V. Return of the Pillaging Dead Part II

“D’anna! Shoot now! Right between the eyes!” Majel screamed as she barricaded the door with her body. Behind it was a symphony of scratching noises, groans, and thuds.

D’anna wept and pointed a shaky flintlock towards her shipmate. “I-I’ll see you soon, Majel…” 

“What the—no, D’anna! D’anna!! Shoot the zombie, not me!” the cat yelled with eyes wide open.

The elf’s brow furrowed. “What?”

“THE ZOMBIE BEHIND YOU!”

D’anna turned around and shrieked in horror as a one-legged ghoul shambled towards her. It was a yard away from her and slowly gaining, its white eyes widened with excitement. It opened its mouth past the point of no return, remaining agape as it got closer and closer to D’anna. “Grahhh…” 

As she tried to aim, the overwhelmed elf dropped the pistol onto the ground. Instead of taking the chance to pick it up, she opted to back away from her slow, approaching doom.

“Get your sword out and kill the fucking zombie already!” the cat yelled from the other side of the room. She didn’t know how much longer she could keep the door up as more and more of the undead were weighing themselves against it. 

Before D’anna could even unsheathe her cutlass, the zombie’s leg dragged over the pistol and it lost its footing. It fell to the ground with a CRACK, and soon, blood started to trace along the mortar lines on the floor. Not letting the opportunity go to waste, D’anna rushed over and started to stomp on its head like if he were a bug, screaming the entire time. Majel was holding a door shut against a horde of zombies, but in that moment, she was more afraid of D’anna.

After a minute or so, the elf leaned against the wall to catch her breath. It was fortunate that she was wearing long, thick boots, since her entire lower half was glistening red. She picked up the drenched pistol and handed it to Majel.

“Here… since you’re a better shot… than I am…” she huffed. 

Majel took it nervously. “Thanks, D’anna… let’s… let’s use that bookcase over there to block the door. That way, we can run down those stairs over there without being followed…” 

“Sounds… sounds good…” said D’anna.

The zombie on the floor weakly groaned. The elf walked over and, without any emotion, finished him off.

SPLAT!

“At ease! At ease! At ease!” Cain yelled to zombies that passed by. So far, nobody seemed to care about his presence. That made him growl with anger.

They’d know who I was if they were still alive, he thought. The name “Sawbones” Sawyer Cain struck terror into the hearts of everyone who had heard of him, or at the very least, a few flashes of unpleasant imagery. But these guys simply didn’t give a shit. They weren’t controlled by fear, loyalty, or anything that wasn’t sweet, sweet brains.

He sighed and decided to give the curse up for now. Continuing to explore the fort’s labyrinthian hallways, the captain kept an eye out for any doors that looked like they contained treasure behind them. Unlocking them with the key he found off a uniformed shambler, he found nothing but depots and depressing looking quarters.

“For a group of people who love to exploit people for their gold, the lot of ye don’t keep any handy!” Cain yelled to the passerbyers. There was no reaction. He groaned in frustration. 

One of the zombies stopped and looked at him. 

“What are ya lookin’ at?” the skeleton threatened, unsheathing his sword. The zombie turned back around and continued walking down the hallway, just like the rest of the horde.

“That’s what I thought…” Cain muttered as he ventured on.

D’anna and Majel found themselves in what must’ve been the fort’s dungeons. While the entire fort consisted of dark, dank tunnels, these were some dark, dank tunnels. Mildew made the air smell funny, the occasional water droplet broke the silence, and several fat cockroaches scurried past.

“You know this place is bad when even the zombies don’t care to come down here…” Majel commented.

D’anna stepped on something soft. She didn’t look down. She didn’t even want to know what it was. 

Suddenly, a rustling noise caught Majel’s attention. She drew her blade and pointed to the general area it came from. 

“Who’s there?” she called out.

There was a wet-sounding cough. “Are you guys… one of them…?”

“As in ‘one of the zombies’?” asked Majel. 

“Yeah.”

“Yes. Now, we’re going to eat your brains if you don’t show us where the vault is.” 

The voice chuckled. “I-I can’t really do that right now, zombie…”

“Now,” Majel commanded. The jovial atmosphere instantly vanished. 

There was a bit of silence. Then, a man crawled out from the darkness. His leg was missing. Recently missing. For added effect, he pointed it towards Majel with the energy of someone flipping off somebody else. 

“Ah,” Majel said as she sheathed her sword, “I see.” 

“Usually I don’t strike deals with pirate scum. However, I’m not in such a good place right now, so I guess I can just ignore my morals and offer a deal to you two. Now, I’m due to join those guys in a bit, it’s only a matter of time before they get so hungry that they expand their search to down here. If you can promise to… prevent that from happening, I’ll tell you how to get to the vault.”

“Sounds reasonable,” Majel agreed.

The guy smiled. “Keep going down the tunnel and you’ll reach a ladder. Go up, stick to the left and you’ll eventually find it. The key is on a necklace worn by the chief officers. But they’re probably all turned now, so… you know… good luck…”

He winced and looked down at his leg. “Now, I know how trigger-happy your kind is, but before we do anything, I just gotta make my peace first. I know that it’s against the—”

He looked up and paused. 

The pirates were gone.

He leaned to peer down the tunnel, but they had already been consumed by the darkness. “Guys…?”

“...grahhh…” a voice warbled from the opposite tunnel.

“...guys…?”

“Ye wouldn’t happen ta know where me crew went, have ye?” Cain asked a zombie that walked by. He wasn’t expecting an answer, but was still a bit disappointed when it ignored him.

“Oh, you too, huh? Well go on, then!” he yelled. The skeleton silently watched as it joined his rotting brethren and shambled out of sight.

“Belay a minute…” he muttered as his brow furrowed in thought. 

The zombies weren’t just aimlessly shambling around. The entire time, they’d been moving in one direction. 

They be goin’ somewhere! Cain realized. And what could draw a zombie over? A juicy cat an’ elf, maybe? Or perhaps, one of their mates that they haven’t yet gobbled up… a mate that could tell me where tha vault is… with tha right amount of persuasion, of course…

He stepped into the horde and was practically carried away. The horde was shoulder-to-shoulder tight, packed like one of those tins of small fish Majel liked. However, it was moving through the fort at a surprising speed; whoever they were rushing after, they’d be of no help to Cain if they were turned into zombie food. 

“Excuse me, pard’en me, miss, ‘scuse, me…” Cain said as he made his way to the front of the crowd. Thankfully, nobody seemed to mind.

“Is this an officer?” Majel asked as she searched another corpse. “No, no it is not…” she sighed before throwing him to the side.

D’anna was standing beside the doorway, cutlass in hand. The two of them had formed a system where a zombie would shamble into the room, get knocked down by D’anna, and searched by Majel. Five zombies in and there still wasn’t any sign of an officer nor a vault key.

“I hear another one!” D’anna said as she raised her sword in the air. Whenever the doorway darkened, D’anna lunged her hands downard.

CLACK!

“Fuck!” Cain screeched.

“Oh my gods, Captain!” D’anna said, letting go of the sword. The skeleton wedged it out of his spine and angrily threw it to the ground. 

“Have ye two found tha vault yet? I don’t like leavin’ the Wound alone fer this long…” 

“It’s right over there,” Majel pointed with her thumb. “It’s that door behind the jail cell. Although, it’s no good to us without the k—” 

Without a word, Cain pulled the key out of his pouch and wedged it into the cell’s lock. It needed some wiggling around, but a CLICK confirmed that it was properly opened. He twisted it around, opened the door, and stepped inside. 

“You two better get inside,” said the skeleton, “there’s a whole boatload of ‘em comin this here way…”

A groaning echoed from the other room. Majel and D’anna scurried into the cell so quickly that they practically tumbled over each other. Once his crew was behind bars, Cain locked it again, ensuring their safety. Soon enough, the zombies began to flood the room, reaching inside to no avail. Hans reached through the bars to try and snag some elf or some cat, but they just couldn’t reach. 

Cain handed Majel the key. “I’ll stay in here and start thinnin’ the herd a bit. You and D’anna take inventory of the vault!”

Majel nodded, took the key, and opened the door. Cain turned back to the zombies and started to slash from the confines of the cell.

“Godsdammit…” Majel muttered. 

Inside of the vault was… not much. There wasn’t even a speckle of gold. There was just a bookshelf filled with huge tomes, a bunch of skulls, a portrait of a bovine goddess, and, in the middle of the room, a stone lectern. On top of it was the ugliest book that Majel had ever seen. It was chained to the lectern to, presumably, keep it from being stolen. The cover was shriveled up and made from a rotting looking leather. The wrinkles on the cover seemed to form a face that stared at them.

“What the heck is that?” D’anna wondered as she looked at the book.

“Hard to look at, that’s what it is…” Majel said as she began to free it from its constraints. Once the chains fell to the floor, she opened it up and began to flip through its pages. They were thick and felt more like old cloth than actual paper. The book was written in Sovali, her mother tongue, but the phrasing and the spelling of the words inside seemed like it was in a completely different language. It was inked in a rich crimson color, blotchy and feathered from the paper’s odd composition.. 

“Huh, I wouldn’t expect an old book like that to have pictures…” D’anna said, pointing to an illustration of a ghostly man with gravity-defying dreads.

“These aren’t just pictures, D’anna,” Majel realized, “they’re graphs! Diagrams! Pictorial representation! This is an ancient textbook!”

She flipped to the title page and traced her finger underneath the big, bolded words. “NEK… ROH… GNOM… IEE… KHAN…” she sounded out loud.