Tim Marquitz - Resurrection

Back at the crypt, I squatted in front of it, running my hands along the seam. That’s when I noticed the bolts that held the crypt face closed were missing. Two small wires with looped ends were slipped through the bolt holes and held the crypt closed from the inside. They were practically invisible until I was right on top of them. This had to be something related to our undead infestation.

I gestured for McConnell to keep an eye out. I shooed away the images of falling silver coins that flashed through my mind, and sank my fingers into the cracks between the crypts. With a gentle tug, the face came free in my hands. The stench that had alerted me to the crypt, drifted out thick, hitting me head on. I gagged as I set the marble plate down. The nastiness settling into my throat, I stepped away to catch my breath. After a moment, when I was better prepared to face the stink, I looked beyond the facing to see only a dark hole. There was nothing discernable beyond that.

Not waiting for McConnell to man up, I drew my gun and stepped forward, leaning in to peer into the double crypt. I expected to see a cement floor just a few feet below where I stood, but was surprised to see nothing but more blackness. As I surveyed the darkness, a quiet rumbling echoed up through the crypt.

“There’s a passage here,” I whispered. Brave man that he was, McConnell motioned for me to go first.

I stuck my tongue out and turned back to the hole. If Baalth hadn’t been so insistent that I not hurt his pet, I’d have pushed the bastard in head first. I had to admit, I was still tempted. Only the strange way Baalth had looked, his pent up anger boiling just behind his eyes, kept me from doing it.

There was no doubt in my mind Baalth would kill me. Even worse, it wouldn’t be a quick death. He’d make me suffer in ways I didn’t feel comfortable even thinking about. McConnell wasn’t worth all that, but it sure felt good to imagine. With a big smile on my lips, I got on with the task at hand.

Uncertain of how far the passage went down, I holstered my gun to free my hands. While thinking I was gonna regret doing so, I crouched at the crypt entrance and talked myself into climbing inside. After a deep breath to calm my nerves, I grabbed the edge and swung my feet over and let them drop into the darkness. Even at six-three, I hit open air, my feet dangling. I glared up at McConnell.

“You better follow me down, cowboy.” With no point in worrying if he didn’t, I let go.

In freefall for several harrowingly long seconds, I discovered the bottom was easily over a hundred feet down. I hit the ground hard. The air was knocked from my lungs in a huff as I landed in a heap, but I didn’t feel anything break.

Unsure of what might be in there with me, I hopped to my feet fast. With solid rock beneath me and blackness all around, I inched forward as I caught my breath, drawing in deep gulps of the rancid smelling air. Something dead was in here. At least I knew we were on the right track.

Off a ways into the blackness, the distance hard to judge, there was a dim, flickering glow. To get my bearings, I looked up, the shimmer from the mausoleum above doing little to chase away the dark. Right then, McConnell appeared above me, momentarily blocking the light as he floated gently down beside me.

I growled at him, my voice low. “You can levitate?”

He nodded, his smile glistening in the gloom.

Bastard. “You could have said something.”

“You did all right.” His grin grew wider. He was enjoying this too much.

Ignoring him, and the urge to put a bullet in his eye, I drew my gun once more and headed off down the tunnel at a creep. The carved stone passage was almost tall enough for me to stand upright and the sides were about a foot and a half from each of my shoulders. I moved forward slow, McConnell’s scuffling feet behind me letting me know he was still there. His presence was reassuring, let me tell you.

What’s that old saying, between a cock and a hard place? The enemy behind, the unknown ahead, I was feeling mighty vulnerable.

After about fifty yards, the glow was just in front of us, illuminating the start of a bigger chamber. I eased forward, my palm sweaty on the grip of my. 45. The funky smell stirred with our passage and grew with every step. At the end of the tunnel, I squatted down and peered into the room beyond.

Cut out of the earth, the chamber was easily a hundred yards across and about twenty high, all rough-hewn. A row of dim, battery powered lamps hung from the furthest wall, providing just enough luminescence to see by.

On the floor below them, like a scene out of a World War II documentary, were haphazard piles of corpses, heaped on top of each other, five to six bodies high, in some places. All in various stages of decay, the fresher bodies had oozed bile and embalming fluids, which had formed glistening pools on the stone floor. Arms and legs lay akimbo, no apparent order to the collection of dead bodies. As my eyes took in the mass of lifeless faces, there was one I recognized. My stomach hardened into a tangled knot.

In the heap, nude from the waist down, was Candy. Though I didn’t know her well, our relationship cut short, I was sure she didn’t deserve this. It was a pretty lousy way to go, her body hidden in a cave, dumped amongst the nameless, rotting corpses of Old Town like so much trash. It was a bitter end.

While sickened by her death, her life gone to waste, I still had work to do. I returned my attention to the bodies. I didn’t bother to count them, but it didn’t look like there were two hundred. It was probably something closer to seventy. That meant there was another hideout somewhere or the dead were on the march. I sighed at the realization. Nothing was ever easy.

Seeing no movement, I let my gaze slide across the rest of the room. To my left were several shrouded alcoves cut high into the walls, their depth impossible to tell from where I stood. I’d have to keep an eye on them.

The rest of the room, away from where the bodies were, was empty, but there on the floor, etched into the rock, were a large number of magical symbols I didn’t recognize. Schooled as I was in demonology and the dark arts, that was surprising. I dredged my memory to see if maybe they’d simply been buried in the murk, under thoughts of a particularly good night out, but there was nothing. A little common sense told me they were necromantic in nature, given all the zombies, obviously, but that didn’t tell me much about their true purpose.

Unable to decipher the symbols, I decided to record them. I pulled out Candy’s phone, feeling a twinge of guilt knowing she was lying just a few feet away, and snapped off a few shots. Tiny clicks accompanied each picture, the sound over-loud in the confines of the cavern. The images, while a little dark and spotty, would be good enough for what I needed.

McConnell grunted behind me, shuffling his feet. Realizing he couldn’t see past me in the cramped quarters of the tunnel, and thinking I didn’t want to get caught unaware in a space I could barely move in, I stepped into the room. As he followed me, I heard him hiss. I glanced back to see him staring off past me, his eyes grim.

I mouthed the word, “What?”

He pointed to the corpses. “They know we’re here.” He didn’t bother to whisper.

I turned around slowly just as a gentle creaking, like a ship moored at low tide, sprung up behind me. My heart dropped into my stomach when I saw the corpses on the pile rising up, slowly getting to their feet. They groaned a horrible threnody, spewing bouts of random nonsense as their blank stares settled on us.

I slid the phone back into my pocket. “Time to go.”

I spun around to run but before I could take a step, a hail of zombies dropped down on top of us from out of the alcoves; the same ones I told myself to watch and had forgotten to do so.