easily have flattened me.
I walked on cautiously, gazing in amazement at the destruction caused by the earthquake. In one hall twenty columns had collapsed and I could easily have broken a leg as I scrambled across the rubble of shattered coffins, overturned gravestones, and collapsed bridges over canals. I had three more halls to get through before I reached the stairway.
Well, of course, in the last hall but one, there was a nice surprise waiting for me in the form of sixty or more corpses! How had they all managed to squeeze in there?
They were lined up like soldiers, as if they were waiting for orders. I quickly dodged back into the darkness of the corridor before these hostilely inclined individuals could notice me. We-ell now … It would be hard for a mosquito to slip past a gathering like that, let alone a man. I put a second light bolt into the empty slot of the crossbow and walked out into the hall.
Surprisingly enough, they took absolutely no notice of me. Every last one of the walking dead was gazing in the opposite direction. What could be holding their attention?
Overcome by a sudden insane urge to play the hero, I blurted out loud enough for the entire hall to hear, “Can I please have your attention just for a moment?”
The sound of my own voice was frightening. The frozen sea of the dead stirred into movement, wheezing in excitement. One of them turned round, then another, then another ten, another twenty, until the entire hall was looking at me. Faces eaten away by the leprosy of decay, skin that was tinged yellow, black, gray, or green … ulcers and holes. Some had no nose, some had no eyes. Some had lost a jaw or an entire arm. White bones gleamed through the decomposing flesh and gray scraps of what had once been burial clothes. Skulls grinned at me and hissed, they reached their hands out.… Then, as if a command had been given, the sea of corpses started moving toward me. I shot the first bolt straight into the crowd. Light, groans, stench …
The second time I fired at the ceiling, and the light poured down on the zombies like genuine sunshine. Then I flung two vials of cat’s saliva and beat a hasty retreat to get as far away as possible from the hall, speedily loading the crossbow with two new bolts as I went.
I came back. The smell was so bad, I almost died. The floor was a seething gurgling mess of melting flesh and disintegrating bones. Of all the corpses who had been in the hall only five were showing any feeble signs of life (blasphemous as that might sound). The creatures were still twitching and wheezing. Without wasting any time, I shot another light bolt at the ceiling and withdrew into the corridor again.
I loitered out there for a good twenty minutes, waiting for the stench in the hall to ease off a bit. To be quite honest, I felt too disgusted to walk through the thin soup that had recently been human flesh. But there was nothing to be done; I had to walk through it. I asked Sagot to give me strength, tore off a piece of the lining of my jacket, wrapped it round my face, and walked through the hall.
A winding, crooked corridor, eight steps down, a corridor, a turn, a corridor. A hall.
“May you all rot in the darkness!” I yelled.
There was no more stairway to the seventh level.
If I’d walked faster, I could have got here before that fateful earthquake. But now it was too late. The jolt that hit the Sector of Heroes had collapsed the columns holding up the ceiling, and now my way was blocked by a massive heap of stone blocks and small debris. The dust hadn’t settled yet, but the stairway had been blocked off securely by the rock pile, and it would take years to shift it.
What could I do? As Kli-Kli liked to say in situations like this—drop your pants and run. The dust swirling in the hall made it hard to breathe, and I had to go back out. I sat down under a torch and studied the maps and papers for the hundred thousand millionth time.
The results of my research were not encouraging. This stairway was the only one in the Sector of Heroes, and in order to get down now, I’d have to go back to the spot where I first entered the sixth level. And from there … From there I’d have to tramp such a huge distance that it was easier just to lay down and die. The Sector of Heroes is a pretty large place, and I was sure to meet plenty of the walking dead before I could reach a stairway. And I didn’t have unlimited supplies of crystals and magic bolts—they were already running out.
I was desperately tired, but sleeping there would have been suicidal. So I had to walk on a bit farther while I still had the strength, and then we’d see whether I could get some sleep or not.…
I lost my way in the tangled network of winding corridors and halls in the Sector of Heroes. I walked on and on and on, and after three hours of walking and a brief doze on a tomb up on the “second story,” I still hadn’t come across a single rotten zombie. It was as if they’d never existed. But the shattered tombs suggested that wasn’t really true, so I stayed on the alert until I reached the “quiet” area (that is, where the coffins were still intact and there was no stink of corpses). But that was a big mistake—I mean letting my guard down like that. And my punishment came swiftly, with a perverse sense of humor.
Something leapt out of the darkness at me. It was so agile that I barely managed to dodge to one side, but the taloned hand missed me and caught the bag with the magical bits and pieces hanging on my right side … the strap holding it on my belt snapped.
All my magical supplies, crossbow bolts, and everything else that was important and useful fell to the floor. There was no time to pick them up—thank Sagot, at least I was still alive! While the corpse (and it was a corpse, only a very agile one) mauled my things, I leaped back and fired an ice bolt into him.
There was a tinkling sound, an icy-cold blast knocked me off my feet, and heavenly bells started chiming in my ears. When I got up, the sight presented to my eyes was an entire brigade of corpses jostling together on the spot where my broken bag was lying. The vile creatures came straight for me.
They moved much faster than ordinary zombies—in fact, they moved every bit as fast as living men. But I had no time to think about that. There was no way I was going to get the bag back, so I fired the second bolt into the crowd, slung the crossbow behind my back, and ran. Right now I had to save my own life—I could cry over the lost bag later.
I’d never have believed that desiccated and mummified bodies could have so much pep in them. I dived into side corridors and hurtled across halls, trying to lose my pursuers, but none of it did any good. They stuck with me all the way, and that lent me wings, but, I must admit, I was starting to feel tired. Eventually I found myself in a dark vestibule, shrank back against the wall, took my knife out, and prepared for the inevitable.
They didn’t notice me. A dozen dead men went rushing past and, without thinking twice about it, I ran back in the opposite direction. I turned into the tangle of narrow corridors, trying to confuse the pursuit and at the same time get back to the hall where I’d left my bag. With no weapons, maps, food, or other supplies, I was a dead man for sure. It didn’t work, though—the sound of wheezing breath told me the lads were on my trail again.
I cursed and ran. What else could I do? I wasn’t ready to take on the corpses with nothing but a knife.
The corridor started turning smoothly to the right. I ran on, past the opening of a passage even narrower than this one. I ran. Turned. Ran. Turned. Ran … and came face-to-face with a crowd of creatures just like the ones running after me. There was a moment’s confusion—they were as surprised as I was by this unexpected encounter.
Recovering my wits an instant before they did, I swung round and went dashing back toward the first posse. The second group also set off in pursuit, and I could hear them wheezing and croaking behind me. I stepped up the pace until I was running as fast as I could possibly go—I had to reach the intersection before the hunt ahead of me. Dark angular figures, barely visible in the light of the solitary torch, appeared right in my path.
But I made it in time. I reached the opening of the other corridor a split second before they did. The bony grappling-hook hands grabbed at the empty air as I ducked into the passage, and then the second brigade of zombies went crashing into the first. In the scramble that followed, I managed to beat it with my skin still intact.
More wheezing behind my back. Those lads were sticking to me like leeches! Forward. Left. Forward. Left. Right. Right. Right. Forward. Jump over a canal. Forward. Forward. Right. Forward. Left. Round a coffin lying in the way. Forward. Left. Dead end. Back. Right. Forward. Right. Left.
I flew out into a corridor and gazed in bewilderment at the backs of a crowd of zombies. The same ones who had been galloping after me less than fifteen minutes ago. They were standing, sniffing at the air. Then one of the corpses turned round and “looked” at me with the black hollows of his eye sockets.…
