“You did this to them?!” Amber retorted.
Mentally Ghost swore. At this stage he’d prefer to leave in peace and come back later with a better plan. Talking was always dangerous. To often it gave the other person time to do something you really didn’t want them to. And experience told him Amber was about to do something he’d really rather she didn’t.
“But of course,” the self-styled Necromancer replied. The zombies continued to wander around him.
As Amber raised her shotgun, he took a step back, letting the zombies step between them, blocking her shot.
“Oh well, that’s done it,” Ghost muttered to himself, “time to think outside of the box.” The Necromancer’s moves were too polished, too practiced and that meant there was more coming that wasn’t going to go well for them. Ghost raised his shotgun, but aimed over the man’s head at the ceiling and fired twice. Several chunks of masonry fell down. Ghost couldn’t quite tell what they hit, but he heard some particularly unhealthy sounds. Amber copied him, bringing down even more debris. They ran back to the shop entrance and took cover, reloading as quickly as they could.
“We should go up there and finish him off!” she insisted.
There was a sound from the upper gallery of a horn blowing. Only it had been distorted. It was odd to think of a sound as being evil, but this came close. It resonated throughout the mall.
“Oh dear,” Ghost said simply.
As they watched, all of the zombies reacted to the sound. The faraway look vanished from their eyes and was replaced by an animalistic look of pure rage. Ghost reached into one of his pockets and took out two grenades. They were hard to come by these days. Replacing them would mean visiting one of the Conclaves and getting out again unnoticed. On the other hand they weren’t going to be much use to him if he was dead.
“Close your eyes and put you hands over your ears,” he warned her. When she had he threw one grenade to the left and one to the right. He closed his eyes and covered his ears. Even with those precautions through his closed eyes lids he saw the flash of light and the stunning bang rocked him for a moment. He grabbed Amber who was more dazed, her enhanced senses having made her more vulnerable to the effects, and helped her to her feet. He then ran back into the shop. The grenades had the effect he’d hoped for. The zombies’ senses were dulled enough that the grenades wouldn’t knock them out, but they caused them considerable confusion and confused rage tended to be directed to whatever was closest. Fortunately that was no longer them. He made one last look in Cindy’s direction and saw her rolling her eyes, but otherwise seeming perfectly calm in the midst of utter chaos as waves of zombies crashed into each other and their surroundings.
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