Critical Failures II (Caverns and Creatures Book 2) (12 page)

Julian mounted the horse with ease. Dave needed Cooper to lift him up by the arm.

“Let’s go,” said Tim. “Butterbean, find Katherine.” Butterbean barked, and started running up the trail.

“Go, horse!” said Julian. “Go fast!” His horse did as commanded, and the other horse followed. Julian shouted to Ravenus over the sound of galloping hooves. “Fly ahead and look out for danger.”

Ravenus, ever faithful to his master, did as he was bid.

They galloped for what seemed like an hour, the horses not once showing any signs of exhaustion. The forest grew less dense as they climbed until it was completely free of trees. Scraggly bushes clung to their pitiful lives through the cracks of rocks here and there, but the ground was mostly barren. The trail turned into a crumbling road, leading still higher aside a sheer cliff face. On the other side was open space. The road would have been comfortably wide enough for the horses to travel side by side if there were solid ground on both sides. But there was nothing comfortable about riding next to a fifteen hundred foot drop, so the horses remained in single file.

Julian pulled on his reins. “We’d better take it slow now.” He brought his horse to a trot. The one behind him followed suit.

“Why?” asked Cooper.

“These horses are only good for two hours. Have you been keeping track of the time?”

“No. I seem to have left my stopwatch in my other loincloth.”

“If we’re riding at full gallop when the spell’s duration runs out, they’ll disappear right out from under us, and we might even go sliding off the edge of this cliff.”

“He’s right,” said Tim. “Anyway, I don’t feel quite as vulnerable out here in the open as I did in that forest.”

“Yeah,” said Julian. “We should be relatively safe from dire squirrels out here. How much farther up does this thing go?” He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “Ravenus!”

Within seconds the black silhouette appeared against the purple evening sky. Ravenus flapped down to land on Julian’s ready arm. “Sir?”

“How much farther up is it to the top?”

“Not much farther now.”

“Good,” said Tim in a British accent . “What’s up there?”

“A keep,” said Ravenus.

Dave practiced his vowel shifts. “Right. ‘ello. Guvnor. Scone.” Everyone looked at him. The Elven tongue was still new to him. “That could be very good for us,” he said slowly and deliberately. “Or it could be very bad.”

“What the fuck are all of you guys talking about?” asked Cooper, who couldn’t understand the Elven language.

With some relief in his voice, Dave switched back to the common tongue. “Ravenus said there’s a keep at the top of this mountain.”

“That’s great news,” said Cooper.

Dave tugged at his beard. “Maybe.”

“What do you mean, maybe?” said Cooper. “We’ll throw the owner a couple of coins, sleep there for the night, replenish your spells.”

“Cooper,” said Tim. “We followed Butterbean up here to find Katherine. If she’s here, then she’s probably being kept here against her will, which means whoever owns this place is probably an asshole who is going to try to murder us all.”

“I concede you may have found a potential flaw in my logic,” said Cooper.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Tim. “We don’t have a lot of options available to us.” As if on cue, the two horses winked out of existence, one right after the other. “And there go two more. Let’s get up there and survey the scene.”

Ten minutes later they reached the point where the ground flattened. Butterbean was waiting for them. They peeked over the edge of the rocky wall just before it evened up with the ground. The ground here was as bleak and barren as the side of the mountain. Nothing broke the dreary greyness of the landscape.

Nothing, that is, but a small stone keep, as Ravenus had reported, and about two dozen zombies, which Ravenus had failed to mention. For now, the zombies paid them no mind.

“Fuck,” said Cooper. “If I’m lucky, I might be able to take down five or six of those.”

“Undead aren’t vulnerable to sneak attacks,” said Tim glumly. I’ll be doing good to take one with me while the others rip me to pieces.”

“I’m pretty much fucked,” said Julian. “I’m out of spells.”

“I could try turning them,” said Dave. “It’s been a while since I played a cleric, and I don’t quite remember how turning works.”

“Do you have a holy symbol?” asked Tim.

“Yeah,” said Dave. “I bought one in the market yesterday.” He pulled out a round wooden carving of the sun with a face on it.”

“Does that represent a god?” asked Julian.

“Yeah,” said Dave. “I guess.”

“I thought you didn’t choose to follow a god. Which one is that?”

“I don’t know. I asked the guy at the shop for a holy symbol of a god of healing or destruction. He gave me this.”

“How does it work?” asked Julian.

“Hell if I know.”

“Just point it at the zombies and say something,” said Tim. “As long as your intention is to turn them, it should work. That should put the odds more in our favor, or at least give us a bit of breathing room.”

“Okay,” said Tim. He was breathing quickly as he spit out the plan he was obviously making up there and then. “Dave and Cooper, you guys take the lead. Don’t go out too far. You don’t want to get surrounded in case we need to retreat. I’ll run out next with Butterbean. We’ll try to take down whatever Dave’s turning doesn’t cover. Julian… I don’t know. Cheer us on or something.”

“Fuck that,” said Julian. “I want in on this action. There must be something I can do.”

“Wave your stick at them,” suggested Cooper.

“Screw you.”

“No,” said Tim. “Cooper’s not far off. Do you have any torches?”

“No,” said Julian. “But I’ve got oil.”

“I’ve got a torch,” said Dave.

“Good,” said Tim. “Go back down the road a bit and light it up. I’m pretty sure these fuckers are susceptible to fire.” Dave hurried back down the road far enough so that lighting a fire shouldn’t provoke any unwanted attention until they were ready. “Julian. After we all make our move, you start throwing flasks of oil at any of those things that are still on their feet. When you get an opening, light the fuckers up. Got it?”

“Yeah.”

“Listen guys,” Tim continued. “Once they’re on fire, just back off and let them burn. The last thing you want is a flaming zombie hug.”

Dave passed the lit torch to Julian. He readied his mace in one hand and his holy symbol in the other. Cooper held his axe with both hands. They looked at one another, nodded, and stepped out onto the flat ground.

“Try to get them to group together,” said Dave, “so I can turn as many as possible in one go.”

“Hey cocksuckers!” Cooper shouted. “I’ve got some fresh meat for you right here.” Julian couldn’t see Cooper, but he had no doubt that Cooper was waving his dick at the zombies.

“All right,” said Dave. “Here they come.”

“Those guys can really move when they’ve got somewhere to go,” said Cooper.

Julian lowered the torch and peeked above the flat ground level. Zombies moaned and dragged their feet as they walked hurriedly to feast on Dave and Cooper’s flesh. The party was surrounded on all sides but the trail they’d come up from.

Dave held up his holy symbol and pointed it at the largest congregation of zombies. “In the name of… um… whoever this symbol represents, I compel thee to… um… turn?”

A single zombie shrieked and fled in terror. The gap he left behind was quickly filled in by the growing multitude.

“Fuck,” said Dave. “That sucked.” He swung his mace into the ribcage of a naked dead man, just below his outstretched arm. The ribs crunched, but the zombie didn’t seem at all concerned by it.

Tim fired his crossbow into the zombie that Dave had attacked. The bolt hit its mark square in the face, burrowing upward from the cheek into whatever remained of its brain. It staggered backward for two steps.

Butterbean and Ravenus set upon it like savages. Ravenus pulled one of its eyes out of its head, flapping away before the thing could claw at its own face. Butterbean ripped a chunk of muscle off of its right upper thigh.

Whether from lack of vision, loss of leg muscle, or scrambled coordination, the zombie staggered around in a circle for a few steps before stepping right off the edge of the cliff.

“Julian!” shouted Dave. “Anytime you’re ready with that oil!”

Shit. Julian knew he should have prepared that already. With the torch in one hand, he rummaged through his backpack with the other hand until it wrapped around a smooth glass flask. The crowd up above was large enough such that he didn’t even bother looking to see where he was throwing it. Hopefully he’d splash a bunch of them. He could spend a couple of rounds down here making sure the crowd was good and saturated, chuck the torch into the middle of it, and watch zombie chaos ensue.

Zombie moans were being silenced by axe and mace up above him. Julian threw his first flask over the ledge.

“Ow!” shouted Dave just after the sound of breaking glass.

Shit. “Sorry!” shouted Julian.

“Dammit, Julian! It’s all over my hair! Watch where you’re throwing that shit!”

Julian scurried up the path to get a clear shot for his next flask of oil. There were zombies everywhere. He leaned the torch against a rock and dug into his pack with both hands.

“Hurry the fuck up, Julian!” shouted Cooper. “I can’t hold these fuckers up forev—Argh!”

“What happened?” asked Dave. He held one zombie at bay with his shield while caving in the skull of another with his mace.

“Fucker bit me!” said Cooper. He dug a clawed thumb into the eye socket of the zombie gnawing his arm, got a solid grip on it, and ripped its head clean off. As he was throwing it into the crowd, another zombie caught his uninjured arm and bit down.

Julian threw two flasks of oil into the middle of the crowd and dug around for two more.

Tim fired a bolt into the back of the zombie on Cooper’s arm, but it didn’t even seem to notice. “Julian!” he shouted. “Throw the goddam torch already! You can throw more oil once the fire gets going!”

Julian ignored him, as he already had two more flasks ready to go. A zombie broke from the crowd and lumbered toward him. He nearly dropped the flasks out of fear, but Butterbean came in from the side and tackled the zombie. Julian threw the oil. At least one of the flasks made a good splash on the crowd.

Dave took a swipe at the zombie on Cooper’s arm, crushing its spine. The creature’s legs went limp, but he still held on to Cooper with arms and teeth.

“Goddamnit!” Cooper shouted. He ignored the zombie on his arm for now in favor of not inviting another one to eat him. He brought his axe down on an approaching zombie’s shoulder, cutting down to its chest. “Light these fuckers up!”

Julian picked up the torch and threw it into the crowd, making his best judgment as to where he thought it might have a good chance of catching some oil. His heart stopped for two seconds while nothing happened. He had failed and they were all going to be eaten alive by zombies because of it.

But he hadn’t failed. A warm woosh of air blew his hair back as the darkness became light. Moans turned into screams as confused zombies waved their fiery arms around, spreading the flames to each other.

The zombies on the edge tried to move away, but their lack of coordination kept them bumping into one another in a panicked frenzy to escape the flames. Tim took aim at one which seemed like it might be moving in the right direction and shot it in the face.

Cooper left his axe buried in the torso of the last zombie he’d chopped, and tore himself free from the half paralyzed body still gnawing on his arm. He lifted the body over his head and threw it into the flaming mass of walking corpses.

Tim picked off stragglers while Dave tended to Cooper’s wounds.

“Is he going to be okay?” asked Julian.

“They got his arms pretty good,” said Dave, tearing a strip of cloth from Julian’s rapidly shrinking serape. He tied it around the bleeding tooth marks on Cooper’s left arm. “But if we can keep from being attacked for five fucking minutes, he should pull through.”

Julian tore off another strip of cloth for Cooper’s other arm. “But,” he paused. “I mean… Is he going to turn into...” he looked at the fiery crowd of screaming zombies. “one of them?”

Dave looked at Julian and smiled sympathetically, as if he were on the inside of some joke that Julian wasn’t privy to.

“No,” said Dave. “These aren’t movie zombies. They don’t spread a zombie disease. They are just dead people that have been animated by some kind of necromancer.”

Julian let out a long, steady breath.

“Don’t get comfortable just yet,” said Tim, taking aim at a wondering zombie which was completely engulfed in flames. He fired. It collapsed into a burning heap. “How do you think that necromancer is going to feel when he sees that we’ve destroyed all of his handiwork down here?”

Julian frowned and looked at the dark stone keep. Something shimmered in the doorway. And then there were two somethings. “Um… guys?”