Chapter 85 - If Not You, Who?

  I had Sue approach the fort with caution. When we left the place, it was surrounded by enemies. There was no telling what the current state was. The horde had likely withdrawn, but I didn’t know that for certain. They might still be there. They could have laid traps for us. Something else nasty might have moved in. There was no telling what we were going to find, so we slowed way down as we got nearer.

  It turned out there wasn’t much point. As we trotted up the hill toward the fort, it was clear there was no massive army waiting for us there, and nothing to salvage, either. The fort was trashed.

  The zombies had taken the time to upend each and every log that had once been stabbed like spears into the forest soil. They’d scattered the beams that had made up the walls, dumping them in a heap all over the hilltop. The huts and structures inside were all crushed under the weight of the logs.

  It could all be rebuilt, with enough time and effort. But it would take a lot more hours than we had left before nightfall, and I was willing to bet if we did rebuild it, tonight would just be a repeat of last night. Until we beat this thing, nowhere would be truly safe.

  I was on board with stopping it. Killing the horde’s leader, and wiping out the horde, too. I just didn’t see how.

  “The bodies are all gone,” Kara said. She slid down from Sue’s back, moving to the east side of where the walls had been, the side where we’d stood our ground briefly to allow the ratkin to flee.

  “Huh?”

  “The ones we killed? There’s no bodies. No sign there were ever zombies here,” Kara replied. “Yours are gone, too. All the undead you had here? They’re all gone.”

  I knew my undead had all been killed. I’d seen most of them go down and felt the others fall through my link to them. But Kara was right—even their bodies were gone, now. I hadn’t even been left with building blocks to Animate new troops.

  I slid down from Sue’s back to join her in rooting around among the debris. Something else was missing, too. “My shields, spears, even the bows, they’re all gone too.”

  Via trades with the Guard base, I’d managed to outfit most of my undead pretty well. All of that was now in enemy hands instead. Not cool.

  Kara sighed and sat herself down on one of the larger logs. “Well, this sucks. What’s next?”

  “I don’t know.” I wished I had an answer for her, but I didn’t.

  The truth was, we’d had our asses kicked, and it stung. So far, I’d been mostly lucky since the Event. I’d rocked my way through almost every challenge thrown my way, mostly because my spells were a serious force multiplier. This was different.

  There’d been times I had to withdraw before. Moments I’d been forced to retreat, to find a better way to fight. But this time, I didn’t even know how to proceed. Beating this enemy felt bigger than anything else I’d done.

  I couldn’t just run. Well, I could. I could hop on Sue’s back and tear off into the sunrise, heading east toward home, where mom and dad were probably waiting for me, hoping I was still alive. I had faith in their ability to take care of themselves. They were tough—they’d be fine. But it was ever so tempting to head off that way, leave all of this mess behind.

  Whatever that boss monster was, it was deadly. The magic it gave off was far more powerful than what I had available. It was not something I could beat, not right now, anyway. We needed a way forward, ideally some method of evening the odds a bit. I just didn’t see how.

  Sue’s head shot up in alarm. I was on my feet an instant later, just in time to brace myself as the dinosaur let out a powerful roar. Sue was under my control, and I still wanted to duck; that’s how loud that battle-cry was! There was heavy rustling in the trees just north of us. Something was coming our way. I readied a Drain Life spell against whatever it was.

  Patches stepped out of the brush, and I almost zapped him anyway before I realized who it was.

  He stood there shaking as Sue glared down at him, while Kara had her bow trained his way, and black fire wreathed my hand. I dropped the magic right away. “Patches! You are okay! We thought you must have run into trouble, after you never showed up at the island.”

  “No trouble. Better. Found other ratkin. They are friends now, too,” Patches said. He gestured to someone behind him.

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  More ratkin spilled out of the underbrush. First it was one. Then more. By the time they stopped coming, there were a dozen of them, and not all of them looked familiar.

  I could easily tell Patches’ people apart from these new ones. The ratkin who’d followed Patches to my fort were mostly white, tan, and black. They looked just like the sort of rats you’d see in a pet store, which made sense, because that’s what they’d been, before the Event.

  The other half dozen ratkin standing before me were cut from another cloth. They were a bit taller than the others, and looked leaner. Their fur was more uniform, too. Each of them was a little different, but they all had the same combination of colors in their fur. I realized these weren’t pet store rats; they were a group of wild rats who’d been turned into ratkin.

  Would they be as friendly as the others? All I could do was hope. At least so far, they seemed helpful.

  “Hi. I’m Selena,” I said, waving to the new ratkin.

  The newcomers made chittering noises, and Patches replied to them with the same strange sounds. Was that language? It had to be. Patches mentioned he could speak English because he’d heard it so much before the Event. Living in a pet store, I supposed that made sense. The wild rats must not have had as much contact.

  “They haven’t had as much contact with you people before, so they’re not as sure of humans,” Patches explained, putting facts behind my hunch. “But they saw us running and took us into their tunnels. They live that way, near the river.”

  He’d pointed north. “When you ran, they found you and took you in?”

  Patches nodded.

  “That was lucky. I was worried you and your people were killed by the zombies, when you didn’t reach the island.”

  Patches ducked his head. “We are sorry for worry. But it seemed best.”

  “Oh, I agree. Smart move. I’m just glad you’re safe! The fort is in tatters, most of my undead are gone, but the enemy seems to have cleared out. I think we need to figure out what to do next.” I gestured with my arms, waving them all forward, toward the logs piled like match-sticks. “Come on over, all of you.”

  They all sat down, joining Kara, and the lot of them waited, all their gazes looking expectantly at me.

  What the hell? How was I in charge of everything, all the time? Okay, yes—I had a Fireball-breathing dinosaur, still. That gave me a leg up in the power department, and so did my tier six stones. But I was a college student, not a general. This was so far from my wheelhouse I didn’t know where to begin.

  That last wasn’t true. I knew where to start. Maybe that would be enough?

  I glanced at my watch. “We have another seven hours or so before the sun begins setting and that thing is released from the mall. I can’t stand against it. There’s just no way. Even with Sue, even if I had a full complement of undead again, it’s too strong for me.”

  “You are strongest. If not you, who can beat it?” Patches asked.

  “I…” I stumbled over my words. God damn it, he wasn’t wrong. I really was the strongest around here, wasn’t I? Even without Sue. Did Colonel Turner have anyone on his base with two tier six crystals? He might, by now, but I wasn’t so sure. He was still spreading most of the stones they gained across a wide number of people, so he had a strong, viable fighting force to defend the base.

  Maybe one of those other leaders? I’d felt three control stones used. I felt confident Turner was the one to the east, but that still left two of them to the west of us. Either of those might be strong enough to serve as allies. On the other hand, they could also easily turn out to be enemies, and then we’d be stuck with multiple fronts.

  There was nobody I could count on but myself.

  Yeah, Kara would help, whatever plan I came up with. I could see that in her eyes. Patches was there to help, too, and maybe he could get these other ratkin to add troops as well. With more bodies in the mix, maybe we’d have more of a chance. I could go to Turner. The mall was close enough to his base that the thing living there would eventually threaten him, too.

  But at the end of the day, when it came to facing that thing, we were going to need at least one person strong enough to take it. That was going to have to be me. There was no one else. If I was going to do that, I needed to get stronger, fast.

  “Patches, can the ratkin gather more troops? I mean, if there’s more like you out there, can we try bringing them together? The more allies we have for this, the stronger we’ll all be,” I said.

  Patches spoke in that squeaking language to the other ratkin, then turned back to me. “We should be able to bring in some more. Not as many as the dead. Some. Maybe eight hands? Maybe more?”

  He held up a paw, showing four fingers displayed. I did the math—he was saying he thought they could gather thirty-two ratkin warriors, maybe a bit more. It wasn’t much when compared to a thousand zombies, but I wasn’t planning to fight the zombies toe to toe, so that was fine.

  “Good. That’s a start,” I replied. “Kara, I think we can maybe get some help from Turner. This whole mess threatens him, too.”

  “Maybe.” She sounded dubious. “Selena, I felt the strength of that thing, too. Whatever it is, it’s scary powerful, definitely higher tier than you. Is it a tier seven? Eight? I don’t know, but whatever it is, I think what we need to do is get you stronger.”

  She wasn’t wrong. “Yeah, that would make sense. But how?”

  “Well, how’d you get to where you are now?”

  “I ran into a cemetery full of skeletons. Oh!”

  “Yeah,” Kara said, grinning again. “I’m betting in a city the size of Burlington, there’s more than a few cemeteries.”

  I yanked out my map, unfolding it in front of me. “I’m sure you’re right. There’s got to be more.”

  There were rumors of another necromancer out west of here, somewhere in the city center, so odds were he’d already hit a few of the graveyards out that way. I wanted to focus my search on the areas east of here instead. If I could find one that was still infested with tons of undead, it might just give us the leg up we needed to beat this thing.

  Before I could spot any likely prospects, though, a wave of magic rushed over me. I froze in place. The energy wave was strong, which meant it was close, nearby. And I recognized this sort of energy. I’d just felt it the other day, three times over.

  The leader of the horde had managed to acquire and use a control stone. University Mall was the center of the world’s newest Domain!