V2Ch41-Night Lights

The second night began much worse for the Rodriguez camp than the first had.

Where before, they had been assaulted by an unseen menace, and a few members of the family kidnapped in the darkness, tonight their enemy was more brazen.

Strange dancing lights appeared in the dark mist that shrouded the night sky.

Ramon, Felicia, and Hector were on patrol together. They all saw the floating night lights.

“What are those?” Felicia asked, looking at Ramon as if he would have some explanation.

Ramon shrugged. “I’ve never seen anything like them before. How would I know?”

Hector walked forward, and the two younger Rodriguezes snapped to immediate attention.

“Uh, hey, Hector, where are you going?” Felicia asked.

“The lights,” Hector said. He sounded drugged or drunk. “They know where our children are. The missing are with them.”

Ramon and Felicia exchanged a look.

“I think it would be better if we all stayed here and reported this to the others,” Ramon said carefully.

“You stay. I have to find my family.”

Ramon had been afraid that he would say something like that. He took a step back, and then made a sideways move, putting himself completely in Hector’s blindspot. Hector continued moving forward, steadily leaving the solid ground in favor of the uneven marsh soil. Walking, no doubt, toward some entity’s trap.

Ramon gave Felicia a significant look, and she nodded. Then she stepped forward and quickly moved to block Hector.

“What happened to the man who didn’t trust magical fires in the darkness?” Felicia asked, her tone chiding. “You’re really going to do something so crazy?”

“Move out of my way,” Hector half-yelled, stepping in and getting in her face. “I’m going to find my family!”

That was when Ramon struck. He lunged and used his right fist to deliver a precision strike to the back of Hector’s neck. He had only rarely had to use the special Rogue technique, but it landed perfectly. Hector crumpled into unconsciousness.

Felicia caught him and kept him from falling. She smiled at Ramon.

“Good teamwork,” he said.

“I’m glad I didn’t have to shoot him with an arrow,” she replied.

That was when Ramon heard some movement from off to the side of them, around ten feet distant. He and Felicia turned to look, and there was another figure wandering toward the lights. A young woman who they recognized as Raquel Rodriguez moved through the darkness.

“Rocky, what are you doing?” Felicia called to her.

Then they heard a splash of movement to the other side of them. Ramon turned and found Javier Rodriguez also walking toward the lights.

“For the love of God,” he said quietly. “How many of them…?”

“I’m going toward the lights,” Raquel said, her voice dull. “They know the way out of this terrible place.”

In all, Ramon and Felicia had to subdue five members of the Rodriguez family who tried to wander off toward the will-o’-the-wisps. Only then could they return to the campsite for their report to the others.

“I can’t believe so many of us would follow a bunch of weird glowing lights into the darkness,” Ramon muttered. “They must be some powerful magic.”

“You don’t feel the pull at all?” Felicia asked.

“Hm?” Ramon looked at her, startled, a suspicious look spreading on his face.

“I’m in control of myself!” she said, annoyed. “But I can feel something when I look at the lights. You don’t feel anything?”

Ramon turned his head back and looked at the lights for a few seconds, and he felt something. Perhaps he’d felt it already, but he’d ignored it in the heat of the moment. A warm glow about the lights that told him that everything would be alright, all his fears would turn out to be nothing, if he would only go toward the lights.

He shuddered and forced himself to turn away.

“Now you feel it,” Felicia said, nodding in satisfaction.

“Now I feel it,” Ramon agreed. “I don’t know how I missed it before. Let’s get back.”

Felicia nodded, and between them, they managed to drag the five unconscious people back to the Rodriguez campsite.

But that was only the beginning of the evening’s events.

When they returned, the whole camp was wide awake despite the fact that it was the middle of the night. They were all gathered together in a tight formation around the central tents. Some of them had weapons drawn. It felt like they were prepared to make a last stand against some terrible enemy.

“What’s going on?” Ramon asked the first person he saw turned in his direction.

It was Cliff.

“Wolves spotted,” Cliff said. “Higher level than what we used to see near the starting point. Coordinated. They dragged Jaime off. Everyone else who saw the wolves managed to retreat from the camp’s edge. Now if they want to get us, they have to hit us all at once.”

That’s actually a pretty good plan, I think. If the wolves are that big of a threat this time. But…

“We’re really running from wolves?” Ramon asked. “After all that we’ve been through already? Why not take the fight to them?”

Cliff’s voice dropped as he replied, “On the other side of the camp, I’m told our people saw something else. Something less natural than fire-breathing wolves.”

Ramon’s mind shuffled through the different kinds of monster that he’d encountered since entering the Orientation forest. There were the spiders, of course. Forest beetles. Those boars they ran into on the way to what turned out to be the cultists’s camp. But he hadn’t seen anything that felt unnatural.

Then he didn’t need to guess anymore. The Night of the Living Dead appeared in the distance.

A dozen full-blown zombies staggered out of the swampwater, through the mist and into view. All around Ramon, he heard cries of dismay. He knew their courage had drained out of them. There was a moment when he thought that his family members might break and run.

“They’re just walking corpses, everyone!” Ramon shouted. “They can’t be any stronger than they were when they were human. Just look at them. They don’t even outnumber us!” Ramon drew his sword and prepared himself mentally to lead by example.

A little bit of the panic seemed to subside at his yelling.

“He’s right!” Cliff called out unsteadily. He raised his Spider Egosword in the air. “We can win this!”

Then a figure stepped out from behind the zombie vanguard. This one didn’t look nearly as decomposed as they did, but his skin nevertheless had a strange gray sheen that it had never had in life.

“Lay down your arms and surrender, Rodriguez family,” pronounced the cold dead lips of Chava Rodriguez. “We promise that if you come peacefully, you will be spared.”

The words were absurd. As absurd as the idea that those mindless creatures shambling toward them would accept, let alone understand, surrender from anyone.

Yet Ramon felt an almost irresistible urge to put down his sword.

Of course Tio Chava would never let us get hurt, he thought.

“No, no, you guys can’t give up now,” Cliff whined. “Don’t listen to that guy!”

The words seemed to Ramon to come from a great distance. A whisper. It should be easy to ignore. But…

No, I can’t let my family get hurt. We can’t die here. He pictured his younger siblings who hadn’t made it here. Luna and Ángel. I have to see them again. I can’t die here.

Then there was a howl of pain from behind him. It took him a moment to make sense of what he was seeing, but then the sight snapped him completely out of his reverie.

Mama Camila was screaming, struggling, writhing on the ground. A big, two headed wolf had half of her hip clenched between one set of closed jaws.

“Ayudame!” she begged.

“No!” Ramon shouted. Around him, others had similar reactions.

The group leaped as a body on the wolves that had snuck up on them while they were distracted with the zombies. A dozen swords and knives found their target in the two-headed beast almost at once.

Then the enemy was upon them on all sides. Wolves and zombies were everywhere, wrestling with family members or sinking their teeth into them. Occasionally Ramon could see creatures more human and less decomposed than the zombies attacking alongside them. Creatures like what his Tio Chava had become.

They were surrounded on all sides by monsters and the mingled stench of death and wolf musk.

Ramon saw, despite his and his family member’s best efforts, the wolf that had become a pincushion ripped Mama Camila in two between its jaws.

“No,” he whispered. “No.”

To his left, Felicia fell, her throat crushed between a smaller wolf’s jaws. Caught too much by surprise even to scream. To his right, Cliff collapsed under the weight of a half-dozen wolves. He cried out loudly, clearly in agonizing pain. In the space Cliff had left open when he fell, Ramon saw little Luna.

No, that’s impossible! She’s not here.

Despite the impossibility of it, the zombies were sinking their teeth into her shoulders. Positioned behind her, Chava grabbed Luna’s neck, pulled, and twisted. There was a horrendous cracking sound, and Ramon realized she was no more.

He fell to his knees, vomit rising in his throat.

I can’t do this. None of us can do this. Years of religious instruction that had gone in one ear and out the other rose back up and hit him like a freight train. We’re in Hell, or something. These are the end times, and we’re being punished for our sins.

Then he felt a crushing weight shove him headfirst into the soil. He couldn’t feel anything pressing him down. It was as if his body had just come under some invisible force that kept him from rising.

He could barely lift his head an inch or two off the ground. When he did, he opened his eyes to see a completely different reality than what he’d experienced before.

His vision blurred, and then he saw Mama Camila lying on the ground in front of him, still in one piece, her body bleeding from a massive bite wound to the hip. She was unconscious, but her chest rose and fell. She was clearly still alive.

Beside her lay the two-headed wolf that had chomped onto her, neatly bisected, two pieces split at the gap that separated the two heads. As Ramon swiveled his head slightly, he could see a dozen more wolves ripped and chopped into pieces, as if some savage monster had attacked them.

What does this mean?

“Sorry I had to do that,” a familiar voice said loudly, projecting to everyone around. “I don’t know what you all saw, but I have a good guess. My illusion was more effective than I intended. Unfortunately, I couldn’t target it to just the monsters. And it doesn’t seem to work as well on the undead. So there’s no point in keeping it around and torturing you guys any further.”

James, Ramon thought. Thank God.

There was a sound of bone breaking from behind Ramon. Then another sound, like flesh being ripped apart. But Ramon wasn’t worried anymore. He could almost fall asleep. He was exhausted, he couldn’t move, and all the tension had left his body. Tears filled his eyes.

Thank God. My family isn’t all going to die…

“Wow,” an old voice said. “Not a single casualty once we arrived. You know, I think he was telling the truth. I really believe the safest place to be in the whole Orientation is right behind wherever he’s standing.”

“We have to chase after the rest,” James said, his voice quieter now, slightly weary. As he spoke, the weight that held Ramon in place vanished like a lie. “We can’t afford to lose our advantage. They’re running. They won’t be as organized. We have the numbers, and against a fleeing enemy we could win even with fewer than our enemy.”