Death After Death

Chapter 71: Aftermath

Walking upstairs was a little more challenging than he’d expected, so instead of immediately heading out, he changed his mind and decided to take a quick nap in the innkeeper’s bedroom since that was the safest part of the whole inn. He slept fitfully as he struggled with his regret at how he’d handled the situation, his anger about Freya’s fate, and the vague anxiety about the newest hazard he’d introduced into the world.

By the time he’d finally sobered up and gone downstairs, the slime had reduced Brenna’s body to bones and was working on another corpse. Simon was pleased to see that it hadn’t turned into some pile of necrotic sludge, and instead, it was its translucent, gooey self. As soon as he got close enough for it to bother, it reached up from its partially digested meal with a pseudopod to try snacking on him as well.

“I wouldn’t try that if I were you,” he chided, pulling out his freezing sword. “Not unless you want another time out.”

The creature stopped as soon as it felt the chill of the blade and retracted its pseudopod. It wasn’t particularly smart, but it knew what it didn’t like. Besides, it hardly needed him. There were literally dozens of corpses waiting to be devoured just outside the windows. Idlyly, Simon wondered how big the thing would get when it had eaten them all, but he didn’t stress it too much. That was a later problem.

“Well, you just keep doing what you’re doing,” Simon said, backing away slowly, “and I’ll check on you… well, I’m sure we’ll see each other around.”

With that, he was off. From the second story, he climbed out onto the peak of the tiled roof and carefully started walking down it, mindful of the way it creaked under him. Weight was a factor, but even more than that, he cursed the body he was trapped in right now for its lack of agility. He just couldn’t move like he knew he was capable of, and that irked him.

“Is anyone out there?” he called, certain that there was. “I’m looking to help the survivors get out before the umm… the itsy bitsy spider gets out and makes everyone else’s life hard!”

There was no immediate response, but that didn’t surprise Simon. He wasn’t sure he’d respond either if a crazy person started to yell in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. When he reached the edge of the building, he stood there for a couple minutes, just watching the milling mob of undead churn beneath him in a way that was almost blase.

It should have been terrifying, but he just couldn’t make himself care too much anymore. Instead, he just had to resist the urge to burn them down because, ultimately, that would undermine his current plan. There was no way he could kill them all like that. He was sure of it. Even if he burned the whole city down, someone infected would escape and start it all over again, just like in the movies.

It was only when he didn’t see anyone cautiously peer out of the windows that he decided he needed to get across the street to where he’d seen those lovers fall so long ago. “Oonbetit,” he whispered, using magic to give him enough strength to force leap across the six-foot gap to the next building.

The next building had been a bakery, and it was apparent that there had been survivors here at one point, but sometime after that, the front door had been broken down, and it was nothing but a slaughterhouse now.

The next building had fared no better. He could see that from the windows without even going inside. He would have just skipped it and gone across the street as he’d planned, but the way the zombies groped for him out of the windows made the sloping roof too dangerous to chance, and he wasn’t about to throw this run away because he slipped off and fell to the street to be devoured. So, he forced his way in and bludgeoned the six zombies that were milling about the second floor and then climbed out the window on the far side before more from outside could come up and join their little party.

As he did so, he pointedly ignored what was obviously the room of a little girl and the dollies sitting on the bed that had been bathed in blood. Something terrible had happened here, but he was too late to do anything about it.

“Why is that?” he asked himself as he walked to the edge to gauge the distance. “Why do you keep sending me to the event after something terrible has already happened? Couldn’t I have gotten here - like… the night the adventurers showed up - or maybe been sent to the necromancer’s lair to deal with them directly?”

There was no answer, but Simon had never really expected one. Now, he kind of wanted to see where all this started once he finished purging the zombies, though he had no idea where he would go about looking for that.

“Oonbetit!” he said louder this time as some of the anger about how stupid this was entered his voice.

This time, he didn’t make another one of the little jumps he’d been making over the four and six-foot wide alleys. This time, he lept across the cobblestone street, which was wide enough that a carriage could navigate it without difficulty. He was fairly sure he’d be able to clear it, and almost fifteen feet, but even so, it was a scary moment. He wasn’t entirely sure.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

When he did, though, something he hadn’t expected happened: he fell right through the roof. The buildings here weren’t as strong as he would like, and between his weight and momentum, he punched right through the tile, landing on his ass in a cloud of debris.

“Spider-Man, I am not,” he said, coughing as he pulled his mace free and readied himself to strike any monsters that might be about to snack on him.

There weren’t any, though. Instead, he caught the briefest glimpse of movement running away from him as he staggered to his feet. “Helva, hurry - they’re coming!” someone yelled down the hallway even as Simon staggered after them.

“Wait,” he yelled. “Slow down. I’m on your side!”

They didn’t listen, though, and he didn’t blame them. If he’d been cooped up in this city for days or weeks, he’d be pretty jumpy, too. By the time he reached the hall, they were scrambling out a window, and by the time he got to the window, they were already on the roof. That was when he saw them fall.

The last time he’d seen this scene play out, he was pretty sure it had been the man who had fallen on the other side of the jump. This time, it was the woman that was fallen before they’d ever even made the leap, and Simon was certain that was all his fault. He’d tried to stop something bad he thought was about to happen, and somehow, he made it worse.

Even as he watched, though, the woman’s partner tried to save her, and he started to fall, too, right after her. They were about to be ripped to pieces, hand in hand, and that was too much for Simon. He couldn’t bear to be the one to crush the only fragile flower that had bloomed in this whole rotten city.

“Gervuul Oonbetit!” he yelled out as they fell, and he focused.

This visualization was a complex one, but all the stupid indie games he’d played once upon a time had to come in handy for something, right? As they fell, a shimmering, imaginary wall of force came into existence. It stretched beneath them, flexing for a moment before snapping taut and sending them back up into the air.

It wasn’t high enough to send them to the roof on the far side of the street - he lacked the math to tie things up quite so neatly. No - this was just to get them clear of what happened next. As they sprang several feet further up into the air, that shockwave of their impact solidified and sprayed out in all directions, slicing through the necks of every zombie in the vicinity at head level and causing all the corpses to drop to the ground.

The exertion winded him, and he felt his throat starting to get sore from the repeated use of magic, but that wasn’t enough to stop him as he yelled out, “Get in that building and bar the door. I’ll be right there!”

The couple got to their feet, terrified at everything that had just happened, and they looked on dumbly, even as the zombies started to pay attention to the commotion and lurch toward the helpless couple. Simon was fairly sure they were still going to die if he didn’t do anything to stop it. So, this time, he used minor force to absorb the impact as he jumped down to street level and ran to them. For a second, he thought they were about to bolt away again, but instead, they just stood there frozen as he barged past them and used his bulk to slam open the door across the way, which was the same dress shop he’d already mostly cleared earlier.

Then, even as the zombies surged forward, he pulled them both inside and slammed the door shut behind them. “Grab those and put them here,” Simon said, gesturing to some nearby crates and corpses. The other man didn’t do anything. Instead, he stared at his partner in horror. It was only after looking for a few seconds and the door he was holding shut started to rattle that he realized why. She’d been bitten on the leg already.

“It’s fine,” Simon yelled. “I can save her, but not until we stop these monsters!” He wasn’t a hundred percent sure he could, of course, but he was pretty confident, even though he really should probably take a break from casting any more spells. He’d already burned almost a year and a half, and he’d only been on this level for a few hours.

That was enough to get them into motion. Working together, they grabbed everything they could that wasn’t nailed down and started stacking it in front of the door. It was only several minutes later that Simon felt safe enough to release his grip and tend to the bleeding woman.

“What’s your name?” Simon asked, examining the wound. It was deep. A whole mouthful of flesh had been removed at the bottom of her left calf, and given how slow Brenna had changed, the way she was bleeding was honestly the bigger short-term problem.

“H-helva,” she whimpered. Simon could have kicked himself as he realized he already knew that.

“Okay, Helva,” he said, trying to figure out the best way to handle this so no one wanted him dead. “Well - I’ve got… holy powers from the gods, and I’m trying to save everyone I can, so if you could—”

“Just please save her!” her partner demanded as he clutched the woman’s hand. “I couldn’t keep living without my Helva!”

That much Simon understood, so when he whispered “Aufvarum Hyakk,” it was with a heart full of understanding and a solid visualization of the muscle tissue knitting back together and the blood vessels reconnecting. He did what he could for the nerves, but he wasn’t optimistic there. He had trouble imagining them. So, in the best case, she’d have a dead spot, and in the worst, she’d have a little trouble walking, but either of those was better than dying.

Within seconds, the skin began to cover the area, and the flesh began to fill in. In the end, there was only the faintest scar around the new, pink tissue to show that there had ever been a wound. That wasn’t the end of this, though. Simon knew from bitter experience that just healing a zombie bite wasn’t enough to stop it from taking effect. Honestly, he wasn’t even sure that his cure word would be enough for this, but he was pretty sure it would work.

“Delzam,” he whispered, willing the toxins or bacteria that caused the people to go mad to vanish.

In the end, they both looked on in shock as he leaned back, exhausted. Simon had planned on trying to go out and save more people, but just this much had left him gasping.

“Alright, do you think you two can keep them out for a couple hours while I grab a nap?” he asked, not bothering to explain anything as he walked upstairs.