Their base was in an abandoned mine.

There were lots of abandoned towns from before the Zombies started spreading across the world. It usually gave the Bokor a place to stay while they walked from walled city to walled city. There were also times when a walled city would fall and the people would move to other cities, which provided another place for the Bokor to use on their travels.

One time Master Bran had found some outlaws living in one of the abandoned cities. I wasn’t sure what he did to them, if anything, but we didn’t stay there that night. There were a few people like that. People who preferred to take their chances outside the city rather than live under a society’s rules.

I’d never understood why someone would leave a safe city to travel from place to place and hope to outrun any Zombies that found you. It had seemed crazy to me, but the longer I was in cities, the more I understood just how much of a headache humans could be.

I could tell that the other two humans were very upset with me as we entered the abandoned city. I didn’t know what I could say that would make it seem better, so I just said nothing. I hoped I’d have a chance to try to explain myself later. There was also a chance that they’d see that I was on their side during my talk with the Master, who I desperately hoped wasn’t a rogue Bokor.

The mine itself was fairly impressive. The mouth of the cave had been walled over, but something had smashed a hole in the wall and now the only way I knew the whole cave mouth had been walled over was that there were still some stones stuck to the upper lip.

Inside. There were Zombies milling about, moving rocks out of the cave and there were some using mining tools to completely tear down the broken houses.

That part scared me a little. If Zombies could be taught to use simple weapons, then they’d become so much more dangerous.

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“How long have they been able to do that?” I pointed at a Zombie that was swinging a pickaxe.

“Master taught them how to do that last week!” Despite me stabbing the Touched through the heart and almost cutting off his head, he was being very friendly. I think I found that to be even more concerning than if he had been being combative. I was also starting to get concerned about his Master. To coordinate this many Zombies, have them perform tasks, and to use tools was frightening. I’d never heard about a Touched who could coordinate this many Zombies let alone the rest of what they were doing.

Neither of the Wranglers had their swords taken away. They didn’t have them out, but they both had their hands on their hilts.

“How much longer?” I looked around the mine. It wasn’t the brightest, using flames for light around Zombies was just asking for an explosion. I wasn’t having too much trouble seeing, since I could still see in almost no light, but I was sure that the humans were feeling very exposed as we went deep in the mine.

“Not long.” The Touched pointed towards what looked like a door in the west side of the tunnel. It walked over and opened the door and motioned for us to go inside. Both Wranglers backed up, so I cut in front of them and looked in. There was a woman seated behind a desk and a cloaked figure in the corner behind her. She was doing something with papers and didn’t bother to look up. There were two chairs on our side of the desk, but nothing else in the room. I looked over at the Toughed and raised my eyebrow.

“This is Master.” He motioned for us to go in.

I looked at the two Wranglers. I could tell they were afraid, but I wasn’t going to leave them in the mine with a Touched and all those Zombies.

“It’s probably safer in there than it is out here.” I walked inside and motioned for them to follow.

Neither of them moved until a mob of Zombies began to form around them, that was sufficient enough motivation for them to come inside.

Once we were all inside, I took the right chair and Eveth took the left. Jaz leaned against the doorframe as the Touched closed the door behind us.

“Good.” There was a melody to the Master’s voice. “Now that you’re here we can begin talking.”