No Bones About It Pt. 3
May 19th, 2009 |< < > >
You might want to read Parts 1 & 2 before reading this. They can be found here and here.
PART 3
When facing an oncoming tidal wave of the undead I don’t think there’s anyone out there who wouldn’t forgive uttering an expletive or two.
Danni and I uttered a stream of them, she using a few I had never even heard of before, and starting running to the opposite side of the chapel.
We darted through a sidedoor that lead to a cramped corridor. Behind us the corpses stumbled around mindlessly, but managed to move in a collective mass after us.
As we raced down the hallway, I said to Danielle, “Next time we do something like this, we double date.”
Danielle did a double-take. “I beg your pardon?”
“Well,” I explained, between gasps for air. It was a long corridor, however, it seemed to be on a decline, “The idea is that we’d have some people for the dead guys to, you know, go through, before they got to us.”
Danni thought about this for a minute, keeping pace alongside me easily—I think I might have been slowing her down. She nodded. “Actually, that makes sense.”
The hallway took a sharp turn and Danielle and I found ourselves in a large underground room, complete with giant cobwebs.
“Oh look,” I said as I came to a stop, “this cemetery is equipped with its very own crypt. Isn’t that sweet?” I muttered. I tipped forward, bracing my hands on my knees. I was going through some serious oxygen deprivation.
“Oh yeah, this is what I’m talking about,” I heard Danielle saying, her voice practically dripping with drool.
I looked up from between my legs and saw her standing a few feet away, in front of a rocky-looking wall. She turned around, holding a bronze-handled broad sword. Her eyes were glazed over as she admired the sword.
I straightened up. “Ok, Danni, I know you’re having a moment, but we do have a mass collection of dead guys coming after us.”
“Sorry,” she said and turned back to the wall. She pulled off a large battle-axe and tossed it to me.
“Whoa!” I exclaimed, grabbing the axe by the wooden handle. “Careful with these things,” I held it with both hands. Jeez, it was heavy.
And then the first of the corpses came bursting into the crypt. Instinctively I swung the axe around. Rotting bones crumbled immediately beneath the sharp blade and the corpse they had belonged to collapsed to the floor.
I stared at the corpse. Then I stared at the axe. Then back at the corpse. Finally I said, “Wow.”
More corpses started streaming into the crypt. Danielle jumped on them, wielding her sword rather impressively. I almost would’ve sworn I heard the blade whistle as she whipped it around.
However, it soon became apparent that no matter how good Danielle was with a sword, for every corpse she took down, there were a dozen more to take its place.
I grabbed Danni’s arm after she yanked her blade out of a fresh corpse. “Come along, darling, we don’t want to over stay our welcome.”
We were soon sprinting through the old crypt, the Corpse Corps never too far behind. We ran into giant cobwebs at every turn. The wooden floorboards beneath our feet rattled violently. And behind us, I heard the never ceasing stamping and groaning of a whole lotta dead guys.
It was a depressing situation.
We passed through a large opening, and found two large wooden doors on either side. We swung them closed and dropped a thick wooden block into the appropriate slots. Almost immediately after that, we heard the Corpse Corps crash into the doors from the other side.
The wooden doors shook violently, but did not break.
“Well,” I said between gasps of breath, “that takes care of that.”
Danni tapped me on the shoulder. “Ah, Mikey, you might want to turn around.”
I was pretty sure that I didn’t want to turn around, but I did anyway. My sense of overwhelming dread was not unwarranted. We had, as they said, gone from the frying pan, to the freaking bonfire.
Danni and I were now in a giant circular room that was lit by multiple giant torches that hung from the walls. There was a shaft of moonlight that shown down through a single hole in the ceiling, it was focused on one figure who stood on a raised altar of sorts: James Wolfe.
Wolfe was now dressed in some funky brown colored, ceremonial-looking robes and looking no less dead than he had a short while ago. Although it struck me that he looked remarkably good for a guy who lived to be a hundred and died twenty-three years ago. He was in the center of the largest collection of animated corpses I had ever seen and I had just seen a pretty big collection only seconds ago.
They were everywhere. Fresh corpses and not so fresh ones. And there were a lot of them. They were kneeling. They were standing. They were clinging to the ceiling. They were crouching. They were standing on each other. They were everywhere.
“Damn,” I said, “that is a lot of dead people.”
“Yep,” Danni replied, “sure is.”
We took a step back and ran into the wooden doors, which, incidentally, were still shaking. In other words, we were trapped.
“This is so not good,” Danielle said, gripping her sword tightly.
“What do we do?”
“I am fresh out of ideas. Unless you just want to go around bashing heads, which you know I’m totally for, I’ve got nothing.”
I swallowed nervously, switching the axe from hand to hand. “Maybe we could go around moaning ‘Imhotep,’ in a monotone voice. Sort of blend in with the crowd?”
“I don’t think that’s going to work, Mikey.”
Wolfe pulled out a fresh cigarette and stuck into his lipless mouth. “I wouldn’t worry about how you’re going to get out of this one, kids, ’cause you ain’t,” he lit the cigarette and then reached into his robes. He pulled out a heavy-looking vial of murky, red liquid and a large, and I mean large, ruby.
“Ooh, look at the pretty ruby,” Danni said.
I sighed and rolled my eyes.
“I hope you’ve made your peace with God, not that I believe in him or anything,” Wolfe said. He didn’t have to speak very loudly. The mass of corpses stood motionless and silent. “Which isn’t to say I don’t believe in a higher authority, which I do. I mean, how else do you explain all these animated dead folks?” He set the vial and the ruby down beside each other. “I’d go into my gods and all that, but we really don’t have the time. If we don’t get this ceremony before sunrise, it’ll be another twenty years or so before we get another chance. So,” the remaining of the skin on his face kind of stretched back. I think he was trying to smile. “let’s get started, shall we?” He reached back into his robes and pulled out a smaller vial, this one was filled with an icky brown liquid.
Danni tilted her head towards me. “You wouldn’t happen to have a plan yet?”
“I’m getting there,” I replied.
“Oh,” she said, nodding her head. “Well, no pressure, but if you could come up with one before they sacrifice us, I’d be eternally gratefully.”
“Exactly how eternally gratefully are we talking about here?” I asked.
“How grateful do you want me to be?” she replied.
“Gratefully enough to never bring me to another cemetery.”
“I think I can agree to that,” she said.
Wolfe dropped the brown vial and it hit the stone floor, shattering into a thousand pieces. The contents were released in smoky haze that billowed around the room. There was a tense moment of absolute nothingness and then, the corpses surged forward as one, all groaning that same bone chilling tune. I felt like I had stepped into a chorus scene from Night of the Living Dead.
I twirled the axe a little. It was now or never. “Ok, here’s the plan: Move for the altar.”
“Move for the altar? ” Danielle shouted back, knocking off a bony arm that had been trying to grope her, “Then what do we do?”
I swung the axe at an elderly woman who apparently had died from a gunshot wound to the head. I know you’re supposed to respect your elders, but there’s a line, you know? Usually that line starts around death. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it!”
TO BE CONTINUED . . . in PART 4
