Page 5 (1/2)

The rising dead terrify me more than any demon ever did Demons are natural They obey certain laws You knohat to expect when you face one of them

But the dead aren&039;t supposed to return When a body perishes, the soul moves on That&039;s the way it&039;s always been But so, snarling, slavering corpses

I stand like a si them advance I&039;d heard that zombies in movies walk slowly, stiffly, mechanically Not these They don&039;t have the look of living people, but they move like them, fluidly and firmly

As the dead close in on ht flits over their heads and flares, causing them to cover their eyes and stumble to a halt They ht

"Come" the voice repeats "Cross while they are distracted"

"Where?" I howl, gaze fixed on the zoht ski dead and hovers by the

"I can&039;t," I whisper, studying the ranks of animated corpses "The others"

"Doomed," the voice says "You cannot worry about theer your concern Come" It sounds impatient

Athe bones of his spine and shoulders-lowers his arhts onwildly

My hands, which have been trey The deaddown those behind hiic and back up close to the

"Yes," the voiceanywhere with this freakish ball of talking light I ran out on Beranabus once, long ago Never again

Taking a firic six or seven feet in diaood at this type of h to stop a de as they were in life, it should repel them

My stomach rumbles with fear as the zombies cluster around the barrier They scrape, punch, kick, and spit at it I hear-i desperately, and turn 360 degrees, trying to cover every angle at once, ensuring there are no weak points

There aren&039;t The barrier holds As long as the ic in the air remains, I can keep these wretched zo it out, I bend over and sh That would have been an awful death To stand up to one powerful de but relatively weak zoo

"You have done well," the voice says, pulsing eagerly by the"Now coo"

I straighten and study the ball of light I&039; zombies, especially the children, every bit as ravenous as the adults

"I&039; nowhere without the others," I tell it

"They do not matter You are the one we need Coe the voice "What do you want? Where-"

The ship lurches I&039; dead I yell with shock, but the barrier deflects et tomy arm where I collided with the barrier The ship has tilted The water in the swie, and so backwards A few of the zoain ?" I ask the ball of light

"The ship is sinking," it answers "Beranabus has been killed Come now, before it is too late"

It takes a few seconds for that to hit At first I&039; down Then the full iasp

"The Shadow killed him"

"No!" I shake my head wildly Beranabus can&039;t be dead The world doesn&039;t le-handedly held back the hordes of demons for more than a thousand years I kneas old and tired, and he often spoke halfheartedly of retiring But secretly I believed he was invincible, that he&039;d live forever, reborn like a phoenix when he grew tired of the confines of his old bones