Zombies went through the same historical trend as vampires. First they were horrifying creatures that rose from the grave and terrorized people. Then they were just one of the undead. Then by 2020, they were the classic bad guys. They were used as bad guys for all the large scale wars, from post-apocalyptic America, to fantasy kingdoms, to attacking plants in mobile devices.

Once they passed the classic bad guy phase, Zombies went a little glam. Ludvig the perpetually depressed European zombie had a different life than his large living American friend von Staadt, who somehow plays electric guitar while eating brains. After that, thank god there were no glitter zombies, but they went all flowery. The new wave was the druid-zombie with the ability to make flowers bloom as they decomposed. There was much mooning over decay after those movies. The next step, of course, was into teen romance territory, and that happened in the 40s.

The three that shamble out of the doorway aren’t the new friendly zombies, but rather the old school scary ones that moan and eat brains. They might even be closer to the original Norse draugr stories. These three each have axes and they’ve got that hatred of the living look down.

As they come out of the door, each of us squares off against one. If I'd had time to plan my coordinated assault on the slavers' fortress, I'd definitely have worked some team tactics into the training. That's not exactly how it went down, so we do better each fighting solo. At least, Goro and Danae do.

Goro leads by punching one of the zombies with one of his ham-sized fists, and slams the zombie in the chest. that fires the zombie back five yards where it hits side of the hill. No big deal, the zombie seems to say, and it picks itself back up. Goro charges forward to hit it again, and does his best fire-breathing dragon impression. I'm hoping that's pyromancy, and not just a side effect of his having become a half-dragon. If I can be a half-dragon Shokan from Mortal Kombat, I would totally turn into a half dragon. The zombie turns black as he toasts it, but then he is forced to jump back, avoiding the axe it’s swinging. It apparently takes a lot of fire to burn the dead.

While Goro is tussling with his enemy, Danae is squaring off against her undead. D. is now wielding her rope like a chain weapon, rotating, watching the thing, ready to throw. The rope is pretty thick, and the end is more than a bit red with blood at this point. Zombie steps forward, and she shoots the chain to meet it. The dead aren't as fast as the cowgirl, and her rope wraps all the way around the zombie before she shakes it a bit and gives a pull. All the skin around its middle, and some of the flesh beneath the skin are pulled off as her rope acts like a 50mph asphalt skin-remover. The zombie doesn’t seem to care about it's missing skin. It hefts its axe, and moves forward again. Its strike is faster than one would think, but somehow when it swings, our resident rope-magician has already recovered her chain. She throws a loop to meet the axe, catches it, and then does some rope judo shit to throw the axe away from the zombie. I think a finger or two went with it as well.

My fight isn’t going as well as either of the other two are. I try sonic attacks: stuns, sleeps, even earbleeds, and they have exactly zero effect. The zombies don't appreciate music, apparently. After failing with sound, I use my absurd speed to dodge around it, and bash the zombie’s arm with my sticks. That would have done damage to living flesh, but the zombie just tanks the beating. His axe is no danger to me at all, with my eight times speed coupled with his zombie half-speed. At the same time, as usual, I’m having zero physical impact on the monster and my sound magic isn't working either. Back to monkey tactics: I swap out my sticks for a baseball bat. Next time I head in, I swing hard enough to crack an elbow, but it just keeps shambling after me, still swinging the axe. I guess it’s animated by magic, not bones and ligaments.

Round two goes better than round one did. Goro takes several large fast steps backwards. He’s clearly put some powerups into speed, because he moves about twices as fast as normal folks. Then he pulls out four swords for his four hands, each one probably bigger than I can wield with my two hands. As he closes to melee again, the zombie swings with its axe, and Goro parries it. That takes one sword, and then he uses the other three swords to chop the arm into four pieces. The amount of force he brought to bear chops through flesh and bone, and doesn't care if it's dead or alive. The zombie, having been literally disarmed, is taken to pieces pretty quickly after that. Ginsu master Goro stabs it everywhere, and when it keeps coming after a face-stab, he simply dismembers the thing. It stops moving when the limbs and head are all severed.

Danae also fares better in round two. The zombie does not seem to react quickly to anything, so she reaches in her pocket, pulls out another loop of rope, and spin-throws it like a frisbee. Then she’s using her rope like a long-ranged flail, with a motion that goes: spin- spin- spin- throw- thump. Her throw removed a knee. The top of the leg is there. The bottom is there too, it’s just the knee that’s missing. You can see daylight through its leg. While it’s teetering, the frisbee loop lands on its shoulders, then starts spinning faster and tightening. Pretty soon it’s doing a remarkable impression of spinning razor wire on the zombie’s neck, and in three seconds, the head falls off. The missing head doesn’t bother the zombie as much as the missing knee does, but it does topple over. Having found a trick that works, Danae takes care of the rest of its limbs as well, making a second pile of zombie parts at about the same speed Goro did.

I’m not quite as effective as either the four-armed giant or the buzz saw queen. My skill is that I move like a crazed parkourist chinchilla on meth. My attempt at strategy involves running very fast, then sprinting back and baseball-batting the shit out of the zombie. Since it works on mailboxes, maybe it works on zombies. The first time, it gets knocked over. The second time, I pull an Einstein and hope that doing the same thing again will get different results. It doesn't. As the zombie gets back up, it doesn’t seem otherwise perturbed by being knocked down. On the third try, I resort to the same technique the others used: dismemberment. When the zombie has its weight on its left foot, I aim for the knee with my full force, three-handed spinning swing for the fences. I hear bones in the knee shatter, and can even see tears in the flesh with bone sticking through, but didn't actually take the leg off. That’s what persistence is for. Three more swings, and I learn you can cut a leg off a zombie with a baseball bat. Unfortunately, when it falls, that removes most of the leverage I used to remove its leg. At least it drops the mobility a lot as well. Beating on a fallen zombie that moves like molasses isn't especially effective, even if I pulp its head pretty quickly. The other limbs are taking forever.. Fortunately, Goro comes over. He dismantles it like he was a professional butcher in his last life.

With three zombies re-deadified, I ping Priya. “All good?”

I build a sound-tunnel so I can hear her as well. “Miguel is alive, but unconscious. He’s stable, and should be fine, but I’m staying with him, unless you need urgent help.”

“How are the prisoners?”

“Carter is decreasing the pressure. He’s says dropping the pressure about one p.s.i. every thirty seconds.”

“We usually did about twice that safely, but if he’s happy with that rate, we’re good. When he’s done, put on your best bedside manner. Those folks need psychological help. We just finished off the zombies, so now we just have to deal with Dr. Jones and Sharon.”

We’re getting ready to head in after the two remaining slavers when I hear more noise down the passage. The rest of the zombies are coming.