Ajax went down the short wooden ladder first and I followed. The large dank room had probably been a wine cellar or something similar. The air smelled strongly of earthy mold with a hint of something chemical. We moved cautiously, weapons raised, but we had to stop and light a lantern to proceed. The morning sunlight failed to illuminate as much as it felt like it should.

Ajax carried the lantern in one hand, pistol in the other and led the way. It didn’t take long to find signs of habitation. A bedroll was laid out on the ground next to a makeshift fire pit. The fire was long burnt out, and the stew hanging in a pot was mostly congealed.

Near the bed was a wooden table that had seen better days. It held various camp supplies like cooking utensils, rope, and a whetstone as well as a few scraps of paper. Ajax leafed through the paper and held up a slip. “Bets on horse races,” he said. “Seems like he was still going to the track even with his new hobby.”

“Treasure hunting not enough to get his gambling fix, I guess,” I said.

Ajax made a thoughtful noise and kept searching. We found a powder horn and some shot, which Ajax happily ‘confiscated’ to replenish his dwindling supply.

“You smell that?” Ajax asked.

“The mold? How could I not?”

“No, that chemically smell, like formaldehyde. I think it’s coming from over here,” Ajax said and started walking to the far corner.

When the lantern light revealed a second wooden table in the corner, Ajax swore softly. Strapped to the table was a corpse. At least that’s what I thought at first. When it tried to lunge off the table, I almost had a heart attack.

Ajax flinched back and shot the thing in the chest out of reflex. The bang reverberated in the closed off room and my ears started ringing.

The zombie, for its part, barely flinched as the ball ripped through its chest. It just kept pulling against its bindings trying to reach us. The animated corpse was cut up, and pieces were missing. The front of the throat and upper torso were removed down to the spine, like a very overzealous autopsy. The lower jaw and tongue were missing, so the creature just vaguely jerked at us with its upper teeth. The shoulders and lower torso were intact, but the heart and lungs, and the ribs protecting them, were just gone.

Frankly, I was amazed the thing could even move at all with so much missing.

Ajax stared at the carved flesh in horror. “You don’t think he was... eating it?” He said, glancing back towards the stewpot.

I advanced tentatively, nervous despite how securely the monster was strapped down. A wooden bucket lay under the table and I reluctantly slid it into the light with my foot. “Found some missing pieces,” I choked out as I thought I recognized a human heart. I tasted bile. Something about organs in a bucket was more nauseating than any of the gore I created yesterday.

“I’m going to kill it,” Ajax said matter of factly as he set the lantern on the ground and started to reload.

I wasn’t about to argue. I sheathed my sword and sapar, and plugged my ears. Hanging out with Ajax was going to give me tinnitus.

When the zombie’s brains were plastered against the wall, I approached and took a closer look. I didn’t learn anything new about the zombie, but noticed that there were other things on the table. Crude surgical tools were strewn about haphazardly. Most of them were covered in dried gore. Whatever Slinger’s reason for carving up the monster, he had gone at it with enthusiasm.

Off to the side of the long table, I found a bound collection of notes. It appeared to be a makeshift journal. I eagerly beckoned Ajax over so that I could take a better look. My excitement quickly turned to disappointment, however, when the light revealed the archaic script written on the yellowed pages. Whatever language Slinger had been taking notes in, it didn’t use characters I recognized. The cramped and angled letters looked a bit like Norse runes, but I was hardly an expert.

I shot Ajax a questioning look, but he just shook his head. “Looks like fantasy gibberish to me,” he said.

“Maybe another class has a translation skill,” I ventured as I carefully wiped zombie remains from the pages using a rag. When they were as clean as they were going to be, I tossed the rag back onto the table and walked back to Slinger’s equipment table. I liberated a backpack from the pile of gear and carefully stowed the journal.

“So, what now?” Ajax asked.

“I guess we head back to the Bitter Flagon and see if anyone can read this,” I said.

“Alright, how about you do that, and I’ll head back to the police station. I want to find out more about the other victims,” Ajax said thoughtfully. “Serial killers are all about patterns, right? So, we should see what the victims have in common.”

“Makes sense to me. Let’s lock this place up and get going.”