As the energy from the wolf began to slow its flow, the tingles of happiness that had shot through my senses remained. Everything suddenly felt better. I closed my eyes, feeling a cheery grin gather on my face.

With my eyes closed, I turned my mental gaze inward. I looked at the energy that had gathered inside me. The pitifully small tendrils had grown slightly more prominent, and I felt them expand more thoroughly throughout my body. It felt as if ‘muscles’ of the animating energy were suddenly doubled in strength.

I wasn’t strong, not by any stretch of the imagination, but I was significantly more functional than I was before.

And that was with that wolf. That creature was barely alive as is, its body weak from blood loss and probable infection from the vicious wound in its leg. What would happen if I killed something like that at full strength? I mentally shuddered in anticipation at the thought. For a long moment, I lay there, just letting the energy curl and uncurl throughout my body, staring out at the cloudy, gray sky.

Eventually, though, I realized that I had to get up. I could go around wandering the countryside, killing anything I passed, but the thought just seemed…detestable to me. I should be helping people with this power…but the taste of the kill made me just want to ignore everything else. I wasn’t even human anymore, was I? I’m undead. A zombie. I was sure that every living thing that knew about my condition would kill me on sight. I got the feeling that I would’ve done the same, if I wasn’t undead myself.

I am dead now. I barely remembered what not being dead was like. Maybe it would’ve been better to just give into my instincts, that drive to kill. It’s not like I could join back into the world as a human. They’d notice I was dead in an instant.

I started for a moment, a thought echoing in my mind and filling me with a kindling for something one could vaguely approximate to hope. Would they even be able to know that I’m dead?

It was stupid. It was reckless. It was, also, my only chance of getting near human civilization without being executed on the spot.

Of course, my ‘solution’ was a temporary one, at best. My body would start decaying soon, rotting to bits, bloating, falling apart. It’s unlikely that I’d be able to hide that for long. But I could get a plan. Find some way to hide my decaying body or preserve it. Maybe a little bit of both.

Of course, I had absolutely no idea how I’d do any of that, except wearing lots of extra layers of clothes. And gloves.

I looked down at my armored form and felt a grim smile forming on my face. At least most of my body is hidden under this, I thought to myself. I won’t have to worry about someone immediately trying to kill me.

I looked up towards the horizon, noticing a treeline in the distance. If there was anywhere for any society to survive whatever this land had been put through, it would be in a forest. I suppose that will do.

___________________________________________________________________________

Darden Hillhoke shifted in his seat, wrinkled eyes vigilantly staring out into the dark, misty woods that surrounded the entrance to his home. In his hand was a well worn, but well made axe, the blade sharpened to a gleaming edge. He smiled down at the weapon, one usually only used for chopping wood, now used in the defense of his little cottage.

Darden had been doing the same thing for a couple of weeks, taking up watch during the nights, and working only in the afternoons. It had taken a while to fix his sleep schedule, and many cranky days and tired nights, but eventually he had settled into this rhythm. Ideally, Darden would never have to sleep at all, just spending the entirety of his time guarding the house. The old man shook his head. No, he was ignoring the true problems. Ideally, he wouldn’t have to guard his house at all. If the military did their damn jobs and killed off that damned necromancer, then he wouldn’t have to do this at all. Now Darden had to worry about some living corpse finding itself in his yard, and trying to eat him and his wife’s brains out.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

Or something. Darden didn’t know a whole lot about undead, if he were to be perfectly honest to himself.

He had heard that undead preferred the darkness of the night, and so he had made preparations for that. Obviously, there were some defenses that would help him against any walking bag of maggots, but it was best to be cautious. Darden hadn’t expected an undead army showing up at his doorstep, but tried his best to prepare for the worst.

Out in these forests, it was a death sentence if one wasn’t.

His eyes stared back out into the forest. Despite his constant vigilance, not a single zombie had come into his land. A small, small part of him was disappointed by the fact that his preparation was basically going to waste. However, a much larger part of himself was massively relieved that he hadn’t seen such a monstrous thing. A mindless, hungry thing, piloting a body that was once the vessel to a thinking, living human…the old man shuddered at the thought of it. But, nevertheless, it appeared that all Darden’s preparation was going to go to waste.

The Necromancer had left days ago, if the local ranger, Gerland, was to be believed. Which was decidedly unlikely, considering the amount of alcohol the man managed to drink whenever he returned to the town for a day.

Almost lazily, Darden’s eyes turned back towards the woods, wondering if something interesting had decided to pass by.

Darden froze.

A pair of bright green eyes stared out at him from the heavy mist of the night, looking at him with an unblinking, almost animalistic intensity. It walked forward in what could only be described as a shamble, the mist parting around them as it got closer to Darden’s home. Pale, unusually pale skin seemed to pull itself on the gaunt form, wild, unkempt black hair stained slightly crimson in places framed the form, making them seem less and less like a living being and more like some beast. Its expression was entirely blank, slack, as if there was truly nothing behind them. On the right side of its cheek, a nasty, horrible-looking wound cut into its face. It wore a uniform and armor, but Darden knew not to trust that.

This must be a corpse. It had to be. Shakily, hands tightly gripping the axe in his hands, Darden stood up. He faced the monster, lips moving silently for a moment before he gathered enough courage to speak to the terrifying thing. “M-move no closer! I’m not afraid to use this thing, you, you…!”

The figure’s stride stuttered for a moment. It looked at Darden with those same wild, beast-like eyes, and the same exact completely relaxed expression lay on its face. It paused for a moment.

Then its arms went up.

Darden’s eyebrows shot up. From what he knew, the undead weren’t smart enough to replicate human speech, let alone understand it. Yet, the figure standing there had apparently figured out what the old man was saying. His eyes narrowed in suspicion. Its mouth opened, and he tensed, prepared for whatever the beast was going to throw at him-

“Hello? I apologize, sir, but I have been wandering these forests for many hours, and I’m quite tired.” The voice came out in breathy puffs, as if the man was barely alive. But it wasn’t alive, Darden was sure. The creature was dead, some monster here to kill him.

“Where are you coming from, then?” Darden said, suspicious.

“I-” The voice paused for a moment, before continuing. “...I come from the battlefield to the west of here. I was knocked out, and woke up with no memories of what happened. I got this injury from a vulture that tried to eat me, thinking I was dead.”

Darden still remained where he was, glaring at the thing in suspicion. It could be some trick, some ruse to get into their home, to get their house, to get Darden to drop his weapon or his guard, to-

“Honey, is everything alright?” A creaky voice came from the inside of Darden’s home, one sounding concerned. Before Darden had the chance to react, to tell her to leave, Darden’s wife, Marla, opened the door.

She looked between Darden staring at her, the axe in his hands, and the thing that looked like a man standing back, hands up. And in a single moment, Marla looked at Darden and her expression darkened.

Internally, Darden gulped. That never meant anything good.

“Darden! You better explain yourself quickly, or you're gonna find yourself in a whole heck of a lot of trouble.” Marla said sternly, looking at her husband.

Darden spluttered. “H-his eyes glowed. Glowed, I swear! And he came in like some walkin death, starin at me with those eyes…” As he continued on, he quickly began to realize how weak his arguments sounded, even to his ears.

“So you took an axe and threatened a potential guest. For. No. Reason.” Marla said, glaring at Darden with her hard blue eyes.

“I…B-but-”

“No buts!” Marla said. Slowly, she turned to the man standing at the front part of their porch, hands up. Her gaze softened, even though his blank expression remained the same. “Now, come on, dearie, let's get you checked up, you look awfully pale, and that wound looks bad…”

And just like that, Darden invited what he had once thought to be a monster into his home.