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Call of the Void
(Rune Cost: 5 Void)
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Effect: Void all cards on the field.
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Lore: The one call that all must answer.
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This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
✪✪✪✪✪✪✪✪✪ (Void Rare)
#9,970
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It was late in the day, black smoke rolling through the abandoned convenience store, the groaning undead pressing against the glass doors that threatened to shatter, when Eric realized he was about to die. He couldn’t even make it quick—no more rounds left for his revolver.
“Shit,” he muttered. His 24 years amounted to this.
He racked his brain trying to come up with a solution. Zeds had the building surrounded. Everyone on the inside of the building, aside from him, was dead—dead-dead. The way they went down, they were going to stay down. Their corpses littered the blood-slick floor and filled the air with the smell of copper.
It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.
A dozen or so of the undead ones groaned just past the old-fashioned push doors. One of their sunken, rotting faces smeared against the glass on the other side of a bright orange window cling that read MEGA-FREEZE 99¢. There was a thin, rasping crunch—the doors were finally starting to give.
It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.
Stupid, stupid, stupid, Eric thought. Spiraling, he pistol-whipped himself with his empty revolver. It stung. Hard. His head spun for a second. If he couldn’t handle even this much pain, how would he possibly endure what came next?
It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.
He grimaced down at the bodies all around him. Soon, he’d be joining them—no, that was only if he was lucky. He’d probably be joining the stiffs outside instead. They would do unspeakable things to him first... and when he stopped moving, they’d leave him, wander off somewhere else. Then he’d rise again as one of them. And when it was all over for him, he’d be doomed to roam the earth and do the same to others.
It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.
His only alternative was to let the smoke take him. Would that really be preferable? Of course it would, but not by much. The jury was out on if the undead had any shred of consciousness left. The idea of putzing around for who knows how many years as a decaying predator, all the people he’d devour by instinct, while still being aware enough to know it was happening... yet powerless to stop it... That was too big of a risk for him to take.
It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. If he’d gotten here 10 minutes sooner, it wouldn’t have. But he didn’t. So it did.
He was dreading the first lick of fire on his skin when one of the glass doors shattered. The other one snapped at the hinges, dangling by the top one. Side by side, the undead shambled into the convenience store two at a time, their unfocused, glassy eyes aimed straight at him. Putrefied black saliva dribbled from their chomping brown teeth.
Eric ducked into the back of the store. Burns beat bites. Burns beat the hell out of bites. With any luck, maybe the flames could take some of the walking corpses down along with him. But he’d have to keep a low profile until the fire could do its work.
It wouldn’t take long. He had set it himself.
He grabbed the handle of a supply closet door, which was already warm to the touch despite no direct contact with the growing blaze. He ducked inside. Smoke stung his eyes and made him want to cough, but it wasn’t too thick here—not yet.
As he waited in the pitch black of the closet, he listened to the zombies’ low growls competing with the crackling of flames. A wall collapsed; whether it was their doing, or the fire’s, he couldn’t tell. Either way, it wouldn’t be much longer.
He willed himself to think happier thoughts. Memories of his parents before this apocalypse had taken them. Better yet, memories of his childhood, before the plague was even a developing story scrolling by on a news chyron. TV. He missed TV. He thought about TV, and the Internet, and pepperoni pizza, hot showers, clean bedsheets, the first Friday night of a summer vacation...
Eric was so immersed in thought that he almost didn’t notice the floor give way at first. Darkness became more darkness, but when the heat turned to cold and the wind whipped around him, he realized he was falling.
Falling and falling and falling across an impossible distance.
He let out the scream he’d been holding.