Barrow of the Draugr Read online

  Barrow of the Draugr

  A Short Story

  Toby J Nichols

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Afterword

  About the Author

  Other books by TJ Nichols

  Chapter One

  It was the longest klick Zac had ever run. Shin high grass whipped against his legs. If he stumbled on the uneven ground and broke his ankle, he was dead. He didn’t bother to look behind. They’d be following, whatever they were. Not three feet away Fletcher kept pace, breathing hard, also weighed down by gold and guns.

  An easy job, they’d been told.

  It was too well paid for such an easy job—and robbing an ancient barrow built to honour a fallen Viking warrior should’ve been easy for Zac’s team of six.

  He should’ve known there’d be a catch.

  Fletcher tripped but recovered. Zac couldn’t hear anything over his own rough breathing. But they weren’t alone on this barren island, in this forgotten part of the ocean. Those undead things followed. Not at a shamble, and not a run, just a real leisurely pace like it didn’t matter.

  That was worse.

  Like the undead knew there was no escape.

  The undead wouldn’t reach them, there was a RHIB waiting offshore, all they needed to do was send up the flare when they reached the beach. Hell, he’d swim the two klicks, twenty kilos of golden relics and all if he had to. Zac reckoned he could just about run on water with the amount of adrenaline pumping through his body.

  Don’t look. Don’t look.

  He had to look.

  Moonlight gleamed off ancient armour and weapons as the dead marched toward him and Fletcher. No one had said the dead Viking would rise to defend his grave, or that he’d have buddies.

  The grass gave way to coarse sand or fine pebbles, depending on your definition. He pulled the flare gun out of his vest and fired. The light arced up, bright and yellow like a sun. Three hours to dawn…the sun wouldn’t be in time to save them.

  But the boat might.

  He watched as the flare fell toward the dark sea. Fletcher dropped to his belly, getting ready to shoot. Like it mattered. Zac closed his eyes and drew a breath, then another. A few seconds of peace wouldn’t make a difference. He opened his eyes and pulled his M16 free.

  It was a pretty night to die. Almost a full moon and the stars were clear with no city lights to spoil them. It was a pity about the bitter wind that streaked across the island continuously.

  He’d been in worse places with the threat of death too close. But all the enemies he’d faced previously had been alive. They’d been human. Those blue skinned things…they might have been human once….

  He turned to watch the enemy cross the field in that nice easy pace like they had all the time in the world. Maybe they did. Maybe the boat wasn’t coming. He couldn’t hear the hopeful throb of the engine, only the gentle crash of the waves on the shore. They had to assume they were on their own.

  “Plan?” Fletcher glanced at him.

  “Can’t walk without knees.” Even as Zac said it, he knew they’d keep coming, crawling if they had to.

  It had taken a grenade to stop one of them. And Zac thought the only reason that had worked was because the undead had been in too many pieces to keep going. Zac regretted packing light so he could load up on treasure. The biggest threat on this job was supposed to be other treasure hunters and possibly a random Scandinavian Navy patrol. The drone he’d sent into the barrow had shown the tomb to be empty and free of traps.

  But the moment they’d started picking up items and bagging them…

  The dead didn’t make a sound when they woke. There’d been no groaning and begging for brains, just the slick scrape of metal. Two of his team had been dead before the rest of them had realized they were under attack.

  Now he knew why no one patrolled the area and what had happened to the other treasure hunters. They’d been literally ripped apart.

  “Yeah.” Fletcher sounded as convinced as he was. They were fucked. “We could toss the treasure at them, maybe that will make them go away.”

  “And when the boat shows up, they’ll see our empty hands and leave.” The man who’d paid for their services wouldn’t accept failure—the job had come through mutual connections and had the usual conditions. Nothing had appeared wrong until the boat had dropped them on the island and then taken off instead of waiting. “And if we’re rescued, no one will be bailing us out.” The man who’d hired them would never admit to the theft of artefacts. The money they’d been paid would be untraceable. Putting out a hail for help and being arrested seemed like a good option.

  The five zombies marched over the grass as though they were out for a picnic. Three had swords and were similarly dressed. The other two seemed to have more modern clothing. Zac swore one of them was wearing World War Two flying gear, but that couldn’t be right.

  “I’m going heads, starting from the left.” Maybe if the zombies had no head, they’d die. It worked in movies. With limited ammunition, every shot had to count.

  Fletcher fired twice in quick bursts of three. The bullets hissed through the grass like they’d make a difference.

  Zac sighted the flyboy and pulled the trigger. The dark reddish-blue corpse stumbled then regained composure to keep walking, no faster, no slower, but with a hole in his head that let the starlight shine through. “Fletch?”

  “That’s a no for the knees.”

  Fifty meters and closing. Bullets were useless. He tossed his rifle on the ground. If the zombies were close enough that he had to use it as a club he was dead. He had one grenade left. He’d brought them to destroy the barrow as ordered. An interesting request, but who was he to question the man with the money? He knew why now. He shouldn’t have waited, but he hadn’t wanted to blow up his own men.

  They’d been killed minutes later anyway.

  He held the comfortable weight in his hand—not yet—and then put it back in his pocket. That left his knife; and while it was a good one, it was the wrong weapon when the zombies all carried swords.

  “Zac…”

  He glanced at the undead squad. The guy in the middle had grown and was now a head taller than the others and moving slower. They all kept pace with him, but they hadn’t stopped. Forty meters and they were fanning out.

  Even if Fletcher and he ran, there was nowhere to run to. Where was the damn boat?

  “We need to take out the big guy.” Then maybe all the zombies would die, again.

  “You going to cut his head off with that toothpick?” Fletcher nodded at the knife.

  “When I get close enough.” Bullets didn’t work, but he had two more flares and if nothing else he would slow them down so Fletcher could escape. He shrugged off the backpack, glad to be rid of the weight of the gold. There’d been more priceless artefacts in one tomb than he’d seen on any job, and they were all destined to end up in a private collection of some prick who didn’t have the balls to get what he wanted himself.

  Fletcher gave up wasting bullets and sat up. “What are you doing?”

  “You’re going to take what they paid us to steal and go.”

  “There’s no boat.”

  “It’ll be coming.” Bastards were probably sitting out there watching, waiting to pick over their corpses when the blue skinned undead had crawled back to the barrow.

  “I’m not leaving.”

  “It’s an order.” If they both stayed, they’d die on the beach. He’d give Fletcher the chance he needed. “Make sure the bastards pay out my share.” His sister’s kids wouldn’t end up like him, military fodder and then for sale to the highest bidder. “It’s been fun, but these jobs pay well for a reason.”

  Fletcher stripped of
f his gear. Bullet-proof vests were useless out here and a dead weight in the ocean. It would be better to be taking the gold.

  Thirty meters. Hurry up.

  “Come with me.”

  “I’ll follow.” Neither of them believed that lie. Fletcher stared up at him. “Go.”

  Fletcher put on both bags, then walked toward the ocean.

  Zac pulled a lighter out of his pocket and lit the grass. It took a few tries to get a fire going, and the breeze grew stronger as though trying to blow the flames out. The waves went from slapping the beach to pounding the sand. Even nature fought against them. He glanced over his shoulder, Fletcher was thigh deep, a black shadow in moonlit ink.

  Zac faced the dead. Twenty-five meters. The one on the left outer edge broke away, his stride lengthened as he grew bigger, then ran. Fuck, the dead could hustle when they wanted. Zac ran towards him, and fired a flare. But the fucker didn’t even slow, even as his clothes burned. On the sand the undead warrior finally stumbled and fell. Zac drew his knife to behead the monster, but when it rolled over it was no longer a man.

  It had become a skinless seal.

  He stepped back, bile rising in the back of his throat. The seal-thing humped its way into the water.

  No.

  He fired the last flare at it. Flesh erupted from the seal’s side. It glanced at him, bared yellow teeth and barked before it flopped into the ocean. Zac had to stop it from reaching Fletcher even though he didn’t want to touch it. He ran into the ocean and leaped on top of the seal. But there was no fur to grab, and his fingers slid off slick muscle and blood and gore. He plunged the knife into the beast. The seal rolled, and Zac expected to be crushed beneath its weight or drowned. He kicked and stabbed again. Heat spread over his hand. The seal thrashed and tossed him off. Its tail slammed into him and he drew water instead of air into his lungs. He pushed off the seabed and broke the surface, barely waist deep in water.

  “Fletcher!” He tried to see the man amongst the waves in the dark. “Zombie seal.”

  He laughed, the desperate kind that only bubbled out when everything was fucked. He couldn’t see Fletcher, but he saw the seal bob to the surface, not dead and Zac had lost his knife in the fight.

  The seal vanished.

  A few seconds later Fletcher screamed—an awful cry that made Zac want to swim toward him to help. But there was nothing he could do, except join him in death. Given a choice, Zac didn’t want to drown. He’d rather face his attackers.

  Zac turned back to the burning beach. His ankle gave way. Broken or sprained, it didn’t matter, the joint wouldn’t have the chance to heal. He limped his way toward the weapons Fletcher had dropped on the ground.

  The undead warriors watched on the other side of the flames. What were they waiting for? He was sure they could’ve walked through the fire. They could’ve each grabbed a limb and ripped him apart already.

  But they stood guard, watching.

  The wind tugged at his hair and chilled his wet pants. If he pissed himself, no one would ever know, but he didn’t want that to be the last thing he did. He swallowed and glanced at the guns and knife on the beach.

  The dead didn’t move, but knowledge pricked at the base of his skull. He knew that as soon as he picked up a weapon they would attack, and it would be over. He fought, or he ran.

  The boat wasn’t coming.

  The gold the man had paid for now lay on the ocean floor along with Fletcher. Killed by a seal with no skin—at least Fletcher hadn’t lived long enough to have nightmares. Zac shuddered and blamed the icy knives of wind. The flames in front of him didn’t offer heat or safety.

  He shouldn’t have bothered with them, but he liked the illusion. The undead on their side and him on the other.

  The seal bellowed behind him, and he flinched. He risked a glance over his shoulder, but it wasn’t humping up the beach toward him. It waited in the shallows, two black lumps by its side. The bags of gold.

  It had all been for nothing.

  The undead still waited. He studied his weapons. All useless. He had no idea what he needed to kill them. He squatted and risked another glance. The big guy in the centre with the beard and braids and skin the colour of a fresh bruise put his hand on his sword.

  The pilot didn’t move.

  The others, in clothing he couldn’t place, also waited. Could he wait and give the boat longer to come? If there were more of those undead things in the water, more seals, the boat was long gone. Sunk as soon as it had dropped them off.

  Knife, firearms, grenade. The rifles would be useless. The pistol, too. The undead cared about bullet holes about as much as he cared about mosquito bites.

  Grenade and knife it was. Decision made, he still hesitated before reaching out his hand, knowing as soon as he picked up his weapons it would break this truce.

  He was the last man alive.

  He owed it to the others to take out at least another one. He might be able to kill two before they destroyed him. If he was lucky it would be quick. His fingers brushed the grenade, but there was no honour in that, and his enemy had patiently waited for him.

  His fingers closed around the knife.

  The scrape of metal filled his ears as the Viking in the centre drew his sword, then flung it on the ground near the flames. Zac could reach it if he stuck his hand in the fire, but he was sure the sword hadn’t been meant for him. When he looked up the Viking had drawn a smaller blade. The fight would at least be equal.

  Zac smiled and stood. “These guys keeping score?”

  “To the death,” the pilot said. The first words any of the undead had uttered. The words were slow, as though they’d taken a lot of thought and effort to create.

  “Yeah, I figured that.”

  The Viking exhaled, and the flames between them were extinguished.

  Fuck.

  The Viking smiled and stepped forward. Every cell in Zac’s body told him to run, that death was imminent, and he should be doing everything he could to survive. He couldn’t hear the crash of waves over his pulse.

  He’d seen plenty of dead, fresh and otherwise, but the dead had never gotten up to fight him. This guy should’ve rotted away long ago, but his skin looked like he’d recently died and the fur around his shoulders seemed ready to wake up and demand to be petted.

  Zac blinked. He had to focus on the fight, not the weird.

  Perhaps he was already dead and what was left of his brain was trying to make sense of it. But his ankle hurt, the ache was in his shin every time he moved. So, he wouldn’t move. He’d fight on the spot. He was dead anyway, so why prolong the torture?

  The Viking took another step forward. It took everything Zac had not to break and run—or hobble. If he dropped the knife, would the Viking stop?

  Could they stare at each other until Zac died of exhaustion?

  This was an enemy that could easily out wait him. The undead didn’t worry about cold or hunger or thirst. Better to make it fast. Zac lunged forward, slashing the blade up, the Viking blocked. His arm was a solid lump of ice.

  Zac stepped to the side and almost fell as his ankle gave way. The Viking knocked him off his feet and sent him sprawling. The stars gave a lazy spin as he struggled to draw breath. He had to get up.

  He made it to his feet in time to defend. The attack was fast and deadly, the Viking more familiar with the weapon than Zac. A hot wound opened along his arm. He stabbed the Viking in the leg, but no blood spilled from the wound. Instead the Viking laughed. A chuckle like this was the best fun he’d had in years…decades…centuries.

  Zac fought on, and the Viking created new wounds, though none were fatal.

  The cold seeped through his clothes and made his muscles numb. Adrenaline had come and gone, and now he was slow. The other undead watched, not interfering in their leader’s fight.

  Would they want their turn when the Viking was done playing with him?

  He tripped again, gritting his teeth as his ankle crunched in a way that ricochet
ed pain through his entire body. The Viking barrelled into him, and they tumbled to the sand. Zac stabbed as best he could, trying to hack off the Vikings head, his grip on the blade loosened, slick with his own blood.

  The Viking pinned his hand. His eyes were blue, and he smiled as he brought his knife to Zac’s throat.

  “Do it you big, dead bastard.”

  The Viking nodded.

  The cut was hot, instead of painful. He choked and couldn’t breathe. Then he panicked, which only made it worse. His mouth was full of blood. He’d been four the first time he’d been slapped in the face and had tasted blood.

  Lost a tooth in a fight at sixteen.

  Frag in his leg. Bullet through the arm.

  A lifetime of violence. He coughed, and his head lolled to the side. The little pebbles that made up the beach weren’t round. The closest ones came into focus. They weren’t stone at all, but little bits of white bone. He blinked. Blinked again and the beach and stars were gone.

  Sunlight glanced off gold.

  Zac squinted at the bright light. The roof of the barrow had fallen in. No, he remembered rolling the grenade in to collapse the tomb. His brain stuttered as it put together an impossible story of zombies.

  Something had happened, and he wasn’t sure what, only that he was here, and he wasn’t supposed to be. He sat up. His body moving slowly as though in a stupor.

  There were people moving around the barrow in the shadows, placing the objects Zac and his team had stolen back on the shelves and fixing the supports and the roof. He squinted, trying to bring them into focus.

  “Hey? What happened?” He struggled to make the words form on his tongue. Had he been drugged?

  They all stopped and turned.

  It wasn’t his team. It was the zombies.

  He lifted his hand, searching for a weapon and finding none, and saw his own bruise-coloured skin. He was going to be sick, but there was nothing for him to throw up. The urge was a memory, not a physical need.

  The big Viking knelt in front of him and clasped Zac’s hand. “You fought well. You’re draugr now, brother.”