CHAPTER 33 - SHIELD WALL

I had my undead form a tight rank ahead of me as we entered the cemetery for what I hoped would be the last time. No promises; there were a lot of skeletons in there! But I had a good feeling about this run.

The skeletons were in the middle, my zombies on the outside. I’d noticed a tendency for the enemy undead to chase after my skeletons especially, and if that held true again I wanted to take advantage of the situation. Getting the enemy focused on the center of my shield wall would let the wings whack them, or so I hoped.

“Heh, shield wall,” I muttered with a grin. “Feels like I’m in a Netflix viking movie.”

And then we were inside, and I locked it down. We had already attracted some attention from the locals, which meant I needed to have my game face on. Hope trotted alongside me. She was my skirmisher—stronger than any one skeleton foe and faster to boot, she could help head off any incoming we picked up.

My primary role would be ensuring we didn’t get overrun. I knew that as soon as we got any distance from the gates, they’d be all over us. I needed to watch for it, be ready for it, and react fast when it happened.

The bulk of the cemetery lay south, to the left side of the gate, so that’s the direction we veered after entering. I kept our left flank within ten feet of the fence and marched us straight down the line. Right away, the skeletons saw us coming and moved to engage. Two of them came from our front and two from our right, and more poured across the grass as the word got out there were tasty tidbits available.

“Rosie, watch your flank,” I ordered. I pointed at the undead approaching us from the right. “Hope, block those incoming.”

That’s all I had time for before the initial clash. The oncoming undead smacked into the rough shields with a mixture of a crash and a thud, depending on whether they collided with aluminum or plastic. Whichever the case, the shields held, and that’s what mattered. My undead held the shields at almost arm-length, then brought them in as the enemy hit the shields, absorbing the rush without taking damage.

After that, it was easy. There were only two of them in this first test, and they faced four weapons capable of delivering some serious blunt-force trauma. Both skeletons went down in seconds.

“Yes!” I shouted. “Advance!”

My line pushed ahead enough that I was able to tap each of the fallen undead, gaining two new black crystals. A glance to my right told me Hope was still running the other two skeletons ragged, but there were more approaching her. She wasn’t going to be able to keep that up forever. But she’d wounded one enemy, so I dropped Drain Life on it, which finished it off.

Now we had six enemies directly ahead, and four more approaching from the right, still a little ways off. The six hit the shields first, and this time my line was forced back a step from the sheer force of the enemy charge. But then Rosie took one down with a well-placed blow to a shoulder followed by a head shot that fractured the skull. The skeletons in the center of my line teamed up and beat one enemy down. But my team was struggling.

I didn’t want to cast another Drain, not yet. I needed my wits about me, and I wanted to see how close together I could chain cast them, so I was estimating about a minute before I cast again. If I could cast once every minute without being worn down, that would be good to know.

Instead, I rushed to the line and brought my axe down between two of the shields, landing hard on the head of an enemy undead. It staggered, almost falling, and one of my skeletons finished the job.

But more of them were coming at us from the side, now. Rosie pivoted—he had been watching his flank, good zombie! His shield caught the first of the new wave of attackers, while the rest of the shield wall was three against three. Those kind of odds were stacked deeply in our favor, thanks to the shields and weapons. Rosie was going to end up overwhelmed, though. There were two of the things facing him, another right behind, and six more coming about ten feet back.

I stepped up alongside Rosie and hammered a blow down, shattering the neck of the nearest skeleton. There wasn’t time to loot it; another undead replaced it almost as soon as it fell. Rosie’s blows kept coming. He was a killer with that baseball bat, and it was taking a serious toll on the enemy force.

But we were coming too close to being overwhelmed. “Withdraw! Fight them as we back up to the gate.”

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

The line did as I ordered, slowly marching backward, killing more enemies with every step. We left a path of broken undead littering the ground during our withdrawal. So far, not bad. With Rosie and I holding the flank and Hope running interference out there in the grass, slowing and distracting the oncoming undead, we were able to back up almost as fast as they came at us.

Then, disaster.

One of my skeletons stumbled over something as it stepped back, and went down. Two enemy undead tackled it before it could get back to its feet.

“Defend our team! Hold the line!” I shouted to them.

They were already on it—my undead beat the hell out of those two skeletons, but the damage was done. They’d killed my guy, and now we had a hole in the wall. Losing the guy wasn’t the end of the world; I could always animate more. The hole was sealed quickly when Guildenstern closed ranks, pulling in closer to the other friendly skeleton. But we lost the shield and hammer. Equipment mattered. With the shields and weapons, my guys were at least twice as effective as they’d been before. We’d killed a lot of skeletons.

Staying alive mattered more, though. I could maybe send Hope dashing in to recover the gear later. For now, we needed to finish our withdrawal before they could block us off. The space in front of our shield wall was now a veritable sea of undead, and only their disorganization and lack of arms was keeping us alive.

I cast Drain Life again, and was thrilled to see that I wasn’t wiped out from the cast. It had been something like a minute, and that was what I needed to know: how fast I could chain cast the spell without wearing myself out so much that I was useless. I’d need to test, and see how close I could cut it, but this was a start.

All at once we were in the clear. The enemy undead had reached the point they wouldn’t cross. We were back near the gate again. I kept us backing up a little further, just to be absolutely sure we were in the clear. Then I left the undead on guard and sagged to the ground. I drank deep from my water bottle, wiping sweat from my brow. Swinging that axe around over and over was hard work!

It didn’t take me long to get reset. I had Hope run out to grab the shield, then dash back over to fetch the hammer our skeleton had dropped. I didn’t bother having her fetch skulls again. From my rough count, we’d left something like ten unlooted piles of bone, which would be nice to get, but I wanted to finish this, not still be fighting these creatures days from now. The sooner I killed them all off, the better.

Once I had the shield and hammer back, I raised another skeleton and armed it, and we went back in.

We had more experience this time, or at least I did, and that was critical, since I was the one calling the shots. We didn’t follow the fence, this time. Instead of following it straight south, we went in at a south-west angle, straight into the biggest pack of undead nearby.

There were fifteen of them, and I believed we could do this. My team did a shield rush, slamming into the front rank of undead. My zombies knocked two skeletons straight off their feet, while the others stopped the opposing enemies in their tracks. Hammers and bats came raining down, one after another. I sent Hope around the side, harrying the edge of the enemy formation. She ripped a leg bone away from a skeleton in what was becoming her signature attack, knocking it off its feet. That made it simple for Guildie to finish it off.

I cast Drain Life, then started counting. This time, I tried casting it again at a thirty-count instead of sixty seconds. I felt tired after the second cast, but not wiped out. From the feeling, I could keep that up a few times in a row, but not indefinitely. Everything I did to learn where my new limits were helped make me stronger and better able to fight.

Only a couple of minutes later, all fifteen skeletons were dead, and we were backpedaling hard again to avoid the mass rush coming our way. We didn’t even lose anyone, this time, and we’d crushed even more of them.

I sat back down to rest, drinking some more water, and did a rough headcount of enemy skeletons. It was getting easier to pick them out, now that there were fewer. I had overestimated, early on. I’d figured there were at least a hundred of the things, but I’d just killed over two dozen between those two assaults, and there weren’t forty left in the whole graveyard. I really had thought there were more, but I’d either miscounted, or they were hiding somewhere in the trees deeper in the cemetery.

Once I was rested, we moved back on the attack again. Shield wall up, we moved to the edge of our ‘safe zone’ and I watched for a big, nearby group. I saw one right away, a cluster of eight undead not far away, and a little closer to the fence. They were even headed our way, but as soon as I had my shield wall advance, they stopped coming at us and just waited there.

Weird behavior, for them—I’d been used to them coming at me with a fury as soon as I came into the space they could approach. Were they getting smarter, somehow? I glanced around but didn’t see a trap waiting to spring, so I chalked it up to weirdness, although I decided to be extra cautious and watch for trouble even more intently than usual.

“Advance,” I told my guys. “Let’s take them out!”

My shield wall marched forward at a quick pace and crashed into the enemy, hammers and bats falling with quick blows, four of the enemy dropping instantly. The other four backed up further, though, forcing my team to advance again to keep up. And then the undead continued backing away.

No way this wasn’t a trap. I pulled back from my line and looked around, trying to see the jaws before they could close on us. I called out to my shield wall. “Pull back. We need to withdraw, and—“

BANG! The door to a little shack I’d barely even noticed shot open with a crashing noise, and undead poured out of the shack, each of them carrying some sort of gardening implement. I saw hedge shears, hoes, rakes, trowels—you name it, if it was a tool in the gardening section of Home Depot, one of those things was carrying it.

The shack was off to my right, and it was danger close. We were about to get smacked hard.