A blanket of gray clouds occluded the morning sky like a painted haze, diffusing the light of the sun over the whole of the valley, driving out all its shadows.

A cool breeze blew past Neil’s face, carrying the smell and promise of rain.

It was a nice day for a stroll through a graveyard. Very nice, as far as graveyards went. Evenly trimmed, dark-green grass as far as the eye could see. The landscape was dotted with wooden posts that served as grave markers.

The occasional grave had its grass torn up from the underside, sure, with mounds of dirt and mud spilling all around it, but the landscape was otherwise pristine.

It would be better, Neil thought, if they weren’t downwind of a rotting corpse, stumbling its way towards them.

“Headshot,” June called out, cocking her crossbow.

“Miss!” Neil shouted in answer, from a safe distance behind her.

Peter huffed, shaking his head. “No bet.”

“Ye can do it, lass!” Nicky called out.

It was almost funny, Neil thought, how quickly the thrill of adventure succumbed to the boredom of routine. And how quickly the boredom of routine threatened to descend into silent, philosophical introspection.

Neil recalled Argus saying something about how the only actually dangerous thing about lesser undead was their effect on morale. Neil, having seen more than one zombie movie, imagined that he would be immune to this effect.

He wasn’t. And—worse—it wasn’t anything like a zombie movie.

Zombie movies, for one thing, generally don’t make their target audience sad. Zombies were never this old, zombies were never this naked, and zombies were certainly never this…

‘Meaty.’ Neil thought, feeling the blood drain from his face.

For another thing, zombie movies don’t smell. Oh sure, they can stink—a few might even reek—but do they smell? No.

No, they don’t.

For whatever reason, Neil imagined that the smell of zombified death and decay would bear some similarity to the smell of dust, mothballs, or maybe even something as bad as mold.

Neil didn’t know why he thought this would be the case—he already knew what rotten meat smelled like, and wished he didn’t—but the reality of it walked into him like a brick wall.

For these reasons—among others—June, Neil, Peter, and Nicky were doing their level best to keep things light-hearted.

They were making a game out of it.

With a resounding *twang,* a wooden bolt sprouted between the eyes of a shambling, bloated corpse. It rocked back on its feet, head lolling backward like a drunk man or a bobblehead, and fell—as if in slow motion.

“Where the hell did she even get a crossbow, anyway?” Pete muttered to Neil, as the pair watched the small woman pivot back towards them, a triumphant smile planted on her face.

“I think she might have stolen it,” Neil muttered back. “Have you seen her knife collection?”

“No.” Said Pete. “What? No.”

They went silent as June approached.

“What do we think?” Said June, putting one hand on her hip, holding her crossbow limp in the other. “Twenty points?”

“If you think that was worth twenty points, you’re certifiably insane,” Neil said, folding his arms. “A headshot is three points. We talked about this.”

June scowled. “But I got him at range. Plus, I mean…” she hefted her crossbow into a two-handed grip, striking a pose.

“…Bonus points for style, right? That deserves at least fifteen points.”

She looked good, Neil would admit. But good enough for fifteen points?

Heh, no.

“How about ten points?” Nicky suggested, drawing a triumphant smile from June.

Nicky had a habit of speaking up right when Neil forgot about him. The undertaker had a subtle way about him, blending into the scenery like a specter among the graves. Fortunately, the man had a sense of humor and knew how to play along with a joke.

“How about five points.” Neil scowled at Nicky, who only smiled back.

“What are these points even for, anyway?” Pete asked, looking between June and Neil.

‘Other than to distract from the smell?’ Neil thought.

“Bragging rights.” He and June said as one, before turning and scowling at each other.

“Oh.” Pete frowned. “Aren’t I winning, though?”

Pete was, as a matter of fact, winning. His weapon was an old iron pitchfork from the cart of weaponizable farming implements Nicky brought with him, and he defeated no fewer than six undead with it.

Pete’s main method of slaying them was—Neil had to admit—fairly spectacular.

He’d walk up to them, as steady as could be, pitchfork held in both hands for a quick stabbing motion. He skewered them through the neck, pivoted under the pitchfork in a blur of movement, and used the tool like a lever to pop the head clean off.

Well, not ‘clean’ off, but more or less in one piece.

Neil’s weapon was collected from the same pile of farming tools. A pickax. More impressive than Pete’s big fork, or June’s as-yet unused hoe, but significantly harder to maneuver.

Harder-still to get a headshot and not get… splattered.

“No one likes a sore winner, Peter,” June advised.

“Yeah—shut up, Peter,” Neil said, smiling brightly at the other man.

The man raised his hands in mock surrender. “You got me, I’ll stay out of it. You get the next one, though.” He nodded at Neil.

Neil grimaced, shouldering his pickaxe. “Piece of cake.”

It was not a piece of cake. As impressive as the weapon looked, it was about as suited to undead-slaying as it was to digging holes. You could do it, but you’d make a mess in the process.

“We’ll head east. After one of you helps me haul the body to the cart.” Said Nicky, turning the Heroes’ heads, “This spot’s cleared over, I reckon, and I’ve got someone I think ye’d get a laugh outta meeting.”

…

…

“Everyone.” Said Nicky, after an uneventful stroll through the grass. “I’d like ye to meet me da, the jewel o’ the corpse field. Da, meet the local Heroes.”

Pride suffused the man’s voice, and Neil looked on.

It was the only grave marked with a headstone, and in its face was carved the words:

…

Here lies Robert Graves.

Lost his life while Robbing Graves.

Oh, the irony.

Civil Servant and Father, Friend turned Fiend.

…

Neil licked his lips, not knowing what to say.

“I’m… sorry for your loss.” He decided, after a beat of silence. “Undertaking is the… family business?”

“‘Tis.” Said Nicky, his smile caught between wist and mischief. “But da took it a little far, eh?”

Neil opened his mouth, nodded slightly, and closed it.

“Your dad’s headstone, is it, umm— I mean, I don’t want to pry, but do you mind me asking… is it…” Pete gestured wordlessly at it.

“Is it accurate?” Nicky finished for him, sighing. “Aye, ‘tis. ‘Graves’ was the family name, and graves were the family profession. I took me wife’s name when I married, on account of the scandal.”

He shook his head again, looking down.

“You’re married,” June said, quickly changing the subject. “What’s her name?”

“Robin Deritch.” Nicky looked back up at her and smiled sweetly.

Neil blinked. “Beg pardon?”

“Robin Deritch.” Nicky said again, his smile progressing from ‘sweet’ to ‘stupidly infatuated.’ “The most beautiful girl this side o’ the Eastern Planes.”

“That makes you…” Neil led.

“Nicholas Deritch.” The man inclined his head in a shallow bow, accent thickening. “Nicky, tae me friends. Keen tae meetcha.”

“Formerly ‘Nick Graves,’ the son of ‘Rob Graves?’” Neil asked, in a low voice.

“If ye like.” Nicky shrugged. “Da’s friends all called him Bert, though, the little he had. Most despise his memory now, on account of what they found him doing when he died.”

“Right.” Said Neil, running a hand back through his hair. “Of course.”

“So, did he…” Pete gestured again, wordlessly. “Fall in, or…?”

Nicky sighed again. “He died the way most grave robbers die.” He shook his head at the shame of it all. “The burrow-ghouls got ‘im.”

Neil nudged Pete, who looked like he was about to start stumbling his way through another series of awkward questions.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“You don’t wanna know,” Neil muttered. “But I’m gonna tell you anyway, later.”

Burrow-ghouls came up when Neil talked to Marry the Hag. As Neil understood it, Burrow-ghouls were a kind of giant, semi-intelligent, pseudo-undead maggot creature that fed on the blood residue of fermented human corpses.

Neil didn’t think human corpses were capable of fermenting, but ghouls thought differently.

They’re monsters in every sense of the word, but these monsters don’t attack living humans, don’t bother touching living crops, and fertilize whatever land they happen to infest.

Except, apparently they weren’t too keen on having their food source dug up. Mary didn’t say anything about that, and Neil would have been perfectly happy not knowing.

“They say that if a ghoul bites you, you're destined to rise again as a ghoul yourself,” Nicky said, conversationally. “Kinda makes you want to dig him up and check, eh?”

“No.” Said Neil, taking a step back from the gravestone.

Then he blinked. “Wait, if a regular undead bites us, will we start lusting after the brains of the living?”

‘Someone would have said something if we would, right?’ Neil thought, growing concerned.

Mary didn’t say anything about it. Then again, their conversation took a sharp turn down ‘ghosts are real, and they’re super annoying’ avenue, and it never really got back on track.

“No,” Nicky frowned at him, accent thickening. “I don’t know how that rumor got started, but ye’ve got tae be dead afair ye can be undead, and lessers couldn’t turn ye even if they wanted tae.”

“Right, sure, makes sense.” Neil nodded, more for his own benefit than anyone else’s.

The undertaker nodded back, before tilting his head to one side. “‘Sides, it’s the heart they’d be after if they were inclined tae anything. Warm an’ wet an’ full ay life.”

He said this last phrase in a particularly deep rendition of his natural accent, leering while he did so.

“I feel like we’d all appreciate it if you stayed away from using words like ‘wet’ right now.” June piped up, nose scrunching.

“How about moist?” Neil said, out of reflex, before wincing. “Sorry, no, ignore me, I didn’t say that.”

“I’ll try.” Said June, raising an eyebrow at him. “But I’d like you to remember that I’m armed and extremely prejudiced.”

“We should move north.” Interrupted Nicky. “I just wanted to check on the poor bastard, make sure he weren’t up to mischief. There’s lessers to be killed, eh?”

There were.

And it was Neil’s turn.

Not ten minutes of walking later, and they saw it—the signs of a lesser’s rise.

Dirt was strewn everywhere, grass binding together clumps of dark mud, turning the whole of the grave into a little hill that reached just past Neil’s knee.

However, rather than the tell-tale divot at the center of the mound, which signified the dead within broke free, the grave dirt was moving and shifting—almost like it was breathing.

“Well, shit.” Neil scowled at the sight. “It’s still in there. Do we help dig it up, or do we give it a couple of minutes?”

“Did you just say ‘we?’” June asked, giving Neil a dry look. “This is all you, guy.”

Neil pressed his lips together and gave her a long, hard stare. After ten seconds, she smiled prettily at him, and sat down in the grass.

He turned his gaze to Peter, who ran a hand through his blond hair. “I mean, I can help you dig it out after you kill it, but I was kind of looking forward to taking a break, man.”

Neil sighed. “Fine, I’ll do it myself.”

He stalked over to the trembling mound of grave dirt, stopped, and leaned casually on his pickaxe. The others, he saw, were all sitting in the grass, watching him with a variety of bored expressions.

“Y’all ready for the weirdest game of whack-a-mole ever played?” Neil said, smiling slightly.

He looked down at the twitching mass of earth, lip curling in more-than-mild disgust. Without raising his pickaxe over his waist, he plunged it into the dirt, scraping away clumps of grass until—

“Hup.” Neil flinched, shielding his face in the crook of his elbow. “It’s a boy, ladies and gentlemen.”

And it was.

Bloated and bleached, with the slightest twinge of yellow, but a masculine figure, nonetheless. Its head was revealed first, releasing with it an odor that Neil was becoming more and more familiar with.

Death, with a subtle hint of earth and mowed grass. A scent vaguely reminiscent of mold, rotting meat, and the instinct to flee, all bound together.

“That,” Neil said, turning his head away, “is fucking ripe.”

Now that its head was free, the wretched corpse seemed to have an easier time freeing itself, with its arms, shoulders, and now torso sticking out of the ground like it was planted there.

It twisted at the waist, thrashing ineffectually at the loose dirt around it, sending some to roll down and cover Neil’s boots.

“We’ll be here a while before it can crawl out on its own,” Nicky called, garnering Neil’s attention. “Might be best to…”

He made a one-handed chopping gesture at the creature.

“Right.” Neil nodded, not breathing through his nose.

He circled behind the creature, stepping carefully around the crooked wooden post marking its grave, and came to stand on the loose hill of dirt behind it.

He raised his pickaxe to the sky and looked closely at the creature for the first time.

It wasn’t a pretty corpse, if such a thing exists. Long strands of tangled, matted hair, clung to the sides of its mostly-intact head. Mud obscured its face, but the stiff thrashing of its arms cleaned them enough that Neil could see tendons, and, if he looked closer, possibly even bone.

Neil didn’t look closer, feeling the blood drain from his face, and bile rise to the back of his throat.

“Three points.” He muttered weakly and brought the pick down with a wet, crunching *thud.*

He let go of the pick—leaving it sticking up in the dirt—and immediately hid his face back in the crook of his elbow, as if a fresh breath of air might be hidden there.

There was not.

After a moment of collecting himself, Neil went to pull the pickaxe from the earth, but it held fast.

“Pete.” He called, grimacing from the lingering smell and effort both. “Could you give me a hand with this?”

Pete sighed, stood, and walked over, a similar expression on his face. “The fresher they are, the worse they smell, huh?”

Neil nodded, pulling again at the pickaxe, to no avail. “I think one of us is gonna have to go in there and… dislodge it.”

“One of us.” Pete echoed, giving him a dry look.

Neil only sighed and shook his head. June and he volunteered Pete to be the one that hauled corpses to the donkey cart. So he did, he reflected, kind of deserve this.

‘Oh, to have friends like these.’ He thought, stepping around and into the hole.

It was a tricky maneuver, considering that Neil did it while trying his best to not look down at his handiwork.

“Careful.” Called Nicky, accent slipping. “Stepping intae another man’s grave is awful bad luck.”

“Feel free to just stand there and watch, then.” Neil groused, finally bringing herself to look down at the pulpy, dark-gray-with-streaks-of-black, mess he’d made.

Nicky and June were no longer in view, but Pete stood over him with a grim expression on his face. He nodded down at Neil.

Resisting the urge to expel his breakfast, Neil nodded back, stamping his boot down next to the mass of what was formerly a head, gripped the neck of the pick, and leveraged it downwards.

It wrestled free with a tearing sound like roots being pulled from the earth, taking with it the remains of the dead man’s skull, which fell to rest by his torso.

“It’s not like I want to speed this process along, at all.” He continued, not breathing through his nose as he turned to the direction of the undertaker, still not visible. “I’m having the time of my life; heaven forbid you decide to help me!”

“Uh, Neil?” Pete said in a high voice. “I think the dead guy’s still moving.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Neil spat, hefting the pickaxe for another re-death blow as he looked down at the corpse.

It was not, Neil noticed, actually moving.

The mostly headless torso was stiff, arms resting at its sides, the whole thing leaning against the back wall of the pit.

Regardless of this fact, the earth beneath him was swelling, twitching, and loosening, much as it had when the dead man was originally trying to break free.

“Yo, Nicky!” He called up and out, less than pleased. “Did you bury this guy with a friend, or what?”

“What?” Nicky called back, confusion blanketing his voice.

“Did y—”

The ground beneath Neil surged with an inhuman shriek.

There was a blur of motion, which—to Neil—played itself like a series of slides, with no details in between.

There was a pallid, sneering face. It had a large gash in place of a nose, twitching at odd intervals. Its eyes were dark and small, like a mole’s. Its black gums clung to a handful of yellowed teeth, each longer than they had any right to be, but retained a flat, nubbed shape.

There was an impression of claws, and hot pain raked Neil from the armpit to the opposite shoulder.

There was screaming. At least three voices. Neil was fairly certain that his was one of them.

The creature’s back was to him. It was bald, with leathery skin the same shade of white as a full moon. Its jaw was locked around Pete’s ankle, and it heaved backward.

There was weight in Neil’s hands, and a pain hotter than that which burned across his chest shooting through his fingertips as he held his pickaxe in a death grip.

The creature was screaming as it wrestled Pete in the mud, it’s voice was ragged and high, and Neil didn’t think it was speaking English, save for a word which sounded like—

“—eeed!” It spat at Neil, kicking against the dirt, trying to break free from Pete’s grapple. He held it back with his arms hooked under the creature’s shoulders, as it thrashed madly against him.

“Greeeeeed!” It shrieked again, along with a string of words that Neil couldn’t understand.

Neil’s pickaxe was held aloft, and an almost satisfying pain rippled through his arms, and he realized he was the one that put it there.

Pete was screaming words. Neil couldn’t understand what it was, but assumed from context it ran along the lines of, “Kill it! Kill it now!”

Neil stepped forward, bracing every muscle in his body to swing downwards, and—

—he froze.

The monster was struggling against Pete’s grip, head craned back as if it meant to bite his neck, just barely out of reach. Its feet kicked out, in a vain attempt to keep Neil away.

It was not the feet, nor the thrashing, pencil-thin, moon-tinted legs they were attached to that kept Neil back. It was the fact that if he missed, there was a more than fair chance that he’d hit Pete.

In the recesses of Neil’s mind, a conversation seemed to occur between his higher and lower selves.

‘Kill it.’ Suggested Neil’s hindbrain. ‘Kill it now.’

‘If we miss—’ reasoned Neil’s forebrain, ‘—there’s a fair chance we hit Pete. We don’t want to hit Pete.’

‘Kill it.’ Refuted Neil’s hindbrain. ‘Kill it now.’

But he couldn’t hit Pete.

Neil shifted the course of his blow—already in motion—significantly reducing its power, but bringing it back, to a safer target.

The monster screamed as the wide-head of the pickaxe bit into its presented thigh. The handle shuddered in Neil’s grip, and a wet *crack* informed him that he broke one of the creature’s bones.

He stumbled backward, vision—and time—returning to something like normal.

Neil’s death grip on the pickaxe hadn’t broken, he was pleased to discover, and so he raised it in the air again, more confident that he wasn’t going to hit—

*thwack*

A wooden stick planted itself between the dark little eyes of the creature, and it went limp, and silent, in Pete’s arms.

“Holy shit, you guys,” June called from beyond the grave, standing over them.

Neil fell backward and looked up at her. She was pale, and might have been shaking. Neil couldn’t quite tell, given that he certainly was.

She lowered her crossbow, bolt expended.

“Holy shit.” She repeated, eyes wide.

Nicky appeared next to her, a dirty old shovel raised in the air, held in a white-knuckled grip.

The undertaker stared down at the monster displayed in Pete’s arms, eyes wide in horror—and in recognition.

“Da?”