Chapter One Hundred and Ninety-Three - Clean the Walking Dead

We were making really good time.

The Newbining dungeon was, without a doubt, the biggest I’d ever been in. Each floor had basically a small town’s worth of stuff in it. With little buildings and shops and homes. Sure, they were dilapidated and rotting away, but they were still there to explore.

If it wasn’t for all the undead walking and floating around it might have been a blast just to wander around and discover things.

As it was though, we were not really there to see the sights.

The third floor ended at a wall with a smaller gate in it, one that easily accepted the key I’d given to Peter.

“When little buns come here, do they complete the whole dungeon?” I asked.

“Oh no,” Carrot said. “We usually send them in small groups, and let them play around on each floor while someone older supervises. Most of the really little ones never make it to the third floor at all. That’s more for those that are almost teens.”

“So like, when they’re Tessie’s age?” I asked.

Carrot nodded. “You know Tesla?”

“She introduced herself,” I said. “She’s nice.”

“Yeah, good kid. Hard-headed. She’ll grow up to be a good bun. She’s about the right age to be tackling the third floor, I think.”

Was little Tessie at the same level as me? I really had to start inspecting people more, but I still hadn’t gotten into the habit. It wasn’t one I had on Earth, and it felt a little weird to use. Still, I had to make more of an effort. “That feels very young to be training so hard,” I said.

“You can’t be more than four or five years older, tops,” Carrot said.

“That’s a lot of years.”

She laughed and shook her head. “Making me feel old now,” she said. “I’m not even thirty yet, I shouldn’t feel old. Momma, is this what it’s like for you all the time?”

Momma looked very unimpressed.

“You’re not that old,” I told Carrot. “And Momma has aged very gracefully. She’s still here fighting with us, right. And she mentioned having grand-buns!”

Momma nodded. “Thank you, Broccoli. Carrot, perhaps you could learn from our new friends about addressing your elders?”

“Meh, you’ve got enough silver-eared foxes complimenting you wherever you go,” Carrot said.

Was silver-eared fox an analogy for an older bun man? That sounded about right. I couldn’t help but smile a little at the exchange. The buns seemed to get along really well, even when bantering a little.

“Maybe I should reconsider baby-sitting your little ones so much since I’m so busy with those silver-eared foxes,” Momma said.

“Wait, you have children?” Amaryllis asked Carrot.

Carrot grinned and brought her hands up in a v-for-victory pose. “Two little brats!” she said quite proudly. “They’re still tiny fluff balls.”

“Can we see them?” I asked.

“Oh course!” Carrot cheered. She seemed very proud of her little buns. I bet that she was a great mom.

“Door’s open,” Buster said as he ducked under the passage into the next floor. He had to be careful not to wedge his shield in the doorway. Peter slid past him and soon the rest of us were following.

The fourth floor was yet another section of town jammed in between four walls. The big change here was that the buildings were just a bit more dilapidated, and there wasn’t a skeleton in sight.

“Keep quiet,” Peter said as he started checking all his knives. “Keep your ears perked. This floor has zombies.”

“You actually call them zombies?” I asked.

He shot me a glare and I mimed zipping my mouth. “That’s what the world calls them. I didn’t come up with it. Their bite is fetid and can turn a healthy bun into a sickly one in a matter of hours if not treated.”

“You don’t turn into a zombie if they bite you?” I whispered.

“Only if you die,” Momma said. “We’ll try to avoid that, shall we?”

I nodded, and I saw Awen doing the same.

“They’re made of flesh,” Peter said. “And they are not all that strong. Past the tenth level though, so expect seven to eight skills from them.”

“Do you know what those are?” Amaryllis asked. She was pulling out loops of thin wire from a new pouch inside her coat.

“Not all of them,” Peter said. “They have poor senses, but can relay information to each other without speaking. Their bite is as I mentioned. Cutting off limbs will not incapacitate them. They might have some sort of light fear effect too, but it’s ignorable.”

“Don’t forget the stealthy ones,” Buster muttered. His voice was too deep to be called a whisper.

Peter gestured to Buster. “He’s right, some of them are hard to spot. Just stay close together, and try not to make a mess of things.”

Peter took the lead, with Carrot to one side, Momma on the other, and Buster right behind Peter. A wedge formation to keep us safe. I didn’t like being so much weaker than all of them, but there I was.

The town had a lot of once-pretty homes, with crushed roofs and battle-scarred fronts. Paint was peeling off everything, and the roads, once obviously cobbled quite carefully, were now cracked and franky dangerous paths, sometimes covered in thin films of lingering fog.

None of the streets stayed straight for very long, and if it wasn’t for the occasional glances of the walls in the distance, I would have gotten quite lost.

Awen tugged my arm, and pointed off to our left, to what might have been a shop once. There was something painted on the front. I bit my lip and hesitated. Was it ‘painted’ if the material used to paint wasn’t paint? The text was jagged and broken, but still legible.

“Dust to Dust,” I muttered as I read it.

Something made a noise in the fog. Not a growl, but a screechy sort of rumbling noise, like a really big cat that had just had its tail stepped on. Peter raised a hand and we all paused. His ears flicked this way and that in quick succession, then the other buns nodded. It seemed to say that there was something to our left, and that he wanted to go around?

Did the buns have some sort of weird ear-code?

That was so cool!

We moved to the next intersection, and then stopped. Peter gestured down with his hand for us to stay, then darted ahead with little bunny hops that he somehow managed to make look cool and ninja-y.

The bun peaked around the next corner, then flashed over to another before returning. He crouched near the middle of our group. “Both paths are blocked,” he said. “Vines and zombies. Faster path is to the left, then straight. I don’t think we’ll be able to fight without being hit from the back.”

Momma nodded. “Split into two formations. Carrot, Peter and I at the front. Full offensive. Buster, stay behind with the younger ones, keep them safe.”

Buster nodded.

“You guys, leave us some room to fight, we’ll make sure nothing hits you from the front as long as you keep our backs cleared. We’ll move forward in leaps. Road to road. Understood?”

We nodded.

Our group moved over to the next intersection, all of us holding our breath a little and eyeing everything around us. Wisps of fog, like long seeking tendrils, searched the air around us and turned the fanciful scrollwork of the buildings around us into mysterious forms that seemed to twist and move whenever they weren’t focused on.

I felt my heart pitter-pattering away with mounting excitement as we reached the intersection, then turned left and started down a street lined by homes with little gardens before them and hip-high stone fences. The flowers that might once have been there were long replaced by spiky weeds and those same choking roots that were crawling around everything.

There were more of those noises, the strange almost-howls.

The cause of those revealed themselves as the fog cleared a bit. Some two dozen people, in simple garb that looked fit for any proper villager, but shabbier, and covered in mud and gore and more.

Their eyes were absent of any kind of intelligence, and their mouths all hung open to reveal teeth that had long passed the point of being rotten.

Still, for all that they looked like they were in poor health, they didn’t fail to notice us. First one, then the next, started to growl and grumble. Arms raised up to reach out before them, and soon the entire band of zombies was moving towards us.

Carrot smacked her fists together, then launched herself forwards to the first of the dungeon monsters. Its head exploded in a gorey mess, and when the stench hit me, I almost lost my tea.

“Behind,” Amaryllis said.

I turned around and faced the street we’d just come from. Momma and Peter joined the melee, leaving me and my friends, as well as Buster, all alone to stare down a street empty of zombies.

Buster grunted. “They’re coming,” he said. He unhooked his hammer from his belt and set it against his shoulder before taking a wide stance, his shield out before him and legs bent just a little.

I evened out my spade like a spear, and saw my friends readying themselves too.

We didn’t have long to wait.

The zombies coming at us weren’t quite running, but it was a near thing. They hobbled and bounced and grumbled with every step. Some of them had bits missing, and I caught a whiff of pus and other yucky stuff before I pushed my Cleaning aura out and washed the stink away.

Something told me that Cleaning wouldn’t work quite as well on these. But that was a hunch, so I tested it by flinging a ball of Cleaning magic into the first zombie in the bunch.

The magic smacked it in the chest, washing away the grime in its shirt and making it stumble back into its friends. It seemed weaker, a little less coordinated, but still very much unalive.

“Darn,” I said.

Buster raised his hammer high, then brought it down with a thump that made the cobbles shift underfoot. Cracks ran out ahead of him, and with a violent rip, stone spikes as tall as I was--ears and all--tore out of the earth and formed a barrier like crooked teeth.

“There,” he said.

The first zombies impaled themselves on the barrier, but those behind were able to squeeze around or climb over it. Not a wall then, but an obstacle to slow them down to a trickle.

Awen’s crossbow thumped and a zombie gained a bristly bolt in the head before going down. Amaryllis, who didn’t seem keen on using her rather loud magic, lashed out with a loop of wire and caught one zombie by the wrist. Another loop around its opposite arm and, with her wires glowing a little, she was able to stop the zombie from going forwards.

The next two loops were tossed on the ground and wrapped around its ankles, but only with some difficulty, and she had to try again a few times. Still, once she succeeded, the air hummed and sparks of electricity raced through the lines and into the zombie. It spun, and under Amaryllis’ command, attacked the next one to squeeze past the wall.

“So cool!” I said.

“Pay attention, idiot!” Amaryllis said.

“Oh, right,” I said. Bastion and Buster were making short work of those jumping off the wall, with Awen’s occasional shot nailing one to the barrier. She even seemed to be using a tiny bit of glass magic to keep them away.

I couldn’t just stand back and gawk! I had to do my part.

Running over to the wall, I raised my spade and smacked the first monster to poke its head out.

I was really, really thankful for Cleaning magic when things started to get splattery.

***