The Grand Battle II! [Happy End!]

Originally posted on MSPA by Sruixan.

---

In a brief moment of frivolity, Galus tried to count the number of approaching zombies, under the justification of getting to know what he was up against. There were at least a dozen, but from the doorway, discerning if there were any more was near impossible, unless he stuck his head out right where his attackers wanted it. If they could want. By the looks of things, their lurching was not even noticed by their brains - some of them didn't even have brains, for goodness sake. You could see one or two of them had holes in their heads, cracked open by a fall to the floor or at the hands of some other, unknown force.

Taking a chance, Galus took his eyes of the approaching swarm and turned to face Maxwell. The man appeared to be routing around in an old cupboard near the sink. The odd item was being chucked back over his shoulder; various bottles of spoilt liquids, plastic cutlery and plates, bags and boxes sporting faded trademarks. Hopefully, Galus mused, he was searching for something that might, by some sheer coincidence, be useful in dealing with the matter at hand. Well, the one that was in his hands, anyway.

Trying his best to remain unstirred, he drew his attention back to his attackers. He'd been cutting it a little too close, perhaps, checking in on Maxwell, but there was still that obligation to keep him out of trouble, cowering at the back of his mind. Still, he now had to forgo the luxury of accurate aiming and just shoot, if he wanted to stay reasonably alive. Years of training and experience at least allowed him to let his subconscious deal with the trigger.

Each bullet sent up a vigorous spray of flesh and fluids as they tore into the festering corpses before him - these then rained down upon the horde, damasking their ragged garments with various shades of blood. A couple of bullets were lucky enough to hit spots of dense matter and shoved their targets backwards, whilst others snapped tendons and sent appendages spiralling out from their sockets, no longer attached to their hosts.

"Aha! Splendid, I must say! I wondered if they might have one..."

Once more, curiosity took control and Galus swivelled away from the gore. Maxwell was leaning against the worktops, looking awkwardly pleased about the spanner he had in his hands. For once, Galus was impressed.

"...have you actually been thinking for once? That's perfect! It'll pack a better punch that your kettle of yours, and it doesn't dent, to boot..."

That hasty glance was all he could afford - a crescendo in the moanings and wailings of his foes pulled him away from the delightful sight of Maxwell's armament. There were thankfully fewer now, what with most of them presently piling up before him. There was, however, a knot of them converging at the back - through their dangling heads, Galus could make out a curious figure, notably still hanging on to most of his head and torso, swinging what appeared to be an oversized hammer in a haphazard fashion. The idea that some of his attackers could have armed themselves didn't settle particularly well… (but then again, all things considered, this mall had a myriad of stores in which to stock up on such weaponry)

Eschewing such speculation for the moment (and reproaching himself for a such scatterbrained approach to this situation), he fired off a couple of shots towards the stragglers. He was going to run out of ammunition before long, and he somehow doubted he could recharge his pistol with a mob of zombies bearing down on him. Taking advantage of the lull in their lurching, he reached for his knife, but a cacophonous clang from behind him made him shake a little and grasp instead at thin air.

“I hope noise is better than it sounds, Maxwell. Please tell me you're doing something useful…”

“But of course! I'm just struggling somewhat with this pipework…”

Galus's groan was not too discernable from those of his aggressors. He didn't know for sure what his companion was doing, but fearing the worst now was probably going to pay off when he eventually found the time to discover quite what was going on back there.

A couple of cadavers had successfully gotten close to the doorway – they didn't get much further, most collapsing as the knife tore into what little flesh they had. Bones were a bit of a problem, but even then, virtually all of them were swinging from their remaining tendons, already exposed and easily snapped. With his safety assured for another few moments, Galus risked turning round.

“I shall confess, this is a little impromptu and perhaps ill-advised. However, this valve is certainly not supposed to be orange and I'd wager that the fool responsible for this stupidity didn't know the first thing about chemistry… still, now we know why this tap disperses such repugnant liquid…”

In the heat of battle, with his attackers less than ten feet behind him, Maxwell was dabbling in a spot of spontaneous plumbing. Galus was reasonably certain he hadn't had any training to deal with this sort of travesty. Nor, he suspected, did he have the vocabulary to properly articulate the way in which he'd like to see his ally suffer for his inconsiderate actions.

“…is there any way, however impossible it might be to carry out, that I can knock some sense back into that supposedly brilliant head of yours that might make you realise that if you don't get your ass out of that cupboard right now, you're going to die?!”

With this outburst expressed, Galus channelled his frustration to his knife and fists. The zombies who had crept up on his buckled at the force of his slashes. One in particular let loose a decidedly discordant cry as the blade was thrust into its decaying left eye. His rage the circumstances he had no reason to deserve; lumbered with a blithering fool of a liability, single-handedly fending of a legion of impossible assailants, thrown out of his world into this despicable farrago that some omnipotent buffoon had seen fit to create for his enjoyment alone; all this indignation transformed into fury, exacted upon his adversaries who should not even exist through a simple slab of carbon steel.

It didn't quite register with him that the big guy at the back was no longer holding his hammer. Its transformation into a broadsword had taken mere seconds, but the mindless creature holding it was having difficulty accepting the power he'd once had. It took the briefest of thoughts to change it into something else, and that was exactly what his maggoty brain was solely capable of, so much so that it generated them by the dozen. The gauntlets could hardly keep their form for a minute, switching freely between swords, axes, projectile armaments, guns and bows and a manifold of other well-worn devices.

Galus couldn't care less. It was surprising, but so were most of the other things that he currently had great umbrage towards. This foe was quite incapable of focusing on his perpetually shifting weapon, but he tried. His attempts at coming to terms with the gauntlets on his hands distracted him from the knife aimed at his throat until it was far too late. His flesh pierced, the blade was removed and plunged into the muscle around his arms, again and again and again, hacking away at the screaming corpse. The broadsword was swung, but it flickered in and out of shape, becoming a sludgy lump of mass, trailing behind his flailing arms.

Presently, the concourse was silent, bar the distant buzz of the undead at the other end of the mall and Galus's trenchant panting. Save some slight twitching from the mounds of bodily parts, it was still as well.

Still, that is, until a familiar, haggard hat popped out around a doorframe, newly painted red.

“Have you quite finished yet? Honestly, you've been making one heck of an awful racket, shouting and screaming like that. With that sort of volume you could probably raise the bloomin' dead; you didn't exactly help my concentration, regardless. Oh, and your language wasn't exactly subtle either – I swear you invented some of those words on the spot, didn't you? I certainly wouldn't put them in a dictionary…”

Stumbling, Galus fumbled towards a bench in the middle of the hallway.

“…not… helping…”

“Anyway, I've decided I was on a bit of a fool's errand back there. I mean, I'm not expert when it comes to plumbing, I'll grant you, but even I can see that no human hand could fix that network, let alone get clean water flowing from it. Blood from a stone and all that, see?”

“Maxwell, please, shut up… I need… a rest…”

“Ho hum… here, tell you what, I've been a bit of a fool, haven't I?”

”Oh, now it's dawning on you, is it?” mumbled Galus.

“It's actually startlingly obvious. I'm amazed I didn't think of it before.”

With his helmet-covered face in his hands, Galus rolled his eyes.

“Where better to find some nice, fresh water than a place called “Splash World”? Come on, let's get going; no time like the present!”

At the very moment the exhausted soldier finally got to plonk himself down on a bench, Maxwell went gambolling off, blissfully unaware of the carnage he was leaving behind. Drawing breath sharply, Galus leapt back to his feet.

“No, no, no! You are not, I repeat, not doing this to me!”

Maxwell carried on, oblivious. Meandering around the noxious stream of no-longer-edibles emanating from a side corridor, he set his sights upon the fading sign at the end of his vision. Gasping for breath, Galus dutifully followed, grumbling more fabricated curses into his helmet. Glancing around for threats, he spotted a ramshackle billboard in the middle of the thoroughfare. A particular word, long since given special status in his mind, glimmered at him.

Lurching forwards, he nearly pressed his face against the peeling wood, just to check it was true. All the letters were there, in the right order (with a few more tacked on the end), with a neat little number next to it in a colour shared with a block on the map.

“Maxwell! Guess what I found? This place, well, I mean, it has a weapons shop! What kind of mall has a shop for weapons? That's insane… but it's here. It's just down that path there. We can get you something and hopefully I can get some more ammo and maybe, erm… Maxwell?”

Pulling himself away, a quick survey of his surroundings produced a concerning lack of Maxwell. Peering around the map, his face fell as he watched a greatcoat amble towards a peculiar pair – a woman in nun's garb carrying a curious tome and… well, someone who, from Galus's perspective, to have suffered unreasonably from the zombification process, to the point where every square inch of his skull was on show above his ebony cloak. Two rather unusual figures to have been patrons in this mall, surely…

And then, the memory of that fight moments prior, tussling with that anomaly of a man with the unexplainable gauntlets, drifted into his mind. The sudden realisation that Maxwell was walking, out of his own free will, straight into the grasp of two more of those bizarre adversaries was sickening, to say the least.

Wheezing and wailing, Galus sprinted towards the meeting, earning inquisitive glances from all three of his targets. He collapsed just short of Maxwell, running out of air before he could push him out of danger. An immeasurable feeling of guilt struck him as he fell to the floor, coupled with a wave of worthlessness at his failure.

“Sorry about that. He's been running around an awful lot lately, I'm afraid. Worn himself out, poor chap. He shouldn't mean you much harm if he doesn't think you're going to tear my head off, which, by the way…”

There was suddenly a noticeable presence, hovering about Galus's left ear. He could feel warm breath on his exposed skin.

“That was quite the display, but totally, completely and utterly unnecessary. For a start, I don't think that zombies can change their facial expressions, especially to one of immense surprise. Nor, I think you'll find, can they beckon you over with properly articulated words and a curling of a finger. The nail in the coffin, I'd say, is the fact they can walk properly. Better than you can, I should think. Now, get up, dust yourself off and introduce yourself. It's only polite…”

Galus tried to speak, but gave up readily. The floor was, however, much easier to look at than the disconcerting reality above him that he no longer knew quite what to think about…