The dead fill the streets, corpses nearly lining entire blocks. The rain does little to hide the smell. A few scattered remnants of the undead cling to life, only to be out down by guards and adventurers alike.

A man and woman pile bodies up onto carts to carry them off for burning and burial. "This is horrible." The woman says to her partner as they heft another one onto the cart.

"I've never seen anything like it." Her partner responds, tightening the rag around his mouth and nose to keep from breathing in the horrid stench. "Have you, Captain?" They turn to another man looking over the sight, scratching marks into a paper clipped tightly to a wooden slate.

"One hundred and seventeen..." The man scratches his chin, looking down the street. More corpses lay strewn about the area, and at the intersection, he can see another group working from their end to collect corpses. "I've seen it just the once. Little village called Loheim, a few days northwest of here. Not quite as bad as this, but still bad...One hundred and eighteen."

The woman sucks a breath in through her teeth. "I heard of that place. Got hit about twenty years ago. No survivors, I heard." Another body is slumped into the cart.

"One hundred and nineteen...No, there were survivors. Not a whole lot of us, but a few. One of them was a little girl who injured one of the people responsible, cut his face from what I remember."

"A little girl?" The woman's partner asks quizzically, stopping to watch a group pass by behind the Captain; a human, a dark elf, a halfling, and a red devilkin holding a greatsword over one shoulder. "Tough cookie if she did that and got away with it."

"Yeah, I'd say so. She survived having her arms lopped off. She saved my life that day. Came out of nowhere and smashed a zombie's face against a wall. Which surprised me, given that she hated my guts."

The two guards look at each other and back to the Captain. "Hard to think a zombie nearly got the best of you, sir." The woman pipes up, her partner nudging her with a glare. "The Captain probably wasn't worried. I bet he had it all under control."

"The Hell I did! I was screaming my head off. Got my first kill that day, though. Whacked a zombie's head off with a shovel. I think it soared twenty feet."

"You must have been one hell of a fighter as a kid, sir!" The woman beams proudly, and her partner snorts, which elicits a sock in the shoulder from her.

The Captain laughs, striking a match and covering it to light a pipe he slips between his lips. "I was just some stupid punk kid back then. Didn't know any better, and I didn't care. That devilkin was the only way I could make myself feel tough. And then she did that...Sometimes it takes nearly dying to realize how much you screwed up."

The two guards look between themselves and smirk, saying nothing. "Wherever that girl is now..." The Captain smiles softly, puffing smoke into the air. "I hope she's alright...One hundred and twenty..."