Death After Death

Simon thought about leaving the plate mail behind under a pile of branches in the woods because of how heavy and bulky it was, but he decided against it and instead loaded it along with the rest of his meager supplies. He might not come back this way, depending on what he found. The last time, Freya had painted him as the villain, and there was no guarantee that this time would be any different, so there could be a lynch mob waiting for him in a few days, or maybe even something worse.

He would have honestly preferred to skip Schwarzenbruck on the way back. That, however, would have been difficult. It might even be impossible. The entire reason it was an important city was because the large stone bridge that the town was named for was one of the few good crossing points for quite a ways. He would be crossing there or not at all. Those were all later problems, though, and right now, he needed to focus on the now since the forest was still crawling with the dead in places.

Simon wasn’t worried. Fresh zombies could be frighteningly vicious. Older ones that started to dry out and decay, though, you didn’t even have to outrun those. You could just out-walk them. The only reason that he bothered to put them down when he found them was because he knew what a mercy it was.

Freya had no idea how much she was tormenting the man she loved by tying him down to the cart for half a day instead of putting him immediately out of his misery, but Simon remembered it all too well. He'd never forget it. She could never comprehend that hunger and he hoped that she would never have to, despite the fact that with this many lives, countless versions of her had ended up as zombies by now.

That thought saddened him, but at least this one was saved, probably. It was possible that in a day or two, she could still turn. He knew that; he just tried not to think about it. Her remaining friends seemed to have the right amount of wariness. They’d put her down if it came to it, and if they didn’t - well, he could save Schwarzenbruck again. It wouldn’t be the first time.

The trip to the barrows was easy enough now that he knew about where it was. The only problem was finding relatively safe places to sleep at night without someone to stand watch. There were just enough dead wandering around that if he did nothing about it, he was likely to wake up teeth in his throat.

So, he slept in trees both nights and thankfully, as much as the sound his mule made attracted them, the zombies made no attempt to attack the thing. The same couldn’t be said about the reverse, though. Both mornings, Simon woke up to find one or two zombies on the ground with their head or their skulls caved in by a good hard kick.

“Yeah, I’ve been there,” he nodded, remembering the cranky donkey that had taken him out like that.

He was very mindful of where he was standing in relation to pack animals and horses now. Getting killed that way once was a little amusing, but dying like that repeatedly would just be sloppy.