NOVEL WEB CHAPTER 62: RUN OR FIGHT?
Griffin Tucker Vasilias, Great House Scion, Reborn Lvl 3
Mount Discovery, Province of Aragonia
Griffin stood at the top of the wreckage that had resulted from the dynamite he’d thrown in a desperate last attempt to defeat a maddened Boss monster. He was still trying not to think about what exactly had happened to the body of the monster after he’d used his Dread Consumption graft. He was grinning excitedly after reading about the new Plasma Beam graft that he’d gained after his hand had consumed the dead plasma cybercentipede Mother.
“You have an attack graft for the next twelve hours,” Kismet corrected Griffin. “And don’t get too excited; I’m seeing movement at the edges of your SONAR range and don’t know what it is. You still need to remember to refill your tensa pool! Dread Consumption took nearly half, and your ability to meditate has not yet progressed enough that you are able to absorb tensa passively.”
Griffin scowled, irritated at the buzzkill, but nodded; she was right. He wasn’t going to barely survive getting cooked by a giant cybernetic monstrosity only to get taken out by the next disgusting monstrosity that wandered by, especially not when he could do something to avoid it. He put his anima into the Ten Star Vortex configuration, feeling a bit of relief as tensa began pouring into him.
Now that Kismet pointed it out, he could also sense the movement at the edge of his SONAR perception. Even with his anima in the sphere configuration, he couldn’t get enough detail to understand what was moving around out there. Now that he was collecting tensa again, his senses had been somewhat dulled.
Heh, I’m already beginning to depend on the extra sensory information that the sphere config was giving me, Griffin thought. I’ll need to watch out for that.
“Well, if the things moving out there turn out to be as friendly as the Mother and the plasma cybercentipedes,” Griffin said, “then maybe I’ll be able to test out this graft and see if it’s worth it to start storing any monster corpses I come across to…” his stomach flip-flopped as he considered ‘eating’ another monster. “Maybe I’ll hold off on corpse storage. That sounds really fuckin’ gross the more that I think about it anyway.”
He decided that his best next move would be to get the hell out of this place and get back to his room. There was no point in sticking around here any longer, so he stretched, feeling his joints pop and crack as he did, and then took off at a run. The shapes at the edge of his perception quickly became clearer as he got closer, and what Griffin sensed made his heart sink.
He was still too far away to see them with his eyes, but his SONAR painted a fairly clear picture: there were half a dozen shuffling, limping—there was no other word for them—zombies. They seemed to be fresh zombies since there was no rot on them anywhere, but his SONAR made it feel like he had touched their waxy, cold flesh with his own hands. Every ping from his SONAR made it feel like he was giving them a big naked hug. There was no doubt about it: they were dead, and yet they moved about aimlessly with an almost Brownian motion.
Griffin stopped running while they were still a little over a hundred meters away. His SONAR could pick them out with no difficulty, though his tensa and infrared senses were unable to perceive that far without his sphere configuration up. It was too dark for him to use his eyes, but he could hear the zombies shuffling around ahead of him. Griffin had often daydreamed about what he’d do in the event of a zombie apocalypse. This felt different.
“Where did they come from?” Griffin muttered under his breath, crouching down behind one of the big metal storage containers to get some cover. “Were there a bunch of corpses somewhere that I just missed? I mean this place is enormous, but still, I feel like I’d have noticed a pile of dead bodies.”
Kismet just pointed at the metal container he was crouching behind. Griffin stared at her blankly for a minute, looking from her finger to the container without making any real connection. Then a look of dawning horror came over his face which quickly turned into true horror when something banged on the container from the inside. He vaguely remembered when he was running away from the Mother hearing the banging come from the containers, but it hadn’t meant anything to him at the time. Now it did.
The banging continued arrhythmically and surprisingly loud, despite how muffled by insulation it seemed to be. Griffin took a deep, calming breath. He’d just gotten an attack graft from Dark Consumption, right? Maybe he could use it to burn away some zombies real quick and then head back to his room. Assuming, of course, that the rope was still there. If it wasn’t, maybe he’d be able to use the grappling hook he packed finally. After all, he could always make more rope.
“Do you think we can get by them without attracting their attention?” Griffin asked, flinching each time a bang came from the container he was crouched by.
Kismet looked at him strangely, then said, “After defeating a plasma cybercentipede Mother—a Class 1 Boss Monster with a Legendary shard of the Void within it—with your explosive, you’re worried about a few zombies?”
“Are you kidding?!” Griffin hissed back. “That explosion gave my organs a good bruising and nearly killed me, and I was in a vent! Plus, what if I open a bunch more of these containers?” He shook his head. “I mean, how do you even kill these things?”
“You should try to identify one,” Kismet suggested. “Undead vary greatly in power and they may look like zombies but be something entirely different. Not that zombies are anything to sneer at. They’re incredibly resilient and strong, and they do not feel pain. Destroying them usually means destroying the tensa core in the middle of their brains.”
Griffin couldn’t help it. He laughed. “Of course. Trauma to the head. Dare I ask if these zombies crave braaaaaaains?”
Kismet looked at him seriously, “What else would they eat? At least, that’s what they all want to eat. They’ll settle for flesh when the brain’s gone, so don’t think you’re safe.”
“Ouch, was that a joke?” Griffin asked, chuckling despite himself.
Kismet smiled enigmatically and said, “They’re pretty unique among monsters: most just want a Reborn’s tensa. Zombies want brains.”
Griffin watched the zombies with his SONAR, only hearing their shuffling footsteps and occasional low groans from the darkness. His SONAR also picked up something even more interesting and important to him: the rope he’d left tied to the spar of steel rebar in the hole in the huge room’s ceiling. There were at least twenty zombies between him and the rope and there was no telling if there were any others beyond the range of his SONAR. He couldn’t see the containers they’d come out of anyway, so there might have been more open ones.
“I don’t think I’m gonna be able to slip past them like this. Maybe if I distracted them somehow?” He asked.
Kismet seemed skeptical. “What would you do to distract them? And what would you do once they’re distracted?”
Griffin shrugged and waggled his head uncertainly, “Well, I mean, I’d rather not antagonize them. They’re fucking zombies.”
“You may not realize this, but your nonconfrontational outlook goes almost entirely counter to every record I have on standard Reborn behavior,” Kismet said conversationally.
Griffin stuck his tongue out at her. “There’s twenty goddamn zombies over there, and I don’t want to feel what it’s like to get my innards forcibly turned into my outers. I like my brain right where it is, thank you.” He sighed. “Now, maybe you can be a bit more helpful instead of just pointing out my shortcomings?”
“I did not say that it was a shortcoming,” she replied quickly. “I am merely pointing out that your caution is not a common attitude.”
“Maybe if I conjured, like, a wind-up car with a bell on it?” He mused thoughtfully. “The noise of the bell should attract the zombies and make them try to chase it while we make a run for the rope.”
“Do you have any idea how to make a wind-up car?” Kismet asked.
“Wait,” Griffin said, his eyes widening as a thought came to him. “You said they like to eat brains, right?”
Kismet looked over at him and cocked an eyebrow, “Yes, they prefer brains but they’ll make do with your flesh, I’m not sure where you’re going with this. We’re not even completely sure that they’re zombies!”
“Right, right, right,” Griffin said softly, still watching the slowly-moving zombies. “But if I want to identify them, I need to get closer and then they’ll notice me. Bit of a problem there.” He paused, watching and thinking. Then, his eyes widened as he remembered the summer of his junior year in high school.
That summer, he’d worked at a food stall at Wolf Creek Lodge in the mountains. It was close to home and his manager wasn’t a complete asshole, so it wasn’t a terrible job. Wolf Creek Lodge was a huge resort that tourists from the South would flock to every summer. It even had an amusement park in the middle of it, complete with a water park and ten different water slides. He had worked at this Southern-themed fried food stall and one of the things he had to prepare every day was a crowd favorite: fried pig’s brains. When he’d first heard what was on the menu, he’d nearly quit right then and there, his squeamishness nearly killing any hope of making money over the summer. He’d gotten over it of course, and had even tried a plate once. It had taken all summer, but on the very last day he worked there, he finally prepared himself a serving and tried it (he’d actually enjoyed it!).
The memory left Griffin feeling more than a little queasy. “What if I, uh, made some, like…well…brains? With my Adaptive Conjuration graft?”
Kismet was silent for a long time, then gave him an odd look. “If you can manage to make a brain with your Adaptive Conjuration, I would be stunned.”
Griffin grinned. It looked rather sickly with the color of pale green his face was turning, but he forged ahead anyway. As silently as he could, he conjured a large soup pot, catching it as it appeared in midair and before it could clang to the ground. He took a deep, steadying breath, and held his hand out over the pot, concentrating. A pale whitish-pink brain flopped wetly into the pot, splatting a little when it hit the bottom. Moments later, another one joined it. The smell of raw meat hit Griffin then and he almost puked, but he clamped down on his nausea and continued making brains.
He was able to conjure enough to fill the pot in just a few minutes. With each brain he conjured, it fell into the pot and joined the others with a soft splat. He felt a little like laughing but knew if he started, he’d probably be unable to stop. It was just so funny though. If he’d never worked at that shitty food stall—he suddenly remembered that it had been called the “Jackalope Stop”, a name that had never made any sense to him—then he’d have never thought of brains as something he could use his conjuration power on.
The movement of the zombies had become much less random as Griffin filled the pot with conjured pig brains. He monitored them through his SONAR and watched as they turned, almost as one, and began stumbling toward him, slowly at first. Griffin swallowed nervously, then took a breath and let it out, watching as the zombies’ pace picked up. These weren’t the classic zombies from Night of the Living Dead. The way they started sprinting reminded him of the rage zombies from 28 Days Later. He moved quickly but calmly away from where he’d been crouched, leaving the pot of brains behind.
As he’d hoped, the zombies seemed to be attracted to the pot of brains. Griffin didn’t stick around, taking a circuitous route as he ran for the rope. The zombies took the most direct route to the brains running straight at the pot and swarming all over it when they got to it. Griffin kept his focus on the rope. It was only twenty meters away now so he put on a burst of speed.
He reached the rope, fully expecting at any time for a zombie to grab him, but none did. The climb was anything but graceful and he resolved that next time, he’d bring a rope ladder instead. Or make one. Whatever.
Once he climbed up out of the huge zombie room, Griffin pulled the rope up after him. I really don’t want to see a horde of zombies shambling down the hall to my room, he thought as he stowed the rope in his Inventory. Let’s hope I never have to go back down there ever again.
Griffin was no less cautious than ever on his way back to his room. It took a long time to get there, but at least he avoided the monsters and made it back in one piece. When he finally did get back into his room and saw the door close and the dying security enchantments re-activate, he finally felt like he could relax.
He created a glass of iced tea with Adaptive Conjuration and took a long drink as he reflected on his near brush with death. He shivered, looking back toward the door to his room, while in his mind’s eye, he saw the Mother ripping away at the vent and slamming itself into the wall. He didn’t think he’d be having peaceful dreams for a very long time after that.
It had been easy to ignore when he was trying to figure out how to get past the zombies. He also had been able to focus on being stealthy the whole way back. Now that he was safe, though, he had all the time in the world for his thoughts to occupy themselves, replaying the entire experience over and over. He shivered with pent-up emotion. Despite having lived through it, he hadn’t let himself feel any of it.
“Man, I wish my therapist hadn’t been blown up with the rest of Earth,” Griffin muttered. “He probably would’ve had some advice on how to deal with all this trauma. My best and only move is to have a long, hot shower and a cry.” He sighed. “Better get started on it then; this trauma isn’t going to repress itself.”
He got up and went into the bathroom, turning on the shower as hot as he could, breathing in the steam as it rose. It was another three hours before he came out, his eyes red, and feeling like he needed to sleep for a week.