From every direction, soldiers had pushed. Casualties had been minimal. To Grey, everything seemed to be just fine. All that was left… was a few square blocks. Blocks which, unfortunately, had been the busiest, most crowded, in the city… and despite the earlier fly-bys by the Chosen, blocks which still housed thousands of undead.
His hopes of using this whole series of events to get to level ten or even beyond were dashed; the rate of growth shriveled as the number of people involved grew higher, and there were hundreds of soldiers… and nine of the necromancers he’d spoken to what now seemed days ago rather than mere hours.
All of the Zombies left were confined to a handful of large, crowded buildings; and apparently the effort to eradicate them across the countryside had of course been handled before this operation started.
As they focused on the mall, Grey’s radio crackled. “Sergeant Grey, this is Colonel Parsons. We’ve got a rendezvous point where the two flags are side-by-side. Your presence is requested.”
Grey glanced at Watkins. From what he could recall, in the military, ‘Requested’ meant ‘get the hell there right now’.
“Might be back, might not. See you on the other side, Sergeant.”
Watkins gave a nod… and a salute, which Grey returned… before Grey turned, looking for a moment… and spotting it. A Humvee and some sort of small tank, side by side in the mall parking lot, with a flag of Mexico and an American flag.
As he approached, a private guided him to Parsons himself… who was watching soldiers gather around the door, standing next to a man in camouflage who was apparently his Mexican equivalent.
After a quick exchange of salutes, Grey stepped closer, studying the two men; both of them had clearly passed level 5, as he doubted someone who looked to be early twenties at the oldest would be at their respective ranks; and the grey in the hispanic man’s mustache was at odds with his smooth skin.
“Reporting, Colonel.”
He glanced back at Grey, and nodded. “So. I understand your unit had zero fatalities, only some minor injuries. Rescued at least forty survivors… mostly children. Despite having one of the worst paths into the city.”
“Yessir. However, we bypassed complete searches of some of the suburbs we stopped, just making sure they were secure and had no active undead inside. Its unlikely but possible there’s a corpse or two back there that was just waiting to turn; should do one last sweep, just in case, after the maximum time it would take to rise.”
A firm nod. “And Most of the rescues were from a school?”
People didn’t like braggarts. It would probably be best to downplay accomplishments. “Myself, Corporal Johnson, and Private Rogers cleared the school. While it would be accurate to say we saved a few dozen kids, there wouldn’t have been any alive to save if it weren’t for some of the teachers.”
Both officers paid more attention now. Parsons spoke up. “Care to elaborate on that?”
“There was a woman, a teacher. She was, apparently, in a hallway with a class when the zombies showed up. She pushed the kids into a supply closet, locked it from the outside, and then got killed. An adult human can generally outrun a zombie. She had a choice, to run or save the kids. She chose the kids.”
The hispanic man gave a nod, and turned to face Grey. The name on his uniform read ‘Martinez’. Handy thing, the military. “I don’t suppose she carried any sort of identification? This is a hard time for our country. We can use heroes, even dead ones.”
“Unfortunately, she carried no identification on her. Most likely she was a teacher, left her purse in her classroom. If you showed me a picture, I’d recognize her, most likely.”
Martinez nodded… and glanced at Parsons. “Mind if I borrow him for a bit after this?”
Parsons chuckled. “He’s not actually active duty. He’s a retired vet. Korean war, came in because he picked a necromancer-adjacent class. Once this is over, he does as he wants.”
“I certainly wouldn’t mind going through a few pictures, sir. If they grabbed a yearbook, I could point her out. Or… do mexican schools have yearbooks?”
“Some do. Not all. I’ll have someone check.”
Parsons shook his head. “Regardless. We’ve got thousands of zombies in these buildings, roaming as mobs.. There used to be over ten thousand in that mall, but they burned out the central areas earlier, now its just the scattered stores. We’ve got a couple of his experts on the way, you’re the only Necromancer on our side with military experience. We’ve got two priorities here… finding whoever did this, and clearing out this infestation with minimal casualties.”
“Hmmm. Well. Have we got any records of lone, unusually focused zombies, or small packs, acting to spread the infection?”
Martinez rubbed his mustache between his fingers for a few seconds. “...Yes. Outlying villages, mostly. At least a dozen of them.”
“Well. He would need to be fairly close to actually raise them, even with upgrades; same town, at worst. But controlling them… one of the upgrades would let a level ten necromancer control them from a bit over ten miles away. If he were twenty, it might be as many as thirty.”
“Most of our initial swarm here in Chihuahua were centered on the hospital. A bunch of people were hit by an explosion of some sort… and came back as zombies after they died, in beds, or in the ambulances. It… was problematic. Did they perhaps send a zombie in to just… poke everyone who was dying already to infect them?”
Grey thought for a moment. “An explosion. I suspect an infectious zombie with a claymore, pipe bomb, or other IED shoved down inside them could infect a whole crowd at once… little bits of zombie flesh getting stuck in you could cause nasty wounds, and kill you from a normal infection if you don’t have a high enough Endurance. You could even use poisons, toxins, or the like to make it worse. So that might have been the initiating factor. Did we track the explosion, whoever caused it?”
Colonel Parsons studied Grey with horror. “... A living zombie suicide bomb that turns a whole crowd into zombies…”
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
“And, unfortunately, a zombie wearing a complete body covering would appear human, albeit clumsy, right up until it went off.”
“This might not be over. This might not even be close to over.”
***
Clearing out the mall was… an unimpressive slog, initially. There were dozens of necromancers there, focusing on the various entrances; and the undead only hated the living, not their fellow undead, and wouldn’t attack them until they were, themselves, attacked.
With hundreds of weapons at the ready, Grey focused on his own section; and with his new Awareness ability, the zombies he seized control of were able to open doors, letting the ones trapped in various spaces in the mall flow out into open spaces where they could be easily gunned down.
As he reached out to a group he could feel beneath the mall, he paused…trying to take control, to command them to move to the nearest entrance…
He stopped. He activated the radio for a moment. “Urgent. Got an enemy controlling some of the zombies, command, trying to get them down low, hide them. Whoever our enemy is, they’ve got an active interest in the mall right now. Over.”
There was a few moments of silence. Then a response. ~Not the first report on that. We’ve consulted one of the Chosen. If you, or one of the undead you control, can grab them… or even just try to seize control of one and he fights you over it… you should be able to get a vague idea of where he is. We’ve had other reports. Check it, and pass up anything you find.~
Grey zeroed in, ignoring the others for now; focusing on one of the Undead moving with purpose beneath the mall… and stretched out, trying to grasp hold of it.
He could feel it. A power… something far beyond his. Whoever it was, there was no way in hell he could seize one of their creations. To the north… in the desert. Whoever it was, they were in… a walled compound.
“...I’m feeling someone… either higher level than me by a good bit, or just a much higher Power stat… to the north… walled compound. In a basement. That’s about all I could get. Its an active strain to keep trying to take control. I can keep doing that, and fighting him, but its much more difficult to do so than to keep the zombies still.”
~Acknowledged. One of the Necromancers on the mexican side is actually stronger than whoever he is, and working to shut him down. Focus on clearance efforts for now… we’ve got a strike team headed his way.~
A nod…. And Grey returned focus to the creatures inside the mall; opening doors, and setting up nice, clean mobs for them to run into.
None of these Undead had any powers to them. If they had Stealth, this would’ve been an incredibly difficult task, impossible without Necromancer support. Whoever did this either didn’t have the Empowered ability, or failed to use it.
If he were to use his Empowered undead ability on the fire-ants as well as taking Infectious, and give them Stealth, and Venom… they could sneak up on people, inject them with venom, and when it killed them… they’d come back as another stealthy, venomous, undead.
He could, quite possibly, wipe out human civilization if he just picked that at level ten, and that might get the job done. There was a problem, however.
Nightfire could teleport. If human civilization ended.. She might just move to the moon colony, and render the whole idea a wasted effort.
As he directed another mass of undead directly into the firing lines, he mentally shelved that idea; it would be something to pursue later, if his ambush idea failed. He really needed to go hunting… find a fire-ant nest… and build up a nice big cache of dead fire-ants.
***
It took hours for the mall to be fully cleared; with the aggressor trying to hide zombies in mid-battle, there was a suspicion that perhaps bodies had been hidden as well, like time-bombs; and this was still possible. But when sunset hit…
The operation was declared over. There might be a few undead scattered here and there… but the Guard and the Army were no longer needed in Mexico; and could get back to ensuring the United States held things together.
As the troops mounted humvees, buses, and APCs for the drive north, Grey was invited on a ride alongside Colonel Parsons… and settled in. He was hungry, and would certainly have enjoyed stopping somewhere for some genuine Mexican food… but he’d settle for whatever was open back in El Paso.
The Humvee was unusually smooth for one of its sort; and Parsons was watching Grey thoughtfully for the first few minutes, clearly having something in mind. “...Sergeant Grey. Or Mister Grey, if you don’t want to re-enlist. My superiors want to create a task force for training Necromancers and handling Undead, and increase the number the US can call on. We’ve established such groups for various classes, and tapped some of the Chosen to help with this process… We’d initially planned on avoiding having any such group for Necromancers… for some very good, logical, reasons.”
He inhaled deeply before continuing.
“Not only did none of the Chosen choose Necromancy, but several of the abilities were given stringent warnings by the Chosen; that they are illegal in some of the nations forming the Committee, but not all. In the event humans had to take refuge should earth fall, or ask for help from them, they’re one of the classes which would cause friction.”
Taking refuge should earth fall? “..I wasn’t aware taking refuge was an option, sir.”
“...We don’t put this out too much. But most planets fall. They think Earth is doomed, and that the best we can do is make sure its a slow, steady fall, so that we don’t have a wave of extradimensional horrors, and we can both evacuate a few billion civilians near the end, and setup space habitats so that, eventually, we can retake the earth once its all stable.”
He focused on Grey. “They take in people as refugees, not governments. If any necromancers with prohibited abilities move out to the Elven nation that’s currently helping us the most, either they have to start over from square one… or move somewhere else. If you take this job, I can offer you a slot on the moon instead, where some remnant of Earth’s governments will exist, no matter how bad it gets on earth itself.”
Grey considered. This would likely interfere with his plans. “...I can appreciate the offer. But I’m not the highest level necromancer on your side; or even a specialist necromancer. I’m also an Assassin. At least one of the men you sent to work with me would be more qualified; the one who actually had good body-armor wasn't just a pure Necromancer, but higher level than me. And there are undoubtedly others as well.”
Parsons chuckled. “You’re former military. Cool under pressure; the men who worked with you said you were like a machine. Smart enough to get things done, but not afraid of getting your hands dirty. And the only soldier who has the right abilities. So. If this sort of bullshit happens in the US, I want a team ready to deal with it. Can you help me put that together? We could use you in a leadership role.”
Could he take advantage of this to help get her killed, instead of interfering? “...I’ve got two problems with this, sir. If I’m going to accomplish this sort of objective, it might cause issues if I were lower level than my subordinates, and if I'm leading, I won't be out there killing swarms.”
“We can undoubtedly help with that. We’ve got hotspots around the country, and are already flying VIPs out every day with teams of soldiers to get them to level 5 so they can reset the aging process. We've already got five teams of SEALs who are at level 20, and are focusing on getting more there every day. As a fringe benefit, it takes some of the heat off the more stressed parts of the country.”
He nodded. “Well. The second problem is a bit more personal.” He focused on Parson, meeting his gaze. “The reason I'm so cool under pressure, as they said. I’ve got brain damage. I don’t know if there’s a paper with an alzheimer’s diagnosis or what sitting in a hospital somewhere, but while I can think clearly now, I couldn’t tell you which unit I was in, can only name a couple of people off of my family photos, and don’t even think of myself as Joshua anymore… just mister Grey.”
He inhaled. “I believe that, now that I’ve swapped species, I’m fine; except that I clearly don't have the same emotional range I used to. But I can’t guarantee it, and that should be kept in mind before making a decision of this magnitude. ”
