A Day in the Unlife Read online

  *****

  I didn't go to Lucas Falls. That was the symptom, not the disease. See, the thing about zombies that most people don't ever quite seem to grasp is that they are self-sustaining. Your basic zombie really doesn't do anything but make more zombies. One good bite transfers the black magic right into the victim, and even if they don't die right then, in a few hours they're shambling right along with the crowd. So if you wanna be removing a horde of the buggers, you have two options.

  First, and the one people tend to use the most often, you can try to kill the zombies faster than they can make new ones, which requires either a ton of firepower, or some very, very geographically isolated zombies, because there will always be civilians stupid enough to stay somewhere they will be chowed down on. It's a fact of zombies, people just act stupid when they're around. Citizens who would quite logically run away from a werewolf or a yeti or a tax collector will always try to stand and fight when the zombies come to town. I think it's just part of our collective consciousness to put up the barricades and maybe try to live in a mall when zombies arrive. I blame television.

  The second, and usually more effective, way is to figure out the source of the zombies and cut it off there. Whether that means curing the ridiculous corporation's zombie virus (Someday. Someday.), making the blood sacrifice of a she-goat to quell the unholy rage of the Undead God, Xanoroth the Night Bringer (Praise be unto his dark name.), or... in this case... finding the necromancer and inflicting horrible, often fatal wounds upon him. Once the guy who had done the original animation had a hole through his head, his army would lose the magic that animated them and go back to their default state of 'dead'. Hopefully I wouldn't also have to kill his lovely assistant.

  But first, I needed to find him. Or, to be politically correct, I guess maybe her.

  He had started in Hawk's Hallow, so I assumed it to be his home town. Most of the low end Dark Lord wannabes start by wiping out their home towns. Makes them feel special, I guess. 'Sever their ties with the past, from before their ascension' or some other emo nonsense. There is a certain type of person who believes that taking a beginner's correspondence course in black magic gives them the right to kill off a few hundred people to make themselves feel special.

  Ah, well. More money for me.

  I pulled up to the edge of town and rolled down the windows. Most of the zombies were off trying to munch on the nearby towns, but not all of them. There had been close to 1,200 inhabitants in Hawk's Hallow back when it had existed; even little towns aren't terribly little in this day and age, and that left a lot of usable corpses to keep around as guard dogs for the Dark Lord (title pending) to protect his Dark Citadel (construction pending).

  It was a bit scary, honestly. 1,200 was a lot of people by most standards, and yet thanks to geography and general human disinterest, it would probably be a few weeks before anyone other than their closest neighbors actually really noticed they were gone and worried enough to do something about it. They had probably called the authorities and been soundly ignored when they brought up monsters, because nobody believes in monsters. Oh, eventually armed forces would investigate, and they would deal with the undead and bribe the survivors to keep quiet, and blame the whole thing on an earthquake or an epidemic that was now under control. I'd seen it happen before, more than once. But by then, most likely three or four other little places would be corpse-infested ghost towns.

  But then, that's what I'm here for. I know that monsters exist whether you believe in them or not, so you might as well keep yourself firmly prepared to shoot them. A slavering beast of dark horror that couldn't care less whether you believe in it or not will definitely start to care if you put enough bullets in them. And then you don't have to believe in them, because they're dead. It's a much more stable lifestyle, I've found.

  Sure enough, there was a low moaning on the wind. Someone sorrowful, in pain, and hungry. Someone... or something.

  I snickered a little at that. I love sounding dramatic as much as the next guy, but really, that had been cheesy even by my standards. I really needed to work on that, it sure wasn't a line I could use out loud around customers. People expect a certain level of style in their paranormal exterminations. I needed to be just a little bit cheesy and insane, because they expected someone who dealt with this sort of thing to be a little bit insane (And I could admit, here, alone in the night, where nobody could hear it: Yeah, I probably am a little bit insane). But the whole 'Or... something', ominous pause stuff was going too far toward self-parody.

  It was a hard thing, striking the balance between being bizarre enough to confuse and make them feel I knew something they didn't, and being badass enough to give the impression that I had just stepped out of an action movie and brought enough firepower to mow down an army with me. It's not easy, a lot of trial and error is involved, a lot of experimenting with various lines, and of course it helps if you actually are a little bit insane. A lesser man might pull a muscle trying. But when you pull it off, everyone you meet seems to be stuck between being scared of you because you're weird, and scared of you because you could kill them at any moment. And that is such a good feeling.

  I walked up to the edge of town carrying the spool of piano wire in one hand, some wire cutters and a lighter in the other, and a bottle rocket tucked precariously in my coat pocket. I was wearing thick leather gloves; about to handle hazardous materials, and all that.

  First thing to do: distraction. Zombies cannot see. Their eyes are all dried out and useless, so they hunt primarily by sound. If you want to have plenty of time to prepare anti-zombie measures, the first and best thing you can do is give them something nice and non-human to focus that hearing on. I set most of the stuff down, picked up the bottle rocket, pointed it straight down main street, and lit it.

  Ooooooooh, good quality fireworks! Lots of light, lots of shrieking, and it went in a nice straight line until it hit an overturned car almost half a mile down the road and exploded. Fun stuff, and more importantly, worth every penny I paid for them. I really do love Texas. You go to Wisconsin, you just do not see easily available domestic explosives of that quality.

  The moaning grew louder. Zombies with no orders to do otherwise will attack anything non-zombie that they hear, converging on it in a swarm, and that was what they were doing now. In the flickering firelight of illegal Mexican homemade explosive and burning car, I could see dozens, maybe hundreds of the walking dead converging on the source of the big, loud, boom, intent of finding anything living they could and ripping into it with bare hands and teeth until it stopped moving. And then started moving again, but doing it slower and in a kind of shambling way.

  They were gonna be watching that for awhile unless their necromancer gave them orders otherwise (Not very bright, your average zombie. Ha ha, you see what I did there? 'Bright', because it's a fire and I was about to kill them all.), so I got started on other preparations. I got out the spool of coppery piano wire and my trusty wire cutters. I always keep wire cutters handy, in case of cutting emergencies.

  Cutting off about twenty feet of wire, I carried it up the street about fifteen yards as quietly as I could, and tied it off snugly between two street lamps. This was why I'd worn thick gloves... that stuff is nasty to handle with your bare hands. Cut you up, it will. Very dangerous, always to be handled with caution.

  I knotted off the wire on the second pole, leaving it tied taut at about where you'd find neck height on the average person.

  Starting to get it, now?

  I got my wire cutters, sliced off another length, and tied it off a few feet away from the first one. Then another, at a slightly lower height. Then a fourth.

  The process continued until I had half a dozen lengths of wire stretch across the street, each one about ten feet away from the ones next to it, each at a different height. I then walked back to my van and opened the back doors to get out the dull metal suitcase contain
ing my favorite rifle. Not the big one I use for hunting werewolves, that one's a pain in the ass to lug around and I hate it, but it needs to be really huge. Basic rule of thumb: if it can't kill a bear, it won't kill a werewolf.

  This one, however, is my baby; a Remington 700. A few years old, but she does the job and I know her like the back of my hand. I call her 'Michelle', after my first ex-girlfriend, who could also ruin someone's day instantly from an effective distance of 1,000 yards. Not that I'm bitter or anything.

  I put together the rifle. I got the bipod, scope, detachable box magazine, extended barrel, the works. I'm not a gun nut, but when I get one, I want it to be good quality and I take good care of it, what with my life quite literally depending on that weapon working as advertised. I set up a little nest on the ground, along with a carton of simple lead bullets; no reason to be wasting silver ammunition on zombies, it didn't work any better than the cheap stuff.

  Leaving the rifle mounted on its stabilizing bipod, I went back to the van, and mixed up my other and far more important weapon. I wouldn't need it for awhile, of course, but it was hard to get it ready in a pinch, so it was best to have it all set up ahead of time. The motto of the successful monster hunter is 'always be prepared'. The Boy Scouts like to claim it was their motto first, but their preparation just helps them win merit badges and ours helps us not get our faces chewed off by the undead, so I think we use it better.

  By this point, a few of them had heard the motion of my prep work and were on their way over in my direction. I figured I might as well get the party started, since the early guests were almost here anyway.

  “Hey, guys!” I shouted. “Are all of you guys hungry? Because I have all kinds of delicious brains over here that I bet you guys would really enjoy eating!”

  As one, the horde turned to look at me.

  I could have been saying anything, really. Zombies don't exactly have the best grasp of language, they just go after anything that makes enough noise to register on their little zombified minds. It's just that, well, I'm a traditionalist. If I'm gonna talk to zombies, I'm gonna talk brains. It makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside.

  “Mmmmmmmm, so tasty! Yummy delicious brains, for thinking with! I bet the zombie that got to eat these brains would be full for like, a month! Delicious like candy, only it's not candy because it is my brains!” I said. “Delicious and nutritious! Get 'em while they're hot! First come, first served, limited time offer only! Yum yum brains!”

  Okay, the horde was very firmly moving in my direction. The moans of hunger filled the night air, dozens of mournful wails rising in eerie unison. It was a scene of both transcendent sadness and unfathomable horror, both for the sheer and unquestionable threat to the lives of anyone who would lay eyes upon this unfeeling army of disaster, and for the threat they posed to our sensibilities, our very way of life.

  In a way, the onslaught of the mindless dead symbolized our own, slow deaths from rampant consumerism and apathy. The creatures that marched toward me under flickering streetlights and in the glow of burning homes represented the death not only of the body, but of the soul. They showed us a dark mirror in which we might see the creeping social decay of our culture. They were monsters, yes, but were not we the greater monsters? The zombie's greatest terror was in its ability to make us realize how twisted and corrupt we truly are, as a species.

  Then their heads started popping off, and that was pretty funny.

  Generally speaking, when you take piano wire up against flesh and bone, the wire is gonna win and it's gonna win in a big way. And that's when you use it on normal-people flesh, with all its wonderful life-giving blood, vitamin D, and tanning oil to make it have a firm healthy glow. Zombie flesh and bone, in comparison, tends to be soft, rotten, and full of holes and assorted goo. As a result, it tends to give out much more quickly and with much less overall resistance.

  And since zombies feel no pain, no pressure, no nothing when they encounter, say, a piece of sharp metal digging into their neck? They just keep on walking into it unless the person giving them their marching orders tells them to stop. On the one hand, this means that if you're fighting a zombie personally, you're very much in a lot of trouble since anything less than a direct, brain-destroying head shot isn't gonna stop it from chewing on you, and it tends to have fifty or sixty friends with it at all times who are also trying to have a nice lunch, your treat. If they get into melee range as a group, well, I hope you aren't delicious, because otherwise you have just jumped to the top of the menu.

  On the other hand, this means setting a trap for the buggers really, really isn't hard, because they will very literally walk into anything.

  The front runners of the welcoming committee had already run (well, limped) into the first wire, which proceeded to cut into their flesh. They reacted to this by continuing to blindly walk right into it until it cut into their throats down to the bone. They reacted to this by continuing to walk blindly right into it until it cut completely through their spines, sending their heads flying off in a mildly amusing fashion.

  I smiled a bit, but I didn't laugh out loud. Really, it was kind of funny, but if you've seen it once, you seen it a million times.

  The front ranks fell, and behind them the next line of the undead lurched forward, moaning out their terrible hatred for the living.

  Their heads also came off.

  Behind them, another dozen zombies continued the assault, their boundless fury and hunger driving them inexorably on in their quest to devour the living.

  Their heads also came off.

  You are perhaps spotting the pattern here? Honestly, I probably was not actually going to need the rifle, because zombies are really just not smart. Dedicated, yes, but not big in the 'brains' department. Well, no, that isn't entirely accurate, since they are very keen on the subject of brains, just in the particular sub-area of eating them, not having them.

  Oh, you know what I mean.

  The first wire now had so many dead zombies under it that the others were literally stepping on top of a pile of their corpses to continue through it. No longer going through the relatively fragile neck, the wire now had to cut through the thick chests of almost twenty walking corpses at a time. Eventually, it just could not hold. The wire snapped, and the horde surged forward, bloodied from deep chest wounds, but still strong, still hungry. They shambled forward, arms outstretched, teeth stained by the rotting flesh of previous victims...

  Until they ran into the second wire, and their heads came off.

  I sighed. Should have brought a book or something. How come I always forget to bring a book? I thought. Someday, I really ought to try the more traditional 'run and gun' style of zombie hunting. It was vastly more dangerous, vastly more impractical, and honestly just didn't work very well, but at the very least it wasn't so dull. Fleeing the horde, scrounging for every head shot, desperately trying to preserve ammo... it was so much more glamorous.

  And also much more likely to kill you. You are getting paid for this, remember? You've been on the clock almost twelve hours since you ran into the kid this morning, and by the time you finish off the necromancer and get back into contact with him, it will be closer to a full day. Focus on the money and let your endless idiotic desire to live in a video game slip to the wayside while you think about nice, fat checks, said the reasonable part of my brain. I gotta say, he's boring, but he does occasionally make a compelling argument. I'm willing to tolerate a surprising amount of boredom for a surprising amount of money. After this, I planned to drop back down to my safe house in this region, book a plane ticket back to the east coast and pick up that job with the Wendigo someone had spotted in Virginia if another hunter hadn't already snagged it (Not that I was looking forward to another Wendigo. Seriously, people, how much cannibalism happens in your daily lives?), making this a very profitable trip indeed.

  I looked up. The second wire now had a small mound of
corpses under it, and it would probably take down another dozen or so tops before breaking. I tried to count out the horde; there were maybe as many as two hundred still queued up down the street, and each wire seemed to be reliably taking down about thirty at the most, four wires left...

  I did the math in my head, and let out a happy little sound. I was gonna get to do some shooting after all!

  I smiled, chambered a round, and looked down the scope. Shooting something always does cheer me up, no matter how gloomy things look. Bullets are the silver lining in any cloud. And shooting zombies is the best. They walk slowly, in a straight line, with no regards to their own safety. You seriously have all the time in the world to line up a hundred perfect headshots, like the world's easiest shooting gallery. Long range shooting of zombies is a game even a bad shot can win, and I like winning at stuff.

  I smiled, full of the deep and soothing sensation of peace that can only be found when you shoot a zombie in the face from 800 yards away and the bullet goes through and hits the zombie behind it, also in the face. I swear, they should start... I dunno. Farming zombies. Build up a usable supply for people to just go out and shoot. This was the most therapeutic thing ever.

  … Oh, stop looking at me like that, I wasn't serious. I know that's desecrating the dead and all, and people really disapprove of that. Even if the dead, being dead, usually don't care, it is still morally and, I dunno, philosophically wrong. My current roommate is dead (Long story.), and she insists I be more sensitive to their unique plight. I pointed out that most of them don't have a plight, on account of being dead, but that just made her glare at me.

  We kept going like this for twenty minutes or so; the only sounds were moans, gunshots, and the thud of headless twice-dead people falling to the pavement. It was oddly beautiful, in a way. I mean, yes, it was also disgusting there was a lot of rotting going on and brains flying everywhere and decapitation and... okay, well, it wasn't beautiful at all. It was icky. But it still had a certain bizarre appeal, if that makes sense? The indefinable allure of a plan coming together.

  I like it when a plan comes together. When a plan doesn't come together, I get beaten up and thrown around and chased by hideous flesh-eating beasts. When the plan does come together... I get paid for playing a shooting gallery.

  This is how it's supposed to go. This is how a real hunt is supposed to go, when everything. Goes. Well.

  The last zombie standing walked into the very last wire. It was set lower than the others, in case any short ones got past the others (I know it isn't fun to think about, but children can be zombies too. If it makes you feel better, then tell yourself that they were not children, just very short people who lived long happy lives and died of old age while surrounded by family and friends.). It was just going to cut itself in half at the waist, which wouldn't kill it, so I put a bullet into its head, and stood up. Just to be safe, I raised my voice a bit and said, “Anyone else for brains? Mmmmm, yummy thinking brains for eating!”, but I didn't get so much as a moan of mild interest in reply.

  I was, it should be mentioned, quite happy with how this one had turned out so far. In exchange for about thirty rifle rounds and some wear-and-tear on perfectly reusable (Once I disinfected the Hell out of it) wire, I'd made over $2,400 for what amounted to zero work. More, by the time I actually finished up and reported in to good ol' Ben. This was turning out to be quite the pleasant excursion.

  I really should have learned by now not to be an optimist. It's my own fault, really. I am not sure if I'm too positive for this line of work, or just incurably stupid.

  You see, around the same time that I was having my hap-happy thoughts about how well things were going, my ears picked up an unusual sound. A kind of whistling, you know, like in TV when a bomb is falling from the sky? Very similar to that.

  The ground in front of me exploded violently as an enormous ball of fire crashed into it, hurling me backward to slam into my own van. Painfully, of course. It had to be painful, because otherwise it wouldn't be my life.

  “Bwahahahahaha!” I wish I was making that up, but the voice really laughed exactly like that. 'Bwahahahaha'. I would have smiled if I hadn't been so busy trying to stop the lights flashing behind my eyes; somebody had been reading his 'Clichéd Villain's Handbook' a little too religiously. Best kind of villain. Still, that had been a damn decent little fireball, even if his aim sucked, so I had to take him deadly serious, or I was going to get myself killed. I had to maintain an aura about me of cold, lethal professionalism.

  Then he came into view.

  And oh, God, was Cold Professionalism ever not going to happen. The instant I saw him, any thoughts I might have had that this was going to end up being a serious case after all just withered and died more quickly than his damn zombies had.

  I want to make it very clear, right off the bat, that I am not making any of this up. Everything that I report is exactly as I saw it.

  He was a big guy, and not in the impressive way. In terms of height, he seemed like he would be lucky to reach my chin, and I'm barely five foot ten, so it's not like he's competing with Goliath here. This was made up for partially by the fact that despite being on the short side, he still appeared to be roughly twice my overall mass. The overall effect was something like a humanoid beach ball. He was almost spherical.

  But wait, there's more.

  He really had been going to the Cliché Villain Handbook, it appeared, because as far as I could tell he had elected to use it for fashion advice. Solid black clothes from top to bottom, of course, and quite a lot of sweat since Texas in the summertime is not the environment to be wearing full body black in, but that wasn't what stood out. What stood out was the fact that he actually had a damn goatee, which I'm sure would have looked very sinister if he'd had the face for it. The problem there was that he had a rather wide face. And a very tiny beard on a very wide face, I shall note right now and as clearly as I can for anyone who wants to know, does not look remotely impressive or sinister. It looks as though you missed a spot shaving.

  It was a wonderful effect, and only increased by the fact he actually seemed to be wearing a pendant shaped like a skull and carrying... and again, I am not making this up... a staff of black wood. Carved to look like... are you ready for this? You might want to sit down... a cobra. Can you believe it? Who does that, who actually does that?! Who looks at all of the most tacky, overused Evil Sorcerer conventions from bad fanfiction and children's animated movies and actually thinks, “Yes, these are cool and original! Skull pendant, very classy. Snake-headed staff, everyone will respect me if I have one of those. I definitely won't look at all like a rejected Disney Villain. Cool and original, bitches, cool and original.”

  But wait, there's more.

  The Dark Lord Ridiculoth obviously did not walk to meet his foes under his own power. No, no, such would be beneath him, as well as being possibly literally beyond his physical ability. So he came out... on a litter. With a big, wooden chair that was probably supposed to be a throne and was actually just a big wooden chair on top. Carried, of course, by zombies.

  Zombies in armor.

  Oh, God, he had Elite Mooks. They were just normal zombies wearing what appeared to be armor stolen from a medieval faire, but still, he had them! He thought that this was impressive! I would have bet my life that he called them his 'elite guard' or something. Oh, sweet Lord above, it... it was all too much.

  Stay cool, Eric, stay cool. I thought. This man has literally murdered hundreds, possibly into the thousands of people. He is at the least competent in several forms of wizardry; most notably necromancy, but that fireball was a fairly nasty evocation. He is a truly dangerous individual and if you don't play this smart you could end up very, very dead. Stay frosty, stay alert, and above all do not descend into a helpless laughing fit. You must treat this as the deadly serious battle for survival that it is, and keep all your wits about yo
u.

  “So!” said the Master of Tacky Evil. “You are the one who has defeated my minions. I knew that a misguided Servant of Justice would soon arrive to challenge me, but I admit you are somewhat more competent than I had expected. Know now, however, that your efforts are for naught! You face now the power of Maliroth, the Shadowed One, lord of Life and Death! The power of your doom!”

  There was only one reply to this.

  “HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA...”

  I know it was unprofessional, and I'm truly not proud of that reaction. But I just couldn't keep a straight face anymore. Someone actually using the word 'doom' in a non-ironic fashion always cracks me up.

  “So! You show such disrespect in the face of death? Just as all the weaklings of this puny town did before I used their unwilling souls to form my army of the damn-ed,” he snarled, and yes, he really pronounced 'damned' with two syllables, just like that. I couldn't make this up if I tried, I swear to God. “Now, hero, you too shall fall, and join my ever-growing legions as we sweep across the land and claim all in the name of my Dark Power!”

  “HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Oh God! Oh God! Stop that, please, I can't take it! HEEHEEHEEHEE! It's too much, please!”

  I'm sorry. I truly am. What you see here is me at my worst, the least professional aspect of my work environment. But the simple truth is, I have my limits, and they had been met and exceeded.

  “Insolent fool!” He snapped. “I might yet have given ye the chance to join me willingly, and rule at my right hand, but no more! Your temerity has sealed your fate, mortal. You shall burn here, and not even experience the dark bliss of undeath. Your seared corpse shall hang outside my citadel...”

  “You don't have a citadel. Hee, hee, hee, y-you just have one little t-town that I took from you in twenty minuuuuuHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”

  His eyes grew wide with fury, and God it made him look like a pumpkin, which just made my laughing fit worse. If he was planning to make me laugh myself to death, he was actually doing a dangerously good job. Perhaps he was more competent then I'd thought. Then he spoke, and the words were literally, “You dare?! I shall feast upon your soul for this outrage!”, which destroyed any thoughts of this being a competent threat.

  I raised a hand in a pseudo-apologetic gesture, and said, “I'm sorry, I'm sorry. You have clearly done some very good necromancy here, killed a large number of people. You're a murderer, a dangerous lunatic and I should be taking you seriously, I know I should, but you just... God, you just look so... and sound so... HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”

  “You... shall... suffer,” he hissed. He raised his hands, and flame began to gather in his palms. “Encantus, flamma vitae, equestria...”

  While I was fairly sure that last word meant 'horse' and wasn't sure how it fit into a spell about fireballs, I decided not to worry about it. He was going to shoot me with fire, yes, but... well, there was a reason I'd never taken up wizardry as a career option. Even a fairly simple spell for destruction takes at least a few seconds of chanting and gesturing and the like.

  More time than it took to raise a gun, aim, and shoot, in fact. Especially if you had a good quality scope.

  I didn't shoot at Malvolioloth or whatever he called himself. Even the worst wizard ever (which I strongly suspected is what I was facing, at least in terms of intellect, if not ability.) would probably have some kind of spell of protection up before he walked right up to danger and started proclaiming how awesome he was.

  But the worst wizard ever probably wouldn't think to apply similar protection to his flunkies. Flunkies are expendable to the Dark Lord, after all. It takes a special kind of person to think gaining magical powers gives you the right to kill off your hometown for kicks, and that kind of person doesn't tend to think of others. Even when those others are quite literally holding him up.

  The round took the front-left zombie in the forehead, and the back of its skull exploded like moldy cheese being hit with a sledgehammer. He collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut, and the portion of the litter he was carrying collapsed with him. Zombies are not known for their ability to adapt, if you take my meaning, and the other three didn't adjust their stance to take up the suddenly off-balance load. As a result, the whole thing came crashing down. The Dark Lord Whatshisname went sprawling, screaming in a bit more agony than the fall should have created.

  The second major weakness of your basic wizard: Those spells have a hefty mental component, and if you happen to interrupt one of them halfway through, well... it doesn't feel good, as I understand. I've known a few wizards who have described the sensation to me, and the words 'red-hot railroad spike' have come up more than once, usually combined with 'head' in very unpleasant ways. Honestly, it's a wonder why anyone would legitimately choose wizardry as a profession. I mean, sure I guess it's pretty cool to summon elemental spirits to your bidding, and I know that chicks dig guys who can throw lightning from their fingertips, that's a given. It just seems like the list of cons outweighs the list of pros.

  Of course, I was also better at exploiting those cons than your average schmuck, so I might have just been over-thinking it.

  As the Mildly Evil One thrashed on the ground, he did manage to achieve the mental fortitude to speak. “Attack, my Elite Guard! Devour this fool!” he said, his voice thick with pain.

  I did a little happy dance. “I knew it! I knew you'd call them something like that! That makes me the winner, I think,” I cheered. I'm not sure what I won, but even now, I continue to firmly state that I had been the winner.

  The Elite Zombies (Zombielite?) set down their load and began to move toward me. They actually were pretty elite, I guess, as far as zombies go. They were faster than the ones I'd been killing all night, so he had clearly put a bit more effort into animating them. They were almost human-speed, and that silly renaissance faire armor would actually be kind of useful if they got into melee range. Really, I doubted I could shoot all of them, and all three of them together might very well have given me a hard time.

  Crying shame about that last wire still being mostly untouched, really.

  The Elite Guard were apparently chosen for physical size. They were all very tall guys, and my last wire was set pretty low to the ground to catch tiny zombies. As a result, their incredible Undead Speed mostly resulted in them slamming their knees into taut piano wire really, really hard. They... well, it's kinda hard to describe in words. There was a brief moment wherein they still appeared to be running straight at me with lethal intent, they just didn't bring their legs with them. It was surreal as all Hell, I gotta admit.

  Then there was an impact.

  After that, they mostly just crawled.

  Whistling a little tune, I set my rifle back in the van, and picked up the other weapon I had prepared... a bucket. In this case, a bucket full of well mixed salt and water. I waited for the crawling zombies to get close, then walked in large circle around them. As they struggled to turn around without any way to stand up, I kind of broke into a light jog, water sloshing a bit over the edges of the plastic bucket. I imagined I probably didn't cut the most dignified figure at that moment, so I reached into my coat and drew my sidearm. Just to make myself look a little cooler. A bucket could be a damned effective tool in the fight against evil, but it didn't look impressive, and I had a reputation to uphold.

  I carefully stepped over the piano wire, jogged past the huge pile of dead zombies, and finally, the avenging Hunter stood face-to-face with the Lord of Terror.

  Or at least, I would have if he had been tall enough to look me in the eyes.

  “So,” he said. “It has come down to this, in the end. All my minions, all of my preparations, and in the end, I must destroy you myself after all.”

  “Um... dude, we're not like rivals or anything. I destroyed your 'minions' in fifteen minutes, with twenty bucks worth of bullets and a spool of wire,” I said.
r />   “You have fought bravely indeed,” he said, as if I had not spoken. “In another world, we could have been friends, you and I.”

  “... You murdered like, a thousand people,” I said. “And as far as I can tell you didn't even have much of a reason beyond wanting to play Evil Sorcerer. I really doubt we have all that much in common.”

  “But now... now it ends,” he said. I got the feeling he was just ignoring me at this point, and it was ticking me off. “Gods of Flame and Rage, gather to me and lend me thy power...” He began to chant. His entire body began to glow with an eerie scarlet flame, and the raw power of it all made the air quiver, the earth shake.

  I threw the contents of the bucket at him.

  There was a kind of screeching sound as the water touched and went through something almost invisible in the air around Lord Faildemort, my perception of reality did a backflip and possibly even a triple axel, and all that unholy magical hellfire abruptly vanished. All that was left before me was a small, chubby man in a cheap necklace, sputtering wildly and spitting out salt water.

  Honestly, now. What did he think I had brought the bucket for?

  “Wh-what?! How dare you?!” He growled, raising his hands and snarling some words that frankly didn't sound real. I hesitate to attempt to reproduce them here, as I'm fairly sure at least one of them had no vowels. He was apparently expecting flames to leap to his fingertips, but what resulted was maybe a tiny bit of steam at most.

  “Anti-wizard juice. Very complex stuff. Mysterious. Cost me a ton of money and time, and it was very impressive that I had it,” I informed him. The fact that it was a lie didn't make it less impressive. I know that's true because I say so.

  The fact is, it didn't need to be expensive or time-consuming to short out magic just fine. Running water has a negative impact on magical energies. Grounds them out, washes them away. And salt, well, salt is all symbolic of final death, 'salting the Earth' and all that, all very complex. Has a very disruptive impact on the manifested energy of your basic human soul. That's why it works so good on ghosts, y'know? Screws up their energy so hard they can't maintain physical form. Mix them together, and you've got a nice little brew that fucks up the powers of your average wizard somethin' fierce. And that is the third reason I have never wanted to be a wizard.

  All of that power, all of that study and knowledge and forbidden otherworldly strength, years and years of learning the spells, mastering the primal energy of the cosmos... and all you need to kill them is a bucket, the element of surprise, and about five minutes in the condiment aisle at the grocery store (ten if you don't have a coupon and want to comparison shop).

  “So,” I said, leveling my handgun at his face, “how we gonna play this?”

  He blinked a few times at the salt water dripping from his fingers, as if hoping he could just will it to not be there. Finally, he said, in a much less hostile tone, “Well, I... don't see why we can't just be reasonable about this, we're all civilized men, I'm sure...”

  I punched him.

  “Ow...” He said.

  “We're not all civilized men, you loon! You murdered a whole town just to be evil! That isn't reasonable! That's cartoonish supervillainy!” I said, in as harsh a tone as I could manage. It was still kind of hard not to laugh, admittedly, since he really did look just about as intimidating as a drowned weasel right now.

  “Th-they... they failed to recognize my greatness, mocked me at every turn, held me back, employed me as menial labor when my intellect w-was clearly beyond them...”

  “So... wait. What you're saying, basically, is that people picked on you and you had to work at McDonald's?” I asked.

  “... We don't actually have a McDonald's.”

  “And... naturally, your response to this is to raise an army of the dead and go on a wave of malevolent conquest,” I said.

  “W-well, I found the books in an old library, buried under a cellar near the edge of town, and when I found the magic worked...”

  I kicked him.

  “OW!” He said.

  “No! No, that is crazy mass-murdering dark wizard talk, and you are very bad for talking it!” I snapped. “Lots of people work in fast food! Almost none of them raise zombies, you psycho!”

  “M-minions! T-to me!” He squealed.

  About thirty feet away, the zombies continued crawling in my general direction. If I was willing to sit still for a solid ten to fifteen minutes, they would be a serious and dangerous threat to my ankles.

  “Oh, that is just sad,” I said, watching the horrible crawling terror.

  “T-they... they usually are more intimidating than that,” He said.

  “Yeeeeeeeeeeeah. Listen... I never caught your name. I mean your real name, not 'Dark Lord McWhatsis'.”

  “I-it's...”

  I kicked him again, just for that sweet kicking sensation, and said, “I wasn't asking.”

  “OW! S-sorry, sorry!”

  “You should be, because you're horrible and you do horrible things,” I informed him. Now, there were a few ways I could play this, but I couldn't be sure that Ben would keep to his end of the bargain, so I decided to be smart about it. “Okay, then. Question. Can you control your zombie horde from a distance, or do you need to talk to them?”

  “I... I can give them basic commands from a distance. Things like, 'kill', and 'eat', and...”

  “Can you do it covered in wat- I mean, anti-wizard juice?” I asked. Then, for good measure, I added, “Very rare stuff, anti-wizard juice. Made by monks or something.”

  “I... can try?”

  “Then try. Tell all your zombies, everywhere, 'Stop attacking and go stand outside of town in a line',” I suggested.

  He closed his eyes, and there was a brief feeling of cold. Sure enough, the Elite Guard stopped crawling toward us.

  “They're not going outside town, though,” I pointed out, gesturing with my gun for emphasis. A gun makes great punctuation.

  “W-well, they can't obey the order. I told them to 'stand' in a line, and they can't stand, so since they can't do what I asked they just... freeze.”

  I considered this. “All right, I guess I'll take that as proof. Now, let's go for a ride!”

  His eyes got that spark of Dark Lordiness back in them briefly. “Why should...”

  “Because if you don't do every little thing I say, I absolutely will shoot you in the face.”

  The spark vanished. “Yessir,” He said, in a very small voice.