CHAPTER 3 - ZOMBIES, I THINK?

Rosencrantz grappled with Zombie Stevens, the two more or less matched, which made sense. Stevens kept trying to lunge past Rosencrantz, but couldn’t, not with my zombie’s arms locked down on him. Pinning Stevens in place was enough to keep me safe, but I was going to have to do something more permanent if I wanted to end the threat for good.

Could I do that? I looked down at the chunk of stool leg in my hand. It ought to be enough to take down a zombie, but… I found it was one thing to smack my phone into a cadaver come to life, and entirely another to do the same thing to a fellow student. I made as if to take a swing, but then I froze. I couldn’t do it.

What if it was curable? Mind, I didn’t think it likely was. The zombie that turned Stevens had done an extraordinary amount of damage to the front of his throat. He was definitely dead.

But was dead even dead, now? I’d been attacked by a zombie and then I cast a spell to control another zombie. Maybe there was other magic, too? Something that could restore Stevens? My thoughts raced as I struggled to come up with some way to capture him instead of killing him…again.

Before I could think of anything, Carver stepped in, swinging the club I’d handed him like he was trying to bat a home run in baseball. He hit solidly, then swung again. The second blow cracked something inside Stevens’ skull, and the chunk of wood sticking out the side of his club embedded itself in the zombie’s skull. Carver yanked it free with a nasty slurping sound.

It went down like a pile of bricks, sagging in Rosencrantz’s grasp.

“Drop it,” I told my zombie, who obeyed, dumping the corpse on the floor. I turned to Carver. “You think there’s any way we can save the students who’ve been turned?”

Carver glanced toward Karen, still threatening a terrified Alfred. If we didn’t get her off him soon, he was going to be another zombie. He looked back at me and shook his head. “Too much damage. Too much risk trying to contain them, too. We need to tend to the living now.”

I nodded, understanding. He was only saying what my gut already told me. The dead were dead. Well, unless they were undead, but then the best bet was to make them dead again, so it was close to the same thing in the end. If we later found a way to restore people, we could do something about it in the future. For the time being, we needed to keep people alive.

“Ah, look!” Carver said, holding up another tiny black crystal in his hand. Like it had for me, it vanished, sinking into his fingers. His eyes went vacant for a moment, his mouth slack, as the gem poured whatever memories it contained into him.

“Control Undead?” I guessed, but I was wrong.

He shook his head. “No. This one is Animate Dead. Watch!”

He waved a hand over Stevens’ body and black tendrils poured from his fingertips. They dipped down toward the former zombie, spiraling about it and sinking beneath the skin. For a long moment nothing happened, and I wondered if maybe you couldn’t animate the same dead body twice.

But then the fingers moved.

That was followed by Stevens clambering back to his feet. I readied my club, just in case he attacked, but the new zombie did nothing of the sort. He just stood there, facing his creator and waiting for instructions.

“You can command him?” I asked.

“Seems so,” Carver replied. He pointed at Karen and told it, “Go stop that zombie!”

Zombie Stevens took off at a brisk walk, heading right for where Karen stood. She’d finally worked her way around the table and had both arms locked on Alfred’s left forearm, trying to drag it into her mouth while he screamed bloody murder. It was understandable, I guess. His girlfriend was trying to eat him, after all, and not in a fun way.

I headed toward the pair of zombies pinning my classmates in the far corner of the lab. Two was going to be tough. As soon as I got their attention, they’d probably come after me, same as the first one had when I stabbed it. I had to make the blows count.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

One of the zombies up ahead was Guildenstern, ironically. It felt almost poetic as I gave my next order. “Rosie, grab Guildenstern. Don’t let him get away or hurt anyone.”

My zombie rushed ahead, staggering into Guildenstern’s back and reaching around to grab both his arms. That gave him enough leverage that he’d pretty much locked the other zombie down. The other one, a cadaver I hadn’t caught the name of, turned and bit my zombie in the shoulder. I felt the injury as it happened. Not as pain, per se. But I was aware of the damage done to my creation.

“Hey! You leave Rosie alone!” I shouted as I rushed forward, club in hand. No holding back, this time.

I slammed the club into the side of the zombie’s head as hard as I could. It wobbled on its feet, almost going down but not quite. Then it turned toward me, that gaping maw of teeth opening as wide as a human mouth could. It lunged forward, and all I could think about was keeping those teeth away from me. I stabbed upward desperately with the sharp, broken end of my club.

The point went right into its mouth, and its forward rush impaled it on the spike. The zombie staggered and I watched the ‘aliveness’ vanish from its eyes. It sank to its knees, dragging my weapon down with it.

I had to put a hand on its forehead to get enough leverage to recover my weapon. When I did, another crystal popped into my palm. I snatched it up, hoping for something useful. That animate spell the professor got was way more interesting than my Control Undead spell.

Like before, this was another black gem. Same size, same color. It sank into my palm, and more memories flooded me.

It was the same spell. I’d gotten a second copy of the Control Undead gem. But somehow getting a second copy did something new anyway. The new memories were more than a simple repeat of the first set. This time, there was more context, more information.

A vision unfolded in my mind, showing the two gems coming together and merging into a new, slightly larger black stone. I knew intuitively that I could now control twice as many undead as before. Better still, I knew that I could do this again—merge more stones. Two more Control Undead stones would enable me to merge them all into an even larger crystal with greater power.

Magical Stones

Point 1: Black stone (Tier 2) - Control Undead

Point 2: ?

Point 3: X

Point 4: X

Point 5: X

How many stones could I have? I wasn’t clear on that, but there seemed to be a limit, and it wasn’t especially high. I’d been able to add a second stone because it was the same as the first one, and now it felt like that had opened up a second spot, so I could add a new type of spell, if I found one. That was good information to have.

But I needed to count my money later, and worry about the fight for now. I turned toward the pair of zombies struggling beside me and cast Control Undead for the second time. Black tendrils of what had to be magic curled out from my fingertips, wreathing Guildenstern with energy. The magic sank into his body, and then all at once, he was mine, too.

“Rosie, Guildenstern, stand guard,” I told them. They both obediently turned to face the rest of the room, and I went to deal with the students I’d just rescued. It was two men and a woman, all of them looking terrified.

“How did you do that?” one of the guys breathed. “You can control them?”

I didn’t see any sense in hiding data here. We were all in this together, at least for the time being. “If you kill one, then touch it, a crystal will appear. They give you some sort of power. Dr. Carver got one too.”

A quick glance over my shoulder told me Carver was still doing all right. He’d taken out Zombie Karen with a combination of his zombie and his club, and it looked like he was trying to calm Alfred down.

“What are they?” the woman in front of me asked.

“Zombies, I think?” I shrugged. “They got Stevens and Looming.”

“Oh shit,” the man who’d been silent said. He held up an arm with a bite mark on it. “Am I screwed?”

I shook my head, worried but unsure. “I don’t know, dude. I can say these aren’t traditional TV zombies. I stabbed one in the head with a scalpel, but it didn’t go down. Took beating it in the head with my phone to finish it. Stevens and Looming turned, but I don’t know if that’s because they were bitten, or because they died.”

He didn’t look terribly relieved. “I am so dead. So, so dead.”

“I’d give it a while to see before you give up,” I told him. “Would suck to assume you’re a dead man walking and do something dumb. Figure while you’re alive, there’s probably hope.”

Then I looked around. We’d curtailed the immediate problem. Carver had Karen’s zombie animated as well; he must have gotten a second copy of the same gem, just like me. It was creepy as heck watching two classmates shamble around as dead bodies, but then, it was also creepy having two naked zombies in front of me. I really needed to get them clothes, stat.

I did a head count. Both humans-turned-zombie were accounted for. Everyone still in the room was rescued. Most of the class had fled when things went crazy. I had Rosencrantz and Guildenstern beside me, and I’d smashed Mercutio pretty solidly.

But there had been six tables. With six cadavers.

Which meant three of them had escaped with the fleeing students.

Some days, it just wasn’t worth getting out of bed…!