Isle of the undead, p.1
Isle of the Undead, page 1
part #2 of Zombicide Black Plague Series
Zombicide Black Plague
Isle of the Undead
“Zombies…” Jannik gasped.
Graf unlimbered his crossbow and started back into the hall. “Aren’t you a pretty one?” he growled.
The thing was shambling out from the doorway. Its face was shriveled down to a dried-out skull. Horrible eyes, somehow both vacant and malevolent, glared up at the men. There was an eerie green luminescence about the zombie, a soft glow that made the hair on Jannik’s neck prickle with fright.
“We need to run,” Jannik urged his partner.
Graf ignored him and loosed the bolt, sending it speeding down into the zombie’s forehead.
Jannik had seen Graf destroy many zombies with such shots. This time, however, the results were far different. Both men watched in horror as the bolt simply glanced off the withered skull. With the spectral glow looking even more pronounced now, the undead continued its slow but murderous march toward the stairs. Beyond it, other hideous creatures shambled into view.
More Zombicide from Aconyte
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Terror World by Cath Lauria
Zombicide
Last Resort by Josh Reynolds
All or Nothing by Josh Reynolds
First published by Aconyte Books in 2023
ISBN 978 1 83908 213 9
Ebook ISBN 978 1 83908 214 6
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For Gwen, who guided me through all the unforeseen pitfalls, thunderstorms, and power outages.
Prologue
Jannik Hassel tucked the heft of his axe underneath his arm while he rummaged through the battered trunk. Clothes and keepsakes were tossed aside, adding to the debris that littered the room. He found his irritation mounting. Why did people hang on to such trash? Where was the good stuff?
Jannik finally spotted a small silver necklace. The pendant was some clumsy portrait of a child, carved in wood. Sentimental value rather than monetary worth. Still, at least the chain might catch someone’s eye. He stuffed the necklace into the burlap sack hanging from his belt. It joined a far too meager collection of loot. After all his years driving a coach between Singerva and Schweinhoff, Jannik had expected better pickings at Feig’s inn. Angrily, he slammed the lid of the trunk and stove in its side with a kick of his boot.
It would be just like that conniving innkeeper Feig to hide his money in some secret spider hole. Some dark corner it would take weeks to find. Jannik gave the trunk another kick. He hoped the innkeeper had died unpleasantly. From the condition of the place, it looked as though a considerable number of zombies had converged on it. Perhaps one of those piles of badly gnawed meat down in the wine cellar was all that remained of that swine Feig.
“What’s all that noise?” a voice growled from the doorway. Jannik spun around, axe at the ready. He relaxed only slightly when he recognized the speaker. Tall, scar-faced, and still wearing a bloodstained cloak, Graf had a compact hand crossbow clenched in one fist. Jannik winced when he noted that the weapon was aimed at him. As a coachman, he knew the deadly accuracy Graf possessed. He’d been the most notorious highwayman in the province. The very best partner to have for a spree of looting. Graf possessed few scruples and sometimes the abandoned places they searched weren’t as empty as they seemed. Living survivors or undead marauders, the highwayman would dispatch them by putting a bolt through their skull.
“Just having a look around,” Jannik told Graf. He jostled the bag drooping off his belt. “Pickings have been less than I expected.” The coachman glanced around the shambles that had once been the innkeeper’s bedroom. “I think someone’s already been through here.”
Graf favored him with a cold smile. “Think again,” he advised. He nodded his head at the floor, indicating the rooms on the lower story. “Found two walkers still prowling about in the kitchen. There was another one locked inside the pantry.” He had a smaller, similar sack to Jannik’s pinned to his coat. With his free hand, he reached into it and withdrew a silver goblet. Jannik recalled that Feig brought the vessel out only when a noble stopped at the inn. Anyone familiar with the place would have known to look for it.
“If someone got here first, they’d hardly have left that,” Jannik agreed, a sour note in his voice. He gave Graf’s report about zombies a brief thought. “Maybe the previous looters were ambushed. Caught out by a bigger pack of walkers than the ones you found.”
The highwayman replaced the goblet in the bag. “Whatever happened, I’m sure they didn’t leave this place. Either they locked themselves in somewhere and starved, or else the zombies got them. Whichever, any loot they found’s still here someplace.”
Jannik considered the problem, thinking back to all the times he’d brought passengers to Feig’s to wait out the night before pressing on to their destination. To avoid meeting up with men like Graf on some dark road. The Black Plague had changed everything in the kingdom, making desperate allies of former enemies.
“We might try the loft,” Jannik said, gazing up at the ceiling. “Not much space up there but if–”
A loud crash from below ended further discussion. Both of the looters instantly snapped to high alert. The initial violent noise was followed by the clamor of splintering wood and heavy objects slamming to the ground. Jannik and Graf shared a frightened look. They knew what they were hearing was the barricade they’d raised to seal off the main doors being broken.
“Zombies…” Jannik gasped. It was always a danger when searching a place that undead in the area would be drawn to them. No matter how careful and quiet the looters were, the zombies seemed to have an innate ability to sense when the living were around.
Graf unlimbered the second crossbow he carried. With a weapon in each hand, he started back into the hallway. “We’d better go and see. There might only be a few.”
“Or there might be dozens,” Jannik grumbled under his breath as he followed the highwayman. As he climbed down the stairs behind Graf, his eyes kept darting around, looking for some way to quickly leave the inn. Every door and window, however, was blocked up. Keeping things out also meant keeping things in.
“Aren’t you a pretty one?” Graf growled when he reached the bottom of the stairs. From over the highwayman’s shoulder, Jannik saw the loathsome creature his partner had spotted. The thing was several yards away, shambling out from the doorway leading into the barroom. Its thinness was almost skeletal and the wispy white cloth that was draped around it might as easily be a burial shroud as the remnant of a proper garment. Its face was shriveled down to a dried-out skull with a tattered pit where its nose should have been. Horrible eyes, somehow both vacant and malevolent, glared up at the men. There was an eerie green luminescence about the zombie, a soft glow that made the hair on Jannik’s neck prickle with fright.
“We need to run,” Jannik urged his partner.
Graf ignored the coachman and aimed a crossbow at the necrotic creature. “It’s only one of them. Show some spine.” He let loose the bolt and sent it speeding down into the zombie’s forehead.
Jannik had seen Graf destroy many zombies with such shots. This time, however, the results were far different. Both men watched in horror as the bolt simply glanced off the withered skull. With the spectral glow looking even more pronounced now, the undead continued its slow but murderous march toward the stairs. Beyond it, other equally hideous creatures shambled into view.
“Khaiza’s Shovel!” the highwayman cursed, invoking the sinister funerary goddess. He aimed the other crossbow and sent another shot at the advancing zombie. Again, the bolt was deflected by the rotten skull, bouncing from the decayed flesh as if it had hit a block of granite. Graf tried to back away, spinning around when he found his way blocked by Jannik. Before he could shove the coachman aside the glowing creature surged up onto the stairway and its bony talons wrapped ab
“Get away from him!” Jannik raged as he saw the zombie gouge bloody furrows in his partner’s cheeks. Without thinking, he sprang down and brought the edge of his axe cleaving through the air at the creature’s head.
The axe bounced back at him, repulsed by the glow exuding from the zombie. Taken by surprise, Jannik lost his grip on the weapon, and it went clattering down the steps. He pitched onto his back and drew his knife.
The walker he’d attacked shoved Graf to one side, leaving him to tumble to the floor where the rest of the undead were waiting to tear the last spark of life from the mutilated highwayman. The zombie on the stairs glared at Jannik, its yellowed teeth bared in a menacing snarl. The coachman scrambled upward, pushing himself along the steps while keeping his eyes on the creature that slowly pursued him.
As he neared the top of the stairs, Jannik noted that another figure had appeared in the room below. A grim shape arrayed in heavy black robes. The face that sneered up at him wasn’t that of a zombie. For all its pallor, for all its predatory evil, it was yet the face of a living man. There was a sparkle of sadistic mirth in the wicked eyes when they met Jannik’s gaze.
“Don’t be too hasty,” the robed stranger said. For a second, Jannik thought the man was speaking to him. Then he noticed the man’s hand as it pointed at the walker on the stairs. That paleness of the stranger’s face had at least a speck of life to it, but the gray clamminess of the hand reeked of the grave. And it was pointing at the zombie closing in on the coachman.
“Let’s see if he can hurt you with that knife,” the stranger scoffed, and in his tone Jannik heard his own doom pronounced.
The necromancer waved his necrotic hand in a dismissive gesture. “It will be amusing to watch him try.”
Jannik slashed at the zombie as it reached for him. He managed to retain the blade after the spectral aura repulsed his blow. He made another futile swing, then the walker was upon him.
The coachman’s last thought, before everything transformed into gnawing pain, was whether he and Graf would stay dead or if their ragged remains would rise again to join the necromancer’s retinue.
Perhaps, Jannik wondered, the necromancer was scavenging the ruins looking for those he could work his loathsome sorcery upon. In his own profane way, maybe he was simply a looter, too.
Chapter One
Alaric von Mertz felt a coldness around his heart as he gazed out across the desolate town. From the roof of Vasilescu’s tower, the knight could see most of Singerva, or at least the ruins it had become. As far as he was aware, the only people still alive in the town were those who’d sought sanctuary in the wizard’s stronghold. The rest of the population had either fled into the countryside or died.
Or worse. Though Singerva was dead, there was still movement in its rubble-strewn streets. Singly or in packs, mobs of zombies prowled the wasteland, shuffling along without wit or purpose until some sound or flash of movement would agitate the malignancy that coursed through their rotten frames. However mindless they might appear, hatred of the living provided the undead with their motivating force and turned them into a relentless army of destruction.
The knight walked slowly about the periphery of the rooftop garden, one hand trailing along the ledge that encompassed the perimeter. The other rested on the dragon-emblazoned pommel of the sword on his belt: the crest of von Mertz, repeated in black and crimson on the tattered surcoat he wore over his armor. A last link between himself and his noble heritage.
The Black Plague had infected many parts of the kingdom, and hordes of the reanimated dead rampaged across entire duchies. Alaric wondered how many other towns had become like Singerva. Was there nowhere that was safe?
Alaric shook his head. Safety? Perhaps that might be possible, if the zombies were the only evil that beset the kingdom, but he knew the situation was far more dire. In this very tower, he’d seen the proof. The wizard Vasilescu had revealed himself to be a necromancer, collaborating with others in profane cabals to control the undead and direct their onslaught. Vasilescu was dead, but his loathsome ally had escaped. Brunon Gogol, the villain who’d brought death to Alaric’s family and left his father’s domain as lifeless as a tomb.
A stir of motion caused Alaric to turn around, refocusing his thoughts on the present rather than the past. A slim, dark-haired woman, her vestments the night-black brigandine of a witch hunter, leaned against the ledge. She directed her sharp, hawklike gaze downward at the great plaza that bordered the front half of the tower.
“The fire continues to hold them,” Helchen reported. She wagged a gloved finger at the scene below.
Walking to Helchen, Alaric looked down into the plaza. It was a far from cheering vista. The streets of Singerva might still be haunted by packs of zombies, but the area around the tower fairly crawled with the undead. There had to be hundreds prowling around the stronghold, with more staggering in to join the necrotic throng from every alleyway and side street that opened onto the square. Some of the bodies in the plaza lay sprawled on the flagstones, returned to a true death by arrows from the tower’s defenders. The real defense, however, was the one that had been implemented by Vasilescu himself: a wide moat that circled the structure. Pumps in the cellars below fed an alchemical mixture to the trench, creating a wall of fire that readily consumed the undead that marched into it.
“The fire holds,” Alaric agreed. He focused on a bulky zombie, its tattered garb marking it as once a stevedore, and watched the creature lumber without hesitation into the flames. The brute’s urge to slaughter the living was greater than any caution yet lingering in its brain, and it pitched forward into the trench without so much as a pained yell. From past experience, the knight knew how hard such brutish undead were to destroy. “The fire holds,” he repeated, shaking his head. “But how long can we hold the fire?”
Helchen gave the knight a grim look. “That’s the question everyone in this tower keeps asking. Even if they don’t dare put it into words. You can see the fear etched into each face. The worry about how long this place will be safe.” She sighed and gazed up into the overcast sky. “You know, there’s a sect of mystics who believe they can draw prognostications from the shapes of clouds.”
“We might make use of such augurs,” Alaric commented. “That is, if the Order left any of them alive.” He knew it was a cruel thing to say, but however much he’d come to respect and depend upon Helchen, he couldn’t forget his distrust of the witch hunters as an organization. Many were overzealous fanatics, perfectly willing to hang a dozen innocuous practitioners of magic just so long as the thirteenth to be executed was a genuine necromancer. The Black Plague had only increased his antipathy, for now there was no denying the extreme menace necromancers posed – a menace that, perhaps, justified the murder of innocents to expose the guilty. The idea that honor and chivalry were inadequate to the task of fighting such evil was a repugnant notion that offended everything Alaric believed in.
“Even at our most indolent, the Order had better things to do than prosecute such fakers,” Helchen replied, choosing not to respond to the anger in Alaric’s tone. After all they’d been through, she’d learned to differentiate between when something was intended to be personal and when it wasn’t. She showed her lack of concern with a little laugh. “Just about now we could use one of those charlatans. He could tell everyone that a particular cloud is an auspicious omen and that the moat will stay lit for many years yet.”
The knight swept his gaze across the decayed throng in the plaza, at all the clawed hands reaching out toward the tower and the gaping mouths waiting to sink teeth into living flesh. “But how long will it really hold?”
“Hulmul might have been able to tell us.” Helchen’s voice dipped as she spoke of the wizard who’d helped them reach Singerva and who’d later died fighting against his former master, the treacherous Vasilescu. She set her hand against a satchel fastened to her belt. Alaric knew it contained one of the arcane tomes Hulmul had saved from the Order’s vaults and which he’d entrusted her with protecting.
