CHAPTER 21 - PUPPY LOVE

The smell from the cooking snake was going to kill me.

It was so good! Smelled like someone was setting up for a chicken barbecue. My mouth watered as a gust of wind blew some of the smoke my way. Distracted, I glanced over toward Brad and his makeshift grill. Alfred saw and laughed.

“What?” I asked. “You saying you don’t want some of it?”

“Nope. I’m as hungry as you are,” Alfred replied.

Both of us were better off than some of the others. We’d raided one of the kitchens back at the University for non-perishable dry goods. I still had most of mine in my pack, and I was willing to bet he did, too. Having some reserve food handy was just smart under the circumstances.

But cooked meat? It was amazing how fast something you could miss something as simple as a hot meal. “If Bradley cooks that snake right, I’ll take back every bad thing I ever said about him,” I added.

“He bothering you?” Alfred asked, looking concerned.

“Not much,” I replied, keeping my tone light. The truth was, I did have worries about the man. He’d talked about making me give up my crystals more than once now. It was turning into a broken record, and an extremely unwelcome one.

The more time went on, the more certain I was that building up a good base of those stones would spell the difference between success and failure in the world we now lived. Failure meant death, so that added even more importance to the things.

As soon as we’d returned to the police station, Lords got the story from the refugees we picked up. It was about as expected: sad and somewhat gory. They were the survivors from the Doubletree hotel just past those trees they’d come out of. They’d all been staying there when things went sideways. Some of the people working at the hotel took off in the first minutes after the Event happened, and others, including some guests, had tried to leave since then. Some of them hadn’t even made it out of the parking lot before one monster or another got a hold of them.

Others had, and I wished them well, wherever they were. Maybe they’d gotten back home and found other people to work with. Maybe not. But these people had been desperate, trying to figure out what to do with themselves. They saw the smoke from our cook fire and figured they were out of good options. They got together as a group and made their way to us.

If we hadn’t met them halfway, the goblins in those woods would’ve been all over them before we could assist. They’d have died, every one of them. One of them had—that guy with the arrow through the neck hadn’t made it. But the rest were thrilled to have even the modest security we were able to provide.

Their story told, Lords went about trying to build a barricade around the station. Now that he had a tier two Strength stone, he was very strong! Not lift-a-car strong, but we didn’t need to lift them. We dropped cars into neutral and rolled them to where he wanted them, then he and Alfred flipped them over on their side. Between the two of them, both at tier two, they had enough Strength to make it happen.

Rolling the cars around was still a lot of effort, but as each car joined the others in a crude wall around the station, it made us all feel like a bit more secure. If those goblins came calling, fortifications might be just what saved us.

“Food’s just about done!” Bradley called. He’d been excused from wall work so he could keep cooking. Nobody was complaining about that. I think we were all drooling at the smell.

“All right, let’s call a break,” Lords said. “We’ve done good work. We can finish after eating.”

Which of course was when a chilling howl reached our ears.

It sounded like a dog, or a wolf, but also different. Like, this was no friendly pooch howling to be let out. This was the nightmare dog from a horror movie right before it jumped out of the shadows. Or the dire wolf from a fantasy film as it started hunting. Everyone glanced around, wondering where the sound came from. Before we could say anything, two more howls joined the first, this time from a slightly different direction.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Great, whatever it was, there were several of them.

“Non-combatants, get in the station!” Lords shouted. “Everyone else, buddy up and watch the walls!”

“Buddy?” Alfred asked.

“You got it,” I said, although I already had a couple of buddies with my zombies. Never hurt to have someone else watching my back too, though. I brought the zombies out of the car where I’d stashed them. Some of the newcomers were pretty freaked out by zombies walking around the camp, still.

More howls, closer this time. Whatever they were, they were definitely coming for us. I wondered if it was the scent, drawing them in? The smell of meat cooking must have been traveling for a good distance.

I glanced at my crystal setup again, since I’d changed it slightly during the last fight. Entangle wasn’t slotted anymore. I’d put in Drain Life instead, and what a difference that made! I was looking forward to using it again.

Magical Stones

Point 1: Black Stone (Tier 3) - Control Undead

Point 2: Clear Stone (Tier 2) - Agility

Point 3: Black Stone (Tier 1) - Drain Life

Point 4: X

Point 5: X

Spare Stones

Black: Heal Undead, Animate Dead

Green: Entangle (Tier 2)

Clear: Will x2

Then something bounded onto the roof of a car next to me.

It was a quadruped, made entirely of bones. I couldn’t be sure, but it looked like a canine of some sort. Whatever it was, it had been dead for a long time now. There was no flesh or fur still left there, just old bone. It leaned back its head and howled again, a long, piercing cry that chilled me. Two others just like it jumped up beside it, snarling at us.

The trio of undead dogs rushed us, and all hell broke loose.

I sent my zombies after one of the things while Lords rushed another. The third was coming at Alfred, and he wasn’t going to be fast enough to dodge. These things were moving! Unless I missed my guess, these were all tier two; they were fast, and something about their howl was slowing down Alfred and Lords enough that the difference was that much worse.

But they were undead. Could I control them with my spell? I only had two tier one zombies under my Control Undead spell, so in theory I ought to be able to command an additional undead, even if it was tier two. It was worth a try.

I focused my will on the one about to bite Alfred, and black fire shot from my hand to envelop the undead dog. It turned my way as soon as the magic hit, and tried to rush me, but then the spell sank into its bones, and it stopped moving entirely.

Alfred was about to smash it with his axe, but I stepped in to stop him. “Wait! I’ve got this one under control. Sit, boy.”

The dog sat.

Alfred slowed his charge and lowered his weapon. “That was awesome! Thanks for the save, Selena.”

“There’s more of them, though, and I’m at my limit for control,” I said.

I turned back toward the battle. My zombies were barely keeping one of the things locked down, and the other had Lords’ left arm in its mouth while he punched it with his right. Where his weapon had gone, I had no idea, but as strong as his punches were now, he wasn’t taking it down.

“Help Lords!” I told my new pet.

It darted forward and chomped the rear leg of the one biting Lords, which yelped and let go. It turned, trying to snap at my dog’s muzzle, but Alfred was already there, dropping an axe blow on its neck. The undead dog went down in a deluge of bones as the magic holding them together vanished.

Lords was bleeding pretty heavily from his wounded arm, but he still spared time to flash me a nod and a pained smile. “The other one?”

“I’ve got it, get yourself to Henry for healing!” I said. And my zombies mostly had already done their job, although they were even more torn up now.

They’d tackled the thing, pinned it to the ground, and then proceeded to beat it with their fists. The undead dog snarled and snapped, but it wasn’t going anywhere. I picked up my axe, walked over, and delivered the finishing blow. Then I leaned down and tapped it, getting a black stone. Tier two, like I’d suspected. Nice!

By the time I was standing back up again, I saw Bradley there with a chunk of rebar, trying to bash in the head of the dog I’d controlled. Alfred stood between them, fending him off.

“Outta the way, kid!” Bradley snarled.

“It’s not—“

I gave the dog a mental command and it dashed off, hopping into the car my zombies had been using as their home base. Bradley watched it go, then looked at me. “You control it?”

“Yup. So please don’t break my new puppy?”

“Puppy?” he snarled. “Those things tried to kill us. Cut up Lords pretty well.”

“And now that one is going to fight for us,” I shot back.

“Or maybe I should just kill it now and get the stone, eh?” Bradley said. He hefted that rebar in a way that was more than a little menacing.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern noticed, too. They were still in ‘guard mode,’ which meant they went after anything that threatened me. Him raising his weapon apparently met the minimum standard, because they both took steps forward to flank me and drew their knives.