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Henderson was nodding. "But in this line of history the Cargo Cult magicians got it."
"I expect so. Our present allies must have taken control as soon as it was in the air. They used their magic to fly it from Long Beach to New Guinea. At some point the other tribe took control. And here it is."
"Here it is. But it couldn't possibly have had enough fuel..."
Margie shrugged. "Magic."
"Uh huh. Well, that's it. Obviously we're supposed to fly it out of here somehow-"
Gina cut him off with a kind of whispered scream. "Chester. The top of those rocks. There."
From the dune they could see a natural wall of rock that stretched from the tree line out into the water, terminating about fifteen meters from where the plane was moored. Three shadowed silhouettes stood and gesticulated at the seaward end.
Even at this distance there was no doubting what they were.
Those oversized heads... Alex recognized the beaver-dam hair, shaped with the aid of sticks and mud. The clawlike hands, the scarred, greased bodies. The priest at the Anglican mission, multiplied by three. Fore.
Their voices harmonized with the roar of the sea, so that the sea almost drowned them out. But Gina said, "They'll be summoning more Undead." Her voice shook.
A whiff of the wind carried the message: Gina was right. "Stations!" Chester bawled, and the remaining Garners formed a ragged wedge bristling with machetes.
"Space out more!" the Lore Master screamed. "We have to give each other room! Make for the rock wall!"
But the Fore priests had abeady been answered.
The Undead emerged from the brush in twos and threes, and the smell was like a gut-split skunk ripening on the road. Alex held his forearm across his nose and held his blade ready. Oliver was to his left, sword high. Gina to his right, spirals of light running along her power staff. Alex felt someone's warm behind wiggle against his, and knew that Acacia guarded his back.
To reach the rock breaker, the Garners would have to cut through a line of the Undead.
"Advance," Chester said, voice cautious and hoarse. "Slowly." A dark, pure-blooded New Guinea zombie was the first to reach the wedge, and the first to go down under the blades of Mary-em and Oliver. They had gained another three or four meters before three Undead reached them, two of them women hiccoughing their horrible mirth. The third was the reincarnation of Rudy Dreager, the bullet-slain Engineer.
Once again, something within Griffin, something logical and cool, died without protest. In its place rose a red shadow that yearned to kill. He chopped at Dreager. Rudy moved stiffly but intelligently, and Alex granted him a block, swerving part of his blade to home on the ribs. Dreager blocked again, but Alex's move was a feint, and the Undead Gamer howled as a glowing blade slashed his throat. This time Griffin took no chances. He chopped twice more until Dreager's whole head glowed black:
decapitation.
Other Garners were engaged, and Alex wanted badly to break formation and help them; but he held his place. It was their only chance to survive. By slow increments, they had already moved to
within twenty meters of the wall. If they could get their backs to
it.
A machete blade flicked past Alex's ear: someone behind him had missed a block. He turned in time to see Tony McWhirter take a wound in the arm and answer it with a stroke to the knees that sent the zombie tumbling to the sand.
"Move!" Chester's voice could hardly be heard above the grunts and the laughter, but heard it was, and they moved another few steps before resistance grew too heavy.
In the corner of his eye Alex saw Oliver gaping, frozen, eyes wide and puppy-moist, his sword pointing toward the sand .
Alex spared a glance in that direction.
Trudging with heavy steps, eyes fixed on the rotund Warrior with a bloodlust that was more threatening than the uplifted weapon, came Gwen.
Oliver made a half-hearted attempt to block her stroke. It was as if he'd never held a sword before. Her descending blade slipped past his guard easily, and a wet red line appeared on Ollie's shoulder.
Behind Alex, Acacia, temporarily without an opponent, had seen the attack. "For God's sake, Ollie... fight back!"
Ollie fought like a man unwilling to strike back. Again zombie-Gwen scored. Her matted blond hair stuck greasily to her face as her arm rose and fell again, her eyes lolling lifelessly in their sockets. Ollie blocked-and missed a perfect opening to her stomach. In a voice so soft that Alex might have imagined it, Gwen said, "Kill me, Ollie. Please."
And Norliss gritted his teeth and slew his woman, plunging his sword into her breast. She went down like a sack of meal, and the Warrior looked sick. Alex took an instant to grip Ollie's shoulder hard. He was relieved when Ollie wheeled to face the next zombie with a vicious stroke worthy of Franicish Oliver.
The Garners had gained another few meters. Alex grew impatient; he shifted his position in the wedge until he was closer to the lead.
Behind him, Chester used a final bolt of lightning to strike down a zombie, then snatched up a blade as his aura dimmed and winked out. He cursed as he handled the unfamiliar tool, and he attacked clumsily.
Most of the Garners were wounded somewhere; Alex himself had half a dozen wounds. Margie was unmarked. She had taken to
the machete like a bat to warm blood. The Undead seemed unable to deal with her style: imprecise and untutored, but full of crazy energy.
Alex had reached the wall. He set his back to it and yelled, "Re-form!" Chester looked at him with raised eyebrow, then nodded in approval.
The group broke up, hacking wildly at the lunging corpses, and formed two lines against the rocks. The zombies kept to the sand, off the rock and away from the water, and that cut the vulnerable area to two sides, far easier to defend.
Still, they came on, and on. No longer was it possible for Griffin to pause between slayings. The Undead piled up around his feet and swarmed to cloud his vision. He was sweating, and the sweat rolled into his eyes, blurring sight. The smell of the Undead, their hideous appearance, and the sound of the laughing, the unholy tittering, were wearing him down.
He saw what happened to Gina. Two corpses menaced her. One was mutilated, a tittering, twitching woman missing a leg and an arm. She leaned on a tall pole tucked under the stump of the missing arm. Her good hand jabbed with a bayonet fixed to half of a shattered M-1 rifle. Gina, fending off a smallish, long-dead man, swung backhand to cleave her open. The woman wheeled; the butt of Gina's machete smacked into her crutch.
Gina froze; she turned to stare. She must have assumed the butchered, half-decomposed corpse was a hologram. The man she'd ignored swung at her neck.
"Gina!" Chester screamed, and Alex saw her buckle to the sand, her aura black as night, and two gri
The line tightened, the eight remaining Garners clustered about Lady Janet, all of them ragged and wheezing with weariness, arms rising and falling, rising and falling.
One face stood out in the press. The shaggy dark brows were whitened, and the glacial blue eyes seemed dulled by death, but it was still Bowan the Black who worked his way toward Chester. The blade in his hand seemed more like a wakizashi, a Japanese short sword, than a simple chopping implement. His target was Henderson. Alex yelled a warning, then turned to his own defense.
Zombie-Bowan snarled and struck. Henderson, clumsy with his
edged tool, slithered out of the way and pushed Bowan back to gain room.
But Bowan was out for blood. There was no pause, no lag to give Henderson time to adjust his balance. Bowan spun, and backhanded his sword into Chester's leg. The Lore Master cursed, and forgot all semblance of style, chopping insanely at Bowan.