Dream Park

sun. When he finally went to clean it out, the reek went through him like a brick through sheet glass, and everything in his stomach had crawled the walls.

This was similar. Rotten... something rotten. Not meat. Something less clean than meat. Something that had been horribly corrupt even in life. Something bottlefly blue on the outside, and pasty green within.

Mary-em was turning green, but now, with a foe in front of her, she moved more surely.

It charged. Mary-em sidestepped the wobbly advance, and drew the blade of her halberd cleanly across its stomach, and whirled to face it again. It laughed and hacked at her head.

Alex yelped with surprise, but Mary-em ducked as if she'd been expecting it. She kicked low and cross-legged, as if smacking a soccer ball, halting an inch from its shim. Its leg gave way, but it

slashed as it fell and Mary-em blocked again, spinning like a dancer with a parasol, and with a fficker of her wrists cut the thing on both sides of the neck. It fell to the dirt.

Alex gave her a 'thumbs-up' and the little warrior acknowl­edged him with the barest of grim smiles.

The thing was still twitching. Wounds gaped, but there was no blood.

'Zombie,' Chester said. 'Our Enemy is pulling out all the stops-' He shielded his eyes and peered down the road, mouth tightening. 'Second wave. Panthesilea, Griffin, you spearhead this time.'

Griffin surprised himself by asking, 'Should we be throwing salt at them?'

'What? No, Griffin, zombies are a different religion. Voodoo. Just fight, okay?'

There were three of the undead this time, moving with rust-stiff joints, faces split into mock-grins. Gagging on the smell, he raised the rifle to his shoulder and fired. Dust puffed from the face of one of the undead. It staggered back a step, then laughed and came

on.

The smell. ... Griffin jacked another cartridge into the cham­ber and fired again, and again, and the thing fell to one knee. The skin of its face had peeled away like rotted wet parchment. One of its eyes was gone, a moist red socket gaping, the useless eyelid shuttering up and down irregularly.

Acacia wasted a moment staring at the results of Griffin's marksmanship, then cursed and clicked her sword free of its sheath. The second and third zombies broke toward her, one car­rying a machete, one carrying the bayonet off an M-1. They at­tacked in tandem, and she backpedaled a step to gain time, then dove to the side and slashed brutally at the nearest knee. The creature was hobbled; it fell with a bone-jarring thump. It chit­tered at her with brown, stubbly teeth and crawled toward her.

The second backed away more cautiously, then smiled. She felt a clammy grip on her ankle, and chopped back to catch the fallen zombie in the head. It howled, but didn't let go. 'Drown you! Let go of my-' Kicking and jerking, Acacia managed to evade the second zombie's machete blow and passed her sword through its arm, which went limp. Another backhanded blow and the zombie on the ground released its grip.

Alex stood over Acacia's first victim, holding its machete. 'But-

lets don't work as well as blades on these things,' he said. He peered down the road.

Acacia took the other zombie's weapon. 'Just how much dam­age can they take?' she wondered.

They moved on. Minutes later they could see man-high sand dunes through the thinning trees. This, at least, brought whoops of delight. Alex found himself missing S.J.'s tireless enthusiasm for the Game; he forced himself to make extra noise. He whipped the machete round his head and glowered what he imagined to be a savage grimace.

Mary-em spotted them first. 'Company.' She tilted her halberd and squared herself, her steps more measured.

They came wobbling out of the dunes, looking vaguely, disturb­ingly familiar. There were four this time, three men and a woman. They were blocking the path out of the trees. The woman carried a spear of some kind; the men carried the usual machetes.

'Oh, Jesus,' said Mary-em, 'that's Eames.'

Eames's face was a blank mask. He walked at the same dead-steady pace, and there was a huge, bloody wound in his chest. Alan Leigh walked on his right, his step devoid of bounce, expres­sion frozen in death, machete held high.

Acacia started to move in on Leigh, but Henderson warned her back. 'Caution, please. We'll keep it at two- on-one as long as we can. Nothing fancy. Just get the job done.' He motioned quickly, dividing up his remaining team members.

Acacia and Alex had moved in on Leigh. The zombie wizard seemed to be restraining a bare smile, but the blade in his hand was far from friendly. It flickered in the air, and Acacia made the deflection while Alex chopped at an extended arm. The arm went red, and Alan switched hands moaning. Alex raised his machete again, and Acacia screamed, 'Watch out!' He wheeled and ducked in time to avoid decapitation.

His attacker was a giggling native woman, long dead, a great hanging flap of scalp obscuring much of her face. She swung a machete at Alex's throat. Alex ducked and reached for the wrist with both hands. A disarming throw- An instant late he remem­bered that hand-to-hand was illegal. Too late. The hologram sword-arm passed like shadow through his hands, swung back and slashed clumsily at his short ribs. Red light bathed his side.

Alex broke out of his immobility to slash backhanded with his recovered machete. He chopped away until the creature slithered

to the ground and stopped moving. Alex was breathing like a bellows, dripping sweat; be looked around, wild-eyed, for more enemies.

'Griffin!' The high, nasal voice of Dark Star called for help, and he spun about. She and Lady Janet were under attack by a duo of shuffling Undead. Both zombies were clotted with dirt; one was in an advanced state of decomposition, and he showed Asian features. Janet had picked up a stick, and seemed able to keep the Asian at bay. Dark Star's forearm glowed red. She had been forced to drop her weapon.

Griffin took a step in her direction, but more Undead were emerging from the bushes around them-men and women and half-grown children-and suddenly the entire group was threat­ened. He saw Dark Star go down with a blade in her neck, and Holly Frost's swift reprisal. Janet had disarmed the rotting zombie, and was using its own machete against it.

Chester had slain three of the monsters with magic. His aura was weakening; he conserved energy by picking up a machete and having at them. Gina used her power staff as a physical weapon. She had little style, but four feet of reach made up for it. The stag­gering, stumbling Undead women couldn't cope with her extra reach, and couldn't cleave through her staff, and they went down before her in shrieks of painfully sustained laughter.

Oliver had several red streaks on his body, but none of them were in vital areas. Vigor points undiminished... Teeth clenched in a fighting grimace, he stood back to back with Margie, who couldn't quite keep the smile off her face as she warded off blows and dealt death. She gave up trying, and seemed to become a demon, her fluffy gray hair billowing behind her as she whirled and slew.

It seemed to go on forever. Alex stopped seeing opponents. They came like waves on the sea; faces formed and faded, grin­ning and bellowing their hate in choruses of laughter. And always his arm rose and fell, rose and fell.

He bore red slashes in half a dozen places, and he waited for the shock to his throat that would announce his death. When the shock came he could lie down... but it didn't come, wouldn't come, though the stench of death rose in his nostrils strong and thick enough to choke. Not when he tripped over the body of a fallen Undead and saw that it was Alan Leigh, who winked at him insolently. Not when only Acacia's sharp eye and piercing voice

saved him from a zombie attack from the rear. Exhaustion had turned his arms to dead things. The laughter of the Undead women was driving him crazy. The sweat rolled down his forehead, ob­scuring his vison and burning his eyes.

And in Alex Griffin's mind something gave way. It didn't matter that he could see the blades passing harmlessly through each other, that the red slashes were dye or glowing light and not ooz­ing wounds. It didn't matter that the sounds of steel on steel, and steel on rigor-stiffened flesh, were coming from the necklace on