Alphonse Nakagawa's composition-plastic halberd had hit one of his zombie actors. He was always nervous about that, even with extra padding in face masks and at neck and groin and knees.
Some of the stuntmen had dotted red lines at arm or neck, visible only through Virtual visors. Strokes there produced an especially messy special effect, for the pleasure of the home viewers. Let's see
… should be breakfast time about now. Watch that over your Rice Crispies. Snap, crackle, and who ate Pop?
Live interactions were his responsibility, and as the actor stumbled back, El watched the program register a 'kill,' producing the requisite disgusting effects. He keyed in the stuntman's code and got an A/V link.
'You all right? Blow looked solid.'
'Little English on it, but didn't penetrate. My nose stings a little.' The stuntman chuckled softly.
El rang off and went to wide-angle again, watching the combat. Nobody had ever been seriously injured in one of his combats, but he had heard rumors…
Behind Alphonse, Acacia screamed, 'Top Nun! Lift this fog!' Even as her scream faded, Al heard Top Nun say piously, 'Though there was darkness in the land of Egypt, Israel's mishpoche had light!'
Light exploded behind him, and the fog disintegrated.
'Excellent, Sister,' Acacia said.
'Darkness has its points,' Top Nun remarked.
The undead enemy became partially visible. They seemed to wink in and out of existence. Their skin was pasty, like Caucasians smeared with mud, or Africans daubed with ash. A mixed breed they were, perhaps human and baboon, hair a beaver's nest of mud and sticks, facial skin drawn so tight across the bone that they resembled some heretofore-undiscovered tribe of mutant Java men.
Friar Duck threw fire. The spell was simple and dependable, if expensive. Two zombies came straight through it-unfair! — and slashed him with dirty claws. Friar Duck went down in a swirl of brown robes.
Corrinda threw salt. The monster grinned and licked the crystals from its lips with a long, greasy pink tongue. Corrinda scuttled back to safety, limping on her bad knee.
Then Al had no more time for judgment or appreciation, because they were around him. A glancing blow hit his left shoulder, and the arm glowed red; if he tried to lift that arm, red would fade to black.
He saw Madonna Philips die. It shouldn't have claimed his attention, but it was a mistake so classic. The Army team had her enclosed, protected. She stood tall with her saber straight above her head, unable to do anything, letting her frustration show. Then Clavell faced left to block a zombie's club, Evil Poule clove an enemy with a left-to-right swing of his scimitar, and Lieutenant Philips stepped forward and split a zombie head-to-crotch. Overwhelmed with her success, she took a classical fencing pose and thrust into another zombie's body. Her telescoping blade collapsed as she ran him through.
Al saw her snarl of triumph change to dismay and knew what had happened.
A little whisper in her ear. The Game Masters, damn their souls, had just informed her that her sword was stuck fast in the body of an undead.
Instead of springing back to the protection of her comrades, she tugged, hoping to get it free And a zombie threw her to the ground and bit her throat out. For an instant she seemed about to bite back; then she must have believed the voice and collapsed, dead.
Al got his attention back in time to block a blurred motion, a club that would have split his head.
He had lost Crystal again, but the spell shielding the zombies was coming apart now, and he had enough glimpses of them to zero in. He twisted sideways, heard a mace shoosh over a shoulder, drove his halberd into a stomach. Yech-it actually stuck there. Some kind of mucilage sack?
The zombies were an arc around Ozzie the Pike, who fought alone, back against a wall. For an instant Al considered trying to reach him. In his first Game, Oz had played as 'The Great and Powerful,' a Magic User. He'd frozen up and been killed out. An accountant, he'd admitted later, with no imagination. The pike had been the saving of him. He was agile and strong and he could wave that pike like a magic wand… and he was too far away and doing fine without Al.
A zombie approached from behind, and Al wrenched his halberd free and drove it into the juncture of neck and shoulder. A red-black gash opened up, splitting the undead from chest to crotch.
Mary-em got behind him now, and they formed a protective sandwich around Crystal. Mary-em's staff spun in figure eights, and she bounced it from head to crotch to ribs, leaving glowing red and black wherever it touched. 'Hiyahhh!' she screamed, and drove its end into a face with a horrific crunch.
If she had put the boot to a beetle's carapace, the effect could have been no more dramatic.
The face actually crumbled. The zombie flapped its arms and stumbled back against the wall. Its (un?)dying scream was a gurgle, oily black fluid splashed in a starburst, and it slid to the ground, arms and legs flopping. Locusts crawled out of the shattered head, fluttered their wings, and flew away.
Mary-em was hypnotized for a moment Then she ducked as a mace whizzed over her head. She howled with battle fever as she cut the zombie's legs from under it.
One leg came off. The zombie crumpled at her feet. Filed teeth filling a hideous, limp twitch of a grin.
As quickly as it began, it was over, except that in the mists around them, from every direction at once, came a horrific moaning.
Then the mist disappeared.
Alphonse turned over one of the bodies with his axe.
'Is it dead?' Crystal asked breathlessly.
'Too late for that,' he muttered. The body had two black borders undulating about it. Dead-dead. Somebody upstairs was a joker.
It had dropped its weapon. Al hefted it: a stick with a tin can wired to the top, and a chunk of concrete wedged inside the can for weight. Nasty.
One zombie was still 'alive.'
He was pale-skinned, and again the flesh was drawn so tightly across the bone that he seemed to have just barely enough substance to animate him.
Nigel Bishop pushed his way through a phalanx of groggy Gamers and shook blood from the end of his sword. He knelt over the creature. 'Who is your master?' he asked.
Nothing but a hissing sound. The creature writhed.
Nigel struck a pose, and he swelled with a sudden, fierce inhalation. 'By my forefathers!' he called to the ceiling. 'Spell of revelation!'
Alphonse leapt back a step.
Light pulsed, and something peeled away from the zombie's body. It hovered in the air above him like glowing smoke, but smoke with eyes and ears.
Its eyes were dead flame. As they watched, it expanded, then dissipated, seeping through the walls.
'Goddamn,' Alphonse whispered. 'What was that?'
Nigel shook his head. 'That's what we were really fighting. Demon of some kind, wearing a mutated corpse.'
Alphonse kept quiet, watching as Acacia joined Bishop. Captain Cipher crept up beside her. 'Ridden by the Loa, milady. Possessed,' Cipher stage-whispered. Then, briskly, 'Voodoo or santeria deity. Loa or Orisha. Possession's a way they use to get around.'
The zombie hissed and tried to get up. Nigel was lightning, pressed his sword into it. The creature's back arched as if it were a serpent. Its mouth overflowed with black fluid. Then it lay still.
The Clerics scuttled about, healing what wounds they could. There were enough wounded to allow them all to test their powers in this unknown domain. Chaim Cohen, Top Nun, Black Elk, and Tamasan chanted in four languages. Gamers winced at the hideous chorus.
Black Elk, blocky in leather chaps, beads, and medicine feathers, reported to Clavell. 'We've lost Lieutenant Philips.' His impressive facial scar was peeling a little at the lower edge.
Waters said, 'I saw her go down. She tried to macho it.'
'It looks like every team's down one or two,' Black Elk said.
'Now we're screwed,' Waters said. 'Without a woman on our team, there are things we just won't learn. Major, think hard about forming an alliance somewhere.'
Clavell's face set. He didn't like losing Philips so fast.
