“Nefarian Serpine,” Pleasant called, “if you’re in there, come out. Come get what’s coming to you.”
The candle flickered behind the thin, cracked glass. The doors banged gently in the hesitant breeze. Pleasant looked at Rue, who shook his head. No one was in that church.
Pleasant made to step forward, then stopped. The other Dead Men watched him as he turned slowly. They started to turn, too.
Corpses lunged up from the graves all around them, pushing aside packed dirt and overturning markers of wood and stone. They burrowed out from six feet under and less, moaning and groaning and uttering sounds that whistled through dried-up throats. They clambered to their feet and staggered and lurched and shambled, all going straight towards the seven sorcerers who were slowly backing away from them.
More and more crawled to the surface, breaking through to add their sounds to the growing chorus of the dead. Hundreds of graves, going back sixty years. Some of the dead, zombies they were called, were fresh enough, and some were little more than skeletons. Skulduggery Pleasant might’ve felt right at home at that moment. If he did, he didn’t show it.
“Start shooting,” he said.
Guns cleared leather and immediately the night was shaking to the thunder of gunfire. The Dead Men stood in a line and fired calmly, making every bullet count. Shots to the legs to slow them down, to the chests to drive them back, and to the heads to give them a death they wouldn’t be walking away from. Bullets were easier than magic when it came to zombies. Quicker, too. Even the skeletons, those without a brain, went down when a bullet shattered their skulls.
Bone fragments flew. Rotten flesh burst. Soon enough the Dead Men were standing in a cloud of acrid gunsmoke, and still the zombies came.
“Reloading,” Vex said, taking one step back. The other Dead Men closed in, filling the gap. When his guns were ready, Vex said, “Firing,” and stepped into the space that was immediately made for him.
That’s how they went, the Dead Men, doing this dance, covering for their partners. Guns got hot and fingers got singed, and still they fired and reloaded and fired, and still the zombies came.
Three zombies from the back pushed forward. Fresher corpses, these. They ran at Bespoke and he blasted one of them in the face and one in the throat. The bullet passed right through the spinal cord and the head flopped backwards, tearing decaying skin, then fell off. The third zombie he punched with a column of air that lifted it off its feet. He fired at it as it hurtled backwards, hit it in the back of the head.
The zombies were surrounding them now. The Dead Men moved into a tight circle, constantly turning, a spinning top of death. Empty cartridges fell. New ones slid into chambers. Hammers pulled back and struck down and powder lit and lead flew. Faces, heads and bodies disintegrated. The spinning circle of Dead Men spun its way halfway down the trail. The slower-moving zombies had to adjust their lumbering course a few times just to get within snarling distance.
Pleasant slipped into the middle of the circle and Ravel covered his back while he holstered his empty Colts. He held up his hands, gripping the air. It wasn’t easy to do what he was doing. The rifles and shotguns that had stayed behind with the horses lifted from their holsters and packs, and he brought them up the hill, over the heads of the foul-tempered dead.
“I’m out,” said Hopeless, returning his pistols to his belt. His rifle, a Sharps, fell into his waiting hands and he brought it to his shoulder and resumed firing.
Rue was next, and he made his Winchester sing, using the butt whenever a corpse got too eager. Shudder had the shotgun, a double-barrelled monstrosity he liked to call Daisy. He fired that from the hip, blowing apart any zombie dumb enough to go up against him. The others all had Henrys, except for Pleasant himself, who favoured the Spencer. They dug in their pockets for shells, reloading as fast as they were able, but it was clear there were more zombies than there were bullets.
A big zombie, a man who’d died scarcely two weeks before, charged into the circle and the circle split apart. Any rational mind watching might think that this’d be the moment to panic, but the Dead Men went about their business, hurried but calm, knowing that one mistake, one fumble or misfire, could lead to being swarmed and torn apart. They dodged among the grasping hands, firing and lashing out, reloading whenever they had a moment.
One by one, rifles were dropped and balls of fire flew. Coloured streams of light burst from Vex’s hands, sizzled right through necrotic flesh. Rue went to work with his bowie knife and Hopeless took out that machete of his. Only Shudder was still firing, his pockets providing a seemingly endless supply of shells.
“To the church,” Pleasant shouted when it became clear they were about to be overrun, and each of them started making their way back up the hill.
A wave of his hand opened the double doors and they grouped together once more, backing into the shelter of the Lord. But the Lord must’ve been busy that night, or else He was sleeping on the job, because there was no respite in here. The carnivorous corpses kept coming, clambering over the pews, and the Dead Men kept backing up, shoulder to shoulder. They slowed their retreat some, only stopping when they had to, when the sheer numbers forced them to.
Bespoke gestured behind them and the makeshift altar and the pulpit slid to the side, out of their way. By the time they reached the single door at the other end of the church, every zombie still moving was packed inside.
At Pleasant’s signal, Hopeless kicked open the door, held it for his friends, and the Dead Men turned and got the hell out of there. Shudder was last, but instead of running, he turned in the doorway and pulled open his shirt. Pleasant, Bespoke and Ravel held out their hands, forming a wall of solid air, keeping the zombies from getting at their friend. They dropped the wall when Shudder nodded. The zombies rushed forward.
There are types of magic that are easy, relatively speaking, that take no particular toll on the sorcerer using them. They’ll get tired, sure. They’ll get worn out, and drained. That’s what happens when magic is used. Same as anything a body does.
But then there are types of magic that demand a price. Anton Shudder’s magic was one such. The risk he took every time he used it, the pain and anguish it caused him, were immense. Few people ever mastered that discipline of magic. There were those who said it could never be mastered. Shudder himself was one such person.
His gist burst from his chest – a screaming, squawking, nightmarish version of Shudder himself. It was made up of every bad thought and feeling the man possessed, and by the look of the fangs and the claws and the madness, those bad thoughts were many, and resourceful. Attached to Shudder by a twisting stream of light and dark, it went at the zombies like they were the things it hated most in the world. Which, at that moment, they were. It went through them and over them and back again, that stream looping over itself like an ever-growing snake. The zombies, with no room to duck even if they’d had a mind to, were reduced to tatters.
Shudder’s knees gave out and Rue and Vex each grabbed one of his arms, held him up. With the last of his strength, Shudder called the gist back to him. It hollered and screeched and fought, but the thread between them shortened, and shortened again, and then the gist was sucked back into Shudder’s chest, and the night was silent apart from the low moaning of the zombie remains.
Rue and Vex helped Shudder walk away, and Pleasant, Bespoke and Ravel clicked their fingers and filled their hands with flames. They tossed those flames through the door, manipulated them a little, and within seconds the whole church was burning, taking the last of the zombies with it.
The Dead Men headed back down to their tired horses, where Hopeless was waiting for them. He’d collected their fallen rifles and had picked up something extra along the way. A man in black, unconscious, with blood