The Living

     A short zombie film made by some indie filmmakers. Gotta love a new take a classic monster though this one does end on something of a cliffhanger. Hopefully they'll make a sequel. Enjoy!

Sweet Dreams!

Atheists Nightmare, Part Five

Previous

Backtracking, I walk the bicycle I’ve liberated towards my dorm room, avoiding any other unfortunate encounters of the ghoulish kind by ducking beneath windows. I can hear the Catholic Preacher (seems like a fair enough title to give to a free-willed undead that preaches) still amassing his army outside, preaching to them from the gospels as they move further away from my dorm room.

Atheists Nightmare Part Four

Previous

I kick the crippled one in the face as hard as I’m able, smiling as numerous bones shudder and crack beneath my heel, while I spin the blade from its temporary sheathe, using the sturdy kick to move as gracefully as possible up to my feet. The gospel leader glares at me with her one eye, her black burquas stained from the blood of those she’d already slain.

Dying Light

     A new game coming out that looks like it will be taking advantage of a new movement engine for better, more fluid running and jumping. From the trailer it seems like this game is going to be a rather horrific zombie survival game that combines smart ways to handle the dead. Take a look:

     
     Looks pretty gnarly.

Child of the Apocalypse, Part One

The zombie apocalypse had happened roughly one-hundred and eighty three days ago… I know because every sunset, without fail, I cut a notch the science book I carry with me. While I’ve been knocked out a few times, I’ve never missed a sunrise, nor a sunset; the daylight seems to make them more lethargic.

Ravens, pt Six

“Fall back!” Heinrich shouted in broken German, the unofficial language of code for the village hidden in the hills of Pennsylvania.

Instantly Steven and David fell back, allowing the dead to press through the three foot gap, stumbling over the mound of still corpses beneath their bloodied feet and into the blades and maces of the two men, plus Michael. Heinrich moved around the melee to the other shelf, putting his good shoulder against the shaking wall of wood and boxes to better stabilize the leaning tower keeping the hungry dead at bay.

Ravens Pt. Two

Previously

It was an all too common problem that Heinrich and other raiders faced; finding survivors tucked away in some remote store or home. Most of the time they were half-starved and crazed, but sometimes they could be reasoned with, brought back to the village to rejoin humanity. The rest of the time they were the occultists that paid homage to dark gods and spirits, relying on their arcane abilities to carve out a niche for themselves in this new, horrifying world. Heinrich’s sickles were each coated with silver, hammered onto the curved blades over the cold iron they were cast from.

The perfect weapon against anything supernatural.

Fighting a Losing War

Pain…

Agony…

And then… nothingness. No bright light or eternal flames, no smiling faces of long-forgotten loved ones or weighing of my heart against my sins. Merely… nothing.

And not nothing like any other nothing I had ever encountered before in recent memory either, but a true and utter lack of anything. Including time, it would seem.

Ravens: Chapter One, Part One

     Prologue

It all started some time ago, in a land not far from here. A land known as the Kingdom of Aura. A prosperous land that grew on the labors of hard working men and women in fields of barley and rye, of brewers most bold and of frivolous merchants and moneylenders that made the whole kingdom run so well. Knights and soldiers patrolled the borders, ridding the kingdom of the occasional bandit menace that was so prevalent during those budding years of our happy little city-state.

I was one of those knights… well, truthfully I was one of those knight’s footmen, a spearmen that moved with the young lad to act as one of his personal guard. Yeah, I know, guards for the guardians of the realm. Seems silly doesn’t it? I always thought so. But I was paid a sack of grain a month, and it was more than enough for me to barter with for food and… luxuries. We’d gotten word from a ragged looking man that his town, some nameless little burg on the Eastern most edges of our borders, had succumbed to the Plague.

That meant Zombies.

A Warrior's Tale, Part Three

Previously

The following days were even more surreal for James as he was touted about the underground complex like some sort of prophet. Whenever he would encounter any of the grey robed cultists, they would bow and scrape, pleading for tasks they could perform to please him. He’d had to give a standing order that he didn’t need any female companionship during the night, as he’d discovered two separate cultists offering themselves up to him over the course of three days. When he asked the disfigured priest (whose names turned out to be the Marred One), he’d only received a wide smile in response.

“You are now the acting voice for our God, by your actions he does speak to us, telling us what to do.” He’d explained with a tone of reverence. “You were able to slay those Chosen by the Horned One, thus marking you as his conduit for which we are to test his will through.”

“And by that you mean?” James had asked, once again over a small meal in the strange kitchen/dining area the cult had.

“The Horned One’s power is being channeled through captured men and women, through wolves and boar. The longer they are left with the energy, the more dangerous they become. Every New Moon, you will bear arms against the Horned One’s Chosen, testing their strength against the mettle of a true warrior. Those that are slain will only add to you and your personal power, while the ones that prove string enough to slay you shall send you on to live with the Horned One, blessed for all the work you had done in his name and honor.”

“Uh, right. Thank you Marred One.” James said, not really knowing how to respond to such a statement. I have to kill every month to stay alive? Well, that’s not terribly new to me but still! James thought bitterly as he strode through the carved halls of stone, the faint echo of his footfalls dancing about him and announcing his presence to any and all the lived within the Temple proper during the time when there wasn’t a fight.

Namely the undead.

Marred One and Spicer were pretty much the only ones willing to talk to him, among the intelligent staff to be shambling through the halls. Great long stone hallways, with walls that tilted and jutted at various points so as to successfully cause vertigo should you move towards them, dotted the honeycomb of entombed tunnels, broken up only by small living quarters where a few cultists would stay for a few days and nights.

The dead freely roamed the halls by night, when no living man nor woman would willingly walk about save for James. He’d learned early on the walking blight had no interest in him…

James had been walking down a corridor he’d come to call the Hall of Lord Marrow, due to the fact the walls, floor and ceiling were comprised of interlocking and mortared human bones, skulls with glowing phosphorescent fungi under the heel of your boot while arms dangled from the ceiling holding oil fueled lanterns. Pushing past a shambling corpse bereft of any eyes or a tongue, a young cultist had come rushing around the corner, James’s title upon his lips as he held a sealed scroll out to him.

He was never able to hand it off, as the very bones lining the hall had come alive, lashing out from the walls to slash and grab at him, skeletal arms wielding femurs as clubs or ribs like daggers, while the floor began cackling as his blood spilled down upon the dusty skulls, their teeth clattering as if they savored the taste of the screaming man’s death. James would have moved to help, if only to end the man’s life out of an act of mercy, but the shambling corpse was faster; with a lunge that belied its advanced state of decay, dirty fingernails raked across the cultists robes, ripping them open for the gap-toothed maw of the undead to sink it’s teeth into the fresh pink flesh hidden below.

What worried James the most was that the screams of the cultist, while truly screams of pain, were also cries of jubilation.

“T-take me Horned One! I o-offer myself to yo-urk!” He’d been crying as the very hall bludgeoned and tore at him, as a felsh-eating ghoul finally silenced him by tearing out his chest via the rib cage, splattering organs and splintered bones all over the floor while holding the sternum and intact ribs high above its head, drinking from the blood pouring from the bloody frame.

That memory, besides his one night in the arena, is what kept him up at night. Especially as the notice that the poor cultist had been carrying was merely a formality.

James would be fighting in three days’ time, for the glory of the Horned One. 
Next

Authors Note: Thought I'd forgotten about this little gem, eh? Well think again kiddies, as this story has only begun! Wonder what James will be facing in three days time, and how in the world he plans on making his escape. The merchant is still alive at the very least, so at least James's resume won't have a blemish on it for being a poor bodyguard.

Just one that takes his time in doing the guarding!

Plague pt. Two

The bitter winter winds whipped past Peter as the slowly made their way down the dirt-trodden road towards the hamlet supposedly in need, the utter cold seeping through his furs and into his skin, numbing his body with frost. Peter ignored it, something he was used to doing, and did his best to keep pace with his would-be mentor, the still as-of-yet named man he had taken to calling Raven. Their walk, which was now going into its second hour, was done with little conversation, just a few mumbled words from Raven here and there that Peter could barely make out. The brisk night air was bright with starlight which, despite the tall trees growing about them, was more than enough to allow them full visibility without the need for a torch or lantern.

Raven had told him the town was mainly a logging camp that had grown too large to be called as such anymore, developing over the last forty years into a farming community that grew barley and rye throughout the year, their fields ever expanding as the woodcutters cleared away vast swathes of forest for their farming cousins. Altogether, a fairly humble place home to fairly humble people, that rarely if ever called for assistance from the outside world. About a week earlier, a boy had stumbled into town, seeking the aid of the Church and their doctors, claiming that the town had been overtaken by the fast-acting illness.

Peter was a little surprised when he was told how the boy was quickly slain; his body burned before it even grew cold and stiff, in order to ensure the illness did not spread. A small detachment of armed soldiers had formed a loose perimeter around the village, isolating them and barring them from leaving the area, effectively placing them under quarantine. As they grew closer to the village, Peter caught sight of the soldiers, all wearing the same Raven-esque masks as his supposed mentor, though without the full leather suit that accompanied it. They walked like soldiers, stiff and with purpose, and all had longbows slung over their shoulders. One reported to Raven that they had already slain three men who had come stumbling from the village a few hours ago, to which Raven merely nodded as if this were acceptable.

“When we arrived, the entire village was practically deserted, with the sick cloistered within their homes, the streets littered with corpses.” One of the soldiers calmly explained. “We kept a good distance away, and made certain to track any movement we could find. So far there’s only been a few isolated incidents, though I imagine that will be changing soon?”

“I would hazard a guess that you would be correct. If my calculations are right, we are moving into the thirtieth hour of exposure, a rather pivotal time frame if I do say so myself.” Raven replied, pulling a long stiletto blade from his belt. Tossing it to Peter, he let out a dry chuckle. “That axe of yours should see some work today, but be sure to keep that close by in case of an emergency.”

“Against plague victims? Are you joking?” Peter snarled, mood still sour from his fate as a Church doctor. “What, will I be hacking the corpses into small enough pieces to burn then?”

Raven was silent for the briefest of moments before he let out a long, high-pitched whinny of laughter. “Yes,” he choked amidst his laughter, “Yes, you will be doing exactly that!”

Peter fumed at the very thought of the amount of disrespect he was being shown. He should be in the North, leading his people as his father had trained him! But due to the wiles of a religious zealot and his army, he was banished to the lowliest of jobs, in a faraway land, as a slave to some strange plague-doctor.

The town was buried deep within the Black Forest, a vast expanse of densely packed trees and darkened paths, trodden dirt paths acting as the veins to the whole of the forest, twisting and turning in an near endless series of spirals and drops. Raven took it all in stride, sliding down the steepened path when needed with the grace akin to the mountain goats Peter had grown near, leaping to and fro to avoid knotted roots and jutting rocks that would otherwise make this path a difficult one for him.

Peter merely tackled the path as any proper Norsemen would: headlong and with unyielding might. Thick leather treads crushed rocks beneath his feet and tore corded roots free of the cold-packed earth. He had abandoned all form of decorum and already drawn his ancestral axe, the heavy haft granting him a sense of peace that he had sorely been lacking the past few weeks, traveling amongst the “civilized” people. Raven had said nothing when Peter had drawn the large blade, his head only inclining a touch at the sheer size of the weapon, and probably in wonderment of how Peter had been able to conceal it as well as he had.

“The village is up ahead,” Raven said, breaking the silence of their march and coming to a sudden halt. Peter trudged up next to him, peering easily over the shorter man’s head and through the brush of the wood at the town that lay before them.

Ringed by barren fields of frost-ridden soil, a small cluster of squat stone houses sat quietly behind a low cobblestone wall. Several barns were visible from their vantage point, the doors thrown wide open… looters had obviously come to the weakened settlement in search of plunder. Peter had seen it often enough, hell, he’d done it a few times as a young soldier. His keen sight allowed him to see that beneath the soft dusting of snow there were several mounds.

Bodies, long dead if he was any judge of the matter.

Raven pushed onward, pulling a small crossbow from his side and carefully loading it, ignoring the drifting snowflakes that had begun to flutter down from high above. Peter smiled at his mentor’s line of thought, arming himself in case any looters remained. Now he could see why he was here! To defend this man as he cleansed the bodies of the living and dead of this foul disease, to protect him from those that would take advantage of the weak and ill.

As he moved to jog past him, Raven’s hand clasped his shoulder in a movement so sudden it caused Peter to spin off balance for a moment. “We stay together, no wandering off.” Raven ordered as he pulled a wide-brimmed hat from his satchel, fastening it over atop his mask.

“I can handle myself!” Peter growled, throwing the hand from his shoulder with a jerk. “No man can cross blades with me and live, least of all some puny looter or bandit!”

“And I fully believe you, but my orders remain: stay with me, no going off alone.” Raven said calmly. “Between the cover of snow and our small numbers, I would prefer that we work together. Besides,” he said with a low chuckle, “I could have sworn you are my apprentice, are you not?”

“Yes…” Peter growled out, hands tightening over the haft of his great axe.

“Than do not question me.” Raven ordered with a hint of cheer lacing his muffled voice. “Stay by my side, and keep that behemoth of a blade away from me; I’d rather not die today, and one wild swing will leave me as open as a broken door.”

They continued closer to the village, snow and ice crunching beneath their feet as they crossed the barren fields. Raven came to a halt some twenty yards before the break in the low wall, twin lamp posts rising from the worked stone dark, candle wax having dribbled out and frozen along the way. Guess with the plague they couldn’t spare anyone to put out their lights… Peter idly thought as he watched Raven root about in a small side bag. What the hell is he doing now?

“Tell me Peter,” Raven said in a conversational tone as he pulled a small wooden whistle from the pouch. “Have you ever used one of these before?”

Peter snorted at the stupidity of the question, but chose to merely shrug. “Nay, I was no shepherd, nor a watchman. I know enough to use it though, why? Why do you ask such a question?”

“Because of my mask, I cannot use it, obviously. So I would like you to do me the honor of taking it and blowing it as long and loud as you can.” Raven said, a smile clearly hidden behind his facial covering. “And to of course keep a cool head for me.”

Peter shook his head, snatching the offered whistle with his meaty hand. “I truly do not understand how your people have come to conquer all of Europe in such a fashion… utter morons, asking me to reveal our position in such a way.”

“Just blow the whistle for me.” Raven chirped, rocking back and forth on his heels happily.

Peter sighed before placed the simple wooden instrument between his wind-chilled lips, taking in a deep breath of frigid air and letting loose a shrill shriek that lasted well over half a minute. The cry echoed all about them, calling back from the darkened wood surrounding them, a haunting cry far different from the high-pitched screech he had let loose. He tossed the whistle behind him, ignoring Raven’s sudden intake of breath and glared at the reflective lenses that served as his master’s eyes.

“There! Are you happy now? Now everyone within a mile knows we’re here!” Peter cried, waving his arms high above his head, the heavy-ended blade of his axe digging a deep trench to his right as he swung it about. “Damn thing was loud enough to wake the dead, so we’ll not find anyone to hold responsible for the looting now!”

“Rarely have there been truer words spoken, my dear Viking.” Raven said with a long sigh, twirling his crossbow about between his gloves. “But looters and thieves are not what we came to seek, and are not what I brought you here to aid me with.”

“Than what then?” Peter howled, his temper finally flaring at the sheer stupidity of the entire situation. “I am a son of Odin and Thor, a warrior that was bred for the battlefield! I have no need for your false god nor his martyr of a child! I need only a foe to fight, and a battle to be won! No man can stand before me, and here I am, trapped as the servant of a cowardly healer that hides behind the face of death as if he can lay claim to its domain!”

Whatever Raven’s reply would have been was kept silent as a low howl of the winter wind whipped through the woods, the very trees groaning as if alive. A noise he had heard many times in his own native home, yet such noises were always accompanied by a gentle breeze. After a few moments of the groan growing louder, Peter could hear multiple different octaves within the noise, akin to a flock of birds crying as they flew from danger.

Turning, he watched the village as it seemed to be coming alive before his very eyes.

The slumped forms of the dead partially buried beneath the snow were rising sluggishly from beneath their icy covering, blue-tinged flesh drawn taut over their bones, pockmarked with countless open sores that leaked thin rivulets of dark molasses. Dressed in a mixture of night clothes to work clothes, to a few fully nude, men and women began to crawl from the recesses and corners of the village where they had lay hidden, jaws wide open, a distraught cry rising from their frostbitten lips. Stumbling woodenly, arms outstretched, the crowd of plague-stricken peasants began to advance upon Peter and his whistling mentor.

“Halt!” Peter cried, waving his axe in front of him to show them he was armed. “We’ve come to aid you! Return to your homes and we will begin treating your injuries, and tending to the illness!”

His cry fell on deaf ears as the crowd continued their advance, slowly gaining speed as their thin sheets of ice broke away from their flesh. One, a large man that easily rivaled Peter in size, stumbled headlong into the low wall, grunting in frustration as the cobblestone impeded his path. With a series of sickening cracks, the heavy man crawled over the wall, his thick fingers cracking beneath his heavy weight and the strain he was putting them under. He tumbled over the wall and, without pausing a moment, began crawling to his feet. A hideous moan wracked from his throat, wordless and primal.

“They won’t listen Peter,” Raven said quietly, moving to stand beside him. All humor had left his voice, which was now harder than steel. “The Plague that we came to cleanse is now before us, a curse that afflicts man and woman alike, forcing them to rise from the grave. We must prevent it from spreading, my friend. I hope you are ready to do what is needed.”

Peter studied the crowd slowly closing in upon them, hands outstretched with hooked fingers, mouths wider than humanly possible. He almost couldn’t believe such abominations could exist, save for when he caught sight of their eyes, set loosely back within their skulls, glazed over like the eyes of the monster fish he and his brothers would dredge from the churning waters of the Atlantic; cold and glassy, unfocused and dark.

These things were anything but human, and as one finally came within reach of him, a young woman naked from the waist up, he made his decision with a sudden snap of his wrist, his axe springing forth and connecting into her side just beneath her arm, a solid, wet noise cracking through the crisp night air.

She remained standing, arms flailing about wildly as she hissed and howled. Peter was momentarily stunned, staring at the head of his axe, how half of the hardened iron was buried deep within the woman’s ribcage. Something she didn’t really seem to notice, somehow. The strike had felt as if he were trying to fell a century old tree, her body as solid as rock for reasons he couldn’t begin to understand.

Her wild flailing ended as a slim crossbow bolt pierced her left temple, cracking through the thin section of bone with a sickening crunch. Peter turned his head to see Raven already reloading his crossbow, a long serrated knife held in a defensive position in his left hand. “Go for their limbs or their heads, winter has granted them a boon by freezing their insides!” He cried, unloading another bolt into the crowd, striking the heavy man with the broken fingers in the left eye, his body slumping to the ground with a crunching of ice as several more of the groaning dead crawled over his bulk.\

The woman at the end of his axe, now merely a frozen corpse, was quickly removed with the proper application of Peter’s thick boot, leaving his blade covered in bits of mottled grey flesh and tissue. The force of his blade leaving her body carried onward and, with a savage howl, Peter spun the blade above his head and through the neck and shoulder of another blue-tinged undead, ending its high pitched moans with a sudden screech.

Raven darted forward, long blade twirling in his hand almost playfully as he lashed outward, severing groping fingers and hands with brutal efficiency, his crossbow letting loose the occasional twang as he fired bolt after bolt into the approaching dead. The center region of their torsos was nothing but ice and frozen muscle, allowing the shambling horrors a strange amount of resilience; it mattered not to Peter.

Peter was Norse.

Peter was a soldier of Odin, a true follower of the Father-God’s ways and practitioner of his sacred teachings.

He found himself praying, in between gasps for breath, as he swung his axe into the frost-hardened corpses that were slowly overcoming him. His prayers grew louder when, due to a particularly fast victim of the plague (a young child, though the cold had caused much of its skin to fall away, preventing any way of identifying what its gender once was), he found himself separated from Raven, plunged headlong into the mass of frigid limbs and gaping, bloodless maws.

As the grey hands grew more and more fervent, grabbing at his furs and tugging at his pelt, his prayer’s became far louder, his screams rising almost as high as the chorus of moans coming from the innumerable horde pressing in all around him. Peter could feel their nails, cold as the grave, pierce and tear into his chiseled muscles. He howled in agony as their teeth broke through his boiled leather and tore into his corded muscle.

And still he fought on, swinging his axe in wide arcs, loudly crying to the heavens the prayers of his forefathers, and of theirs. As his blood flowed freely from his body, the warmth of life ebbing rom his very core, he cursed the name of Olaf, cursed his sniveling uncle… and most of all, he cursed the name of that damnable false god that had caused all of his misery, and lead to this horrible death. He prayed that soon he would be with his ancestors in Valhalla, and that all of this would become nothing but a tale he told to his fellow warriors in heaven.

His hands aching with fatigue and cold, his grip slackened just enough for his axe to go flying from his grip mid-swing. Peter idly noted with pride that even without trying, the blade was able to cut deep into the flesh of one of the attackers, lodging deep into the chest of a slack-faced man missing the right half of his face.

As the edges of his vision began to fade to black, his ears filled with the thundering sound of his own blood and the innumerable moans of the dead, Peter smiled. Smiled and laughed, as he knew he would soon be with his father, and his fallen brothers. He had fallen in combat, and while he had not claimed the lives of any more enemies of his people, he had at least escaped the clutches of the Church and their fool of a god.

And that was enough for Peter, as it would be for any true Norseman.

High above the carnage playing out in the ice-packed fields of Relmut, a lone child squatted atop the low, steeped roof of the town’s church, idly twirling the iron cylinder that dangled from a long length of chain from around her neck. Her flesh, paler than the untouched snow at her bare feet, twitched as the wind carried the scent of fresh blood up to her, carried the screams of the living as they slowly gave way to the inevitability of death. Smiling, she palmed the cold tube, thumb running over the frosted skull topping it, and murmured a prayer she had murmured many times over her long life.

The doctor was the first to go, pinned beneath a mountain of flailing limbs and jagged teeth as the dead she commanded had charged at him, moving around the gigantic Northerner in order to gain a better vantage point to attack. The young boy who had spit upon her, whose skin now hung over her like a sinister cloak, had served his purpose when she had mentally commanded him to sacrifice himself, tripping the Viking up and sending him deeper into her army of hungering dead.

Her smile grew wider as she could feel the doctor’s life essence drift from the mob, slowly drifting towards her and her phylactery. A flash of memories flew through her mind as his life, his very soul, joined the thousands of others trapped within her toy; Alice caressed the tube lovingly as she awaited the soul of her Viking friend to come forth, one she had yet to sample and, she hoped, would prove far more entertaining than the countless serfs and peasants she had supped upon so far.

“The Black Death…” She said aloud, voice honeyed and sweet like a summer’s day. “Death to all who would try and quell us, and our kind…”

She had cursed God for allowing her to fall prey to a similar fate, just as the Viking now was. She had screamed and cried as the illness robbed her of her strength, sapping away everything that made her human. The only difference between the two of them was that she believed in God, and was now serving the other side… her hatred of that mad God and his Church had allowed her to rise as something far more powerful than the Ghouls she commanded. Just as such hatred had done for all of the Reapers in the world, those that spread the true word of the “Lord.”

“There is no such thing as eternal life.” She intoned with a smile as the Viking gave his last cry, falling beneath the tide of putrefied flesh. “The only true eternity is found in Death… come serve him, and spread his word. Spread the truth.”

She watched as the Viking rose unsteadily from the crowd of undead, her mental call for them to fall back working faster than any bugle or drum. His dead eyes opened glassy, dull. With but a single thought, he wrenched his massive axe free from the chest of one of his new comrades, and began slowly walking into the village, towards her.

“Will you help me spread the word?” She asked him, high atop the church, knowing full well that he would. After all, he was now a devote follower of the truth. How could he say no?

Stanton Creed Pt. Two

Stanton moved over to the cooler, squatting down to examine the various bottles of liquor arrayed before him. Despite the rot betwixt his ears, he could hear the girls murmuring between themselves, the remaining two boys muttering dark mutterings. Scooping up a heavy glass bottle of rum bearing an image of a cocky pirate, Stanton looked over his shoulder.

“Negro? You got a name?” Stanton asked, preferring not to have to call him by his race the entire game.

“It’s James you racist motherfucker.” The man replied through gritted teeth, a fist clenched at his side. “And you can’t just make us do this! What if we just run?”

Stanton let out a wicked laugh as he burst into a puff of black sand and shadow, reforming between the two men holding the bottle of rum, both arms slung around their shoulders. “I’m cursed to roam these lands boy,” Stanton said, stressing the last word with amusement before shoving the bottle into the older boys hands. “Since we’re getting along like a circle with a peace pipe, let’s hear some names so I don’t have to call you by what I think of you.”

The older boy, holding the bottle and looking a tad confused, merely said his name in a single word as he moved to grab shot glasses fro his backpack. “Jesse.”

“Jesse and James,” Stanton said with a thick chuckle, taking a moment to hawk and spit a globule of mud and roaches from his lungs, wiping his mouth on his dirt encrusted sleeve. “I knew a Jesse and a James back when I was more flesh than bone. Good fellas, honest through and through.”

“I’m Jessica,” A blonde girl in a two piece swimsuit, sitting next to a girl with similar hair and facial features. “And this is my sister Becky.”

Stanton merely waved at them with a cocky grin before turning his eyes as cold as death upon the last two women, Jesse walking amongst them passing out shot glasses, one by one.

Stanton smiled as his shot glass bore a small drawing of a devil on it, along with the words “South Padre” across the creatures furry ass.

“I’m Sara,” a thin brunette said, her hands in her lap and eyes on the bonfire. Girl’s in shock… Stanton thought, looking down at the corpse of the man he’d shot for being difficult. Toeing him with his muddy boot, Sara winced as he did so bringing a horrid smile to Stanon’s wrinkled features.

“And I’m Jackie,” Said a thicker girl that, if Stanton’s rotten eyes weren’t mistaken, was of injun blood.

“And who’s this lump,” Stanton asked, kicking the warm corpse soaking in it’s own bloody sand.

“Jay,” Sara said with a choke.

“Ah… young love.” Stanton said with a sneer. “You beat me in this contest girl, I’ll bring him back for you, healthy as a horse. But old Stanton’ll want something in exchange for this extra bet.”

“What do you want?” She asked, tears welling at the edges of her eyes.

“If I win, I get your soul nonetheless, as well as his, but I also want two additional souls. Don’t care how you get them. You just gotta kill two people before offing yourself.” Stanton said, smiling as he face went a further shade of pale. “You win, I’ll bring the boy back. Simple enough?”

“Now wait a minute mister!” Jackie said suddenly, standing and pointing down at the dead man perched atop a comfortable mound of sand. “Who the hell do you think you are to do this to us? What do we get if we win other than what we already had?”

Stanton stared at Jackie with his dead eyes for a moment before a wry smile cracked his face. “My oh my, a woman with sense! Alright then, you best ol’ Stanton Creed in the game of Drink and toss my body in the well at the top of the hill, you’ll find buried beneath my headstone a sack of gold. Don’t ask me how I got it ‘cause you won’t like the answer, but suffice to say it should make you all plenty happy.”

Quiet murmurs broke out around the camp at the sudden addition of not only living past this night, but possibly being richer. Only Sara remained silent, staring across the bonfire into the glimmering dead eyes of Stanton Creed.

“We’ll play your little game cowboy,” She said in a low voice, “and we’ll beat you too. We have to.”

Stanton just smiled as Jesse began filling up everyone’s shot glass one by one.

The game was on.

Stanton Creed

Stanton Creed blearily opened his eyes, a sickening series of pops and clicks as the desiccated corpse began to move from his fetal position at the bottom of the dried well. His dirt-caked leather jacket and moth eaten short shook free a variety of vermin as the skeletal ghoul rose to his feet, his body slowly rejuvenating as it did every year. Blue veins followed by grey muscle swelled and pulsed along his skeletal frame, filling his clothes with the body of a man who’d been prime physical condition before his death.

Letting out a rattling breath, a chilled fog seeping past his rotted teeth, the reanimated outlaw coughed, clearing his lungs of the dirt and spider webs that had filled them over the past year. Turning to the crumbling stone wall of the well, Stanton Creed began his yearly ascension from his barren grave. His ears picked up the sounds of laughter, of men and women celebrating close by, a sneer spreading across his face, shallow and dirty. As he began to pick-up speed in his ascension, the familiar hunger spread through his body, tingling in his limbs and rattling deep in his bones.

One leathery hand grasping the lip of the well, he heaved his fully fleshed body over the rim, landing on his half-rotted boots. One hand checking his holster for his pistol, he smiled a wicked smile as he made his way down the hill towards the bonfire set up on the beach. Dancing around the fire like the injuns of old, he could make out seven people in total, along with a bright red cooler full of bottles of liquor.

Stopping at just the edge of the light that the bonfire offered, he stood for perhaps five minutes before one of the scantily clad youths caught sight of him.

“Holy shit!” The shirtless man said, pulling a pair of girls further away from him, as if her were about to pounce upon them. “Dude, what the fuck? Get the fuck out of here, invitation only!”

In a voice as thick as mud, a burst of cobwebs blasting past his lipless mouth, Stanton Creed looked to the lad. “This here be my hill boy, I think that be invitation enough.”

One of the other man, a bald, muscular negro, let out a sudden gasp as a large yellow and red centipede curled out from a hole in Stanton’s chest, curling and crawling up to a hole in his neck, burrowing into the leathery flesh with glee.

“What the fuck are you?” The negro asked, the girls moving back to put the bonfire between them and the walking dead.

“A man who was just sleeping before being woken by a band of stupid boys and girls,” Stanton said with a sharp his, taking a moment to quickly take a snort and a bite, spitting out a solid inch of the invading centipede as any other man would spit out chewing tobacco. “Now that you woke me up, one of you has to put me back to sleep.”

“Or we could just fuck you up,” the first boy said, stomping up aggressively towards Stanton, only to realize the ghoul was armed and ready for him, quickly drawing from his holster and emptying three rounds into the boy’s sculpted chest. The boy dropped to the ground, dead, while the girls screamed and the remaining two men stood up, as if they were going to do something about it.

“You could try boys, but old Stanton Creed has an aim as dead as his body,” the corpse boasted, blowing at the end of his rusted six shooter before slipping it back into his holster. “Now just settled down with your womenfolk and get out your liquor, we’re gonna see if you folks can put me to sleep or not.”

“What?” The negro asked, looking at Stanton with a weary eye.

“Simple,” Stanton began, a chattering rasp echoing from his body as a series of spiders came spewing forth past his teeth. “Old Stanton is a man fond of the drink you see, and proud to say that not many can drink him under the coffin. We all take shots of whatever you folk have, the last one standing being the winner. If one of you win, I get to go back to my grave and rot until disturbed again. If I win, I get to bring your souls down to Hell with me.”

“Why the hell would we play against you?” The other man, an older one with a spiked ringlet of ink around his bicep asked.

“Because refusing me means I get to use my gun on you like I did your friend here, a fate that guarantees a good time with Lucifer himself.” 

Authors Note: Inspired by this song, a tribute to the band that has now been added to my playlist for when I write.

Zombie Games Coffin Hopper Edition Part Two!

The four-armed monstrosities were capable of taking an absurd amount of abuse, but in the end we downed them as much as they could be downed. One was torn to utter pieces, great swathes of hardened carapace torn free from it’s body, the tarry skin below ripped asunder by Tank’s frenzied rending.

The second one had been handled in a far smoother manner, with Soldier and Suit tackling the creature together, Suit using Tank’s discarded machete to parry away the creatures talons while sliding the blade skillfully between the segmented plating of the creatures body, all the while Soldier was merely breaking whatever limb she could get a hold of, dislocating joints and cracked the creatures shell whenever she could.

Now we had a much more difficult problem on our hands: Tank. The amphetamines I’d pumped into his system had kept him on his feet, but he had been bleeding out the entire time, finally collapsing on top of the twitching carcass of Doctor Dead’s little lab rat. Using what limited supplies I had, I had sewn him up as best I could, using a pair of makeshift tweezers and a needle with unwound steel wool for thread to stitch him back up. While I was patching him up, Geek and Scout were searching the rest of the laboratory, the earlier brawl having somehow made us not even notice the stairwell leading up to the second story and down to a basement. Soldier and Suit were now standing guard at the barricaded door, where the groans of the walking dead were still leaking through the walls.

As I was just finishing with the last hole that had been bored into Tank’s chest, Geek and Scout came down from the upper level, smiles on their faces.

“What’s the good news?” Suit asks casually, leaning against the rattling door as if this were any normal day.

“We found two places we could leave here from, plus a ton of supplies.” Scout squeals, hopping from foot to foot excitedly. “There’s a door that leads to a terrace up on the roof, where we could scale down the wall to the other side of the building and sneak away.”

“Problem is, there are a few of those fast zombies up there, and it looks like they have armor or something sewn into them.” Geek explains, rubbing the back of his head. “There’s a wide plate glass window that lets you look out onto the roof, and there’s like three or four of them just crouching up there, watching the door.”

“What about downstairs?” I ask, knowing Tank was in no condition to be climbing anywhere.

“A grate that leads to a sewer, some more supplies and a map of the island labeling other research facilities.” Geek says with a sigh. “If what I’m guessing is true, the grate should be like a sewer system, leading us straight to another building like this one. And one of them is near the waterfront where that boat is supposed to be.”

“What kind of supplies?” Soldier asks, stepping away from the barricade to begin walking towards the stairs leading up.

“Weird ones, a bunch of swords and knives, plus a lot of medical stuff.” Geek replies, nodding towards the mutilated corpses. “I think these things were supposed to wield weapons, because upstairs is essentially an armory.”

“I’m so there,” Suit says with a smile, moving to follow Soldier up the stairs.

“Where are the medical supplies?” I ask just as Scout hands me a first aid kit. “Perfect! Well, not perfect, but pretty close. Tank will need this for sure.”

Geek pulled a small metal handle from his pocket, handing it to me. “We snagged you this as well. A folding knife, just in case you get stuck too close to one of these fuckers out here.”

Looking at them, I could see that they’d both elected to grab a pair of swords that they’d strapped to their hips, Scout wearing a bandolier with a dozen stub handled knives.

Tank groaned, causing me to turn my attention back to him. I’d been sitting on the floor now with my back up against one of the broken containers, resting his head in my lap and monitoring him for a fever. He coughs and rolls over, spitting up a mouthful of blood as he pushes himself to his feet, wavering as he moved from the crash he’d suffered after the amphetamines had worn off.

“Damn,” he said, his voice dry and raspy, “What the fuck? Feel like I got hit by a truck and ate from a sand box.”

“Normal side effects of the stuff I gave you when you were dying,” I say quickly, grabbing his thick forearm as he teeters back and forth, his other hand rubbing at his eyes.

“Crank?” He asks, looking at me after a moment. “This feels like the crash from crank.”

“Yeah, what the monsters were being fed was a mixture of that,” I answer honestly. “When you got stabbed by the creature, you were about to go down and looked like you were going into shock, so I did what I thought was best.”

“Well I may feel like shit, but at least I’m alive.” He says after a moment, looking around the room. “We killed those fuckers I take it?”

“You killed one yourself, while we all took the other one.”

“Huh, well what’s the sitch now?” He asks, scratching at his stitches.

After I rely what Geek and Scout had told us all, he seemed far more excited as he slowly made his way downstairs with the two of them, asking if they’d seen any weapons for a “man of his size.”

Scout had merely giggled.

I’d just fought off the oncoming headache.

Trouble is, now we have to figure out where we can go without getting killed. Tank’s in better condition than I thought, though still vulnerable, but we’re all better armed now. The sewer system seems like a good idea, but who knows what kind of monsters our host has dropped down there? 

Authors Note: Just leave your vote in the comments below where you think they should head: out through the roof or down through the sewer.

Zombie Games, Part One

“Welcome, one and all, to Doctor Dead’s Island of Fear and Dread!” Crackles an overly cheerful voice over a loudspeaker, a loud squawking noise honking out from the old set directly above me with almost every word. I grab at my head, trying to will the pounding headache away, but have little luck.

“I’m sure you’re all wondering what you're doing listening to my dulcet tunes this fine morning instead of waking in your oh-so-comfortable beds like you would any other morning!” The voice screeched over the intercom, ignoring my pleas to just shut the fuck up. “Well remember that dreamboat or hottie you were talking to last night, that you were planning on bringing home to shag rotten? Well, turns out they’re kind of a bunch of dicks: you see, I pay them to drug people for me and then load them onto my boats, bringing them to my private little island.”

I blink my eyes, rubbing at them as best I can from inside this strange metal coffin, looking down at my feet, I can just make out that while there’s no lid to this thing, there is a small door. I quickly begin kicking at it, cursing the damn bitch who I thought was so into me last night; laughing at my jokes, twirling her hair, blowing me in the parking lot… the signs were all there that she thought I was a catch.

Turns out she was just a slutty mercenary.

Why do I always attract money-hungry whores, I wonder. With the first few, you think it’s them, but I’m well past the counting stage now… so it must be me.

Fuck.

“For those of you that haven’t heard of me, you’re obviously not a big fan of the internet or the news, so I’ll fill you in,” the voice continues, grinding into my hangover like a screwdriver in my ear, “We all know the dead are a very real, very dangerous thing, yes?”

Of course, I think bitterly. Fucking zombie outbreak every other week on the news, the CDC must be working overtime cleaning all that shit up. It’s why I quit watching the news actually… to damn depressing.

“Well I’m the cause of all of those fun times. You see boys and girls, Doctor Dead here actually is a Doctor! I invented a fun parasite based off a few existing ones that essentially brings George Romero’s nightmares to life!” The voice was entirely too cheerful for this time of day. A-ha! My boots have dented the door and a ray of blinding light is now filtering into my tiny metal case.

“Since I’m hiding from all the major governments of the world, I’ve decided to have a little fun with my projects… by testing them on you!” He cackles over the intercom, not the laughter of a sane man. “Right now you and five other men and women are sitting in a time locked vault on my little island maze, with the great prize at the center: a case of antidote for any who get infected, one per person of course, and a speedboat fully stocked and loaded with a GPS locator to send you to the closest friendly nation. All you have to do is survive.”

Oh fucking hell…

“Despite many governments best wishes, I stream this live from my island via a few hundred cameras to over a dozen different casinos throughout the world. Should you survive, and added bonus is you automatically have a fifty thousand dollar bet placed upon you to live, payable to an account in your name. I of course, as the master of ceremonies, get a ten percent cut of all winnings from the happy gamblers and their addictions, and the populace at large finally gets a reality television show worth watching.”

“Now that we’re all on the same page of the playbook, I say let’s let the games begin shall we? This time around, I’ve decided to divide the teams evenly, with three men and three women per team. Now, just to be a fair host, I’ll just remind all of you that while you are indeed suffering from a hangover, that pain in your head is actually from a pair of microscopic cameras I inserted into your eyes, so the audience can see what you see.”

Thought this was a rather harsh hangover… I think bitterly, kicking again at the door before a loud buzzing noise emits from it, popping it open. I yelp as the metal sheet I’m lying on rolls out, revealing we were all in morgue-style cadaver boxes, and that we’re all cursing and cussing at the sudden infusion of bright light.

“Ten minutes before the vault door opens, boys and girls! Ten more minutes before I release the lever that holds back a good deal of the zombies at bay.” The voice crackles over a new intercom coming from the center ceiling tile of the room. “You should find plenty of supplies to make weapons or armor as you please, so go ahead and have fun… and to quote a man I love ever so dearly, let the games begin!”
Next Time!

A Warrior's Tale Part Two

Previously...
The pitch-eyed dead come at him faster than he'd like, a slow lumbering gate that while not exactly fast, promises that it will never slow down. All three have similar wounds, a simple torn out throat, and a carving of the Horned One’s emblem upon their foreheads. James recognizes one of them to be his comrade in arms Heinrich a fraction too late as he is forced to raise his arm in defense of the grasping fingers of the first of the groaning corpses.

As these zombies were once soldiers, all of them seem to have retained their strength and then some. James had hoped the leather handle of the whip would have been enough when draped over his arm, but the hungering maw of the dead merely bit into it, the bloodied teeth scraping so close to James’s arm in the process, and begins to chew through the tough leather like it’s a slice of roasted ham.

Ignoring the jeering crowd above, James kicks Heinrich in the stomach, sending him tumbling back into his fellows, and makes a break for one of the spears lying on the ground some ten feet away. The dwarf squawks in fear, and runs back with me, scooping up a sword with both hands. He looks to James in desperation, the dull gleam that James had grown accustomed to seeing in the dim jailers eyes pleading him for aid.

James merely nods before moving forward, slowly. The downed dead right themselves seamlessly, requiring neither hands nor knees to pull themselves up from the ground, merely the muscles of their body working in complete and utter concert together.

“That is not right,” James grumbles at the sight, choking back the bile billowing in his throat from the smell of the rotten flesh pervading the air, as well as whatever fluid they were covered in… ale?

The undead move in unison, shambling forward, one with a whip dangling from its mouth as it continues to choke the weapon down, the long cords of leather slowly disappearing down the dried gullet of my former friend.

Before they even get within striking distance, James lunges forward with the bronze-tipped spear, sinking it deep into the throat of the largest undead, yanking it to the side to sever the esophagus and vocal cords, but sadly not the spinal column. Some damage was done it would seem, as the ghoul drops to the ground, seemingly forced to drag itself with one arm while kicking out with one leg to propel itself in a truly bizarre shuffle.

The Dwarf is trying his best to handle Heinrich, and failing utterly due to my former-allies superior strength. The Dwarf sank the blade deep into Heinrich’s hip, causing his right leg to go slack. Sadly, going slack doesn’t prevent Heinrich’s probing hands to gain purchase on the Dwarf’s leather jerkin, ripping into it with the full ferocity of a starving wolf, the whip now waggling about like some obscene tongue. The other undead, a hulking mass of rotting flesh that could have only been Baldric, reached over Heinrich and grabbed at the dwarf as well, his jagged nails tearing a deep gouge into the hapless jailer’s semi-exposed chest, blood spurting out from the wound in thick gouts, splattering across the cold floor in a messy streak that only seemed to excite the dead further.

James whirled his spear around and once more stabbed at his crippled foe, this time scoring a solid meaty wound into the beasts swollen back, the bronze tip sinking into the creatures back like a knife slicing into undercooked meat, black blood welling up from the wound, dribbling onto the cold floor like heated tar. The dead thrashed about at the end of his blade, but it allowed him enough leverage to kick the beast in the side of the head, cracking it’s skull open and dislocating its jaw with a meaty thump. The creature shuddered and collapsed, its energy spent and its body done.

James released the spears haft and made his way to the two undead ripping into the jailer. His jerkin had finally been peeled off; revealing his hairy folds of greasy fat to the hungering dead’s questing fingers. Heinrich, the tail of the whip now dangling past his swollen and torn lips, was twisting and pulling on the screaming dwarfs arm with a fervor bordering on the mad, the arm in question cracking and snapping at the rough treatment it was receiving, already dislocated from a brutal yank.

Baldric’s titanic form had pushed Heinrich out of the way, lifting the dwarf bodily into the air as he sank his rotten teeth into the jailers flank, tearing away a wide strip of flesh with wild thrashings of the head, chewing on the meat noisily as the Dwarf screamed and pleaded for aid. Above it all, this disfigured man had begun a sermon concerning the Horned One’s kindness, his love for us all, and how we could repay it.

Wrenching the sword from Heinrich’s hip, James brought the gore-spattered blade in a high arc before flashing it low, sinking it deep into the back of Heinrich’s neck, tearing through sinew and spine alike as he yanked it free to stab once more into the rapidly expanding wound. By the third strike Heinrich fell to the floor truly lifeless, his head dangling from his neck by mere strips of worn and leathery flesh.

Turning on Baldric as he tore into the Jailer, James took a moment of ignoring the dwarf’s dying screams to take in all that Baldric had become. Pitch black eyes, with skin pale enough to see the dead veins beneath his cold flesh, heavily muscled limbs seeming to strain with every movement as Baldric’s body and muscles moved in complete tandem, unlike James’s own living body, which would scream in agony should he try and move like Baldric.

Despite his terrifying size and strength, he was dispatched easily enough as he was too enthralled by his captured dwarf, the light sword taking four hearty chops to fully remove his head from his taut shoulders, the dwarf falling to the ground like a forgotten chicken bone. James stomped on the poor dead things head, just to make sure he wouldn’t have to fight a diminutive zombie next.

“The Champion of Light has showed us the way!” The disfigured priest declared before a distraught audience, silencing their growing anger with his jubilant praise. “The Horned One desires the merchants to be better tested upon later, gifted with a more potent plague perhaps or some other amazing boon from the Horned One. For now, Champion of Light… what is your name?”

“Uh… James. James Hartglow.” He calls up, a tad embarrassed, and confused. He’d never had so many eyes upon him at once.

“Well than praise to James, Champion of the Light of Truth, shining unto us the true will of the Horned One through sacrifice, going so far as top slay the jailer that held him for us.” The disfigured man bellowed, clapping his hands three times in a slow rhythmic way that his congregation followed. “Go now my children, and come back once the New Moon has come, when the eyes of jealous God’s will be turned away.”

As the crowd apparently began to disperse, James looked up to see the smiling face of the disfigured priest. “Go on then Champion, the jaw is also a set of stairs to the kennel. I will have someone meet you there.”

***

The climb up the stone stairwell was slippery, slick with whatever the three walking dead had been soaking in, the sweet smell of decay mixed with the strange alcoholic stench confusing James’s senses far too much for him to hazard a guess. After climbing perhaps forty steps, he arose in a well lit room inside a high walled bowl of sorts, the thick glass walls of the bowl reaching the ceiling almost.

When he leaned in to look at the glass closely, he heard the grinding of gears and the clatter of chains once more, the path behind him closing up with a smooth piece of stone rolling over the stairwell, and undoubtedly the jaw was closing outside. A closer rattling of chains began, spinning off of a pulley and being pulled by some sort of cloven animal, from all the commotion going on past the glass barrier.

Which was slowly sinking into the ground until it was only knee high, revealing the disfigured priest and a pair of armed guards wearing the same grey robes. The room was long, carved from the same stone his jail cell had been made of, and containing a number of iron-wrought jail cells, deeply cut alcoves with iron bars and doors covering them, holding back the moaning dead, at least forty to fifty of them between four such cells. Opposite of the lowered glass barrier was a turn sty with a bound horse, the flank hairless and torn into by some savage beasts, or men, before it had died. Now the dray beast served eternally as a beast of burden, an iron muzzle strapped over its mouth and an iron backing keeping the creature from rearing up and hoofing people to death, or trying to eat people.

James could not even imagine how terrifying a flesh-starved horse from beyond the grave could be, and prayed to God he’d never find out.

“Here’s our dear Champion.” The disfigured Priest said happily, holding out his arms as if presenting James a present. “How are you feeling James, are you hungry? Thirsty?”

Looking around at all of the rotting meat, James swallowed the bile in his throat before clearing his throat. “A, um, a little thirsty?” He half said, half asked.

“Of course!” The priest said, his hearty voice not something James would expect from the emaciated, diseased body standing before him. “Let’s get you out of here and into some more comfortable clothes, get some food and wine into you!” 

James couldn’t argue, save for when the priest slung his arm over James’s shoulder, patting him on the chest with a leprous hand as he guided him out of the kennel and down a well-lit corridor, the two guards following them, but at a respectable distance.

They entered a smaller room, two long wooden tables adorned with bowls of fruit and small casks of wine dominating the majority of the room, both curved around the center which held a roasting pit, red hot embers cooking what appeared to be a sheep or hornless goat, slowly being turned on a spit by the skeletal remains of some poor soul.

“Spicer, is the mutton ready yet?” The Priest asked the skeleton as he forced James into a seat, and to James’s horror the skeleton remained silent while an unseen boy, emerging from a shadowed alcove he hadn’t noticed, probably due to the presence of a skeleton that upon closer inspection as it moved around the fiery pit and into a better source of light, looked like it was wet with recently spilled blood. Yet he left no sanguine smears as he patted the boy on his shaven head, running his fingers almost lovingly down his bare back. The boy was clad merely in stitched leather pants, with a leather cloak and hood that he wore, which were folded over his tiny arm.

“Ready enough for the killer over there, yes. I prefer mine more burned, and I know the child prefers it well done.” The little boy spoke in a flat tone, looking at James the entire time with a lost, dead stare. James took a moment to stare at the boy before realizing with a terrifying revulsion that the bloody skeleton somehow spoke through the child.

The skeleton seemed to pick up on James’s thoughts, and the child merely shook its head. “You misunderstand Champion, the boy was a needed sacrifice to grant me a voice, true. But he was also a volunteer from amongst the followers of the Horned One. He has served me now for a little over a week, and probably will survive a full year as my voice before I must select another child.”

“That’s horrible!” James cried, looking on in revulsion as the young child moved to tend to the spit sheep, grasping the handle and turning it slowly.

“That’s debatable, but most would agree that I’ve spared the poor boy a horrid life of disease and famine that seem to run through this region fairly often. Even when we’re not spreading the disease ourselves.” The skeleton said with the child’s voice, the small body of the boy straining as it spoke for the unholy creature. “And afterwards, he’ll go to the afterlife to be with the Horned One. You’re Christian I assume?”

“Yes? What’s that have to do with anything?” James hotly demanded, looking between the speaking child and the seated skeleton.

“Just look at me, not the boy,” The boy said as he finally managed to get a rhythm to the spit sheep. “It just means you’re familiar with sacrifices and slavery is all. I find it strange you view this so poorly.”

“What the Hell do you mean?” James asks again, this time focusing on the skeleton, and the baleful green glow that radiated from the empty sockets.

“Well let’s see…how about the story of Jephthah, who burns his daughter alive for God as an offering, in thanks for his great luck as a competent general? Surely that’s far worse than what I’m doing here, especially as the young lass hadn’t accepted Jesus as her Lord and Savior, and so she went to Hell afterwards for essentially committing suicide by allowing her father to do such a thing.”

“That… that’s different! The Lord commanded that!” James protested, only to see the skeleton go into a fit of convulsions as the boy let loose a string of high pitched laughter.

“That… That is rich. Your Lord commands it, so it must be fine. Well I serve a different Lord and no,” the skeleton rose its bony hand before James could interrupt, “I don’t serve Satan or whatever. Hardly a point in siding with the losing team after its already lost.”

“Then who the Hell is this Horned One supposed to be?” James demanded, taking an apple from one of the fruit baskets as he only now realized how hungry he truly was.

“A God that backs up his word with actions, not just sending his son in some lame excuse for a loophole out of eternal punishment that hadn’t been known before said son came about.” The boy snorted as he took a long fork and a sharpened dagger and began slicing off long juicy pieces of flank, placing them on a wooden platter at his feet. “I mean really, why the sudden need for a Hell?”

“It’s always been there, we just didn’t know about it!” James cried, not really knowing how to argue with a skeleton and his boy-puppet. That seared sheep did smell good though, and the disfigured priest smiled as he nudged a small decanter of wine towards James with his elbow. “Thanks, I guess.”

“Don’t mention it,” He waved a thin hand at my thanks before pointing at the skeleton. “And don’t argue religion with Spicer, he’s as cruel with his words as he is knowledgeable. You’ll regret debating him about your God or his existence.”

“So you all are Atheists?” James asked, remembering the word from the Latin Mass.

“Please,” the boy laughed as the skeleton convulsed once again. “We know of your God’s existence, that’s why we denounce Him. After all, He’s just one of many to choose from.”

“He’s the one true God!” James argues, giving the priest a pointed glare as he chuckles and shakes his head.

“According to him.” The boy says dully, placing the platter of steaming sheep flank before me. “Dig in, more than enough to go around. And to quote your God in reference to other deities, ‘You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me.’”

“Yeah,” The priest says around a mouthful of pear. “That just shows he’s not the only God.”

“And that he’s jealous of other deities taking what he views as his.” The boy said with a tone of finality to his words, slicing away a rather crispy piece of leg meat, and chewing on it thoughtfully.

James found that he knew no way to argue as he ate, especially against a Pagan priest and a skeleton using some sort of twisted magic to use a boy as his voice. It was all too surreal for him to even try and argue.

The food was good, at least.
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