Severed Souls(17)
Watching with wide eyes, townspeople in doorways, those standing along the side of the street with their backs pressed up against shops, and those peering out from behind buildings all started melting back into the shadows, leaving the trouble to their young home guard to handle.
With a look behind him, Lord Arc met the gaze of the spirit king. “I think it’s time to show them what they face.”
A small smile seemed to be the spirit king’s only command. With that small smile, the corpses freshly pulled up from their graves, and up until then out of sight among the closely packed, chalky figures, pushed their way out from behind and trundled forward. One of them bumped into Gerald on the way by, knocking him aside.
The young men looked as shocked as everyone else to see the corpses with glowing red eyes approaching, but they stood their ground and met them with the kind of fury and confidence that only invincible youth and simple ignorance could muster.
The young man in command who had spoken for the others drove his sword through the chest of the first of the walking dead to reach him, a putrefied corpse that smelled bad enough to gag half the men waiting to stop him. The sword jutted from the back of the dead man. The corpse twisted, yanking the hilt of the sword embedded through his chest from the young man’s grip.
With surprising speed, the dead man seized the leader by the throat with one hand. With his other hand, he grabbed the young man’s muscular arm and with a mighty twist tore it off at the shoulder.
Everyone, including Gerald, flinched in disbelief. It was an act of occult strength that no living man could perform.
Without delay, other men charged forward and drove their swords through the dead man still holding his victim. He soon had half a dozen more blades stuck through his chest to go with the first. None of them slowed him any more than did the first.
The dead man tossed the screaming young soldier down on the ground at his feet. Even as other men hacked at him with swords and stabbed him with knives, the attacker seized his one-armed victim by the ankle and threw him into the side of a building with such force it cracked the clapboard walls. The man fell unconscious at the edge of the road, bleeding his life away.
Others of the dead, from the dried and brittle to the slimy and bloated, advanced into the midst of the young defensive guard trying to keep them back. Axes driven by powerfully strong men failed to bring down even one of the dead. Confidence swiftly turned to terror and screams, both from the young men and from the townspeople watching.
The battle was as brief as it was one-sided. In moments it was over and any confidence or hope the townspeople had that their home guard could protect them was shattered. All of the young men lay bleeding, most of them dead, at the feet of the dead come back to life standing over them. And the Shun-tuk had yet to descend on the town.
Lord Arc, the spirit king, the Mord-Sith, and the untold thousands of half people waiting behind watched without reaction. The townspeople watched with unbridled terror. Some screamed. Some fell to their knees and prayed to the Creator to spare them. Some begged Lord Arc for mercy. Many tried to run and hide.
Then the king of the dead, the greenish glow wavering over his worldly corpse, turned back to the sea of whitewashed figures behind.
The spirit king said but one word.
“Feed.”
CHAPTER
9
With that single command, the silent Shun-tuk instantly turned into a howling mass of killers leaping ahead toward the townspeople. People screamed as they scattered in a panic to escape, but it was too late. To the sides, a flood of the half people spilled in from between buildings. At the far end of town the road was inundated with the half-naked figures. They poured around Gerald as if he were a boulder in a raging river.
Some of the invading throng knocked into him on their way past him, spinning him around, making him stumble as he was buffeted first one way and then another. They ignored him in their madness to get beyond him to the people of Insley.
When they reached those frightened people, they fell on them with the savagery of wolves taking down terrified prey.
It was shocking how quickly the muddy road through town turned red. Everywhere people shrieked in panic. The Shun-tuk barged into buildings, going after people who ran inside seeking safety. People cowered inside, but Gerald could tell by the shrieks that there had been no safety in trying to hide.
In other places, people dove headlong out of windows on the second floors of buildings to escape those coming after them inside. Chalky white arms stretched out of those windows, trying to catch the fleeing people. Those who jumped escaped for only the brief moments they were in midair. Once they crashed to the ground, the Shun-tuk pounced on them, closing in so tightly that no more could get in on the ferocious feast.