Read Drinking Midnight Wine Online

Authors: Simon R. Green

Drinking Midnight Wine (35 page)

BOOK: Drinking Midnight Wine
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Jimmy and Toby jumped to their feet and looked wildly about them, but Gayle just sat where she was and looked at them, baffled. “What?” she said. “What’s the matter?”
“What’s the matter?” Toby said incredulously. “It’s
Night of the Living Dead
time! The whole place is crawling with zombies!”
“She can’t see the dead,” Jimmy said quickly. “It’s a blind spot, part of her special nature. Toby, listen to me. We can’t let these bastards get anywhere near Gayle. She mustn’t be hurt or damaged. It’s vital, for everyone’s sake.”
Toby looked immediately for the nearest exit, but there were already a whole crowd of the dead between him and the door. There was no way for him to get Gayle out. He moved to stand back to back with Jimmy. To his surprise, he wasn’t as scared as he thought he should be. The dead looked distinctly upsetting, but he’d seen much nastier things in horror movies. Mostly he felt angry, even outraged, that Hob should seek to hurt the woman he loved.
“
Hate
liches,” said Jimmy, his voice thick with loathing. “Never a fair fight, and never any honor in it. Not a real enemy, just . . . things, that can’t be killed because they’re already dead.”
“I know how to deal with zombies,” said Toby, trying hard to sound confident. “I’ve seen all the movies. Just shoot them in the head. Take out the brain.”
“You’re thinking of the wrong movies,” said Jimmy. “This is more
Evil Dead
territory. Tear them apart, rip them into pieces, or they’ll just keep coming at you. Every part of them is a part of Hob’s will. I’m going to have nightmares for weeks after this, I just know it.
Hate
liches. Feel free to grab any weapon from the wall you like the look of. And whatever you do,
keep them away from Gayle.
”
He gestured at the weapon plaques on the walls bearing fine displays of swords and axes. Most had clearly been designed to be wielded by someone of Jimmy Thunder’s size and strength, but Toby quickly spotted a sword he thought he could handle. He darted over to the wall, pulled the sword from the plaque, and hefted it in his hand. He’d never handled a sword in his life, but the solid weight felt comforting, even reassuring, and he’d seen enough swordfights in films that he thought he could fake it. He glared about him, sweeping the shining blade back and forth before him, doing his best to look dangerous. The dead were closing in from all sides now, and none of them looked impressed in the least.
Gayle had stood up by now, but was still looking blankly around her, unable to see or appreciate the danger they were in. Toby grabbed her by the arm, hauled her over to the nearest wall and then dragged wooden benches into position around her, forming a basic barricade. He managed to pile it three benches high before the first dead got too close, and he had to leave her. He was breathing hard now, not all of it from the exertion. He really didn’t like the odds. He would have run—if there’d been anywhere he and Gayle could have run to. He tried to smile reassuringly at her, but his mouth was very dry, and he wasn’t sure how it came out. She smiled and nodded back at him, trusting him, expecting him to save her. Toby looked around him, at the zombies shuffling forward, dragging their dead feet, and he grinned suddenly.
Ah, hell; how often in real life do you get the chance to play the hero? To be the good guy, protecting his lady fair from the forces of darkness? So stop thinking and worrying, suck it in, and go for it!
He moved to stand back to back with Jimmy Thunder again. The godling had his hammer in his hand and was hefting it thoughtfully.
“Don’t try confusing them, or setting them against each other,” he said tersely. “There’s only one mind guiding them, and that’s Hob’s.”
“How can he control so many bodies at once?” said Toby.
“Same way he got past all my defensive shields,” Jimmy growled, “because he’s the Hob. Fight well, Toby Dexter. Or if you can’t manage that, at least try to die well.”
He drew back his great arm and launched his hammer Mjolnir like a guided missile. The ancient weapon smashed into the nearest zombie, punching a ragged hole through its chest and out of its back. The hammer sped on, hardly slowed at all by the impact, and slammed through half a dozen more bodies. The zombies were thrown to the floor, but the terrible damage hardly affected them, and they were already rising awkwardly to their feet. A whole group of the dead lurched deliberately in front of the flying hammer, slowing it down until dead hands could snatch it out of the air and then pull it down, holding it to the floor by the sheer weight of their bodies. Jimmy snarled angrily.
“Some days, things wouldn’t go right if you paid them. All right, we do it the hard way. Watch your back, Toby.”
The dead surged forward, and the thunder godling went to meet them. He lashed out with his great fists, smashing skulls and tearing heads from bodies. Some of the dead he tore limb from limb and others he smashed to the ground and trampled underfoot. The dead fell, unable to match his inhuman strength, but there were always more to replace them. They clustered about him, clutching at his arms and back and trying to drag him down. He flexed his great arms and bodies flew from him. But still they came.
Toby watched Jimmy fight and envied him his godly abilities. All he had was an all-too-human body, already tired out from a really hard day, and courage that was more stubbornness than anything else. But still he stood his ground before Gayle’s improvised barricade, and didn’t even think about retreating. He tried to hold his sword like he knew what he was doing, and was surprised at how steady his hands were.
The first of the dead reached him: an old man in his best black suit, a shock of white hair hanging down around his gaunt face. The eyes and mouth were open, the edges ragged from where they’d torn through the mortician’s stitches that had held them shut. He stank of the grave, and his reaching hands were crooked like claws. His yellowed eyes were deeply sunk, but full of awareness and hate. Toby stepped forward, and swung his sword with both hands like a golf club. The long blade flashed round in a great sideways arc, and sheared clean through the dead man’s neck and out the other side. The blow staggered the zombie, and the grimacing head toppled from the shoulders. Still the body staggered forward. Toby scowled. He moved to one side, and tripped the body so it went crashing to the floor. Toby then gave the severed head a good kick, so it went rolling away, well out of reach of the body’s grasping hands. Toby grinned. Not bad for a first attempt. He looked down at his sword, that had suddenly seemed so light and effective in his hands. Trust Jimmy Thunder not to have an ordinary sword on his wall.
More dead came lurching forward and Toby went to meet them with a confident smile on his lips and a dangerous gleam in his eyes. His sword was a blur as he moved quickly among the slow-moving dead, cutting them up and easily evading their grasping hands. He was soon breathing hard from the exertion, and his arms and back ached fiercely, but his success put new vigor in him, and he felt as if he could have done this all day. To his great surprise, he found he was actually enjoying himself. After a day of being the butt of everything that happened to him, it felt good to be involved in something simple and straightforward, with a whole bunch of tangible bad guys for him to take out the day’s frustrations on.
But still, for every dead body he dismembered and sent crashing to the floor, there were still more coming forward, and appearing out of nowhere to join the crush. Good as he felt, Toby knew he couldn’t keep this up forever, and just maybe they could: the dead didn’t get tired. It occurred to Toby to wonder just how many dead Hob had at his command. There were a lot of cemeteries in Bradford-on-Avon: very old, very large cemeteries. As he thought that, the crowd of risen dead around him seemed even thicker, and the smell became almost unbearable. Toby set his back against Gayle’s barricade, and fought on.
There was a sudden cry from across the hall, and Toby looked round sharply just in time to see Jimmy Thunder fall beneath an unstoppable wave of the dead, that was dragging him down by sheer weight of numbers. The thunder godling was still fighting, throwing broken bodies away from him, but the dead held him down, clawing at him with their cold hands and fastening on him with their yellowed teeth. Toby got a brief glimpse of Jimmy’s face, already streaked with blood, as he looked right past Toby to Gayle.
“Dammit, Gayle, take on your aspect!” he yelled, his voice touched with hysteria. “Your presence might be enough to block Hob’s sending!”
“I daren’t,” Gayle said miserably. “That has to be what the Serpent wants. He must have set up some way to turn it to his advantage. It’s the only trump card I’ve got. I daren’t play it too soon.”
“Gayle, damn you . . .” And then the thunder godling was lost to sight and sound under a mass of the dead that writhed like a pile of maggots.
Toby heard the mirror on the wall scream, right behind him. He looked round to see three of the dead hammering at the mirror, trying to smash and shatter it with their cold fists. Toby cut all three of them down before they even knew he was there, and was back defending Gayle in a moment. He rather thought he was getting the hang of this. Even if his arms hurt like hell, and it was growing harder to get his breath with every minute. His image in the mirror babbled thanks, and then raised its voice urgently.
“Use the artifacts in the display cases!” the mirror shrieked almost hysterically. “They’re all weapons!”
Toby looked over at the rows of glass display cases. His sword was getting harder to wield. The dead were taking longer to go down. He didn’t have a godling’s strength, but if he had a godling’s weapons . . . Most of the cases were already out of reach, overrun by the dead, but the first few . . . He used the last of his strength to clear some space with his sword and then sprinted forward to smash the glass of the first case with his swordhilt. The sign said Mirror of the Sea.
His prize, when he got it out, turned out to be a small hand mirror, in a battered steel frame. Toby lifted it uncertainly in his free hand, not at all sure what he was supposed to do with the bloody thing, and then the carved runes on the back of the mirror seemed to come alive, twisting and squirming before him, and words came from his mouth before he was even aware he knew them. He didn’t understand what they meant, but the mirror did. He could feel power roaring in the ancient artifact, like a head of steam that had been building for centuries, and was only now breaking loose. The mirror shook and shuddered in his hand and then a jet of dark water shot out of the mirror’s face.
The water came flying out like a fire hose, an endless stream under enormous pressure, bowling the dead clean off their feet and casting them away. None of them could stand against the crushing impact, even for a moment. Toby grinned fiercely as he turned the mirror back and forth and the pounding stream of water mowed down the dead around him. The mirror was a gateway to the ocean, to the deep dark bottom of the sea, where water under unimaginable pressure never knew the light of day. He knew this, just as he’d known the right words to activate the mirror. And more: where the waters hit the dead and soaked their clothes, they were slowly dissolving. Their mouths screamed silently as dead flesh melted away. It was the salt in the ocean water, Toby realized. Salt had always been a defense against zombies. He laughed aloud and advanced on the dead and they fell back before him.
Until a dark, rubbery tentacle studded with twitching suckers suddenly burst out of the mirror’s face, blocking the flow of the water. Something in the depths of some faraway ocean had discovered the hole, and become curious. Toby shook the mirror hard, but the face remained blocked. The tentacle snapped back and forth, curling and uncurling, until it encountered a zombie that had ventured too close. It snapped around the dead body, crushing the midriff to pulp in a moment, and then tried to pull its prize back through the mirror. Toby swore disgustedly and threw the mirror to the floor. The tentacle had made it useless to him.
The dead were already regathering and advancing once again. Toby turned to the next display case.
Thor’s Gauntlets turned out to be a pair of ancient, ratty leather gloves, falling apart and much mended with assorted patches. Like the mirror, they were covered in sigils and runes, this time spelled out in black iron, but Toby didn’t need to be able to read them to know what you did with a pair of gloves. He put his sword to one side and snatched the gloves out of the shattered display case, pulling them on carefully. They were so delicate the leather felt like lace, but they fitted him perfectly. Toby felt a new strength flooding through him and smiled confidently as the first zombie came within reach. He drew back and hit the dead man square in the face. The zombie’s head shattered and flew apart, and the glove all but disintegrated under the impact, falling away from Toby’s hand in scraps of crumbling leather. Some artifacts just weren’t built to last.
Toby swore loudly, pushed aside the headless body that was still reaching for him and hurried over to the third display case. Some of the dead were getting too close to Gayle’s barricade. From the way she was glaring desperately about her, it was clear she could sense the danger, even if she couldn’t see it. Over to one side, Jimmy Thunder was still fighting desperately under the mound of dead bodies holding him down, crying out angrily as they clawed at his flesh and snapped at his face. And that was when Toby realized he’d left his sword behind. He snarled, and smashed the glass case with his elbow, yelping at the pain. This had to be the one. There was no way he’d be able to reach another case.
BOOK: Drinking Midnight Wine
11.93Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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