Chapter 90 - Multiple Dilemmas

  Turner sighed, and then to my relief, he nodded.

  “I agree. My problem is that the horde isn’t my only problem.” He gestured to a pair of red marks closer to the lake. One was a little northwest of the university. Was that a cemetery? The other was down on the lake shore itself, right at the Burlington harbor. “Those are also Domains. One of them is another necromancer, like yourself. He’s mostly been keeping to himself. Our scouts have observed him, but not yet made contact.

  “The other group, down by the lake front, are another matter. They’re calling themselves ‘pirates’ and dressing up like it’s cosplay season on the Pirates of The Caribbean ride. But from what my scouts have said, they’re bringing back all of the worst parts of historic piracy: murder, theft, slavery, rape, plunder…”

  “Charming. At least they’re a ways off?” I suggested. The mall monster was a hell of a lot closer.

  Turner nodded, accepting the point. “That’s one saving grace, yes. We’ll probably still have to deal with them sooner or later, unless something else gets to them first. But they aren’t my only worry. Since I used the control stone, the avians have intensified their attacks. I suspect they, too, have a control stone, but can’t use it now. There’s a radius around each Domain which is protected from other people setting up shop, and now they’re pissed they can’t use their stone.”

  “So if they capture your stone, they get command of your base?” I asked, still playing dumb about Domains. “That sucks.”

  “Well, to capture it, they have to kill me, which won’t be easy. On the other hand, if we capture their stone, we can merge it with mine and grow even stronger. If they get it, they can be the ones who get a double-strength Domain. We still don’t know what they will do for us, or for them. But they’re clearly interested.”

  That wasn’t going to be an easy dilemma to resolve. I’d managed to—maybe—earn at least a little goodwill from the avians. At the least, they hadn’t tried swarming us after they got their kid back, which felt like something. But this was different. The fight between them and the Guard wasn’t just two powers that happened to be next to each other. Now they were fighting over something real, too—the control stones, and the ability to use one on their home.

  No matter what I did, the avians and Guard were simply too near to each other. They’d never be able to both have a Domain, not where they were, anyway. One of them would have to leave, and I didn’t think either group was going to relent.

  “These are all serious problems,” I said, thinking my words over carefully. “But at the risk of sounding like I’m saying ‘my problem is bigger than yours,’ I think the mall situation trumps these others. The avians are a clear and present danger to your base—no doubts there. But so are a thousand zombies. They haven’t turned their attention this way, no. But I feel like there’s a ‘yet’ on the end of that sentence. It’s just a matter of time.”

  Turner ran a hand through his thinning hair. “I know. I agree with you, and it’s why I’ve had scouts keeping an eye on the place each day, and examining the area around the mall each morning to see how much damage they’ve done. They’re definitely spreading, moving farther afield each day. Their numbers are growing, too.

  “To be honest, when we saw you taking them on, I was hoping you’d finish them off. One less issue for me to worry about, if you did, and I’d know all of those black crystals were going to an ally. I don’t have the troops to take that horde down. Being honest, even behind our walls here, we might be hard pressed to fend off a thousand zombies. It’s part of why we’ve been reinforcing the walls.”

  I’d wondered about that. Why build up the fences into stone walls when your main opponent flew? But thinking about the zombie horde, it made far more sense. Enough zombies would push a chain-link fence right over, even with the metal posts embedded in the pavement. A stone wall, on the other hand, would be much more difficult to topple.

  “What about a team-up?” I asked. “I’ve already collected some allies. I’ve made friends with a couple of the local ratkin tribes, and they’re gathering more soldiers to help us take on whatever lurks in the mall.”

  “You did? Interesting. That’s the first I’ve heard of the monsters turning friendly,” Turner said. “How did that happen?”

  “They’re not really monsters,” Kara pointed out. “They’re pretty friendly.”

  “The ones we met used to be pet store animals,” I added. “They understood English from hearing people speak around them, and when the Event changed them, they became something like the goblins. I know we never managed to reach peace with the goblins, but I suspect that dealing with these creatures as if they’re intelligent is the smart way, moving forward. Some of them are always going to be hostile to us. But others? It varies.”

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  “That’s good to know. More troops for the assault will help, but can they come up with thousands of ratkin? We’ve seen a good many of them on our scouting runs, but not a thousand.”

  I shook my head. “No, we’re talking scores at best, I think. It’s not really the zombies I’m worried about, so much as the boss monster. If it were just the zombies, I think Sue and I could handle them ourselves.”

  “You and the dinosaur against a thousand of them?” Turner asked. He sounded skeptical, which pissed me off some.

  “It is a lot,” Farnsworth added.

  I quirked an eyebrow at Turner. “Surely your scouts told you what happened when I fought them?”

  Turner chuckled, looking a little nervous. I realized with a start that he wasn’t used to dealing with people this way anymore! His Charisma turned everyone around him into a yes-man. When he said something, people just agreed. Here I was, barely out of my undergrad degree and I was calling him out on his bullshit. It had to be a weird experience for the man.

  “They did, but it’s one thing to read a report, and another to see it firsthand,” Turner said. “You’re that confident though, I’ll believe you. If you can reduce the zombie horde to a manageable level, say a couple hundred left? I’ll commit troops to help you finish whatever is leading them. Fair?”

  More than fair, really. He was right that his people weren’t best suited to handling this mess. I had a fast moving Fireball platform, which made me the ideal opponent for the horde. My main issue was in fighting the Big Bad, whatever it was. If he was willing to help with that, I’d take it as a win.

  “Sounds good to me,” I replied.

  He reached out a hand, and we shook.

  “Okay, come back here when you’re ready to make your move. I’ll have Farnsworth get a team together, himself, the steel golems, and a few of our higher ranked people. I’ll make sure he has enough firepower to take down a tier eight or whatever this thing is,” Turner said. “One condition, though. Your team is going to reap the rewards of the zombie crystal drops. In exchange for our support, I want us to get the control stone held by the enemy.”

  Again, not unfair. He was right that Kara and I would get the stones from killing all those zombies. He was offering to commit substantially to the assault, so it was just that the Guard base get something for the risks they were taking. I wanted that stone, but… It was probably worth giving it to someone else, just to ensure the undead didn’t wipe out every human for a hundred miles.

  “That works fine,” I said after the briefest pause. “Whatever it takes to end this danger.”

  “Excellent. I’ll have Sergeant Farnsworth escort you to wherever else you need to go, then. I have much still to do today,” Turner said.

  With that abrupt goodbye, Farnsworth took us back outside. He asked if there was anything else we needed—a trading session, swapping our crystals for Guard credits, or whatever—but I told him we were in pretty good shape still. It was early enough in the afternoon that I wanted to get a move on toward our next target. That cemetery we’d found on the map was still out there, waiting for us.

  He brought us back to the gate where Sue was still waiting, crouched down on the pavement like she was asleep. To everyone else, the dino looked like a pile of regular fossilized bones, but as soon as I drew near Sue roused and stood, letting out a soft growl.

  “Yeah, we’re back,” I told Sue. “Ready for another adventure?”

  The dinosaur nodded its head. Interesting.

  We mounted up and set off on our way, the Guard opening their gate for us and Farnsworth himself waving us off.

  “I’ll be ready when you come back,” he told me. “We’ll take that thing down together, eh?”

  “It’ll be a fight to remember,” I replied.

  Then we were off, Sue’s powerful legs pounding the pavement as we ran south. I glanced at my watch. Already three in the afternoon, and we had a long way to go before we got where we were going. I’d been halfway tempted to stay at the Guard base overnight. At least we’d be secure there, behind the walls. Get some good rest and set out the next day.

  But if we did that it would allow whatever was building the zombie horde that much more time to grow its force. Each night, that threat was growing larger, strong, more able to handle whatever we threw at it. If I wasn’t getting stronger at a faster pace than the enemy, things were going to end very badly.

  Once we cleared the airport area, we turned west on Route 2. There was still a good trip ahead of us to get where we were going. The reason I hadn’t tried to hit this cemetery already was precisely because it was so far away. It looked huge on the map, though, so I was hoping it would be worth the trip. Assuming nobody else had cleared the place out, it might have hundreds of undead. That would give us all the new crystals we could ask for plus the materials to Animate a new crop of undead.

  We took a right turn on Kennedy Drive, moving into South Burlington. The road wasn’t as heavily traveled, which meant fewer cars stranded in mid-street when the Event happened. That was easier for Sue, and we made excellent time.

  I almost missed the turn back north onto Hinesburg Road, which ran right past the cemetery, but Kara caught it just in time. She was more familiar with some of the local roads than I was. In the old days, the trip from the Guard base to the cemetery might have taken half an hour. Today, it took us two, which was way longer than I was happy with. We were going to arrive as dusk was starting to set in, only a couple of hours before the sun set.

  That coming darkness made me nervous. The bad things came out at night, after all. And whatever hid in that mall would be out and about again, too. Hopefully it thought I’d fled, but I couldn’t guarantee that. It might easily come looking for me, once the daylight was gone.

  At the same time, as Sue jogged up Hinesburg Road, I was excited. It had been a while since I’d had a chance to just hunt monsters to grow stronger. I’d been good at this sort of thing even without Sue and Kara. Now that I had serious backup, I had a feeling this was gonna be fun!