The village that hired us paid for the return of a family heirloom. The Elder, a trembling old man with shifty eyes, explained that the Golden Urn of his ancestors had been stolen by a Necromancer. Apparently, the sorcerer was short on teacups.

  The problem was the security. The cemetery was crawling with armed zombies.

  "A frontal assault will cost us too much," Gunther calculated, looking at the field dotted with slow-moving figures. "Minus two hundred points of shield durability. High risk of injury. And the Necromancer will just keep raising them again and again. It is a war of attrition, which our budget cannot sustain."

  "Then what?" asked the Sergeant, scratching his scar. "Do we decline?"

  "We are not going to fight them," answered Nasser, our Optimistic Thief and master of unconventional solutions. "We are going to join them."

  Preparations were underway behind the leaning cemetery fence.

  "More dirt!" Nasser commanded. "Alf, roll in that puddle. Jem, smear soot on your face. You look too rosy. You smell of life and vitamins."

  "I smell of sweat," objected Alf the Hoarder (our new, constantly whining recruit).

  "Dead men don't sweat," the Thief cut him off. "Vain, bring the 'Perfume'."

  Our Anatomist brought a sack of biological waste left over from butchering ghouls. We began rubbing the rot into our clothes and skin.

  Alf sobbed, and suddenly, a sharp, warm reek of ammonia mixed with the smell of decomposition. A dark stain spread down his trousers.

  "You pissed yourself," Jem stated. "Again."

  "I... I am getting into character," Alf’s teeth chattered.

  "Excellent," Nasser nodded, sniffing appraisingly. "Fresh urine will mask the scent of a living body. That's even better than rot. It is the smell of despair. Good job, Hoarder."

  "Listen, Nasser," Jem asked, smearing mud on his neck. "Why do they call you 'The Flyer'? Did you build wings?"

  Nasser smirked, checking how his torn hood sat.

  "Once, I unsuccessfully tried to rob a baron. He wanted a creative execution. I was loaded into a siege mortar. They wanted to fire me into an enemy castle wall. As a living projectile."

  "And then?" Alf stopped shaking, his mouth hanging open.

  "The fuse burned down, but the powder was damp. It was just a 'pfft'. I flew two meters and landed in a haystack. Since then, I consider myself a man who has visited the heavens and returned. Compared to a flight in a cast-iron tube, a walk with zombies is just a picnic. Ready? Let's go."

  We climbed over the fence. The fog was in our favor.

  In the center of the cemetery, by an open crypt, stood the Necromancer. He was a withered old man in a black robe, mumbling something over a book. "Clients" wandered around him.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Dozens of walking corpses stood, swayed, and stared with empty eye sockets into nowhere.

  Nasser stepped into the crowd. Outwardly, he was a perfect corpse. He dragged a leg; his slack jaw twitched slightly. Alf and Jem fell into his wake, trying not to breathe.

  The nearest zombie slowly turned its head. Its cloudy cataracts locked onto Alf, who reeked of urine from a mile away. The dead man sniffed the air, but the smell of excrement apparently was natural for this place. It lost interest and turned away.

  They were advancing toward the altar, where the Golden Urn gleamed dully.

  The Necromancer suddenly raised his head.

  "Hey, you!" he croaked. "The trio by the south fence!"

  Nasser froze. Alf began to slide into a faint.

  "What are you standing there for?!" the sorcerer yelled, waving his staff. "On patrol! To the north gates! Move, you bags of bones! I didn't raise you to slack off!"

  Nasser understood: the Necromancer mistook them for his servants. He was commanding them.

  The Thief let out a low, guttural moan, feigning obedience, and made a show of turning north. But the trajectory of his shuffle coincidentally passed right by the altar.

  It was a moment of High Art. Nasser made no sudden movements. He simply passed the Urn, slowed down for a second, and the golden object vanished into the folds of his filthy rags. A thief's trick against Death Magic.

  They had almost shuffled to the safety of a gap in the fence.

  And then Alf tripped. His natural clumsiness triggered at the worst possible moment. He caught his foot on a root and crashed down, instinctively throwing his hands forward.

  "Damn it!" Alf yelped — loudly, clearly, and unmistakably human.

  The silence in the cemetery began to ring.

  The Necromancer whipped around.

  "Dead men don't swear!" the sorcerer shrieked, realizing he'd been played. "THEY ARE ALIVE! GET THEM!"

  The entire crowd of zombies, a mere decoration a second ago, surged into motion. Dozens of heads snapped toward our heroes.

  "Run!" Nasser yelled, dropping the idiot mask.

  They sprinted for the fence. There was no more acting. Only a dash for survival.

  Behind them, the air thickened. The Necromancer began casting a spell.

  "Warning, Possession cast!" Jem provided running commentary. "They’re going to speed up!"

  The earth beneath Alf's feet bulged; a bony hand grabbed his ankle.

  "Help!" the Hoarder shrieked.

  Nasser spun around, grabbed his comrade by the scruff of the neck, and yanked him out of the dead man's grip with a violent heave.

  "To the exit!" Jem was already scrambling up the wall.

  Zombies were slow, but under the Necromancer's buff, they moved terrifyingly fast. They rolled in like a wave.

  At that moment, Dieter's head appeared on the other side of the fence. Our tank leaned over the barricade and extended a pole.

  "Grab on!"

  They tumbled over the fence a second before rusty swords and axes bit into the wood. The Necromancer squealed in rage, hurling curses, but our heroes were already rolling down the slope, far from the cursed ground. The Elder's eyes bugged out when he saw who had returned to him. Dirty, reeking of rot and latrine filth, but holding the golden urn.

  "Did you kill them all?" he asked hopefully.

  "We executed a Special Asset Extraction Operation," Gunther answered, breathing heavily, and snatched the pouch with the 450 crown payment. "You don't need to know the details. The result is what matters. And don't breathe too deeply."

  That evening, the squad scrubbed themselves by the river.

  Nasser rubbed himself with sand until he was red. Alf washed his pants, muttering apologies.

  "You know," Nasser said to Jem when they finally washed off the cemetery makeup. "The scariest part wasn't that they could have eaten us."

  "What then?"

  "It was that when the Necromancer gave the order, for a second, I actually wanted to obey. That was pure willpower, man. Occupational hazard for a dead guy."

  "And what stopped you?"

  "The thought that I've already flown out of a mortar. It doesn't suit a man who was a cannonball to be a zombie. It's a demotion in class."

  Jem chuckled.

  "You are a great actor, Nasser. And a great thief. But next time, please, let's do it without the smell of piss. It kills the vibe of our heroic saga."

  We moved on.

  Gunther counted the modest profit.

  Alf dried his pants as he walked.

  And Nasser smiled at the stars, because he knew: as long as you are neither in a mortar nor a grave — life is beautiful.

  (End of Chapter 28)