Chapter 76 - Something Malevolent

I guess we had a plan, anyway. It wasn’t one I was thrilled with, as it put Kara immediately in harm’s way. She was the one putting herself at risk, though. Same as I was. I hoped she’d be okay, but there wasn’t a lot else I could do to ensure that.

No, that wasn’t entirely true. I reached out with my mind toward the undead I controlled. Hope was still dashing around the parking lot, legging the odd zombie and then zipping off to attack another one. I redirected her, asking the skeleton dog to keep an eye on Kara and help protect her if she was attacked. Hope dashed off, chasing after my friend.

I couldn’t even see Kara anymore. She’d completely vanished. Had to be that new spell she had. If it allowed her to hide that well even in broad daylight, that was way cooler than I’d given it credit before. I caught a quick glimpse of her as she dashed from one row of cars to another, but as soon as she was back in shadow, she vanished again. That was cool as hell. Maybe she would pull this off.

If she was going to be able to loot the dead ones, I had to do two things to help. First, I needed to make a lot more zombies dead. Second, I had to get the bulk of their force away from the Target store. Right now the damned zombies were still streaming from the hole we’d made in the glass, and as I watched more came out both entryways to Target, too.

“Sue, smack those guys again for me, would you?” I said.

The dinosaur turned and blasted the enemy again, blowing a bunch of them into the air. It was kind of fun, watching the Fireballs go off. Sort of like ‘bowling for zombies,’ in a way.

The rest of my undead were all off to one side, but they were attracting some attention. I didn’t want that. It was better for me to be the sole focus of the horde, so I could lead them all on a merry chase. I ordered my undead to withdraw, pulling back into a little copse of trees next to the parking lot. From there they were to play defense if anything came after them, but otherwise hunker down.

If Kara needed backup, they’d be relatively close to her. I could send the whole batch in to distract attackers and give her a chance to escape, if things went sideways.

We got off one more Fireball, and I cast Drain Life twice, knocking down two more foes, before they started getting close enough I felt I had to worry about it. I directed Sue to dash about twenty feet, then turn and set up again. The good news was, we had plenty of runway, as the mall had an enormous parking lot. The further we got from the stores, the fewer cars were parked there, too. Made it easier to hit the bad guys without stuff in the way.

These zombies were sort of middle-speed. Like, they weren’t the ‘fast zombies’ from “28 Days Later.” But they weren’t the slow zombies you saw in old movies, either. Something closer to the middle of the road, like a “Walking Dead” style zombie. Sue, on the other hand, was able to hit something like twenty or thirty miles an hour, by my best guess. And unlike a living T.rex, Sue didn’t get tired running at that pace. They could probably keep it up forever.

Shit, escaping from a monster like Sue would be a nightmare, wouldn’t it? I mean, the thing would just keep chasing you…forever. Until you killed it or it killed you, or it somehow lost the trail. And good luck getting away from something that fast with no working automobiles.

A black ray shot from the mob, smacking Sue in the side. My dinosaur roared in pain from the Harm spell, and I scanned the mob of enemies, looking for the casters. Some of them were harder to spot than others, but it looked like zombie casters weren’t a thing. Whatever was making the skeleton mages, presumably the boss of this army we hadn’t seen yet, it had some of the powers of a necromancer.

“There!” I shouted, pointing. Sue followed my mental commend, pivoting toward the skeleton mage, and fired. Three seconds later, the offending skeleton was a pile of smoking bones, the zombies surrounding it aflame.

I moved us further away again, casting Heal Undead as we went. Keeping Sue in fighting trim was vital. If the dinosaur went down, I’d have no choice but to run for it and hope I could outrun this mess. The thoughts I’d just had about the difficulty fleeing undead came roaring back. Nope, keeping Sue upright was key, much more important than spending mana to take a few zombies down with Drains.

Scanning the legions coming at me, I watched for more skeletons, picking them off where I could and having Sue Fireball them otherwise. I also tried to get a rough count of what we were facing. It just wasn’t possible. Even trying to guess, I just failed. There were over two hundred zombies outside the mall at that point, more still coming, but it had finally slowed some. They continued to pour out the hole we’d made in the glass and the south entrance, but the east entrance slowed, then stopped.

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I spotted Kara make a dash to that door, Hope close behind. A zombie exited the building in front of her, and she took it down with a slash of her sword. Then she was back in the shadows next to the building and I lost sight of her again. I figured she’d gotten inside, though. From there, she’d go try looting the ones we killed. All I had to do was keep the rest of them busy.

Another short sprint to get some distance and we were trotting down the road that snaked through the middle of the parking lot. Not many cars stalled out, there, so the way was mostly open. That helped Sue sprint faster, and it gave the zombies no cover from Fireballs. I ordered Sue to spit another one, and another set of zombies went down.

“What we’re doing here is working, but oh my god is this taking forever,” I muttered.

Each Fireball killed a few zombies. Sue could cast Fireball about four times a minute or so, with all the running around we had to do, so we were taking out maybe as many as a dozen a minute. After ten minutes of ‘kiting’ the army, we’d left a string of dead zombies stretching over a hundred meters, but there were still at least two hundred more out there facing us. On the plus side, the zombies had finally all but stopped leaving Target. A few still trickled out the south entrance, but only occasionally.

Kara was in there, I knew that, and I hoped she was being careful. At least the flow of zombies through the store had pretty much stopped. She could loot the dead without worrying about being overrun.

There was a massive crashing noise to my left, and the main entrance next to the Applebee’s tore open, releasing another horde of undead. That was on the east side of the mall, and a little south from where Sue stood. In effect, they were setting up a pincer movement to trap me.

“Not cool,” I said, glancing around for some way to keep from being trapped between the two groups. The whole operation had just gotten much more dangerous.

This was a planned attack, now. I felt sure of that. The initial surge? That was easy to explain as zombies hearing a noise and chasing whatever made the sound. When we busted in the glass going into Target, we’d woke the whole army, so they chased.

But this second group, pouring from precisely the exit where they would be most threatening to me? There was no way that was an accident. If they’d popped out of the Victoria’s Secret instead, they wouldn’t have been a major problem. The two hordes would have merged.

I glared at the mall entrance. I saw the zombies easily enough once they were outside in daylight, but of the space inside, I could see nothing. Whatever was inside was shrouded in shadow, effectively invisible. In spite of that, I still had a sense of being watched by something malevolent. Our boss foe was out there, somewhere. We’d woke up the leader.

That made all of this ten times as dangerous. Dumb undead were relatively easy to kill. Guided, controlled undead were another thing entirely.

As I watched, both sets of zombies formed up, building themselves into ranks. They started using the cars for cover, especially the ones south of me—and I realized with a start that a bunch of those were carrying shields, too! They were crappy shields, tossed together without much real thought. But they’d soak up a lot of the damage from Sue’s Fireballs.

I Drained one shield-carrying zombie as it came into range, then another, but there was a limit to how many I could take on that way, and there were far more shields than I had mana.

My options were running out. I sent Sue mental commands to turn and run back toward Dorset Street. The zombie mobs had formed up into two solid forces, each maneuvering to pin me between them. My only real option was to run east, away from both groups. Predictably, they followed.

I pointed Sue at the southern force. They had the shields, and they were close enough to me that they were about to become a serious problem if I didn’t deal with it. Sue hit them with a Fireball, but as I expected it hit the massive shields and broke apart. The spell might have injured a couple of them, but it wasn’t slowing their advance.

“Okay, we need to collaborate on this now,” I said, patting Sue’s bones.

This time, I dropped a Drain on a shield-holding zombie, taking him down and putting a gaping hole in their shield wall. Then I had Sue spit a Fireball. The spell flew true, striking the gap perfectly and blasting apart their ranks.

They reformed quickly, though, forcing me all the way out onto Dorset Street. Once I was out in the road, I turned Sue around to hit them again, but I was shocked at what I saw.

Instead of chasing me, the zombies were all returning back the way they’d come.

The ones with shields were making a slow but steady withdrawal, using their shields as cover. The other, larger group didn’t have shields, so they just turned and moved back toward the Target building as fast as their zombie legs could carry them.

It was a full retreat. They weren’t even stopping to collect their dead, so every zombie I’d killed outside was going to win us more crystals. That part was awesome.

The less awesome part was worrying about Kara. I couldn’t see her, had no idea where she might be. But I’d asked Hope to keep her guarded, and I could tell where Hope was. The dog was inside Target.

Right in the path of over two hundred returning zombies, trotting back along the same path they’d taken to chase me. In another minute, all of them would be inside the building again, and Kara was going to find herself completely surrounded!