The Undead King: The Saga of Jai Lin: Book One (30 page)

“I got on Lothario and rode from there as quickly as I could, never looking back. I lived with the secret of what I had done for years, until word got out that there was a zombie-tongue living within the Blight who called himself Plaguewind, the Undead King. This zombie-tongue was working closely with the Church of the Bleeding Christ to bring his army of the undead to the Green Lands. Accounts from the Apostles of the church led many to believe that Plaguewind was in fact Willis Crane, and I knew that my failure at killing him was now out in the open. I fled the Fort, fully aware of Dusty Yen’s army gathering in the east and that he and Indio were conspiring together. I thought I could convince Dusty Yen to focus on the bigger threat coming from the south, I really did, but it would seem there is no talking to a mad man, especially one as power-hungry as he. I was ready to kill him, but knew the chance to do so would be a hard one to come by. And so here we are. Slated to be executed at first-light, the Green Lands about to be consumed by war. In all my years, I never thought it would end like this.”

Mercer didn’t know whether he wanted to throttle the old sergeant or embrace him. There was so much of the world that he didn’t understand, that his father had deliberately isolated him from, or had at least tried to. Power struggles between the western cities, sources of energy that came from splitting apart the smallest of all things, dead men being an unfinished step towards immortality, they were all concepts that were new and strange to him. But strangest of all was the love and loyalty Solloway had for Willis Crane, which, if if any of what the old soldier told him was to be believed, was a rare thing in the world indeed.

“What I don’t understand, Solloway, is why you didn’t tell us this before. Why wait until now? Why did you even bring us with you?”

“There’s no good reason. Believe it or not, I thought you’d be safer with me. Looks like I was wrong on that one. You’re both young, and haven’t seen what I’ve seen. I wanted to protect you, felt I could, both from the violence of the world and the truth of how things are. I’ve told you all this already, Mercer, but that sword you have, a lot of people want it, your father included. In the wrong hands, it could be the deciding factor in what ultimately destroys the Green Lands. I had to make sure I kept you close.”

“A lot of good it did us,” Brook whispered. “This will be our last night before joining Elon in the Dusk.”

“Elon and the Dusk can wait, girl. There’s always hope, even in the darkest of night. In the war, we had never seen anything like Godwin or his army of undead. Many men gave up, but many more fought on, and that is how we won. We… wait, did you hear that?”

They had. There was a clanging up by the window, as though someone were beating a syncopated rhythm on the bars. “That sounds like the melody to that children’s song
The Old Train Car
,” Brook said.

“It does,” Solloway rasped. “Hey, who’s up there?”

“Oh, good, good, good,” a familiar voice whispered down from above. “I’ve already tried two other cells and was beginning to think the worst. Are you all alright?”

“Jed?!” Solloway laughed, slapping his knee. “You sneaky little cosmologist, you! I knew you’d come back, I just knew it!” Mercer looked at Brook and the two shared a smile; in all the commotion of the past few hours, it hadn’t occurred to them to think about what had happened to Jompers.

“Of course. I could not just leave my friends in mortal peril. Isn’t that right, Leo?” There was a small yelp, just audible enough for the three in the cell to hear it.

“Leo!” Brook gasped. “You’re okay!”

“Yes, Miss Brook, he is okay. He found me as I was sneaking around the camp and led me to you. Now I need you all to cover your eyes and stand as far away from the window as possible. The guards have left on their rounds for the time being but they’ll be back soon. I don’t have much time.”

The three did as Jompers asked, Solloway trying in vain to not show the limp he had been gifted by the Crenshaw rangers right after he had kicked Dusty in the face. The hate that the other soldiers had felt for Solloway had been palpable, like the taste of sour milk, lingering on the tongue in a slimy film and imbuing the world with a putrid flavor. Mercer was beginning to understand the savagery of the world in the ways that man treated each other, not just in the way dead men could kill and eat innocents.

An extremely bright, orange light cast its glow upon the far wall as Jompers went to work on the bars. Mercer could see through the cracks in his fingers the rod Jompers had in his hand, a torch of some sort whose flame was cutting through the metal like a sharp knife through cheese. As he did this, Solloway began to explain to Mercer just what had happened prior to their being captured by Alyssa.

“When I heard the commotion going on between you and those slavers, I ran as fast as I could, leaving Jed behind me in the dust. By the time Jed caught up, we must already have been put in handcuffs, so he hung back. Gods, I knew he was a gem from the first I met him.” Mercer remembered well when they had first met Jedediah Jompers and how Solloway wanted nothing more than to put his axe through the wandering cosmologist’s head, but he wasn’t about to spoil the old soldier’s mood. There was hope up there through the window, a chance they may all live to see another day, and he wanted to keep that hope burning as brightly as possible.

One bar fell into the cell, its tips still white hot, then another, then another. Soon, the entire window was cleared save for some smoldering nubs that lined the small opening like baby teeth.

“Hurry now!” Jompers yelled in as clear but quiet a voice he could. He dropped down a length of sheets tied together at the tips. “Climb up!”

Solloway grunted as he shimmied himself up the taut sheets, getting up quickly despite his injuries. Though it was too dark to see, Mercer could feel the warm blood that had seeped into the fabric from Solloway’s hand when he went to climb. The wound must have been terrible, having not yet healed. When Mercer and Brook got to the top, they saw the old sergeant hunched over on the ground, panting heavily, his brow coated in sweat. Brook ran to Leo, the pit bull covering her faces in kisses, but Jompers and Mercer were concerned by the condition of the old sergeant.

“Are you alright, Roderick?” Jompers asked.  

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll be fine. Just getting too old for all this, that’s all…”

“That wound in your hand. I need to attend to it.”

“Not now, Jed. We have to get out of here before they know we’ve jumped ship.”

“Quite right. Fortunately, I came into possession of a set of keys that I believe can turn the ignition on the combustible engine of an old motor cart_”

“What the hell are you talking about, Jed? Speak words I can understand!”

“He’s saying that he found the keys for an old cart,” Mercer said, excited. “You know, the sort that runs on black blood.”

“Yes, yes. A guard too drunk to stand straight left them hanging on a post by the latrines. There are a row of motor carts up a ways. One of these keys should probably get one of them to work.”

“The engine will be loud once it starts up,” Brook said. “Old Wren said that the old motor carts rumbled like thunder and you could hear them coming several eye-spans away.”

Solloway nodded. “It’s true, but that won’t matter at all once we’re moving. Those carts may rumble like thunder but they fly like lightning. We’ll be on our way out of camp before Dusty’s men even know what happened.”

“Let’s do it then,” Mercer said. He had his doubts about the plan, feeling there were too many things that could go wrong, but knew that if they were to get out of camp, they should be as quick about it as possible. No place in the Green Lands was safe anymore, not with the discovery that Dusty Yen and the Fort at Kingston had banded together.

The reunited group stayed in the shadows off the trail as they made their way to the old carts. Solloway was now the one having a difficult time with the pace Jompers was setting. “Do you need us to rest, Roderick?” The cosmologist asked.

“No time for that, damn it. Keep moving.” There were shouts from far behind them, followed by gunfire. “Looks like they found out we’re gone.”

“Then we really have no time. Let’s go!” Mercer said, putting Solloway’s arm around his neck. The man’s arm alone was heavy for Mercer, but he shouldered Solloway’s huge girth as best he could, knowing that at any moment Dusty’s men could come upon them.

“How much farther ahead?” Brook asked.

“Oh dear, dear, we should be coming upon it now. Where is it? Oh!” Jompers stopped at the edge of the forest. Ahead was a clearing, the grass waist high, save for a series of dual-depressions that snaked to the open space from the road. The depressed grass was due to the heavy tires of the old carts being kept in the clearing. “Found them,” Jompers said.

“And I found you!” A familiar, phlegmy voice said from the trees. A gun went off, the bullet grazing Brook’s cheek, a soft cry coming from her throat. Jompers acted quickly, loosing a dart from the belt across his chest. There was a thunk, which Mercer heard despite the gunshot ringing in his ears, followed by the flaccid shape of a short man with bright red hair falling from the trees.

Brook was the closest to the fallen man. She leaned down to check his pulse, then looked up to Jompers, a thin stream of blood trickling down her cheek. “This was one of the sentries we saw earlier, before we got into camp. What did you do to him?”

“A sedative. He’ll be out for a few hours, but he’ll be fine. Come on, there is no more time to waste.” They left the fallen mercenary and ran into the clearing.

“Which one?” Brook asked, looking from one vehicle to the other. There were four of them in all, each painted an identical shade of deep forest green, their tires worn to the cords. None of the carts had a roof or door, their cracked, black leather seats exposed to the night air. The only real difference amongst them were the spots of rust, like birthmarks on their bodies.

“One surefire way to find out!” Jompers had a degree of confidence in his voice that no one in the party had heard before. He jumped into the driver’s seat of the nearest car and felt around for a place to stick the keys into. The tip of his tongue stuck out of his lips as he searched, a huge grin appearing on his face once he found what he was looking for. “I got it! I…”

“What is it?” Solloway asked. He looked to have shrunk in their run from the jail cell, and wavered on his legs like a blade of grass in the breeze.

“The key… it won’t turn.”

“Try another cart then.” Jompers got out of the one jeep and into another, but the result was the same. He tried the other, then the final cart, but still no luck. “This has got to be some stupid joke…” Solloway seethed.

“Wait. Let me try.” Mercer moved Jompers aside and got into the driver’s seat. The controls at his hands were very old, but looked extremely familiar, like those of the machine his father had and had sometimes been able to get working. The
backhoe.
It had a bucket and treads instead of wheels, but had also run on the black blood of the earth, on oil. To start it, Mercer had to step on one of the foot switches, the
clutch
, while he turned the key. That was it, now he remembered. He found the pedal, pushed it down, then turned the key, and…

The growl of thunder filled the clearing. Brook covered her ears while Jompers leaped up in the air, clicking his heels together and cheering. It was a rare thing for an old machine to work, particularly one that ran on the black blood.

“Come on, let’s go!” Mercer shouted. Solloway limped over and threw himself up into the flatbed in the back. Brook hesitated, as did Leo, but only for a moment. There were more gunshots from behind, and the shouts of the soldiers were closer and could be heard even above the din of the roaring engine.

The five travelers on board, Mercer pushed the clutch down and moved the thin metal stick vibrating between himself and Jompers forward. He hoped this worked the same way as his father’s old machine, hoped that his memory served him correctly. He lifted his foot up off the clutch and then put his other foot down upon the other pedal. The car began to jerk forward in spastic movements, but the more pressure Mercer applied to the new pedal and less he had on the clutch, the smoother the car began to move.

“How do you know how to drive this thing?” Brook whispered in his ear from behind him.

“My Pa taught me,” Mercer said. Brook only knew Willis Crane as he was now, as Plaguewind, the Undead King. He wished she could have met the man he knew and loved as a young boy, the man who had saved the Green Lands from Godwin in the last war, the man who Solloway said was broken when the light of his world, Mercer’s mother, had been taken from him by yet another cruel act of man.

“Well, he taught you well, Mercer Crane.” Brook leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. He felt his face grow hot where her lips touched his stubble, felt himself shrinking within the infinite void which opened up under his skin. The smirks that Solloway and Jompers’s were beaming at him were like two hot lamps, but Mercer was too embarrassed to snuff them out with a stern gaze. He knew he couldn’t be stern right now, even if he tried.

A bullet flew past his ear and he snapped back to where he was. The cart wasn’t going fast enough. A swift mercenary could easily catch up with them on foot and jump in the cab. Mercer pushed the clutch down and then shifted the car up to second gear. There was a lurch and the sound of grinding metal from beneath the hood, but once Mercer lifted his foot the car began to move more quickly and more effortlessly.