sliding passage through the door, halberd at the ready.
All about him, halls as wide as city streets stretched off to concrete horizons. The ceiling was ten feet above his head. A balustrade lipped a central well larger than most airports.
'Horseshit and gunfire,' Alphonse muttered. The central well's ceiling was at least four floors above them. One man's ceiling is another man's floor. Who lived up there? Were they home? How could his people find their way in so vast a structure?
'We could spend a week mapping this place,' Major Clavell said.
The hallway seemed empty in either direction. Alphonse tiptoed to the rail and looked down. An ocean of mist raged down there. It curled, lapping at the lower levels like some semisentient primordial soup.
Alphonse was a Warrior-Magician, with a spell or two of his own. His halberd, enhanced by past adventures, gave him a little extrasensory data With the tip of the blade he traced a symbol in the ground, a complex curlicue of power. Immediately he heard a chorus of low groans, a herd of shuffling feet. Something Wicked This Way Comes.
Tammi was already looking down in that direction. 'All right,' she whispered to Acacia. 'Let's get the others.'
Why did he get the feeling that these ladies were in bed together, pardon the pun? In addition, Acacia/Panthesilea might well be allied with Bishop the Living Legend. That notion put a spider in his shorts, for sure. Alliances were fencing him in. Al the Barbarian had best watch his backside.
A few at a time, the Adventurers filed out of the room and crouched down in the corridor. They coalesced into a loose diamond formation. Almost without design, the five individual teams formed themselves again.
Mary-em was right behind Al, with Crystal Cofax, his favorite Scout. His Engineer and Thief were with him, and he was damned glad.
Because something was waiting to eat his face.
The halls were musty, and reeked with decay. The corridors stretched off in all directions, fading in the mist. Vague light shone through the fog. It swallowed more than light: it was a sound baffle. Something that might have been voices, machinery, footsteps (of the Fool-Killer), echoed around out there, hovering just below the threshold of hearing.
Crystal had sensed a distant glow. She stared through her visor, flipped it up, and looked again. Then she motioned with one hand and crept down the hall.
So they filed through the darkness, keeping torches shielded and pointed at the floor. They passed the shattered, ruined shells of stores now: a shoe store with a sale still on, a TWELVE HOUR SALE!!! lasting for a thousand years. Al had a sudden, mad urge to rummage around and see if there was anything in a size 11.
A frozen-yogurt parlor. Next to that, a transdress shop offered over three thousand colordesigns per processor. Just plug it into the transparent dresses and dial a new fashion every day! He had heard stories of women whose batteries had died while they were walking down the street…
The entire column had suddenly stopped, and Al went to the alert. A moment later he saw why.
They had passed the commercial sector and were entering a park of some kind. Perhaps long ago it had been an alluring, restful pit stop for the overburdened, overstressed shopper. Now it was a graveyard. Epitaphs had been carved in elaborate, almost illegible curlicues on plastic rectangles that slanted at irregular angles from piles of dirt. Ancient topiary was wildly overgrown, to bizarre effect: rabbits seemed toadlike, a lion had grown tentacles and extra, misshapen heads.
A few graves were lying open. He inspected two of them. Their headboards bore different dates: Joseph Miller, died 2234. Millie Washington, died 2189.
He whispered to Mary-em, 'Unburied?'
'It was a warm night. They kicked the dirt off.' She touched her holstered, telescoping staff. She didn't bother to say, 'Voodoo implies zombies,' and neither did anyone else.
They continued deeper into the cemetery, spreading out as they did. There was little sound, but the ground thrummed with an irregular vibration like distant machinery going bad. Drumbeats? Lights flickered, hundreds of meters away. A far lantern… or glowing gases of decomposition?
From that direction came a distant scream.
There followed a quick, efficient pause during which everyone checked his or her equipment. Weapons up; visors down; duck as Ozzie the Pike assembled his twelve-foot weapon; noncombatants safely protected in a center pocket. Go.
It felt very strange to be moving en masse like this. Damn it, a section of floor could open up… anything could happen.
The Adventurers were stretched out in a thin line. Alphonse felt his heart in his throat. And if some of the others had made truce, or deals when would the backstabbing begin?
Right after we figure out the Game.
Meanwhile, keep an eye on Da Gurls. Give me half an inch and sayonara, suckers. Pearl Harbor time.
Drumbeats? Machinery? And smoke, or something like smoke, boiled out of the corridor ahead. Alphonse raised his hand just before it engulfed them. 'Crystal,' he whispered, and his Scout tucked her nifty little derriere beside him.
Crystal's body emitted a soft phosphorescence. Immediately, Alphonse could see crouched, misshapen figures creeping toward them through the smoke.
The Beasts awaken. Could they see in this smoke? Probably. Still, Al wouldn't give away his position by warning the others. If they didn't have enough sense to call for a Scout… 'Stay behind me,' he whispered. 'Mary- em?'
'I register outlines. They flicker. I'll be okay.'
Mary-em's staff, like his halberd, had seen enough campaigns to have magic of its own; her Vision rating was phenomenal.
Could the enemy see him? Couldn't they? He had to keep in contact with Crystal.
'Watch your hand, boss.'
'Just business, darlin'.'
'Get your business a little higher, then. Or let me.' Her hand closed on his belt. 'Leave your hands free to fight.'
There were four attackers ahead, maybe more elsewhere. They carried maces of some kind. Bludgeoning weapons, and nasty ones at that. Shards of metal and glass projected at odd angles from the knobby ends.
One zombie shambled right at him.
All he had was a vague outline. When he twisted to avoid the mace, he broke contact with his Scout: as Crystal's hand left his belt, the attacker winked out of existence.
Duck! Where'd the beast go? He felt wind as the mace swished past his shoulder.
The combat computer in his brain figured angle and momentum, and he backhanded with the halberd. Nothing, and he was overextended.
If I were him…
Al the Barbarian rolled and brought his weapon up, and felt the blade slam into legs. Heard the unearthly howl of… pain? Did zombies feel pain? Wrath, maybe. The terrible beast, spawn of the undead, no longer recognised pain…
Or soap. Shitfire, they stank! Then again, rotting does that to a person.
Decomposing? Ordinary antiperspirants still leave 'em gagging downwind? Try new Vlad the T's, deodorant for the undead His thoughts returned to the matter at hand as a body thudded atop him. Teeth bit into his arm, through the thin fabric, and it hurt. Screaming, Alphonse kicked the zombie away from him and hacked at it until it stopped quivering.
All around him in the fog pealed screams of pain and fear, labored breaths, the groans of the undead. He rose shakily to one knee. 'Crystal!'
'Here. '
Behind him. He backed up cockroach-quick, staying low to the ground, until her hand touched his ankle.
As they touched, glowing zombie outlines reappeared. They were almost upon him. He parried the swing of a mace, shattering it. Careful not to lose contact with Crystal, he backhanded the halberd into a face and saw the head peel back and open. Something thick and black bubbled out Elmo Whitman caught that one. The blunt edge of
