Chapter 20

In Turrialba, Costa Rica…

They appeared not long after the last bit of grayish daylight left the town, and all that remained was the twilight of the street lamps in what would otherwise be a deep and abiding darkness of the night. The foul smelling mist came first, and with it a cold, inexplicable fear as though Death himself were coming for a visit. It would have been bad enough with just dozens, but there appeared to be hundreds of them. One might have been forgiven for thinking that every corpse which had ever been buried near the mountain had been disturbed and raised as the walking dead.

The Numenorians and the Elves who joined them were armed and patrolling the streets of the small city both on foot and in what vehicles they were able to gain access. Some of these carried full flame throwers to be used sparingly, where others carried hairspray cans and cigarette lighters in addition to their assault rifles, pistols, and short swords. The latter makeshift equipment wasn't ideal, but it would be better than not having any flame at all. There were over a hundred on rooftops to act as spotters, lookouts, and snipers should the need arise. All of these were armed with heavy compound bows and arrows whose heads had been rendered flammable by wrapping oil soaked cloth around them. Open flames had been positioned near every one so they could quickly dispatch their unnatural targets.

The mist filtered down from where the caldera of the volcano sat, and most of the abominations came down the road leading from the same into the town. Some of them appeared to be nearly all skeleton, their eye sockets glowing with an unnatural, sickly green light. These bore knives, rude clubs, and whatever other implements their bony hands and digits could wield. Others still had flesh on them, though grotesquely distorted, and clearly in various stages of decomposition. Some of these looked incredibly fresh as though they could still be living except for their ghastly pallor, vacant eyes, and blank expressions, others had clearly been dead and unpreserved for weeks. These latter, fleshly wights and undead held pistols and rifles.

Estel watched with night vision equipped binoculars from the roof of a building, crouching next to a sniper with horrified fascination.

"It's been like this every night?" He asked his distaff cousin, a blond German woman with her hair tied back in a functional braid who appeared to be in her late twenties or early thirties. She was attractive to be sure, she even possibly could have been a model or television personality though he had never seen nor met her before that day. In his estimation however, she carried herself like, and had the look in her eye of a professional soldier or even police officer. Her name to the rest of the world was "Sofie," but among their own people her parents had christened her, "Eowyn."

"Both the past two nights since we arrived, and every night before this for the last three weeks according to the priest." She told him, her bow held ready in her left hand, an arrow not yet nocked in her right. "Mostly they shamble through the town shooting or stabbing anything or anyone which moves, except for their own of course. In the morning, people caught outside are missing. There are never any corpses that remain."

"Have we lost anyone?" Estel asked.

"Three the first night, none the second once we figured out how to destroy them." Sofie replied.

"Did you know who they were?" Estel asked, feeling the weight of his kinsmen's deaths on his conscience.

She then turned and looked at him, "Not personally, no. We'd not met before the flight here. I didn't know their names. One was an accountant from Zurich. Another was an office manager from Warsaw. I don't remember where the third was from. Why?"

"I will need to find out and contact their families." Estel answered. "Those who aren't already here. If they had children, they will need to be brought to Cerin Amroth and cared for when this is all done."

"If we all survive it." She answered, turning her eyes back to the scene down on the streets. "Not all of us were fortunate enough to receive combat training in our lives."

"You don't look uneasy with it." Estel observed.

"I volunteered for the Bundeswehr in two thousand and two after they decided to let women into combat roles. I spent two years in Afghanistan before coming back to manage my family's horse ranch near Hanover." She answered before dipping the arrow's cloth wrapped head into the flame, setting it alight. "I grew ill from watching friends die in that hellhole."

She nocked the arrow, drew, and with careful, practiced precision let it fly. They both watched at the light from the flame silently streaked through the darkness and the mist and embedded itself in its undead target, setting it ablaze. The monster burned where it stood, laughably trying to pull the arrow out of itself as the fire consumed what clothing it still wore. Around them, more arrows streaked silently through the air from the rooftops, their presence only made visible for the flames they carried to their goals.

Estel went silent as he joined her with his own bow, striking his own targets with precision, the flaming arrows doing their jobs. Thoughts entered his mind of who the corpses might have been in life. Were they sons? Had they been daughters? Someone's plumber? Someone's lover? This went on for several moments before he shoved all such thoughts out of his mind. Whatever they had been before, they were no longer.

It wasn't the first time he had encountered such horrors. Once in Poland in nineteen forty three he and his unit were scouting out the camp at Auschwitz, trying to figure out how to free those innocents trapped inside the death machine. The smells of the cremation fires were awful, but they were preferable to what happened with those corpses the Nazis did not burn. The undead had only been stories before he and his unit encountered them at night, naked, skeletal, with sickly green glowing eyes. Three of the men were lost to them, the fourth was remanded to an asylum once they returned to their main force. Only he escaped with both his life and his sanity, though he was not always so lucky with his dreams since that night. He never learned what black sorcery had given them their "unlife."

Around them, arrows flew like silent tracer fire in the night as the undead began to multiply. The Numenoreans lit them up like candles wherever they could. Soon after the arrows began to fly, jets of fire could be seen up and down the streets as the undead were sprayed with it. Shots rang out from poorly aimed weapons, and these flashes too contributed to the atmosphere of the rapidly heating battle.

"Can I ask you a question, your majesty?" Sofie asked him in-between shots.

"Please, don't call me that. Call me Estel." Estel told her, still uncomfortable with the title, especially in the presence of one he'd gladly consider a comrade-in-arms.

"Nein." she flatly refused before shooting another creature in the chest.

"Why ever not?" Estel asked, confused.

"Because it's your duty and your responsibility." she answered somewhat curtly. "I joined the military because I believed it my duty to Germany. I answered your call because it was my duty to fulfill my oath to the king of Gondor, in exile or not. To cheapen your duty is to cheapen my own, and I answered the summons for a purpose. It is your duty to lead Gondor whether in the white city or just among our relatives. Just because we no longer have a capital doesn't make you any less who you are than the Windsors in England, your majesty." She let fly another flaming projectile striking a skeleton's ghastly glowing skull and shattering it. "My father would be horrified to hear you ask me that."

Around them, the sounds and flashes of gunfire and the sprays from flamethrowers echoed through the city.

"Who is your father?" he asked as he too drew and fired on yet another monstrosity.

"In our family he is known as Amdir son of Artamir." She responded. "He is patrolling the west side of the city tonight."

Amdir was an old family name, and Estel didn't know its present owner personally, but he recognized the name of Artamir well. "I knew your grandfather. He answered my father's call during the Nazi regime, and fought alongside him. He was a good man, and very disciplined."

"He died alongside him too." Sofie replied, a soft accusation in her voice. "I never knew him, but only heard stories." She then added, "My father always said it might not have happened if your father had understood his duty and responsibility too. A lot of people might not have died."

She fired off another arrow then turned her head to look at him in the eye, "We did not want to leave our home, but we were both glad to receive the summons from the Lady Arwen. We gladly left everything behind to serve our king knowing we would have the full might of our people alongside us."

"My father was trying to spare people their lives." He retorted.

"And how did that work out, hmm?" she returned just as quickly, and she could see it bit harder than intended. She softened her tone a bit as she added, "It is good that you care about people. Too few rulers do not. But fate demands that we be who we are, regardless of what it costs us in nightmares, guilt, or personal pain, your majesty. I am both German and Dunedain whether I want to be or not. It is my duty to serve both allegiances. You were born a king of Gondor whether you want to be or not, and whether or not the world thinks such a place is a fantasy because of some English professor. Fate knows better, and demands better from you."

They were both silent after that, getting back to their task at hand.

After several more minutes, Estel asked, "What was the question you wanted to ask me?"

She paused for a moment, still keeping her sharp eyes trained on the street below, and then asked, "What will you do when this is all over?"

"What do you mean?" he answered with his own question.

"There were always stories of you as well going around our family. I know you've spent most of your life trying to find the ring and destroy it. I figured that the summons had something to do with this. What else could be so important? But once it's destroyed, what then? Will you disappear again into the shadows like the mercenary I've heard about, or will you do something more?" She asked him.

It was a pointed and penetrating question. In truth, he hadn't thought that far ahead. The most he had considered about it was losing and accepting the loss of his edhelvain once this was all done. The truth was he had no idea what to do with the rest of his two hundred plus year long lifespan. He told her as much, though he left his feelings about the Elf woman unmentioned. "I haven't given it as much thought as I should have. I suppose I always thought I'd finish my days living quietly at Cerin Amroth, maybe raise a family of my own at some point."

"Europe may not be the Gondor of our ancestors, but it still needs good leaders. There are threats to it from both the east and the west now more insidious than ever. It will need a strong and compassionate voice to guide it in the coming times." she answered him as though she had given it much more consideration than he considered possible. "I heard that voice coming from you earlier before the Mass. Our lands have been governed by waning stewards for a long time, but what it needs is its true king guiding it through the darkness."

"I… er…" this was a thing he had never in his life considered even a remote possibility.

"Just think on it, your majesty. Ancient magic rings and wraiths are not our world's only problems." Sofie told him before returning to their task.

In the church of San Buenaventura…

Jim and Sam both could hear the sounds of automatic and pistol gunfire even from where they were within the protection of the church's walls. The voices of those men and women out their bravely facing down the walking dead sounded off through the radios they had as they coordinated their attacks and strikes. This accompanied by the veil of cold fear which had settled over the city had both Englishmen's hearts racing. Every shot, every pop, every shout from without the walls and knowing what was the cause weighed heavily on both men even as it did those few others who remained there.

Nearby, Eltariel kept watch on the doors, while the Lady Arwen had joined Padre Jorge and Father Adalbert in the sanctuary of the church praying. Unknown to the Costa Rican priest, her prayers were also active in fueling the protective barrier of the Elven ring the Elf matriarch wore which now extended around the grounds and buildings of the church. No undead fiend would be able to reach the entryways of the church through its holy, light filled energies.

Still, in spite of those extraordinary protections, and knowing that nothing unholy or malevolent could pass through the church under such shielding as it now enjoyed, Jim paced the tile of the interior office where they waited until the dawn hour. He could not sit. He could not bring himself to sit. Sam occasionally stood up from the upholstered chair where he sat and went to the office window before he returned.

"I don't like this." Jim would say every so often as the minutes turned into hours.

"What's there to like, mate?" Sam would question in response, his tone an attempt at ironic humor. "We're in the middle of a Central American town besieged by nightmare zombies. Why wouldn't anyone like this?"

"I just wish…" Jim then broke off. "Well, I've said it all before haven't I?" He asked, knowing full well that he had.

"You have." Eltariel confirmed for him. "You wish there was something you could do. You hate just sitting here listening to all of it. I too wish I was out there helping. So does the Lady Arwen. So does Father Adalbert. I know them. None of us are without skill or experience in warfare. But that would only leave you and the ring exposed to our enemy, and that is an unnecessary risk. You want to do something to help, but by waiting here where the evil cannot reach us you are already doing it."

"Well," he couldn't argue with her logic. Not the first time, nor the second, nor this time or any in between either. "It doesn't feel like I'm doing anything." Jim responded, slightly more mollified.

"Hang on, when did Father Adalbert have experience in warfare? I thought he was a Jesuit all his life." Sam asked. It was the first time she had mentioned it.

"When he was a young man he fought in the French Revolution against the monarchy. It was part of what led him to join the Church." Eltariel explained. "He wanted redemption for those things he felt guilty of."

Sam's eyebrows raised not having expected such an answer. Jim tried to imagine what kinds of things, and then immediately stopped himself. He knew the history of France's republic as well as most people, and the atrocities which had been committed on both sides. It was hard to imagine the gentle priest as having partaken in such things.

"I suppose I would have too from what I've read of it." Jim said.

"If the Assassin's Creed game on it was anything to go by, I'd be wanting to get myself clean from it too. That was a brutal time." Sam then added. "All the beheadings and such."

"Brutal would have been an understatement." Eltariel agreed, her eyes drifting just a little as if at a clear memory.

The sounds of the battle across the city continued into the night as the defenders of the small city stood fast against the horrors which were unleashed upon them.

Elsewhere in the city of Turrialba…

Gondeg and Autharan had their own fair share of nightmare kills that evening. The two cousins worked well together as a team in the twilight of the street lamps. Neither carried the full flamethrower units, but instead made do with several spray canisters of cheap aerosol hairspray absconded with from a local store not far from the church, and disposable cigarette lighters to provide the all too necessary flame. Of course that meant they had to get up close more intimately than was comfortable for either of them to the horrors as the makeshift flame units did not have the range that the full military equipment did. Unlike some of their more white collar kinsmen however, they both possessed much experience with fighting in close quarters having also been an active part of their Grandmother's search for the ring for decades.

Bullets were useless against the fiends unless you wasted a clip destroying the head, and this would only blind and deafen them sending them shooting or stabbing in all directions and increasing their threat. The better plan, if they had to disable them before torching them, was to use their blades to lop off the hands. This deprived them of their physical weapons, literally "disarming" the monsters.

It did nothing however for their first and most effective weapon, the fear and revulsion the undead engendered upon sight. It was a powerful, primal response to flee from them rather than attack. Every horror movie either man had ever watched, every nightmare they had ever dreamed seemed to come to life in these encounters. Both men had seen prior combat. Both men had seen the horrors of war firsthand in several battles throughout the decades. Both had thought themselves hardened to anything.

Both were wrong on that count. The fear never got easier, and neither did the revulsion and deep sense of grief when they encountered those whom they knew had been innocents from the town returned to wreak unholy havoc.

They had just dispatched one such, a Costa Rican girl of no more than twelve before she had died and been taken by the ghouls' deathly masters. She had not been dead for long either. Autharan had tears of both rage and grief in his eyes as he disarmed the creature before beheading with his own blades, allowing Gondeg the chance to draw close enough to set it and its members alight.

"How could anyone do this to one so young? How could anyone desecrate something so precious?" Autharan asked. "She wasn't much older than my daughter." he told his cousin as he stared at the body being consumed by the flames.

"I know, cousin." Gondeg replied, putting his hand on the man's shoulder. Gondeg had no wife or children himself, but he had met Autharan's young family more than once. They did not live far from Cerin Amroth. His cousin's wife was not of their kin, and so had not come, and none of Autharan's children had been old enough to take the oath. But they were, even to Gondeg, a breath of fresh air and a promise of something approaching a normal life when this was all over. He did not know the emotions the man must have been feeling just then, but he mourned with him just the same for as many short moments as they both could allow for.

And then something moved in the deep shadows nearby, and those moments were ended.

"Over there. Movement." Gondeg told his cousin in a low voice, pointing with his chin to the shadows across the street in an alley between two three story buildings, probably the tallest structures in the town.

"I saw." Autharan replied, and regained his composure quickly. There was still a job to do.

They both crept quietly to the sides of the alley where they had seen the shadows move in a way they shouldn't. Autharan had his blades out while Gondeg was ready once more with his lighter and spray can. They both listened intently for the tell tales sounds of the walking dead.

But there was nothing. It was even more silent than the grave should have been. And it felt colder there than it even had elsewhere in the mist shrouded town. The fear which fell over them before intensified, but both men held their ground as they observed and waited to strike at what they were certain was another of the ghouls.

Silence. No movement. No sounds. Just the increasing feeling of dread which neither man could shake.

And then the darkness jumped out at them faster than either man could react. The last thing either Autharan or Gondeg felt were cold, ice cold blades running through their body armor and piercing their hearts. The last things either man saw were deathly black robes and cowl with no face beneath it as though Death had bothered to come for them himself instead of sending a lackey.

On a rooftop in Turrialba…

The onslaught of undead appeared to be leveling off as midnight approached. It was well that it did, because Estel's and Sofie's arrows were nearly spent. After that initial conversation, neither had spoken much, concentrating on the task at hand, and they did not return to their previous topics either. Estel received updates over their radios and issued direction where it was asked for.

He had purposefully kept their less experienced fighters towards the better lit areas of the town and away from the forward entry point of the fiends. His reasoning was that those less experienced would be able to clean up whatever stragglers the archers and experienced fighters and mercenaries didn't catch. He made sure to learn who had military experience and who didn't before the sun went down and assigned them accordingly. Most of the Elvenkind were serving as their snipers along with those of his kin who were well experienced with a bow. This only made sense to him and to them. Their eyes and ears were quite literally sharper than any of the rest of them.

He was listening intently for the radio when a voice he did not recognize came over it. A voice which was higher pitched, wheezing, and hauntingly ghastly in its quality, "Two of you lay dead at my feet. Bring us the ringbearer, Dunedain, or none of you will live to see the morning."

Estel grabbed the radio and nearly shouted into it, "Where are you, fiend! Stop hiding in the shadows and face me yourself!"

"All in good time, Dunadan. You have one hour to bring the ringbearer to our camp." The deathly voice answered, its tone mocking.

"Try it and we will commit you and all your kind to the flames." Estel challenged it over the radio.

His answer was a haunting, demonic laughter. "You cannot burn what you cannot see in the darkness, Dunadan, and it can get very dark indeed."

Suddenly there was an explosion in the distance as several electrical transformers blew simultaneously. The power went out across the city, and all the artificial lighting went dark plunging them all into a pitch black night that was so thick it could be felt. Around them, personal torches and helmet lamps went on among the Dunedain. The light was bright, but directed and did not always help to see around them. Not all of them were equipped with night vision goggles either. The Elves had an easier time, their eyes adjusting better than those of more human descent, but there still had to be some light source to work from, even for them.

"You have one hour." The voice of the nazgul repeated over their radios, and every person near one heard it.

Not far off, Estel saw and heard flashes of gunfire and heard the terrified screams of another of his kin from the heavy darkness. While not every enemy's move can always be anticipated, he cursed himself for not anticipating this one. A number of scenarios to counter the ring wraith's move flashed through his mind quickly. Finally, taking everything into consideration as he could, he pulled out his smart phone and sent first an SMS message to Eltariel, and then one massive group text message to everyone on the rooftops and on the ground. The radios were compromised, so cellular phones would have to make do, assuming the towers were still functioning after the loss of the transformer.

"What do we do now, your majesty?" Sofie asked him, a genuine hint of fear in her voice.

Without hesitation he gave her the gist of his orders to everyone, "Our schedule just got moved up. We move to attack the camp now."

At the church of San Buenaventura…

Eltariel's smart phone went off and she read the text from Estel. She and her two charges heard the nazgul's threat loud and clear as everyone else with a radio did. Her own mind raced with their options. She knew the ring wraiths and their capabilities better than anyone. She knew the threat was not idle. One wraith alone could turn a battle, but if there were more than one in pitch black darkness accompanied by their undead minions? They could decimate their forces to nothing and none of them would see Death coming.

She typed a one word reply to let him know she had received it and then left Sam and Jim in the church office without explanation for several minutes as she ran down the hall towards the sanctuary. When she returned, the Lady Arwen was with her.

"It's time." She told the two Englishman, her mistress at her side. "Grab your climbing gear, and let's go."

"Wait, what? It's only just after midnight. It's still at least six hours until dawn." Sam protested.

"If we wait until dawn, everyone else out there will be dead by then." She replied. "The Lady Arwen and we will group up with the two units around the building. Nenya goes with us. The wraiths will not be able to penetrate its power. All of us will meet up with the rest of our forces on the north side of town like we planned. We travel with them for part of the way along the road and then we travel parallel to them off the road so the wraiths won't know we aren't among them. By the time they figure it out, we'll be at the caldera."

"But there weren't any zombies or wraiths between here and there when we first planned it." Sam retorted.

"Well, now we have to improvise a bit, don't we?" The Lady Arwen spoke up. "If we stay here in fear of our own lives, everyone outside of this church dies horribly, and that is not acceptable."

"No. It's not." Jim then spoke up, shoving his own panic aside and focusing on why he came. He shouldered the rope and climbing gear he was to carry. "We're here to do a job, Sam. No one said it would be easy."

"All too true." Sam conceded picking up his own gear. "Alright, let's do this."