Chapter 72 - Lady Death

Sue bounded down the hill toward the advancing army of zombies and spat out a quick Fireball on the way. The spell exploded right in front of the horde, sending clods of dirt flying in all directions and stalling their advance for a critical few seconds. Confused, leaderless, and without any real direction, the undead surged ahead anyway, trying to make their way through the mess the impact made.

But then we were right in their midst. Sue ripped the top half off a zombie and sent it flying dozens of feet before it crashed to the earth again. The dinosaur stomped on another zombie, crushing it into the soil. Sue was a true wrecking ball, able to drop zombies faster than anything I’d seen before.

There were a lot of zombies coming our way, though. The nearest ones grabbed into her leg bones, turning themselves into dead weights, slowing Sue down. I blasted one of them with a Drain, forcing it to let go. Sue kicked another off. But there were too many of them, and the zombies quickly had us surrounded.

“Not good. So not good,” I muttered, wishing I’d brought Kara and the rest of my undead along for this trip. I could definitely use some additional backup.

Fighting them like this wasn’t a winning proposition. The zombies were already trying to climb Sue’s legs. Give them enough time and they’d clamber their way up to me, and I’d be fighting hand to hand from the top of a moving dinosaur in a field full of zombies. Sounded to me like the perfect recipe for disaster.

I shot Sue a mental command, ordering the dino to get clear. They ran northeast, sort of perpendicular to the zombie horde’s line of advance. This did a couple of things for us. First, it shook most of the undead off her legs. Just as important, it got the zombies following us, rather than continuing their advance toward the ratkin.

With them chasing us instead of surrounding us, I had a little more breathing room. I also had a few more tiers worth of Control Undead left to me—four, in fact. I quickly Controlled the two zombies still hanging from Sue’s legs, ordering them to turn and hack their way into the horde. They rushed to the attack, and each of them felled an enemy zombie before the bad guys figured out I was using their own forces against them.

As soon as the horde realized what I’d done, they tore my two zombies apart. But that just left me more Control points free again, so I use the spell four more times, controlling four zombies on the army’s right flank. I waited until I had all four under my power before ordering them to attack.

They turned on the flank, ripping into the nearest enemy zombies and taking down several. It was awesome! If I could keep this up a little longer, I could whittle this force down substantially. Just keep them chasing Sue while I slowly Controlled a few at a time, and eventually they’d all be dead. I wasn’t going to get crystals from the ones I controlled, but that was a price I was willing to pay to keep these assholes busy a little longer.

I turned Sue around because we were running out of space to stay ahead of them. We sprinted back in the other direction, the zombies still hot on our tail. Before we’d taken two steps, though, a black ray shot from the horde, slamming into my shoulder.

Pain raced through me. The spell almost threw me off Sue’s back; I barely managed to hang on. Before I could stabilize myself, a second beam hit me, and this time I screamed. It felt like all my nerves were on fire. I ducked down, trying to make myself as small as possible on Sue’s back, and commanded her to run as fast as she could, and get clear. A third beam slammed into her side, staggering her for only a moment before she returned to her regular pace.

Those were Harm spells; I’d cast them myself, so I recognized the magic in play. But what was casting them? I hadn’t seen signs of a spell caster in the mix out there, but it was almost full dark now, so I might have missed something. I cast a Drain Life on the nearest zombie, which refilled my health enough that I could concentrate again.

But Sue was hit by two more black beams, and this time the spells almost made her lose her footing entirely. If the dino went down, I was screwed, so I cast Heal Undead to repair the damage their Harm spells were doing.

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The Harm spell was clearly low level. I was guessing tier one, maybe tier two at most. That meant it probably wasn’t a human necromancer out there. I was looking for some sort of undead monster that could cast. I’d seen a few, like skeleton mage, pop up when I was using Animate Dead. Maybe there were some creatures like that in the horde?

I watched the horde as we raced away from it, looking for clues. If I could spot the undead that were casting the spell, I could Control or Drain them. But I needed to see them, first. Another beam shot from the center of the mass, striking me in the shoulder. The pain was intense, but I bit my lip and kept watching for the caster.

There! I caught a flash of white in the middle of the mess. That had to be bone. A skeleton? Maybe it was a skeleton mage. If so, I’d been seriously missing a trick by not animating some of those myself. They were pretty strong.

I reached out with my magic and cast Control on the skeleton mage. It locked down under my control instantly. Awesome! I had a secret ally now. If I could keep the others from figuring it out for a few minutes, maybe I could do some good with it. I ordered the mage to zap zombies, instead of me. It took a few seconds before the timer on its spell reset, but then I felt it cast. Somewhere out there in the mass of zombies, one of them was having a very bad day.

Now that I knew what to look for, I hunkered down on Sue’s back, watching for flashes of white. I saw a second one and took it over, too, ordering it to blast zombies from within the pack. It wasn’t much, but it was something. I was whittling them down, and each zombie I killed now was one I wouldn’t have to worry about later.

Sue tossed another Fireball in the direction of the horde, then I guided us both back up the hill toward the Staples parking lot. Another ray of Harm hit Sue as we fled, but I was able to heal that well enough. Those ranged undead were a lot more powerful than I’d guessed before, though. I was going to need to acquire some of those for my own army, soon as possible.

Thankfully, the ratkin had already begun their march, a long column of furry bodies leading north from the PetCo, across the road, and through the Hilton complex on the other side of the highway. I heaved a sigh of relief at that. If they’d still be struggling to get their act together, I wasn’t sure what else I could do. Those zombies would be up the hill in minutes, and we needed to be away before they could see where we were going. The last thing I wanted was for us all to be besieged in the fort all night.

Patches was waiting for me with a small rear guard of five other armed ratkin. “Come quick! We go. All others already gone.”

“Good timing,” I told him. “Let’s get this show on the road, then.”

The ratkin rushed to join their brethren in flight, and I pulled up the absolute rear, sitting backwards on Sue so I could see where we’d come from. I watched as the first zombies scaled the hill and ambled through the parking lot. Without a direct threat, they seemed uncoordinated as they wandered their way to the Staples building. I heard glass shatter—the front-runners had reached the glass windows on the building and were breaking their way in.

Whoever was commanding these undead still wasn’t out and about yet. They’d issued orders for their undead, same as I could for mine. But without having their eyes on the target, they couldn’t change those orders on the fly as the situation changed.

If I gave an order like ‘go attack that building and kill everything in it, plus anything else that gets in your way,’ they’d do precisely that. If the inhabitants of the building had just departed, though, the undead would keep following their orders anyway.

As I finished crossing the street and moved into the shadows around the hotel, the last redness of the setting sun left the sky. Behind me, the undead were storming the strip mall. More sounds of breaking glass reached me across the distance. There wasn’t going to be much left of the place by the time they were done. But I was beginning to have hope that we’d get away clean, here.

If any of the undead were smart enough to track us, it ought to be easy enough to do. Even if the ratkin had managed to travel with no trace—which objectively, I noted they were not doing, and I couldn’t blame them since they were fleeing at top speed—Sue left a trail a blind person could follow. As soon as I left the pavement we were leaving big dinosaur-skeleton tracks everywhere we went, ripping up the soil.

Once we were in the forest, I felt much better. That was ridiculous, really. The undead weren’t going to be afraid to follow us. But I felt the rest of my undead not far ahead, and I knew that fort represented at least a little shelter and security. If that horde came calling, we’d have mostly-sturdy walls between them and us.

Closing the gap in the walls would have to be a top priority, assuming I was even keeping the place. If I handed it over to the ratkin, that would be their problem, but it opened the bigger one of wondering where I ought to go next. I had cheap labor, which was cool because it meant building a new fortress wouldn’t be impossible, just a lot of work.

We were getting close. I called down to Patches. “I’m going to ride to the front, to make sure they get inside safely. Join me as quick as you can.”

“We will. Thank you, Lady Death.”

I blinked, surprised at the weird name. I almost went to correct him with my real name, but then shook my head and started on my way. I guess from their perspective, that title fit.