The wooden arm slapped at Erasmus' chest and tore a strip of skin away from the rigid muscles beneath. They were pink and grey and they didn't glisten at all. No blood emerged, but she could clearly see the edges of his skin where it had been torn open. In the midst of all that fur the wound looked like a sickly orifice, a new and monstrous genital.
Ayaan pushed the telescope away and stood up. It was a long way down the ridge and for all she knew there were mines planted all around the little barnyard but she couldn't wait any longer. She stumbled out of the lookout station and practically threw herself down the side of the ridge, grabbing at tree branches to slow her descent, her feet barely touching the ground. A torrent of pine needles and rustling leaves swept around her while bits and pieces of rock and soil pattered and bounced down before her like a miniature landslide. She skidded to a stop in a copse of trees near the floor of the valley and pushed the branches away from her to take a look. Nothing had changed in the barnyard. Ayaan moved forward until she was standing before a seven foot high fence of thin wooden palings, the only barrier between herself and the barnyard.
Maybe, she thought, maybe she still had the element of surprise. She would need it'this wizard had more power than any living man was supposed to. Careful to be as silent as possible she climbed up one side of the fence and jumped down on the other.
Her foot barely nudged something round and hard as she landed. She looked down and saw a human skull there, bleached white with all its delicate nasal bones still intact. Other skulls littered the ground just inside the fence. Dark energy flickered inside every cranium.
The skull she touched gave off a blood-curdling shriek. Whether it actually made a sound or it was just inside her mind'and presumably the wizard's'she couldn't say, but the scream made her clutch her ears and duck her head.
At the center of the barnyard the wizard looked up. His wooden hand dropped a ball of fur and skin on the ground and Ayaan felt his attention hit her like a spotlight.
'This a friend a your'n, monkey-boy?' the wizard asked, looking over at Erasmus. The furry lich didn't move an inch. 'You shoulda said somethin'. I coulda redded up the place.' The wizard's face cracked in a wide, toothy smile.
Ayaan wasted no time. She dropped into a shooter's crouch and flung her hands in wide arcs. Energy spilled from her core and sizzled as it cut through the air. The wizard turned, far too fast, and put his wooden arm up. The bark there cracked and snapped and the wood underneath creaked and groaned. He reached inside the back pocket of his trousers and whipped out a pocket knife. Ayaan saw that the palm of his remaining hand was one smooth callus from fingers to wrist. He slashed the callus with his knife and then squeezed his fist until blood dropped onto the dry grass of the barnyard.
The door of the barn rattled on its hinges. Ayaan shot another bolt of death energy at the wizard but he caught it easily in his wooden hand. He absorbed the darkness into his own body with a visible shudder of delight. Ayaan raised her hands to attack a third time but then the door of the barn slammed open.
Dead people came slouching out. They were skin, skeletally thin. They were missing pieces. Very few among them still had four limbs. A few were missing all the flesh from their heads and all but the sinews of their necks. All of them had chunks of their torsos and abdomens carved away. Their ribs stuck out from denuded sides or were cut away entirely leaving them horribly lopsided. None of them had body hair of any kind. None of them had eyes, nor much skin.
Ayaan had seen plenty of decomposing bodies in her time. She'd seen human flesh gnawed on, torn apart, burned, hacked, eaten away by disease. She'd never seen human bodies systematically butchered, though. Not butchered for their meat.
'Just like prime aged beef,' the wizard chuckled. 'If you sauce it just right, it gets so you hardly can tell.' He squinted at Ayaan. 'Now, I figger I could do with a nice skirt steak for breakfast.'
The carved dead shuffled toward her, their faces unmoving, their hands up to grab and claw and tear.
Monster Planet
Chapter Seventeen