Kal Moonheart Trilogy: Dragon Killer, Roll the Bones & Sirensbane (59 page)

… Sea Dog rolling around on the blankets. Dead Leg’s head appeared from behind the opposite side of the bed.

This was
not
Dead Leg’s room. ‘What are you two doing here?’ Kal said. ‘Where’s Che?’

‘Probably with his new girlfriend on the other side of the house,’ Dead Leg said. ‘We were just, um …’

Kal noticed that Dead Leg’s arm was under Che’s mattress. ‘Are you looking for drugs?’ Kal said. ‘Hell, Dead Leg—Che was the cleanest person on board. Well, so long as you don’t count that horrible ganja he liked to smoke. But it’s Sirensbane you’re after, isn’t it?’

‘Er, yes!’ Dead Leg quickly agreed, which immediately made Kal think he was lying. ‘As captain,’ he continued, ‘I have a responsibility to ensure my crew aren’t, um, over-indulging …’

Something suddenly clicked in Kal’s mind. ‘Oh, cut the crap,’ she snapped. ‘I’ve just realised what it is you’re really looking for—’

But before she had a chance to say what, they were interrupted by a cry from further down the corridor.

Lula!

‘Come with me,’ Kal ordered Dead Leg. ‘Azul’s got Lula.’

Dead Leg gave Kal an odd look, but shrugged and followed. Together, they approached the door at the end of the corridor. There were sounds coming from within; sounds of a scuffle. Kal put her hand on the door handle, and suddenly realised that she was unarmed. ‘Give me your knife,’ she said to Dead Leg.

‘Let
me
handle any trouble,’ he insisted. Kal turned the handle and opened the door a crack.

She quickly shut the door again, and leaned back against it, her eyes wide.

Dead Leg had a revolting grin on his face. ‘Seen enough yet?’ he said.

Kal had seen
far too much
. Lula had been on the bed, naked, on her knees, her hands gripping the iron rails of the bed frame. Azul had mounted her from behind, his gold jewellery clinking as he thrust in rhythm with Lula.

‘Lu,’ Kal sighed, half in disappointment, half in regret. She staggered back to her own room in a daze. There was nothing to do now but throw herself onto her own bed and wait for this new storm to blow itself out.

She grabbed her pillow to wrap around her head in an attempt to silence Lula’s yelps of pleasure and Azul’s grunts. But the second before she did, all hell broke loose …

She heard windows smashing downstairs, and shouts and screams that definitely weren’t ambiguous. Dogwood was calling her name: ‘Moonheart! Help, damn it!’

Kal sprang off the bed, grabbed a weapon from her chest, and ran down the corridor to the balcony. Dead Leg was there, as well as Jako and Bosun. A large naked man had followed Bosun out of her room, his enormous manhood swinging between his legs.

The kid who Kal only knew as Whalo was running up the stairs, his face wet with tears and blood. ‘Zombies!’ he wailed as he reached the top. ‘They got her!’ Kal and the others looked over the balustrade. Below them, Dogwood was standing in the small circle of candlelight, fending off four zombies with his sword and an upturned stool.

The girl Vuda was lying on the floor at Dogwood’s feet … in pieces in a puddle of blood. She had literally been torn apart.

Another window smashed, but this time it was somewhere
above
them.

The Blue Mahoe was under siege.

II.viii

The Reaping Wind

Kal didn’t bother with the staircase; she leaped up onto the balustrade and launched herself off, grabbing the extremities of the chandelier with both hands. The giant crystal and iron structure groaned as Kal’s weight dragged one side down. When she was hanging as low as she was going to get, she let go and dropped to the ground floor, landing on a divan so hard that the stuffing popped out and the wooden frame broke in two.

Kal was now directly behind two of the zombies that were threatening Dogwood. She pulled her weapon out of her belt and swung it in a wide arc. The weapon she had grabbed from her chest was her meat cleaver, and she smashed holes in the back of each of the zombies’ skulls. Ashen brains poured out of the rents like sand out of a split sack, and the zombies dropped to their knees.

Kal turned to Dogwood, who was struggling to fend off one of the other creatures; he had just run it through with his sword, and was now wondering why it wasn’t dead yet. ‘Chop its head off!’ Kal suggested, then left him to it, bounding back up to the balcony three steps at a time.

She passed Jako and Bosun, who were heading down to deal with the horde of silent, slow-walking undead that was filing through the Blue Mahoe’s smashed-down front door. Most of the zombies were dressed in simple villagers’ clothing, and if it wasn’t for their bleached white skin, dead eyes, and unwillingness to knock, they might just have been workers out on the town, looking for an evening’s entertainment after a hard day in the fields.

Kal found the first floor overrun with zombies now, too. Dead Leg was in command, shouting orders to those of his crew who had managed to rouse themselves. Bosun’s courtesan friend was also taking charge, trying to organise the Blue Mahoe’s own crew into a protective huddle. Kal dodged through the fray and sprinted down the corridor to Lula’s room. She yanked open the door just in time to see the window panes opposite bulge and explode inwards. She jerked back, pulling the door shut again just in time—there was a rapid
thud, thud, thud
as shards of glass embedded themselves in the wood.

She opened the door again cautiously. A hot wind—
the Reaping Wind
—gusted in through the broken frame of the ceiling-to-floor windows. Three zombies stood on the ornamental balcony outside. Azul and Lula had managed to roll off the bed to avoid the flying glass, and were lying in a tangle of sheets on the floor.

Kal went straight to deal with the intruders first, hacking at their arms and hands as they lumbered into the room in a tight group. Three on one was too many though, and Kal found it tough to land an effective blow while trying to avoid six grasping hands. One of the zombies batted the cleaver out of her hands.

‘Stand back!’

She instinctively responded to the offer of support, and stepped aside to put some space between her and the zombies. Azul had risen from behind the bed and was holding a pistol out in front of him. When Kal was clear, he fired. There was a loud bang and a great deal of smoke as the powder in the gun’s chamber exploded, sending a ball of lead smashing into one of the zombies’ skulls. Bone fragments and dust went everywhere, and the remainder of the zombie’s body crumpled to the floor.

‘Thanks!’ Kal said, waving away the smoke with her hand.

‘The wardrobe!’ Azul said. ‘My other guns. They’re loaded!’

The large mahogany wardrobe was just behind Kal. She pulled open the doors and grabbed a pistol from the bandolier hanging inside. The surviving two zombies were ignoring Azul and still coming after her; Kal backed up almost inside the wardrobe as she raised the gun and pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened.

‘Cock it!’ Azul shouted.

Kal was flustered. She fiddled with the weapon as the zombies lurched ever-closer. It was a flintlock pistol: Kal had seen them before but never used one herself. But when she pulled back on the flint-tipped hammer, she heard it cock with a satisfactory clunk.

The zombies were almost on top of her. Kal put the muzzle of the gun to the nearest zombie’s forehead and pulled the trigger. This time the gun did fire: Kal watched, almost in slow-motion, as the hammer was released, dragging the flint along the tongue of metal that rose up from the lock plate, sending a shower of sparks down onto the firing pan. Kal almost dropped the gun when it went off. Another zombie head disintegrated.

Through the smoke, Kal saw Lula appear behind the final zombie and drive her dirk through its brain, pinning the zombie to the door of the wardrobe. She had a wild grin on her face. ‘You know I don’t mind you barging in to watch, Kal,’ she said, ‘but you didn’t have to bring these creeps with you.’

‘Shut up,’ Kal said. Lula’s eyes were dark and shining; she was high on Sirensbane. Kal gave a Azul a sidelong glance; he was busy reloading his guns.
We have to go
, she mouthed to Lula.

Azul looked up from his weapons. ‘Now that you are here,
Drago Matador
,’ he said, ‘maybe you could stay, and between us we make some more explosions!’

‘Shut
up
!’ Kal repeated. Azul was stone cold sober, she noticed—so much for the plan of getting him drunk and escaping. ‘I think you should attend to the safety of your crew, Captain,’ Kal suggested. ‘This place is being invaded by zombies.’

Azul pulled up his breeches, slung on his bandolier and rushed from the room.

Kal went in the opposite direction: to the balcony. She looked down; it was an easy drop into the ferns below, via the low springy branches of a papaya tree.

‘What about
our
crew?’ Lula said as she pulled on her boots. ‘I’m not leaving until they’re safe.’

Kal sighed with impatience. She didn’t care about anyone but Lula, and even Lula was testing her resolve now. She had made a promise to Lula and nobody else. Dead Leg and the others only had themselves to blame for getting involved in the Magician’s
empire
. There were no innocents here tonight.

‘Forget about them,’ Kal said. ‘You wanted me to save you; this is the only chance we’re going to get.’

‘They’re my
friends
,’ Lula said, angrily, holding her ground at the door while Kal stood waiting at the window.

‘Friends are a liability,’ Kal said. Right then, she meant it.

Lula didn’t reply. She gave Kal a cold look and left through the door.

Alone on the balcony, Kal was suddenly aware of the noise of battle and chaos all over the mansion. People were fighting for their lives in there.

‘Damn it!’ she said to herself, and went after Lula.

* * *

Kal stepped into a world of bodies and blood. The long corridor that stretched from the east wing of the mansion to the west wing was jammed with struggling figures, all of them so heavily splattered with dust and gore that it was hard to tell the living from the undead. Dead Leg and Azul were in the thick of it all, their crews fighting side by side. The pirates and smugglers were holding their own against the seemingly never-ending onslaught, but the residents of the Blue Mahoe were faring less well: Kal saw Bosun’s well-endowed paramour lying dead on the carpet, blood still pouring from gaping wounds all over his body; it looked as though several pairs of hands had gouged fist-sized chunks out of his flesh.

Kal advanced through the crush, lashing out to the left and right as she went, spitting out curses to Lula, Azul, Ben, and anyone else she could think of who might be to blame for getting her into this situation. She couldn’t see Lula anywhere in the chaos, and as she looked around she lost her footing, tripping over a body and suddenly finding herself flat on her back on the soft, squelchy, blood-stained carpet. A zombie sat down on top of her, and she just about managed to grab its wrists as it groped for her.

It was unbelievably strong. What had been a small, thin woman in life, was now a powerful, vigorous monster in death. Kal stared at the zombie’s eyes as they struggled. The irises were completely black; there was no life in them … none at all. Except … did Kal imagine it, or did a tear squeeze out from behind an eyelid, only to instantly dry on the zombie’s white cheek?

The monster was moaning as it pushed its hands closer to Kal’s face. Kal was screaming with the effort of throwing it off. But in the end she was saved, not by her own strength, but by Sea Dog. The tiny dachshund leaped in, locked his jaws around the zombie’s wrist and twisted. The zombie’s hand was ripped away, and the vicious little dog ran off with it, taking it back to his master.

With her free hand, Kal was now able to pick up her cleaver and then bury it in her assailant’s neck. She kept hacking away until the head was half-off, and the zombie stopped moving. ‘You owe him!’ Dead Leg shouted from down the corridor. Kal could only laugh hysterically at the thought of owing her life to a small dog. She jumped to her feet and got back in the action. Just a few paces away, the kid Whalo was being held against the wall by a zombie whose hands were around his neck. Kal sprang forward and smashed the zombie’s skull in.

But unlike Sea Dog, she was a fraction of a second too late with her rescue. The zombie collapsed, but its hands never let go of Whalo’s throat. Kal heard the boy’s neck snap as he was pulled to the ground.

Kal swore. There was no end to the zombies, who were still coming in through windows and filling the staircase both above and below. They never raised their voices above a low moan, so Kal was painfully aware that each scream she heard was another ally being torn apart. Would the next scream be Lula’s?

She couldn’t see her friend anywhere. But she did spot someone else: a skinny figure, limping down the stairs from the top floor, pulling a young girl along with him, pushing past the zombies and just managing to stay ahead of their groping hands.

‘Che!’ Kal shouted after him. ‘Stay close to me!’

But the albino ignored her. He hoisted Rose onto the bannister, climbed up beside her, pushed off and slid down to ground level. They slipped off halfway down, though, and crashed to the floor. Che pulled Rose to her feet, and hobbled off with her towards the kitchens.

Kal followed him. If there was one person in here that needed protecting, then it was Che; he was almost a cripple, he wasn’t a fighter, and he wasn’t involved in smuggling Sirensbane for the Magician.
And
he had said he was the governor’s son. Estranged or not, saving his life might be worth something if the governor was ever restored to his rightful position.

Kal didn’t risk sliding down like Che had. Zombies were falling over each other to get up the stairs, so Kal clambered over their bodies to get downs, hopping from back-to-back, and kicking at their faces as she went. In the entrance lobby, Dogwood and Bosun were in the centre of a circle of thirty-odd zombies. Kal tried to dash around the edge of the fracas, but Dogwood spotted her. ‘Get over here, Moonheart!’ he bellowed. ‘We could use some support!’