Dark Fate 9 B – In the Dark

FIRST AND VERY IMPORTANTLY, THIS IS NOT CANON.  THIS IS COMPLETELY UNSANCTIONED (okay, not completely.  Larry said I could do this for you guys without his ripping my head off) MHI FANFIC.
Good, now that we got that out of the way, why am I doing this?  Both Grant and Fado Negro (Portuguese Monster Hunters) have minuscule parts in Guardian, the MHI book I’m collaborating with Larry Correia on.  However, obviously the Portugal of Monster Hunter is not the real Portugal (Really, no arcane creatures come stumbling out of the undergrowth there.  If there were arcane creatures, the country would be chock-a-block in them, when you take in account the continuous human occupation since… well, forever.)  And this story gives me more of an opportunity to firm the worldbuilding.  (Yes, it would be MUCH easier to do this with a notebook and noting things down, but that’s not how my mind works, d*mn it.)
Okay, that’s the rational excuse.  The real reason is that d*mn Grant Jefferson won’t leave me alone.  (Always had a thing for men from Patrician New England families.  Ask my husband.)  So I’m torturing him.  Also Guardian won’t come out until I do this more or less at same time (I’ll be sending first chapter of that to Larry soon.)
Will this ever be a book?  Don’t know.  First Guardian will get delivered.  Then, this being finished, I throw it at Larry.  And then it’s his SOLE DECISION. (Which means, don’t you monkeys hassle him.)  It’s his world and his character.  I’m just grateful he lets me play in it in Guardian and here for your amusement.*

For those who have no idea what this is, Dark Fate starts

First chapter is here.

Second Chapter is here

Third Chapter is here

Fourth Chapter is here

Chapter 5 is here.

Chapter 6 is here.

Chapter 7 is here.

Chapter 8 is here.

The beginning of chapter 9 is here.

And yes, I’m going to collate and proofread the preceding and put it in a tab at the top.

I jumped sideways.  I couldn’t see if she had jumped also.  The car continued on a direct course into a wall ahead.  I noted that the plaque above the door read “armador”.

“Merda,” Silvia said.

“What?”

“Shit,” she translated helpfully. The car hit with a bang and everything shook, and I didn’t know where she was but she must be nearby.

“I know what it means,” I shouted back somewhat agrieved.  “I want to know why you’re swearing.”

“The undertaker,” she shouted.

She did it just in time for me to see the front of the “Armador” shop explode outward.  Out of it, lumbering, came zombies.

“Ah, shit,” I said.  I hate zombies. They’re nasty, smelly, and are garanteed to destroy whatever suit you’re wearing when you fight them.

I got the gun Silvia had given me.  It looked like a 9mm, and it was honestly, a simple grease gun, and I didn’t expect much from it.  It felt light and like a tinker toy in my hands, but it was what I had and by damn I was going to use it.  I stitched a line of shots into the two nearest zombies.  There seemed to be a dozen or so of them, and one must have been midway being worked on, because his guts were trailing behind him.  I hit that one first across the neck, not explecting much.

Well, the damn thing exploded, all over the place, sending guts and embalmer fluid elsewhere.  I sighted the second zombie, let it fly, the same happened.  Meanwhile Silvia was shooting also, with the same effects.

“Why are they exploding?” I asked.

“Blessed bullets,” She said.  “Father Frodo blesses our ammunition just in case.”

She could not have said Father Frodo, and I was not going to touch that one with a ten foot pole.  The idea of Tolkien characters in holy orders made my head ache.

I tried to get all the zombies, but in the haze of their exploding fellows, it was almost impossible to see the ones lumbering up behind.  When the submachine gun clicked on empty, there were still four zombies left.

Silvia gave a scream, like the zombies personally offended her, I saw her charging towards the zombies, guitar in hand.  I wondered if she was crazy.

But I had no time to wonder, because a zombie jumped me.  It went from lumbering horror to jumping like a lion, and landed full weight on me.  This zombie had been a heavy, middle aged man.  Either that or he had been stuffed with lead, prior to burial.

He took hold of my neck, with cold fingers, in a vise-like grip, and brought his mouth down to bite me.  His mouth, when he opened it, was stuffed with cotton.  But the teeth were still sharp enough.  His eyes glowed red, and he stank.

It was all so fast, I felt my vision dim, and struggled for air.  Fortunately my body is way smarter than my brain, even when it gets full oxygen.  My hand, holding the submachine gun, rose of its own accord, and landed a blow sideways on the zombie’s head.

It snapped sideways, lolling on its shoulder, and it allowed me to get up.  But it was by no means dead, and as I stood, holding the submachine gun, ready to wack it again, it coiled for a leap.

And Silvia appeared behind it.  She did something I couldn’t see, and the loling head fell off and rolled, while the body fell.

“What?” I said.

“Guitar string.  Good heavens, man, don’t you know better than to let a revenant get a jump on you?”

“Uh… a what?”

“Revenant.”

“Is that what you call zombies?”

She looked at me as though I were mentally slow.  “No,” she said.  “We call zombies, zombies.  We call revenants to creatures that are also called from dead bodies, but who have the full range of movement of a live human being.”  She looked around.  I hadn’t realized how fast the whole battle had happened, except that we were in this narrow street between two and three story portuguese houses, the kind that have no front garden, but have the front wall flush with the street.

We’d fired machine guns, and shouted, and there was a car crash.  How come no one had heard.  I suspected something magical.  And then, above us, shutters opened with a bang.  A white-haired head peeked out, and I wished I had ammo for the machine gun.  But what came out was a creaky, high pitched yell.

“What did he say?”

Silvia giggled, “Go play elsewhere and take the woman with you, you bunch of libertines!”

“Bunch?”

“I don’t think he can see too well.”

Silvia yelled soemthing back, I wasn’t sure what.  There was a sort of growl back and the shutter closed with a bang.

“Let’s see if Miss Priss still runs,” she said.

“Miss what?”

“My car.”

Weirdly, it did.  I wondered if it too had been blessed.  I mean the front was a mess, the windshield was mostly blown out, but she backed it out of the shop, and started off down the street.

“That was interesting,” she said.  “I don’t think I’ve ever got attacked on the way to an outbreak yet.”

“That wasn’t the outbreak?” I asked.

“Oh, nowhere near.”

She seemed very cheerful about it.  I had a feeling things were about to become interesting.  This is when my phone buzzed, with an incoming text.

It was from Franks, and it read “Grrrrr.”