Chapter 71 - Cutting Loose

  As I hovered over the mass of zombies, I realized a couple of things I hadn’t before.

  First off, I really hated smacking into bodies at high speed. They splattered, when I did that. It was messy, gross, and was incredibly bad for my wardrobe. Just looking at what was left on my hands and forearms from the attack earlier made me want to lose my lunch.

  The other thing I recognized was that of all the monsters I’d faced, I was pretty sure this was the time when I could absolutely go no-holds-barred.

  I’d fought ratkin. Still had a special dislike for them, if I was being honest. The one who’d killed Amanda was dead at my hands, and I knew I couldn’t blame every ratkin for what that one had done. Still didn’t like them. Probably wasn’t going to change anytime soon. They were thinking beings, though, and that meant it was probably easier to talk with them than fight them. The same was true for the goblins, Peristera, the Karabos, or most of the other monsters and creatures I’d seen since the event. Sure, sometimes I might end up forced to fight an intelligent species. The Karabos drove that point home well enough. But given options, I’d try something else first.

  These zombies, though? They were just dead people. The undead part left over was a mindless, voracious automaton. There was nothing left of the person it had been before death, as far as we could tell. Nor was there any crystal that could bring back the dead, at least not that we’d found. These people were gone, and only the monster remained.

  Which meant I didn’t have to be gentle. I could actually cut loose, for once, and see what I was really capable of doing with these powers.

  I swung out over a side street and scooped up an SUV, lifting it into the air. As soon as I’d flown away, the zombie turned back south again. Something was drawing them that way. Maybe they could smell the living? Whatever it was, they set off down Massachusetts Avenue again right away. I flew to the front of the pack and dropped the SUV from about fifty feet.

  It blew apart on impact, crushing half a dozen of the lead zombies and shredding another dozen as chunks of the car few in all directions. The wreck formed a mound that made it difficult for the horde to proceed, but they still clambered over it as best they could.

  So I got another car and dropped it, too. I followed that up with a third, a fourth, a fifth, and a sixth vehicle. By the time I was done, there was a solid pile of the things blocking off most of the road, and I’d crushed more than fifty of the creatures.

  That still left most of the pack, though, and they surged onward, scrambling over one another to get past the weak barrier. I landed on the south side of where I’d dropped the cars, stalking over to the side of the road where I grabbed a parking meter with both hands. It took a serious yank to rip the thing free from the ground, and then two hard whacks on the sidewalk to break away the remainder of the concrete stuck to the base, but in under a minute I’d made myself a viable mace.

  Then, I ripped a door from a nearby car and pushed my fist through the padded inside so I could grab one of the internal support bars. Now I had a weapon and a shield. With both in hand, I strode forward, wading into the mass of oncoming enemies.

  I was strong enough to carry an SUV through the air, so when the makeshift mace smacked into the first zombie, it made a serious impression! The blow blasted bits of zombie into the rest of the horde, slowing their advance for a few seconds. Without hesitation, I strode ahead, winding up the mace for another blow.

  Hey, they had to break my skin to even have a chance of taking me down. As creepy and gross as it was to wade into a horde of dead people, it wasn’t like these guys could hurt me easily. I swung two more times, and they were packed in so close each blow killed two of them.

  A zombie snuck past my shield and clamped itself onto my arm, biting down. I felt the pressure, but with my Natural Armor as high as it was, even the strongest zombies in this mass weren’t much of a threat. The teeth couldn’t do more than dent the surface of my skin. I shook my arm hard enough to send the zombie flying thirty feet into the air.

  It didn’t survive the landing.

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  I activated my Flight, soaring ahead just a few feet above the ground and leading with the car door. One after another, the zombies splattered against the door like bugs on a windshield. I kept it up, pouring on more speed as I drove straight through the center of the horde until the door literally came apart. Turns out even titanium roll cages can only survive so much damage before they come apart.

  With the shield gone, I set down again, landing with both feet on the pavement right in the middle of them. I grabbed the mace with both hands and spun in place as the zombies rushed me. Mindless as they were, they kept coming even as the mace started making like a blender and churning them into zombie goo.

  More and more zombies approached, rushing me from every angle. I spun faster, starting to get a little dizzy as I busted them up as quickly as they came.

  Finally, one managed to move fast enough to catch me from behind. The weight as it jumped onto my back threw me off balance, and I went down.

  In an instant, they were all piling onto me. Dozens of zombies joined the fun, all of them pushing and shoving, trying to find somewhere they could bite down. First, it was half a dozen sets of chompers trying to break my skin, then a dozen, then more. The pile was growing faster than I could break them away. Even though their bites weren’t breaking through my Natural Armor, they could still suffocate me, if they piled enough weight on top of me.

  It took all my strength to haul my legs up to my chest. From there, I surged up, throwing the zombies clear as I rose to my feet, then took to the air again. Getting pinned by a big pile of monsters was still one of my weak spots, and they’d been too quick to take advantage of it. It made me wonder if they were truly as mindless as I’d thought—but then again, they were just following their core instinct, right? They saw a living being and they all went in for the bite.

  The fact that instinct also made them much more dangerous than they could possibly have been one at a time was just bad luck, right?

  It was something I’d have to ponder another day. For the time being, I’d cut the horde in half, but that still left a major threat bearing down on Harvard Square. I wanted to finish them off, end this danger so I could report back to Reynolds that the threat was past.

  I still had the mace, so I landed near the front of their formation and started going to work. Two of them rushed me, and I knocked them to pieces with a single blow. I cluster of three rushed from my left, and I reached out a hand in their direction, firing a Lightning Bolt that dropped them where they stood.

  There hadn’t been many chances to test that spell since I’d won it from the Karabos leader. It drained more of my mana than I was happy about, so I had to use it sparingly, but it was tier five, and powerful enough to take out several low-level creatures like these. That made it an effective addition to my arsenal, and one I was glad to have.

  “Come on, then. There’s enough for everyone,” I shouted, striding forward to meet them.

  More zombies rushed me. Each one was met with deadly, lethal force. I’d been so worried about friendly fire, about hurting innocent people, that I’d kept a lot of my Strength in reserve during the Battle for Boston. No more. These blocks had all been completely evacuated days ago, and the zombies were mindless monsters. It wasn’t like I could negotiate with them.

  I was free to cut loose.

  I picked up the pace, moving faster as I slid through their group, shattering one batch of zombies after another. Shifting both hands back to the meter, I swung for the fences, tearing apart a whole pack of the monsters with each strike. They came at me with everything they had, rushing in with teeth and claws bared, ripping at my skin.

  None of their attacks got through. Not a single one. I knew I wasn’t truly invulnerable, but against monsters like this, my Natural Armor was the next best thing.

  When it was done, I stood there, panting, scanning the battlefield for any still-moving adversaries.

  The street was a gross mess of zombie bits. My onslaught hadn’t been gentle, and the results were dramatic. But as I looked around, I couldn’t see a single zombie still on its feet or able to move around. The fight was done. This fight, anyway. There would be more of them, for sure. More zombies, and more monsters in general. If anything had become crystal clear over the past week, it was that the Event had left our world in a dangerous state. If we wanted to survive this new world, it meant becoming someone capable of handling whatever new twists the return of magic was going to throw our way.

  “Which unfortunately means I need to loot these guys,” I muttered to myself. As gross as the battlefield looked, having to go around and physically touch each zombie body was much worse.

  I made a face, but I got to work. There was no way I could turn down all those hundreds of crystals. I needed them, to continue advancing. Getting from tier eight to nine was geometrically more difficult than the earlier ranks. I needed a hundred and twenty-eight points worth of crystals to go from tier eight to nine.

  That was a lot of zombies or other low level creatures.

  Just as important, we needed to get other people ranked up, too. I was our strongest fighter, and Alex was almost as powerful as me. But we needed more people to rank up. Putting all our eggs into two human ‘baskets’ was asking for trouble. Neither Alex or I were immortal or invulnerable, and as it stood if anything happened to us, everyone else in the area was in a lot of trouble.

  With a sigh, I set aside the parking meter and set about the disgusting job of collecting crystals from five hundred very dead undead.