depths of its gaze.

  I might have been lost then, but Sorcha grunted, and the mind-numbing fear of being trapped inside a never-ending darkness abated. The creature spasmed, as if it had been struck again, then it moved back toward the road.

  “Big mistake,” I whispered as I watched the thing draw nearer.

  The creature hesitated for a moment when the pump-action shotgun boomed to life, followed by two quick shots from the Glock. An arrow hit the thing in the side of the head, and I thought it might dissolve at that point, but it reached up and pulled the offending arrow from the wound with one long claw.

  But it stumbled forward a few steps after that, clearly disoriented, and it was soon well within my range. The M1 roared in the night, and I saw the creature’s head pop. Everything, from the oversized jaw to the creepy eyes, were suddenly gone. A moment later, I saw black droplets splash onto the road even as the rest of the creature turned into sludge that puddled in the middle of the road.

  I quickly turned the M1 onto a new target, a pair of creatures that were trying to rip the doors off the small general store. I knew several people had taken shelter in there, and I could hear them start to scream as the nightmares began to pour into their minds.

  I took out the one closest to me first, with a thrumming shot that hit dead center just above where the ears would normally be. The head tilted over for a moment, and then collapsed, as if everything solid inside it had suddenly been removed.

  Its companion gave up on the door and turned its flickering gaze toward me. Before the fearful images could start up again, I fired the next bullet, and told myself that I had to let Darwin know that the Garand was as fast firing as promised. I watched the second creature’s head crater as the bullet smashed through the forehead, and then the whole head imploded in on itself.

  I swiveled to find another target and then realized that I hadn’t heard any shrill calls or unearthly screeches for several minutes. As I scanned the street, all I saw were puddles of black goo and a few broken arrows. I heard
a shotgun boom one more time, and then everything went quiet.

  Despite the chill in the air, I felt a drop of sweat dribble down my face. I peered toward the nearest palisade, and then toward the field where the bonfire had been held, but the world remained still. I closed my eyes for a moment and offered a thank you to any spirits or gods that might have been listening.

  Chapter 6

  “That’s it,” Sorcha declared in a hoarse voice after several moments.

  I glanced back and saw that the mage had opened her eyes. She looked drained, though, so much so that even her golden locks looked dimmed.

  “Are you okay?” I scuttled over to her side.

  “I just need to rest,” she replied in a shaky voice.

  As I started to help the mage to her feet, I heard a few human voices call to one another from the other buildings. I couldn’t see any more of the creatures, though I wasn’t quite ready to celebrate. I figured that would wait until sunrise, when they were sure that no more creatures were coming.

  “Let me get you back to the hotel,” I suggested as the mage wobbled in my arms.

  Sorcha looked as if she would protest, but when she stumbled, she nodded. She took a few more steps, then stopped at the edge of the flat roof and eyed our exit route with uncertainty. She shook her head and took a step back as she tried to gather whatever strength she still had left.

  I glanced at the basket and blanket and decided those could wait until morning. With the Garand slung over my shoulder, thanks to the handy strap, I led Sorcha across the beam to the hatch, then eased her slowly down the ladder. I heard a faint thud as she found the floor, but she managed to stay on her feet.

  Luckily, we’d left the mage light by the ladder, and I turned it on as I started to lead the Irishwoman down the stairs to the hard concrete floor. She only stopped once, to rub her forehead, when we were halfway across the granary’s main floor, then leaned against me the rest of the way.