Reluctant Necromancer

We watched them for another hour. With each passing minute I became more and more pissed off. I checked the time, and it had only actually been ten minutes. I slumped down below the hill because I couldn’t keep watching these people so nonchalantly destroy these villagers’ lives. I was seeing red and I didn’t know if I could handle continuing to watch them ransack this place without doing anything.

I listened to the others comparing observations about what they were seeing. So calm. So collected. I wish I could be like that. I don’t know when I decided that this was such a big deal to me. Why all these villagers needed my help. But it was and they did.

Ashley’s hand reached down and grabbed my shoulder and squeezed comfortingly before she left it there as a tether to her. I slowly began to calm down and I started actually listening to my friends above me.

“I’ve counted eighteen so far,” Jenny was saying.

“Did you count the guy by the corner of the house?” Mara asked. “I got nineteen.” There was some back and forth between everyone for a few more minutes before it died down and they agreed that there seemed to be nineteen people down below. Though there might be more that we weren’t able to see or that were inside one of the buildings.

“What do we do now?” I asked Ashley.

She shrugged at me, but Mara turned around and looked down at me. “We’re going to see if we can follow them out of here. Maybe trail them back to their base.”

“If we’re close enough to see them then we’re close enough they can see us. And there haven’t exactly been a lot of other vehicles on the road. How do you expect to follow them back?” I argued.

“I don’t see enough vehicles for them all to have come in on trucks or anything. Chances are most of them walked,” Mara answered.

Just then there was the roar of a diesel engine. It was muted from the distance, but still distinct. I crawled back up to the top of the hill to look down. Coming out between two houses where we’d been unable to see it was a big ole tractor and a long trailer with rails. People began hopping into the trailer and getting comfortable while the tractor slowly made its way to the center of town where the small truck and trailer full of stolen supplies was located.

“Quick! Everyone count,” Mara whisper yelled at us all.

“One, two, three…”

“Twenty-three,” Jeremy called out.

“Twenty-four,” Jenny countered.

A few minutes later, “Alright, I counted twenty-four. What about everyone else?” Mara asked. The rest of us nodded in agreement. “So much for following them,” she sighed.

“Well, they look like they’re heading east,” John offered as he looked back and forth from his phone to where the trailer had just disappeared.

Mara sighed, “We can’t just go looking everywhere east of here.”

“And it might have just been the direction they left town and they’ll turn a different direction once they reach a turn off,” I added.

“I guess we have to take this back to Montgomery and see what he says.” Oliver leaned his head onto John’s shoulder as he let out a deep sigh. “At least we learned something,” he offered.

A few minutes later we all began the trudging journey back to the van. Since all the bandits or whatever had left town we just kind of all agreed to walk down the middle of the cleared path for the power lines.

Everything was quiet and we spoke in hushed voices. I lagged behind with Ashley at my side. Her hands swung at her sides, brushing past mine until I grabbed her fingers with mine and laced them together. I looked over at her and smiled as we walked with our friends.

“Well, well, well.”

My head snapped forward as a small group stepped out of the trees on the far side from us. There were five men, all haggard and hairy. Two of them were large. The kind you get when the star football player in high school starts drinking and gets fat. Still strong, but not necessarily fit. Another towered over everyone else including John. Like John he was built like a beanstalk. The last two were fairly average looking guys. Nothing really stood out about them. Just regular guys who could be anyone’s neighbor or family member.

It was one of the average looking guys that had stepped forward in front of their group and was speaking to us. “Don’t recognize you folks from town. Thinking you might be a little lost.” There was some snickering from behind him. “You wouldn’t happen to be the people that were causing a ruckus in town not too long ago would you?” he asked not unkindly.

“What if we are,” Jeremy shouted back. I tried not to actually face palm, but it was a close thing.

“Well then I think you should come along with us. Boss has a few questions he wants to ask you,” the man called out to us.

Mara stepped forward and held up a hand to ward off anything else Jeremy might say. “Yeah, I don’t think we’ll be doing that. Thanks though,” she answered back.

“Wasn’t really asking,” the man pulled out a pistol from the back of his pants. The other men with him pulled out similar weapons.

John and Jeremy immediately shifted into their metal skin and stepped forward in front of the rest of us. Ashley unslung her military gun and stepped to the side around the others. Josh and I summoned our spears. Mara and Jenny just stood there, but I could tell even from behind that Mara was smiling an evil grin back at the men.

We all stared at each other in a kind of stand-off for several tense moments. Everyone just watched the other. Waiting.

Then there was the loud bark of a gun going off and Jeremy rocked back a little from the impact. All hell broke loose as Ashley began returning fire. I pulled her along with me toward the tree line by the back of her jacket.

John and Jeremy rushed forward at the group of men. As they did all their gunfire focused on the advancing metal men. They began fumbling around as they tried to retreat and still maintain shooting at the two berserkers.

From behind them Mara and Jenny began lobbing magic shit at the men. Mara managed to set fire to the patch of forest behind the men, cutting off their retreat. By the time I managed to pull Ashley with me into the tree line it was all over.

Several men were burnt and twisted from Jenny and Mara’s magic. Others had been practically torn apart by John and Jeremy. I was sure that Ashley had taken out one or two of them as well.

Jenny turned around and hurried off to the side before throwing up. Josh walked out of the trees and rubbed his hand soothingly across her back as she tried to get her breathing under control. Mara looked over with a little guilt on her face.

John and Jeremy were going through the bodies looking for anything to tell us about the men. After a few minutes they returned to us. John just shook his head. They hadn’t found ID or anything else on them.

The rest of the walk back to the van was quiet. Everyone was more watchful and less talkative. We didn’t continue down the center of the strip of open grass. We hedged our way into the tree line like we had on our way up.

The trip back to town was equally as quiet. It didn’t take long and before I knew it we were pulling in front of the police station in Whitcomb.