Zompoc Survivor: Inferno (24 page)

We ran, letting our greater speed get us past most of the zombies, only occasionally killing a zombie that got too close. Poleaxes and greatswords made it a lot easier to hit them before they got within arm’s reach. I reloaded my pistols on the run and dropped the empty magazines into my vest as soon as we were clear of the largest groups of them, then pulled the Deuce in favor of its quieter killing ability. We broke left after we got some distance on the shambling group behind us, then right at the next block and skidded to a stop. Another wall of infected was standing midway down the block, effectively closing off the road. In the center was the well-dressed PZ from the other night.

“It’s the Necromancer!” Kent said. A couple of ghouls came at us and I stepped forward with my sword up. They stopped as soon as I moved, then backed away. I came up short at that.

“That’s new,” I said to no one in particular.

“Kent, take the others and find another way around,” Willie said as he stepped forward and took up a position on my right side. “We’ll hold them here long enough to give you a head start.” I heard slow steps behind me, then the measured footfalls of people double-timing away at a disciplined pace.

“You sure you don’t want to go with them?” I said to Willie as the PZ walked forward.

“I’d love to,” he answered quietly, “but I want to see how this plays out.”

“Assuming you live through this.”

“I get the feeling I will,” he said. The crowd of zombies and ghouls advanced to cover our left and right flanks, and I found myself of two minds about the situation. The smarter, more survival oriented side of my brain was very unhappy about being so vulnerable. The rage-fueled zombie killer in me saw it as a way to thin the ranks of the dead, which would make it easier to break those ranks and work my way up one side along the building. With Willie covering my rear it would be that much easier. My eyes darted from target to target, and I saw a path that I could hack through the crowd. Then another set of possibilities became visible, then another, until at least half a dozen ways to fight my way clear of the horde were laid out in my head.

None of them were so tempting as the one that led to Patient Zero.

“Good evening, Survivor,” the Necromancer said. “What a nice night for a stroll.”

“I thought the same thing,” I said. “But I bet you weren’t just being all casual and random, were you?”

“Oh, no, I had something specific in mind.”

“I hope you didn’t have your heart set on killing me,” I told him with a fierce grin, “because I’m just not in the mood for dying tonight.” His laugh set my nerves on edge, and even the zombie killing part of me had a moment of doubt when I heard that god-awful noise come slithering from his mouth.

“Oh, no, I can’t kill you. You’re still too valuable to me alive. In fact, I am going to yield the field to you. And your friends who ran will tell everyone how you stood face to face with the Necromancer and lived to tell the tale. And the next thing you know, instant legend; just add gossip.” He smiled, pulling gray lips back from crooked teeth set in shrunken gums.

“What do you say Willie? You want to get the hell out of here, or do you wanna go for the brass ring?” I asked. My hands flexed around the Deuce’s handle and I waited for Willie to give me his answer.

“Everyone else runs,” he said with the same grim enthusiasm I remembered from fighting beside him in the battles at Estrella. “And I didn’t come all this way to go home without a fight. Let’s go for the brass ring.”

For just a moment everything was still, and I was balanced between rage and joy. Then the first ghoul leapt toward me, and I stepped into its attack. The Deuce shot forward, sliding into the soft flesh where throat and jaw met and came back bloody. I sidestepped and spun to my right, whipping blood from the tip of the sword until blade met spine of the ghoul that was right behind the first one. The second ghoul flopped onto the gurgling corpse of the first, and I swept my arms to the left. The blade sank into the middle of a hapless zombie’s face. Before it could drag my blade down with it, I kicked it in the chest and yanked my blade free. Beside me, Willie swept his blade low and took two down at the knees. I put my foot in the middle of another zombie’s gut and pushed it back into the two behind it, then drove my sword into the eye socket of a zombie to my right. Before I could pull the blade free, something landed on my back, and I could feel something scraping at the mail on my neck. Reflex took over, and I slammed my head back. There was a satisfying crunch as the helmet met flesh and bone, and the weight on my back slipped. Not satisfied with that, I turned with my elbow up and felt the impact all the way up to my shoulder. My right hand reached for my sword as my left grabbed the Tainto from my belt. Both hands closed on the leather wrapped grips simultaneously, and I spun to plant the knife in the ghoul’s sternum. With a triumphant yell, I pulled my hands toward each other to free both blades.

For a fleeting moment I had no targets within my reach, and my head turned toward the Necromancer. Only four infected stood between us. In a flood of confidence, I tossed the knife into the air, passed the Deuce to my left hand under the smaller weapon’s arc and caught the Tainto’s handle in my right hand as it dropped. The path to him was as clear in my head as if it had been outlined in glowing lines.

“Come on!” I yelled as I rushed forward. Upthrust to the right with the Tainto, dead zombie. Cross body swing with the Deuce, dead zombie. Yank the blade free, spin it up, over the head, and down behind me, twist the wrist as the blade falls and snap it back up under the chin of the zombie in front of me. Dead zombie. Twist the knife around, sideways thrust into the eye of a ghoul on my right. Dead ghoul. Which left me standing in front of a surprised looking Necromancer.

Without missing a beat, I dropped the knife and took a two handed grip on the Deuce and stepped into the blow, a smooth, beautiful feeling snap shot, thrusting my arms forward to full extension, then pulling back with my right hand and following through with the left to bring the edge of the blade whistling forward to sink into the Necromancer’s head to the bridge of his nose. The crunch of steel through bone was the loudest sound in the fight, and suddenly, everything stopped. Living, dead, everyone froze the moment the sword hit.

Whatever I’d been expecting, I knew it wasn’t happening. My pulse still pounded in my ears and I still felt the urge to smash and kill. The world still felt wrong, and now that I was up close and personal with the Necromancer, I could feel his noxious presence pressing up against my skin, undiminished by the foot of steel I’d just lodged in his brain pan.

On either side of the black, acid etched blade, the Necromancer’s eyebrows rose. With one hand, he reached up and grabbed the back of the sword.

“Now, that was unexpected,” he rasped as he slowly pulled the blade free from the eight inch gash in his head. “That hurt!” I pulled on the blade to free it from his grip, but it was like trying to yank a building off its foundations. Instead, he pulled on the sword, and I ended up face to mangled face with him.

“Even this serves my purpose, Survivor,” he hissed before he pushed me away. I stumbled back and fell on my ass. Before I could even start to try to get back on my feet, Willie was at my side pulling me up by my arm. My Tainto lay at my feet, so I grabbed it and slipped it back into the Kydex sheath on my hip.

The Necromancer stepped away from me and held his right hand out. A female zombie shuffled forward and laid her hand in his.

“That stung, Survivor, but it was just an inconvenience,” the dead thing said. His hand tightened on the zombie’s, and her arm turned black. The black crawled from her skin to his and stretched up his hand in thick, pulsing veins. Moments later, black lines spiderwebbed from under his shirt, up his neck, and across the right side of his face. I watched in horror as thick threads of black arced across the gap in his skull and slowly started to pull the fissure closed, leaving a blackened and uneven line down his forehead in their wake. As the wound I’d made healed, the flesh of the zombie next to him began to liquefy and drip from her bones in thick, gooey clumps until all that was left was a crimson stained skeleton. One of the hands dropped to the ground, then the forearm, the humerus, and shoulder blade slid out of her sleeve. Then the rest of the bones fell into the gooey mass that had puddled around her feet, leaving the Necromancer holding just the hand. With a wide grin on his face, he pulled one of the fingers off and put it into his mouth, then sucked on it as he pulled it free.

“Mmm-MM!” he crowed as he dropped the finger bones to the ground. “Now that is what I call finger lickin’ good!”

“Next time I’ll do more than leave a mark,” I said. His hand flew to his forehead, and he ran his fingertips across the line of black that ran down his face. His lips peeled back in a rictus of hate, and he pointed at me.

“Even this, Survivor…even this,” he said. “You’re almost served your purpose. The next time I come for you, you’re dead.” With that, he turned and started walking away. I stood there and watched him go, my hands shaking as I tried to keep from going after him. This was the second time this bastard had walked away from me, and I was not happy at how good I was at letting him walk away. Willie panted beside me, and I could hear my own breath coming in steady gasps. All around us zombies were shambling along in the same direction the Necromancer had gone.

“What did…he mean?” Willie asked, coming up on my right.

“Dunno,” I panted in reply. “He’s up to something.”

“Ya think?” he said. My left arm came up and back, rewarding me with the satisfying sound of steel crushing flesh and bone. The zombie that had wandered too close crumpled to the ground, and I turned and walked in the opposite direction, for the moment a little less grumpy. I pulled the can of spray paint from my right leg cargo pocket and started shaking it, looking for a fairly flat piece of wall.

“I kid you not,” Willie said to Kent as we walked up the stairs to the dining area. “He hit that son of a bitch right in the noggin, and he just pulled the blade out and said ‘That was unexpected. That actually hurt, Survivor.’ Then he grabs another zombie and just sucks the flesh off her bones and heals this massive gash in his head. And Dave just looks at him, like he thinks he’s Chuck Norris or something, and says ‘Next time, I’ll do more than leave a mark.’ Man, he was pissed about that.” They followed me as I stepped into the large open space and stopped. My eyes scanned the folks at the various tables until I saw Ruth sitting with Mark and Phil.

“No shit?” Kent said. “He went toe to toe with the Necromancer?”

“No shit.”

The room went silent as I pulled the Deuce off my back and walked across the room.  People stepped aside well before I got close to them, leaving me a clear path to the table where Ruth sat. I tossed the scabbard onto the table in front of her with a clatter, and she looked up at me with wide eyes.

“You wanted a tissue sample from an Alpha zombie,” I said. “There ya go.” I turned and started to walk away.

“Mr. Stewart,” Ruth’s voice came, clear and firm. I turned to look back over my shoulder at her. She was holding the Deuce by the handle and had it pulled halfway out of it’s Kydex sheath, revealing the gore covered blade, looking at me over the edge. “What kind of tissue?”

“Brain matter,” I said, and walked toward Willie and Kent. I stopped next to them and put my hand on Kent’s shoulder. “No shit.” No one said a word to me as I grabbed a tray, spoon, and bowl from the stack at the end of the table, ladled some of the thick ham and bean soup from the pot, and grabbed the maximum two pieces of cornbread from the pan. The hard bench felt better than a recliner to my tired ass as I plopped down on it. Once I was down, and gravity seemed to have doubled, I realized I didn’t have anything to drink. My shoulders slumped as I leaned forward to lever myself back to my feet.

“Don’t bother,” I heard someone say from in front of me. A thick hand set a brown bottle down on the table before me. Its twin set another down on the other side of the table, and one of the larger men I’d ever seen sat down across from me. Dark hair covered his arms, matching the thick ruff on his head that turned into a full, well-kept beard. “All they have up there is warm tea. If you’re going to drink anything after a fight, at least make it a good stout.” His voice sounded more like it should have come from a teacher than from the bear sitting across from me. I turned the glistening bottle to reveal the Guinness Extra Stout label.

“Won’t say no to that,” I said as I took a pull from the bottle. “Dave,” I offered as I extended my hand. His hand engulfed mine for a moment, then left mine uncrushed.

“I know,” he said with a laugh. “Vali Jorgenson. I hear you asked for some of my work.”

“Yeah, I need you to make a couple of knives for my…daughter,” I said as I crumbled one of the squares of cornbread into the soup. “She needs one for fighting and one for working. For that matter, I need a working knife myself. My Tainto is a damn fine blade, but I never expected to be fighting with it as much as I have. And I really don’t want to nick myself with anything I stuck in a zombie.”

“I hear that,” he said. “I can set her up with one of my dog-leg fighters, and get you a couple of my bushcrafters. Why don’t you come on over to the workshop tomorrow. I’ve got a couple of other things I think you’ll like.” I nodded at him, my mouth full, and he got up from the table. The bowl of soup didn’t survive much longer, and I savored the second square of cornbread with butter and honey. I managed to nurse the bottle of Guinness until the last bite of the cornbread, then slowly climbed to my feet. As tired as I was, I still needed to clean my gear before I even looked at a bed.