Thirty
A crackling black bolt of necrotic energy leapt away from Gertrude’s fingertips and sped towards Blue Team.
Gabby stepped up to deflect it, raising her golden wings to shield us all from it.
The bolt passed right through her wings and struck one of Euna’s copies right in her chest. Her entire body turned albino white and then crumbled to ash in an instant.
Euna’s copies all screamed in agony and moved away from the pile of ash.
Gabby stared at her wings incredulously, muttering the word, “impossible.”
Selene fired off a hail of shots that Gertrude easily deflected, conjuring a black shield that successfully managed to do what Gabby’s wings failed to do a moment prior. She was hovering over the heads of the cultists and cackling with malevolent glee as she charged up a new spell that looked way more powerful than anything Kevin had ever thrown my way.
All of the cultists turned our way, moving towards us with all-black eyes.
Around them, a battalion of phantoms rose up from below, looking even older than Gertrude, a mix of warriors from several different centuries. Some wielded translucent spears and hatchets, others muskets with bayonets affixed, and yet others with stone cudgels.
I once heard a rumor that Camp Ferris was built atop a mass gravesite made from the dead of countless battles that had been fought over Eastport’s founding, which was a complicated and messy affair no matter which century you went back to.
Well, I guess there was at least some truth to that rumor.
I felt like I was playing through the climactic fight in an epic video game after I skipped the intro cutscene. Maybe I should have let Gertrude explain her big plan. Oh well, too late now.
Live and let learn, am I right?
Gertrude unleashed her overpowered spell, a blackened beam that looked like it would’ve carved through all of us in an instant.
Luckily, Derek rushed forward and cast a massive ward. The shimmering shield appeared white against her black energy in this desaturated are, but it could have been bright purple for all I knew. The impact drove him to his knees, and a streak of his black hair instantly went gray, but he held. He glanced up at me, determined.
“I’ll hold her off. You clear the way?”
“Deal.” I started forward, ready to face whatever came my way.
Hannah appeared beside me, leading a swarm of phantoms of her own.
Where’ve you been? I demanded.
Wrangling a phantom posse. My powers take time. They aren’t as flashy as yours.
Excuses. Also you said ‘phantom pussy,’ so your argument is invalid.
Hannah smiled. I’ve missed you too, my love.
Euna, Selene, and Gabby moved up beside me, joining the fight, and a smile cut across my face as I let out a bellowing war cry. There was no one else I’d rather ride into certain death with, than my girls…and Derek too I suppose.
As Gertrude and Derek hurled spells at one another over our heads, I led my girls into an all-out assault on her undead forces, and our two lines collided in the middle in a violent chaotic swirl. Phantoms erupted into black and white sparks. Cultists dropped and–if they weren’t struck down by a headshot–rose again as zombies.
Absently, I wondered if Red Ryan was having an easier time of it, getting to watch the birth of my son while I was stuck saving the world. I was a little jealous of myself.
-
I (Red Ryan here) was sick and tired of all these motherfucking zombies in this motherfucking hospital. Lana and I made our way to the Dawn’s Grace hospital just in time to see Gabby land on the helicopter pad.
There had only been one major issue.
By which I mean there had been about six thousand issues.
Zombies, a whole army of them, were pushing in on the multiple layers of barricades that the Bureau had erected around the property. There were highly trained Hunters in tactical gear letting loose on the zombie hordes with machine guns and grenade launchers galore, but they weren’t making a dent.
I had checked my wrist-pad. 8:18pm. We just had to hold out for a little under four hours until the cure that Autumn, Lana, and I worked on took full effect. We could do that, right?
Spoiler alert, wrong. It was 10:32 now, and we were holed up on the top floor of the hospital. Lana was at my side as I stared down the barrel of a shotgun at the end of the hallway. It was only a matter of time. Time we didn’t have.
Tabitha warned.
I shut my eyes and sighed.
Her mental voice sounded feeble as she started to push.
I glanced over at Lana and nodded.
The little fairy got the hint and turned around, dual-casting a frost spell that sealed the door to the maternity ward in a layer of ice as thick as a vault door. A bunch of protection sigils, like ones that had protected the football player’s helmets, started floating around it; warding off any potential intrusion as best we could.
“Get set, people!” I commanded. As one, the squad of survivors–many but not all of whom were from the Bureau–racked their weapons and got ready.
A very petty part of me somewhere in the back of my mind noted that most of them had way cooler weapons than I did, thanks to Olson being far more generous towards them than he had been to me. I made a mental note to go give the old one-eyed codger a piece of my mind once this was all over, but it was pretty far down the list of important matters I needed to take care of after saving the world.
Defending Tabitha took precedence, by far and away.
Behind us, Tabby started screaming as the pain of labor became too much.
The first zombie rounded the bend a few agonizing minutes later.
Then the shooting started, and I prayed to anyone who might be listening that it didn’t stop until midnight came. In between shots, my eyes darted over to a bright red emergency axe hanging in a glass case on the wall. As badly as I wanted to use that thing (I never stopped wanting to be a firefighter okay, other things just became more important along the way) I knew that if things got bad enough that I reached for that…
I shook myself and refocused on the other end of the hallway.
All that mattered now was keeping the zombies away from Tabitha until midnight.
I hoped that wherever Blue Ryan was, he was having an easier night.
-
Blue team was scattered.
Hannah was screaming as she tried to hold onto her command over her few remaining phantoms, but Gertrude’s phantoms far outnumbered hers, and they were crushing in from all sides trying to snuff her out.
At the same time, Gabby and Selene were fighting back to back, nearly overwhelmed by the sheer mass of collegiate cultists. The sounds of gunshots and an angelic mace whistling through the sky only to intercept a skull were picking up pace to an almost frantic degree as they fought on.
Euna and I were fighting side by side, running circles around the others as our months of fighting left us in near perfect harmony.
It just wasn’t enough.
Gertrude kept firing out blasts of necrotic energy that Derek was struggling to deflect. His hair was completely stark white now, and I was pretty sure that was not a sign that he was growing more powerful by the second.
Every step I took was accompanied by a new chute of roots striking up from the soil to take down an enemy. Every slash of my angelic sword was in tune with a vine reaching down to bind some cultist’s arm or neck.
We were just outnumbered. Nobody could hold that up forever. Although… my eyes darted to Derek’s satchel, and the memory of him tucking that angelic crown came back to me. Maybe we didn’t need to hold out forever.
“Derek! Give it to her!”
Derek gave me a bewildered look as he tossed out another ward that bounced Gertrude’s latest pair of attacks off into the woods. Two trees shriveled and died in an instant. “I’m giving this bitch all that I got, Ryan! It’s not enough!”
“That’s what she said!” One of the cultists yelled at the top of his lungs.
Selene fired five shots into the guy’s face.
“Not her-her!” I yelled, pointing at Kevin’s girlfriend’s body that Gertrude was currently possessing. “Her-her!” I pointed at Gabby.
“You’ve lost me completely, dude!” Derek shouted, struggling to erect a new shield in time to fend off yet another of Gertrude’s seemingly endless supply of necrotic bolts.
Oh for fuck’s sake.
Grim determination answer back from her psychic bond as she pulled out all the stops. She merged all of her remaining copies into one form and grew to twice her normal height. The blessing Gabby had given her shone through her entire body like golden tattoos snaking up her limbs as she stomped her way through the enemies and went on a rampage.
I leapt high into the air and dove for Derek, slashing through a bunch of phantoms attacking Hannah as I did so. I landed in a roll and came up in a crouch, reaching into his satchel.
“Hey, hand’s off the sack, man. Now’s not the time for a reach-around!”
“Oh shut up,” I hissed, though I had to admit I’d probably laugh at that one in a day or two. I withdrew Gabby’s crown spun in place, tossing it her way like a frisbee and shouting her name as loud as I could.
Gabby looked my way, spotted the crown, and it was like her wings turned into rockets. One second she was smashing her way through a squad of enemies, the next her wings were straight back behind her, leaved were scattering away from her like a helicopter coming in for a landing, and she was at the crown.
She spun in mid-air, now wearing the gleaming halo and blazing with a radiance that made everyone on the battlefield avert their gaze.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Gertrude hiss like a vampire exposed to sunlight (which I’ve seen up close way back in my first week dealing with monsters) and fly off through the trees like a bat out of hell.
All of her minions, however, couldn’t fly.
Gabby’s radiance reduced all of the nearby phantoms into golden sparks, and snuffed the black flames glowing in the cultist’s eyes out as a rippling shockwave erupted outwards from her and cleaned everything it touched.
The battlefield was empty aside from us.
Euna shrunk down to her normal size and collapsed, all the color fading from her body as she started to crumble away to ash.
Euna smiled softly as her copy, just one of many, dissolved.
Selene sat down heavily on a bench and set her golden gun on the seat beside her, breathing heavily.
Gabby’s radiance dimmed as she slowly lowered herself to the forest floor, a thoughtful expression on her face. “I have cleansed this area of impure spirits. All those that remain are the worthy dead. They deserve Paradise.”
The knot of phantoms around Hannah, I noted, were all still here.
Hannah was speaking to each of them in turn, and one by one they were launching skyward and dissolving into light, heading off to Paradise forevermore.
I sheathed my angelic sword over my shoulder and turned at last to Derek.
My heart plummeted.
“Derek? Tell me this is a joke. A-a decoy!”
All of my girls looked my way.
Derek shook his weary head. His hair was start white and his skin was frail and mottled, like that of an old man. “Sorry, old boy. Not this time. Some prices demand to be paid. Such is the way with magic. Gertrude’s magic is strong. Souls are stronger, but it comes at a cost.” My oldest friend fell to his knees. “A cost I was all too happy to pay. For you, Ryan. Gabby has the right of it, calling you ‘your majesty.’ You may not wear a crown or sit on a throne, but you’ve always been a king to me, dude. Even…” he swallowed and started to tilt backwards, his eyes losing focus.
I sped to his side and caught him as he fell.
“… even when you were just that loser from Hilltop. I followed that guy into the woods. Not some chad with a bunch of bitches, man. But the good guy with the heart of gold. My king. Don’t forget.”
I smiled through the tears that spilled over my cheeks. “Dude that was, really gay.”
Derek laughed once, a smile stretching across his face as he looked past me up into the open sky. He chuckled a little, sighed, and grew very still. He died with a smile on his face.