And the smell. What little I ate this morning comes up.
The revenants ignore me as I sick myself, which is fortunate for me. Otherwise, I’d probably be missing an appendage or two. Instead they move around me, their viciousness focused entirely on Death’s brothers.
War laughs like a maniac as they come at him. He slices through the mass of dead bodies, congealed blood and other bits going flying as he takes off their arms or slices them below the legs.
I join in then, despite everything in me recoiling at the sight and smell of the revenants. I pry one away from Famine, kicking the woman in the chest.
Her body makes a sickening sound as it hits the ground, and I grimace. I swipe at another.
“Aim for their legs and arms,” War commands the rest of us. “The goal is to render them useless; there will be no killing them.”
I glance over at the massive horseman just as he swings his sword like a baseball bat, cutting through a line of opponents. I avoid looking at them as they fall apart.
This is the sickest situation I have ever been in.
War meets my gaze. He nods to my blade. “That one can cut through bone, though I’d aim for joints,” he says conversationally, even as a revenant jumps on his back. He grabs the creature by the neck and tosses it off of him and into more approaching undead, knocking the group of them over.
“Think of it like you’re carving a turkey,” War continues as, on my other side, Famine swings his scythe around his body, mowing down the dead encircling him.
I flash War a horrified look, even as I swipe my blade at the shoulder of a nearby revenant. “I’m never eating meat again.”
War flashes me a ferocious grin, then turns his attention back to his attackers.
I do aim for the joints, cutting through shoulders and wrists and elbows, the rotted flesh falling apart beneath my blade, their blood and other unmentionable juices getting on me.
These are not people, these are not people, I have to remind myself.
The dead keep coming, even as mounds of writhing, broken bodies pile up around us.
Across the way, I catch sight of Pestilence on the roof of the building he’d eyed earlier. There are only a few revenants on the roof, and as I look, I see the horseman kick an undead man off the side of the structure, the corpse’s body pin-wheeling as it falls. But even as I watch, more dead are climbing up the walls. They’re not getting very far before their grip gives out and they plummet back to the ground, but more are moving within the building.
Near me, Famine drops his scythe, scowling as his eyes take in the hordes of dead swarming the highway as they rush towards us. The Reaper moves his hands as though scooping magic from the air, his fingers splayed. His arms shake with the effort.
From deep beneath us, the earth shudders.
Asphalt and concrete cracks as massive, twisting plants rise from the ground. Vines and branches snatch the undead as they run by, coiling around the corpses like snakes. I can hear the sick sound of hundreds of bones breaking. More unnerving yet is that there are no screams of pain. The dead make no noise at all as their bodies are crushed.
To my right, the building Pestilence is on groans.
“Brother!” Famine shouts with more emotion than I thought he was capable of.
Before he can say more, a portion of the high rise collapses. Corpses fall with the rubble, and at the very top of the structure, I see Pestilence lunge for the edge of the roof as the floor falls away.
Famine throws out a hand, and a line of twisting vines sprout from where we stand all the way to the base of the building, rising and weaving themselves together to make a bridge of sorts. On the other end of this makeshift bridge, a thick, vined monstrosity slithers its way up the building’s walls. Halfway to the top, it slows.
“I can’t make it any bigger!” Famine shouts. I doubt Pestilence can hear him, but it’s clear enough that this is the limit of the Reaper’s help.
Pestilence pulls himself to his feet and, slinging his bow across his chest, he moves directly above where Famine’s ropy bridge of vines has attached itself to the plant growing up the building’s walls. The high rise groans again, and then the rest of the structure begins to collapse.
I suck in my scream as Pestilence leaps, his body plummeting towards the earth. Before he can hit the ground, Famine’s plants reach out and catch the horseman. The foliage rustles as it deposits him onto the far edge of the bridge.
It takes Pestilence a moment to get his bearings, but once he has them, he moves across the ropy bridge with surprising agility. He steps off of it, giving Famine a nod.
“Thanks brother,” Pestilence says, lifting his bow off of his chest.
“Just doing my job,” Famine says. “Ana tells me we must take care of our elderly.”
The Reaper seriously does not know how to handle gratitude.
But Pestilence guffaws and claps him on the back. “I hope you get the chance to experience it too, brother.”
Famine’s expression grows serious. “I will.”
Now that the horsemen are all safe and accounted for, we take in the carnage around us. Hundreds—if not thousands—of corpses are wriggling around, either caught in Famine’s plants, or lying in piles. One decaying hand latches onto War’s ankle. The horseman punts the appendage clear across the highway, the thing smacking into the face of a trapped revenant.
In the distance, I can see more undead scaling the foliage, and while the plants make quick work of these new corpses, there’s no way they’ll be able to hold off the horde for long.
The Reaper grimaces at the bodies. “They smell … like shit,”
“They’re corpses,” Pestilence says, digging through the dead. From beneath them, he grabs one of the bundles of arrows he had set aside earlier. “Did you expect them to smell like your precious purple roses you like to rub all over yourself when you think no one is watching?”
In response, a bush near the horseman opens, releasing a mostly pulverized revenant. The creature lunges for Pestilence.
“Whoops,” Famine says.
Cursing under his breath, Pestilence drops his weapons just as the creature collides with him. Grabbing it with both hands, Pestilence tosses the undead over his shoulder, aiming the body right at the Reaper.
The corpse crashes into Famine, nearly knocking him off his feet. The Reaper begins to swear when War steps up and swings his sword, cutting the undead off at the knees.
In the sky, Thanatos falters. He looks downwards at the sight before him. If he notices me at all, he makes no sign of it.
Instead, all around us, the plants Famine had grown wither away. They don’t release the trapped revenants, but then they don’t need to. Hundreds more are already climbing past the wall of plants.
“Shit,” the Reaper curses. The ground trembles as more plants push through.
While Famine’s focusing on regrowing our defenses, the bodies around us begin to vibrate.
“Pestilence, Lazarus, Famine,” War calls, “ready yourselves.”
My gaze sweeps over the dead just as piles of severed body parts rejoin, corpses fitting themselves back together as though they were never cut apart. I’ve seen this before with Death’s servants, when it seemed as though magic and nothing more stitched their forms together. But never have I seen it with fleshy bodies.
The severed appendages don’t physically reattach; instead magic seems to hold them in place. Within seconds, legions of dead are whole again. Teenagers, adults, children and the elderly. All of them stare at us through rotted eyes.
Then, as one, they attack.
I kick out at the previously severed arm of a nearby revenant. My boot meets resistance, but then, not a second later, the appendage falls away. I wait for it to reattach itself. Instead it gropes around on the ground.