Alexei grabbed the unconscious Harly into a fireman’s carry. Then practically pushed Kazamir out in front of him on the walk to the settlement. So that some trigger happy defender didn’t get the wrong idea. As they walked along on what was left of a road, Alexei remembered that they had left their packs behind. He shrugged mentally. It probably wouldn’t matter. Once they dropped Harly off in town, they could quickly return and get them.

Plus, they had more pressing problems to deal with. Mainly the first world war, no man’s land they were now walking through. The land surrounding the walls of the city was a blasted hellscape. Alexei saw multiple arms, legs, and torsos, along with pieces of bones and burnt piles of flesh. All of the carnage mostly surrounded what looked like artillery shell holes. But as the small group approached the palisade, the number of shell holes seemed to lessen, and the corpses appeared to be in more pieces than the killing ground.

The group was now within about 30 meters of the gate. The walls and gate weren’t something to admire for craftsmanship. The wall was about one and a half stories tall of rough unpolished stone. The gate wasn’t any more fancy, having been made out of roughly cut oak planks held together with iron strips nailed into the wood. It was big enough to fit a carriage loaded with supplies.

“Halt!”

Kazamir and Alexei froze in their tracks. The voice had come from above. It was a gruff and coarse voice,

“State your names and business.”

Kazamir spoke up.

“We are traveling mercenaries seeking refuge.”

“What happened to your friend there?”

“We had to fight a long night battle to get here; then we had another battle when we got here. So he is just in need of rest. We all are, in fact.”

“With the goblins, right?”

“Yes, damn all those bastards to hell.”

It was said with such vitriol and hate it made the other man take a few seconds to respond.

“Couldn’t have said it better myself. Well, I won’t keep you waiting any longer.”

Alexei gave Kazamir a thumbs up, then both of them trudged over the gates. A small door built into the larger one swung out to admit them entrance. As they both stepped through the door, they got their first look at the guard. He was a clean-cut, short, and stocky man about 1.6 meters (5’4”) tall with clearly defined muscles under a wool jerkin and rough cow leather pants. His armor consisted of a padded, iron-studded vest with shoulder padding along with a helmet that had clearly seen better days.

Harly weighed heavily down on Alexei, and he was losing his grip. The guard’s face softened as he moved to shut and lock the door behind them.

“Boy. go and help that man.”

The guard said that not to Kazamir but to a young, fresh-faced guard to the left of Alexei. The young man moved over to help the tired Alexei. Alexei gratefully accepted the help by sliding Harly off his back and rapping one of his arms over his shoulder. The younger guard did likewise when the first guard spoke up again.

“I gotta stay here and keep watch. So, Brathal, take them to the inn, then show them to the guild hall.”

“Yes, sergeant. Come now this way.”

Responded the young guard. He had his orders, so he went about carrying them out. He began walking, so Alexei and Kazamir followed.

____________________________________________________________________________

Walter, Bunden, and Snow had moved out after they had finished breakfast. Snow led the group down animal trails and dirt tracks, over hills and down valleys. But after about 6 hours of hiking, they topped a ridge about 200 meters (656 feet) away, and a village was at the bottom of the valley. Snow stood tall and proud at the crest of the ridge. Bunden was not overthinking about it because Snow did this with every hill she walked up on, so he walked up to the crest to join her.

But when he got a good look at what was below him. He dragged Snow to the ground while cursing.

“What the hell!”

Snow exclaimed as she was unexpectedly hurled to the ground.

“You want to get fucking shot!? If not, you might want to stay low.”

Bunden replied in a harsh tone. Walter, who was still hiking his ass up to the ridge crest, started double-timing it to where Bunden and Snow were lying. Bunden leveled his rifle at the vill-target. He couldn’t think of it as a village. It was just a target now, like any other. People no longer lived there. Now it was just a husk of its former self filled with people that were just husks of their former selves.

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Walter crawled up beside Bunden and mounted his MG3 on its bipod overlooking the village of the dead. Both of them looked into the magnifying lenses of their scopes. The town they saw through them looked normal enough, with people walking about in the village square, Kids playing on the streets between food stalls, and figures sitting on front porches.

But as Walter and Bunden looked closer, the people in the streets had chunks of flesh missing from them; one of the kids that were playing had half his face ripped off, then part of another sewed back on, and the figures that were ‘sitting’ were mounted on poles holding the overhangs for the porches up.

“Holy mother of Jesus.”

Walter swore as he took in the sights. Bunden had a horrified look on his face which convinced Snow to save her breath instead of yelling at him. Bunden drew breath to speak, but the eerie ringing of the church bell cut him off. Both Bunden and Walter swung their weapons to bear on the church at the center of the dead village.

The figures around the church ran inside, and new figures dressed in all sorts of armor ran out. Some seemed to be dressed in rotting padded leather armor with rusting metal helmets carrying spears. Others were dressed in black full-body robes with hoods pulled over their rotting flesh. But there were so many bodies with different armor and weapons that it would have been impossible to describe them all.

At first, Bunden and Walter thought they had been spotted; Snow’s eyesight was good but definitely not as good as a 4x scope. So she was looking at Bunden and Walter’s reactions. Bunden was grimacing, and Walter was trying and failing to keep a look of horror off his face.

Walter flicked his safety off and was about to begin shooting into the horde of dully glinting metal and rotting flesh when Bunden stopped him.

“Don’t shoot. They’re not coming after us; look over there.”

Bunden pointed over to the right side of the village, to where a familiar foe was ripping into a ‘civilian’ zed head.

“Seems like those leopard bastards have their hands full with the zeds.”

Bunden continued with a sense of satisfaction in his tone. They continued watching as a group of 6 leopards ripped through a few more zeds before they ran into one that could put up a fight. It was one of the ones that had come out of the church. It had rotting padded armor, helmet, and spear. As one of the beasts jumped toward it, the rotting corpse placed the tip of the spear so the beast would impale itself, and jammed the other end into the ground.

Bunden and Walter couldn’t hear the beast’s blood splatter onto the ground. But they knew it happened because the leopard slid onto the shaft of the spear. Bunden heard Snow intake a sharp breath as the leopard died. Bunden took his eyes off the scope to send a stern look at Snow.

“What’s your problem?”

“We should strike now while the undead are distracted.”

She said without any conviction.

“No, we need to conduct recon before we attack. Lucky for us,” Bunden jerks a thumb toward the ongoing battle. “They’re doing all the heavy lifting.”

Bunden turns his eyes back to the scope in front of him. Back on the battlefield below, the first soldier zombie (ThEy’RE nOt zoMBiEs tHeIr UndEAd) had been reinforced with five other spear-wielding zeds, and they had got another leopard. Seeing that numbers weren’t on their side, the four still-living leopards started backing away. As the leopards backed away, the zeds formed up into a line and started advancing. The small group on the hill could hear the sound of their boots slamming onto the ground in unison.

The leopards gave ground willingly under the marching boots of the zeds. The zeds would march forward and into spear range of the leopards, but the leopards would dance away majestically before any spear blow landed. It occurred to Walter that the leopards were leading the zeds away from town. He voiced his idea and got a nod from Bunden and an affirmative grunt from Snow.

The leopards kept leading the zombies further and further down the only road out of the village. But as the leopards passed the last house, the zombies stopped chasing the nimble leopards. The leopards snarled and lunged but never came into range of those deadly spears. That was when Bunden noticed a group of leopards perched on the roof of the last house. There were five of them, and they seemed almost coiled and waiting for a signal.

Bunden pointed them out to the other two, and they all watched as the leopards jumped down onto the line of zombie spearmen. The six zombie spearmen intently watched the leopards in front of them, so the attack from above caught them off guard. Three zeds were put down for good, and one had lost an arm before they could react.

The remaining zeds gave ground in order to put their backs to the wall. Then a thought occurred to Walter, which he gave voice to.

“Where are the rest of the zombies? We definitely saw more than six zed heads.”

Now that they were looking, Bunden saw a force of ten zeds coming up to the fight from the road and two more hordes coming from either side of the battle consisting of 20 zeds each. In a few more seconds, the leopards would be surrounded.

There was practically nothing the small group of humans and humanoid could do as the group of leopards got surrounded. The now highly outnumbered group of leopards finished up the small group of zeds, then took up a defensive stance and waited for the zeds to close in. The zeds closed in with a slow and steady pace.

There was no rush, as they had the leopards boxed in. a building to the west, ten spears zeds to the south, 20 a horde zeds to the east and north. The leopards waited for the zombies to get close, then they climbed onto the building, jumped off the other side, and ran off into the forest. But the last leopard got unlucky. A flying skull lashed onto its right leg, causing it to fall off the side of the building it was trying to climb, into the reaching, grasping hands of the undead.

The skull seemed to come from a figure with a black cloak with a staff made of bones topped with a large bird skull. The zombies seem to part for the black-cloaked figure as it made its way to the still-warm corpse of the leopard. The figure tapped the corpse with the staff; this made a vapor-like substance extrude from the carcass.

The shoulders of the figure seemed to rise and fall as if he was breathing, and all the vapor seemed to be sucked up by him. He stayed sucking it all up for about 5 minutes until the vapor stopped coming out. Then he walked over to the fallen zombies and seemed to crouch down and breathe it into each one, and after a few seconds, they came back to life.

This gave Bunden an idea.

“Hey, Walter, you see that guy down there with the black cloak?”

“Yeah, I got eyes on him. Whatcha gonna do?”

“Well, I was thinking we should turn him into swiss cheese.”

“I’m all good for that.”