Chapter 36: Chapter 36: Dirty work

The five men spread out in the forest. All carrying guns, all ready to use them if it came to it. The boss wanted the man alive if possible. But dead if they couldn’t make that happen. None of the men questioned why the boss wanted the man, it wasn’t their place to ask.

After they failed to find their target within the city, one of the men sent a drone up to see if it could spot anything from the air. It hadn’t taken long to locate their quarry after they put a drone into the air. The lone van stood out as it traveled along the backroads.

A group of men followed the drone in an SUV. They lost their quarry for a time but after a bit of drone scouting, they were able to locate the cabin where the van was parked. Its distinctive solar cells gave it away.

One of the men held his hand up and three of the five people paused. The man hissed angrily at the other two, getting their attention. Once he had it, he pointed to a body lying in the shallow ditch next to the driveway.

“Newbie, go check it out.”

“What, why do I gotta do it,” the younger man replied in a hushed whisper.

“Because if you don’t, I’m gonna shove my size twelve up your ass. Now shut up and get moving.”

The newbie cursed quietly as he held his gun pointed toward the body. It looked like someone had tossed the poor bastard into the ditch. The body sat face down in the shallow pool of stagnant water, with the arms and legs splayed out. Peaking at the cabin to make sure nobody had noticed him, he poked the body with his foot. When that elicited no response, he turned the man over, wincing at how pale and cold the man was. He quickly checked for a pulse before heading back toward the others with a shake of his head.

“Guy has been dead for some time, the body is cold. You think the necromancer did this?” The guy looked back at the corpse and shivered. None of the five men had the luxury of being physically enhanced. The chapter commander couldn’t spare one to go after three people who were also unenhanced.

“Who the fuck knows, now pipe down. This means we only have two people inside which makes our job easier. The boss wants the necrophiliac alive if possible.”

“Don’t you mean necromancer?”

“I know what I said. Do you think someone chooses to play with corpses and doesn’t go around fucking them? Now, shut up.”

***

While Toby was out hunting for a deer, he heard the drone. At first, he wasn’t sure what it was but he soon spotted it through a break in the trees. It was flying in a back-and-forth search pattern. Toby knew it was only a matter of time until it spotted the cabin and the van they hadn’t concealed from the air. Toby cursed his carelessness as he rushed back to the cabin as quickly as he could. He knew he wouldn’t make it when he heard the truck pull up along the main road.

Out of time and with no place to hide, Toby did the only thing he could think of. He played dead. Throwing himself into the ditch like a discarded piece of trash kinda hurt, but one thing good about his new condition was he didn’t have micro twitches to give away that he wasn’t exactly dead.

If he didn’t think about it, he could remain perfectly still since his heart didn’t beat and he didn’t need to breathe.

That proved valuable when one of the men rolled him over to check his vitals. It had been extremely uncomfortable laying face down in the water with his eyes open, but he endured. He had hoped to go unnoticed along the road and then hit the group from the rear, but this worked even better since he could now see all five men as they approached the house. They had written him off as just another corpse.

Toby waited patiently while the two had an inane argument. Eventually, they began to approach the house again. Two of the men broke off to approach the door while the others started to fan out. Toby cursed inwardly. He would have to rely on Norman and Anna to hold them off for a bit while he dealt with the other three.

Rising quietly from his resting place, Toby moved in behind the three at the woodline. The man who checked him hadn’t been very thorough. Toby still had his gun tucked inside his pants. It wasn’t ideal but who wanted to grub around a dead man’s junk to see if he was packing? Well, according to the leader of these nitwits, Norman did. Toby was going to get a good chuckle out of telling him what Sin’s men thought of the necromancer. After he dealt with these men of course.

Toby aimed and fired three shots in rapid succession. The first two men went down but the third threw himself to the ground and the bullet missed.

The two who had been approaching the house spun toward the sounds of gunfire, which ended badly for them as a burst of new gunfire erupted from within the cabin.

Something struck Toby in the side almost knocking him over, but he ignored it as he fired three more shots at the last man in the woods before turning his attention towards the two that had approached the cabin.

He could only shake his head. Anna had unloaded the entire magazine through the door. He would need to talk to her about firing blindly. The older man – whom he dubbed the leader – was unmoving on the ground. The other man was the one that had checked him for a pulse. He was clutching his stomach and groaning in pain. His gun lay a few feet away.

“Toby!” Anna shouted worriedly.

“I’m fine, stay inside while I make sure it's clear.”

Toby tried to keep the wounded man near the door insight while he checked the other three bodies. All three were dead, he made sure they weren’t playing by slicing their carotid artery. Then he moved toward the wounded man, kicking the gun away.

Normally Toby would use this as an opportunity to get dirt on Sin’s operation but looking at the terrified and pitiful face of the young man, Toby could only shake his head. And from the conversation the two had before, he knew this boy wouldn’t know anything anyway. It was a waste of a bullet but Toby was wary of getting too close as he put the man out of his misery.

“Alright, it’s clear.” Toby took the moment to inspect himself. He knew something had hit him during the fight, but not what.

He could only sigh when he looked down and saw a bullet had struck him just above his bottom rib. He didn’t feel an exit wound on his back, which was both good and bad. Good because he wouldn’t have to explain to Anna why he had a huge hole in his back that wasn’t bleeding. And bad because it meant the bullet was still inside him. He quickly covered the entry wound with some clean cloth.

Norman was the first to poke his head out the door. He glanced at the bodies with a greedy glint in his eyes but a frown on his face.

Anna was quick to push past the man and run outside to make sure Toby was ok. She skillfully avoided the corpses in front of the door before rushing Toby for a hug.

Toby returned the hug, thankful he could still feel touch. He was also thankful he was not able to feel true pain, something he had quickly learned from Norman slapping him and that damn jorik putting an ice spike through his hand. A hand he still had wrapped in a bandage. If he wasn’t careful, he was going to end up like Goldie Hawn’s character in Death Becomes Her. He doubted he would be able to hide a gaping hole in his torso from his sister. Hopefully, Norman would have something for this particular issue.

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***

“Did you have to shoot them all in the head,” Norman asked with a sigh.

“You know a better way to drop a man, let me know. Why's it matter anyway?”

“I don’t know if it does. That’s the problem.” While Norman had examined the bodies, Toby had run down to ensure there was nobody left by the truck. That could have been disastrous. When Toby returned, he was carrying one of those little personal drones and a remote.

Toby hadn’t said how they had found them, but it made sense now that Norman saw the drone.

“I won’t be able to check their memories. Not that I would get much, considering they were probably in the woods for over five minutes… How do you feel about having your armor made from a dead man?”

Toby just shrugged. “Your magic converts it into something else, right? As far as I’m concerned, it's just bone at that point. How long will it take?”

Norman glanced at the five bodies that had been dragged into the clearing. Thankfully Anna was inside the cabin packing everything up so they could leave.

“Twenty minutes.”

Toby nodded. “I’ll go help Anna. But we gotta hurry, if Sin’s men found us here, they may have reported the location and more could be on their way.”

Without replying to Toby, Norman got to work. By the time he was finished, he was coated in blood. He rinsed off as well as he could in the stagnant water that sat in the ditch near the road, but it wasn’t nearly enough to get him clean.

He really wished he had his gear with him, or at least an apron. He silently handed one of the spell anchors for Bone Armor to Toby. “Just crush it and it will cover your torso and arms with armor. It’ll feel a bit weird at first but you get used to it.”

Toby looked at the human tooth. “Will it block a bullet?”

Norman shrugged. “Not something I was willing to test. Although it kept a rycor from crushing my arm in its powerful jaws.”

Toby blinked at that statement.

“Don’t ask.”

“…ok.” He leaned in and whispered to Norman. “Can you do something to patch me up, I’m getting more holes than swiss cheese?”

This caused Norman to lean back and hold his nose, “Yeah, no kidding, you also smell awful. I was going to wait to test this but it seems like you need to see if it works now.” He handed Toby one of the bottles of healing potion he brewed in the cabin. “Take only a tiny sip. I don’t know how it will react to your… unique situation.”

“Uh-huh, you mean you don’t know if this will harm me or help me because…”

“Yeah.” Both of them had played video games. The standard trope was healing items always harmed the undead. Doubly so if they were holy in nature. Norman was betting that because he was a necromancer, he had been the one to make it, and that they weren’t technically healing potions but anti-necrosis potions, that they might just work.

Toby took a small sip from the bottle and waited. The change was almost immediate, at least to Norman’s eyes. Toby’s ash-grey pallor had lessened and a bit of color had returned to his face. He still looked like a shut-in vampire wannabe but at least he didn’t look sickly anymore.

“Feel anything off?”

Toby shook his head, but he paused and unwrapped his hand. The open wound he had was starting to close. Toby took another sip of the drink. This time the wound was covered over completely by new skin. Norman also heard a tink and looked down to see a partially smushed bullet rolling around by Toby’s foot.

He looked at Toby and raised an eyebrow. The man just shrugged.

“What did you do with the other four bodies?”

“Turned them into Bone Walls.”

“Is that what you used to stop Sin?”

“You saw that? Yeah. They work well to block areas off and I can recover them similar to the armor. But we gotta be careful, the smell attracts animals. Now that I think about it, you might start to attract animals too.”

“It's that bad?” Toby winced.

“It’s not pleasant, that’s for sure.”

The two wrapped up their discussion as Anna hurried out of the cabin with the last of their supplies. The three hopped into the van and drove off, leaving the cabin behind as a mystery for anyone that happened upon it.

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