Resurrection

Chapter Five

On the way to the cemetery I blasted the stereo, for no reason other than spite. With Slayer’s “Raining Blood” oozing from the crackling speakers, I watched in giddy pleasure as McConnell cringed every time the discordant squeal of a King/Hanneman guitar solo erupted. It was petty, but oh so satisfying.

At Rest Land, I turned the music down out of respect. Not so much for the dead, they’d proven way too often respect was a notion that didn’t carry over, but rather for the mourners who tended their graves. However callous I may be about the concept of death, you had to admire the dedication of a person who takes time out of their hectic life to remember and care for a loved one who’s passed on. While there was nothing I could do for them that would make their loss any easier, the least I could do was not add to their grief.

I parked the car near the maintenance area and looked out over the green fields to see where my buddies were working. After spotting the guys several gardens over through the misty haze of the sprinklers, I turned to McConnell.

“Sorry about the rough ride.” I patted the Impala’s dashboard. “I know it’s probably not quite as much fun as riding bareback like you’re used to, but you took it like a champ.”

Yeah, I went there.

McConnell shook his head. “Look, Trigg. I’m not interested in being here anymore than you are, but it’s just business, hear? The boss says we gotta do this, so that’s what needs to be done. T’ain’t no two ways about it.”

“That may be so, Yes Man, but that doesn’t absolve you from trying to kick my head in, or for blowing my damn house up. You can say you were just following orders all you want, but it was you who pulled the trigger; personal responsibility and all that crap. So, at some point, I’m gonna take it out of your hide.”

He shrugged. “Be careful what you wish for, mutt. I don’t see any magic-dampening manacles lying around.” He gestured to the car, a cocksure smile springing up behind his snow-white beard. “Lady Luck ain’t always gonna play your side.”

I grinned back at him, but to be honest, I wasn’t feeling as confident as I came off. He was right, as much as it sucked to admit it. I’d gotten lucky stumbling across the manacles that shut his magic down. If I hadn’t, things would have played out very differently. Round two would probably be a slaughter, my ass on a hook. It was a sobering thought.

“Just don’t add me to the naughty list, Santa.” Not in the mood to talk my way into an ass-beating, I veered off. “Let’s get this over with.”

Nodding his agreement and smiling from ear to ear, McConnell hopped out of the car. As I climbed out, I fought the urge to shoot him in the back and shoved my hands deep into my pockets just to be safe. Once the feeling passed, I took off down the road to where my buddies were digging a hole. The wizard stayed a few steps behind. Not interested in letting him see how much our talk rattled me, I let it ride, striding boldly in front. By the time I reached my friends, my jaw hurt from all the teeth clenching.

The rumbling sound of the backhoe echoed through the quiet cemetery, the screeching grackles doing their best to compete. The birds were winning, much to the regret of my ears.

I made my way across the grass, dodging the headstones and raised memorials, making sure to avoid the clusters of plastic flowers and religious figurines piled en masse around the graves. Near the center of the garden, I sidled up alongside a dusty little guy who stood leaning against a parked red tractor. To its right was an orange dirt-mover, its bucket noisily biting into the ground with a rumble.

“How’s it going, Javier?”

He glanced at me, giving a crooked smile before turning back to shout up at the backhoe, “Hey, Carlos. Look who’s here. I told you we’d be seeing this vato soon, esse.” Javier stuck his hand out.

Wondering what he meant by that, I shook it, trying not to think about how many dead people he’d touched with it today.

Javier was not a bather.

As I wiped my hand off on my pants, as subtly as I could, Carlos shut down the backhoe and climbed out slow and deliberate, as though it were a trial to do so.

“Hey, Frank. Who’s this chango?” He gestured to McConnell as he strolled over to us.

“He’s with me. It’s cool.”

Both men looked The Gray over like they were sizing him up for a casket. I couldn’t blame them, but I wasn’t gonna get any answers if they were suspicious of him.

“He’s one of Baalth’s boys. A couple of his guys got jumped here the other night and he wants me to straighten it all out.”

They looked McConnell over for another few seconds, then Carlos turned to me and nodded. “Yeah, we heard something about that.” He motioned to Javier.

“We could probably tell you something, if we weren’t so busy, you know?” He kinda shrugged, little brown poofs of dust rising up off his shoulders.

Like almost every other person I dealt with on a daily basis, they all wanted something. The dictionary people should retire the word “free” as nothing truly ever is. “So, what can we do to help alleviate your workload?” It was wheelin’ and dealin’ time.

Carlos smiled wide, his wiry mustache sticking out like cat whiskers. “Seems some of our customers are getting up and walking away. That’s cool and all, shit, we could use the extra spaces, but it’s turning out to be a lot of work filling in all the new holes.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help myself. Not that I was surprised the zombies Marcus and Poe tracked here were actually from this cemetery, but it came across as a comforting sense of serendipity. Not to mention, it got me off the hook without having to do another favor for someone. The dirt boys and I wanted the same thing, even if they didn’t know it. It let me look magnanimous without putting out any effort.

“It’s not funny, homie,” Javier complained, getting animated.

“Nah, I know. I feel ya.” I raised my hands to pacify him. His funk was starting to creep as he jumped around and I didn’t want to catch too big a whiff. “I’ll help you guys. Tell me what’s going on.”

McConnell shook his head. He looked like he was enjoying the show. Graveyard TV: Two Vatos and a Hole.

Carlos stepped in. “Marvin, our night watering guy, noticed the dug up graves about a week ago. He was setting the sprinklers when he fell into one of the damn things. After he got out, took him four hours he said-”

“That’s because he’s fat,” Javier explained, apparently feeling left out of the conversation.

“Yeah, he is,” Carlos agreed without missing a beat. “Anyway, he found a bunch more empty graves and even saw a couple of the corpses walking off into the desert out back. He knew then something was up.”

You think?

“How many bodies have taken off?”

“Man, it’s hard to keep track, but I’d say maybe two hundred, maybe more.”

I looked to McConnell, his face no doubt mirroring my own surprise. That was a lot of zombies. Either George Romero was shooting a movie in town, or something big and sinister was going down.

“Have you reported them missing?” The Gray asked, clearly not used to being on the interrogator side of the equation.

Carlos looked at him like the wizard had spilled his last beer. “Yeah, to you, cabron. What am I going to do, tell everyone that their dead mamas y abuelitas went to stretch their legs?” He rolled his eyes, shaking his head. “Of course we didn’t tell nobody, fool. I need my job. If I go blabbing that people’s familias aren’t being taken care of here, they’ll shut this place down.” He glanced over at me. “Besides, not all them vatos that got up and walked away are on the books, you know what I’m saying?”

I did. I headed Carlos off before he could say anymore. I’d already agreed to help him so the less of my extracurricular activities he let McConnell know about, the better. The wizard might one day be among my collection. I didn’t want Carlos to spoil the surprise.

“Did any of the corpses come back, that you noticed?”

Carlos turned to Javier, who shook his head. “Not that we’ve seen. None of the holes we filled have been messed with, or anything.”

“Has there been anything else weird, besides the bodies?”

Javier answered. “There were some flashing lights upstairs in the crypts.” He pointed off to the mausoleum.

Painted in an earthy pink, with a red-tiled roof, the mausoleum stood at the center of the cemetery, framed by a wall of towering Firs. A little over two stories tall, the building housed concrete crypts, set into the walls. Hundreds of embalmed bodies were stored inside, separated from the living by only an inch-thick marble slab and a thin piece of plastic held in place with window caulking.

“Marvin didn’t see nothing else up there. Course he didn’t have the huevos to really look, but with the lights and all that shit, it’s probably a good place to go looking,” Carlos added.

“We’ll do that. Thanks.” I waved to the guys, glad to put some distance between me and Javier’s stink. Give me a dead body any day. “I’ll handle this.” They nodded as I nudged McConnell into motion.

We walked in silence to the mausoleum, Javier and Carlos’s eyes on us the entire way. Still during business hours, we strolled through the front doors like we belonged there. A wave of subtle, permeating decay met us at the entrance. McConnell covered his nose, his eyes narrowing. I drew in a deep breath. No matter how bad it smelled, it wasn’t Javier. That was an improvement.

I led the way down the quiet, carpeted halls, passing the closed chapel on the way. The bronze placards stood out against the marbled white faces of the occupied crypts. Their sparse memorials were a far cry from the grandiose decorations that surrounded the graves outside. With little more than a few brass rings holding small, brown vases filled with wilted flowers, there wasn’t much to be seen. The mausoleum had an air of solemnness to it.

Unlike the rest of the cemetery where nature worked to reclaim what it lost, life springing up all around, the crypts were barren and cold. No matter how many corpses were raised to traipse about, there would never be life here.

Bummed out by the mausoleum, I hurried and found the stairs to the upper level. Taking them two at a time, I arrived to find the same, somber arrangement as below. If nothing else, death was consistent around here.

While not a massive area to search, I didn’t have a clue as to what I was looking for. However, after a moment surveying the floor, it became pretty obvious that whatever we were looking for, it had to involve the crypts if we were gonna find anything at all.

The deep red, carpeted floor was mostly clear and pristine. There were a couple of neutral-colored couches that sat at opposite ends of the room, but nothing else to block the thoroughfare. On the walls behind each was a large, stained glass window. Motes of dust floated in the gentle light that filtered through their colored faces.

At a loss, I gestured to the marbled squares which ran five high, almost to the ceiling. The bottom crypt was doubled, the lower half sunk into the floor.

“Let’s check out the crypts and see what we can find.”

McConnell shrugged and started imitating me as I ran my hands across the smooth marble aimlessly. Monkey see, monkey do.

I moved off in the opposite direction from the wizard, assuming I was wasting my time. It’s not like I could pop open the crypts and look inside-at least not during the day. As such, it was a half-assed search at best. Frustrated, I moved through the halls speeding up as I got further along. My eyes glazed over at the sameness of everything, the whitewash of marble and gold. The monotony was only broken by the rare picture of a loved one taped to the crypt face, and the occasional crucifix or two. Figuring the night guy had too much to drink to know what the hell he was talking about, I felt I was sure this was turning out to be a snipe hunt. To counter the humdrum sameness, I paused and glanced out the window. As I looked out over the sprawling cemetery, I saw Carlos and Javier. They were back at work, continuing to dig the same hole. From my vantage point, I could see a large number of graves the zombies must have risen from. Patches of brown dirt marred the green fields, way too many to have been recent burials.

I shook my head at the amount and drew in a deep breath. The air by the window was sour, fetid, damp even. I worked my tongue around a bit, trying to build up some saliva to wash away the taste. It wasn’t leaving. I ran my hand around the edges of the window, thinking maybe it was just a draft stirring the smell up, but I didn’t feel anything. Out of nowhere, another thick wave wafted up and dusted my nose, the scent way thicker where I was standing than it had been anywhere else in the mausoleum. It caught my attention.

I spun in a slow circle, taking in everything. That’s when I noticed a scrap of something dark caught between the crimson carpet and the one of the bottom crypt faces. I bent down and snatched it up. When I did, an even thicker wave of decay assaulted my nose without mercy. I covered my mouth and examined the scrap, realizing it was a piece of rotten flesh, dead so long it had shriveled and blackened. Discarding the skin, then continuing my examination, I saw the thick carpet had been pressed down somewhat, right in front of the crypt.

If there was something to find here, this was it.

Quietly, my eyes on the crypt face, I went down the hall and called out for McConnell. After a moment of what seemed like obvious hesitation, he wandered over. I put my finger to my lips and motioned I’d found something. His eyes narrowed and he followed me back in silence. A shimmering gray energy flickered at his fingertips.

Back at the crypt, I squatted in front of it, running my hands along the seam. That’s when I noticed the bolts that held the crypt face closed were missing. Two small wires with looped ends were slipped through the bolt holes and held the crypt closed from the inside. They were practically invisible until I was right on top of them. This had to be something related to our undead infestation.

I gestured for McConnell to keep an eye out. I shooed away the images of falling silver coins that flashed through my mind, and sank my fingers into the cracks between the crypts. With a gentle tug, the face came free in my hands. The stench that had alerted me to the crypt, drifted out thick, hitting me head on. I gagged as I set the marble plate down. The nastiness settling into my throat, I stepped away to catch my breath. After a moment, when I was better prepared to face the stink, I looked beyond the facing to see only a dark hole. There was nothing discernable beyond that.

Not waiting for McConnell to man up, I drew my gun and stepped forward, leaning in to peer into the double crypt. I expected to see a cement floor just a few feet below where I stood, but was surprised to see nothing but more blackness. As I surveyed the darkness, a quiet rumbling echoed up through the crypt.

“There’s a passage here,” I whispered. Brave man that he was, McConnell motioned for me to go first.

I stuck my tongue out and turned back to the hole. If Baalth hadn’t been so insistent that I not hurt his pet, I’d have pushed the bastard in head first. I had to admit, I was still tempted. Only the strange way Baalth had looked, his pent up anger boiling just behind his eyes, kept me from doing it.

There was no doubt in my mind Baalth would kill me. Even worse, it wouldn’t be a quick death. He’d make me suffer in ways I didn’t feel comfortable even thinking about. McConnell wasn’t worth all that, but it sure felt good to imagine. With a big smile on my lips, I got on with the task at hand.

Uncertain of how far the passage went down, I holstered my gun to free my hands. While thinking I was gonna regret doing so, I crouched at the crypt entrance and talked myself into climbing inside. After a deep breath to calm my nerves, I grabbed the edge and swung my feet over and let them drop into the darkness. Even at six-three, I hit open air, my feet dangling. I glared up at McConnell.

“You better follow me down, cowboy.” With no point in worrying if he didn’t, I let go.

In freefall for several harrowingly long seconds, I discovered the bottom was easily over a hundred feet down. I hit the ground hard. The air was knocked from my lungs in a huff as I landed in a heap, but I didn’t feel anything break.

Unsure of what might be in there with me, I hopped to my feet fast. With solid rock beneath me and blackness all around, I inched forward as I caught my breath, drawing in deep gulps of the rancid smelling air. Something dead was in here. At least I knew we were on the right track.

Off a ways into the blackness, the distance hard to judge, there was a dim, flickering glow. To get my bearings, I looked up, the shimmer from the mausoleum above doing little to chase away the dark. Right then, McConnell appeared above me, momentarily blocking the light as he floated gently down beside me.

I growled at him, my voice low. “You can levitate?”

He nodded, his smile glistening in the gloom.

Bastard. “You could have said something.”

“You did all right.” His grin grew wider. He was enjoying this too much.

Ignoring him, and the urge to put a bullet in his eye, I drew my gun once more and headed off down the tunnel at a creep. The carved stone passage was almost tall enough for me to stand upright and the sides were about a foot and a half from each of my shoulders. I moved forward slow, McConnell’s scuffling feet behind me letting me know he was still there. His presence was reassuring, let me tell you.

What’s that old saying, between a cock and a hard place? The enemy behind, the unknown ahead, I was feeling mighty vulnerable.

After about fifty yards, the glow was just in front of us, illuminating the start of a bigger chamber. I eased forward, my palm sweaty on the grip of my. 45. The funky smell stirred with our passage and grew with every step. At the end of the tunnel, I squatted down and peered into the room beyond.

Cut out of the earth, the chamber was easily a hundred yards across and about twenty high, all rough-hewn. A row of dim, battery powered lamps hung from the furthest wall, providing just enough luminescence to see by.

On the floor below them, like a scene out of a World War II documentary, were haphazard piles of corpses, heaped on top of each other, five to six bodies high, in some places. All in various stages of decay, the fresher bodies had oozed bile and embalming fluids, which had formed glistening pools on the stone floor. Arms and legs lay akimbo, no apparent order to the collection of dead bodies. As my eyes took in the mass of lifeless faces, there was one I recognized. My stomach hardened into a tangled knot.

In the heap, nude from the waist down, was Candy. Though I didn’t know her well, our relationship cut short, I was sure she didn’t deserve this. It was a pretty lousy way to go, her body hidden in a cave, dumped amongst the nameless, rotting corpses of Old Town like so much trash. It was a bitter end.

While sickened by her death, her life gone to waste, I still had work to do. I returned my attention to the bodies. I didn’t bother to count them, but it didn’t look like there were two hundred. It was probably something closer to seventy. That meant there was another hideout somewhere or the dead were on the march. I sighed at the realization. Nothing was ever easy.

Seeing no movement, I let my gaze slide across the rest of the room. To my left were several shrouded alcoves cut high into the walls, their depth impossible to tell from where I stood. I’d have to keep an eye on them.

The rest of the room, away from where the bodies were, was empty, but there on the floor, etched into the rock, were a large number of magical symbols I didn’t recognize. Schooled as I was in demonology and the dark arts, that was surprising. I dredged my memory to see if maybe they’d simply been buried in the murk, under thoughts of a particularly good night out, but there was nothing. A little common sense told me they were necromantic in nature, given all the zombies, obviously, but that didn’t tell me much about their true purpose.

Unable to decipher the symbols, I decided to record them. I pulled out Candy’s phone, feeling a twinge of guilt knowing she was lying just a few feet away, and snapped off a few shots. Tiny clicks accompanied each picture, the sound over-loud in the confines of the cavern. The images, while a little dark and spotty, would be good enough for what I needed.

McConnell grunted behind me, shuffling his feet. Realizing he couldn’t see past me in the cramped quarters of the tunnel, and thinking I didn’t want to get caught unaware in a space I could barely move in, I stepped into the room. As he followed me, I heard him hiss. I glanced back to see him staring off past me, his eyes grim.

I mouthed the word, “What?”

He pointed to the corpses. “They know we’re here.” He didn’t bother to whisper.

I turned around slowly just as a gentle creaking, like a ship moored at low tide, sprung up behind me. My heart dropped into my stomach when I saw the corpses on the pile rising up, slowly getting to their feet. They groaned a horrible threnody, spewing bouts of random nonsense as their blank stares settled on us.

I slid the phone back into my pocket. “Time to go.”

I spun around to run but before I could take a step, a hail of zombies dropped down on top of us from out of the alcoves; the same ones I told myself to watch and had forgotten to do so.

Under slabs of rotten flesh, I crashed to the floor, narrowly avoiding having my nose bitten off. Assaulted by the smell as much as by the zombies, I squirmed, trying to get them off me. To my relief, my gun hand was free. Twisting my wrist into an awkward angle to point it toward the corpses, knowing it was gonna hurt for a while-if I lived that long-I snapped off a round. The recoil whipped my hand back and slammed my knuckles into the rock floor, causing an explosion of pain before going mercifully numb.

Though I was gonna have a hard time using my right hand effectively, the pain was worth it. My shot struck the top zombie in the side of the head. Its dead again body rolled to the side, and off me. I helped it along, using its bulk as a bulldozer to muscle the other two that were gnawing at me, off my chest. It worked somewhat. My upper body loose, I sat up just as a pair of gnashing teeth tore into the meat of my calf.

Biting back a scream, I pressed the barrel of my gun against its biting head and blew a fist-sized hole in it, my hand twinging like a motherfucker. Its head snapped back and crumpled, leaving behind its teeth, still buried in my leg. I shot the other one and swiped at the embedded teeth, knocking them loose in jagged little pieces. With a growl, I examined the wound. A gooey greenness was mixed in with the blood.

“If I catch Corpse Creep, I’m gonna kill you again,” I shouted at the toothless undead while I hopped to my feet. My leg gratefully supported my weight, though it felt as if it were on fire.

I glanced around for McConnell. He, too, had been caught off guard by the attack. While I played zombie snack, he must have freed himself. A pool of melted, disfigured flesh and yellowed bone encircled him. Steam wafted up from the waxy zombie puddle as he stood with clenched fists, sparkling gray energy whirling about his hands.

When the rest of the horde approached, their chaotic symphony of gibbered epithets leading the charge, he let loose. A fiery blast of energy burst from his hands, slamming into the clueless zombies. The temperature in the room rose by twenty degrees as the front line of undead exploded into ash. Black clouds filled the air, biting at my lungs. It was like sitting in a sauna that was built inside an ashtray-the perfect stop smoking ad.

Coughing out the bitter blackness, I watched as the next wave of zombies ignited with gray flame. Its touch was virulent, contagious. Methodically, the fire leapt about the room, attaching itself to the corpses like sentient napalm, sparing everything not undead, for which I was quite grateful. The surviving zombies shrieked their incoherence at the wizard, their ranks going up around them faster than a California hillside. They were pissed.

McConnell roared back, his energy building once more. He raised his hands, readying to finish the job. Right then, I saw a blur of black spring from one of the alcoves. It dove toward us. My mind whirled. It had to be the guy who attacked Baalth’s men. No zombie could move like that.

I spun and tried to track him with my gun, firing, but he was too fast. My shot whined off into the darkness. Less than a heartbeat later, the shrouded figure, dressed from head to toe in what looked like a ninja outfit, landed in a crouch beside McConnell.

The wizard barely realized he was there, focused as he was on the zombies. There was a flash of silver, followed by an arc of crimson that flung blood across the room. McConnell let out a pained cry and clutched at his stomach. He stumbled backwards toward the tunnel, his pants discolored with an ever-growing red stain.

I dove forward, angling myself for a clear shot, and let loose a barrage. The assailant saw me coming. He ducked, using The Gray for cover, and leapt to an alcove. The move was pure grace. He stared down at me for a split-second, his masked face hiding his expression. I leveled my gun as his cold eyes bored holes through me. Before I could get off another shot, he disappeared into the shadows just as McConnell collapsed.

Torn between chasing the guy and helping McConnell, my rarely present conscience took the lead. Hatred being too weak a word to express how I felt about the cowboy, he had probably saved my life. I couldn’t have decimated the zombies like he had. There’s no telling how I would have fared against the horde alone. I at least owed him a chance at survival, if nothing else.

My eyes peeled on the alcoves, my teeth grinding, I raced to his side holstering my gun as the few remaining zombies made their way toward us. I took a quick peek at McConnell, looking to assess the wound. It was bad; real bad.

A chasm of intermingled red and black ran a good twelve inches across his stomach, just below the beltline. It was ugly. The floor beneath him was slick with dark blood and there was a stinging, bitter scent coming off the wound I couldn’t recognize. Whatever it was, it’d have to wait. Unceremoniously, I dragged him bodily back into the tunnel. It was too narrow to carry him.

A trail of crimson bled out behind us in the passage and The Gray’s quiet moans punctuated the seriousness of his condition. As quick as possible, I hauled him back toward the crypt. There was no time for gentle. Deep down, I can’t say I was all that bothered by it.

At the base of the ascent, I propped him against the wall. “I need your help, McConnell.” I lifted his chin so we were eye to swimming eye. His were glassy and unresponsive. “If you want to live, we’re gonna have to do this together.”

He groaned, his head bobbling weakly. He was losing a lot of blood and I didn’t have time to staunch the flow, the zombies catching up. I could hear their garbled voices rebounding through the tunnel, drawing closer. Unable to fly, I was gonna have to do things the hard way. I yanked my shirt off and spun around, pressing my back into McConnell’s barrel chest.

“Put your arms over my shoulders,” I shouted, reaching back to help.

After a few fumbled attempts with McConnell doing nothing to help, I managed to drape his meaty arms over me. Using the shirt, I tied them together, just above the elbows. He grunted as I pulled the shirt uncomfortably tight. I muttered a half-ass apology while I yanked my belt off, my ammo cartridges dropping to the floor with a clack. I hoped I wouldn’t need them.

To the insistent sounds of approaching zombies, I leaned back against McConnell, drawing a muffled protest as I used the wall to support us. No time to be nice, I grabbed one of his legs and yanked it up, draping it over my own. I did the same to the second. Then I wrapped the belt around his ankles, circling it around until I barely had enough room to cinch it. Once I’d locked it in, his legs secure around my waist, I spread my own legs a little more to keep his from sliding off as I turned to face the wall. I caught a glimpse of shambling zombie as I did.

Spurred on, I stretched out, and pressed hard against the wall with my elbows, forearms, and feet. Finding the vague impressions of hand and footholds, I dug in, pulling us up. Weakened and unable to hold on, McConnell shifted downward as unconsciousness claimed him, the knotted shirt pulling tight against my collarbones and throat. I could barely breathe, but there was nothing I could do about it. The alternative was never breathing again. I couldn’t let that happen. Do you know how embarrassing a killed by a zombie epitaph would be?

“Ever hear of Jenny Craig?” I asked McConnell, sounding like a frog, my voice croaking. Built like a brick shit house, the wizard was a big, steaming pile of dead weight.

To make things worse, the rough rocks were like razors against my skin, slashing my arms to ribbons as I ground them into the walls to support our ascent. Now wet with my blood, the already awkward movement became even more difficult as each bracing thrust opened more wounds, adding to the slickness of the walls. I glanced up as I inched my way toward the mausoleum, the square patch of light seeming a million miles away.

Below me, I heard the jabbered call of the zombies, their shuffling feet on the rocks nearby. We were still too close to the floor, my legs and McConnell’s fat ass still within reach. I pressed harder, squirming upward, grinding the bones of my arms against the jagged walls, whimpering like a beaten dog.

All of a sudden, I felt a tug that nearly pulled me from the wall. I managed a glance back as I leveraged myself, damn near tearing my shoulders out of their sockets. What I saw tied my stomach in knots. An enterprising zombie had latched a hand onto McConnell’s belt, adding its weight to ours while swatting at the wizard’s exposed back with the other.

McConnell regained consciousness with a hoarse shout as the corpse carved red troughs along his spine. I bore down harder as The Gray’s pained twitches threatened to yank me from my unsteady perch. My arms screamed out in agony. The bones of my shoulders ground together.

“Damn it, McConnell, stop squirming. You’re gonna get us killed.” I thumped my head against his to draw his pained attention. “I can’t hold us much longer. I need a boost.”

His only response was a grunt that showered my neck with warm, bloody spittle. He was passing out again. I thumped him once more, getting a growl in response.

“Now, McConnell!”

Though he said nothing, I saw a dull gray sputter to life around his hands. It flickered for an instant, then died. I felt his weight shift as the zombie tore into him again. We both cried out at the same time. Chunks of my arm peeled back against the sharp edges of the wall as our combined weight dragged us down an inch at a time, slow and excruciating.

I growled in frustration, doing my best to keep us stable, but it was a losing battle. That thought was reinforced as another zombie appeared alongside the first below. I heard its gibbered voice mingling with its buddy’s. Its grasping hands joined the effort to tear us from the wall. It wouldn’t be long until they succeeded, my arms going numb.

Just as I contemplated dropping, figuring I’d take my chances in the hole, McConnell’s hands lit up again. A strained moan escaped his lips as I felt the pressure on my arms relax, our weight buoyed by his magic. A split-second later we were being pushed upward, gathering momentum. I tucked my arms in to avoid having them ripped off as we hurtled upward, and loosed a sigh of relief.

The comforted feeling didn’t last long.

I looked down and noticed we still had a passenger, one of its dead hands clasped tight around the wizard’s leg, the other swinging loose. To make matters worse, McConnell’s head was slumped against my shoulder and the glow had retreated from his hands. That, however, didn’t stop our ascent.

I looked above us and saw the light from the mausoleum, which had looked so far away earlier, was now hurtling toward us way too fast. I groaned.

“Wake up!” I screamed, but McConnell didn’t bat an eyelid. He was too far gone to hear.

It was just my luck. I’d escaped being mauled by a gaggle of zombies only to be smashed against the rock ceiling. After which, I’d no doubt fall back down and crash into the stone floor where I’d be set upon once again and mauled by said zombies. This was working out great.

Not interested in either scenario, I curled my legs up tight against my body and tucked my head a bit, doing what I could to change my angle in regard to the narrow shaft. McConnell’s body arched over me, placing him somewhat between me and the fast approaching ceiling of rock. While not my intent, I can’t say I could give two squirts about the fact he’d hit first if things didn’t pan out. The maneuver, however, did nothing to shake our zombie hitchhiker. It still held on, its free hand latching ahold of my injured calf to ensure its grip. Its fingers dug into the wound and I gritted my teeth.

Though I knew we were gonna hit something, no matter what I did, I was hoping I could change the angle and minimize the impact to give us a shot at getting out alive. Not much of a plan, but it’d have to do. Simplicity works best for me.

Just as we reached the bottom of the open crypt entrance, about four feet from the roof, I kicked my legs out, slamming them into the wall. When they connected, I pushed with all my might redirecting our momentum. It worked…

…kinda.

My head and shoulders shot out through the crypt, but it wasn’t enough. We were moving too fast. McConnell’s back slammed into the ceiling hard, followed a split-second later by the zombie crashing into us.

The impact drove the wizard’s head into the back of mine. Stars exploded in front of my eyes, my vision whirling as our ascent ended abruptly. Through the haze, I felt our weight return. Gravity, my old nemesis, had reasserted itself. We were falling.

In a panic, I reached out with both hands and grabbed whatever I could. My fingers sunk into the soft, thick carpet and latched on. It didn’t take but an instant to realize that wasn’t gonna work.

Red strips of carpet peeled away like from an orange, curling up in strips between my fingers. I shouted a million epithets as we fell, tumbling back into the hole.

As my hands slid past the edge of the crypt, I tried again, desperate. This time I got lucky. My fingers locked onto the concrete lip. I bore down with everything I had, the sudden snap of McConnell’s and the zombie’s weight nearly tearing my fingers off. My hands and arms felt as if they were being massaged by a blowtorch as McConnell slipped down, pulling the shirt tight against my throat like a noose. I gasped, unable to breathe. Frantic, I dug in while summoning every ounce of energy I could muster. I fought and I fought, inching my way upward. The relentless zombie tore at McConnell all the while.

Each torturous inch was like crawling a mile naked across a carpet of glass shards. Every muscle in my body shrieked, but at last, I’d gained enough ground I could leverage my arms against the sides of the crypt opening. With one last agonizing effort, I’d pulled us through far enough that only our lower bodies hung inside the hole, not counting our zombie hitchhiker. It clung on viciously snapping at McConnell’s back, which probably looked like bloody hamburger by now.

Comforted by the solidness of the ground, my heart still doing somersaults in my chest, I could at last do something about the zombie. Unable to reach my gun, I started to kick, lashing out with everything I had. It wasn’t much, but fortunately, it was enough. The zombie slipped loose and fell back into the hole, chittering madly.

Free of the undead, I slipped McConnell’s arms from around my neck and sucked in a deep breath, my throat raw. Even so, it felt glorious. But with no time to waste, I undid the belt that held the wizard’s legs to mine and pulled him the rest of the way out of the hole. Once I’d done that, I rolled him over. What little optimism I’d gained from our escape withered.

While not disemboweled, the wound was as close as you can come without being so. Not having the skills to deal with it, I yanked my shirt off his arms and used it to stuff the wound, keeping pressure on it with one hand. With my free hand, I dug out Candy’s phone and put a call into DRAC.

If McConnell was gonna live, he’d need more than my help.