Chapter 29

My prey lay just ahead, standing out in stark contrast against the lichen-covered walls thanks to my dark vision. There were six of them standing in a tight circle, their silhouettes swaying back and forth as though captives to a silent song only they could hear. Though their flesh was visibly decomposing, there still remained enough to recognize them as having once been human. Was this vague connection to their plundered humanity what made them so repulsive, yet at the same time so familiar?

I could only pray it was so, because the possibility that I might share any sort of kinship with these abominations was too sickening to contemplate. More troubling still, I could now easily smell their scents but they hadn’t reacted to my own at all. When they did finally stir, it was because what passed for a breeze within these fetid tunnels had suddenly shifted and borne the intoxicating scent of fresh meat downwind.

“Why couldn’t they wait like I’d asked?”

Biting back a snarl of frustration, I shed any pretense of stealth and rushed ahead while activating my Dash skill. My Cloak of Shadows billowed out in thick strands of inky darkness as they trailed my heedless charge ahead. The zombies had barely begun to react to the smell of humans in their vicinity when I took one final step, then propelled myself into the air with both arms raised high above my head.

I didn’t bother using Critical Strike, but Backstab activated as my overhand swing saw the thick concrete slab at the end of the parking meter in my hands blast what little remained of the first zombie’s head straight into its chest cavity. There wasn’t much left, most of its skull had disintegrated under the violence of the blow.

The headless zombie’s body slammed into the ground and actually bounced up from the impact. By then, I had already rushed past it, swinging my improvised sledgehammer to strike another zombie in the temple right as it turned toward its new threat. No human skull was ever designed to withstand such force, caving in under my blow and sending out chunks of brain matter soaring through the air. I leaned into the swing, needing only a slight adjustment to redirect the blow toward another zombie’s head. It connected with a meat-thumping thud, spraying bits of concrete against the tunnel walls as my parking meter lost a sizeable chunk of its mass.

That’s fine, that only made it lighter to swing around.

Barely five seconds had passed since I initiated my assault, my world slowing down as the rush of speed from my Dash finally died down. The remaining three zombies finally burst into motion, crouching low as they parted their maws in preparation to emit one of their blood-curdling howls. That’d summon the entire pack on top of us. I hastily brought my parking meter around for another pass, but there was simply no way I’d silence the remaining zombies in time. To make matters worse, that’s when the searing light suddenly sprang into life from behind me, momentarily disorienting me.

“Shit, we’re gonna be buried under piles of zombies!”

I barely managed to compensate for my surprise, stubbornly tracking my next target like a dog with a bone to gnaw. Said bone crunched loudly under my next blow as another half-rotten skull disintegrated under my blow. I redirected the swing toward the next zombie, all the while wincing at the strain in my arms as I pushed myself to the limits. Strengthened as I was, some muscles simply weren’t designed to be twisted and shifted so quickly. I grunted with the pain but pushed ahead regardless. Just two more!

That’s when I heard a rapid series of controlled metallic clicks from behind me. The next thing I knew, my extended swing sailed through empty air, my intended target suddenly gone. Overbalanced, I nearly stumbled but my improved agility allowed me to just barely catch myself against the wall. How had I missed? Whirling around, I lifted the improvised club over my shoulder for another swing, still bracing myself for the inevitable alarm but then stopped cold, staring. The last two zombies lay twitching on the ground, several neat bullet holes drilled through each of their skulls.

Turning around, I eyed the smoking barrel of Victoria’s MP-5 submachine gun. Damn, she was still standing nearly 75 feet away. More importantly, I was planted right in the middle of the line of fire!

“What the hell was that?” I cried out, spluttering in outrage.

“Damn fine shooting - better than I’ll ever manage, that’s for sure,” Dexter said, sniggering at me.

I tugged at my recently donated shirt and held it out to the light. “You shot me!”

Victoria didn’t even grace that with a response. An impatient roll of her eyes was all I got as she leisurely marched up to me.

“You shot me!” I repeated, indignantly poking a trembling finger against through the fresh tear in my shirt’s sleeve.

Victoria turned around from her inspection of the downed zombies with a long-suffering sigh. “Did I hit you?”

“Uh, no, not really..” I trailed off as I realized that I hadn’t actually been struck. It had been too damn close though! “But that’s not the point!”

“Agreed,” Victoria nodded, unexpectedly agreeing with me. Then her eyebrows drew closer as she frowned at me. “The point is that you should stop pointlessly endangering yourself like an amateur with reckless, poorly-conceived head-on assaults.”

“Amateur? Reckless?” I protested, proudly holding up the gore-stained parking meter. “I just took down four zombies before they even knew what was going on!”

“My point exactly. You jumped right in without even considering how you would handle the remaining zombies, didn’t you? You’re fortunate I was able to pick them off before they could raise the alarm.”

“If you’d stayed back like I asked you to,” I growled under my breath, stepping right up to her and glaring down at her impassive gaze. “Then they wouldn’t have detected us in the first place. Not before I could set up a proper ambush.”

My actions didn’t have the desired effect, of course. Far from it, Victoria just looked up at me with cold disdain, not the least bit intimidated. “You mean like the one you just carried out? Randomly swinging a parking meter like you’re smacking pinatas at a birthday party? How far do you think that’ll take you before your luck runs out? Honestly, it’s a wonder that you ever survived this Trial you speak of.”

That made me wince, thinking back on the countless times Allie had kept me alive during the course of the trials. Maybe Victoria had a point. I felt disjointed, like the lesser half of an incomplete circle, fractured right down the middle. I was used to following my heart and looking out for Allie. Everything else had always seemed to just settle into place - mostly guided by Allie’s hand, of course.

Now she was gone and all I was left with was this irrepressible desire to find my girlfriend again or burn the whole world trying. Yeah, I was never the sharpest tool in the shed, and I didn’t mind admitting it. It only brought to sharp contrast just how gaping a hole in my life had been left in Allie’s absence.

Perhaps some of this percolated through to my face, because suddenly Victoria’s features melted from stony belligerence to an anguished grimace. The emotion only flickered briefly across her face, come and gone in an instant before she composed herself. Still, that split second of vulnerability lingered in the silence that followed as we avoided each other’s gazes.

“Damn, these things are fugly,” Dexter interjected once again, poking at one of the zombies on the ground with the barrel of his shotgun. “Don’t look nearly as dangerous as what you made them sound like though.”

“Alone, they’re easily dealt with. The problem is that they’re never alone.” I grunted as I reluctantly nodded my acknowledgment to Victoria. “If Vicky hadn’t nailed her shots, we would be drowning in zombies right now.”

“In the right conditions, we could handle a couple of dozen, no problem,” Dexter mused, resting his shotgun on his shoulder.

“Try a hundred or two,” I said wryly, kneeling down next to one of the downed zombies. A flickering light gathered next to my hand.

You have found 0.1 Mana Orbs.

“That many?” Dexter wheezed out, his eyes going wide.

“At the very least. And that’s not even the worst of what I smell down here.” I watched my companions but they didn’t seem to have noticed the mana orb.

“You mean the fanged fiend?” Victoria said, her eyes narrowing into slits as she checked the chamber of her gun.

“No, not the horror. It’s something else. Something worse,” I finished, gulping loudly.

“Fuck my life. Worse than hundreds of zombies or a nigh-unkillable 8-feet tall abomination?” Dexter wailed.

“Yeah, worse,” I said with a grim set to my mouth. “Much worse.”

“You’re just full of good news, aren’t you?” Dexter scowled at me out of the corner of his eyes before sighing and shouldering his shotgun. “Is this too late to point out that any sane person would turn around and get the fuck out of here right about now?”

Victoria just looked at me for a moment before smiling humorlessly. “Not an option, I’m afraid. You should turn back and report to headquarters though, Agent Kelly.”

“Fuck that, I see exactly what’s going on right here, don’t think I can’t,” Dexter grumbled under his breath. “You’re obviously trying to get me stuck with all the paperwork again, aren’t you?”

“Obviously,” Victoria agreed, still watching me with that penetrating gaze of hers that made me feel naked and defenseless where I stood.

“This isn’t what I meant when I said I needed help,” I said, shuffling my weight on unsteady feet and finally lifting my own gaze to meet Victoria’s eyes. “Who knows what’s waiting further down these tunnels, but whatever it is, the burden is all my own. You should turn back while you still can, Vicky.”

“That warning comes too late, Kai,” Victoria said, smiling bitterly. “Seven years too late.”

“Can we get going already? My hair gets all frizzy in the damp, and it’s really hell to untangle later,” Dexter bemoaned, scratching his head.

“Cheer up, Dexter,” I grunted over my shoulder as I moved ahead. “Pretty soon, we might not have a head at all.”

In just the next ten minutes, we managed to dismantle three more camps of zombies. At times we had to circle around side tunnels to avoid bigger camps of zombies, but progress was relatively smooth as I zeroed down on Allie’s scent. Victoria proved to be a dead shot with her silenced MP-5 submachine gun, each short burst of fire producing a corresponding splatter of brains before downing another zombie. I did the rest of the work, using my Dash skill to close in on the remaining zombies and dispatching them with surprising ease. As for Dexter, he kept up a constant litany of complaints that kept us motivated to move swiftly or die trying - anything if it meant finding a blessed respite from the man’s incessant chatter. Not even the threat of a horde of flesh-eating zombies descending upon us was enough to silence him. If anything, it only added to the growing list of grievances he seemed determined to air out, as though he were venting all of his frustrations before the Grim Reaper’s scythe descended and the privilege was forever snatched from him.

Blessedly, we finally arrived at a wide intersection where five tunnels met. Greenish lights illuminated the walls where magical glyphs had been carved into the rock. Under the flickering glow, several dozen zombies milled in a tight pack. They stood motionless, swaying back and forth like decayed trees swaying to an invisible breeze.

“That’s too many damn zombies,” Dexter breathed, staring in horror at the milling mass of undead.

“Time to use the diversion, then?” I prompted, glancing to my left.

Victoria nodded reluctantly, her lips set in a grim line. “How close?”

“Very. Just around the bend, even. I can feel-” I coughed as I rephrased my words. “Detect a mass of dark energy emanating just beyond that throng.”

“What’s the glow? Do you recognize it?” Victoria said, watching the zombies ahead.

“Magical runes. I’ve seen something similar before,” I said.

“Those definitely look man-made,” she pointed out.

I nodded. “It might be from the same person who’s controlling all the zombies.”

“You mean someone’s controlling them?” Dexter scowled at the zombies, his eyes overflowing with blame for the indignities he’d suffered thus far.

I could only shrug. “Maybe. I don’t know. The zombies at the trials behaved differently. They would actively move around hunting prey to devour. These zombies just stand around, almost as though they’re guarding something.”

“Well, they make for piss-poor guards,” Dexter grumbled. “Maybe it just means they’ve been disconnected from whatever was controlling them.”

“That’s what I thought too,” I said, shaking my head. “But those magical runes change everything. They didn’t carve themselves into the walls, after all. There’s also..”

Dexter scowled at me as I trailed off. “What now?”

“I told you I smelled something else. Something evil. Now that we’re this close, I can feel it even more clearly.” I could feel my hands balling into fists at my sides as I ground my teeth. “It’s vile and horribly wrong and…”

“And what?” Dexter prodded.

“And definitely human,” I finished grimly.

“Oh,” Dexter said, his mouth hanging wide open. Then his lips curled into a relieved grin. “Oh, that’s fine then. Why didn’t you say so in the first place?”

I stared at him in a daze. “W-What?”

Dexter patted a hand against my shoulder. “Zombies and ghosts might scare the crap out of me, but if it’s just a person - no matter how corrupt and evil - it’s just another day on the job.”

“Huh?” A grunt was all I could manage as I blinked uncomprehendingly.

“Taking down naughty humans, that’s what we do for a living,” Dexter said, his wolfish grin growing wider. “And we’re very good at what we do.”

Victoria nodded her agreement, as though she hadn’t heard me clearly state how evil the presence ahead was. I opened my mouth to state as much, but Dexter just shook his head.

“Humans, no matter how souped up on all this otherworldly shit they are, are still humans in the end. Take you, for instance,” Dexter pointed out, tapping my chest. “Even all jacked up on that inhuman speed and strength, either of us could stop you cold with a couple pounds of cold lead.”

“You don’t know that,” I muttered doubtfully. After all, not even I knew the limits of my orb-powered physique.

User Information

Greater Ghoul level 5 - Tier E

Strength: 15.6 [Base 10 + Orb 5.6]

Agility: 12.6 [Base 7 + Orb 5.6]

Resilience: 18.4 [Base 12 + Orb 6.4]

Intelligence: 11 [Base 6 + Equipment Bonus 5]

Wisdom: 11 [Base 6 + Equipment Bonus 5]

Charisma: 4 [Base 4]

Famine was gone and in its place there lingered power the true extent of which remained untapped. All I knew was that my body felt lighter than air and within my every muscle and fiber there coiled a power that was frightening and exhilarating all at once. Yet, I was like a newborn calf, still shakily trying to stand on my own legs and explore the full extent of my strength.

Was the human a necromancer, perhaps another orb user? Why could I smell Allie’s scent mingled within that same source? There was clearly only one person’s scent carried by the breeze, but I knew better than to believe my sense of smell was fool-proof. All I knew for certain was that the sense of wrongness ahead was growing stronger and Allie’s scent was fading. I couldn’t allow that to happen.

Victoria seemed to read the decision from my expression and her own gaze mirrored my own determination. Dexter glanced between the two of us before smiling wryly.

“So, what’s the plan?” he asked.

“I scouted ahead. This other tunnel bends around and reaches the intersection ahead,” I whispered, pointing to a smaller side tunnel that lay to our left.

“Wait a second, you can’t be thinking..” Dexter moaned, the blood draining from his face.

“We’ll execute the diversion maneuver,” Victoria confirmed, ignoring Dexter’s groan as she watched be closely. “Remember to stick to the plan. Disengage as soon as possible and regroup with us.”

“You got it,” I nodded to her, turning around.

She stopped me with a hand on my arm. “Don’t be a hero.”

“That’s the last thing on my mind,” I said, smirking.

“But you always think with your heart instead of your brains,” Victoria whispered, her tone coldly disapproving. “Don’t disappoint me again.”

“I’d never dream of it,” I said, surprised at the surge of warmth that spread in my chest at the thought that Victoria still held expectations of me, even after all we’d been through. Maybe that was it. Maybe it was precisely because of our past that I could hope for a future.

Victoria’s eyes narrowed into slits as she glared at me. “You’re thinking about unnecessary things again. Focus. We save your girl, then we’re done. I still need you alive, at least for that long.”

I tried to stifle the smile tingling my lips as I nodded. “Of course. And Vicky…”

“What?”

“Thank you.”

Victoria grunted wordlessly in reply, swiftly turning away from me. Maybe too swiftly.

I watched Victoria drag Dexter helplessly away, all the while clutching at the shotgun in my hands. It was time to unleash hell and watch the pieces fall where they may.