The Elementals : The Dawn of Darkness

Chapter 33 - Progress! Finally!

The smell of wet blood and ash choked the air. It was warm too, not uncomfortably so, but definitely a bit balmy. The three of us sat on one of the pieces of rock that had once been a glorified fence, breathing heavily and sweat pouring from every pore. Just giving you a pleasant image there.

Sheira resembled Carrie. Blood, that was mainly originated from someone else, had practically been painted onto her, even in her hair which was now a delightful shade of crimson compared to its usual snowy blonde. A strong smell of iron occasionally wafted in my general direction.

Shadow, on the other hand, was pale and exhausted, like a man that had been up all night or had contracted some form of plague. Or possibly both. His clothes were torn, hair was damp with sweat and his fingernails were caked in dirt and god knows what else. His own shade was firmly attached to his feet and thankfully not pulling a Peter Pan.

I couldn't tell what condition I was in, and if I'm being honest I don't really want to know. I think mirrors would crack if I got within a hundred feet. There was also a strange scent coming from my general vicinity but I was resisting the urge to take a sniff test. I think that would actually polish me off.

"You came back," I said quietly. We'd been in silence for what seemed like forever at this point. A group of guards were shovelling up a handful of corpses to be taken to be identified.

Shadow grunted.

"You didn't leave us."

An arm twitched. The body was promptly hacked to pieces.

"Hmm."

"You punched me in the face," I said with just a twitch more energy.

Shadow laughed slightly. From my right, I heard Sheira chuckle too. "Yeah, I did, didn't I."

"But you came back and that's what counts," Sheira said.

"And you've got a left hook to make Muhammed Ali proud."

"Heh," he was a lot quieter than he had been two days ago. It was weird but better.

We sat in silence for a little bit more. "Why?" Sheira asked eventually. "Why did you come back?"

Shadow didn't answer for a solid ninety seconds or so, in fact, I was sure he wasn't going to answer at all when "Crash...convinced me. We made a deal, all three of us, and I can't back out on that. No matter how pissed off you guys make me."

Sheira and I exchanged a sideways look. I don't know about her, but my bullshit detector was going into overdrive. It had sirens wailing, red lights flashing, the whole shebang. Perhaps he was telling the truth or perhaps he just felt guilty about abandoning to a face a never-ending horde of the undead, I don't know. But what I do know is this.

He came back and in the end, that's all that matters.

It was certainly all that mattered to Lillian. When dawn came and we realised that everything that was undead had now gone through the old double-tap procedure, Lillian had been leaping around the blood-soaked town square cheering and laughing like a hyena. To be fair everyone else was getting in on the action too.

The only glaring fault was that Marx had gotten away but with our, and the kidnapped people's eye-witness accounts, they knew where his base was and how much petrol it would take to burn the whole thing to the ground. To hell with it if we never found out how Marx had been controlling the zombies, the residents of Truespear would and they'd make sure it never happened again.

That's what Lillian and Tulip told us as we rode along on the back of the truck to Port Alderman. "We'll rip it apart," Tulip said with renewed vigour. "Tear it to pieces and then burn it all and throw the ashes out to sea."