Chapter 16 - The Nests

I was scowling up at the blue sky when I felt someone put a hand on my shoulder.

I turned. Conrad had snuck up behind me while I was distracted. That was the third time it had happened since we’d left the mansion, so I wasn’t surprised to see him standing there, holding the clipboard and pencil out to me while keeping the map in his other hand.

After Conrad had finished eating breakfast, Iset had sent us out to collect as much information as possible.

No breakfast for me. For some crazy reason, I wasn't hungry.

I had asked Kappa if he wanted to come with us, but he refused. When I tried to tempt him with the possibility of juicy dragonflies, he hissed at me and hid behind Iset.

I couldn’t blame him. We’d all been through a lot, and if my eyes hadn’t been needed to help gather the information, I would’ve been right there with him, tucked behind Iset and hissing at anyone who got too close.

It was a shame that Kappa hadn’t come with us. The grounds and forest were peaceful. I could feel my nerves unclenching a little more every minute I was outside.

But there was a speck of tension I couldn’t get rid of, and it buzzed like an enraged wasp whenever I looked up.

Conrad passed me the clipboard and pencil, but kept the map he’d been marking.

“You’ve been doing that all morning,” he said as he sat on the ground.

“Doing what?” I said.

“Looking up at the sky. Is there something I ought to know?”

I scowled at the sky again, squinting against the weak sunlight that showed through the partial cloud cover and…whatever was up there. A magic roof? An enchanted ceiling?

Ha! It was the top of a cage.

“I don’t know,” I muttered. “Does it look different to you today?”

“There’s not much point asking me,” Conrad said, but he lowered the map and raised his muzzle. “It seems dim, but I can’t tell if it’s the clouds or…”

I looked at him. “Or what?”

His huge shoulders rolled in a shrug. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s the clouds, and I’m imagining things because I know there’s something up there.”

“Yeah.” I sat down beside him. “Maybe I’m imagining things.”

“Oh, no.” He tilted his head to gaze down at me. “You’re a seer. You don’t get to imagine things.”

I huffed. “Well, then, maybe you should’ve picked someone more responsible to be your seer! Not some hysterical Looney Tune who can barely keep her cool on an average Monday!”

“You do fine.” Conrad returned his attention to the map.

“I drop mirrors!”

“You can drop as many mirrors as you want. You just can’t imagine things,” he said as he ran his eyes over the map. “And god help us if you ever start hallucinating. We won’t know what to think. Hey!” He looked up and pointed a claw at the space between my eyes. “No psychedelics.”

I smiled and shook my head.

Other people got to snarf magic shrooms to become seers—but oh, no! Not me! One day you wake up with a set of magic eyeballs and suddenly you’re on a strict no-shrooms diet for life. It didn’t seem fair.

Conrad lowered his hand. “Do you feel better now?”

Conrad had probably smelled how upset I was the moment I’d walked down the backstairs and into the kitchen. My fake smile would never fool him, but I hadn’t put it on for him; it was meant to fool Mrs. Park and Kappa. Since they were both in the room, Conrad hadn’t said anything.

I took a deep breath, feeling the chill of the air on my cheeks and letting the scent of the trees fill my body.

“Yeah,” I said. “I do feel better.”

“Good.” Conrad put his hand on my head and pulled me to him. When my shoulder squeezed up against his ribs, a warm feeling bubbled up in my chest. He let me go and grabbed the loose side of the map.

I scooted closer so I could see over his arm. “We’re back where we started?”

“Yeah. We’ve covered the whole perimeter.”

My eyes followed the faint pencil line he’d drawn around the grayed-out block that represented the mansion. Considering how varied the terrain was, the edge of the boundary was surprisingly smooth. It only bent outward to give more room to the eleven x’s carefully marked by Conrad. Each one was almost at the edge of the boundary.

The zombie nests.

The now empty zombie nests—thank god.

Fifteen minutes after we’d left the house, Conrad had lifted his nose and said that he smelled zombie blood. I had followed him (at a healthy, if not life-saving, distance) to the first nest. A large flat stone had been pushed up and shoved aside, creating heaps of displaced dirt, leaves, and grass. Beneath the stone cover was a dirt ramp that led down into an empty stone-lined chamber still hidden by the earth above it. If the cover and dirt had been in place, I never would’ve guessed it was there. In their eagerness to get out, some of the zombies had clawed at the bottom of the cover, leaving long smears of black blood across the stone.

Conrad had insisted on investigating that nest and every other one we found. He also insisted on going in first to make sure they were safe, and—believe me—I did not argue.

“We missed one,” Conrad said.

I looked up from the map to his face. He frowned and pointed at a blank spot on the map.

“The way the boundary moves out here,” he said, “there should be another nest.”

“And we’re going to go find it, aren’t we?” I said while wrangling back a groan.

Conrad stood and helped me to my feet. “Given our situation, I’d be afraid to miss something.”

That was an offensively good point, so I followed Conrad with minimal moping.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

The nest was nearby, and since we knew it should be there, it didn’t take long for us to spot the stone cover. It was tilted up on a tree root and shoved back, revealing part of the entrance.

I stopped two yards away from the hole. “How many zombie corpses do you think it’ll take before I get used to seeing them?”

“I wish I could tell you, Mera.” Conrad grabbed the stone cover and finished pushing it aside. He squatted near the entrance. “Just be glad they’re not moving.”

He jumped down onto the shallow ramp that led into the chamber and ducked his head so he could fit inside the nest. A few seconds later, he emerged.

“You’re okay to come in.”

That’s what he says, I thought with grim humor.

I braced myself and walked over to the nest.

It was the same as the others. The dirt ramp led seven feet down, ending in a stone floor that matched the stone walls and stone roof of the chamber. I knew it was seven feet because we’d measured everything when we found the first one.

Yes, we had brought a tape measure. We were out there for information, and, darn it, we were going to get it!

It was eerie how similar all the nests were. The stones that made up the chamber were unbroken slates. Because of their size, I assumed that magic had been used to make them. I didn’t think flat, perfect, solid stone came in six-and-a-half by fourteen foot sheets. But if magic had been used, it had been used a long time ago.

“Still no sign of magic,” I said as I scanned every surface. “Active or otherwise.”

Conrad was at the back of the chamber, near a long object that I was doing my best to ignore. “Turn on the light and come look at this.”

With a mental sigh, I pulled out my phone, turned on the flashlight function, and walked over to Conrad.

It was a zombie corpse. I knew it would be. We’d found others.

Usually they were only pieces. A spare hand or leg. A half a skull with its jaw sagging open. Part of the discolored flesh would be intact, but at the edges, it would fade into desiccated leather, then end in nothing. No cuts. No tears.

In two other nests, we’d found bodies that were more complete. One was only missing its legs. The other looked as if it’d been sheared by a disintegration ray that took off an arm, shoulder, and half its ribs. At the edges of the gaps, the flesh was the same hard, dry leather.

Looking at body parts was undeniably horrible, and I hated to think what I’d be dreaming about that night, but it was still better than having a live zombie trying to bite my face off while I looked into its eyes.

Relative joy wasn’t much, but at that point, I would take it.

This zombie corpse was a woman. She was smashed against the floor near the back wall, presumably by the weight of the bodies that had been piled on top of her. Several parts of her body were missing, but none of the remains had been disturbed. She was laid out like a human jigsaw puzzle with some of the pieces missing. The feet were where they should be, but there was no calf on the left side, and no thigh on the right. A chunk of the hip was missing. A strip as wide as my hand was gone from her chest, separating the upper ribs and shoulders from the rest of her torso. The worst, though—the sight that made me feel small and cold—were the fingers of her left hand, still laying in place, with no palm or wrist to attach them to the rest of her arm. Three of them had turned to bone.

I put a hand over my mouth, closed my eyes, and took a deep breath in through my nose.

“I’m sorry, Mera,” Conrad muttered.

“Don’t be.” My voice sounded too choked for my liking. I cleared my throat. “It’s not your fault I have a weak stomach.”

I offered him my best smile. It wavered on my face.

We looked back at the body.

“Do you see anything?” Conrad asked.

I didn’t bother inspecting it for magic like I had the others. I never found any, and, by that time, I was too weary to care. I let my eyes rest on the whole figure. The words bypassed my exhausted brain and came out of my mouth in a quiet monotone.

“It tried. The magic came to it, but too much of the spell had failed. Too many pieces were gone. There was no perch. It faded. Like smoke.”

My ears heard what I said, and my eyes widened. I glanced at Conrad to see what he’d made of my drivel.

He made of it pretty much what I had.

“What the hell was that?” he demanded.

“Um…maybe I’m imagining things?” I offered.

“Bullshit! That was seer stuff!”

“Why? Did my eyes change color?”

“I wasn’t looking! Do I have to watch for that now?”

“Don’t worry about it. It probably wasn’t anything. I’m tired, right? I had an early morning. Lots of walking and dead bodies.”

He shook his head without breaking eye contact. “I’m not buying it. How did you see that?”

I groaned. “I don’t know, Conrad! How do I see something that’s invisible! With a headache. That’s how.”

“Your powers are weird.”

“Hey! The guy with a telepathic honker does not get to call my powers weird—like, more than once.”

His volume grew in proportion to his confusion. “What the hell is a honker?”

I reached out and pressed on his black nose. “Honk!”

He turned his head away. His chest was shaking with a silent laugh, and he ran his tongue over the front of his teeth. I could almost see him trying to process it all. Maybe we could chalk that vision up to my powers too.

He didn’t turn back until he could look at me without laughing.

“First of all,” he said, “it’s an empathic honker, not a telepathic honker—and it’s not empathic either!”

“Right, right. Empathic. Senses emotions. But not really.”

“Secondly, you do not get to call my nose a honker.”

I tried to look serious and respectful, but I had to bite down on both lips to keep from laughing. “You prefer snoot?”

“You know what? You are a Looney Tune.”

I grinned.

“Can we get back to the dead body?” he said.

I nodded.

We returned our attention to the corpse.

“That could explain it though,” Conrad said. “If there was some kind of spell that was supposed to protect the body, but part of it failed, the parts without protection would’ve rotted away.”

He put his hands on the ground and leaned over, bringing his nose to within an inch of the body and slowly moving it over the corpse.

I did my best not to gag.

“It smells different,” he reported. “The parts that are intact smell something like the other zombies—”

“You mean that stench?” I said.

“That’s the one. Only it’s faint. The edges that have mummified don’t smell like anything.”

“How can something smell like nothing?”

“They smell like the world. Organic. Natural. If I was outside, I would never notice it.”

I nodded as if I understood. The concepts were hazy to me, but I had faith that they made sense to Conrad.

Conrad got to his feet, then helped me up. I held up my phone as a light while Conrad took a picture of the body. One more x was added to the map, then we left the tomb and started toward the mansion.

On the way out to the edge of the barrier, we’d planted a stake on the magic circle and written down the time. Now we had to go back and measure how far the circle had advanced in the time we’d been gone.

I thought about the nests as we walked.

The whole situation was like another, more sadistic, jigsaw puzzle. We had twelve pieces of a thousand-piece puzzle and the box was missing. The pieces all fit together, but I still had no idea what the big picture was supposed to be.

There were twelve nests with enough room for at least fifteen bodies in each one. When I’d dropped that stupid mirror, I’d set something off. The zombies rose. It depended on how long it had taken them to get out of their chambers—if them clawing at the bottom of the stone cover was any indication, it must have been difficult—but there was a good chance that, once they were free, they had milled around for a while. It doesn’t take that long to cover a half mile, especially when you can run that fast, but for whatever reason, they hadn’t bothered us until they heard Kappa crying. Then the whole mess of them had converged on the mansion.

My mind lingered on the age of their clothes, and how the unprotected body parts had dissolved into nothing despite being sheltered from the elements.

I shivered.

“You okay?” Conrad asked.

“Those nests have been here a long time, haven’t they?” I said.

Conrad buried his hands in his pockets. “I think so.”

“Why didn’t someone find them before now?”

“They might have found a few of them,” Conrad pointed out.

There had been two chambers that were still closed when we went looking for them. Conrad had to dig out the cover stones to move them and reveal the sterile chambers below. There were no bodies and no sign that any had been there.

“But why didn’t you smell the ones with the zombies still in them?” I asked. “Those zombies smelled bad enough to make me retch! Were the stone walls too thick?”

We walked in silence while Conrad took some time to think. It was an admirable trait. I hoped that, someday, a good fairy would bestow it on me. In the meantime, I had taught myself to shut my mouth and wait.

Conrad said, “I don’t think they smelled much until the magic started moving their blood. That would explain why the scent of the leftover pieces—the ones where the magic had failed to take—were so faint.”

“So there’d be no way to find the nests while they were covered?” I asked.

“No easy way to find them.”

I made a sour face.

“What is it?” Conrad asked.

I peered up at the trees, taking comfort from their serene indifference. “What are we talking about? Over a hundred dead bodies? What kind of a person would set up such an awful trap?”