Chapter 19: Smash O'clock (Patreon)

“Undead are a perversion of life, as more than anything else they are motivated by hunger.”

“That tracks,” Jeb said, thinking of Borg. The undead cyborg did seem to have a fixation with eating and biting things.

“The undead are theorized to possess a way to process Impact outside of the System. It’s widely considered uncouth to suggest anything is outside the system but…”

“Yeah, there’s obviously stuff outside the System.” Jeb shrugged as they walked through the sun-dappled walkways that lead through the strangely empty neighborhood of rich people. Maybe it was strangely empty, or maybe there just weren’t that many in the first place.

“Like someone with a Vow,” Vresh tapped Jeb’s shoulder for emphasis, “Undead seem to process Impact in a more organic way. By eating everything they can get their hands on. A portion of the Impact of a fresh kill goes to their personal strength, and a portion goes to the miasma they generate, making it more likely to spread to the weak or dying.”

Jeb nodded along to Vresh’s lecture on the undead, every little thing she’d absorbed from two different purges that she’d been actively involved in.

“So they don’t turn people they’ve bitten? No zombie rules?”

“What’s a zombie?”

“It’s a…” Jeb realized there were simply too many zombie movies to really pin down what a zombie was, so he shrugged.

“Generally, the person who an undead feeds on will be dead. However, if the person manages to survive long enough in a weakened, near-death state, in a high concentration of miasma, then they have a good chance of turning.”

“So like if an undead hunter was mortally wounded in the sewers, that would be more dangerous than one mortally wounded aboveground.” Jeb said, connecting the dots.

“Yes.”

“Any specific materials undead are sensitive to?”

“Well, you already know that they don’t like sunlight, but they can tolerate it. Fire is only useful for destroying the corpses after they’ve been ‘pacified’.

Jeb recalled all the movies and video games where a well-place Molotov cocktail could put down a swarm of undead, dramatically collapsing into piles of burned flesh.

“Fire is onlyuseful when they’re already dead? Why not set them on fire while they’re alive?”

“Because it doesn’t kill them fast enough,” Vresh said. “They’re usually made of rotting flesh which is historically juicy and not particularly flammable. If you light an undead on fire, then you’re stuck fighting an aggressive torch, which makes things far more complicated than they might be otherwise.”

“But as far as a material that they’re ‘sensitive’ to…Not really.”

“So, do they stop moving when you destroy the brain?”

“No. They corpses are animated by Miasma, which suffuses every part of their bodies. They’ll still be moving after they’re completely separated into limbless chunks.

“Then you burn them.”

“Then you burn them,” Vresh agreed.

“Okay, I think I’ve got most of the important info,” Jeb said, nodding. It wasn’t sounding good. Intelligent undead were on a completely different level than mindless automatons, both smarter and stronger, and they didn’t even have much in the way of exploitable weaknesses.

Not only that, Jeb would have to destroy them thoroughly, rather than a simple stake through the heart or a decapitation.

First you quarter them, then you burn them to ash.

Is there really is anything here? This place seems like it would be too well-guarded for undead to spread…Jeb wondered to himself. Was he just seeing things, assigning magical importance to memories of decisions made on a whim? Jeb had seen how faulty the human mind was when it decided it didn’t want to bear responsibility for its actions.

Forget Mab messing with him. He vehemently didn’t want to be messing with himself. Self-deception was a huge stumbling block. Jeb carefully re-checked his memories and decided that yes, he’d seen that flickering of light on the map, and he was prettysure it had pointed to around here.

“Do you really think there’s something here?” Piwaki asked, always the first to complain out loud. “The Jikubei district is a gated community filled to the brim with high level nobles, merchants and retired adventurers. This is probably one of the worst places an undead outbreak could occur. They’d cull them easily.”

Above them and to the left, a salamander child jumped out of the window of a mansion, sprinting across the roof a moment before a hand made of the fused flesh of another salamander person reached out and seized him around the waist.

“You were saying?” Vresh asked.

And that’s why I don’t open my mouth. Jeb thought, whipping out the Myst strings. Makes me look smarter.

***Later***

“Hey, kid,” Jeb said as he patted the salamander-kid’s cheek. “Vresh says it’s bad to fall asleep around miasma. Seriously. You could turn in your sleep.”

“Allow me,” Kolusk said, pulling out a flask of something, before Jeresh stopped him.

“You wanna kill the boy? Here.” She held out a little waterskin to Jeb.

“Says the person who drinks paint thinner.” Kolusk snorted.

Jeb cautiously accepted the mysterious liquid and smelled it, aware of Melas drinking habits.

“It’s water!” Jelesh said, throwing her hands up in the air. “Everybody drinks water!”

Jeb didn’t smell anything wrong with it in particular, so he splashed it on the kid’s face.

“Ah!” he woke up with a start.

“Vresh says not to lose consciousness around miasma.” Jeb reiterated for the kid’s benefit. “It’ll try to turn you.”

“In my dreams, they were calling to me,” the little salamander-person said.

Well, that’s creepy.

“That’s nota good sign,” Vresh said, leaning over the two of them to peer into the child’s eyeballs, her foot slipping on the curb and nearly goring Jeb with her horns.

“Ow.” Jeb muttered, rubbing his scalp. “We’re gonna get you somewhere safer, but for right now, just follow along in the middle of the grou-“

A tap on his shoulder interrupted his words, and Jeb looked up.

Vresh wordlessly motioned to the surrounding suburban mansions, which seemed to be regurgitating undead out into the streets in broad daylight.

“I feel lied to,” Jeb said sourly, glancing up at the Amazonian warrior above him.

“I said they dislikesunlight,” Vresh stressed, drawing her swords as the corpses of hundreds of the well-to-do closed in around them. “There’s no rule against them attacking us in the daylight, it just means they can’t infect us…unless they drag us into the shadows.”

“I like my monsters with exploitable rules,” Jeb said, climbing to his foot, keeping a strong grip on the child’s shoulder as he scanned the terrain.

“Alright, listen up kid,” Jeb said, weaving a ring of plasma around them, so hot it could be felt against the skin from ten yards away. In a fit of creativity, Jeb created a celtic knot at the end and fed the beginning of the loop into it, like a little bow at the top of a present, then let go.

The burning beam of plasma hung there, circling around them and slowly losing heat.

Jeb chuckled with delight.

“Things might look bad right now-”

“Oh gods, oh gods, oh gods,” Piwaki said, rocking in the center of the street, clutching his skull and hyperventilating.

“But you’re actually pretty safe.” Jeb said as the first of the undead reached the ring of plasma, cutting itself in half. Jeb could have sworn the creature had a stunned expression as it flopped to the ground, only for twin blades to emerge from a shimmering portal and lop it’s limbs off in two smooth strokes.

“Hey, isn’t that Masha’s dad?” Kolusk asked, hefting a slender hammer with a weighed head. The keegan Daredevil kicked forward in an unnatural burst of speed and put his entire body weight behind the hammer, smashing in one of the creature’s skulls.

It immediately got back up.

“Oh, no,” Jelesh said, her hand on her chest, “Masha is going to be devastated.” She cocked her head to the side. “Then she’s going to be rich.”

“Maybe you should start working on getting in her pants instead, then.”

“Kolusk! You know that –“ Jelesh paused, glancing guiltily at Vresh. “You know I’ve only got eyes for someone else.”

“Just saying, it would be a damn sight easier than –“

“Less talking, more lopping!” Vresh said, approaching Kolusk and shoving her left-hand sword into the Daredevil’s hand. “Hammers are for shit against undead. They don’t care if you break their bones.”

“And you!” She rounded on Jelesh. “What are you doing to help, right now?”

The melas girl was startled into action.

“Umm, yes! This, Ms. Tekalis!” She threw her hand into the air dramatically, and Jeb saw a dozen or so streams of dark blue Myst emanate from her hands and reach out past the horde of undead and touched the windows, which shattered and began to fly through the air back to her, turning into flying shrapnel, lopping off several appendages on the way back.

That’s good control. Jeb thought. If she could control glass, she would probably be able to help with the lopping more than - OW!

Jeb tugged a shard of glass out of his shoulder and gave the young woman a careful, weighing glance.

Would it save him a lot of trouble if he crushed her to paste right here? Would saving himself that trouble be a part of his ‘best effort’?

Jelesh must have seen the look in his eyes, because the melas girl paled and turned away, devoting all her attention to forming blades of glass and sweeping them through the horde.

That acknowledgement of fear gave him a reason not to kill her. It told him he could keep her in line until he was done honoring the terms of his Deal, which meant keeping her alive was part of his ‘best effort’.

In any case, Jeb whipped himself up some telekinetic armor, a little bubble of personal space, including the child. No more friendly fire.

Piwaki continued to rock in place.

“Piwaki, get up.”

“No, I can’t!”

“Spoken like someone who wants to die,” Jeb said.

Piwaki glared at him with a bloodshot eye.

“What do you know!?”

“I know what survivors look like, and I know what victims look like. Right now, you are committing yourself to being a victim.”

Piwaki gulped and rose to his feet on trembling legs.

Jeb scanned the battlefield.

His ring of plasma was slowing the tide of undead down, while Kolusk was zipping around the battlefield in a way that distinctly reminded Jeb of Jessica’s Inertia control. Vresh was a whirling dervish, her lithe form severing limb after limb in a flurry of motion.

But Jeb could tell she was holding back, mostly acting as support, preventing kolusk and Jeresh from being attacked in their blind spots, putting down corpses they hadn’t quite sealed the deal on.

Is she accommodating the kids? Jeb mused.

Jeb took a button off his shirt and built a sword onto it, creating a knot of Myst at the place where it was connected to the button.

Please don’t explode, please don’t explode. Jeb thought, a bead of sweat emerging on his forehead as he worked.

When it was done, there was a self-sustaining blade of force jutting out from the button, complete with a handle beneath it. It would probably last a couple minutes. Not long, but long enough for Piwaki to contribute.

It was weightless, but sharp.

Jeresh was standing mostly still, orchestrating panes of glass that bisected undead left and right, aiming for MVP.

“Get Jeresh’s attention, tell her you’re going to watch her back, then stand behind her and flail at anything that gets close.” He grabbed Piwaki’s shoulder and aimed him at the glass-weilder.

“Why do I have to tell her?”

“Because friendly fire is a real problem,” Jeb said, rubbing his hand across the wound in his shoulder and showing Piwaki the bright red blood. “Don’t want you to get bisected because she didn’t know you were there, right?”

“Right.” Piwaki nodded and headed over to Jeresh, flagging her down and getting her to acknowledge his presence before getting behind her, clutching the sword in trembling claws.

Jeb and Vresh shared a glance and nodded, slowly retracting their assistance until the three college kids were dealing with the majority of the undead all by themselves. Jeb’s ring of plasma slowly cooled and the String Myst disintegrated, allowing the full brunt of the undead horde to settle on their shoulders.

“You got babysitting duty?” Jeb asked, glancing at the three of them fighting desperately back-to-back, gasping for air with bloodshot, terrified eyes.

“Of course,” Vresh said. “This was my idea, after all.”

There wasn’t much benefit to be had from a level hundred and twenty eight killing a minor horde of undead. But three level twenties could experience a significant power up, both in levels, and practical experience.

Jebediah ‘Best effort’ Trapper hadn’t been ignoring everyone’s words. He believed them when they said Undead shouldn’t have been able to infect this neighborhood. That meant that something strange had happened that allowed this to happen. One of his targets, perhaps? Those were likely the only undead strong enough to kill a wealthy neighborhood.

On Pharos, wealth and martial might were synonymous.

He didn’t want to treat the symptom, he wanted to find and purge the root cause.

Jeb’s attention was briefly drawn back to the fight as Piwaki gave a squawk, his sword poofing out of existence in his clawed hands, just as a pair of gnashing teeth were heading for his face.

Jeb tensed for a moment, until Piwaki reflexively punched outward with a knife-hand, his fingers tight together, aligning his natural claws into a blade, which punctured the rotting corpse up to his elbow.

That was trained into him, Jeb mused.

By sheer luck, the strike severed some of the last remaining bones holding the creature together, and it fell apart, leaving Piwaki staring at his own hand in wonder.

Vresh winked.

She’s obviously got the kids under control, Jeb thought.

“Hold on tight.”

“Hold on whAAAAH!” The salamander kid’s voice rose an octave as Jeb flew into the air, surveying their situation.

If only something convenient, like an arrow, pointed in the direction of the bad guys.

It was the smell that brought it to Jeb’s attention. The smell of rotting flesh was one of the most viscerally awful things a person could smell, and Jeb had long since become intimately familiar with it.

Some of the corpses smelled a bit more off than others.

It was hard to tell how decayed the aliens were at a glance, because they weren’t human, their appearance was hard for Jeb to judge based on eyesight.

Everybody rotted the same though. Smelled the same as they decayed.

And the least rotten, freshest corpses were in…that direction.

Jeb turned his head toward the street where the most recent undead were coming from.

That gave him the general direction, but it didn’t give him the exact location. If the mastermind behind this was making any serious attempts at hiding, he doubted this would pan out, but he still had to take the shot.

Jeb flew the two of them past the advancing line of undead toward the last house on the street, at the end of a little cul-de-sac. The house itself wasn’t spewing undead like the others, which was probably a good sign.

Either they were still alive, or the mastermind was hiding in here.

There were other options of course, like the place being abandoned, but the first two were the ones he was concerned with.

Jeb raised a hand, grasped the knocker, and after a moment’s consideration, lifted his pinky finger before rapping the heavy metal against the door.

While he was waiting for the survivor to come to the door or the ambush to reveal itself, Jeb considered the best way to track down Pikaku Sr.

Track down, track down… Jeb’s eyes went wide as he recalled a previous foe who was thankfully still alive.

That keegan with the poisoned letter that tried to kill me half a dozen times…Kol, was it? He had a pretty easy time finding me whenever he came at me. I think he had some kind of class-based gimmick that allowed him to track me down anywhere I went. Maybe I can ask around to see if there’s any class-specific ability that allows people to unerringly find other people. Then all I would need to do to narrow down the undead master’s location would be to find one of these classes.

I’d rather not tap Kol for help if I didn’t have to. The guy’s got a bug up his ass about – Jeb’s thoughts were cut short by a soft scrape and a frightened whisper.

“What do you want?” the person behind the sliding panel of wood asked, peering out at him. All Jeb saw was a glitter of eyeball and the bridge of a beak. Brown feathers.

A kitri then.

“Hello ma’am, I’m working for the emperor with a group of people doing a survey of the local area. Have you seen anything strange or out of the ordinary lately?” Jeb asked with a straight face as zombies mobbed a ragtag group of teens in the street a couple hundred feet directly behind him.

“Aside from that?” she asked, her gaze flickering to the battle going on in the background.

“Yes’m.” Jeb nodded.

The kitri rolled her eyes. “No, and if you’re not here to do anything about that, then you aren’t worth my time.”

The panel slammed shut.

Jeb knocked on the door again, but there was no response. Deeper inside the house he could faintly make out many hushed whispers and a baby crying. There were probably a lot of people from around the neighborhood sheltering in the last mansion on the block.

Jeb knocked some more. Harder. It wasn’t Smash O’clock yet, not for being rude.

Finally the voice returned, although the panel didn’t open.

“What?” the woman’s voice sounded angry and strained.

“Whoever killed the people on your block seemed to have miraculously stopped at your home. I’m skeptical of the miraculous. If you’ve got people in there with you right now, I would suggest abandoning your pride and gravitating towards the relative safety of me. One of them might be more than they seem.”

Jeb shrugged as he continued. “Even if you just got lucky, it seems like now would be a good time to seek shelter elsewhere. The neighborhood isn’t quite as safe as it used to be.”

Understatement of the year.

“The House Pukuwa does not shrink in the face of duty, and right now that duty is to provide stability to our community. We will not leave.” The muffled voice said.

You stupid F--- Jeb bit back the cursing. “If you don’t leave this house in the next two minutes, I’m probably going to have to kick the door down, and things will get heated,” Jeb said. in more ways than one.

“If you wish to attack civilians trying to survive, do what you must.”

Bull….shit.

Jeb wasn’t buying it. Maybe. MAYBE they had collected all the survivors from the rest of the houses, but at the first sign of someone trying to get rid of the undead, they should have been ecstatic. Or joined in the purge.

Or…

Something didn’t sit right with Jeb.

Jeb picked up the gecko kid and flew over to Piwaki, who yelped and held his hands up in a chopping motion.

“One sec,” Jeb formed a blade of telekinetic Myst around the group before unleashing it in a circle outward, bisecting the majority of the undead on the street.

“Hey Piwaki, what sound does a Kitri baby make?” Jeb asked.

Piwaki’s neck wobbled in consternation as he and the rest of the team caught their breath.

“I’ll not tolerate any more of this disres-“

“Being totally serious. What sound does a baby make?”

Piwaki sighed and made some hooting noises.

“What about you?” Jeb asked, looking at the salamander boy he’d been hauling around. The boy made some croaking noises.

Jeb pointed at Kolusk and Vresh in turn, but didn’t get anything remotely resembling the sound of a human baby.

That was a human baby.

It clicked into place. The neighborhood was a gated community. Old money. Connections to powerful people. They didn’t have any humans, let alone human babies.

There was only one human baby of note floating around the city that someone would consider weathering an undead uprising rather than be exposed as possessing it.

A fraction of a second later, Jeb smashed foot-first through the solid oak door two hundred feet distant.

It was Smash O’clock.