Wallace

I wanted nothing more than to leave and take Val far away from here. I'd come within heartbeats of dying, and now she was paying for it.

Needless to say, this is not how I imagined our adventure going. This was supposed to be a fun romp. We'd have some fun exploring, Val would tease me a bunch, and if we were lucky, there would also be the chance to bury the people chasing Val.

Instead, I was kneeling in a corridor behind a handbag store, holding Val's body while she continued to shiver and cold sweat beaded on her forehead.

But leaving wasn't a solution. Agamemnon and the others might be able to fight off Lady Death. But we were talking about having a city full of undead just a few days away from our home, and I couldn't leave that to chance.

"You two need to take Val and get the hell out of here."

Regina nodded grimly while Amity covered her face with her hands.

"Amity, you know we can't let this go unresolved. But we can't do anything if we're trying to take care of Val at the same time."

She ran her hands up her face and through her hair, "Then take Regina-"

"And leave you to navigate through this mess, find a car and hotwire it, all while trying to carry an unconscious fey through a city full of zombies? No," I said flatly.

I took the long axe off my shoulder and examined the blade.

"Give me a minute to fix this," I told her, already feeling in my pocket for the coins I'd need, "and then I'm going to tear out of here and make a fucking lot of noise when I go. Once the way is clear, you should be able to find a parking garage and hotwire something to get you all out of here."

"And you're going after Lady Death on your own?"

I shrugged, "There's only three of us. Someone's going to end up alone. Better it be me."

"Lord Wallace's course of action is sound," Regina agreed, "And he won't be alone, should he reach those holed up in the mall."

"Do you want us to wait for you somewhere?" Amity hoped.

"No. No waiting, no sitting around. The moment you find a vehicle, get the fuck out of the city and haul ass back to the hotel. If you're still worried, I've still got my communication book on me, and I can keep you updated. If the situation isn't resolved by the time you get home, then you can send someone back to meet me."

I focused, and with a bit of zinc and steel, used Transform Metal to straighten the top spike and bent the axe head back into shape.

"Wally, I know it sounds ridiculous, but please be careful," Amity said in a small voice, "Val's not the only one who cares about you, and god forbid she should wake up before we make it home."

"I will," I promised, "I've got a few ideas, but if I'm going to make this work, I need to know Val is safe."

"Lady Valentine will not come to harm," Regina promised.

I hammered across the faux marble tiles, my footfalls landing with enough force to rattle signs and shop windows as I passed. Behind me, I could hear the mushy sound of repeated impacts as shamblers fell down the stairs in their haste to reach me.

I kept up my momentum as I rounded a bend. I held the axe across my body, bottom left to top right, ready to attack or guard against what might be there to meet me. But while there were a couple of shamblers in the hall, already moving towards me, none were near enough to catch me as I rounded the corner, and I easily dodged those few that reached out with grasping hands.

At the far end of the hall, past a handful of scattered zombies, was a series of plate glass windows. There were yet more zombies on the street beyond, but their attention was focused down the street, and they were passing by the windows at a slow walk, silhouetted against the still-burning wrecks parked on the street.

I swept my gaze to the right as I passed a hall on my right. There was the bank of windows I'd seen from the bridge. There was already a crowd of zombies in the hall and streaming towards me, and a collective groan went up as they spotted me.

I almost broke my stride. Almost.

Zombies are so prevalent in movies, games, and tv, that a lot of their horror is lost to familiarity.

Oh yeah, a zombie. Just whack 'em in the head, and they go down.

I was guilty of the exact same thought process. Hell, I'd been doing it when we were making the climb to the lighting asshole. And yeah, a small group was no real threat. Especially if I had something that gave me some long-ranged punch.

But there were fifty zombies in that hallway. Fifty, in just that hallway.

If I could choose the ground and had space to move, I could take on a fair amount. These guys were pretty slow, after all. But it wouldn't take long before I'd begin to tire and slow, or for some to shuffle in behind and surround me.

And that was just this one hallway. How many more were out in the city? Even if very few living people had come along when the city had appeared, how many corpses had rested in the city's graveyards?

No. I couldn't just walk away and hope the city would sort itself out. Lady Death was a contagion. Even if these zombies didn't spread by biting living victims- and that was something I really needed to figure out -she'd only grow more dangerous over time. She was being kept in check by the other gods and by the tides, but neither would hold her for long. Each god she slew was another turned to her side, as I found out first hand, and one fewer ally for those still holding out.

As for the tides, well, even limited to walking speed, the zombies did not tire. Three miles an hour was on the low end of human walking speed, and if these creatures maintained that rate- as they could -from the moment the tide passed until it next swept over the landscape they could cover... What was that, seventy-two miles?

I raised my arm and launched a handful of screws at the window. It shattered, and I was out onto the street. I leapt over the soot-covered hood of a burnt-out car and landed in the middle of the road where I'd have the most time to react. Zombies were one thing, but somewhere out there were the skeletons I'd seen by the mall.

Short of another asshole chucking a lighting bolt through my heart, they were my biggest concern.

I shook my head, angry at myself for not giving this greater thought sooner. I'd been thinking of Lady Death and her zombies in terms of people. People who would mostly need to walk to get where they wanted to be. I'd known, of course, that they lacked the limitations of the living. But I'd not taken the time to really consider what that meant.

It would be really great if killing Lady Death would make them all fall down.

I felt my endurance beginning to flag as I pounded down the street. I straightened my back and took care to ensure I was breathing regularly and deeply.

I knew I could make it. I just needed to keep my rhythm and keep myself from getting too stressed. Sure, zombies were tearing the city apart, but that was no reason to lose my head.

I tore the strap off the axe as I ran. I'd have preferred a better source of Body mana, but there hadn't been a jewellery store near where the girls had been hiding out, so the leather would need to do.

I bit into the middle of the strap and pulled again, tearing the strip in half.

I saw the collapsed bridge emerge from the smoke as I drew nearer to the mall, but I kept my focus on the cars to either side as I approached. The zombies were slow, but there was a hell of a lot of them. So dodging them was not so much quick footwork, as it was anticipating where they'd be and making sure well in advance that I was out of their reach. It reminded me of racing games, of all things. Driving had always been an interesting but ultimately unattainable hobby due to my size. But that hadn't stopped me from putting together a decent racing setup at home.

So I imagined my path down the street as I veered from side to side as a sort of racing line. Except here, the penalties for going off track were a little more severe.

I saw two masses of zombies filtering through the cars on the left side of the street and a few stragglers in between on the right side. But rather than trying to snake in between them like the world's highest-stakes chicane, I took a shortcut.

I stuck to the right side of the track, and when I hit the stragglers, I didn't run into them. I ran through them.

Hockey. That was another hobby I'd never been able to explore, though that had more to do with my complete hopelessness when it came to skating. But I wasn't on ice at the moment, and while a long axe and a hockey stick don't have a ton in common, both can manage a pretty devastating cross-check.

So rather than hold out my axe before me like a plough, I held the haft close to my chest. It was only at the last moment before impact that I shoved the axe forward.

My greater reach kept the zombie's claw-like hands from scratching me as the haft slammed into its chest. I heard ribs shatter like rotten pickets on a fence, and I slowed only enough to ensure I wouldn't put my foot in the ruins of its chest as I charged onwards. My momentum carried me through the remaining couple of stragglers, with my axe and even bits of the first zombie serving to keep them off me long enough to get clear of the group.

I saw as I neared that the bridge was surprisingly clear. While there was still the odd corpse shuffling around, the constant assault I'd seen underway on my first pass had let up. Whether they'd won and were now inside tearing through the still-living or had been ordered to regroup by Lady Death was an open question. A question I'd be settling shortly.

I readied my spell as I closed the remaining distance to the fallen bridge, and when I was about twice the bridge's height away, I leapt. At the same moment, I drew upon the Body mana in the torn piece of strap, and a tiny bit of Movement from the iron in my blood, to launch myself skywards.

My biggest worry was slamming uselessly into the side of the bridge or smashing through and cutting myself on the glass, but if anything, I overdid it. So worried was I about falling short that I nearly went off the far edge of the bridge, and it was only because I lost my footing as I landed and ended up on all fours that I was able to arrest my momentum before skidding off the top and back down onto the street below.

I heard groans and raspy howls from below, urging me to haste, but they didn't happen to be the biggest problem with reaching the mall.

I pushed myself up and was halfway to my feet when I felt a white-hot pain just above my right ear, heard a crack, and stumbled.

"Hey, fuck off!" I bellowed.

I turned, and there in the ruined hole where the bridge had once met the building was a waist-high sandbag barricade and two very pale looking guards.

At least they were healthy enough to shoot me.

I straightened, took several steps back, and then broke into a run that ended with me being launched into the air to land heavily just behind their barricade.

"I- I- I shot you in the head," one of them stammered, unbelieving.

I brought a hand to the side of my head. It came away covered in blood, and I could feel more running down the side of my neck.

"Yes, you did. Be glad I'm patient."

I turned away so they couldn't see my little smirk and went looking for the things I'd need to fix this mess. I'd need copper, pearls, and diamond. And while I was here, I couldn't forget to grab our supplies, and because it would make Val happy, all the weird shit she'd picked up.