25.
The back door swung on silent hinges, letting them enter the pitch black back room. Santi cursed as both Daniel and Hana grabbed and cracked glowsticks, giving an eerie green light to the surroundings. Pallets of dried goods were arrayed in neat lines, labeled with the aisles they belonged to. The concrete floor had splotches of dried blood on them, smears of it as if something was dragged.
The glowsticks destroyed their surprise, but none of them could see in the dark. Santi shoved his way in front of them, pulling his sword free and having it lead the way as he stalked down the long aisle. Large commercial grade coolers were on his right, while more supplies were on his left. The short walkway was only thirty or so feet, opening up to a large space.
“Fuck,” Santi said as they found everyone. A wall of emaciated figures, most clad in all black uniforms, stood in front of them. Sickly green collars dug into their necks, ghastly chains trailing away from them and into the heart of the huddled mass of flesh.
“Oh, shit.” Someone cursed behind him as all the enslaved looked up and met his eyes. They were soulless husks, their eyes dried out, flesh devoured. Skin and bones, their clothes hung off of them like tents, but they shambled forward instantly. A voice was murmuring behind them all, hidden from view.
“Back, BACK!” Santi hollered as he started to back up as the victims of the curse launched themselves forward. They couldn’t move quickly, but their shuffle was eating the short distance quickly while Santi’s group took a minute to re-organize and start sprinting back toward the door to the front of the store.
They weren’t going to make it in time. Which led Santi to commence his second rearguard action in less than 24 hours. His blade blurred as he used his higher stats to push himself to his limits. The narrow walkway helped, though some of the chained husks climbed on top of the pallets and started jumping that way.
Every time he struck, it was like slicing through paper and then twigs. They were literally husks, drained of every ounce of vitality. There were a lot of them though and not all of them were quite so emaciated. Some were healthier people, recently caught, and even a handful of monsters. All of them attacked and so far Santi held them back.
“TURN!” Chloe yelled, only a few feet from him. Not taking his eyes off of the horde of silent husks, Santi spun towards the doors and accelerated. The husks couldn’t keep up and he slammed the doors open and raced back into the gloomy bakery. Paulie, Trevor, Justin, Beto, Chloe, and Rayleigh were all standing in a curve around the door and Santi took his place in the middle of the arch of bodies. Wherever Daniel and Hana had got off to, he didn’t have time to look for the two scouts.
The husks burst through the door like a horde of zombies, shambling and clawing forward with their chains trailing off into the distance. Santi was sure those chains were leaching them of their strength, feeding the anchor that the curse was attached to. He slashed down, shearing straight through the remnants of a once large man.
Glasses clattered to the ground as the husk fell apart, the chain retracting as the collar dissipated from his neck. Santi was already stabbing at the next husk, a kobold that looked like a skeleton, and couldn’t care less about the damn things falling apart. His blade was chewing through them, everyone else was struggling a bit more.
When Chloe was using her skill, the silver light around the edge of her axe, they died easily. When she didn’t, it was like she was trying to topple a small tree. Bits of flesh and bone would chip away, shattering bone and crippling limbs, but not killing them. The Brawlers were in an even worse position, their blows breaking bones, but not killing them.
“Back up!” Santi ordered, the pressure of the horde becoming too much. He skipped back a few steps, aiming to retreat down an aisle to keep the horde from encircling him. The group started to break away, none of them sticking with their designated partners except Chloe and Rayleigh.
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“BETO, PAULIE, GET YOUR ASSES OVER HERE!” Santi screamed at the top of his lungs as he ducked under swiping arms. He cut the husk in half at the waist and skipped back again. There were just too many of them, even if they died easily, he was at risk of being overwhelmed and brought down by sheer numbers.
Beto stopped his retreat and started to shove his way forward. He aimed crushing blows for heads, shoving away those that got too close. Long nails scraped at his arms, furrows digging through his flesh, but he broke free of the horde to take his place next to Santi.
Paulie just rushed through them, his pipe cracking kneecaps as he shoved and pushed his way free. Just as he got to Santi, they saw Justin go down. He swung around, crushing one of the husks into a shelf and sending boxed goods spilling everywhere. It left him off balance as two other husks tackled him, riding him to the ground. Trevor wasn’t looking at his partner, too busy fighting a pair off of him.
Justin screamed for a moment and then went silent. The husks got off of him and Justin got back to his feet. He had a collar around his neck, a chain slowly materializing from the aether, leading off and through the walls of the meat department and toward the back room.
Chloe screamed, a mix of rage and pain and then she was pushing through the horde and heading toward Justin. Her silver blade was a storm as she got closer to him, Rayleigh right behind her, and they all watched as Justin snapped a punch out at Chloe. Chloe was stunned, not expecting Justin to attack her, and he managed to land a heavy blow. Bone crunched and Chloe staggered and fell on her rear, Rayleigh spun and used the momentum to drive her club into Justin’s head.
Metal met bone and bone lost. Justin went slack, falling to the ground and his chains evaporated before they had fully formed. Rayleigh was pulling Chloe back to her feet, and then they were stumbling to meet up with Trevor who had managed to dispatch the two husks who had kept him occupied while Justin was overwhelmed.
“FRONT!” Santi yelled, hoping they understood what he meant. They had to spread out the relatively weak husks. While they were all bunched up, they were a threat, spread out they would be a much easier threat to deal with.
Santi followed his own order by backing down the aisle. Beto was to his right, Paulie to his left and slightly behind. The husks never hesitated, shambling after them with grasping dirty nails. The aisle was narrow, preventing all three of them from striking at once. Santi took the brunt of the attacks as his sword was well equipped to deal damage. For the thousandth time, he wished he had some other type of magic other than his air sense.
It allowed him to easily dodge all of the attacks. Having a sphere six feet around where he knew where everything happened was a broken ability at this rank. With his advanced stats from having his title, he was overpowered. Husk after husk raced at him and were left in pieces. By the time they made it to the end of the aisle, he had broken nearly a dozen of the creatures.
The light was brighter here, streaming through the widows giving them plenty of illumination. They spread out again, Chloe and the others emerging from their aisle and started to sprint across the store to regroup. The husks stopped their unthinking blitz, thinned greatly. Maybe only half of them remained.
The chain grew brighter, glowing with energy as they started to pulse white-green energy from the husk down the length of the chain and to whatever it was connected to. They slowly sank in on themselves, bodies collapsing under the weight of their own skeletons.
“This is creepy,” Paulie muttered. Santi had to agree with him, just nodding along silently as forty or so husks collapsed into nothing more than piles of clothes, bones, and loose skin. Chloe was busy trying to get her nose to stop bleeding, Rayleigh helping her, as they all waited. Santi was tempted to try to find Daniel and Hana, but he had an idea where he was.
The squeak of rubber on polished tile came to them as something started to come out of the darkness. The dim gloom of the back of the store made it nothing more than a wide shape, but with every step more and more of it was revealed. Santi gulped as the monstrosity got closer, the muttering words slowly becoming audible.
“Workforce reduction, labor hours reduced, production decreased,” the words were hardly more than whispers as it lurched toward them.
For a second Santi thought it was two people, but realization gave birth to disgust. It was two people wedged together, the ghastly green chains wound around their arms and ending in spikes. Blood flowed over the wounds, dripping down on the tiles as it lumbered forward on four legs.