March till Death (Hellsong Book 3) by Shaun O'McCoy

Author:Shaun O'McCoy [O'McCoy, Shaun]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sisyphean Publishing
Published: 2014-05-28T04:00:00+00:00

The gate that separated them from the undead was a shaky, brittle thing. The shackles that held it shut might have been strong, but each of the two rusty doors looked as if they might easily break off of their hinges.

Galen took them to those doors.

The corpses on the other side paid him no heed. He unlocked the shackles and tossed them aside.

Arturus remembered what Kelly had said to him once.

Do you like me better chained?

Galen led them into the sea of undead. He could not go quickly because there was barely any room to move. The dead were packed close together, their vestigial breaths filling the air with their sorrow. Arturus could see the dead’s memories drifting out of their heads as they forgot them. They could try to hold on to the memories, but eventually they would all fade. One was trying to keep his memories in. Its hands were on his head, but the memories slipped right through his fingers.

“I’m sorry,” Arturus told him.

The corpse pointed to Arturus’ head, and Arturus saw that he was losing memories too. They were floating away. He saw the one where he’d learned of his mother.

Oh. I liked that memory.

And then another, from when he’d made a mistake and shot a man.

I won’t miss that.

But though it would free him from guilt, forgetting that moment would be a horrible thing. Then he might kill someone else again in the future because he couldn’t remember the lesson that he’d learned with that man. Then his experience would have been for naught. He would have shot someone and had it mean nothing.

No, I can’t forget you.

But the memory floated away.

Every step was a battle. The undead were pressing against him from all sides. Their fingernails, long and yellow and rotten, scraped against his skin. Their lifeless visages passed by him, only inches away, each one more rotten than the last. Pale paper thin skin stretched taut across their faces. Rotted through cheeks revealed the hollows of mouths. Chest wounds showed the grey innards of kidneys and intestines and lungs.

Kelly’s hand seemed to be slipping away. He grabbed it tighter. Then it slipped again. He grabbed her around the wrist. She looked back at him. The left side of her face was all rotten, the right, pale beyond possibility—but her eyes were pools of blue fire.

I will not let go. I will love you.

“Even if we die,” she said, “don’t let go. Let us wander these fields of asphodels for all eternity, hand in hand.”

I will not let go. Not even in death.

“I’m following you,” said the wight.

No you’re not.

“Yes I am.”

Ha! I fooled you. If you were a wight, you wouldn’t be able to read my thoughts.

“You are very wise.”

Wiser than you.

“Don’t worry. I will continue to follow you. Sooner or later I will convince you that you are not real. When you are not real, then I will be as real as you, and then I can attack you like I promised.”

I will never be a dream.

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