“Right, once it blows, we take back the town,” Mitchell told the crowd around him.

People nodded. Their numbers were smaller now but Mitchell figured if they worked together they could maybe pull it off. That was assuming the explosion took out most of the creatures.

They had found a quiet spot beyond the hordes but from which they could still watch the town. Even Knuckles had joined them again.

So far the plan was working. The undead all ambled toward the church. The building was quickly surrounded. Bodies pressed in from all sides. Then the ringing stopped.

They all stared apprehensively.

Casey moved her horse close to Dodge’s. “There’s got to be another way,” she whispered. She hadn’t liked that the plan involved sacrificing someone.

Dodge shook her head sombrely. “It’s too late now.”

From inside the church, on the internal balcony just in from the bell tower, the fair-haired priest took a deep breath and he lined up the sights of his gun on the carefully placed barrel of gunpowder below. Once he shot that, it should cause a chain reaction, taking out the building, the surrounding undead, and himself. He gulped and looked back at the bell tower. The walls were sturdier there. Maybe if he was fast enough? He shook his head. There was no way he was surviving this. There was enough gunpowder in here to reach a couple hundred metres out. He took another breath and fingered the trigger. He squeezed.

“Dammit!” remarked Hades. “This was Billy’s idea but Ares is gonna get all the points.”

“Well, it is my character who’s sacrificing himself,” replied Ares.

Aphrodite frowned. “I thought the dead can’t earn points and technically he’s probably going to be at the centre of the explosion so...”

“Not if I can help it!” Artemis exclaimed as she threw down a card and marked her target.

“That’s supposed to be used on the zombies!” Ares complained.

“Well there’s no way I’m letting you get all those points.”

The priest’s bullet punctured a barrel. Instinctively he ducked his head. Nothing happened. After a moment’s silence he peaked down at it. “Must be a wet barrel,” he mumbled. Once more he glanced at the doorway to the bell tower behind him and the open window beyond. He sighed and lined up another shot on a different barrel. He was just about to pull the trigger again when suddenly from outside the window he heard an old familiar sound.

CRASH! RATTLE! RATTLE! HONK! HONK! NEIGH!

The priest ran to the window of the bell tower. Down below he could see the hordes pushing in. The church door shattered inward as he watched, but some of them were moving away too, toward the new sound. The priest leapt for the rope and rang the bell again, but from the other side of town the noise contraption called loudly and obnoxiously, splitting the attention of the undead. He was losing his chance to take them out. It was now of never.

Glancing back toward the inner of the church he realised he could still see the barrels from here. Perhaps not an ideal shot but in his panic to get as many undead as he could before they wandered too far out of range, the priest raised his gun and fired.

“Well, fine, take this then.” Ares threw down his own card. Then he rolled as the card instructed.

Across town, Trevor’s horse stumbled, throwing him from the saddle. The clanking contraption ceased it’s rabble. Trevor lay motionless in the dirt.

“You’ll regret that,” Artemis replied as she raised another card high in the air, ready to slap it down.

“STOP!” Aphrodite shouted.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

They all turned to look at her. Even Hades, who had been rapidly shoving popcorn into his mouth while alternately looking at the two combatants, paused in his eating.

More calmly she said, “We are supposed to be working as a te-”

The church exploded.

The building burst outwards, taking out the majority of the town’s assailants with it.

The priest, found himself flying through the air and for a moment he wondered if he was in heaven. Then he started to fall.

The landing was hard, although not as hard as it could have been, given he found himself landing on a pile of flesh. Still, there were bones among the flesh, and one particularly splintery one punctured his side. He lay there on a pile of dead, injured but alive. Around him some of the flesh started to shift.

“Now!” cried Mitchell.

Dodge nudged her horse forward and into a gallop. Casey followed not far behind.

“Oh my,” mumbled Faith as, seated right behind Mitchell, now sharing the horse, she tightened her grip on her husband.

The remaining townsfolk raced back to town as fast as they could. The explosion had not destroyed all of the creatures but it had gotten most of them. Now was their opportunity to finish the job.

Jasper, the priest, lay on a pile of dead, too tired and injured to pull himself upright. Hazily he watched as one slow moving creature made it’s way toward him. He hoped the end would come fast.

“Arrghggblub,” it moaned as if moved another half an inch.

Jasper waited, and he waited. Why did the undead have to move so slowly?

The thing made it’s way up and over its fallen comrades, if these creatures could be said to have such things. Finally it reached the priest. It opened its mouth wide. A wet goopy substance fell from its rolling tongue and landed on the priest’s boot.

Jasper braced himself.

A shadow suddenly fell over them both as a horse leapt right over the pair of them. Jasper blinked and the horse was gone. So was the head of the undead creature. A scythe had taken it right off. It rolled and bounced down the street. The body hung in the air for a moment and then fell forward onto the priest.

Jasper lay there, half under it, still too tired to move. And there he stayed until another rider pulled up nearby.

Casey slipped down off her horse and raced over to the priest. “He’s alive,” she cried. “Oh, hang on, we’ll get you out of here and patched up. Dodge, help me move him.”

The priest felt hands drag him from the pile and soon he was propped up near the front porch of the general store. Across the road the explosion had knocked down the blacksmith’s place and a small stable, often used by town visitors. Rubble and body parts littered the street. Blood stained the dirt.

Undead still stumbled aimlessly around the streets, but everywhere he looked he could see people fighting back.

A moment later, Billy appeared helping another injured man.

“It’s Trevor,” Billy told them. “I think he fell from his horse. He’s alive but his arm’s all bent wrong.”

Casey nodded. “Set him down, I’ll do my best.”

Trevor groaned as he was laid down next to Jasper.

Jasper reached for a canteen at his belt and offered it to Trevor. “Water?” he asked.

Trevor took it, downed a large swig and immediately choked. “That’s not water,” he spluttered, and then he took another large swig.

“It’s holy water,” the priest explained, “Brewed from an ancient recipe and fermented with the help of God’s touch.”

Mitchell and another horse stopped by a moment later and dropped off both Faith and a dentist who had recently been passing through. The teeth of the recently deceased were a valuable commodity in some areas and he’d been doing a collection round as well as offering his services. He’d been the bane of Pete’s existence for at least three days now, but had proven useful after some of the more recent battles, given his modicum of medical knowledge.

Casey stepped back and let him take over.

“That’s some good stitching,” the dentist remarked as he looked at Casey’s recent handiwork.

She nodded her thanks. Then she glanced over to find Dodge smiling at her. She smiled back.

Around them, the undead numbers slowly dwindled, and then a shout went up, “They’re leaving!”

Sure enough, the undead seemed to be retreating, almost as if in fear. They groaned and moaned and twisted, all heading in one direction, no longer attacking.

“We’ve done it! We’ve scared them off!” came the happy cry.

Exclamations of joy and happy cheers went up all over town.

Subtlety at first the ground stated to shake. A soft shudder, almost barely perceptible. Casey felt it and she looked down at the dirt with a frown. Nearby, small pebbles rocked from side to side.

The shouts of laughter slowly died as others also started to notice the thump, thuMP, THUMP! of the earth.

“What is that?” Dodge asked.

The world seemed to darken. A shadow fell across the land as if something had blotted out the sun.

The undead fled slowly in terror. What could make such creatures as those so afraid?

The townsfolk all turned. There, coming toward the town, a large looming figure, slowly stomped forward. It was as tall as the bell tower on the church had been and it was human shaped. As it got closer however, they could see that it was no human at all, but made up of several, maybe even hundreds of bodies all melded together to form one gigantic amalgamation. As they watched, its long fingers reached for a lone staggering walker. It grasped the thing tight, juices fell from it’s fist as it squeezed. Then it plopped the entire creature in it’s mouth and swallowed it whole.

It turned its eyes towards the town, not just two eyes but hundreds, spread out all over its pulsating body. Eyes that saw in all directions. The Gargantuan had finally come for them.