Exploratory Writing: Ken Makes Some Survivors The Offer

(This would be well after The Burning of Hugo, when the world blows up and The Wars of the Damned begin.)

"I hear you got a dead problem."

The group looked on at the strange man addressing them. Hairless, skin white like show, eyes sunken and of an eerie yellow hue. In one calloused hand he held the severed arm of a former zombie, from which he bit into and tore off another piece as one would from a chicken leg, and loudly chewed.

One of them, the eldest man, stepped forward: "We do."

"I can solve it." the dead-eating man said, his mouth full, "Of course, I see rifles in some of your hands, so I guess you can do that yourselves, but you normies got to take that risk now." He finished. "And I know you folks would rather not."

One of the women in the back leaned into another's ear: "It has to be him! The one that eats zombies."

The strange man turned his eyes to them. "I am that man." he said, looking right at them as he would to mischievous children, "I am Ken, and I have an offer for you."

The eldest man looked over to the others and gave his own commanding glare. They nodded, one by one, their submission, and then the eldest man looked back at Ken: "Go on."

"You people are much like others I've come across since the end of the world. You prepared. You planned. You stored your food, stockpiled your supplies, chose remote locations filled with exploitable resources, and most of you got out in time." Ken waived the arm he held. "You never really expected this to be real, and you aren't able to do what you planned to do and deal with this."

Ken looked over the faces before him. He saw them confirm what he suspected: they already lost people, and had to deal with their own dead re-animating.

"I offer you this: I will deal with the monsters. Call, and I will come to your aide."

"In return?"

"Fealty" Ken said, "You will join with others like yourselves, cooperate under my guidance and protection, until such time as I am no longer necessary because you--and they--will be able to do this on your own."

"We stay where we are?"

"I insist. You're all better off in your prepared homesteads. I focus on keeping the roads and paths between them clear."

An older woman moved to the eldest man's side and whispered into his ear: "He'll not need food from us. Take it."

The eldest man nodded. "What else?"

"No aggression between any of your settlements. I decide them, and my word is law. Handle your own affairs as you like, and be ready to support me as required."

"Is that all?"

Ken eyes a young woman in the back, clearly out of place here by her hair color. "You have a burden among you." Ken said, pointing to her, "I'll take her off your hands."

The old women whispered again: "Take the deal! She never should've been here anyway, what with just being a girlfriend to one of your grandsons. She's not one of us, she has no useful skills, and has no children. Cast her out!"

The eldest man nodded. "Done, Ken." he said, and they shook hands to confirm agreement.

"I'll take the girl now." Ken said, "Prepare her things."

To Split Rock Light house-11

(From an entry dated March 26th, 2013)

I have to write something. I can’t not write something. I have other way to make sense of what happened. What happened is impossible, yet I saw it and I know damn well that Derren Brown and Chris Angel are just flesh-eating walking corpses now so this was not a trick. It was real, it happened, and I have to write something to make sense of it or I will go mad.

The plan was a very simple plan. Ken would hide. Yuki would find me and do whatever she wanted. I would buy time by playing dumb-but-scared and make her talk. Then Ken would jump out of hiding and kill her. All I had to do was keep talking, and keep her talking, any way I could that didn’t put me into a hostage scenario. Simple plan, easy to make work, right? Ken even said “Don’t worry about the plan. I’ll handle the contingencies.”

Well, I’m glad that Ken didn’t put much effort into the plan because it went South, and I’m now certain Ken expected it to go bad. Sure enough, she showed up, and she showed up looking like she’s a sweet little girl in kindergarten or something about that age. Nonetheless, she showed up cackling like the Wicked Witch of the West as she glided across the water towards this boat, her long hair flowing in the winter winds keeping her aloft. Yeah, I remember it that vividly; you would too if you thought she was keen on killing you, hoping to escape certain death somehow.

No subtlety here; she flew to me, to the boat, and landed on the deck with a snowy flourish. I don’t think that this is how the old Japanese tales depicted her, but Hollywood happens to everything- even after the end of the world- I guess. Sanity is not on good terms with reality as I write this entry. Yuki saw me and moved to seize me, and I screamed like a teen-aged Jamie Lee Curtis just as Ken asked me to, which somehow flipped Yuki’s brain over to her exuberant girlfriend mode. She asked why I freaked out, and I pointed out the obvious to her, which somehow did not register.

You know that scene in the domestic violence made-for-TV movies where the abuser lays on the lovey-dovey guilt trip, the “Baby why you make me so crazy?” routine? Yeah, that. She told me that she loved me, wanted have all the babies—yes, “all the babies”, verbatim; I’d focus on being bred like a bull by an inhuman thing—and never wanted to hurt me. She just wants to be with me, that all this is just making her crazy, and we can work out- you know the routine by now.

All this, by the way, coming out of the mouth of a kindergarten-aged girl. Creepy is an understatement.

Then Ken jumps her, impales a jade shard into her head and smiles. Apparently he did loot the museum.

The Treasure of the Iron Range-10

The next step, as Ken saw it, was to make his way into the mine. Down there were certain to be more of The Necromancer’s undead thralls, including the last of the more intelligent leader thralls. Ken knew that he was expected, and this would not be nearly so easy to execute as his antics on the surface. He expected that he would find a more dangerous opposition down there, one that needed no light or fresh air, and the constricted corridors of the old mine made his mobility moot. This time it was a fight of might, not maneuver.

Ken’s expectations got met on the way down. A far more aggressive response met him early, and Ken in turn demonstrated that he knew how to handle a longsword in confined quarters. Once he saw that the sword’s flames didn’t burn him, or that the blade didn’t cut him, Ken laughed long at the enemies before him. As their severed limbs and torsos caught fire and burnt to ash—some falling down the shaft, reduced to ash before impact—Ken heard the dull roar of more of them awaiting him below, and the laughter grew louder. He felt no fear.

Ken came out of the shaft swinging, cleaving through the undead and rotting flesh and burning them to ash before they could get a withered claw on him. Fury uncommonly expressed energized his form, and he continued to laugh at the absurdity as he hewed through the undead horde as if they were so many bales of hay. When the horde attempted to flank him, he quickly hewed his way out and then resumed the assault. They tried and failed multiple times, so at last the leader compelled their retreat and Ken eagerly pursued them- cutting them down without mercy.

As he reached the very bottom of the mine, where the thralls worked anew at long-dead veins to create underground a ritual space around which they unearthed a massive sarcophagus of silver that shown as if it were reflecting a full moon on a cloudless night. Before him now stood a great and large abomination that once was an ordinary man, now distorted into a caricature formerly seen only in the fiction of the Old World. On its face Ken felt the great presence of The Necromancer pushing down upon him like a giant bearing down on his very soul.

Ken drew the sword, blue-white flame flaring in The Necromancer’s presence, high over his head as he readied to strike. The Necromancer, directly possessing his amalgamated thrall-gestalt, did not waste words and charged Ken. Ken severed an arm, but still got spun about and tumbled off his line. As the severed flame burned to ash, a new one grew in its place. Ken, seeing how this would go, drew deep into his inner strength; with uncanny speed, Ken dodged the monster and severed limb after limb until he sliced the thrall down to no flesh at all.

The sarcophagus cracked.

The Treasure of the Iron Range-09

Ken figured that The Necromancer would have a presence on the surface waiting for him, and he was right. As he approached the old mine, he saw many patrolling undead marching in close order. These pickets patrolled in concentric circles, starting a mile out, and alternating in direction. The sheer size of the undead presence told Ken that his taunt made its mark, and the more life-like behavior told him that one of those more dangerous minions likely monitored this presence so the big man didn’t need to do it all himself.

Ken sat in a tree, downwind, and watched. Stealth seemed the obvious approach; sneak in, get the leader, the cohesion collapses and then create plenty of chaos to inhibit recovery before moving on to the next phase. However, Ken didn’t want to seek out his target; instead, he wanted the target to come to him. That’s why Ken drew the sword and dropped down on the patrol passing beneath him, reducing it to blue-flamed ash piles within seconds. He ambushed patrol after patrol, destroying each in turn, and soon knowing that there was a gaping hole in the outer defenses that could not be ignored.

As Ken expected, the remaining security patrols flooded down his way, but they did not arrive in any manner that could contain him. He went from one to the next, his laughter getting louder as more of then burned to ash before him, and none of The Necromancer’s undead thralls could so much as get a touch on Ken. He kept on cutting them down and burning them to ash, knowing that soon his target had to appear to salvage the situation. By the time that one could see ash piles all about for a few hundred yards, Ken’s expectation got fulfilled.

The leader, arriving with a bodyguard of a score of corpse-men, was indeed life-like as Ken expected. So was his bodyguard, and all of them armed with crude clubs—likely debris picked up from around the mine’s entrance—that showed them as being a more significant threat. Yet, once they saw Ken and the sword in his hands, they showed fear. That fear meant hesitation, and hesitation gave Ken an opening so Ken attacked.

This was not Ken’s first time fighting the life-like legionnaires of The Necromancer, as he’d been part of a raid upon the Necropolis itself some years before and encountered such minions then, so he had a firm idea of what to expect from them. Before they could regain composure, Ken already struck down a quarter of their number. Even then, and with supernatural will imposing itself upon them to attack, they still could not wholly commit. This sliver of a difference was all that Ken needed to put them all down.

Ken soon had the leader at his mercy. Armless, legless, backed up against a tree- helpless now against a foe stronger than expected. Ken took off the leader’s head and said “You can’t stop me, Necromancer.”

The Treasure of the Iron Range-08

When the sun rose, and Ken awoke, he saw the “gift” still lay cradled in his arms: a sword, firm in its scabbard, just like out of the stained-glass windows of Old World temples. He got to his feet, and after he stretched himself out of his lingering slumber he took up that scabbard and drew that sword. In a tongue dead millennia before the Old World’s destruction, a tongue that Ken knew from studies done in his life before now, he read the inscription put into the sword’s cross-guard: “Cast in the Name of God, Ye Not Guilty.”

“An executioner’s sword.” Ken said, and it became clear now what Gabriel thought of him: a slayer, sanctioned by powers beyond mortal comprehension, of those deemed beyond redemption. As he examined the sword, he noticed another inscription—in an even more obscure tongue—on the blade itself. Ken eyed that inscription with great care, and then held the blade as far away from himself as he could before speaking that word. The blade erupted in flames, blue-white flames just like those that he saw destroy the Old World, and now Ken comprehended the matter fully: to destroy Wendigo utterly, he be consumed by the uttermost fire of Creation itself.

Ken extinguished the flames by a repeated utterance, and then put away the sword. Ken broke camp, such as it was, and then made his way back to the open pit mine. Unlike last time, Ken ambushed the patrols instead of evading them. He destroyed them faster than the leaders could react, and then he moved inward and cleaved his way through the corpse-laborers mindlessly hacking away with rusted pics. Then, when the leaders finally reacted he cleaved his way through the ad-hoc militia of dead men and made his way to those leaders- or, rather, leader. The other two he previously saw were not there.

Without effort he hacked apart that leader—first arms, then legs—and then beheaded the now-limbless corpse-man. He picked up the severed dead head and stared into its lifeless eyes.

“I’m in your digs, gankin’ your mans, and I’m gonna get your treasure. You think you can stop me? Come at me, bro.”

Then he tossed the head aloft and carved it in half before it hit the ground. If that didn’t get The Necromancer’s attention, then Ken had no idea what would. To be certain, Ken scoured that open site and destroyed every last undead thing that he found. He burned what he destroyed, incinerating them and reducing them to ash. Once satisfied that he utterly destroyed The Necromancer’s presence at this old open-pit mine, he walked away from the scourged site and let his senses guide him to the next site- and the one that he knows will be more dangerous to handle: the old underground mine that formerly was a historical preservation site during the waning days of the Old World.

Ken felt a malevolent presence. This was the place; now’s the time.

The Treasure of the Iron Range-07

“The Creator—God, if you prefer—intended for what you call ‘The Azure Flames’ (how poetic!) to be much less destructive than what it was. However, there are plenty of those who defy him-“

“Like you?”

“Oh no, monkey-boy, not at all.” Gabriel said, “While I don’t know why your kind has his favor, and I still think that you’re not worthy of that favor, I am still loyal and do as I am told.”

“This ought to be good.” Ken said, and he bit into another piece.

“As I said, God has his enemies. Your kind has words for them, and those monkeys that they swayed to their cause. These enemies are of my kind, and so work differently from what your minds can comprehend.”

“Fallen angels and demons,” Ken said, “and their human cultists, right?”

“You’ve been paying attention! Good monkey.” Gabriel said, and patted Ken on the head, “The other entities—the spirits that some of your kind deal with—are lesser than my kind, to put this into a context that monkey-brains can comprehend, so we are talking about the primal powers of Creation.”

Ken didn’t hear, smell or taste any lies from Gabriel, yet.

“The enemy had two groups of cultists, spread across a great many subsets. One was a rather ordinary group of power-obsessed individuals who loved like monkeys often love this world, the sort you so often slaughtered in great numbers in your old life. The other group, the older one, trafficked with—and congressed with—the enemy regularly for the sort of power that monkeys can otherwise only steal by guile or raw will.”

Ken nodded, watching Gabriel pace around him as he often stalked prey.

“The monkeys got out of hand, and when their big attempt to steal the power unleashed at God’s hands when—against my expectations—a critical mass of you monkeys actually proved to be as good as expected and thus proved yourselves ready for the next step that cascaded into ‘The Azure Flames’. What you’re seeing now is the cleaning of that great mess.”

“Interesting.” Ken said, “Let me guess: The Necromancer is meant to clean out the humans not sufficiently up to standards, and then I’m here to clean him out when he’s done?”

Gabriel clapped, slowly. “Very good! You’re one clever monkey, but that’s not quite all of it. Far beyond this place, and this time, there are others who have vital roles to play. Some of them will be villains, as your kind sees things, and some will be heroes. All I can say for you, specifically, is that you’ll never do your job by yourself; it’s too big and will take too long.”

Ken mulled over those words. “I thought so. Now, about Wendigo in particular.”

“Ah, yes.” Gabriel said, “The moment at hand. You reflect him. This is no accident, monkey. Yet he is beyond your might, and outside the plan.”

Gabriel dropped a blanket before Ken.

“Use this. Do your job.”

The Treasure of the Iron Range-06

Ken culled another zombie from The Necromancer’s uncounted horde of undead thralls, sneaking in under cover of darkness and ambushing a sentry lurching about its patrol of a dig site. After he dragged the lifeless corpse away, and then began consuming it, Ken also mulled over a plan. Ken knew that The Necromancer, whatever else that villain was, was not a fool; it was wise to presume that The Necromancer would be wary of Ken intervening.

Ken chewed on the flesh of his meal. Even now, The Necromancer’s presence—through his horde—felt palpable to him. That presence, if it focused itself upon Wendigo, would be more than he could handle. Somehow, Ken must separate his target from his enemy and keep them apart long enough to put Wendigo down for good. Then there was that ally of his enemy, the one whose very presence radiated power beyond mortal means, and yet did not seem so dissonant as his enemy.

What of this thing that allied itself to The Necromancer? Would he—it—intervene? If it did, what would it do and how would it do that? Why did it look like a young Christopher Walken from some Old World horror film? Ken tossed the now-meatless bone aside, and heard it hit something other than a tree, rock or dirt- and then felt that same eerie presence.

“You’re a curious monkey.”

Ken leapt to his feet. Out from the darkness he saw a man-like figure appear—approach—him.

“Would you prefer a more familiar form?”

The figure changed its shape, appearing as that now-dead actor, and now Ken remembered.

“Gabriel.” Ken said, “That is your name, isn’t it?”

“In your tongue, so that’s good enough.” Gabriel said.

Ken took in a deep breath, drawing in through his nose and exhaling through his mouth, flexing himself without thinking as if he prepared for a fight. He smelled stale incense barely masking a rot off of Gabriel.

“Your kind calls mine ‘angels’.” Gabriel said, “Yes, the monkey I look like mimicked me well, and I must say that inspiring your kind can be quite entertaining. The story, however, I made up.”

“You’re not here to chat over dinner.” Ken said.

“True.” Gabriel said, “I’m here because I caught your little trick the other day. The ‘see-through-another’s-eyes’ trick that you did I found very interesting. I had to know what new monkey came up with this stuff. I’ve been following you now for weeks.”

Ken gave Gabriel a disbelieving look.

“Time doesn’t work the same way for us as it does for you.”

“So,” Ken said as he assessed Gabriel’s body language, “if you’re watching me, then why talk to me now?”

“Because you’re about to do something rash and stupid, and—as much as I’d love to watch you do your monkey-thing and fail spectacularly—I have my orders.”

“Which are?”

“There’s more to what’s going on than you’ve figured out—that you could ever figure out—on your own.”

"Tell me."

The Treasure of the Iron Range-05

Ken’s mind returned from the past. Still before him stood the water spirit, still shaped as a man, and still holding Ken’s head in its hands.

“I’ve known stories of other giants, from other places, in days like those.” Ken said, “This is one of that race?”

The spirit nodded. “Wendigo slumbers fitfully. Unable to exact its revenge as it wished, only now and again does it remind the world that it exists when a shade possesses a man.”

“Nephilim.” Ken said, “The spawn of angels and women, forbidden by God.”

“Yes. That is the word from across the seas for that race.”

“And thus Wendigo is an old and powerful demon.”

Again, the spirit nodded. “We also know that word.”

Ken looked at the spirit before him with a discerning eye and a disdainful scowl.

“I find it interesting that this demon and I share so many salient qualities.” Ken said.

“Predators are more alike than different.” The spirit turned away and faded into the lake.

“I see.” Ken said, “Farewell.”



Ken walked away from the edge of the water and sat against a tree. Ken calmed his body, and then his mind. He slowed his breathing, making it steady in its pace and deep in its action—breath in, breath out, breath in, breath out—and once more banished the noisome distractions of the world. As his mind calmed, Ken reviewed what he knew: The Necromancer sought to unearth a long-dead ancient demon, one originally of a race spawned in a time before the Old World’s reckoning of Man’s past, slain before Civilization reached these shores, and banished shortly thereafter into a prison made of its own grave. It was an insatiable monster, craving manflesh without thought or sentiment, a beast with naught by animal cunning in its life. It was no less a monster in death, and being dead it fell into the reach of The Necromancer.

Ken recalled that he knew of many survivors, holding out as far as they can from what both Ken and his fellow survivors now called The Necropolis—the seat of The Necromancer’s power, where the dead are legion—and that these survivors now formed the core around which new communities now formed, communities that opposed The Necromancer. He recalled thwarting undead hunting squads, seeking survivors to slay and assimilate into the undead horde. Having a powerful demon, once more clad in flesh, dedicated to this task would be a risk that The Necromancer would be willing to take even if its hunger proved to turn against that villain should undead flesh serve well enough as food.

Ken remembered the powerful presence by The Necromancer when he examined the memories of the zombie thrall, and then saw that The Necromancer relied on this ally to be the safeguard against any threat of Wendigo turning against The Necromancer. If Wendigo could be brought to heel using this ally’s power, then it could be effectively used by The Necromancer. Wendigo must be destroyed.

The Sons of Ken: A Primer

The Sons of Ken are, by now, famous. Many of us have blood ties, however distant, to that first new race of Men to emerge after the Azure Flames destroyed the Old World. Unlike many of the great heroes and villains to emerge, those whose names are lost to us now, the Sons of Ken ensured that we know all that there is to know of their mighty and legendary progenitor.

I shall not talk of Ken's life before the Coming of the Azure Flames, save to comment that it is now clear that what he truly was had already manifested in a subtle state long before the Old World burned to ash. All that the Azure Flames did was to force the transformation to complete itself, to make Ken fully become what he always was meant to be: a hunter of monsters, a slayer of Man's predators, a killer of Things Unclean.

The Azure Flames burned away all unnecessary for Ken's mission. The brilliant green eyes turned star-aflame yellow, sunk into blacked sockets. His flame-red hair burned away, from crown to toe, and his already fair skin bleached white like fresh-fallen snow; his mortal hunger turned towards the consumption of his prey exclusively, freeing him from procuring water and food as he once had to do, and his already keen awareness heightened to supernatural states and substantiated via super-sensory sensitivity.

The Azure Flames also burned away the ravages of age and the injuries of action, making him once more whole and filled with the power of youth- a blessing that became common in the Sons that he would go on to sire. The predators of all Creation now saw Ken as one of them, and they respected their two-legged brother in turn. This too passed on to all of the Sons.

This, reader, is why The Necromancer hated the Sons of Ken and waged war upon them. How could he not? They stalked and slew his property--the dead--for sport and sustenance, in turn inspiring survivors of the Old World to give their daughters to him (and, later, to his Sons) in return for training their sons as best they could and aiding in saving what of them that he (and his Sons) could.

The Sons would soon spread far and wide, repeating their father's feats and winning over the living peoples who had not already escaped the doom of The Necromancer in some other fashion. Later they would become witch-slayers, demon-killers, eat the flesh of dragons, and otherwise seek out and slay that which preys upon Man.

Today the Sons are few amongst Civilization, but remains a race found frequently on the frontier where their ways are appreciated most (and are needed most). This race, in a real ways, are Man's salvation and has been time and again in the ages after the Azure Flames. Wild, seeking action always, and peculiar in that their women are not like the Sons- but always bear more Sons, regardless of who they take as husbands, much to the dismay of prissy people ever and always. Some day the Sons will die out, but that day comes only when the last monster is slain and no more shall ever come.

That day, reader, is one that we--if we are honest with ourselves--pray never comes.

Stalker-Part 10

Jane awoke to a surprise. She saw Tom looking over her, cuddling their newborn son, and he read her amazement on her emaciated face. With a free hand, he signaled for quiet and pointed to the baby, and then he leaned closer.

“You’re not dreaming. You’re awake, you’re safe, and you’re in the cave with the woman that Ken talked about.”

Jane, still stunned and groggy, didn’t answer. Tom handed her a warm, cooked fish.

“Eat. You need it.” Tom said, “You’ve been out for days. I’ll explain what happened.”

Jane, still coming around, took the fish and nibbled at it.

“Ken sent me to this place, where the cave women dwell, when we failed to get the book I wanted out of the library and had to flee the city. The women here tell me that they are adopted daughters of the spirit of the Mississippi River, which is apparently the thing that found you and brought you here.”

Feeling some strength return to her flesh, Jane bit deeply into the fish.

“Ken figured out what happened, more or less, to the farm. Last I heard, he’s still in the city seeking some way to get to Sally and get out again.”

The baby cooed.

“No matter what, Jane, we’re leaving this place. We can’t go north, and we don’t have the means to go east or west anymore- not for long. Once we know, one way or the other, what’s become of Ken and Sally we’re fleeing from here and going as far from that city as possible.”

Jane looked up from her meal, shocked anew.

“You’ve seen what’s in that city, Jane. We didn’t survive all these years because we’re better than the zeds. We survived because that monster in the city—that “necromancer” Ken talked about—didn’t think we were worth his time!”

Jane put down her fish. “Do you know?”

Tom nodded. “The women told me. One of them heard you talking in your sleep, going on about the attack on the farm, and that’s how I figured that what Ken deduced was right. The world’s gone even crazier than we thought, Jane, and I don’t know what the hell to do anymore- other than get as far from it all as we can.”

Jane slipped her arms around her husband.

“It’s out of our hands now, Jane. It’s all out of our hands, and all up to Ken.”

“Funny, isn’t it?” Jane said, “It seems that the world’s pushing normal people like us out.”

Tom, resigned, embraced his wife and sighed wistfully.

“What about Sally?” Jane said.

“If she’s still alive after all this—if Ken can get her back—then she’s his wife. She’s far better off with him than us now. Ken’s part of this insane world and Sally’s got to go with the future no matter how insane it is. You and I will be busy enough keeping ourselves and the baby going.”

“Why not stay here?”

“I doubt that this place will remain safe much longer, for us or anyone else, especially if Ken succeeds. For some reason, that monster wants Sally, and that means that he’ll come this way sooner or later. We’d better be gone well before that happens.”

* * * * *

Ken, certain that he and Sally were indeed alone, took a moment to inspect the girl as he sundered her bonds- he saw a couple of draw-cuts that had since sealed.

“These!” Ken said, poking the wounds, “What happened?”

“One of them cut me, and then held something up to me right on the cuts, before sealing them. He tasted the blood, and then sprinkled it over the zeds- like some kind of blessing or something. The zeds settled down and then they tied me to the stake.”

Ken cast about, seeking something to use as a cover for Sally, but none could be had.

“Damn!” Ken said, “That makes it clear now. We have to move, now!”

Sally tried to object, but Ken cut her off before she said a word and pointed to the river.

“We reach the river, we’re safe. We don’t, we fail.”

Sally again opened her mouth, and got cut off.

“I don’t know exactly why, but he wants you- alive. He’s used you to set a trap, and it’s about to spring. We run, now!’

Before Sally could stall things further, Ken threw her over his shoulder, broke into a run and made for the river. Distantly, they heard the clamor of a horde of screaming zeds approach. Ken ran, banishing fatigue and strain from his limbs through his own mutant qualities to keep up a sprint-like pace. Sally, looking behind them, saw an uncountable number of corpse-soldiers surge into view like an onrushing flood coming from behind. Ravenous and unyielding, the undead reflection of her own living would-be savior, she screamed and clutched for the only thing still adorning her body: the ring that Ken lent to her, still hanging on a string about her neck.

Moments later, Ken smirked with a wicked satisfaction. A new scent banished the omnipresent stench of death and decay that saturated his senses, swelling up from the very girl current over his shoulder and screaming wildly. The sweet scent, to his senses a mix of lilacs and roses in bloom, made Ken certain that Sally had somehow tapped into a power greater than herself. Soon the scent put him into a near-frenzy, and only through his intense focus on the moment did this explosion of supernatural power not throw him into a rage-filled killing haze. His entire body pushed to its limits, fueled by Sally’s sudden surge of supernatural power, Ken led the horde on a chase that Sally could not believe.

The Necromancer watched, viewing the chase simultaneously through the eyes of many of his drone-like minions, and he directed the horde. He wielded the wave-like hordes as if a painter brushes across a canvas. With each stroke, he meant to cut off Ken and force him to stand and fight, and with each stroke he cut closer and closer to that goal.

After some initial efforts, the Necromancer noticed that when his minions nearly closed the gap and made contact with Ken and Sally there would be some mishap that disrupted his momentum just enough to keep his quarry ahead of his minions.

The shade of John Dee appeared beside the Necromancer. “Master, the girl has some sorcery at her command.”

The Necromancer nodded. “Indeed.”

Just then, as Ken ran over a crumbling bridge covering what once was a rail yard, the bridge collapsed into dust beneath his feet. Ken and Sally fell to the rocky ground below, with Ken ensuring that he—and not Sally—took the brunt of the impact. They landed harshly, but in an inexplicable bit of good fortune they landed in a deep hole filled with stagnant water. By the time the pair climbed out, however, the horde surrounded them.

Ken knew that the river was near; were it not for the din of the horde, he would hear its waters. As Sally glommed onto him, trying as she might to shield herself from the undead and ravenous horde, Ken bent down and whispered into her ear.

“Call to the river, girl. Call to it if you want to live. I will hold them.”

Sally collapsed into a fetal ball, terrified. Ken drew the cleaver-like blades and stood over her.

“Call, damn you!” Ken said, “Or shall I sell my life for nothing?”

The minions came upon them, and Ken whirled into motion. The haze took him, and Ken lost all track of time and space. Conscious thought now suppressed, Ken whirled into motion; without pause he crushed bones and hacked flesh, severed limbs and smashed skulls. Still energized, still frenzied, Ken’s endurance astounded the Necromancer- his mutant nature pushed him well outside mortal limits.

As the blood, bone, rotted flesh and vile viscera spilled around her Sally closed her eyes and clutched that ring as if it was a magical talisman- and in her hands, it was. She chanted the very call demanded of her over and over, unwittingly using it to transform her terror into focused will, and as she did Ken against felt the girl’s supernatural power swell, building up towards a massive outpouring of power.

Ken supped unthinkingly at the power beneath his feet, using it to fuel his flesh and keep it going beyond the limits of his endurance. Already nicked, cut, bruised, sliced and otherwise covered in small wounds all over both arms as at about his chest and back, and then about his legs and then his shoulders and neck- Ken sustained such a series of wounds that would take him down ordinarily, had he not been seized by the fury of such otherworldly menace and power suffusing his senses such that he can’t suppress the urge to slaughter and devour.

“Mississippi River, hear my call and take us away!” Sally said, now screaming.

The spirit answered. The river surged over its banks and flooded the city, sweeping away the debris and dead in its path, and crashed about Ken and Sally. When the waters receded, they were gone.

The Necromancer sighed. “Time is on my side, girl. Sooner or later, you shall serve me.”

Mississippi swept Ken and Sally downriver, away from the Necromancer’s domain, and for now from his power- and as a result, the stalker of the dead became the father of a nation: the Sons of Ken.

Stalker-Part 9

Tom awoke to find the face of a strange woman looking back at him. He found his limbs bound to a crude frame, and his clothes damp.

“You are Tom?” the woman said.

“Yes.” Tom said, “Who are you?”

“I am Lilly.” The woman showed Tom his bag. “You came to us through the river, guided here by our matron, Mississippi.”

As Tom’s eyes adjusted to the light, he noticed that Lilly was a young woman; he guessed that she was yet a girl, about 10 years older than his daughter, when the Cataclysm came.

“Ken sent you here.” Lilly said, “Mississippi told me that Ken left instructions for you.”

Tom nodded, acknowledging. Lilly took up the note and read it to him.

“’Tom, I send you to the ones you called ‘cave women’ so you can escape and recover. Stay there. Once you’re better, be a good guest and help them. Remember your manners, and respect the word of Elder Canny: you do not mess with that woman. Stay put; I will recover Sally and bring her to you. I’ve asked Mississippi to see to Jane.”

By now, Tom’s seen enough weird and fantastic things—especially out of Ken—to let good sense run its course. Obligingly, Tom sighed.

“Might I have someplace more comfortable to sleep?”

Lilly laughed, amused, and cut him from the frame. Helping him to his feet, she led Tom to a nearby bed of leaves and grass and laid him down. She tossed a couple of cured bear hides over him, sat his bag under his head to use as a pillow.

“Deciding to be sensible?” Lilly said.

Tom winced, now noticing the hurt he sustained, and nodded. “Ken was right; my part of this adventure is over, and now all I can do is wait and hope.”

With that, Tom curled up and went back to sleep, a wish swiftly granted.

* * * * *

Ken mulled over his options while consuming the flesh of a zed he’d brought down. He now felt certain that, whatever else this Necromancer was, he was not without the needs and urges of the living; though Ken didn’t perceive the fullness of the Necromancer’s intention, that this was the second time he had crossed paths with the villain during a dispute over women For the second time, therefore, Ken set himself to denying the Necromancer possession of living women.

First, however, Ken had to deal with whatever monster hounded his heels. His hatchet and knife, while valuable tools, would not handle the butchery required for this task. Finishing his meal, Ken banished the fatigue from his muscles and bones, and in stealth he skulked throughout the necropolis for suitable replacements. From a pair of unwary corpse-soldiers, Ken stole a pair of cleaver-like blades; long, sharp and crude—but serviceable—they were, but competently made and deftly-wielded in his calloused hands. In these stolen arms Ken found what he required.

Second, Ken need to draw out his quarry. After a short nap, Ken stalked his stalker. Again he found and ambushed more of his enemy’s undead minions, and over the hours Ken hit and killed many of these as they dispersed throughout the necropolis seeking both him and Tom. Ken, now letting his cunning take up command, ran his trackers on a macabre chase. A head taken becomes a prop in a ploy to misdirect his foe, mounted upon a scavenged piece of rebar and used to give the impression of Ken going one way instead of another. A pair of arms used as props to lure victims to a second doom, thinking that their fox had run into a corner, was another ploy. A pair of legs, stamped to mislead the rotting ears, made them think that their unseen enemies went some false direction, was a third. By such tricks, Ken chased and turned hunter again and again; the attempts by his enemy to keep him from resting proved weak, and from eating worthless.

This, inevitably, forced Quintus Fabius Maximus to confront Ken directly. Fabius, no fool, did not conceive of fighting Ken fairly. When Fabius finally saw Ken with his own dead eyes, they met at the ruins of one of the many bridges that once connected both sides of the river in this dead city. Fabius, befitting his Roman heritage and military history, let his minions swarm Ken. Ken grinned. He drew the purloined blades and—contrary to expectation—ran away, up the naked beams.

The formation broken, Ken turned about and hacked the legs out of the lead corpse. That one now off-balance, Ken pushed the corpse-soldier over the side and let the thing splatter on the broken ground far below. Ken sensed the advantage, and he pressed it. He fell on the undead minions, hacking off limbs and cleaving through skulls with a savage abandon. As one staggered, Ken shoved it out of the way and went for the one behind it. Steadily, Ken fought his way back down the beam; able to kill them one or two at a time, and with the high ground, he fought hard with all power at his command to cleave his way through the army of the dead before him.

Fabius reacted by taking those not on the beam, flanking the beam and throwing debris at Ken; Ken used his foes as shields, and Fabius didn’t care. Time skewed, and all sense faded for both living mutant and undead general. Savage fury and barbarous valor, tied to a supernaturally-honed cunning, proved a match for a depth of experience and significant soldiery that already knew death- and thus held it in utter contempt. In time, despite move and counter-move, a fatigued Ken finally faced a ready Fabius.

“Who are you?” Ken said, breathing heavy after some unknown time in battle.

“I humor you.” Fabius drew a crude mockery of a Roman sword, “Soon you shall die on my blade, and soon thereafter rise as my slave, but I grant your request as a boon- for you fight like only one other I saw in my living days.”

“I’m honored.” Ken said, recovery swiftly, and now seeing that it’s midday as he glanced his eyes upward.

“I am Quintus Fabius Maximus, the general that saved Rome in the Second Punic War and the nemesis of Hannibal Barca.”

The name ran through Ken’s mind; he’s heard it before, prior to the world’s end, and it seemed to be truth. Ken then took note of the general’s stance; this Fabius, clearly, defeated Hannibal- but never beat him. This fact gave Ken reason to smirk.

“Come, then. If you could be so vicious a man as Hannibal, prove it.”

Fabius and Ken closed their distance. Circling, probing, testing, feinting- and then, suddenly, a rush and ring of steel. Body-to-body they went, and Fabius shoved Ken to the ground. Then, no less suddenly, Ken leapt to his feat; he caught the Roman’s thrust with his main hand, and in one smooth motion brought his off-hand down on the general’s skull. Long-dead bone shattered into dust and shards, and the fires in those long-dead eyes flamed out. Without pause, Ken dismembered the corpse and then swiftly fled the scene.

Ken now had the more important of the tasks before him, but in this one he had it easier for he knew where to find his prize. Coming from the farmhouse, the undead troop would enter from the north and west end of the necropolis. This is where Ken went, and he saw that already a train entered from without. Two more like Fabius he saw, and these two seemed to be proper fighters and not mere movers of men. In a place of spectacle now sat, stripped of covering in mirror of her dignity, stood Sally; she stood, lashed to a pole and paraded as a captive princess of antiquity.

His blood got up, and Ken—feeling kinship to the tribal peoples of old—took great affront to this mockery of life in service to some demonic imperial power. No time now for thinking, and all time for cunning and fury. Ken felt that his blades, still slick with viscera most foul, up to the work and down he went to do what so many others did before him and failed.

Still, not a fool, Ken struck the parade from the rear. He attacked, slew a handful, and fled away; he drew away some troops, who themselves met oblivion, before circling back to do it again. In this, however, the Barca men proved wiser than Fabius- death taught them well. They immediately went to the rear to confront Ken. This they did, quickly chasing and catching Ken between the two of them. Ken, sensing that these two monsters were great and terrible butchers of men in life, wisely opted not to face them together.

Ken escaped the two, cutting a swath through a weak point in their encirclement and fleeing. The Barcas again saw Ken’s aim and caught him a second time as he approached Sally’s naked form and struck for the chains binding her.

“Persistent, this one!” Hamilcar said, “What sport this one shall bring, son?”

“This one is the man that the master seeks, father!” Hannibal said, “Apparently, Fabius failed!”

A loud, unnerving and unnatural laughter erupted from the pair. Ken again struck for the chains, which brought the undead back to the moment.

“Deny the master his prize, would you?” Hamilcar said.

“This one is mine, monsters. Promised to me by her father, and I think you two are able to remember what that means.”

“We do.” Hannibal said, “Yet we are the master’s slaves, and must obey him. He demands this one as his own, and we cannot deny him.”

“A shame.” Hamilcar said, “For beating the Roman, we would let you go otherwise.”

Ken’s mind threw a hunch at him, and he decided to play it.

“I did beat him, but I suspect that even in death his Roman ego won’t allow the Sons of Carthage to claim greater glory than he might. As I raced here, swift on my heels ran those under his command, for those I am not without strength I am not a god.”

Just then, Ken felt the presence of a great, terrible and awesome entity. It commanded the attention of the undead officers that he hoped were Hannibal and some other Carthaginian hero; and a few moments later they waved off their troops towards the direction of the ziggurat.

Turning their foul faces to him, they spoke.

“Fare you well, Eater of the Dead.” Hamilcar said, “We shall meet again.”

“Our thanks for rubbing the Roman’s face in it, living Ken.” Hannibal said.

Perplexed, the Barca men quit the parade and raced to rejoin their troops. Alone with Sally, Ken quickly sundered the chains and cut her loose. Then he felt the presence again.

“I am Gabriel.” It said, “I serve the one you know as the Necromancer. I am his vizier and liaison with greater powers.”

Ken sniffed about, attempting to find where exactly this entity was.

“It is our creator’s wish that I defy the appointed king.” Gabriel said, “I assume that this is because you are part of His plan to regenerate Man.”

Ken, his mind still quick in the moment, did not miss his mission.

“This girl, my intended wife, what of her mother?”

“I guided her to the river. You handled the rest already.”

What of our escape then?” Ken said, now looking about him as he put Sally into a carry.

“Yours to handle, Kenneth.” Gabriel said, “I do only what I am allowed, as I am yet faithful unto Him.”

Then Ken felt the presence vanish, and he knew that again he was alone with Sally. That this entity is unseen bothered Ken, but not as much as the implications.

Stalker-Part 8

The men of the community, with Rick in command, returned to the farmstead with the piece of machinery that they raided the necropolis for in hand. Their demeanor betrayed the mixed results, and for Jane and Sally it gave both women pause; in Rick’s face they knew what a conspicuous absence of Tom and Ken really meant before they heard the details.

What none of the men knew was that their absence was long enough for all of them to miss Jane give birth to yet another boy, with no one but Sally to aide her through the process. Subdued, the men came into the house in pairs or trios to see the newborn and pay their respects to a recovering Jane. Rick came in last, having ensured the storage of their prize, and he gave the women the ill word.

“Tom and Ken are inside the city. Tom’s making a run for the library, with Ken watching his back, hoping to find that engineering text again. Tom ordered the men with him to come back; Ken agreed.”

Jane understood. Rick understood. This was not the first time Tom did this sort of thing. Sally, on the other hand, shook visibly and grabbed the ring that she kept under her shirt.

“The men also told me that this ‘Necromancer’ that Ken talked about is in there, and that the old city is gone; there’s some sort of alien city of the dead made from the buildings and streets that used to be there, with a few exceptions. They say that Ken sensed its eyes upon them, and that’s why Ken pushed them to get out as fast as they could go.”

“You don’t think he’s coming back alive, do you?”

“If he does, then Ken will have surely earned his prize.”

With that, Sally broke into tears, ran to her room, slammed the door and wished over that ring.

* * * * *

The undead army of Hamilcar and Hannibal Barca, the Carthaginian generals that brought Spain under Carthaginian rule and prosecuted the Second Punic War, marched without fatigue or distraction for the farmstead designed by their master: The Necromancer. When they received word that a group of men some distance before them seemed to be going to the same destination, the two men knew that soon their work would reach its moment of bloodshed and butchery. Both father and son knew that this was no true battle, but instead punishment. Both had no qualms with hacking apart such communities; they did so plenty in life, and in death it came even easier to them.

It seemed so easy to them. Without fear, they trailed the living men back to the farmstead. Without worry they arranged their meager forces in a simple encirclement. Without concern, they began their attack. Unmoved, they watched their victims expend the whole of the community’s cached ammunition and incendiaries upon the initial waves of expendable troops. Guns empty, bombs used, and barriers bowed- the community moved to evacuate as planned before the barriers broke. While a wave of zeds pressed upon the barriers, the Barcas maneuvered their deathless cavalry into position, and with the aplomb of a father yanking a child up off his feet by the arm that cavalry struck like a hammer against the anvil of the zed infantry.

Exactly as ordered, they slaughtered the men and the boys with savage, monstrous fury. Exactly as ordered, they seized Sally and bound her as a captive. Exactly as ordered, they put both home and fields to the torch. Exactly as ordered, Hamilcar and Hannibal spared Jane. Not knowing if her newborn were a boy or a girl, they spared the baby.

The slain men and boys, now under the Necromancer’s sway, arose from the dirt where they died and fell into line behind their new officers. Jane, alone with only her baby, slumped to her knees weeping as her home, her brother in law, her sons and the men that served her lurched away in time with a sound only the dead could hear while the fields that fed her and the home that sheltered her burned to ash.

As for Sally, she screamed—first with terror, then with horror and finally in hysteria—until she cried out her last and slumped into the back of the wagon, her energy spent, and fell unto a slumber deep and disturbing. The Barca men laughed deep and full, their unnatural voices resonating with a ghastly echo that chilled Sally to the bone, as they drank of her despair as if it were ambrosia. In her sleep, she clutched that ring—still concealed under her shirt—with both hands and wished for someone to make it all better, to make all the monsters go away.


* * * * *

With the corpse-soldiers of Fabius Maximus bearing down on them, Tom and Ken shimmied down the rain gully of the old library as fast as they could go. As they cleared another floor, windows burst out and more corpse-soldiers scrambled out to intercept them in the style of monkeys or apes; they had pieces of steel rebar that they drove home into the wall with inhumane strength and speed, using each as a grip from which they brachiated with practiced ease. Tom glanced down, seeing the banks of the river far below them; Ken copied Tom.

“Jump, and press out from the wall!” Ken said.

“I can’t clear the distance!” Tom said, and the corpses drew closer.

Ken scrambled back up to Tom.

“Ken, there’s no time to arg-“ Tom said, just as Ken socked him in the gut. Ken scooped Tom over his shoulders in a most awkward carry with that same hand, and with moments to spare leapt from the wall and towards the river. The brachiating corpses leapt after them, but missed, despite their horrific might.

As they fell, Ken looked down and saw that, indeed, the ground approached faster than they cleared it. Ken blinked, and in that fraction of a second he felt a gust of wind slam into him; that wind shoved him just far enough to ensure that he and Tom would clear the bank and land in the deep water of the river. As they hit the water, Ken realized that this was no fluke; someone, or something, aided them- but he knew not what.

Tom and Ken swiftly came to their sense and swam up to the surface. Breaching it, both saw that the current already pulled them away from the library and south, away from the Necromancer’s center of power- and even further from the farmstead that they knew not yet had been raided and ruined by the Necromancer’s legendary lieutenants. The pair hurried swam for a fallen branch that hung over the water, and having grabbed fast to it they slowly drew themselves out of the water.

“What were those things?!” Tom said, slumping to the earth, exhausted.

Ken, likewise, sat on the dirt behind them. “Dead things.”

“No zed moved that like before.” Tom said, checking his bag, “They moved as if they lived.”

“They’re dead, Tom. They reeked of it, yet there was another presence—fouler, ranker—that drove them and guided them. It was his power that overwhelmed my senses, and yet it was not that of the Necromancer.”

Tom, though tired in ways he’d not been in years, had yet his wits. “A subordinate?”

Ken nodded. “It had to be, and it had to be a potent one.”

“Then we should count ourselves fortunate to’ve thwarted him.”

Now Ken shook his head. “No, he’s not done yet. We were hounded and harried, Tom, and we didn’t escape without aid; someone or something pushed us out over the water- we should’ve died.”

Tom, finding his bag to be okay, shunts it aside.
“Tom, we’re in way over our heads.”

Tom almost asked Ken for clarification, but then the implication hit him and he inferred Ken’s meaning clearly, and he gasped a wordless cry of terror.

“I’m sorry, Tom.” Ken said, taking Tom into his arms, “Your farm is forfeit for certain. So are your men, your brother, and…”

“My family?” Tom said, as tears began streaming down his face.

“This Necromancer may yet spare your wife and daughter, as he sees value in sparing a widow as a living symbol of his might. As for your daughter, I have good reason to believe that he yet breathes as we do.” Ken said, “But your sons are now his corpse-slaves.”

“What would a monster like him want with my daughter?” Tom said, sobbing.

“What you have with Jane is what he wants, Tom, and what all men want.” Ken dried Tom’s eyes, “Now, quiet yourself and listen to me. I am no master of military minds, but I do know tracking and stalking- and right now we are being stalked, hounded, and harried. This rest we’ve gotten won’t last long, and soon enough we’re on the run again. However, this means that we’re more valuable to our enemy alive than dead at this time; we must make use of this fact while it exists.”

“What are you talking about?” Tom said, agitated.

“Survival.” Ken said, “Maybe even something of a win, but everything’s changed now. Your time in this adventure is over, Tom. The best thing you can do now is leave this place and stay away; I’ve got a strong feeling that I—not you—am the quarry being hounded here, and that now things reshape to put me into the trap.”

Tom looked at Ken, ill-following Ken’s logic.

“I eat zeds. He makes zeds. Need I spill this out in more basic terms?”

“But Jane-“

“She will be fine, if you do exactly what I demand of you. Can you do that?”

“How? How can you possibly guarantee that?”

At this point, using his unseen hand, Ken found the taser that Tom secretly kept in the bag and drew it out without a sound. Keeping Tom’s attention misdirected to him, Tom never noticed Ken turn it on; the next thing he knew, Tom again fell into unconsciousness and his form went limp in Ken’s lap.

With great urgency, Ken scavenged amongst the nearby trees and ruins. He found enough floatable debris and lashing materials—wire, cables, etc.—that he put together a frame and tied Tom to it. Then he took his knife and stood before the river. Cutting his own forearm, he let the blood fall into the river and waited a moment.

“Mississippi, I call to you. Receive this, proof of myself, and answer.”

Moments later, Ken felt—but neither saw nor heard—a palpable presence about him. Wet, wild and willful- it was the entity he beckoned to him.

“What gives you, butcher of those that breathe twice, leave to harken unto me?”

Ken pointed up and behind him, towards the ziggurat.

“He seeks a prize amongst the living, one that may yet hear your voice, so as to trap myself. You are no friend of the dead, despite our own conflicts, and for that reason I ask a boon of you. Take this man, father of the virgin stolen from this man’s home, and take him to the caves where the women I relieved from this monster now take refuge.”

Then, taking a piece of paper and a pen, Ken scribbles a note and puts it in Tom’s bag.

“I leave this man some instructions. Be certain that he reads them; be certain that the women ensure his obedience.”

“In return, stalker, I shall not hear of hunts against my children?” Mississippi said.

“So long as they respect the Creator’s rule, I shall not hunt them.”

Tense moments pass. A swelling sensation of something awesome and terrible rises in the back of Ken’s mind.

“Choose quickly, spirit. A greater power waxes, and likely sweeps this way.”

The raft rises by unseen hands and seems to push into the river.

“Agreed, stalker.”

Stalker-Part 7

Tom, groggy, waved for the men to gather around. Ken, feeling an urgency that escaped the men about him, kicked those abed awake and splashed them with water from the fire buckets near at hand.

“Wake up!” Ken said, bellowing, “On your feet, or next time you get up you’ll be zeds!”

That prick to their primal fear got the men moving, and moments later they stood around Ken and Tom. With all eyes on him, Ken pointed back towards the Necropolis, towards the ziggurat.

“He knows.” Ken said, “He’s coming for us.”

Ken let that sink into their groggy heads, and once he heard their collective gasp he knew that they realized the threat.

“I guess that he means to trap us, killing each of you and using your corpses against the rest of us in turn. Fortunately, we have just enough time to evade this doom.”

“What’s the plan, Tom?” one of them said, his mask of bravado cracking.

Tom turned to Ken, and Ken’s reading of Tom’s face gave the mutant a good idea of what that plan was.

“All of you men are to pack up and head back to the farm.” Tom said, “Ken and I will handle the rest of the job ourselves.”

One of the younger men moved to protest, only for his father to shut him up. The older men, seeing the full intent in Tom’s eyes, knew better than to argue with their leader. With haste they broke camp and split up, marching as fast as they could maintain going back the way that they came. Once out of sight, Tom again turned to Ken.

“Tom, you’d better be certain that this library still has whatever you’re looking for in it. I’m certain now that the Necromancer knows that you’re raiding his domain for that prize, and I’m just as certain that as soon as we’re detected we’ll have a horde of zeds swarming for us.”

“It’s there, in a climate-controlled portion of the archive. When the Cataclysm hit, it was due to be digitized; the staff kept it there to facilitate the process, because they kept the scanning station near to that vault.”

“It ain’t the Vatican, Tom. It was one of the university libraries. “

Tom chortled. “No regular to libraries, were you? That one in particular kept a lot of old and rare manuscripts, and the university decided to digitize them to satisfy both the archivists worried about the conditions of the collections as well as the faculty and students that used the collections for coursework and research. That’s why the vault existed, and why the scanning station was so close; to minimize the time outside of climate-controlled conditions.”

Ken nodded. “That works. Now, the book’s there?”

“It has to be there; nowhere else for it to go before digitization means that it sat in that vault.”

“You can get in there?”

“If the locks still work, I can crack them. If not, and the vault isn’t breached, then I have a far different set of locks, as it were, to handle that.”

Ken didn’t argue; he didn’t believe Tom’s tale of tools, but neither could he do better.

“Back downriver we go, only we’re going downriver floating on debris; they’ll be watching for boats, rafts and men walking along the banks.” Ken said, “The library is along the banks.”

“I remember it well.” Tom said, “Right next to where I got my M.B.A.”

Ken sighed. “We scale the banks, then the walls, and come in through an upper floor window if we find a safe entrance point- otherwise, to the roof and down from there.”

“You’re sure that we can’t just go through the front door?”

Ken glared at Tom, and that ended the conversation. Once they split their gear between the two of them, they wade back into the river and let the current take them downstream. Passing back under the Great Wall, and into the Necromancer’s domain, they stayed as close together as currents and prudence allowed. Tom kept his eyes on Ken, hiding when he hid and ducking when he ducked, for all of the powers that Ken spoke of were invisible to Tom’s eyes and thus had to rely on the mutant yet again for his own survival.

Tom saw Ken pass to the shore as they neared the old falls dividing downtown from the once-upscale area right across the river, and used great effort to follow the mutant’s seemingly-effortless prowess. For his part, Ken watched and guided Tom to shore- pulling him up out of the river when in reach. Once on his feet, Ken grabbed Tom by the shoulder and pointed at the monstrous black shape before them; the grand ziggurat, stretched over the river, clearly composed of tar, steel, concrete, rebar and other materials obviously recycled from the skyscrapers that once rested here in what once was a city of renown before the Cataclysm.

“Your library is there.” Ken said, “In that thing’s shadow. We have to come around the site of the lab that the university used for mass-wasting experiments, and reenter the river below.”

Tom looked about him. Though the buildings were long gone, and streets disappeared also, leaving tell-tale signs of pits where foundations once stood, Tom still recollected where he was in the city- and that gave him another idea.

Tom pointed down a wide, dirt road that once was an underpass running parallel to the river.

“Does this still go under the Interstate bridge?”

“Not that the bridge is there anymore, but yes.” Ken said, “Why? You have a better idea?”

“If we hurry along that road, we can get into a better, and shorter, position to cross the river and get at the library.”

Ken looked; he saw what Tom saw, and figured it a good change. Ken went down the road, with Tom following, and both men now put hands to weapons; each assumed that it was only a matter of time until chance or fate put a zed’s dead eyes upon them, and once that happened inevitably more would converge on them.

Eyes did find them, but not dead eyes. Living eyes, those of the Necromancer, watched from his place atop the ziggurat. Ghostly eyes, the shades of his courtiers and viziers, blazed their cold light at him in turn.

“The mutant somehow perceived my intent.” the Necromancer said, “It is but himself and one other, the leader of that farmhouse band.”

The shade of Sun Tzu manifested before him. “Sire, what shall you do?”

“This entire affair stems from the fact that this band of men have but two women amongst them, one of which is the leader’s wife and the other his daughter- and the mutant conspires to take the girl as a prize in return for leading these men to a cave filled with women.”

“Yet you desire the mutant’s capture?” Sun Tzu said.

“I do.” The Necromancer said, “Fabius!”

The shade of Quintus Fabius Maximus appeared. “Master.” he said, saluting.

“Proceed as planned against the quarry within. Send the Butcher of Cannae and his father against the farmstead; spare the mother, take the daughter, slaughter the men and boys. Burn it and the fields to ash.”

“By your command.” Fabius said, and disappeared.

Elsewhere in the necropolis, corpses arose from piles of their own volition. Flesh deformed reshaped itself anew, and cold flame flickered in dead eye sockets. Two corpses in particular took on aspects of a race of men long vanished from the Earth; one older, one younger, both fierce and alive in temper. Corpses of horses and other beasts also arose and assumed renewed flesh, unnatural in form, and became bearers or pullers of carts or riders. An army marched forth from the Great Wall, treading grass and flowers underfoot, with two of Carthage’s most famous sons—Hamilcar and Hannibal Barca—at its helm.

Meanwhile, Fabius called up corpse-soldiers of his own. Deceptive in appearance, they lurched like the mindless flesh-eaters that Ken and Tom long knew and are accustomed to hacking apart by the score, but mindless they were not. As they moved towards the library, Fabius joined his master and watched Ken and Tom swim across the river and reach the far shore—near to these fiends—and began their ascent. The Necromancer knew that Fabius would hold back until the interlopers gained a way into the library and neared their quarry; inside, hidden, Fabius secreted a few score of his undead soldiers.

As Ken and Tom reached the vault, Ken stopped in his tracks and sniffed extensively. Tom went to him, took to Ken’s back, and raised his weapon- ready to fire.

“We’ve been found.” Ken said, “They’re here; the stench is nearly overwhelming.”

The first wave attacked, lurching forward wielding crude clubs foraged from the debris. Tom quickly emptied his weapon of ammunition, and once depleted the lurching suddenly shot into a rush; Tom barely got his gun up in time to block the blows. Ken, his mutant senses warning him just a moment before, stood ready with knife and hatchet. He twisted amongst them, panther-like, cutting them down by hacking or slashing limbs off; as he freed Tom from the press upon the man, a great swell washed over him.

“We’ve got to flee!” Ken said, shaking it off.

Tom shook his head, violently, in protest, but Ken backhanded him.

“We run or you die here!” Ken said, “Choose, quickly!”

Tom didn’t get a chance to speak, for they heard more rushing coming up from below. They ran, fleeing back for the window they shattered to get in, but found their rope cut and more of the monsters scaling up after them.

“Up!” Ken said, and he ran for the elevators. He and Tom forced the door open, and seeing nothing inside leapt for the ladder and began climbing up. Fear and dread drove them both, knowing that they wouldn’t avoid the undead hunters for long, but they gained the top of the shaft before the first pair of cold-fired eyes looked into the vacant shaft. Busting out a maintenance hatch, the two gained the roof of the library and hastily beat down the hatch again.

“Now?” Tom said.

Ken again shook off the swelling assault on his senses, scanned about him quickly and saw the rain gully going over the side.

“Take this down, and worry later about the pain!”

Stalker-Part 6

Tom and Ken organized the men into three watches. One watch stayed at camp, guarding their landing site and covering retreats. A second watch rested. The third watch either foraged for food and fuel, or accompanied Tom and Ken to a site. Ken came and went frequently, scouting the area and clearing a path from the camp to the long-ruined factory; Tom stayed close, and never without escort. Ken’s admonishments, as far as he saw, stuck.

The men camped where they made landfall at the river banks for a week before moving into the ruined city-turned-necropolis. They kept quiet, concealed their presence as best they could, and never lost sight of the camp while alone. Each day Ken would have Tom and some of the men follow him out of the camp a ways, showing them a place that he’d cleared for their progression into the necropolis; by the end of the week, Ken showed Tom the way to a hiding place within sight of the ruined factory.

“In there are the machine tools you seek.” Ken said, “They should be, at worst, repairable. You’ll need most of your men just to get them back to the sight, and then you’ll need to improve your raft or make multiple trips to bring them all out.”

“Do you intend to get inside and clear a path to the tools?”

Ken nodded.

“After that, we go to the library. Where it is?”

“Our best course is to go further downriver; it too lies near the banks, so it would be easiest to ascend from the banks, get inside, find your books or papers and then come out the same way.”

“What of the zeds?”

“I’ve not gone hungry here, Tom.”

That was all Tom needed, or wanted, to hear for an answer.

“Tom, I’ll be back in a day or so; head back to camp and wait there.”

Tom departed with his escort, while Ken bounded forth and sprinted across towards the ruined factory. Declining to enter at ground level, Ken scaled the building and found access a floor up through a broken window. Once inside, he crept through the ruin as a panther stalks prey; his footsteps fell so faint, even to his own ears, that Ken felt certain that no one else could possibly hear him.

With a knife in one hand and a hatchet in the other, Ken cautiously passed from room to hall and from level to level, knowing that the tools Tom sought would be on the main floor below. His senses, despite being dulled by the omnipresent stench of unnatural power, death and decay, remained sharp enough to warn him of immediate dangers- yet they told him nothing.

Ken got to Tom’s treasure, checked to see that they remained capable of being moved, and then cleared a path to the doors that he and Tom would need to get them out. Once secured, he located some simple parts to aid in moving them down to the river; some sheets of steel, empty drums and a working welding torch would come in handy. Ken placed the former two things with the tools, but took the torch with him when he left.

Cautious, Ken covered his tracks back to the camp; he obscured the others’ tracks as he got closer and all tracks converged. Upon returning to the camp, Tom looked up at Ken and thought the precaution odd. After Ken passed the welding torch to one of the men, Tom took him aside.

“What is it?”

“I felt a prick against the back of my neck; I’ve long taken that sensation as a warning.”

“I see. Did you see or hear anything?”

Ken shook his head.

“You found a torch. What else?”

“Your tools are there, and I found some materials that you’re going to need for that raft, but we must act quickly. I worry that we’re not going to go unnoticed for much longer.”

“Should we go now?”

“No,” Ken said, pointed up to the sky, “because the sun sets soon as we have no way to go by night that doesn’t give away our position. Instead, we must go shortly after dawn; we take two of the three watches, leaving the last here to rest, while we hurry to grab and take back those tools. As soon as we can, we get that raft upgraded and depart upriver to our spot beyond the Great Wall.”

“That’s why you brought the torch; there’s metal we can use?”

“Some drums and sheets of steel will allow the men to ensure that the raft will have the strength and buoyancy required to bring them out this way, but they must be ready to start work as soon as possible.”

Tom agreed, nodding.

Word spread through the camp swiftly of the changed plans, and eager to escape this unnerving place the men complied. The watchers eyed the land and waters outside the camp with eyes kept open and alert as much by fear as by unease, but again no incidents. Come dawn, those on watch slept at last; those asleep rose and quickly got to work. Tom and Ken lead them to the factory as fast as they could while keeping quiet and out of sight; thanks to Ken’s previous scouting, they got to it not long after they left camp.

Once Ken ascertained that no hostiles were about, the entire group rushed into the ruined factory; the tools and supplies were as Ken left them, so Ken helped get the supplies into the hands of some runners and sent them back straight away. Tom helped the rest of the men secure the tools to a cart that they jury-rigged from other parts in the building that Ken didn’t recognize as useful; soon, they too made ready to leave, which Ken—visibly showing signs of distress and unease that worried Tom—seemed happy to hear.

“A great power waxes near here, and its eyes sweep this way!” Ken said, “Move!”

Tom, not wanting to push the matter, relayed the order and the men moved. Pushing the cart as fast as they could out of the ruined factory, they retraced their steps back to camp while Ken furiously flew about them- sometimes watching the distance, sometimes sweeping their trail, sometimes doing something unrecognizable to the men as any sort of anti-tracking technique, but so long as it kept the mutant’s attention away from them the men didn’t care.

Once back at camp, Tom and Ken saw that the runners worked with the resting men to pull the raft up and into some positions whereby they could work. Already the drums and steel sheets were in place, being secured by lashings and crude pegs. Tom and Ken ordered the raft into the water, and then the tools loaded onto it; aboard and at its center, tied down as with some of the remaining ropes, they did load it aboard- but, while it floated, most of the men couldn’t ride it, for it couldn’t hold much more.

Tom ordered a couple men aboard, handing them the poles, and ordered them to ensure that nothing obstructed the raft in the river. The rest of the men would take up ropes, secured to the raft, and move along the banks pulling it upriver; Tom and Ken would clear the way and cover their trails. Behind them, as they moved slowly north upriver towards the Great Wall, all saw a visible darkness erupt at the peak of the ziggurat sitting at the black heart of the necropolis.

As they had to resort to this slower means, the return trip—once thought to be a day, at most—turned into another week. Dread, fear and unease gripped the company; at night the watchers kept silent and alert, lest some horde of ravenous undead sweep upon them unawares, while during the day they kept their eyes northward or downward lest they see reminders of the malevolent power behind them.

That same power, sweeping through its domain with the inexorable certainty of death itself, knew what happened, but cared not- the minds of beings possessed of the perspectives of eternity do not quarrel over ill-preserved artifacts of ruined peoples. Yet, not wanting distractions from their work, they make a show of power and frighten the foolish away- at least, long enough to finish the task at hand. So, it rattled the trees to startle them and it pushed the air to harry them, and spur them away it did, all but those that led them- Tom and Ken. These two, though no less awash in fear and doubt did not become drunk by it and lose their reason; they mastered their fear, and this power noticed it.

As Tom and Ken followed through on their plan and called out to Rick for a rendezvous, it kept its eye—invisibly—on them. Well, almost invisible; Ken detected it, and pinpointed it more than once, to the amazement and consternation of it. It kept away from Ken, as best it could, thereafter. Weeks passed, Rick’s company met with Tom and Ken’s company, men and material changed around and the groups separated once more.

Unknown to the survivors, the power of the necropolis—the one Ken called “The Necromancer”—is not unfathomable to mere men; it knows them well. With a moment of will, it commanded one of the dead to rise up; with another, it molded the flesh of the corpse and gave it the semblance of life and made it appear pleasing and comforting; with a third, it seized direct control, much like the way that video games made before the Cataclysm put a player into direct control, for that most amused the Necromancer- a sort of joke that few not like it could understand.

That night, the Necromancer took his drone and stole into the camp of Rick’s company. It took up a knife and made a shallow cut into Rick’s arm as the man slept. The drone licked the blood off of the knife, and with that blood the Necromancer learned all that Rick knew; it assumed Rick’s form, stole out of the camp and then made its way towards the camp of Tom and Ken. Now knowing what this flurry of activity was all about—though, it recognized that Rick’s perspective was not without biases, and took some of what he learned skeptically—it found a way to make these men play a part in his schemes.

Yet, what bothered the Necromancer was that this mutant—the one slaying and eating its property—and he took Ken as a threat to be dealt with. While the drone marched tirelessly to Tom and Ken’s camp, the Necromancer called forth the shades of the greatest of the dead before him for counsel. Sun Tzu and Quintus Fabius Maximus in particular had wise counsel for the Necromancer, as did the fiend’s chief advisor- a supernatural agent named “Gabriel”; they praised the use of the drone, but went on to say that they should endeavor to separate this mutant from the rest of the men with him and slay him separately.

But one of the undead courtiers made it most clear, if not sinister, as to what should be done; this one was Sun Pin, and he said this: “Sire, part him from his fellows for a time; convert his allies into yours, and through them you slay him.” This most pleased the Necromancer. Putting Fabius in charge of executing the plan, and Sun Pin into a supervisory role, the Necromancer ordered that Ken be put down and brought—alive—before him. The others were to be used towards that end.

At that moment, miles away back at the farm, Sally felt a premonition of doom befall her father; clutching the ring in her hands, murmuring prayers with a will focused by fear and love, Sally did what she knew to stave off such a feeling. Ken immediately picked up on what Sally felt at the moment, and that’s when he woke up Tom.

“Get up!” Ken said, “He knows, and he’s after us.”

Stalker-Part 5

Ken and Tom took the men under their command east along the Great Wall, following the old highway that ran parallel to it, the next morning. Slowly, steadily, they marched across the vacant and crumbling remains of suburban settlements. All about them stood remnants of the world that died years ago: long-looted superstores, cleaned-out clothing stores, gutted garage, rusted-out restaurants, offices obliterated, cars and trucks crashed or trashed, and even the highways itself cracks and crumbles as the years of neglect allow wear and tear to inflict damage unthinkable before the fall. What once took hours to traverse, as all remembered, now took days but after about a week they arrived at the west bank of the river—the water that sliced through the ruined city—and again rested.

Tom spoke little to Ken, but thought often of his Sally; Ken, in turn, sensed that Sally often worried over and wished for her father’s safe return. The men, ever centered in their own desires, thought mostly of the day’s matters when not lusting over the women that Ken told them of weeks before. This the men spoke of often, and they did again as they made camp that night. Ken and Tom, despite the coolness between them, sat at the fire together.

“What now?” Tom asked.

“We go downstream from here, passing the Great Wall. Now I put a question to you: do we march, or do we make a raft and float towards your library and factory?”

Tom thought on it a moment.

“I say that you make a raft, and while you and the men do that I scout downstream. If you take the time to make a large raft and enough poles to ensure that you can either come back upstream, or convert to a cart and come out overland, then I can clear at least part of the way south into the city.”

Tom’s look seemed to Ken as if Tom thought Ken to be insane.

“Come now, Tom.” Ken said, “I merely gave you advice on how to proceed.”

Tom shook his head. “You really don’t see why I might be angry with you?”

“I do. You’d not be a man if you cared not for your daughter, but I remind you that it was you that sought me out. If you honestly thing that you can use me and toss me aside like you did to all of your workers in your old life-“

“I did no such thing!”

“You did so, Tom. I know you did; I dug up the files, hunted through the archives and tracked the victims of your indifference down so they could be interviewed.”
Tom’s face made plain the shock he felt.

“You were part of the team suing me?”

Ken nodded. “You can hide behind laws about shareholder value that no longer exist, but the fact is this simple: you got your wealth off the backs and brains of the men you brought into your service, and when they broke down you threw them away like so much trash.”

“So, this is all some ridiculous revenge?”

Ken laughed. He laughed loud and long at Tom.

“No, Tom. The irony of our destroyed world is that you have the chance, really and truly, to make good on all your past sins. Yet you still have old habits, and it is those habits that may yet see you to your own downfall.”

Tom again looked at Ken as if Ken were insane.

“Tom, you and I both know that you don’t want any of the other men to lay hands on your daughter.”

“That doesn’t mean that I’m keen on you doing that.”

“You won’t care once the pressure’s off. Right now, as we speak, Sally’s starting to see me as your best bet for getting out of this in one piece. She’s also starting to see me as her best chance to get out from under the same dark cloud that dominates you and your household.”

Tom almost protested, but then he remembered the ring that Ken placed in Sally’s care.

“She’s a woman. She can’t help what’s happening to her anymore than her mother could at that age. Fancy becomes fantasy, and that surge of desire does all sorts of things to girls her age. All I’m doing is making it work for me.”

A couple of the men approached them, handing Tom a stick with a fish skewered on it.

“Now back to the choice at hand, Tom: raft or no raft?”

Tom bit gingerly into the charred fish, but could not shake the nagging thought that this mutant—formerly some sort of investigator for the lawyers that sued him before the Cataclysm—is now the zed-devouring mutant running around the blasted wastelands like some mad beast of a man that stalks the walking dead, kills them and eats them as if they were deer or moose.

Just then, Tom got a flash in his mind, an idea as thoughts crossed in his mind and sparked like live wires short-circuiting: Ken isn’t thinking of this any differently than he does a common zed hunt; it’s all the same to him- and this is all just a hell of a ruse to get what he wants. Yet, Tom wasn’t sure that getting Sally really is what Ken wants; going to all of this trouble, antagonizing him while showing him
the way to the stuff he wants—even providing him with the solution to his morale problems—and other hot-and-cold stuff just boggles him.

Ken sensed Tom’s confusion. He called over one of the men, who handed Tom a bottle.

“Drink,” Ken said, “it’ll do you good right now.”

Without thinking, Tom took a long drought from that bottle.

“Now Tom, again, do we make a raft or not?”

Tom now realized that he took a heavy drink of the moonshine that the men often brew from the crops. He passed the bottle to Ken, again turned his eyes to the mutant and finally answered Ken’s question.

“We raft our way down.”

Just then, Tom stood up and he called the men together.

“Rest well tonight, men. Tomorrow we scour the banks for suitable trees or scrap to make a sturdy raft and a set of poles. Once done, we’ll float our way downriver to our targets.”

The men, noticing Tom’s demeanor, smiled and chortled approvingly.

“We’ll drift like the rest of the river junk that’s gone by since the Cataclysm into the city ruins, get what we came for and then make our way out before any of those monsters know we’re there.”

Then one of the men said, “Then we get our women!” and the others cheered.

“Yes, after that you get your women, like reaping wheat at harvest.” Ken said, “Those cold caves will seem as Hell itself once you men return them to proper living at your farmstead and return them to civilized living.”

Watches assigned, the men retired in good humor. Starting the following morning, Tom got the men organized into foraging and building teams while Ken headed out on his own to scout downriver. The mutant woodsman disappeared into the brush, moving swift as a wolf, knowing certainly that no zeds would be near the banks for miles. Once out of sight, Ken broke into a run; drawing on reserves no ordinary man possesses, he ran for hours at that wolf-like pace, easily passing under the Great Wall and entering the Necromancer’s domain.

It wasn’t a mere crossing a wall; the stench of death, of unnatural wrongness, quickly filled his senses- he knew that he passed an invisible, supernatural border as well as a physical one. However, Ken’s senses soon became overwhelmed; the power concentrating into the city’s heart seemed to Ken like walking into a recently-used charnel house: he couldn’t discern which scent came from where, as they all got swamped by the greater environment, and he had no time to adjust.

Still, Ken ran downriver until midday, where he found a suitable landing site for the group to beach and camp; he spent the afternoon retracing his steps after marking the spot so it could be seen from the river. He passed back under the Great Wall, and returned to the group a few hours before dusk as the group gathered for their evening meal of charred fish and what other stuff they found or hunted nearby- some squirrels, a feral cat and provisions brought from the farm.

Ken saw that the raft was no slipshod job. It was a handful of fallen tree trunks acted as pontoons; all in a grand example of lashing things together with twine- the Boy Scouts would be awed. Around the fire men careful charred ends of pole-sized trunks, easily two or three times the height of a man in length; Ken saw that at least one of the men knew what to do in this task, and in Tom’s face Ken saw that he wasn’t that man.

Tom, seeing that Ken didn’t press the issue, said “You go ahead and we’ll meet you.”

Agreed on a course of action, the pair and their company strike camp the next day; the men found neither complaint nor cheer in Ken’s going ahead- especially once they set off from shore, for that was when they glimpsed Ken’s ability to quickly cover ground. However, as they passed under the Great Wall, their attention turned away from the mutant and towards the sights—or lack of them—about them.

Only Tom and some of the older men had been here since the Cataclysm and none of them in the last decade. They expected more of the ruined houses, stores and businesses that litter the towns and suburbs that once ringed the city; they found about them naught but denuded shores and empty land, as if the urban development that once covered the space within the Great Wall had never been at all- all that is now are grass, rocks and trees.

The sole exception is in the south, downriver, where the skyscrapers once stood. There, rising like a hideous blasphemy of antiquity, they saw a massive ziggurat. Even from a distance they saw that it didn’t displace the skyscrapers of the pre-Cataclysmic world, for it gleamed as if made like one, but sickly so. Tom, using an old pair of binoculars, looked long at it; he saw in it concrete, rebar, tar, brick and other repurposed materials mixed in with that glass.

“My God!” Tom said, “It’s as if the old downtown were melted down and recast as that thing!”

Tom passed the binoculars around the company, and each in turn looked about them. Each in turn added their observations to Tom’s own.

“The old city’s gone!” one man said, “What makes you think now that either this library or that factory is still there?”

“What happened here?” another said, “This isn’t a ruin- it’s a city of the damned!”
Swiftly the men erupted into a clamor, but being confined to the raft they had to check their enthusiasm, which Tom thought wise to exploit.

“Ken awaits us downstream.” Tom said, “While I don’t trust him in all things, he’s still a zed-eater and thus no friend of whatever ripped up our old city and put this inhuman growth in its place. Let us meet with him, as I promised, and we can talk about it once we’re camped.”

The men quickly agreed to follow Tom’s lead, but the alien character of the world within the Great Wall kept them unsettled and on edge for the rest of their downriver travel. Tom spotted Ken’s signal fire from far off, ensuring that he and the men would make their rendezvous without incident; once they made landfall, Ken quickly got the men ashore and helped to drag the raft out of the water. Then he brought them near the fire.

“You now know that things are greatly changed here.” Ken said, “We are in the domain of the Necromancer, and must be cautious. From this point on, only I may go off alone; you men are but ordinary men and as such are vulnerable to the Necromancer’s deceptions and guile. His powers are weak against me, and he knows it. But, as yet, we have the advantage, for he does not yet know that we are here.”

Distantly, atop that very ziggurat, a cloaked figure said in answer “Yes, I do.”

Stalker-Part 4

The men talk incessantly about Ken’s tale of the Cave Women as the community surges into action. They store provisions and tighten defenses in anticipation of the consequences of splitting their numbers for an extended period of time. A week later, Ken led a group of a dozen men—with Tom in command—out of the fortified farmstead and into the ruined wilderness beyond its borders.

In a few weeks, Ken guides the company south and east, towards the Great Wall of the city. Ken guides them along a roundabout way, avoiding contact with others—zeds, usually; crazed beasts otherwise—as best his fellows allow. Like escorting a convoy, Ken’s ranging often involves circling around the group to double-check the rear as well as going ahead to scout the way before them; the sudden toss of a slain beast or zed into their path quickly convinces the doubters of his worth, much to Tom’s silent glee.

As the group reaches a hilltop parallel to the old highway that they followed for the past two days, Ken points into the distance; with the sun at their backs, all of them lay eyes upon the Great Wall of the city. Taller than most of the old oaks of the land, this barrier is as grand as it is grotesque; within its construction are patterns of bone forming shapes and words that most of the men couldn’t read or didn’t know.

“What tongue is that?” one of the men said.

Tom and Ken looked at each other; both, by now, realized that only the other possessed any knowledge or wisdom of note.

“It’s Latin.” Tom said, “It reads ‘This pale wall marks the Necropolis’ borders.’”

Ken followed. “The shapes depict the fact of those who enter unbidden.”

The men, Ken knew, would easily assume the worst- and, as expected, they did. Ken sensed an instant shiver of revulsion at the thought of being trapped, swarmed and consumed by the angry, hungry dead within those walls. He kept his mirth to himself, knowing that these proud survivors don’t appreciate such sentiments.

“We camp here tonight.” Ken said, “Keep fires covered; the zeds may not see them, but there are others that can and this is not a good place to be caught napping.”

“Watch orders are as usual. I want grub going as soon as you men dig a firepit and get a fire lit.”

The men got to their chores; some took up watch positions around the campsite, some got to work digging the pit and the latrine, some foraged for wood and the rest put up tents. Meanwhile, Tom and Ken stood apart from the men and made themselves appear to be planning on how to deal with the Great Wall.

“We’re in sight of the Northwest corner of the Great Wall.” Ken said.

“It’s worse than I remembered.” Tom said, “Your boogeyman story seems a lot more real to me, now that I’ve laid my eyes on the tallest ‘No Trespassing’ sign known to Man.”

“You haven’t been this way in years. The Wall changed since your last raid. It’s taller, thicker, and far more indicative of the Necromancer at the heart of the city than it was then. His powers are far stronger now than they were then.”

“Then how do we proceed?”

Ken pointed at the ruined highway. “We get on the far side of the old Interstate there, and follow it until we reach the river. We rest there and cache supplies for the return trip while we build a raft.”

“Why?”

“The Necromancer sees what they see; zeds are just extensions of his will.”

Tom looked at him, disbelieving.

“C’mon, Tom! You know your tongues; what does ‘necromancer’ mean, strictly?”

“It means ‘one who gains knowledge from the dead’, more or less.”

“Now, what’s the practical application of knowledge? Rick’s an engineer, and you were a successful businessman before the Cataclysm, so I know that you can answer that question.”

Tom sighed and hung his head.

“As monstrous as the whole thing is, what it is in practical terms isn’t difficult to understand at all.” Ken said, “Think of it as an insect colony, like ants or bees. This Necromancer is the queen of the hive, and the zeds are the drones that serve as extensions of the queen’s will- but, outside of direct control, have some sort of robot-like basic functionality.”

“So, as long as we go unseen and unheard, we escape notice?”

Ken nodded.

“But the deeper into the city we go, the greater the density of zeds, and that means that our odds of being seen or heard rise accordingly.”

“Correct.”

“You’re lucky that our targets are well-built structures, and insulated from the outside.”

“You’d blame me for your failures?”

“No, they would, and I’d be damned stupid to stop them by myself.”

Ken looked into Tom’s face; he saw in Tom’s face a desire to be rid of Ken, something that Ken expected from Tom, but not necessarily the bluntness or crassness of it.

“Then you had better pray for success, because if this does go poorly and you do try to make a scapegoat of me, you’ll be abandoned amidst a hostile population that you can’t hide from for long. I can, and have, gotten in and out by myself without undue difficulty. You, on the other hand, are utterly screwed without me. You may think you know your way around, but you don’t; so much is different inside that wall now that your knowledge is woefully out of date. You turn on me, and I will leave you to be turned into zeds. Then I’ll go back to your farm, take your daughter in the night and disappear with her forever.“

Tom narrowed his gaze at Ken.

“Try it.” Ken said, “Just try it. I’m better than you in every way that matters, Tom. Stick to our plan, and you get what you want. That’s all that you need to do, so don’t get stupid on me. You get your stuff to make your farm into a little nugget of Civilization, your men get women of their own at last, peace reigns in the hamlet of Tomdale, and all it costs you is your daughter. One girl, and in return you get a thriving hamlet with loyal followers and a secure base of power for the future; that’s nothing in the big picture, and you—being a businessman—know it. Why risk losing it all just to get rid of me?”

“You’re a bastard.”

“No, Tom, I’m something else: a man looking to build a future for his kind, just like you, and unlike you I’m willing and able to do what it takes to get what I want. That I choose to be diplomatic about it, instead of just stealing her in the night, is because I understand—as you do—that it’s best to make gains through mutually-beneficial deals.”

“What makes you think that you’re not one-of-a-kind?”

“You’ve not seen what I’ve seen, Tom.” Ken said, sweeping his arms wide to emphasize the world about them, “I’ve ranged farther and wider than you think, and I’ve already seen evidence that some of those changed by the Cataclysm can breed true. For now, I am the only one of my kind, but that won’t be true much longer. If this world is to be reclaimed from the Cataclysm’s effects, it can’t happen through just by survivors like you or your sons; you and I will have to work together, and that means that your sons must work with mine.”

Tom froze. The image of a whole race of alabaster-like, hairless and deep-eyed mutants like Ken--a race spread far and wide across the ruined world, hunting and consuming the monstrous things wrought of the Cataclysm—that live and breed with normal men like himself horrified him. That his own flesh and blood could ever produce such things like Ken, at a level he had not remembered existed, hit a primal chord his mind.

“I know what you’re thinking, Tom.” Ken said.

Tom made to speak, but Ken cut him off.

“The Old World is dead, Tom. You can’t have it back, ever. This world is one where Man, if he to remain at the top, has to share power between himself and his younger brother. Adapt or die, Tom.”

“My daughter fears you, Ken.”

“I see.” Ken said, “You know, I had a feeling that you’d say that.”

Tom didn’t respond.

“You recall that I changed clothes before we left?”

“Yeah, I do. You wore tattered rags.”

“I also bathed.” Ken said, “While I did so, I left a trinket with your daughter. Nothing obvious, mind you, as it was just a ring I kept as a trophy from a kill. I asked her to wash it and hold it until I came back.”

Tom’s mind whirled into motion; no master wizard was he, yet he knew a little of the occult, and this got him thinking.

“Your daughter is not like you, Tom. She’s not like me either, but I can sense what’s different about her, and right now I am certain that—in obliging my wishes—she’s put that ring on a string and wearing it around her neck. To keep others from talking, she keeps it under her shirt, so it’s touching her skin and resting right next to her heart. She worries about you, as a good daughter does; she wishes for your safe return, and that becomes focused willpower at certain times when circumstances allow her to clear her mind of distractions. When she can do that, she’s unknowingly tapping into a supernatural power and using it to make her wishes real; when she does that, her scent becomes most potent and I can smell it from miles away.”

Tom’s mind, still whirling, almost cuts out Ken’s voice from his mind.

“Tom, this is why you—and, sometimes, you alone—returned from those earlier raids. Your daughter, literally, turned her wishes into reality.”

Ken let Tom stew on the implication for a moment.

“Sally is a witch, Tom. I am now certain of it, because I can smell her scent strongly right now; that ring I told you about? I’ve killed witches before, and I’ve learned a few things in my two lives, so I know a few tricks that damn near anyone can do. One of them is to either take something from a target, or to leave something with a target. This forms a supernatural link, and it makes certain occult powers easier to use.”

“Like what Sally does?”

“Yes, like what Sally does. However, that ring I lent to her is very shiny now that she’s cleaned it and it’s nigh-impossible for a girl like her to avoid the temptation of holding it when she’s alone. I know that right now she’s thinking hard about you, but she’s holding that ring right up against her heart while she does it, and as I can sense your moods and thoughts so I can sense hers- just like I can read a beast in the wild.”

Tom’s mind, still whirling like a tornado, quickly catches the symbolic magical theory; Ken sees the revelation on Tom’s face the instant that it occurs.

“That’s right, Tom. Because she feels just how much you need me, she’s unconsciously extending her wishing to me in order to protect you, and because she’s focusing her wishes with that ring—a ring held up to her heart—she’s putting me as close to her heart as is physically possible. When she wishes, she opens her heart metaphorically and uses her love to give power to her will; by putting me so close to it, she’s drawing me into her heart, and soon that same love will flow to me.”

Aghast, Tom’s hand dropped to his sides, but Ken quickly grabbed them both.

“You need me, Tom.” Ken said, taunting, “You can’t succeed without me, and you will lose everything if you turn on me. Now do you see?”

Still shocked at the depth of Ken’s treachery, Tom didn’t answer.