Zombies. It had to be zombies. He hated zombies – ever since that time when he was twelve. Of course, if anything bit off half of your ear when you were a child you wouldn’t ever really have a liking for it. On the other hand, this wasn’t the same kind of zombie that he’d encountered in his childhood years, those weren’t the type of things that he dealt with now. The old, rotted, slightly decapitated, muscle disintegrated, arms falling off, one eye, smelling, pealing, walking corpses that slowly crawled toward you. That was the stuff he left for others to deal with. He didn’t have to waist his time with those guys because someone else would. Not to mention they didn’t end up doing that much damage. The things might not feel pain, but if you didn’t have a foot, walking was kind of hard, and slow, and once someone saw a sixteen year old corpse walking toward them they tended to turn high tail and run away – fast. Really fast. Too bad he didn’t do that when he was twelve.

No, this was not that kind of zombie. Unfortunately the guy here wasn’t that stupid. This guy, this sick freaking guy, had to be a necromancy expert, and a smart one. He didn’t go for the scare factor. Didn’t go for the army of undead that you saw in movies and that others who were new the scene went for. This guy went for the fresh ones. The ones that still had flesh, still had their eyes, still had there limbs, still had their muscle – and muscle was a huge factor in the zombie hoard. No muscle – no so fast. Muscle – pretty freaking fast.

And that’s how Malcolm found himself where he was now. In the middle of a cemetery, of all places, another one of those things he didn’t enjoy too much, half because of the zombie experience, half because they just weren’t the most comfortable place to hang around. Alone in a cemetery in the middle of the night, on a full moon, and he still didn’t have a complete grasp on what the guy was actually doing. He had suspected that they were zombies when multiple people ended up seeing dead people, and not the semi-translucent, creepy, flickering ghost-like person, but solid, screaming, talking, silent, stalking person – who had died awhile ago. He knew a few people in town had started disappearing, but so far no bodies had been found. He knew the guy who was doing it, the local coroner. But he still wasn’t sure exactly what the guy was doing.

The full moon was a big boost for most people who used the dark arts. Being in a cemetery didn’t have much value other than the creep factor and the fact that you weren’t likely to be disturbed. Then again, the guy was a necromancer and if things really came down to push and shove it would be great source of an undead army, slow or not. On the other hand… they had to get out of the ground first, and no matter what you’ve seen on television and movies you cannot just pop up out from under six feet of packed dirt – from within a coffin. Not feeling pain helped in the getting out process, but zombies did not, no matter what Hollywood said, have super strength – unless, the whole muscle thing was happening, then that was a different story. But it all added up to the fact that he, at least, didn’t have to worry about corpses just popping up out of the ground like daisies and attacking him.

Not to forget the fact that they guy was dead. The no-coming back dead.

Malcolm crouched down next to the open grave with the recently deceased body of the man whose blood stained nametag simply read: Johnny. Johnny’s head looked, gapingly up from between his knees, nicely separated from his body. Not a necessity, but it did make Malcolm feel better. If the guy had cast any spell on himself not to die, it wouldn’t have been the kind that brought him back to life after he died. He might be a necromancer, but that didn’t mean he wanted to be one of the walking dead. And he had been smart, which would have meant a protection spell, or immortality, or something like that. Luckily, Johnny hadn’t had the resources for something along those lines, or this night would have been a Hell of a lot longer. As it was, Malcolm had to get through a few relatively speedy dead people to get to the guy, and that had been enough work in itself.

A shotgun and a bar of fire helped with those things.

So now he was left alone in the middle of the cemetery, Johnny six feet under him, sprinkled with salt, drenched in lighter fluid, spotted with some holy water (just for good measure). As Malcolm pulled a match across the rough side of the box rustling in the darkness not a hundred yards away drew his attention. Flame flared up between his fingers, momentarily blinding him with the bright light. With a shake of his head and quickly blinking eyes his ears perked to the sound of crunching leaves and shuffling and through his blinking he saw a shadow in the darkness rushing toward him faster than any normal human could possibly move.

Fucking zombies.

Heart slamming in his chest he launched himself to his feet and backed away, loosing the match in the process, watching it fizz on the grass and go out with a tuft of smoke that lingered in the air as though to taunt him, lazily laughing. And by then she was on him, slamming into him with the force of a bull, tackling him to the ground with a wild, inhuman shrieking that echoed through his ears and rattled through his skull, filling his body.

Blindly he thrashed, the only thing running through his frazzled brain being along the lines of ‘zombie zombie zombie zombie!’ the cries of a scared little girl echoing in the back of his brain – until the dead chick on top of him slammed his hand into his face and grabbed him by the neck, dragging him up as easily as a kid playing with a rag doll, and tossed him through the air. He landed with a thick thud, earth tilting under him, flashes spotting his vision, and through it, the young teen in a white silk gown coming at him for another round.

The impact at least did something for his state of mind, or maybe it was just the fact that he wasn’t being groped by a dead chick anymore. Backing away from the girl his hands went to his pocket, frantically searching for the box of matches he had just been holding in his hand, already knowing is what a futile search, he’d dropped it in the madness.

“Johnny.”

And if that wasn’t fucking creepy he didn’t know what was. Malcolm’s eyes shot to the girl who was taking her time coming forward, knowing she could easily catch him if he tried to run, knowing he didn’t have anything on him, knowing he put his gun and knife down to dig the grave without them digging into him. He hadn’t really ever spent enough time around zombies to hear them talk. Sure, maybe a guttural word or two, but he tried to stay away from them, and there weren’t really many of the ‘fresh zombie’ issues that came often enough that he dealt with more than one or two since high school when this whole thing started.

“You killed Johnny.”

She sounded pretty normal, looked pretty normal too, if it weren’t for the deathly white skin, gray glazed eyes, dried cracked lips, and the wash of blood that spilled from her red teeth down her dress. Apparently Johnny figured that feeding zombies living people made them stronger – thus the missing girls, thus the no bodies to be found – it was all pretty nasty, but the sad thing was that Malcolm had been expecting something a little more grotesque out of the whole deal. But, as far as Malcolm had found out, nothing disproved the theory.

“Johnny loved me. You killed him.”

He really would give anything for that box of matches at the moment. Unfortunately he’d located them, and sure enough, they were back at Johnny’s grave, a good seventy-five feet away. There was no way he’d make it there, and there was the fact that the chick was standing between him and it.

“You wouldn’t just want to calm down and just talk about this whole thing, would you?”

“You killed Johnny!” Her face distorted horribly, bloody mouth ripping open as she screamed, shriek spreading through the darkness, consuming the empty cemetery. She started moving more quickly, perfectly good knees bending as she crouched and prepared for another launching attack.

If that was what war cries of olden day foot soldiers had been Malcolm was pretty sure he would have been at the back of the lines sliding away to watch the battle from a distance. Or, you know, he could just standing there watching a man-eating dead person flying through the air at him.

Stealing a slow, calm, shuddering breath, he bent his knees, set his shoulders, and bolted just seconds before she hit him. Behind him he heard her slam into the ground with another shriek of anger and frustration and take up the pursuit. Eye on the matches, he rushed forward, diving, hand out, trying to pretend he was playing baseball and not ‘can I keep the zombie from making the rest of me look like my ear’ game. Weight smashed into his back, his spine compressed, bent, joined cracked and pain split through him. Claw-like hands grasped at his shoulders, the wailing screech became overwhelmingly loud as she descended on him, and all he was focused on was that freaking box of little matches. Just a few more inches.

Teeth sunk into the base of his neck and he let out a shout of pain, elbow slamming back into the girl’s face, knocking it back along with a good chuck of himself that was in her mouth.

Finally his fingers wrapped around the little box and he slid it open, grabbed a match and rolled over, hands grasping at the matches, trying to get one lit, his legs working furiously to kick the chick off him. She fought and he thrashed and finally his heal caught her under the chin and sent her stumbling back, screaming at the top of her lungs, fresh blood shining over her face, dripping from her teeth. Stumbling to his feet he lit the match, flame puffing to life as she once again gathered herself and came forward.

His left arm came up, unusually steady, left palm out, flashing a bizarre and complicated design, match between his index and middle finger, grim smirk pulling at his lips. “Fucking die.” The ruin on his hand became hot, but remained black and dull as the flame of the match suddenly sucked into the middle of his hand and expanded, as though suddenly met with a burst of methane, and rushed forward in an unstoppable bar of flame, smashing into the chick’s face, cutting her howling shriek short.

The rules aren’t very specific for killing zombies, but burning their heads off their shoulders apparently does a pretty good job of doing it. Malcolm watched the decapitated body fall slowly to the ground, crashing to its knees before falling face forward to the ground with a soft thud into the grass.

Panting heavily, Malcolm plopped down on his ass and spent a few moments getting his breath back and staring at the officially, truly dead corpse in front of him. He’d have to burry her again, in the proper place, like he’d done with the others. It was one thing to have to re-kill someone, but burying them in a different place was just wrong. He couldn’t stand the thought of family members preaching to an empty grave. Though, oddly enough, he didn’t feel all that bad about burying her without her head.

Blood soaked into his shirt from the divot in his shoulder, warm and thick and flowing a little too quickly to really be a good thing, but there wasn’t much he could do about it now. He’d suffered a lot more, having a chunk bitten out of him wasn’t going to be the end of him, not in the least. That would just be sad. Instead he stood, walked back over to Johnny’s grave and relit another match. “See you in Hell Johnny boy.” He tossed it in and watched contently as the flames washed over the man’s body before taking up his gun and knife and the shovel and turning to the new body. Now he just had to figure out where she belonged.