“What the hell?!” the necromancer exclaimed.

He stumbled backwards, clutching at his face. Gary glimpsed his nose, a bloody, flat mess. The necromancer took another step back, yelping in pain. Gary almost felt sorry for him, but he was committed now. He pulled the shovel back and swung again, this time aiming for the stomach. His shovel connected, but this time only for 4 points of damage and with no stun attached.

Still, the necromancer was down 9 points out of 35, and Gary had got the first couple of blows in.

“What is going on?” The necromancer whined, “You’re undead, you can’t talk. You can’t attack me! It’s against the rules!”

Wow, you really aren’t very bright at all, are you? Gary thought.

But he wasn’t going to waste the opportunity for another attack whilst the necromancer was busy complaining about it being unfair. He swung the shovel again, hitting for 6 points and getting a lucky stun in.

The necromancer fell to the dirt, scrabbling around with one hand, holding his bloody, gushing nose with the other, his eyes wide open.

Gary brought the shovel down on his back. 6 points! No stun. But the necromancer was down to 14 hit points out of 35.

“Stop!” he called out. “Just stop! This isn’t the way this works! You can’t attack me!”

Gary stood above the cowering figure and felt a sudden surge of guilt. It wasn’t just that the younger man sounded like a school kid that had just been cheated on at sports. It was also the fact that Gary wasn’t comfortable beating a man to death with a shovel. Whatever craziness all of this was, he was still a pretty chill guy and now he was feeling like a bully.

The necromancer was curled up on the grass next to a grave, his eyes staring in shock.

“Okay,” Gary said, “I tell you what, I’ll stop attacking you if you tell me what the hell is going on here. How does that sound?”

He raised his shovel one more time to show that there wasn’t a third option. The necromancer nodded. If the necromancer had possessed any fighting spirit in the first place, Gary was pretty sure he had beaten it out of him with the four good whacks from Simon.

“Yeah, sure man, sure, just don’t hit me again, okay?”

He was still holding his bloodied nose as he got to his feet.

“What are you?” he asked Gary.

“I’m asking the questions here. First, what’s going on? What is all of this? What were those black slugs all about? Where did you come from? Why can I see these screens and stats and so on?”

“There’s no point asking me!” the necromancer said. “I’m just a trainee. This is my first time on the job, right? I only graduated last week!”

Called it, Gary thought.

“Okay, let’s start at the beginning. What’s your name and what are you doing here?”

“My name’s Zafier and I’m just doing my job, right? You can’t blame me for doing my job. It was that or, well, you know the alternative.”

Zafier waved a hand in the direction of the undead horde still closing on the church in the distance.

“No, I don’t know the alternative,” Gary said. “I don’t understand any of this! I don’t think there’s anyone on the planet who would understand any of this!”

“Okay, okay, let me just catch my breath here and I’ll explain everything, okay?”

Gary nodded.

“Fine, I just want some answer…”

The knife slipped under Gary’s ribs before he even realised Zafier had drawn it.

Gary yelled in pain as Zafier, grinning viciously, twisted the knife and pushed Gary backwards.

“Sucker!” he snarled.

Zafier the Necromancer (level 4) stabs you with a black knife. 7 points of damage.

“You little bastard!” Gary shouted. He rolled away from Zafier and lashed out with his shovel but failed to connect with the treacherous necromancer.

“Burn, burn, burn!” Zafier called out. There was nothing save gleeful malice in his voice.

Zafier the Necromancer (level 4) casts fireball.

Gary rolled hard as flames appeared around Zafier’s hands. He got behind a gravestone just as the fireball hit. Most of the flame was absorbed by the gravestone, but the flames still hit his legs. The fireball burnt through the legs of his jeans, the skin beneath sizzling and turning black. Gary screamed again as he took another 5 points of damage.

So much for trying to talk it out.

There was no time for sour musings, however. Zafier had been stalling Gary as his Hit points and Mana points had regenerated a little. And Gary was now down to 13 hit points, just over half his total.

Ignoring the pain in his gut, Gary jumped up from behind the gravestone and took another swing with his shovel at Zafier, catching him for 4 points but failing to stun. Zafier grinned.

The status bar above his head revealed that he had recovered 10 or more Mana points in the meantime, and the same amount in Hit points.

Gary was fighting a losing battle.

“Burn!” Zafier shouted again and another fireball hit Gary full force in the chest. His skin blistered and burned as the notifications informed him he’d just lost 12 hit points and was now down to 1 hit point.

Oh shit, I’m going to die. Like, really die, Gary thought through the pain. His vision was blurred and splotched with red around the edges.

“Hahaha, how do you like that, you little shovel swinging scumbag?” Zafier crowed. He whipped out his black knife again and moved in for the kill.

Gary knew what he had to do. The idea sickened him, but the pain and threat of imminent death blew past any reservations he had.

Using the last of his strength, he launched himself at the necromancer, knocking his arms aside and putting him in a bear hug.

Then he bit down with all his strength on Zafier’s neck.

His teeth crunched through the soft flesh with startling ease, and a nauseating spray of blood gushed into Gary’s mouth, nose and eyes. Feeling as if he was going to throw up, Gary forced himself to do the one thing he never in his life had imagined he would do.

He swallowed the mouthful of bloody flesh.

Zafier screamed in shock and fury.

You bite Zafier the Necromancer for 6 points of damage.

Eat the living: Regeneration 6 points of damage.

Zafier the Necromancer is Infected.

Zafier struggled to break out of the bear hug, his knife abandoned.

“Stop! Stop!” he shouted, “I’ll answer your questions, I will, I...”

Gary ignored Zafier’s begging and took another chunk out of the necromancer’s neck. The second chuck of flesh went down smoother than the first one. Gary could feel the injuries on his body healing up, the pain from the knife wounds and the burns dying down.

But that was as much as he could bear, before the horror of what he was doing overwhelmed him as the blood spray kept gushing into his eyes and nose.

He let go of Zafier, who in a blind panic was busy casting a Cleanse Infection spell.

“Wait, stop!” He called out, “It’s my first day! Please stop it!”

Gary swung the shovel at Zafier’s face, then again in his stomach. He started swinging with the edge of the shovel into Zafier’s stomach in a blind rage. Zafier scrabbled for his knife and got one last slice at Gary, across his forearm, but Gary ignored it and kept pounding and slicing at the devious necromancer until his hit point bar ran down to zero.

Zafier the Necromancer is defeated.

Gain 400 XP.

Gary dropped the shovel next to the bloody rag doll mass that was Zafier and threw up. The chunks of bloody flesh landed on the grass in front of him, along with the cereals and milk from his morning breakfast and the couple of pints he’d drunk the previous night at the Proud Lion.

When he was done heaving, he rolled onto his back, a few feet away from Zafier’s corpse.

“I just wanted some answers,” he said, “That’s all.”

He lay there for a few seconds, exhausted.

His clothes were singed and burnt right through in places, and blood stained his face and t-shirt. The cuts he had received were knitting themselves back together, which was not an unpleasant feeling. Clearly, he now had regenerative abilities on top of the other ones he’d gained since being classified as a zombie.

He tried to ignore the horrible fact that he’d just killed another human being – beating and biting him to death, no less.

It wasn’t as if Zafier had given him any choice. Gary had tried to be reasonable with the other man, after all.

Gary sat up as a scream rang out in the church’s direction.

The undead had broken down the fence and were attacking someone.