“So what exactly are we looking for, Gerald?” I asked the big man as we continued south. Even with Gerald’s minor wounds, we were far from being forced to retreat. We would want to leave Old City before dark, of course, but we had plenty of light left for now.

“Really any building that is both large, and relatively intact,” he responded. Gerald’s main quest was to establish a bastion in Old City, a rallying point to sortie from and retreat to. He hadn’t gotten very far before we joined forces, mainly focusing on sticking around the Bitter Flagon and consoling the other testers. Despite his lower level, he served admirably as a tank, taking hits and distracting monsters while the rest of us cleaned them up.

“We’ll need a barracks that can house up to thirty soldiers, a mess hall, chapel, a clean well, and a panic room for if something really bad shows up,” the Crusader continued. “There are also a bunch of optional base-building things that provide passive bonuses, but they’re not required to complete the quest.”

“If we can find something by the Obelisk, it would be ideal,” Sarah said, consulting a map from her journal. “It’s fairly deep into the Old City, but before things start getting really bad. Plus, it would be easy to access from both Westminster and Blackfriars Bridge.”

Gerald fell back a step to see where on the map she was pointing. “That’s St. George’s Circus,” he said. “About ten minutes further if we follow Blackfriars Road.” I was glad those two knew where we were going. I liked to think that my sense of direction was alright, but I found the Old City hard to navigate. Collapsed buildings and deep ravines blocked off streets, forcing us to take winding routes. Since almost none of the street signs had survived, Sarah’s mapping skill and Gerald’s familiarity with the area were invaluable.

Gerald’s “ten minute walk” wound up taking closer to an hour. A building that might have once been a hotel had blocked the street, forcing us to go around. The detour had led us into another small horde of zombies. Fighting, reloading, looting, and resting all ate up time. We finally got back to the main road and were attacked by a pair of demon dogs. With only two of them, they weren't much of a threat, but one of them managed to latch onto my boot. It barely broke the skin, but I would need to replace my footwear, again.

Sarah was happy to see the monsters at least. Her Archivist entry for the cannibalistic canines still needed a lot of updates. They seemed to be a fairly rare spawn here in the shallows of the Old City. She poked and prodded them to her heart’s content, all the while making notes, then directed Gerald and I to dump them in a storm drain.

We were almost to the junction Sarah had mentioned, I could see the thin obelisk standing in the middle of the torn up streets, when Gerald came to a halt. So focused on our destination, and keeping an eye out for enemies, I almost didn’t notice I was leaving the big man behind. When I turned to him, he was inspecting a large building complex.

“The Magdalen Hospital for the Reception of Penitent Prostitutes” was printed in bold letters above the doorway of the main building. Walls connected the building to another on each side, forming an almost castle-like appearance. The gate in the southern wall was caved in, just barely hanging on its hinges.

Almost all of the first floor windows were broken, along with many on the second. The northeast corner building was almost entirely leveled, just a wreckage of brick and shingles. At least the main building and southern one looked intact.

“It’s perfect!” Gerald exclaimed, lighting up like a little kid.

“The main building?” I asked. “It might be a bit tight to fit everything in, but it would definitely work.” It would be easy to fix the few windows, and the building wouldn't stand out much.

“No, the whole thing,” Gerald said, excitedly. “Between the walls and buildings, we’ll have an entire enclosed complex. That’s three buildings plus the chapel to work with. The outer fence provides another layer of defense!”

I eyed the rotten and scattered wooden planks skeptically. This would be a bigger project than rebuilding the Flagon. Not to mention the logistical problem of getting workmen to come into the Old City.

“There certainly is a lot of room to expand,” Sarah said optimistically.

“I say we go for it,” Eva interjected. “How badass would it be to have our own fortress in a zombie wasteland?”

“Come on, let's check it out,” Gerald said, walking through a car-sized hole in the outer fencing.

Instead of trying the door to the main building, we decided to explore the outside first. We walked through the destroyed gate and into a central courtyard. There were a handful of zombies loitering around, but Eva took them down before they could even reach us. I had to hand it to Gerald, with the four buildings acting as walls, the complex would make a fine outpost. If we could fortify it, that is.

The east half of the north building was demolished, but the rubble was still almost a story high. With just a small amount of work, we could make it impassible. The other three buildings, and the attached chapel in the southwest corner, were in decent shape. If we barricaded the windows and repaired the broken gate this place would be decently defendable.

Against the normal zombies, anyways. One of the hulking boss zombies would probably be able to do some decent damage to the walls. They were just brick and plaster after all, not real castle grade defenses. The terrifying bone golem we had faced deep in the Old City would probably flow right over the walls. Luckily, we hadn't seen anything like that this far north.

I was more worried about the monsters that came out at night. The zombies getting faster and more feral was manageable, but the weird tar monsters had been agile and stealthy. I wouldn’t be surprised if they could climb the buildings and slip into the windows. Besides that, I had no idea what other monsters prowled the Old City after dark. Almost all of our time here had been during the day, as it was far safer, but an outpost would need to survive whatever nighttime could throw at it.

“Let’s check the chapel,” Gerald said, moving southwest. The double doors creaked open ominously, and a wave of fetid air spilled out. Gerald gagged, but forced the doors the rest of the way open.

The stained glass window gave the grisly scene an ethereal quality. Multicolored light revealing a mountain of corpses splashed against the back wall like a wave of flesh. Rivers of flakey dried blood stained the floor. There must have been over a hundred dead packed into the small building. And they weren't just killed, but butchered. Severed limbs were scattered haphazardly and intestines spilled out like ribbons.

Distantly, I heard Eva throwing up. Forcing down my gorge, I stepped into the chapel. From the bodies whose gender I could make out, most of them had been female. They had been pressed against the back wall, trampling each other to get away from whatever had come through the doors. For a surreal moment, I felt like they were fleeing from me, too terrified to fight, but with nowhere to run.

“They must have been here since the Night of Jagged Teeth,” Sarah said. Her face was a touch pale, but her voice was steady. “Many people fled to churches and chapels like this one, thinking they would be safe. They probably would have been, churches naturally repel the undead, but whatever caused the apocalypse despoiled every sacred space south of the river.” She looked sad as she spoke. “We’ll need to bury them if we want to—”

She cut off as a length of intestine wrapped around her ankle and yanked. Her head hit the stone floor with a thunk and she started being dragged towards the mound of corpses. Shaking off shock, I used my Remote Push spell to pull Sarah back. It wasn't strong enough to break the intestine’s grip, but it bought me enough time to draw my sword and sever the cord.

I looked back up in time to see dozens of other ropes of flesh snake out of the pile. Slowly, like a man waking from a deep sleep, they gathered scattered limbs, before pulling them back into the mass.

“Keep me safe, Lord, from the hands of the wicked!” Gerald roared as he barreled past me. As he crashed into the wave of limbs and flesh, I grabbed Sarah’s shirt with my free hand, and dragged her to the door. She was blinking, clearly stunned, but not unconscious. Luckily, she was fairly light, and I had no trouble hauling her with one hand. With the other, I fended off the intestine ropes that got past Gerald.

Pulling Sarah out of the chapel, I dumped her unceremoniously at Eva’s feet. “Watch Sarah,” I barked to the stunned Harlequin, before plunging in after Gerald. In the few seconds it had taken me to extract Sarah, Gerald had been completely surrounded. Ropes of intestine sang through the air like whips, growing faster as the creature (creatures?) woke up. Animated limbs attached themselves to the ropes, flesh fusing, to form claws and clubs on the ends of the whip appendages.

Gerald danced among the chaos, his huge montante sword flashing in gleaming circles. “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed,” he bellowed.

“Fall back!” I yelled over the din of flesh hitting metal and stone. “Fall back to the doorway.” I summoned my force shield to my left hand, and started hacking at the jungle of flesh. My pistols would do no good here, not without a target to hit and Gerald downrange. I cut ropey intestines and slammed aside grasping hands with my shield. Thanks to my multi-weapon skills, every cut and shield bash increased the speed and force of the next. Coupled with my true time skill, and prodigious dexterity, I could cut down the attacks as they came.

I wasn’t sure how much real damage I was doing to the monster, the severed flesh just got reabsorbed into the whole, but I managed to clear a path back for Gerald. Luckily, the Crusader was paying attention, and executed a fighting retreat.

I decapitated a snake made of human heads and arms, before finally stepping back into the open air of the courtyard. Sarah looked slightly concussed, but was standing. Eva had her knives drawn, but seemed at a loss for what to throw them at. Gerald strode out right behind me, keeping the flesh appendages away with great looping cuts.

He hadn’t made it out unscathed. His tunic and heavy chain were torn to tatters, and blood pooled at his feet. Despite his injuries, he fought on, undaunted.

“Will, give me your holy water,” Sarah said from somewhere behind me. I hit the release straps on my pack and let it fall to the ground, not daring to turn away from the appendages pushing out of the chapel doors. I stood a few paces to the side of Gerald, hacking at the flesh ropes as they came out.

I was just considering calling for a full retreat, when the first glowing knife flew over my shoulder. It threaded between the waving appendages, and sunk into the main mass of the creature. The whole conglomeration of corpses shuddered at the impact and the ropes of flesh twitched before renewing the attack with even more vigor.

The next few minutes were a flurry of Gerald and I keeping the appendages at bay while a steady stream of glowing knives struck the creature's main body. Every knife struck point first with a satisfying shick, embedding itself in a corpse’s head or heart. At first, it only seemed to enrage the thing, and I took a pummeling as attacks overwhelmed my ability to guard. Eventually though, the mass began to slow. The flesh whips stopped reforming, and less and less attacks were truly threatening.

Finally, with a fleshy ripping, the mass of corpses fell apart. Individual bodies and limbs separated, crashing to the ground as the force that animated them dispersed. I stood there, sucking air like a bellows, ready for the next attack.

“The hell was that?” Eva's voice.

“That,” Sarah said from her seat on the ground, “was an abomination.” In one hand she held my bottle of holy water, in the other one of Eva’s throwing knives. On her lap was a large pile of the short blades. I hadn’t realized Eva carried so many. “A greater undead that forms from the animation of a mass grave.”

“Or in this case, a chapel full of slaughtered women,” I added grimly. I pulled some bandages out of my pack and started dressing my wounds. My chainmail had taken the brunt of the attacks, preventing me from getting cut to ribbons, but I would be covered in bruises. The worst wounds were a deep scratch on my thigh, just below where the mail ended, and a cut on my scalp. The head wound wasn't deep, but it was pouring blood. Why did I never buy a helmet? I looked over at Gerald’s great helm with jealousy.

“You alright big man?” I asked the Crusader. He was swaying on his feet.

“Pretty worn out,” he mumbled, before collapsing in a heap. We all rushed over to him. He was geysering blood from dozens of wounds. We tried to staunch the bleeding with bandages, but even with three of us, there was no chance. He bled out in only a few minutes.

When he stopped breathing, I sat back with a defeated sigh. My arms were soaked up to the elbows with blood. Sarah's face was a stormcloud, and Eva had started crying.

“Well shit.”