Chapter 20: A landmine Named Jeb

***Kiyiki Pukuwa***

Sometimes bad things happen. Sometimes all the bad things happen at once.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this, Kiyiki thought, her beak hanging open as she overheated in the stuffy mansion. All the windows were locked tight by the survivors, who themselves contributed to the muggy heat that made her feathers itch.

When the heir to the family name hands you – the most distant cousin and glorified maid – a human baby and tells you to hide it somewhere as far from anyone connected to the family as possible without asking any questions, you do as you’re told.

Unless a malignant force begins stalking the streets of your gated community at night, killing and turning neighbors one by one.

The owners of these mansions were mostly dead, but each household typically had at least three hired servants and several children.

The Dreyfus house had fifteen! But they laid large clutches, after all.

In short, there were plenty of noncombatants in each home that chose discretion as the better part of valor when the screaming started.

Each night they’d been pushed further and further down the street. Herded like breek.

Everyone who went for the gate never returned. Some of the survivors argued it was because they had successfully escaped, but that was just wishful thinking. If they had escaped, the wrath of the empire would have fallen upon this…darkness haunting them.

No.

The cry for help did not reach the outside.

It was after a few nights of this that Kiyiki learned of the disappearance of the Emperor’s ward, a human child one year of age.

Kiyiki glanced over at the fat little creature once again trying to escape her imprisonment.

The baby froze at Kiyiki’s gaze, one chubby leg slung over the crib’s railing. In a completely unnatural act of situational awareness, the child slowly withdrew her leg, sitting back down in the crib.

For now.

Gods, if I don’t get eaten alive, I’ll be executed, she thought, her heart sinking.

The only light at the end of the tunnel was the possibility that the emperor would forgive her if she kept the baby alive and well through this plague and turned on her cousin at the FIRST possible opportunity.

If the undead hadn’t prevented her from handing the infant off, the baby would already be out of her hands and Kiyiki would have unknowingly already been complicit in treason.

Her gaze drifted past Casey the Third toward the three women who had offered to watch the baby.

The three of them were older, with a little bit of grey in their feathers, and sunken, wrinkled bags under their eyes. Grandmothers of three different houses, they doted on the child, cooing and offering the baby sweets, watching her while Kiyiki got some much-needed sleep.

Casey didn’t seem to like them, but Kiyiki didn’t care.

She didn’t even mind their poor hygene and the funky smell that seemed to emanate from their clothes. In Kiyiki’s long experience cleaning shit-streaked rooms, old people just had a harder time taking care of themselves. Or perhaps they simply didn’t care anymore once they got past a certain age.

Both?

BOOM BOOM BOOM!

Kiyiki jumped in place with a stifled yelp as the knocker created a booming echo that brought every single survivor to attention.

The three old women in the entance hall swivelled their necks to face the door in an eerily synchronized manner, but Kiyiki didn’t have time to overthink it. She was on door duty.

It was a human, strangely enough.

His appearance was scruffy, and he was oddly cavalier about the literal end times, but heradiated power, so much that kiyiki nearly lost her breath through the door. It was like she was standing face to face with an Enforcer.

And he was working for the Emperor.

He’s after the baby! Kiyiki realized an instant into the man’s speech. If she did not personally return the child, then she was simply an accessory and going to die a vreek’s death.

The baby heard the man’s voice and began crying.

Kiyiki’s heart rattled in her chest as she hastily told the human to get lost.

A tiny voice in the back of her mind screamed at her to hand over the child right now, but she was too panicked to listen to it. The larger, more terrified part of her mind wanted to distance herself as much as possible, hide the child until she could control the circumstances.

You fool!She cursed herself as the aura of power departed from the doorstep, leaving them with an ultimatum to come outside.

Now you’ve done it! she thought, smacking her forehead and matting down the feathers in the universal gesture of self-recrimination.

I’ve got to make this right. I’ve got to…

Kiyiki’s thoughts finally settled on the man’s actual words as she turned back to the hall.

They might be…among…us? Her feathers fluffed up, standing on end as she spotted the three old women, standing silently beside the crib, the baby squirming in the iron grasp of the one in the middle. The others flanked her like statues, silently watching Kiyiki.

The baby wasn’t crying because of the voice. She was crying because they’d picked her up. And they were being none too gentle about it.

“Kiyiki Pukuwa,” the middle woman spoke.

“Yes?”

“We appreciate you keeping this morsel alive. She will be like the mythical Kupeiwa, her flesh will allow my master to touch the Divine.”

The shawls the old women wore had come loose, revealing grotesque, rotting wounds. The smell was suddenly impossible to ignore, and the wounds…they spread beyond the shawls. One of them even had a large part of her skull missing, exposing sinus and brain.

It suddenly no longer felt warm in the mansion.

“The charade has ended earlier than expected. Your services will no longer be required.”

Hyperventilating, Kiyiki looked past them at the other survivors. They looked a lot…deader than she remembered. They watched her with mindless hunger.

Kiyiki’s heart began to hammer in her chest as she backed away, every fiber of her being screaming in her ears to run, fight, surrender, beg, plead, in a confusing wash of impulses that weakened her knees.

She collapsed, scooting backwards with a quiet mewl as the two intelligent undead approached her, moving in lockstep.

BOOM!

Behind her, the door exploded.

The human flew over her head and landed on his feet in front of the three creatures in a shower of wood shards.

They directed their full attention on him as he spoke.

“Alright, where’s the baaaaaayyyyy.”

The human’s eyes dilated, his jaw hanging slack.

***Jebediah Trapper***

Jebediah Trapper lay low to the ground, covering in camouflaging shrubbery, waiting for his chance, like a spider hunting a centipede. The high-tensile wires strung across the engagement area deep in the peruvian jungle were connected to claymores that would, like their namesake, cleave the enemy asunder. No human could survive being hit by one of the devastatingly effective explosives.

Today though…today Jeb was after a monster.

He heard it approach, the distinctive shuffling sound and disgusting yawning gargles that passed for breathing.

It was bigger than him, nearly half again, stronger, faster, and he was ashamed to admit it, smarter.

The only advantage that Jeb had was surprise.

He leveled his rifle, breathing out slow and steady, timing his shot to the beat of his heart.

The door opened, and Jeb unleashed hell.

“Ow, ow OW!” Roslyn shouted as Jeb’s semi-automatic paperclip gun peppered the front of her faded Grateful Dead T-shirt with tiny bits of steel.

Rather than blindly barrel into his web, Roz simply leaned back and slammed the door shut, cutting off any potential for a dramatic, overwhelming victory and leaving Jeb sorely disappointed.

The white twine woven between the bunk beds, desk, lamp, and bookshelf hung unused, making the room truly seem like it’d been webbed up by some manic spider.

Unfortunately his prey was too sharp to charge in and get tangled up in the strings.

Dangit, I knew I should’ve used less strings, Jeb berated himself. Sometimes less is more.

“Really?” Roz demanded, peeking back in to the room and surveying his traps while Jeb desperately reloaded his gun. “You’re not supposed to – You know, setting traps for people is a symptom of ass-burgers!”

“I don’t have Ass-Burgers!”

“Do too!” Roslyn yelled back, sticking out her tongue.

“You suck!”

“Clean this mess up and get ready for bed. It’s a school night, Jeb!”

“Make me!” Jeb shot back, smug in the assurance that his room had been thoroughly protected against any assault that Roslyn could mount on his fortress of solitude. He’d even booby-trapped the window.

Roz lifted an eyebrow. A cold, calculating look of surgical dispassion on her face. She clicked her flip-phone open.

Oh, crap.

It was embarrassing to admit, but Jeb had memorized the dial tones that emanated from the cell phone when Roz dialed his mother. She had an out of state number for her office.

“I’m doing it!” Jeb shouted, climbing out from under the desk and shrugging off the camouflaging covers that kept the majority of him concealed from the visual spectrum.

“There you are,” Roslyn said, voice emotionless, head tilted to the side in a way that felt a bit off.

Jeb didn’t have any time to think about it, because he was too busy taking down the strings and cleaning up his room before Roz dialed that last digit and tattled on him.

Jeb didn’t have time to undo the hundreds of knots that he’d tied around the room, so he pulled out his pocket knife and started sawing away at the knots while Roslyn watched him with a critical eye.

I should have used a painter hitch, Jeb thought, scowling as he wasted perfectly good twine by cutting it prematurely.

What’s a painter hitch? Jeb paused for a moment as the thought nagged at him strangely.

“Tick tock,” Roz said, pointing to her wrist in an exaggerated manner, despite not having a watch.

Grumbling, Jeb got back to it, disconnecting all the obvious traps in the room.

He’d put a lot of effort into the pencil launcher hidden in the corner of the room, and didn’t want to take it apart if he didn’t have to.

Finally, his room was relatively clean, save a few hidden traps that he was still working on, and wouldn’t need until next time he hunted the most dangerous game.

There is the question of lethality, Jeb thought, rubbing his chin in contemplation as he put his knife down on his desk and kicked the pile of strings across the floor and towards the trash bin in the corner of the room.

“Pick it up.” Roz said, shaking her head. “I swear to god, If I’m late for my date with Charlie…”

“Sucking face in a Chevy. Sounds like a great time,” Jeb muttered, despite being secretly curious. He would never admit that to his babysitter, though. Never in a million years.

Maybe I could ask Sam…Nah. Ella? Nah, she already got married to that Colt jerk.

Jeb straightened, his arms filled with a bundle of strings, facing the trashcan in the corner of his room as his mind began to work overtime.

Ella married Colt and got pregnant right out of high school. She even broke her leg while pregnant, which was why Jeb remembered it so clearly, watching one of the sweetest girls he’d had a crush on in elementary and middle school walking out of a grimy Pizza Hut hugely pregnant and limping along on crutches.

It was what they called a flashbulb memory.

But…I’m in fifth grade.

Jeb was given no more time to digest that as Roslyn’s arm wrapped around his neck.

“Roz, what?” Jeb croaked, barely able to speak through her hold.

“You know, I always thought about doing this, but never got the chance,” Roslyn whispered in her ear, her other hand securing the sleeper hold. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his babysitter’s face sag, like a piece of melting wax.

A bolt of panic shot through Jeb, and he reacted. Don’t go for the arm, you could scratch at it all day, it isn’t gonna make them let go.

Jeb didn’t have all day, either. He knew he had nine seconds before he passed out. He didn’t know how he knew that, but it didn’t matter. He didn’t have any time to spare navel-gazing.

Jeb bucked forward, straining every muscle in his torso as he tried to get Roslyn to stumble forward towards the desk.

The biggest pitfall of the sleeper hold was that for the next few seconds, Jeb’s hands were free, and Roslyn’s were not.

The next seven seconds, anyway.

“Not so fast!” Roslyn yanked backwards on Jeb’s neck, dragging him away from the desk, his fingers bare inches away from his knife.

“You’ve a more resilient mind than I gave you credit for,” Roz said, her beak brushing against his ear and making the hairs on his neck stand up. “A very sneaky, crafty sort, aren’t you? It occurs to me that I should know your name. There aren’t many humans who can resist this much. Not that it matters. Goodbye.”

Fading fast, Jeb spotted a string on the floor.

It was connected to his pencil launcher.

A lot of things happened at once.

Jeb felt some kind of phantom pain, jabbing into his throat like a cold steel knife, seemingly nicking his skin through Roslyn’s chokehold as he collapsed forward, yanking on the string with his toes.

The cold steel vanished, leaving a point of stinging pain above his jugular.

Not-Roslyn staggered, drawn into the of fire as the rubber-band propelled pencil shot through the air.

Jeb’s vision was darkening, interspersed with sparkling lights as his brain cells gave up one by one he barely made out the pencil as it shot past his face, barely missing his eyeball and burying itself in the meat of the monster trying to kill him.

“AgH!” Not-Roslyn’s grip loosened for a moment, and Jeb’s vision came back. Desperately, he reached back, grabbed the pencil buried in her arm and started stabbing at everything in arm’s length.

Not-Roslyn shoved him away, staggering backwards as Jeb fell to his knees, gasping. He glanced up at the strange bird-creature wearing the Roslyn-mask, her feathers jutting out from his baby-sitter’s ill-fitting shirt like a scarecrow’s straw.

Her clawed hand was clasped over her eye, blood oozing between the pebbled skin of her fingers. Her other eye burned with fury.

Whaddya know? I really am hunting monsters, Jeb thought, his grip tightening around the bloody pencil as he pushed himself to his feet.

***Kiyiki Pukuwa***

There was a moment of silence as the human came to a halt under the direct gaze of the three women. No, not women. Uskelis.

A breath later the three seemed to shake themselves out of a trance, sharing a wordless glance with each other. The one on the left spoke.

“You’ve a more resilient mind than I gave you credit for,” The leftmost undead said, ignoring Kiyiki’s trembling form as she strode forward, unsheathing a blade from a hidden compartment in her clothes with a languid flourish. “A very sneaky, crafty sort, aren’t you? It occurs to me that I should know your name. There aren’t many humans who can resist this much. Not that it matters. Goodbye.”

Kiyiki’s heart leapt into her throat as the vacant-eyed human stared into the distance, allowing the Uskelis to slip up in front of him and ram the stiletto into his throat.

A lot of things happened at once.

The instant the blade pierced the human’s skin, a violent explosion of invisible force blasted the uskelis, flinging the undead backward like a doll.

Kiyiki yelped and ducked as the creature flew over her head and slammed into one of the columns supporting the second story, making a kitri-shaped impression in the cracked stone…and a hole the size of a man’s fist.

“He’s fighting it!” the righthand Uskelis shouted, raising her hand, her head tilted down in determination. Kiyiki scrambled backward, her feathers raising she felt the sheer quantityof Myst streaming above her.

Kiyiki was not sensitive to these things, and she could practically taste the magic in the air.

“Aaaaa…” The human groaned, his hand trembling as it slowly raised, palm facing the three undead, his eyes still fixed on a point in the distance, jaw slack. On his neck was a drop of blood.

The uskelis against the pillar pushed herself to her feet, a quarter of her skull torn away around the eye socket, exposing brain and bone, as though she’d been struck by a ballista.

“LLLLLL”

The kitri with the dagger charged forward and attempted to grasp the human’s head. A moment later a flurry of whizzing noises exploded around the human, and Kiyiki was ironically saved by the uskelis, who tumbled past her again. Even with the shield, it seemed as though half a dozen invisible blades buried themselves in the walls and floor around her, outlining her body

Kiyiki scrambled backwards before she checked to make sure she had all her arms and legs

“PHAAAA.” He groaned, his eyes flickering side to side, nearly rolling back in his head like a man struggling to stay awake.

“Mystic Trapsmith. I remember this one now. Hold.” The center Kitri said, handing the baby to her companion.

The baby!

The undead kitri knelt in the hall and placed her hands on the floor.

Kiyiki gasped as the floor softened and became liquid beneath her. For a desperate instant she thought they would shove her into the liquid wood and earth beneath it, but they didn’t pay her a second glance as she flopped out of the liquified hallway, hauling herself into a side room as the paralyzed human sank down into the liquified battlefield.

“SSSSSTRRRR”

The human’s voice was cut off by bubbles as he sank beneath the smoothly flowing wood and stone.

The undead jerked her hand away from the floor, cutting off the effects of her Myst, freezing a popping bubble of liquid wood in place and sealing the human into his tomb.

“There, that-“ The thre abominations paused, focusing on the spot the human had disappeared with eerie focus.

As one, they scattered, diving into the side doors on either side of the mansion’s halls.

Kiyiki let out a squawk as the hall was filled with a deafening roar. The floor heaved and ripped up and flung itself outward in a massive cone of force, picking up the majority of the mindless undead watching their masters fight and turning them into squishy chunks smeared against the far wall.

Then the pillars and staircase to the second floor came loose, their heavy stone catapulting out the side of the manor, leaving a gaping, blood smeared rent in the old building.

A rumbling shook the mansion from beneath it.

Kiyiki scrambled to her feet and dove toward the window.

***Piwaki, level 26 Mystic Cosmetic Healer***

It was finally over. The last bag of rotting meat collapsed into a pile of uselessly twitching limbs. Piwaki collapsed to his knees, too tired to care about the entrails he was undoubtedly smearing onto his tailored clothes.

“Thank every one of the gods,” he gasped between pants, his mouth hanging open to better rid himself of the built-up heat.

“Think I sprained something,” Kolusk muttered, rolling his shoulder and elbow with a frown.

“This is why I always say your methods are crude and inefficient,” Jelesh said, looking down her nose at the taller keegan as best she could.

“Six levels,” Kolusk said, sticking out his long, hollow tongue.

“How – I only got five!” Jelesh complained.

“Four,” Piwaki muttered, head in his hands. He’d joined late and done little, and still earned a fair amount of impact for dispatching the undead. Probably stolen a bit of Jelesh’s for covering her back. The horned woman seemed to realize this and gave Piwaki a bitter glare.

“And you said rushing headlong into danger was stupid,” Kolusk said, hands on his hips.

“It is,” Piwaki and Jelesh said as one.

“Alright children,” Vresh said, idly wiping ichor off her waterproofed leather. “Assign your Ability points and get ready for the hard part.”

“What hard part?” Piwaki asked, glancing around the battlefield. There was nothing left but scraps of meat. Maybe they had to clean it up too? That definitely didn’t sound like fun but it woudn’t be particularly hard. Especially not compare to fighting for his life.

“That.” Vresh gestured behind her.

The Juntei brickwork mansion with the elegant façade and creeping vines artfully complementing the moulding…exploded.