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Melvin should have been elated when Jason pointed with his bone fingers at the town in the distance. Getting here meant the end of a hard road and life in the wrong body. Instead of elation, there was only a choking sense of dread.
The town was nondescript, like a mountain version of Triptoe. But above the town sat a massive cave carved into the hillside. Perfectly round, the cave gaped open like the gigantic maw of a hungry beast.
That’s where Jason’s finger pointed. Melvin guessed it wouldn’t be monsterly enough for the black creature to hang out at the local pub.
“Well, guess we should end some evil, right?” Melvin asked the guys.
“You ready to cleave some zombies?” Jason asked. “Town’s probably crawling with them.”
The town wasn’t. Living people milled about the town. Not a lot of people, but everyone there was very much alive. The first man to see the three of them smiled warmly at them.
“Welcome to Olukent,” he said, taking particular notice of Melvin. “I knew the master’s message was going to spread, but, my, I never expected it to reach all the way down to the Transvaal.”
“Funny how word spreads,” Melvin said.
“Well, you all have gotten here just in time,” the man said. “We’ve less than three days left until the Rising.”
The man looked around with a question on his face, like the newcomers were missing something. “Where are your bodies?”
“Um...” Melvin began.
“They’re close,” Jason filled in. “We weren’t sure how this all worked, so we wanted to come and investigate first.”
The man looked shocked. “You have heard Master Izal’s message, yes?”
“Meh. A little,” Jason said, shaking his hand so-so style. “You know how word gets when it spreads, the message gets twisted around.”
The man looked in awe at the death hand Jason shook casually. He stared at Jason. “You’ve been touched—directly—by the Death Null?”
“Yeah,” Jason said, looking like he was bored with the conversation. “Kinda why we’re here.”
The man brought his head down. “I am not worthy to speak to you,” he said. “You are a portent of the Death Null’s promise. Please, come, you must meet Master Izal.”
He led the way to the inn, where a small crowd had gathered around one man who looked like a cross between mage and clown. He wore black robes covered with white polka dots. His face was white from caked powder, his lips red from what could only be lipstick. The guy was talking to the people in a calm, soothing voice, like he was teaching little kids Sunday school.
“Master,” the man interrupted. “I’ve brought more to the fold. One, the aian, has been directly touched by the Death Null.”
The man’s powder face cracked as his ruby lips widened into a heartwarming smile. “Burru, you have done well.” His attention returned to the crowd. “Excuse me, my children, I have much to discuss with our new friends.”
The crowd left without a word. Master Izal looked at Jason like he was Jesus Christ.
Melvin shuddered. He hoped this wasn’t another Chosen One episode. How many freaking messiahs did this world have?
“I am honored to be in the presence of one who the Death Null has directly touched,” Izal said with a bow. “None of us have earned its grace yet, not even I.”
“Yeah, that’s why we’re here,” Jason said. “We wanted to experience more Death Null and we heard a little of your message, but we didn’t get it all. So what’s your message?”
Izal smiled. “Why, brother, you’ve arrived at the gathering place fortuitously. In less than three days time the Death Null will stop taking our offerings, and grace our lost loved ones with his gift.”
“What offerings?” Jason asked. “What gift?”
Izal frowned. “It’s tragic, how distorted the message becomes once it leaves the hearth,” he said. He explained, maintaining his eerie bible-study sermon voice.
“I told all interested in gaining new life for their loved ones to bring their treasured remains along with a stranger’s corpse. The Death Null resurrects them both at the mouth of the cave. We allow the stranger to roam into the cave as an offering and the loved one we escort to the town jail.”
Jason scratched his head, confusion all over his face. “Why do you lock your loved ones up?” he asked.
Izal laughed, a good-natured, friendly sound that ran contrary to the freakish look he sported. “Our loved ones would wander into the cave with the offering corpses and would be forever lost to us. The resurrection is incomplete, you see. Our loved ones are just a roaming shadow of their former selves until the Death Null bestows its grace. But when its grace comes, in less than three days now, all of our loved ones will be restored, body and mind.”
Despite Izal’s attempt at explanation, Jason looked more confused than ever. Maybe he just couldn’t believe what the hell Izal was saying.
“What’d everyone do in this town before the Death Null showed up?”
“Why, this old mining town has been abandoned for countless ages,” Izal said. “Our family comes here once a year at the start of autumn, to practice our resurrection rituals. We have done so without fail for centuries. This year we have been blessed with our unwavering faith by the coming of the Death Null. And in three days its grace will fall upon us.”
“One more question,” Jason said. “Why do you think its grace is falling in three days?”
“Our loved ones tell us,” Izal answered. “In fact, since resurrecting that’s all our loved ones say. They speak in unison the days left to make offerings, counting down starting seven days ago when the first of them rose. Now they uniformly say three days.”
Izal put his hand on Jason’s shoulder. “You all have come just in time, brother.” He looked past them like he had just missed something important.
“Where are your loved ones and your offerings?”
“They’re on the way,” Jason said. “Our resident mage will send word right away. You’ll see, gonna bring an army of offerings for Death Null.”
“Glorious,” Izal said. “If you excuse me, I must see to my children.”
Alone in the inn now, Jason turned to the others, his voice a harsh whisper.
“Dude, we’re in the middle of a resurrection cult!”
“So?” Melvin asked. “I say we head into the cave and catch us a Death Null.”
“We can’t just march in there,” Jason said. “You think these cultists are going to stand by while we stop their Death Null from dropping grace on them? We’ve gotta sneak in.”
Jason was right. They needed to make the cave without being seen. Getting discovered meant having a murderous town at their backs and a legion of zombie offerings at their front.
They walked around the town, assessing their options. The cultists approached them and talked with serene optimism, like Ritalin kids waiting for Christmas. Melvin kept his smile pleasant and his eyes peeled.
By the time they had talked to everyone and mapped the town out, it was late afternoon. One of the cultists, Crispin or Crispy or whatever, came rushing out of the jail.
“Two days! Two days!” he yelled.
Great. Death Null wasn’t on standard time. One thing all three of them universally agreed on, whatever it had in store in two days probably wasn’t good.
Getting to Death Null didn’t look good either. The only way to the cave was through a building at the base of the hill. That building was heavily guarded by at least eight nutjobs with swords. Izal called them the protectors of the flock. Melvin called them impossible to get past.
“Maybe the guards don’t hang out in the building all night,” Melvin suggested.
“I’ll take a look late in the night,” Jason said. “We’ll see.”
Jason got V.I.P. treatment around the town. Everyone loved him. Two of the cultists even gave up their room in the packed inn for Jason and his friends. That’s where the three of them were now, in the small, dusty room sitting on either of the two beds discussing strategy.
Jason popping over to the guardhouse in the wee hours wouldn’t cause suspicion. Mage-clown Izal said he was even free to go into the cave to audience with the Death Null. Too bad Izal said Melvin and Rich weren’t worthy, otherwise there’d be no need for subterfuge.
“I’m an awesome gamer,” Jason said. “But this is starting to look like a quest that needs a bigger group.”
“Well, we can cut down the guards,” Melvin said a little half-heartedly. He didn’t relish the thought of killing guys just doing their job, but they were devoutly in the way and he wasn’t about to scrub the mission. “After that, I can bolt and lock the guard house and defend it while you two track down and capture Death Null.”
“Can’t,” Jason said shaking his head. “My arrows are useless against the zombies. And Rich would be even worse.”
“How can I be worse than your useless arrows?” Rich asked indignantly.
“Even if you were the magefire slut I wish you’d be, these zombies are numb puppets. They’re kept up by magic more than their meat. You go flaming zombies and all you’ll do is create a bunch of walking bonfires begging for a hug.”
Jason looked at Melvin. “We need someone who can hack these zombies down. Arms, legs, heads have to come clean off. Rich and I can grab swords off the guards and help, but the two of us alone won’t get far if they’re swarming.”
Melvin got up from the bed and looked out the window. Early evening cast the town in dark spots filled in with the flickering light of several torches. People were still out and about greeting one another, talking and laughing peacefully. These folks were peaceful because all was right in their universe. Soon as that paradigm shifted they’d be grabbing their torches and pitchforks.
“All three of us going into the cave means a whole angry town at our backs,” Melvin said. He turned to face the guys. “It’s suicide.”
“It’s looking like our only option,” Jason said. “But they’re people, angry, nut-filled loon or otherwise, I can shoot them down and Rich can flame them up while you work out on the zombies in front of us.”
“Don’t you remember Fort Law?” Melvin asked. “Nothing stays dead around this thing. All you’ll be doing is creating more zombies, and Rich would be making flaming zombies. In the end, we’ll being stuck in the middle of a zombie sandwich as the fresh meat.”
They were quiet for awhile. Melvin chewed his lip and went over all the factors again, like the perfect solution was there, waiting for him to discover it. Nothing came.
“I’ll check in at the guard house at like two, three in the morning,” Jason said. “We may be able to sneak past the guards. We don’t have a lot of time to plan, but we have some. Let’s make the most of it.”
After all their talking, the only thing they could agree to do was wait until later. Rich took out his books and began reading like he had done every night since leaving Nasreddin. Jason took off downstairs.
“Crazy people like drinking too,” he said with a shrug. “Just the fact that we’re setting up to do this job means there’s a place at the bar for me.”
Melvin didn’t have a thirst. Being cooped up in this little room didn’t hold any appeal either. He settled for walking about the town, hoping to find a yet undiscovered option.
The cultists greeted and exchanged small talk with him as he explored the streets. They talked about their loved ones and all the things they were planning to do once the shuffling dead were restored to life. Melvin tried to imagine all these folks with rage on their faces, him cutting them down with his bastard sword.
It’s twisted. But you just might have to kill every one of them, he thought.
Melvin found no secret ways to the cave. It’d have to be the guard house. No miraculous better option came to him in a moment of inspiration. Eventually, he found his way back to the inn room.
Jason was still gone. Rich, still reading, didn’t even look up as Melvin entered the room. Melvin took the empty bed and turned towards the wall in an attempt to sleep.
A vigorous shake roused him. Melvin didn’t know how he had found sleep, but he did until that happened. He turned, squinting in the light of the room. Jason stood over him. Rich was awake on his bed, looking up from his pages at Jason.
“Bad news,” Jason said, looking tired. “They go down to six guards at night, two asleep in different corners. Even if Lady Luck was on our side and strip-teasing to distract the guards, odds are we can’t stop all six from yelling out and waking the town.”
Jason shooed at Melvin with his bone hand. “Move over. We’ll plan in the morning. Sleep now.”
Melvin had to dodge Jason’s hefty aian frame as he dove onto the mattress. He stood, looking at Jason, whose body sprawled haphazardly across the mattress.
Rich closed his book.
“Over here,” he said, putting the books into his robe. “I’m not as bulky as Jason anyway.”
Rich turned to face the wall, leaving a decent amount of mattress space empty. It was better than the floor. Melvin sat on the bed and noticed something missing.
“No bowl of water tonight?” he asked.
Rich didn’t turn from the wall. “No. No water,” he said.
Melvin lay back to back with Rich. If nothing else, he was eager to get back to sleep.
He was semi-conscious when he first heard Jason’s voice. Before that, he had only a sense of comfort. His hand had found a soft, ruffled pillow that felt good to rub back and forth. Then Jason had said something and it jarred the comfort.
“Awkward,” was what he said.
Melvin’s eyes opened and the situation became clear. Rich was asleep next to him, but sometime during the night his hand had found Melvin’s hips. Melvin’s hand had found Rich’s hair, which he had been tousling as Rich breathed heavily into his neck.
They were spooning.
“This is his fault,” Melvin said, rising to a sitting position as Rich kept slumbering.
Jason’s eyes danced as he looked at Melvin. “You’re becoming more Zhufira, I mean, more woman, every day.”
Melvin laughed. “I was minding my business. He spooned me.”
Jason shook his head. “I can see farther. Rich wheezes when he runs. We’re all slaves of some kind to our bodies.”
Melvin thought about Nasreddin. Rich in his new clothes popped into his mind. He choked out the visual. It was something he didn’t want to think about.
“All the better we hurry up and get back, then, isn’t it?” Melvin asked.
“You bet,” Jason said behind a wan smile.
They woke Rich with little planned other than to watch the town. Perhaps an opportunity would present itself. If nothing changed, the standing plan was still to run into the guardhouse at two in the morning and start carnage.
Out in the streets, the morning autumn air was crisp. Melvin was glad the Hierophant had given him the cloak. This mountain town was no place for underdressed warrior girls.
An hour of watching the town yielded nothing but pleasant cultists going about the start of their day. Some hauled barrels, others moved wheelbarrows full of random materials and still others did nothing but roam about being friendly. Then Melvin saw dust rise in the distance, moving toward the town.
Melvin started to worry as the dust column grew closer. With their luck, it’d be an army of resurrection seekers, all with their two corpse minimum. They should have just gone in last night, unprepared as they were.
The thing stirring the dust got clearer at the edge of town. It was a rickety half-tank, half-train that barely moved faster than a power walk, it was so beaten up and broken looking. A guy in goggles drove it.
Melvin’s breath caught in his throat. Next to the guy driving was a big man he instantly recognized. Runt Half-weagr. Right beside Runt was a little megrym, smiling a slick smile at Melvin like he had just bet the devil himself and won.