It took nearly twenty minutes for everyone to get their bags packed and ready to go. The group scrambled up the embankment and onto the highway blacktop, all of them hunched against the wind and the rain. Shane gave a last look back at the SUV then turned his attention towards finding shelter.
The road ahead rose and curved away to the left. Not far away, the group could see a small pileup of cars and a big rig truck. Moving steadily but carefully they came closer to the crash site. Shane motioned for everyone to stop. “I think we need to check for survivors.” He looked to the others, “I can go alone if you all want to stay tight right here. I’ll be as quick as I can.” He nervously gripped the tire iron.
“No way!” Barked Brom. “No one goes anywhere alone.”
“He’s right.” Malcolm shivering, added, “It’s always a bad idea to split the party.”
“So, what should we do? We can’t just leave someone here if they’re hurt.” Shane could not simply walk away. Not when he had the means to possibly help someone.
Kenzie spoke, “We go as a group. Stay together and stay aware.”
Brom gave her a discerning look, “You gonna hurl again if we have to kill another zombie?” With his arm around Brynn, he could feel her shiver even more at the mention of the monsters.
Kenzie took a firmer grip on her spear and eyed Brom back with a steely gaze, “That won’t happen again.” She said it as if it were a command. Brom nodded back at her, and the group began moving once more.
“Guys, hold up.” Malcolm stated. He held out his arm and a staff appeared in his hands. It was made of some dark wood and had steel caps on both ends. The entire thing was carved with intricate runes, including the steel caps.
“Damn!” Brom exclaimed.
“Dude, where’d that come from?” Shane asked incredulously.
“Probably the same place Kenzie’s spear and Brom’s sword came from. It’s what I got with my boon. The Staff of the War Magi!” Malcolm proudly displayed the staff.
Shane raised his eyebrows as Brom added, “Um, yeah, my sword is actually a spell called Champions Blade. My boon was the Titan Lineage.”
Shane glanced behind himself at the wreckage, torn between wanting to check for survivors and wanting to know what his friends could now do. “Okay gang. Once we find a safe place, we can all compare notes on spells and stuff, but for now, let’s look for survivors and then find shelter.”
They all agreed and continued to carefully approach the mangled cars. At his insistence, Shane went just a little ahead of the others to begin checking cars. He assumed that if there were dead bodies, the others did not need to witness them and if there were survivors, he could motion them over to help. Unfortunately, he had to get within a few feet of the cars to see anything through the rain.
Shane counted about eight cars that he could see and the one semi. The first cars he found had no one in them, but there was blood. The semi’s driver door was open, and the cab was empty except for quite a lot of blood. As the group made their way towards the back of the semi-trailer to go around and investigate the rest of the cars, they all froze as they heard an odd noise coming from the rear of the pile-up.
Brom gently nudged Brynn behind himself as Kenzie stepped up next to him. Shane and Malcolm stood just behind them with Brynn sandwiched in between. As they stood there, the sound became louder until it was apparent that it was a chorus of the moans that they had heard from the zombie earlier.
Brom began moving everyone backward as a person stepped around from the back of the trailer, immediately followed by another then another. They seemed to be wandering aimlessly. That is until Brynn screamed as she saw them in full view.
The scream startled everyone as the shambling people all turned in unison towards the small, scared group of friends. The moaning of the few that could already be seen was taken up by more moans coming from behind the wreckage. Malcolm placed his hand over Brynn’s mouth which surprised her enough to stop her screams.
Shane, feeling braver than before, used his Inspect ability and found them to all be level one human zombies. “Guys! They’re all level one! They each have twenty HP!”
Brom looked surprised at Shane, “What, are you suggesting we actually fight them?”
Shane raised his eyebrows and shrugged, giving Brom a look of, “What else can we do?”
With a resigned sigh, Brom turned back to the oncoming undead. “Fine. Kenzie and I will do what we can. The rest of you stay back.” With that, a glowing two-handed sword appeared in his grasp. “Kenzie, you take that one, I’ll take this one.” He indicated the two lead zombies staggering their way, arms outstretched.
Shane thought that if it weren’t so frightening, it would be almost comical as the zombies acted just like out of a bad horror movie. He moved to place himself in front of Malcom and Brynn, hefting his tire iron just in case.
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Malcolm called out, “Go for the head!” Shane gave him a look. “What? That’s the first rule of fighting zombies.”
Brom and Kenzie moved in unison, almost as if they had practiced it. Brom’s sword cleaved down into the zombie’s shoulder while Kenzie planted her spear directly into the left eye of the female zombie in front of her. Shane could see her emotionally adjust to what she had just done as she pulled the spear free. The now truly dead corpse crumpled to the ground. Meanwhile, Brom did not stay still, after cleaving his first opponent literally in two, he swung the sword in a huge arc overhead and brought it parallel to the ground and cleanly decapitated another.
“Hah! We totally got this!” He stepped away from the trailer to allow Kenzie room to fight then targeted his next enemy.
The duo slashed and stabbed a few more zombies as they rounded the end of the trailer only to back pedal as a group of about ten came around in a mass of grasping hands and chomping teeth. It was at this time that Brom slipped in the mud and went down hard on his side, dropping his sword, which dissipated into vapor. The zombies wasted no time in capitalizing on his fall and, as a single entity, fell on top of him.
“No!” Shane yelled.
“Brom!” Brynn cried out in terror at seeing her brother covered in a churning mass of dead people trying to eat him.
Kenzie stood frozen in fright at the scene until something in her seemed to awaken and she screamed as she began stabbing her spear into the bodies that she felt she could safely hit without accidentally hitting Brom. She was also suddenly covered in a ghostly glowing suit of fur and leather Viking armor.
After a few seconds, Kenzie had a harder time finding an opening when an odd sound came from the pile of thrashing bodies. It was laughter.
Everyone stood confused as the laughter continued which was then followed by excited cursing. “Fuck you! And fuck you!” Unexpectedly, Brom began to stand in the middle of the pack of ghouls. He had no sword but was instead punching the individual undead in their heads. He pushed one away from himself, “Get off you nasty fuck!” He turned towards another one, “Oh, you want some?” followed by a heavy blow to its face, toppling it off its feet. Finally noticing his friends standing agog he grinned widely, “Isn’t this freaking great? They can’t break my skin!” He then turned back to one, grabbed its head in his hands and began twisting until its neck broke, “Die motherfucker!”
Kenzie stepped back in to help and between the two they managed to destroy the rest. Both warriors were breathing hard by the end, but whereas Kenzie had a serious look on her face, it was obvious that Brom was elated. As the two began to walk back to their friends, they watched as Malcolm, wild eyed, leveled his staff at them and promptly fired off what looked and sounded like a blaster bolt from Star Wars. They both dodged away from the bolt which flew directly between them.
Brom, his anger riled up yelled, “What the hell little man?”
In answer, Malcolm unleashed another bolt, but this time Brom realized he and Kenzie were not the targets. He followed the path of the bolt to see a zombie falling to the ground, a hole in its chest and one bore directly through its forehead.
Brynn yelled in panic once again while Brom’s demeanor changed instantly as he turned back to regard the teenager, “Now that’s what I’m talking about! How come you didn’t do that earlier?”
Kenzie yelled, “What the hell was that?” as she strode up to Malcolm.
Cowed by his sister’s anger, he sheepishly said, “Eldritch Bolt.”
Shane, wide eyed, looked at his friends. “That was…” He was at a loss for words.
“Epic? Bad ass?” Brom smiled.
Brynn ran up to him and gave him a hug and was instantly repulsed, “Oh my God! That is so gross!” She began to wipe her hands on her jeans.
Brom glanced down at his torn-up jacket which was now smeared with mud and other unsavory fluids. “Heh! Sorry.” He shrugged, finding her antics amusing.
Shane placed a hand on Brom’s shoulder. “You okay man? Seems like you may be losing it.”
“Nah. I’m good.” He gave Shane a serious look, “I just feel, I don’t know, free, powerful, confident. Kind of hard to explain. But I’m not going psycho if that’s what you’re worried about.”
Kenzie interrupted, “Guys, can we talk about shit later? It’s freezing out here and we really need to find some shelter.” She turned to speak to Malcolm only to find him standing over the corpse of the zombie he had put down, staring rather morbidly at it. He then bent down and touched it. Kenzie rushed over and grabbed his jacket collar, yanking him to his feet, “What the hell are you doing?’
Malcolm, with an expression of curiosity more than anything else responded, “We can loot them.”
“I’m sorry what? We are not going through their pockets. What’s wrong with you?” Kenzie was working herself up to a new level of freaked out.
Malcolm was quick to notice the rising panic in his sister, “No no no! It’s not like that!” The others, having heard Kenzie’s rising tone rushed over as Malcolm explained. “In a lot of video games, you can touch or interact with the body of a dead enemy and see what kind of loot they have on them. I just wanted to know if this was the same, and it is. You just have to touch the body and think Loot and you’ll get a screen with what the person had on them that’s worth taking. I got six copper pieces.”
Upon hearing that Brom bent down and touched one of the bodies then stood up quickly, “Holy shit! He’s right!” He quickly moved around touching the other bodies much to Brynn’s dismay as she clutched Shane’s jacket and basically hid behind him. Brom got to one body and called Kenzie over, “Hey, you killed this one and I can’t loot it. You probably can though.”
Disgusted by the act, but trusting Brom, she placed a finger on the corpse and thought, Loot. A screen popped up for her, surprising her. Just as surprising to everyone was after Kenzie had looted the last body, they all dispersed into motes of light and disappeared.
“Okay, that’s a thing.” Shane stated.
Kenzie with a determined air, grabbed Malcom by the arm and began walking, “Let’s go.” As she passed Shane she stopped, “Babe, I love you, but we can’t afford to stop at any more wrecks. You know better than anyone that we can’t survive out here in the cold and wet for long. We need to find a place to shelter in.”
Shane placed a hand on Kenzie’s cheek, the contrast of his pale hand on her dark brown skin was made even more apparent by how cold his hands were, but neither cared at that moment as they both understood the love that flowed between them. Shane leaned in and kissed Kenzie and spoke just loud enough for her to hear, “I hear you and I love you too.” He then motioned for Brom to lead the way back up the highway.