Chapter 28
The moment Marcus touched earth, every muscle in his body came to life. Every limb wanted to relieve their enemies of their tainted ligaments. Marcus was lost in the bloodshed; he did not know where he was and he really did not care; all he wanted at that moment was to satisfy his own bloodlust. His breath took out many foes at once, but the damage did not kill most of the larger ones. Marcus’s spaded tail and head took care of the rest. Once or twice, one was lucky enough to break his line of defense and attack him directly. Whenever such an event happened, Marcus would turn the foe to bloody ribbons with claw and tooth before continuing the fight.
Liz, while not as powerful or muscular as Marcus, was very capable in this kind of fight. All of the behemoth undead ranged within thirty to fifty feet tall and they were all well spaced apart. Their positioning was perfect, as she could easily decapitate a nearby enemy and leap from the bloody stump left behind to another. Liz guessed that there were at least twenty million behemoths and nearly a hundred million others. She let the bodies of the large block the path of the small and focused all her attention on the giants.
Liz eventually found Marcus, but he was too engulfed in his fight to see her. She jumped to his head and yelled in his ear, “Throw me!”
He did as she asked and threw her back to his wing, where she was thrown across the theatre of war. She held her blade in front of her and Liz passed through thirty undead as if they did not even exist. Liz returned; she leapt from behemoth to behemoth and beheaded them as she went. Marcus said to her between mouthfuls of undead, “Your sword is really five. Use every one.”
Liz looked at the creases in her blade and pulled on one of them. A small hilt appeared from beneath the blade’s surface. She killed her next undead two-handed. It was only seconds later that she pulled the others off and used them as throwing knives. Liz saw how the impaled undead could still walk and retrieved the pieces one at a time. She decided that it would be better to use only two blades at a time instead of five.
With her two blades, Liz killed her foes with a more artful style akin to her actions with the samurai sword the day before. She relieved the undead of their individual limbs and took to letting them trip over each other and slipping on the thick undead blood. The beasts were clumsy in their movements, and Liz had trouble keeping her footing on their uneven hides.
She continuously returned to Marcus, who threw her to a different location every time. Each time they met, Marcus would give her another piece of advice. It was soon afterward that they developed a pattern of killing their enemies in the most efficient manner possible. After five hours of Marcus’s intense flames and Liz’s stunning acrobatics, Liz yelled to Marcus, “How many?”
Marcus responded, “a hundred twenty seven thousand, eight hundred and sixty three – four – five – six…” and he continued to count as his tail beheaded three others. Liz remarked as her face was covered in her most recent kill’s blood, “Well, you cheated. I’ve only got a dinky piece of metal and you’ve got a flame thrower, teeth, claws, and a spade.”
“You failed to mention wings.”
Marcus unfurled his wings and the long, thin bones that held the membrane in place knocked over a hundred giants as if they were made of gelatin. Liz smiled and threw her blade into the skull of a far off enemy. She jumped into the air and Marcus released a fireball that caught her mid-flight. She flew like a rocket back to her sword. Liz returned to Marcus hacking up zombie meat like an Italian cook from hell. After her fifteenth beheading on the return trip, she landed sideways on a great gold eye.
Dem was completely still; he did not expect to have such a sight before him. Liz’s legs were spread two feet across his eye, and she was not wearing anything under her skirt. When Liz realized where he was looking, she turned her sword to the flat surface and used it to slap him across the head. Dem fell to the side and four behemoths went down with him. Mish appeared out of the nothingness behind Liz and said, “Boys; can’t live with them, can’t eat them.”
“You could, but I doubt they taste very good,” Liz replied before jumping back into the foray. One by one, the titanicus joined the bloodbath.
Mish did not turn invisible, as she was plainly visible after being sprayed with the blood of the behemoths around her. Isaac leapt over her head and followed a style similar to Liz; he jumped from one to the other and guillotined them as he moved. However, his style was more precise, aiming for the veins in the neck to spray large amounts of blood onto the battlefield. Dragoon, Mish, and Dem followed similar patterns of snatch and slaughter. It was slow and boring, but it was effective.
The blood of the undead spilled for hours, and still the bridge they were defending refused to collapse. The group had no choice but to go deeper into the undead ranks because the bodies piled up to the point where the titanicus could not keep their balance. Marcus yelled to the group, “How can we fight if we cannot stand? Isaac and Liz go left and right. Mish and Dragoon, follow Liz to Oakland. Dem, follow Isaac to Berkeley. Stay split up so we can divide their numbers.”
The plan was simple enough, but Marcus knew that there was one major flaw; him. Marcus had no idea what he was going to do. Would he stay there to guarantee that not a single undead made it to the island or move father inland to fight on harder ground? Marcus decided to compromise his ideas and mixed them together. First, he backed up to the bridge and swung his tail twice through the bridge’s roadway. The effect was a fifty foot gap between one side and the other. Marcus then climbed to the top of the hill he created from the undead corpses and slid down the far side directly into the largest undead he had seen yet. It was easily twice his size, and Marcus had no allies at his side.
Liz, while not as powerful or muscular as Marcus, was very capable in this kind of fight. All of the behemoth undead ranged within thirty to fifty feet tall and they were all well spaced apart. Their positioning was perfect, as she could easily decapitate a nearby enemy and leap from the bloody stump left behind to another. Liz guessed that there were at least twenty million behemoths and nearly a hundred million others. She let the bodies of the large block the path of the small and focused all her attention on the giants.
Liz eventually found Marcus, but he was too engulfed in his fight to see her. She jumped to his head and yelled in his ear, “Throw me!”
He did as she asked and threw her back to his wing, where she was thrown across the theatre of war. She held her blade in front of her and Liz passed through thirty undead as if they did not even exist. Liz returned; she leapt from behemoth to behemoth and beheaded them as she went. Marcus said to her between mouthfuls of undead, “Your sword is really five. Use every one.”
Liz looked at the creases in her blade and pulled on one of them. A small hilt appeared from beneath the blade’s surface. She killed her next undead two-handed. It was only seconds later that she pulled the others off and used them as throwing knives. Liz saw how the impaled undead could still walk and retrieved the pieces one at a time. She decided that it would be better to use only two blades at a time instead of five.
With her two blades, Liz killed her foes with a more artful style akin to her actions with the samurai sword the day before. She relieved the undead of their individual limbs and took to letting them trip over each other and slipping on the thick undead blood. The beasts were clumsy in their movements, and Liz had trouble keeping her footing on their uneven hides.
She continuously returned to Marcus, who threw her to a different location every time. Each time they met, Marcus would give her another piece of advice. It was soon afterward that they developed a pattern of killing their enemies in the most efficient manner possible. After five hours of Marcus’s intense flames and Liz’s stunning acrobatics, Liz yelled to Marcus, “How many?”
Marcus responded, “a hundred twenty seven thousand, eight hundred and sixty three – four – five – six…” and he continued to count as his tail beheaded three others. Liz remarked as her face was covered in her most recent kill’s blood, “Well, you cheated. I’ve only got a dinky piece of metal and you’ve got a flame thrower, teeth, claws, and a spade.”
“You failed to mention wings.”
Marcus unfurled his wings and the long, thin bones that held the membrane in place knocked over a hundred giants as if they were made of gelatin. Liz smiled and threw her blade into the skull of a far off enemy. She jumped into the air and Marcus released a fireball that caught her mid-flight. She flew like a rocket back to her sword. Liz returned to Marcus hacking up zombie meat like an Italian cook from hell. After her fifteenth beheading on the return trip, she landed sideways on a great gold eye.
Dem was completely still; he did not expect to have such a sight before him. Liz’s legs were spread two feet across his eye, and she was not wearing anything under her skirt. When Liz realized where he was looking, she turned her sword to the flat surface and used it to slap him across the head. Dem fell to the side and four behemoths went down with him. Mish appeared out of the nothingness behind Liz and said, “Boys; can’t live with them, can’t eat them.”
“You could, but I doubt they taste very good,” Liz replied before jumping back into the foray. One by one, the titanicus joined the bloodbath.
Mish did not turn invisible, as she was plainly visible after being sprayed with the blood of the behemoths around her. Isaac leapt over her head and followed a style similar to Liz; he jumped from one to the other and guillotined them as he moved. However, his style was more precise, aiming for the veins in the neck to spray large amounts of blood onto the battlefield. Dragoon, Mish, and Dem followed similar patterns of snatch and slaughter. It was slow and boring, but it was effective.
The blood of the undead spilled for hours, and still the bridge they were defending refused to collapse. The group had no choice but to go deeper into the undead ranks because the bodies piled up to the point where the titanicus could not keep their balance. Marcus yelled to the group, “How can we fight if we cannot stand? Isaac and Liz go left and right. Mish and Dragoon, follow Liz to Oakland. Dem, follow Isaac to Berkeley. Stay split up so we can divide their numbers.”
The plan was simple enough, but Marcus knew that there was one major flaw; him. Marcus had no idea what he was going to do. Would he stay there to guarantee that not a single undead made it to the island or move father inland to fight on harder ground? Marcus decided to compromise his ideas and mixed them together. First, he backed up to the bridge and swung his tail twice through the bridge’s roadway. The effect was a fifty foot gap between one side and the other. Marcus then climbed to the top of the hill he created from the undead corpses and slid down the far side directly into the largest undead he had seen yet. It was easily twice his size, and Marcus had no allies at his side.