Consecrate this Sword?

I dodged under a grabbing swipe and put the Altar between me and the closest zombie.

“Yes yes! Consecrate the Sword!”

What is the Sword’s Purpose?

Oh for fuck’s sake!

“Killing zombies!” Nothing. Maybe it needed to sound more… I don’t know, noble or something.

“I Consecrate this Sword to Slaying Cursed Creatures!” I had meant zombies, but ‘Cursed Creatures’ had popped into my mind and, on a whim, I went with it.

The Church lacks Authority to Consecrate the Sword towards that Purpose. Reduce its Purpose Error! Provide Additional Source of Divine Authority.

“Fucking Gabe! Stop messing with my shit!” Gabe-shit, all over it. Reeked of it. I didn’t like it one bit.

I dived under a rotten hand that clawed at me then slammed my shoulder into another zombie as I gracefully rolled down the steps at the foot of the altar, landing in a heap.

Scrambling up and away a hand grabbed onto my backpack and pulled me back. I twisted in a panic out of the straps and fell forward. The zombie started walking away with my backpack? The zombie was fucking running away with my backpack!

I slammed into it and sent it to the ground, spilling the contents in between an old rotten pew. Something caught my eye. GIdeon's Bible. Snatching it up, I kicked the grounded zombie in the face and kicked out at another’s knee. Two replaced it as it crunched to the ground. Even grounded, the two other zombies weren’t out of the fight. More started to crowd me before I stood on the pews and ran across the backrests back toward the Altar. This bullshit had better work.

The zombies weren’t dumb, they knew where I was going and were there, waiting. I rammed myself through the encirclement at full speed and slapped Gideon’s Bible on the Altar next to the sword.

A boom of thunder threw me and the zombies onto our backs. I scrambled up and grabbed the glowing sword off the fading light of the altar and swung it down on the nearest. It sheared through its head like a piece of wax paper. Ah-fucking-mazing.

“Thank you!” I honestly meant it, I wasn’t even mad. Well, that mad. I mean, come on. Magic-fucking-sword.

I carved a path through the zombies, each stab burned them from the inside out, each slash removing limbs, severing necks, splitting skulls on clean lines.

As I approached the last few, the sword returned to its normal state, but now instead of pure steel-color, it was white and had a blood-red core running down its center. It still cut, but not nearly as well. Skulls could be pierced, but slices had serious trouble getting through the skull. I took a raking scrap from rotten fingertips and pierced the last zombie through its eye socket.

I moved to wipe the sword off, but it was perfectly clean. Fucking-A, about time I got some cool shit!

Shotgun, I ran back and scooped it up to see a new crowd of zombies pouring down the hallway.

I reloaded it with two of my few remaining shells in my fanny pack and ran to the front door. I lifted the huge wooden beam, dumped it to the side, and then shoved the doors open. Zombies poured in and I backed up and blasted both barrels before charging into the crowd.

I pulled out my sword again as they swamped me. No matter how much I cut and stabbed the mass of bodies continued to push against me. I took another bite, I knew that because instead of pain a sense of deep wrong numbness pulsed through my left shoulder. No. Fucking. Way. Was I gonna die here. Not right after magic-fucking-sword.

“Fuck! Off!” zombies flew off in all directions as my shotgun slipped from my tingling fingers and I stumbled to my feet. I reached for my pistol but that seemed like a lot of work. Something about holding the Sword made it really, really easy to swing it at zombies and lazy swipes were the best I could manage while still putting one foot after another. I had to get out of here.

The block stretched on as rain started to softly pitter down. Sometimes zombies got close and turning my head halfway every once in a while was enough to keep their red dots on my minimap updated so I knew when to throw a formless swing somewhere behind me.

Past the first block now. Zombies were coming in from side streets and I continued to stumble as the sky started to darken. Man, if my Nemesis was here right now, she’d be loving this.

One, two, one two. I heard a cadence in my head pushing me forward as I continued to put one foot after another. I couldn’t walk faster than the cadence called for. The Sword sung to spill zombie blood and I almost turned around a few times to die fighting against the horde before I scrabbled together my last scraps of ‘fuck this I’m not dying to a zombie horde’ and focused my feet on moving forward. The school, it was close.

Someone was shouting, but all I could hear was the sound of rain and moans and my sword cutting through rotten flesh and the call of the cadence. One, two. One, two.

Something wrapped its arms around me, this time from the front. I tried to fight, but a pulse of common sense had me, instead, take a second of effort to stop telling my feet that they should be still trying to walk forward. I thought I probably should attack the thing wrapped around me, but there was another burst of common sense and my Sword wasn’t giving me ‘stab it in the face’ vibes. I barely held onto those as I was swept upward.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

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I woke and slashed my Sword in a vicious arc before realizing that I didn’t have a sword. My hand hit something solid and started to hurt. I sat up with a groan.

Damn, where was I?

“You ready for some coffee?”

“Wate-” I croaked. Something was… untying my hands? Then, a bottle of water was in my hands, how’d that get there?

I slammed the entire thing then coughed and laid back again as I looked over. It was Lena.

“Thanks. Where’s my sword? How’d I get back here?”

She handed me my sheathed sword while laughing, “You don’t remember?” I saw tension draining out of her. A bit that had still been lodged in my mind drained out in response. Like being an idiot and getting blackout drunk and not knowing where you were or what had happened when you woke up, but finding yourself home safe in bed. Well, maybe not at home, but somewhere safe while being reasonably sure you didn’t make a complete ass of yourself the night before.

“No, I got mobbed by zombies when I left the Church and then used Will to push them back. After that I remember… I don’t know, something about one and two.”

“One and two?”

I shrugged and reached out a hand, she placed the coffee into it which dropped to the floor from between numb fingers. I stretched my hand out and rolled my shoulder before I felt the feeling slowly return down my arm. She picked the cup up and returned it to me after filling it with coffee from a thermos. Wait, that was my thermos! “That’s my thermos!”

She rolled her eyes, “Such good eyes on you fair knight, I refilled it with fresh coffee for you.”

“Oh.” I accepted the cup as her line about ‘fair knight’ hit a bit deeper than I was prepared for, I shook it off, “Uh, thanks. Thank you.”

I took a sip, it wasn’t particularly good, but it was hot and I was in the apocalypse. I decided on the spot to lower my expectations; between hot, good, and actually coffee, a cup of it only needed two of three. I stumbled for a second as my ankle tried to give out, but managed to not spill much of my new cup as I slid myself into a chair near her.

“Display… Tribulation Timer.”

“I was out for a day? Damn.”

“Just about. What happened out there?”

I told her about the zombie alley ambush, though that was being generous. The dog sneak attack which I had to pause at as she wiped some stray tears from her eyes. Didn’t figure her for a dog-lover in this type of apocalypse… Right, she had killed her family’s ‘pookie’ after it shredded her mom and grandma. I stopped sometime after I got into the Church as I pieced the memories back together. I skipped some parts of my private recollection as it failed me sometime between leaving the Church and waking up on the floor. I told her as much.

“Are you curious how you got back?”

Her voice was weird and she obviously wanted to tell me and it cost me nothing to ask, “Yeah, I really am. What happened? Tell me from the beginning.”

Lena brightened at that, “Well, you left for the Church right? And we heard a series of shotgun blasts-” Damn I didn’t mean that beginning.

“Some people were worried, but I knew you weren’t dead, then we heard you start shooting again and then there was another silence. I knew you had made it to the Church. Some people thought they heard some more shotgun shots, but most didn’t.

Then it started getting really foggy outside, out of nowhere, but all of a sudden there was this burst of light from the Church, like a huge bolt of lightning struck the top of the Church. I mean, we couldn’t really see the Church anymore. Because of the fog. But after it hit, we couldn’t hear anything for a minute after. Some people started to panic a bit but then our hearing came back and it was really quiet. The thunder had deafened everyone, not just the people by the windows, so by the time everyone’s hearing came back, everyone was up here, looking out. Then we heard two more shotgun blasts and then we heard you shout something like you were really angry and then it went silent again.”

I had already lived through this and she wasn’t the best storyteller, but hearing about your own exploits from another perspective was pretty awesome, real-knightley shit. I might have been a captivated audience.

“And then?”

She gave me a somewhat wicked, teasing grin, but then must have decided to not be that way and continued the story, “So then, rain started coming down right? But it’s not hard rain like it was before, it was really soft and misty,” I nodded at that, I remembered the rain. I told her I did.

“Then we hear tons of groans, like a real low moaning and then, a figure comes shambling out of the fog like a zombie. A ton of people totally thought you were a zombie at first, you had ‘the shamble’ down perfectly,” She laughed but then must have seen me grimace as her eyes flicked to my shoulder, “but that talk stopped pretty quick when they saw you still cutting down the zombies that were chasing you. It was the most intense low-speed chase I’d ever seen in my life.”

“Helps that it probably was the only one too.”

“Yeah, well actually, no. I once saw a cop car chasing a grandma who was driving a speed-locked golf-cart. So you had some stiff competition and even though it was kind of close, the shambling sword-fighting zombie chase definitely wins.”

I nodded appreciatively at that, also, in agreement.

“How’d I get up,” I waved my hand around the classroom, “here, though?”

“Well, you weren’t responding to our shouts, maybe it was the rain, but we moved to another classroom and I tied a rope around my waist and was lowered down. You looked like you were just going to keep walking even after I grabbed you. I was a bit worried that you were going to slice me.”

“You used your Fortitude Skill?”

“Yeah, ‘Comfort of the Living’. Thanks for that, it’s a good Skill.”

“Yeah,” I grinned and shook my head, “I’m definitely glad you picked it.”

She was looking at me weird. “Lena. What is it?”

“You’ve been bitten.”

Ah.

I debated lying about it, but she hadn’t been asking a question.

“Twice, actually.”

She jolted back but managed to catch herself before spilling backwards.

“I take it I should have turned sometime in the night?”

She nodded hesitantly.

“Well,” I showed her the bite on my ankle, damn. It did look worse.

“This one I got before I even knew you guys were here and I haven’t turned yet.”

“So… so you’re immune?”

I sighed, damn this was just a free knowledge giveaway here huh?

“Okay, I’m going to tell you my thoughts so far, but promise me that you aren’t going to tell anyone.”

She seriously considered it then shook her head, “I can’t promise that. If it’s useful information that’s going to help someone else survive… if it’s going to help them then I’ll use it to help them. If I need to tell them, then I will tell them.”

Yeah, I guess that makes sense.

“Well, alright, I don’t mind that, but if it’s specific stuff that relates only to me, then can you try to keep it to yourself?

I was really trying here and, thankfully, she nodded. Then said, “Okay, I can do that. I promise.”

I held out my cooling, half-empty cup and she refilled it for me. I nodded to her and sat back, rolling my bitten ankle. Considering that I’ve skimmed over the surface of the lake of death more than a few times in the past week, I figured I should probably lay out my complete thoughts to someone trustworthy. Just in case I didn’t make it. After all, I couldn’t let this shit wipe out all of humanity right? ‘Torch not dead until the last of us falls’ type of thing? Well, maybe not, but it sounded kind of noble and I was a Squire, so why not?