CHAPTER 29 - ARMY OF THE DEAD

It was a long and restless night. The forest was no longer a peaceful place. I woke at least a dozen times to various noises, none of them pleasant. First it was a pack of goblins, who looked like they were out on a hunt. They made enough noise to rouse me as they crossed the parking lot on their way to wherever. My zombies were hunkered down, though, and just about invisible in the darkness. I stayed very still until they were well past.

Sometime later, I woke again to a distant roar that sounded frighteningly like the demon bear. That was all I needed was to run into another of those, but thankfully it sounded far off, and didn’t repeat itself. A wolf-like howl made Hope perk up her ears at one point as well, but she kept quiet and it wasn’t repeated.

After all the noises, I wasn’t as well-rested as I’d have liked, but when daylight began splashing over the treetops I figured it was time to get moving anyway. I’d gotten lucky so far, but relying on luck was never a great plan. It was time for me to take some forward action. I needed to find a way to stop running and begin building, and the fastest manner I could think of was to grow in power and strength.

“All right, girl,” I told Hope. “We have a hike ahead of us, hey?”

Hope wagged her tail in response.

Yesterday had been a thing. I still wasn’t sure how to deal with having killed three people. Part of me was still shocked, even horrified at what I’d done. But overall I was having trouble dredging up a lot of guilt over it. Brad planned all of that. He’d organized those two as helpers, planned the ambush, and they almost succeeded. If they’d beaten me, would they have let me live, and just killed my creatures and stolen my stones? Brad knew if he let me live I’d have told Lords what he did.

No, there was no way they’d have allowed me to survive. I would have been a brave casualty in some sort of attack, a heroic soul who died defending them from monsters. Or maybe they’d just have dumped my body in the brook and claimed I wandered off. The only way I was coming out of that alive was with them defeated. If there’d been some way to take them down without killing them, I would have. But the only tools I had were pretty lethal, and they were the ones who forced me to use them to survive.

That was something I decided I could live with.

I ate a quick breakfast from my stash of food and drank the bottled water I’d found the evening before. I still had a full water bottle of my own, in my bag. I’d need that for later. I repacked my bag, making sure I wasn’t leaving anything that could be useful. The blankets had kept me warm through the night-time chill, and I wasn’t leaving those behind. One went into the bag, but the second wouldn’t fit, so I tied it to the top.

The map stayed out, though. That was going to live in my pocket for a while. I needed it to make sure I didn’t get lost cutting across the forest to the cemetery.

As I set out into the forest again, I felt better with each footstep. My journey was carrying me further away from Lords and his collection of people, but that wasn’t wholly a bad thing. He was too cautious, I realized. Here I was all by myself at last, and my first impulse was to rush into the fire. I was headed toward danger because I knew that was how I would become strong enough to survive all of this.

If he kept hiding in the police station, only venturing out in short scouting runs, those people were never going to become stronger. Not at the pace I had a feeling people were going to require, anyway. I’d seen the fortress in the forest, after all. Whether those were goblins or something else, they were clearly numerous and well-organized. Sooner or later they’d come for Lords and his people, and they’d lose.

I hoped to chart a different path for myself as I marched through the morning sun. It was less than a quarter mile to the interstate; I89 ran through the woods here, carving a wide path. It startled me, running across it. The trees just ended like they were a wall, and beyond was a grassy stretch leading down to the highway.

Between the open grass on either side, the median, and three lanes traveling in each direction, that was a lot of open space to traverse. Worse, there were cars out there in the middle which could easily be hiding anything. The road wasn’t packed, but there were scores of cars within sight, and zero way to tell if anyone or anything was hiding in or around them.

There was no movement out there beyond the wind blowing through the grass, but that didn’t mean it was safe. I hunched over next to Hope. “What do you think, girl?”

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She barked a quiet yip, then dashed out into the opening. I hadn’t ordered that! How smart was this dog, anyway? The more I interacted with her, the more like a regular canine she seemed to act. It was the right move, though; as a skeleton dog, a monster herself, maybe she’d be less likely to attract monster attention. Any humans hiding out there might try to attack her, but Hope was fast. I sent her a mental command to return right away if she thought there was danger.

But there was nothing. She reached the median without incident, then let out a loud bark there, like she was giving us the all clear. One zombie ahead of me and the other behind, we set off to join her. I watched carefully as we left the woods, but still nothing—no movement, and no attacks coming my way.

When I reached the cars, I saw they were all simply empty and abandoned. I tried to imagine what happened here after the power went out and the car engines all stalled. These people had been commuting somewhere, and then everything just…stopped. What had they done?

They’d probably tried to wait it out, at first. But when they realized their cell phones were gone, their car was dead, and no additional traffic came along for over an hour, they probably started walking. It wasn’t that far back down the highway to get to civilization. The next exit was half a mile or so south, and there were hotels, shops, places to get help.

Of course, they couldn’t have known that monsters were tearing through everything. How far had they gotten before running into trouble, I wondered?

We made it across the danger zone and back into woods on the far side. According to my map, if I proceeded due east, I’d end up at the cemetery. I didn’t remember there being one out that way, but Vermont had lots of old cemeteries in out of the way places. I watched the trees for hints when the canopy was thick and it was hard to tell direction from the sun alone. North side tends to grow more moss; south side grows more branches. It’s because there’s more sunlight on the southern side, when you live up north.

I climbed a hill after a bit, which was a surprise. The map didn’t show elevation. It was the smart call, though, because from higher up I figured I could see my destination. By the time I reached a small clearing toward the top of the hill, I had a decent glance at where I was going. My line of sight to most of the cemetery was still blocked by trees, but I could see a good chunk of it, and I’d called it completely right. The place was overrun.

Even only seeing part of the place, there were hundreds of graves in sight, and a lot of them were obviously exhumed recently. The bodies wandered around the cemetery, aimlessly moving from one area to another. There were dozens of undead, just where I could see them. It was hard to tell at this distance, but it looked like these were old bodies, closer to Hope in appearance than my zombies.

The magic had still brought them back, though, and the fence running around the cemetery kept them in. That was a big plus for me, since it meant I wouldn’t need to go hunting scattered undead all over the countryside.

A clattering sound from down the hill caught my attention and made me reassess that statement. One set of old bones, dressed in tattered rags for clothes, stumbled up the hill. It had clearly spotted me and just as obviously wanted to say a special hello. I chuckled. One skeleton just didn’t seem like a threat anymore.

I cast Drain Life on the thing, feeling a rush of strength coming to me as it stumbled and almost went down. Hope was after it in a dash, snapping a leg off as she tore into the thing. My zombies went to assist, but they didn’t make it to the skeleton before Hope finished it off.

“Neat and fast. That’s the way to do this,” I said. I walked to where the scattered bones rested and tapped the skull. A single black crystal popped into my hand and instantly merged into my palm.

I gasped as new knowledge poured into my mind from the stone. It had linked with Drain Life! I had that spell up to tier two now!

Magical Stones

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

Point 2: Clear Stone (Tier 2) - Agility

Point 3: Black Stone (Tier 2) - Drain Life

Point 4: X

Point 5: X

Spare Stones

Black: Heal Undead, Animate Dead, Nightvision

Green: Entangle (Tier 2), Entangle

Clear: Will x2, Unknown (Tier 2), Strength (Tier 2)

That was amazing. Drain Life had already become my staple combat spell, even at tier one. Without that I’m sure Brad’s attack would have been a lot more dangerous. I don’t know if I could have beaten all three of them without it. The ability to cause damage and heal myself was invaluable, and now it was twice as strong as it had been.

I felt more ready than ever to face what was up ahead. We set out again, Hope leading the way as we descended the hill toward our destination. I made sure to remain extra alert. If there was one skeleton outside the fence, there could easily be more of them as well. How it got out, I didn’t know. If it was one very old grave which happened to lay outside the fence, maybe unmarked, that would make sense. But if there was a break in the fence somewhere, there could be a lot more of them waiting in the forest. I kept my eyes open.

We made it to the fence without running into more undead, though. We rested just inside the shelter of the trees. Well, I rested. My critters didn’t need it, but walking half a mile while watching for bad guys in every shadow takes a ton of effort. Besides, I wanted to see what I was facing out there.

The answer was, a swarm of undead. This graveyard was very old. A lot of the stones were exceptionally worn, so I had to guess they were a hundred years old. Some might be even older. And there were hundreds of stones. Lots of hundreds. How many had unearthed themselves, I couldn’t say. Less than half, for sure.

That was still an army of skeletons.