Chapter 47: Swamp Zombies
Darius
Darius had a lot of respect for Alley’s skills and knowledge. Even with his Deck Curse Locked the dark-haired boy was fast, stronger than he looked, and had a sort of knack for getting out of trouble on the fly. The fact still remained that Alley was presently further from his home island than he had ever been. The boy lacked real-world experience and was certainly no hunter.
So when six rotting figures burst from the water around the raft Darius was in motion a second or two before Alley even realized what was happening. It wasn’t that Darius had expected this but the way the birdsong and other sounds of the wetlands had tapered off as they polled down this particular waterway had clued him in that something dangerous was nearby.
With barely a wasted motion Darius tossed his river poll aside and kicked his spear which had been lying across the deck into his now free hands. The weapon was a primitive thing of wood, leather, and bone. Something that belied its penetrative force and durability, it was after all a magical weapon. Not in the way a linked item made with Resonance dust was but the more classical use of materials that had absorbed Resonance from unusual surroundings or had been heavily exposed to Resonance crystals.
The zombies came at the raft from all directions, pale gray hands clutching at the wooden sides of the flat bottomed vessels. It wasn’t really a very good strategy for getting at the boys as the zombies were extremely vulnerable while they pulled themselves out of the water.
Without their arms to defend themselves with the monster’s bald or lank-haired heads were easy pickings for Darius’ spear or Alley's hook. The real danger was that the raft would become destabilized if they couldn’t get the zombies away in short order.
Forgoing a flourish the redheaded boy got to work, shortening his grip on his spear Darius thrust through the face of a bald zombie before twisting himself and the weapon to hack into the neck of another. Behind him Alley had ripped the throat from one of the monsters with his hook and was presently trying to stomp kick another back down into the water.
Evidently, zombies didn’t need to breathe as the one Alley had de-throated hauled itself onto the raft and lunged at the dark-haired boy.
“Back Left!” Yelled Darius using the basic combat code the boys had developed as he twirled his spear to take a pair of grasping arms from another of the waterlogged creatures.
Without a word or a moment of hesitation, Alley reversed his grip on his hook while he spun on the spot, coming around to drive the tip of his hook into the throatless zombie’s temple. This it seemed was enough to stop the undead thing as it collapsed bonelessly onto the deck of the raft. Darius knew the trick to a spinning attack like the one Alley had delivered. Both boys had been taught it at the same time by Darius’ father. It might look like the person who did it had some near-supernatural level of perception to aim their attack blindly like that but it wasn’t the case. Whilst still turning you quickly glanced over your shoulder and adjusted your attacking weapon as you did so.
On the downside, this had left Alley’s hook stuck in the head, but with only one and three-quarters of a zombie left Darius had no problems dispatching them.
After recovering their river poles, Alley directed them to stop at a grassy little island without any trees that was barely thirty yards away. Darius was curious about why his friend wanted to pause here given they were on something of a timeframe here. He didn’t bother saying anything though, Alley would tell him what he was scheming sooner rather than later. The dark-haired boy loved to show off how smart he was and wouldn’t be able to resist explaining his thought process. Besides if Alley had some fancy reveal planned Darius didn’t want to step on his toes.
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It turned out there was no dazzling display of intellect to be had, Alley just wanted to watch the defeated Undead for a little bit. That proved a more interesting activity than Darius had anticipated. After only a few minutes a strange helix of Undeath Resonance began to flow together from the separate pieces of sliced up zombie. Alley made an interested noise and sat down on the bank, pulling a book and charcoal pencil from his pack to make notes. Darius raised an eyebrow.
“Where did you get that book?” The red-headed boy asked already knowing the answer.
“Like you said it is a library,” Said Alley with a grin.
While his friend made note of what he observed as the six zombies resurrected, Darius made ready to defend the tiny island. The different chunks of zombie were pulled by the Resonance helixes slowly back together. It seemed like the more destroyed the corpses were the longer the process took, but within ten minutes of being slain all six zombies were shambling their way through neck high water towards the pair of boys.
“You know.” Said Daris shaking his head. “These things are kind of a pain in the ass.”
Alley snorted with amusement but didn’t look up from the notes he was taking.
“Are you going to be okay by yourself?” Asked Ally who evidently couldn’t spare thirty hectic seconds to help his friend keep them alive.
“Of course I will.” Replied Darius dismissively, calling forth the four cards that made up a Trials Deck Hand.
With his deck in the equation, the group of monsters was almost disappointingly easy to deal with. Once they were all dead on the shore of the little grassy island Alley sprang to his feet. Still taking notes he approached the group of vivisected Undead.
“No Crystals inside them,” said the dark-haired boy chewing a lip. “How do you think you get Undeath Resonance Crystals?”
Darius shrugged in response. His parents had never had a use for hunting undead and thus had never taken him hunting the monster type. A fact he quickly relayed to his friend along with a very blatant.
“I have no fucking idea.”
After a few more minutes of poking and prodding at the slowly resurrecting zombies, Alley wrapped a bit of his creepy cloak around a hand and leaned down to try and turn one of the zombies into a Card. To the shock of both boys not only did it work, but the Dealer’s Card creation effect stopped the resurrection process in its tracks.
Rather than immediately inspect the Card like Darius expected him to Alley kept watching the remaining group of still reanimating zombies.
“Come on, let's get out of here.” Said Alley in a tone that told Darius his friend’s experimentation had only just begun.
Once they were on the move again the boys checked out the card they had created and found it more than a little wanting. Still, Darius supposed it would prove a quick and easy way to evolve a Card for Alley’s own growth, otherwise, he was pretty sure the Creature Card had hardly been worth the meager effort of acquiring it.
https://i.imgur.com/ZdDyN35.png [https://i.imgur.com/ZdDyN35.png]
That didn’t seem to deter Alley though, quite the opposite in fact. The dark-haired boy was practically twitching; he was so full of creative energy. As per usual he kept Darius in the dark for all but the first stage of his plan.
“Okay so it will take an hour for my Dealer’s creation effect to reset, but that's okay. In the meantime, I want to lead as many of those zombies as I can back to that little island.”
Darius knew there was no point asking, just like he had mused before the boy knew his friend got too much of a kick from revealing his schemes at the ‘right’ time. The hunter asked anyway.
“What the hell for?”
The only answer Alley gave was a “ You’ll see.” While he grinned from ear to ear.
The hour his Deck was useless had passed at least an hour ago when Alley declared they had gathered up enough undead. It was about fucking time as far as Darius was concerned. Keeping the monsters both following the raft without actually catching it had mostly fallen to the Knots boy. This mostly involved shoving the dead men and women back with his river pole or throwing rocks at their rotting heads if they fell too far behind. It was not a challenging task, at least not initially. Before long the little raft had close to twenty zombies on its heels and herding the monsters had become exponentially more difficult.
Still, once the swarming horde of dead people had been gathered together Alley grinned once more at Darius.
"Now for step two, we kill them all...again."