Captain Vaughn noticed it before Private Lee or Gary’s uncle.

He swore as a skeletal hand burst through the earth and grabbed at his ankle. He let loose a quick burst from his automatic rifle, shredding the skeletal hand and the skull that was emerging from the dirt, then swore again as another pair of bony claws reached up and grabbed his ankles.

Gary’s uncle span round at the sound of the gunshots, saw the skeletal figures rising. He gazed down in horror as the arm of one of his most recent victims, not yet decomposed down to the bone, reached up and grabbed his trouser leg.

He shrieked and shot wildly at it with the Glock as he jumped away, but another skeleton appeared behind him, creaking and cracking as it shoved the earth to one side. Private Lee started shooting as the field erupted.

Forty-three dead bodies, the victims of one of Britain’s most prolific uncaught serial killers, burst out of the shallow graves he’d buried them in.

Most of them were little more than skeletons by now, their bones covered with dirt as insects and slugs crawled around their fleshless forms. Within seconds the ammunition of Captain Vaughn and Private Lee had run out. They only managing to destroy four of the rising dead before their weapons clicked.

Gary stood in his shallow grave and observed all of this, unmoving. The skeletons paid him no attention as they honed in on their living targets, their teeth clicking and gnashing. Three of them still bore enough rotten flesh to be classified as zombies. The rest were bony terrors, all raised at Gary’s command. Their fingers ended in sharpened claws, their teeth elongated and pointed. They moved with a swiftness and agility not afforded their zombie brethren.

Private Lee tried to make a run for it, but was the first to be brought to the ground. He died screaming as the skeletons chewed on his flesh, their bodies absorbing the living meat and growing back onto their bony frames. Captain Vaughn lasted a little longer, using his assault rifle as a battering weapon, but in less than a minute the massed hordes had overwhelmed him, too.

Gary stood and watched. He saw no reason to intervene as the soldiers fell. It had been him or them.

A few of the horde were already making their way to the farmhouse, sensing more of the living in that direction.

“Fireball!” His uncle screamed, then roared in frustration as the system informed him he didn’t have enough mana to cast the spell. He had spent most of his mana maintaining control of those around him with command person and charm person spells. Aside from a couple of useless cantrips, there was nothing he could do magically.

He tried to run to the edge of the field, but the undead blocked his path. He threw the Glock at one of the skeletons, then ran back towards Gary.

Gary got out of the grave and stood on the other side of it, blocking his uncle’s only escape route.

“Gary!” he called out, “Come on son, I was only joking, you know that! Just a little joke! Come on, we’re family, aren’t we? You can’t let them do this!”

Half a dozen of the skeletons gnawed and chomped on the bodies of Captain Vaughn and Private Lee. Another dozen were closing in on Gary’s uncle as he tried to find a way through the clicking nightmares.

The only way to escape the tightening net was through Gary.

He reached out his hands to his nephew, pleading, praying.

He fell to his knees as the dozen skeletons moved towards him.

Gary... smiled.

A darkness inside him grew.

It was something he wasn’t used to feeling. A desire for revenge and payback. More than that, a desire to be callous about it.

For the past two days, he’d done everything he could to help people out, and what had been the result? Attacked, hunted, trapped, stabbed, marched at gunpoint and forced to dig his own grave. Every time he had turned around, someone who should have been an ally, friend, or family had turned on him.

The darkness he felt increased.

This wasn’t the same as the undead voice, Yarg, that had been goading him to consume the living.

This was a darkness buried deep inside Gary, set free. A seething anger that threatened to consume him.

“Yeah, okay, Uncle David,” he whispered, “Just wait there.”

He picked up Simon and smashed the two closest skeletons, felling them each with one blow. Another swing and he destroyed another one and stunned two others. He noted with grim satisfaction that he received 13 experience points for each one.

Not a lot, but something at least.

His uncle, still on his knees, scrambled behind Gary as his nephew fought off the approaching horde. Already they were closing in behind, leaving him trapped in a circle of undead, with only Gary to protect him.

“HE’S MINE!” Gary shouted out at the skeletons, “You can’t have him.”

The dozen skeletons that hadn’t opted for the farmhouse paused as Gary’s words rang out.

Perhaps they sensed there were easier and more plentiful pickings in the farmhouse behind them. Or perhaps Gary’s words carried with them the weight of one who spoke to the undead, a latent commander ability. Perhaps it was that simply that Gary was level 3, and they were only Level 1, and the dead respected their superiors.

Either way, the skeletons turned and started clacking their way to the farmhouse.

“Oh, god bless you Gary, god bless you!” his uncle said.

He stood up and screamed as Gary lashed out with a claw, scratching David’s face.

“Gary, what? What are you doing?”

Gary kicked his uncle in the chest, pushing him back to the edge of the hole he’d dug.

Then he kicked him again, forcing his uncle to fall into the shallow grave.

“You infected me!” His uncle screamed, “You infected me!”

“That’s right, you sick bastard. Now stay down.”

Gary lifted a shovel of earth and threw it on his uncle’s body.

“What? Gary, what are you doing? Command Person! Stop doing this!”

Gary grinned as his uncle’s last-ditch attempt to save himself failed. As Gary had surmised, the magician’s spells were as much use on him as Zafier’s had been. Gary wasn’t a person, and he wasn’t a zombie. He was something else. Attempts to control him as either an undead or one of the living would both fail.

His uncle tried to scramble out of the grave, but Gary hit him across the face with Simon, forcing him back down.

He shovelled another load of earth onto his uncle’s body.

Then a third and a fourth.

Each time his uncle tried to get out of the three foot deep grave, Gary pushed him back down until David could do nothing except whimper and plead for mercy.

Gary ignored him and continued shovelling earth onto his uncle.

In the end, all his uncle could do was stop pleading for his life and start pleading about how he was going to die.

“Come on Gary, not like this, come on,” he wiped a shovel full of earth way from his mouth, his legs and chest already covered. “Why like this, Gary? Why are you doing it like this?”

“I’ll tell you why in a minute,” Gary said, as he shovelled two more loads of earth onto his uncle’s face.

The dirt piled up.

His uncle tried to reach up out of the side of the grave, clinging to the edge. Gary smashed down on his hand with his shovel. His uncle screamed and choked on a mouthful of dirt. Gary continued his task, throwing shovel load after shovel load onto his uncle until there was nothing left to be seen of the magician. The only sign that he existed was the wriggling earth piled on top of him.

Five more shovel loads and the earth stopped moving.

A notification appeared.

You have defeated Uncle David (Level 3 Magician)

Uncle David is dead!

Gain 300 Experience Points.

Gary shovelled the rest of the earth onto his uncle’s grave, patting it down nice and tight.

Then he sat and waited.

Five minutes went past, then ten.

In the distance, he heard a scream as the undead horde that he’d unleashed attacked the farmhouse. Gary paid it no mind. He’d deal with the rest of them once he’d finished this bit of business.

The earth shifted and Gary’s uncle rose again, a Level 2 zombie.

Gary took his head off with one clean sweep of Simon.

You have killed a level 2 zombie. Gain 26 experience points.

“Experience Points,” Gary said, continuing his earlier conversation with his uncle. “Plus I get the pleasure of killing you twice.”

His uncle’s body fell back into the grave.

Gary kicked his uncle’s decapitated head after it.

Then he turned to face the farmhouse, his eyes narrowed.