The Gaming Outpost

Third person limited, waiting to frenetic…

“Wait for it.” Sergeant Tim Rover said to Miriam Ipanby, Ba’anen Cheeves, and Henri Bonnet, in the small firing post anchoring the line of the laid stone fence. Mists and drizzling rain cut their visibility to twelve yards. Flat seeming sketches of trees were the Parker’s orchard, and quite real even if the mist and rain made them seem not.

And then a shape like that of a man flickered. Ba’anen stirred, and the Sarge put his hand on the young fellows shoulder.

“Witchery.” The young African muttered.

“Devil’s work.” Mirian replied, her voice harsh and judgmental. “The fools would not yield in peace to the right, and when they brought war, they embraced the darkest parts of humanity. Unreason, bigotry, hatred, illogic, and a senseless urge to destroy.”

Another couple came as ghosts tramping through the orchard, and they began to feel the Sway. Give up, give up, it cried. Enough with your questions, and concerns, and your sorely tried faith in what might not be Goodness, embrace us, become like us, certain and without fear or torment. It struck them at the moment of greatest fear, when they were about to fight for their lives. And it awakened cravings in each soul.

“Go back to Hell.” Henri began to pray out loud. “Beg God for mercy that your sin may be forgiven you. You chose to be slaves, we choose to be free. Go back and tell your Master that he will have none of us.”

The zombies staggered under the force of the prayer, and the Sway faded, but then the zombies began to run. They charged up out of the orchard, many rising from their hidden places in the tall grasses.

“Fire!” Sarge roared, and the lase bolters were slung to shoulders, and fired. All of the first line of cyan bolts missed, but the crackacrackacrack thundering calmed the resisting milita.

A second line of shots rang out after the bolts were yanked back and forward. This one punched holes in stomachs big enough to put supper in, or swept off heads

A zombie came up close on the left of the redoubt, a larger pile of sandbags against the corner of the fence, and the Sarge fired his second rifle in an off-hand swing that looked careless and easy, but was the product of a dozen years of practise. The Sarge cut it in two.

And still more rose, and bolts were yanked back, and new energy cylinders pushed in, before being slammed home.

The trigger was squeezed again, and another head exploded.
Zombies were by now, close enough to need no aiming.

One came over the fence and the sandbags, and Miriam reverse snapped her gunstock hard enough into its cheekbone to break its neck. It fell back twitching, still dressed in high-quality clothes gone to rags.

And then the zombies were gone.

All of them had been killed. But Henri and Ba’anen…Ba’anen was dead, his body savaged. And Henri, all they saw was a trail of blood leading over the edge of the redoubt, and trailing away into the forrest. Sickened Mirian turned to Sarge.

“Sarge, I…can we rescue…?” Her face was like chalk.
He shook his head, and then smiled.
“I do not think we need to. A couple weeks ago…well, you surely must have noticed how naive, and yet capable Henri was?” The Sarge leaned back against a sandbag, and pulled out a cigarette.
Miriam nodded, flushing slightly. The odd young man had caught her attention for more than one reason.
“Well, he told me what he was. That if he ever were captured, to stay back, because, he could pass out of this world into another, by a kind of weird magic, he said. He promised me he would be alive in another world, and not a heaven, but a regular world. But if he got the chance, he would give the zombies one last gift before he left.”
“What? I don’t understand?” Miriam felt the urge to slug the sarge, but considering he outweighed her by fifty pounds, and he was a second degree black belt, she repressed that urge.
“He had a card, a playing card, an Ace of Spades, that he swore the Archangel Uriel had given him.”
She blinked.
“The Angel of Death, Miriam.” Ba’anen said gently, or his ghost did as it rose from near his body. She could see through it, but at the same time, his face was clear.
“I never told you, I loved you, Miriam. So I was glad to answer the Call, to come back for a moment.”
“Oh, Ba’…” Miriam cried, and he chuckled. “I made the fearsome Miriam cry for me. I shall treasure this moment forever.”
“Oh, Ba’…”
“Permission to engage the enemy, Sarge.” Ba’anen asked politely, but his stance was of someone holding himself back. All over the field other ghosts were rising, and some already stood.

There was a drowned Vietnamese Boat Person dribbling out seawater, and an Israeli mother punctured by nails doped with warfarin. A falling stockbroker and wannabe CEO stood with his suitcase open to the business plan that would have made him a billionaire. A young black man with a violin in his hand, with bullet holes studding his body and the instrument also waited. And there were others, the victims, who waited for Ba’anen.

“Vaya con dios, Ba’anen. You were a good troop.” The Sarge said, and stood to snap a salute.

Ba’anen nodded, and walked through the sandbags and the stone fence toward the zombies. The other ghosts waited for him, and then they all walked into the mist.

“Oh Ba’, I could have loved you.” Miriam whispered.

And all over the land, the ghosts of those slain by the nihilists, by those who refused truth, rose, and then came upon the zombies, and bore them back down into the dirt and beyond. Had he known how powerful it was, Henri Bonnet would have used it sooner, but the important point was that justice came in the form of a playing card.

And the devout Alsatian verser arrived elsewhen, but that is a tale for another day.