Even as David was tentatively reaching out to feel for a pulse the young man took a wheezing breath. He clearly struggled to get the air in with his chest pressing against the top of the back-to-back seats.

  At that moment David felt a surge of anger, fuck it. Fuck these zombies and their white-haired witch of a leader. He quickly freed his friend’s hands and, no longer caring about being obvious, he hauled Charlie over the chairs and down onto the ground. After a second, he put him in the recovery position and listened.

  His breathing sounded easier but other than flinching when David moved his mangled head there was still no response.

  Having got no reaction to something as obvious as moving another survivor David stuck his head up and looked, the milky eyed undead were unmoving and unwavering.

  IN, IN, IN…

  This was fucking creepy. David accelerated his checking and freeing. The more people he searched, the more evidence he found that severe beatings had been the order of the day. He doubted most had even been conscious, or at least able to resist. The injuries seemed too calculated for that.

  His helpless rage grew as he found more people who had died, hung over the chairs like meat racked on display. Most were still alive, likely due to their insistence that people develop Health as a resource pool.

  He continued grimly. The area he was in was large and most of the seats had bodies draped over them.

  Finding Sarah, barely breathing, the same treatment as Charlie, with a fucking visible dent in her skull caused fresh waves of rage. Then it was Carl. He was almost sick. The man was alive, semi-conscious even. As David touched him he groaned, flinched then whimpered, trying to get away from his touch. For the first time since waking he risked speech.

  “Hey, man it’s me, David. I’ll get you free just hang on.”

  That was when he saw his hands. Swollen, black lumpy and misshapen. Where the caster’s heads had been repeatedly smashed Carl’s hands had been destroyed, then tied.

  He was cutting the ties, his task made harder by the flinches and groans that Carl gave before he passed out from the pain.

  Just from the jostling of David cutting rope. A sick mixture of frustration and anger bubbled up.

  Then a voice hissed from behind him, close to one of the zombies.

  “David! Is that you? Over here!”

  It was Katie. She was facing the window in the last, closest, back-to-back row of seats.

  The sense of relief he got upon hearing someone’s voice was immense. He knew he was running on borrowed time, and the Zombies could start paying attention at any moment, so he raced over to her. His knife was starting to get dull from cutting but he was able to scoot round the row of chairs and cut her free quickly.

  Finally, he had help.

  Katie raised her head and flinched, in front of her and off to one side, less than ten feet away was a zombie, its back turned. Then she gasped as she saw the scene playing out on the tarmac below.

  David spoke softly.

  “They seem to be entranced right now, I’ve been moving round for a few minutes, but they are deep into what they are doing. If you move slowly and smoothly it should be fine.”

  Katie’s eyes were wide. She slowly wriggled backward toward David, then slid onto the ground before hugging David and asking.

  “Mark? The others?”

  “I haven’t found Mark, or Billy. Sarah and Charlie are here, with their heads bashed in. Carl is here too, his hands are smashed. Camila is out there…” He gestured vaguely to the runway.

  When he said that she started shaking. Then she whispered in his ear.

  “I heard it. I couldn’t see and they broke over us. I was knocked down and kicked in the head. When I woke up I was being dragged. We all were. I moved and they kicked my head again.”

  She was crying silent tears now.

  “when I woke up again I was really woozy and sick, and already tied down. They were tying us over the chairs. Someone moved, he almost got free.”

  Now she was crying in earnest, desperation in her voice.

  “They moved really fast and they just kept hitting him. Long after he stopped moving. Then they dragged him away…”

  With trembling hands she pointed to a long, bloody, trail moving towards the Gate.

  She was looking at him imploring.

  “I had to stay still, I was already tied and I couldn’t get free. I had to stay still and pretend I wasn’t awake. I could only listen… I had to stay still… didn’t I?”

  There was so much in that question, fear, shame, despair.

  David gripped her face. “Look at me. You did the right thing. No matter what, we stay alive so we can keep fighting.”

  She seemed to focus on that. “I really did fight; I was badly hurt. Regenerating made me better! I tried as hard as I could!”

  David nodded. “I believe you. Now because you have Regenerate, we are both in fighting shape. So, let’s fuck these bastards up and save our friends.”

  Shakily Katie nodded. It was time to begin.

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  There was an immediate problem; what to do?

  Katie was adamant that they check and make sure Mark wasn’t among the captives.

  David, meanwhile, was starting to worry about the problem of what to do next. They had lost their weapons, were surrounded by currently distracted zombies, and they had a lot of people who were worse off than they were.

  In short, once they finished checking bodies, freeing the living and whatnot, they had to face problems with no easy solution.

  Half his brain was chewing over those problems even as he checked person after person, cutting bonds with his now dull knife blade.

  Katie was initially hasty and panicked. Checking for Mark while casting frequent anxious glances at the unmoving zombies around them.

  They still had no idea what might trigger the zombies to react, so everything was done slowly and furtively, though with each repetition they grew bolder. David had a plan for if, when really, the zombies moved in response.

  Use Halt, a lot.

  It really was all he had right now. What was the saying? When all you have is a hammer everything starts to look like a nail.

  Then there was the elephant in the room, Camila. He was confident he could escape with Katie. Sneaking Carl, Charlie and Sarah out was probably doable if they could quietly take out a few zombies. Getting Camila or any kind of mass rescue needed a clear win.

  Two of them, with no weapons, needed to take out a huge number of admittedly distracted zombies.

  A cynical part of his mind filled in the steps; it really was as easy as one, two, three.

  First, they needed weapons. Second, they needed to suppress the death screams, so they didn’t immediately alert the other zombies. Finally, once they killed everyone silently – rescue everyone and ride off into the sunset.

  He checked. His health had dropped by around ten percent, and he had lost a couple of percent of stamina, overall he had a little time but couldn’t risk decompensating and getting woozy again.

  He worried at the problem. Death cries. Taking them out with weapons would probably trigger them. Though for some reason it hadn’t in a great deal of the approach. Why was that?

  The conclusion was simple. The zombies were controlled. They were under orders not to scream. Why? More to the point why did they scream if he Halted them before killing them…

  Did he reset their commands when he halted and reduce them to base instinct?

  Did the screams do the same thing?

  Then David grinned. It was almost feral. He had a plan.

  When he met up with Katie after finishing their check of the survivors, he quickly explained his plan to her. Finishing with his honest assessment of their chances.

  “I think we can thin them out, then we have to take a big chance, though if it works we run the tables and everyone gets to go home… I don’t see any other way to get Camila out, or most of the raiders lying there.”

  She was pale but she surprised him.

  “I can do it, I can do my part. I don’t want to feel like this… So, let’s start before my nerve breaks.”

  With that they took the first, and likely scariest step.

  With Halt poised on David’s lips they stood up and slowly, smoothly walked past the frozen zombies, leaving the gate area and moving back into the terminal, heading for security.

  Even as he did, he focused on his spirits, spreading several of them out with a flex of effort to keep them moving where he wanted them. He needed to keep track of some things…

  After getting the supplies they needed, which was surprisingly easy thanks to a couple of Port police in the security area and what he could only assume was a serious battery backup they initiated their assault.

  The first Zombie they approached was still locked in place, still chanting.

  In, In, In…

  David had enough Magic, so he focused on what he wanted. First, he reached for his spirits. Then focusing on the connection, he reached out sending all of them. They were not scouting but focused on the Nath just in front of him.

  The connection bloomed in his awareness like a constellation of dim stars clustered around a discordant one. Now he needed them to do more.

  Go, he commanded silently. Engage. Silence. Claim. The spirits flowed towards the zombie like a swarm of piranha towards a panicked, bleeding animal that had fallen into deep water.

  Information flowed through the collective senses of his spirits to David as they followed his intent and overwhelmed the Nath dragging it from its shell and feeding it thrashing and wriggling into the spiritual woodchipper that was Convert.

  The zombies weren't just standing. They were positioned deliberately and the death of the first caused a subtle change like pressure against his ear. A pattern he couldn't quite grasp but that spoke of intention was fraying and that was changing something.

  Then it clicked. His spirits drifted toward the windows, toward the tarmac beyond. Toward Camila and whatever was being done to her.

  His connection was strong enough to resist if he used energy. Free Nath wouldn’t, they would flow to the center to lay siege to the only possible host there.

  What had the Herald said? They system was designed to resist just this sort of thing. He was sure one Nath was nothing, but what about a hundred? A thousand?

  Then the time for speculation was over as the zombie collapsed, soundless.

  They kept moving, distance mattered for his control, and it wasn’t time to get loud yet. So, he strode up to the next zombie and again unleashed all the dozens of tendrils of his will along with his spirits. This time he focused not on the sensations but the connection and felt it as the Nath burst free and was dragged back to feed him.

  Another silent kill. This one quicker than the last as he got more familiar with what he was doing. The dissonant pressure grew with each death, he was disrupting whatever they were doing and he worried that he might be noticed too soon.

  He took more of them out, refining his attack and after the third a quick check of his status showed he was ready. So, he started to claim the spirits faster and added to the ones he still commanded. More fuel for later.

  It was so easy and he found he could claim the majority of them and still maintain his resource levels for phase two…

  He was confident, moving faster now as early detection became less and less of a problem. They were almost back at the waiting area overlooking the gate.

  There was something shifting. Once they reached the lounge area David nodded to Katie. Both of them moved quickly, hurrying to get everything ready, so that at least at a glance it looked like it had before.

  She hurried to get into position as David checked his status. Good to go, he had achieved what he needed to with the quiet portion of the plan and opened a route to retreat.

  Then he dispatched four spirits, heavily reinforced with power, leaving him with just enough to start the chain reaction he needed going. A second to confirm they were locked on. Then, crap. They were sensing a fifth presence, weird, nebulous and multifaceted? Like a ball of free Nath? Swarming, feeding, digging?

  There was no time to worry about that but wanting to watch it he reinforced a fifth spirit and set it to track that new presence. Then it was go time.

  “HALT!”

  There was nothing subtle about this he threw the power wide and snagged a load of nearby zombies.

  Then he moved to the closest and shot it in the head. Then the next one.

  The death screams began immediately, and the zombies reacted shattering their pattern. even as he wrenched at the more distant zombies claiming their spirits, he needed fuel for this as well as distraction.

  In all the chaos he almost missed it. That constant chant was gone and the outrage and agitation of the Nath in response to kills was there. So was the leader and her intent.

  Zombies boiled towards him like ants defending their nest from the farmer’s boot. No movement from the leaders…

  “HALT”

  The next group of zombies fell to his power and after changing the magazine on the pistol he was holding he kept right on shooting to provoke screams even as he wrenched spirits free and fed his power.

  “Halt”

  Then again.

  “Halt!”

  He tried to sound triumphant, to imbue his words with the sense he was winning after his initial panic.

  Finally, their leader responded. One, two of the fast zombies moved towards the building at a dead run.

  A moment later she was moving too. Accompanied by the last one.

  Well, that was going according to play at least…