23
BENE
THE UNIVERSITY OF GERICH ASSET RECOVERY TEAM
EASTERN RENDEROS
MUMOLO
“Keep going as we are?” asked Hassing, his voice a rough whisper under his helm’s visor.
“Yes,” Bene whispered back. He was in charge here, sort of, although Roaoo had said to defer to the sergeant if need be. He felt more like a struggling apprentice than a leader, and so he practically hung off the man’s elbow as they picked their way through the town’s winding back alleys with the rest of the men.
The streets of Mumolo were far too quiet. Yes, he thought, it was just after dawn, a time when you could reasonably expect a fair amount of quietness. But not like this, and not in the bowels of a town so big. Oil lamps should have been leaking rays of yellow light from under doors and between gaps in curtains. People should have been up and busy in their homes, making breakfast and getting ready for work. But there was none of that–all the signs of domestic normality were absent. Even if he hadn’t already known that something beyond terrible had happened here, the eerie silence would have been the biggest clue.
He glanced about. Of course, the carnage would also have been a pretty strong sign. The streets were a mess. Every house looked like it had been ransacked, and broken furniture and household paraphernalia littered the streets. There were bodies everywhere. Most lay amid the wreckage, barely distinguishable from it, though here and there a corpse sat propped against a garden wall or the side of a house. Fortunately, they were all twice-dead and could be safely ignored.
Parts of Mumolo’s northern quarters were still smouldering, but the flames hadn’t really taken hold. Here on the southern side, the town was untouched by fire. Lucky. Unfortunately, a thick pall of smoke clung to the ground for miles, and the lumpy wet kerchief tied over his mouth wasn’t enough to keep him from coughing. He went to adjust it, and banged his hand on his helm. It felt odd to be wearing a helm. An uncomfortable thing, and too heavy by half, but Roaoo had insisted. And it was exactly like a birdcage, not even remotely the horror-faced bascinet that the soldiers wore. They looked menacing; he looked more like a children’s entertainer.
Bene hadn’t told Khela that he would be accompanying the soldiers into Mumolo. Why? Well, not so much because she would have tried to stop him (though she probably would have), but because she didn’t actually need to know what he intended. He didn’t owe her anything. And she didn’t have a claim on him or anything, did she? Fuck, no! He was his own man. He could do whatever he wanted. Besides, he was going into Mumolo because he had to. It was his job and he didn’t care if she had a problem with it or not.
Except, fuck it, deep down he sort of did care. And she cared for him as well, probably. Secretly. He imagined that if she had some choice words to say to him when he got back, it would speak volumes about the depth of her feelings for him.
Shit, he sure was hung up on this girl, eh? Despite the ups and downs when they’d been together (mostly downs, if he were being totally honest) and their current ridiculously complicated love-hate, friends-with-benefits, on-again, off-again relationship, he was still crazy about her. He made a vow that if they weren’t a proper couple by the time this expedition was over, he would move to another town so he wouldn’t have to look at her ever again.
But enough of Khela. He had other stuff to think about right now. He coughed from the smoke. The amount of coughing he was doing was cringe-worthy, but at least the soldiers were spluttering and gagging along with him. Even Hassing. Seeing the toughest of the tough affected in the same way you were felt like a real victory. He just hoped all the noise didn’t attract wights. They hadn’t seen a live one up close yet, but it was only a matter of time. He hoped he wouldn’t fill his breeches when push came to shove. That would be something, wouldn’t it? Then everyone could call him ‘Shitpants Munning.’
Through they town they went, hacking like old pipe smokers. Then, somewhere deep in the south-west quarter, he spotted a likely target: a bungalow of unpainted wood. It looked intact. Or at least the door hadn’t been ripped off its hinges. He pointed. The men deployed in a half circle around it, taking cover with crossbows at the ready.
Hassing tried the door but found it locked. He took out a pry bar to force a gap between it and the frame. Trooper Horvey jumped in beside him to help. Bene couldn’t see how he managed to unlatch the locking chain, but the sound of it slamming into the back of the door was like a thunderclap. They all froze.
“Shit,” muttered someone, and someone else had a coughing fit.
Shit indeed. This, Bene thought, was a great way to get surrounded by wights. Sure, they weren’t the fastest, and yes, their eyesight was pretty poor. But they weren’t deaf, and there certainly wasn’t a shortage of them. He counted to ten in his head. Nothing. Not even one wight came to check out the noise, let alone a horde. He counted to ten again. Same result.
Hassing tried the door again. Iron hinges yelped in protest as he cracked it enough to peer inside. Sword out, he opened it fully before disappearing beyond. Horvey followed.
Bene waited. After a few moments, Horvey came back to the doorway and motioned for him to come. Had they found what they needed so quickly? His heart raced. He hadn’t been this scared since… well, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt fear like this. But, reassured that Hassing would protect him, he put one foot in front of the other and started forward. If the sergeant couldn’t keep him safe, no one could.
His first impression of the bungalow was how cosy the interior was. In fact, even calling it a bungalow was generous. Not including his tent, it was one of the smallest structures he’d ever been inside. It was dark, but a pair of small windows let in enough light to see by. Well, sort of. And the stink! It smelled like a latrine, only a hundred times worse. He could practically feel it through his eyes!
“Look,” said Hassing.
Bene looked. Just paces away, a corpse lay on a mattress, covered by a thin, stained blanket. Perched on the edge of a wicker chair was another body. Female. Green, and with large, fluid-filled blisters on her arms and neck. Something vile had seeped through the bottom of her dress to pool on the floor. “Wow.”
“Any good?”
Bene nodded. “Wow.” He crouched to get a better look at the dead woman’s ankles. Blood was starting to collect in her feet. “Yeah, this is good.” It was better than just good, though. She was exactly what they wanted. He felt goosebumps rising on his arms. If the next few hours went according to plan, he would make history!
Using the tip of his sword, Hassing peeled away the blanket covering the body on the mattress. Another female, only much younger than the other, and bald. Curious. Bene recoiled from an almost boiling wave of stench, then vomited. He was soon grateful for his birdcage helm, even if the steel slats did retain some of the chunkier pieces of breakfast. Unflattering though it might look, it was definitely a practical choice for warriors with weak stomachs. He was less grateful for the kerchief. “Eyuurch,” he said, wishing he could untie it and clean up his face.
“Easy now,” said Hassing, putting a steadying hand on his shoulder.
“I’m all right.” Trying to ignore the warm gunk running down his chin, he turned his attention back to the body on the bed. The skin on the legs was scarlet and blotchy where it touched the mattress, but otherwise it had taken on a waxy yellow sheen. She was absolutely perfect. “We’ll take her,” he said, unable to keep from grinning. “We’ll take both of them.”
“Right you are,” said the sergeant. He turned to Horvey. “Go and get the gear.”
They were almost free of Mumolo. But they weren’t in the clear just yet, for the safety of their hilltop headquarters was still a good way off. The going was slow, a situation of his own making. They’d probably have been home already if he hadn’t hassled the men shouldering his rotting prizes so much about getting them back perfectly undamaged. He really shouldn’t have emphasised (and an unnecessary number of times, too, admittedly) the need to handle the bodies as if they were made of the finest porcelain. At this rate, they wouldn’t get back until nightfall! He thought about asking them to hurry things up a bit, but then they’d think him indecisive. Indecisive and weak.
One major problem with pre-wight corpses was that you could never tell when they were due to reanimate. Bene’s pair could start wriggling now, in an hour, or tomorrow. If they came back now, at least they couldn’t go anywhere or harm anyone. He’d barely stopped looking at them since Hassing and Horvey had readied them in the bungalow, swathing them in blankets and heavy rope. The foulest and yet most precious bundles in the world!
Fact: to date, no one had documented the passage from life to death and undeath. Bene hadn’t seen it when a person became ensnared in the object’s killing field, but if all went well, he would be amongst the first to witness one becoming a wight. And he was almost certainly the first to come up with the idea of abducting a once-dead in order to do so. For that alone, he was going to be famous. The thought of his future celebrity status made him giddy with anticipation. It was probably why the fetid smoke no longer bothered him. Even the disgusting vomit-soaked kerchief clinging to his lips didn’t seem that bad anymore. No, the only scent filling his nostrils now was the sweet, sweet smell of triumph!
A warm, gooey feeling enveloped him as he pictured himself on stage in a packed university auditorium. Standing there before an enthralled audience, with the Warden Master himself placing the Robe of Distinction for Outstanding Service to Learning over his shoulders. All to wild applause, naturally. Oh, and the first few rows of spectators were busty babes in revealing clothes, each vying for his attention with lascivious winks and grins. Sexy brunettes and redheads. And blondes.
Thinking about blondes made every girl in his fictional audience morph into Khela, and from there into naked Khelas. And then, just as they all stormed the stage so the group sex could get underway, the first shard of doubt pricked Bene’s ridiculous fantasy.
Shit.
Extremely sobering fact: not all corpses were viable. Plenty of once-dead simply corroded without making the journey to undeath. From rotting green to shrivelled black and nothing in between. For all he knew, the Scouts were carting around a couple of lumps of useless dead flesh.
Shit.
The stage, the Warden Master, the Robe of Distinction, the wild applause and all the Khelas abruptly winked out of existence. He felt stupid to have gotten his hopes up.
Then a new thought struck him: they could always try again, couldn’t they? You know, if at first you don’t succeed and all that? Keep going until you get the desired results, right?
Shit.
No. They couldn’t hang around Mumolo forever. Whether this experiment was successful or not, they had to catch up with her.
Shit.
But they could always try again somewhere else, couldn’t they? And he might be wrong about the wights–what if they were actually viable? What if everything worked out? Oh, except…
Shit.
Roaoo would steal the credit. Because of course he would. That was how it worked at the University of Gerich, and he was a fool to think otherwise. Magister Roaoo would get all the glory, and he would be relegated to being some guy who just happened to be there when it all went down. No matter the scale of his achievements, a lowly research assistant could never be permitted to outshine a magister.
Emerging fact: he didn’t give a fuck if they never made it back to camp. The soldiers could go as slowly as they wanted. He kicked at a stone, sending it skittering away. Ah, but they were on the edge of town now, with one last walled alley to clear and a stretch of dead ground to cover. Beyond the dead ground, in some thick scrub at the base of the hill leading up to camp, more soldiers were waiting. He couldn’t see them, but he knew they were there.
It took almost bumping into Hassing for Bene to realise that everyone else had stopped moving. Baffled, he looked up to see a large green wight blocking their path. A very large male, in fact, and with its back to them. It didn’t know it had company yet, but that would change very quickly unless someone took care of it.
“Munning?” whispered Hassing.
Bene nearly gave the order to shoot. But then he had a crazy idea. What if, instead of simply killing it, maybe they could–?
Before he could finish the thought, Trooper Alec fired a bolt into the creature’s back.
“No!” cried Bene. “No! Don’t shoot!”
The wight heard him. It turned around, its jerky movements a monstrous parody of life.
“Sergeant?” said Alec, glancing at Hassing as he reloaded his crossbow with shaking hands.
“No!” cried Bene again, waving at Alec. “Don’t shoot!” He caught Hassing’s eye. Something about his expression must have convinced the sergeant to follow his lead.
“Don’t shoot!” said Hassing. “Back up.” But the soldiers just stood there, flat-footed, staring at the wight. He lifted his visor and snarled at them. “I said, back the fuck up!” This time the men obeyed.
“Sergeant?” asked Alec, more than a hint of panic in his voice. “What are we doing? What are we doing?”
“Shut your mouth, trooper,” said Hassing, facing the wight. It stared back at him with dead, milky eyes. The bolt jutting from its chest was apparently of no concern.
Alec licked his lips and shouldered his crossbow. “Let’s just kill it and be done with it!”
Hassing shook his head. “No.”
The wight just stood there. A cluster of maggots spewed from its mouth and onto the ground. Though he was no expert on the subject, Bene didn’t think it wanted to attack.
“But sergeant, that thing is gonna get us!”
Hassing pointed at the man. “Trooper Alec,” he said through gritted teeth, “shut your fucking trap! Stand down, and I swear if you say another word, I will fucking break you in half!”
The wight’s eyes shifted from Bene to Hassing and back again.
“Munning?” asked the sergeant, his voice low but calm. “I’m assuming you have something in mind?”
Bene swallowed. “Yeah.” Though the more he thought about it, the more insane it seemed.
“Over to you, then.”
Bene decided to stop thinking, trust his instincts, and just go for it. He stepped forward, holding a hand out to the wight in what he sincerely hoped it would take as a gesture of good will. “Please. I’m not going to hurt you.”
The wight just stood there, dribbling maggots.
“Can you hear me?”
No reply.
Bene let the wight see his palms. “See? No weapons.” He took off his birdcage helmet and kerchief and tossed them aside. “I promise you, no one is going to hurt you.” He turned to look at Hassing.
Hassing shrugged and put his crossbow on the ground.
Bene and the wight stared at each other for what seemed like forever. Then it took a single tottering step and slowly–ever so slowly–raised one of its bloated arms toward him.
“Fuck me,” said Hassing.
The hair on the back of Bene’s neck stood up as the creature’s other hand moved to the swollen, rotting flesh beneath its shirt. Its mouth opened and closed, but no sound come out. More maggots did, though.
Bene thought he understood. “Yes. You are… sick. We know.”
The wight lowered its arm and took shambling steps toward him. Soldiers began shouting at him to look out. No doubt they thought he’d lost his mind, but did they also think he’d lost his sight?
Fortunately, Sergeant Hassing voiced his exact thoughts. “Shut the fuck up!” he bellowed at his men. “That’s an order! And lower your crossbows, for fuck’s sake!”
The wight, apparently spooked by all the fuss, began to shuffle away. But Bene hadn’t come this far to just let it go. He gave it encouraging gestures, and told it in soothing tones that he would not let anyone cause it any harm. His sweet-talk must have convinced the creature, because the wight took its next halting steps back toward him.
“That’s it,” said Bene. “Yes. Come to me. I will not hurt you.”
Perhaps the wight understood, for it edged closer and closer until it stood just out of reach.
Bene paused to take stock of the situation. He had beckoned a thing of nightmares to him and it had come. What now? Should he offer his hand? No. Not to a distended bag of maggots that smelled worse than vile. Just breathing was enough to make him feel like he was absorbing its putrescence. If he had to touch it, he would almost certainly throw up again and never be able to stop.
Despite its malevolent appearance, the creature hadn’t shown any propensity for violence. If anything, it seemed curious, even friendly. Had it retained some measure of intelligence in its transition to undeath? Was it sentient? Based on what he’d seen so far, it was a distinct possibility. Only one way to find out for sure. “Can you hear me?”
The wight shifted its bulk. Was it just him, or was it favouring its right leg? The mouth opened and closed again. Was it trying to speak? Its chest wasn’t moving, which meant that its lungs had probably decomposed. No breath, no voice.
“If you can hear me, friend,” said Bene, “raise your hand like you did before.”
Slowly, one fat green arm went up.
“Well bugger me,” said Hassing behind him.
Bene got goosebumps on top of his goosebumps. Holy shit. He was communicating with the dead! With. The. Dead! He knew exactly what he wanted to ask next. It was something he’d been wondering about from the very beginning. “Are you in pain?”
The wight didn’t move.
“Do you feel any pain?” He waited a few moments. Still no response. He realised his error. “If you are in pain,” he said, “raise your hand like you did before.”
The wight didn’t move.
Hmm. Did that mean the creature wasn’t in pain, or that it didn’t understand the question? “So it doesn’t hurt… to be… you? Is that right?”
The hand came up again.
“Ah.” He didn’t know what else to say. There was no doubt in his mind now that he was communicating with a human being. Wights were sentient, obviously. Or at least this one was. The implications were staggering. That the creature didn’t feel pain was interesting. Even… comforting. To be trapped in undeath was bad enough, but if it also hurt? Talk about a shit sandwich! Of course, not all pain was physical. Which led him to his next questions. “Now I don’t mean to offend you, but, er... do you know that you are… dead?”
For the briefest of moments, a curious but unmistakably human expression seemed to cross that hideous, rotted face. Sorrow.
“You know that you’re… dead?”
The man raised his hand and then lowered it.
Bene felt as if he’d been punched in the guts. “Do you... know what happened? Do you know how you died?”
The man’s arm stayed by his side. He didn’t know.
“But you know you’re not alive anymore?”
The hand came up once more. Yes.
He desperately wanted to do something nice for this poor, poor soul. “Are you hungry?” he blurted out. “Do you want food? Water? Is there anything I can do for you?”
The hand came up.
“Yes? Water?”
The man didn’t want water.
“Food?”
He didn’t seem to want food either.
“Then what?” asked Bene, confused. “You want something? What do you want?”
The dead man lurched toward him. The soldiers shouldered weapons, and Bene could practically feel the points of their bolts on his back. He resisted the urge to run, not wanting to even take a step backward if it meant they’d take it as a sign to start shooting. Not knowing for certain if the wight meant to harm him, it took every bit of his self-discipline to stay where he was. “Um…”
The man stopped right in front of him. The smell made it almost impossible not to gag. Even so, he looked into those awful, clouded eyes. “You want something. I will give it, if I can. Just tell me what you need from me?”
The man held out an arm as if pointing at something behind Bene. Bene turned, tried to follow his line of sight. “Sergeant Hassing? Can you come over, please?”
“Yes,” said Hassing, and came to stand next to him. Didn’t question the order, didn’t even flinch. But the wight shuffled sideways, one arm still out.
“I thought he was asking for you,” whispered Bene. “You don’t know what he’s pointing to, do you?”
Hassing turned to look. “Maybe the crossbow?”
“Do you think?”
“Want me to get it?”
Bene thought about it. “I dunno. Yes?”
The sergeant went to retrieve his crossbow. “This?” Bene asked, indicating Hassing’s weapon. “Is this what you want?”
The wight looped a trembling, clumsy finger around the weapon’s cocking stirrup, then guided it until it rested against his own forehead.
“Oh,” said Bene.
“Munning?” asked Hassing.
Bene wanted to say no. But he knew he couldn’t. Instead he nodded, slowly, just the once. The simple flexing of a few muscles, but easily one of the most difficult things he’d ever had to do.
“Be at peace,” whispered Bene, and he closed his eyes right before Hassing pulled the trigger.