Title: The Evil Undead (Four/Seven)

Author: Randall Stone

Disclaimer: All characters are belong to someone else.

Summary: Xander finds out more about his Uncle Rory's past than
he ever wanted to know.

Notes:
Spoilers: S1-3

Clearly the Uncle Rory we saw in Hell's Bells was some kind of
cheap imposter. What would a story be like with the _real_ Uncle
Rory interacting with the Scoobs?

This story takes place in season 3 some short time after the
events of The Zeppo.

Category: B/X
Rating: PG-ish- nothing worse than what's on the show.
Feedback: Yes please.

*****

Joyce Summers was in the zone. Concerns about her daughter's
safety, the seemingly endless maze in which they were trapped, and
Ash's boorish behavior had all receded to the back of her mind. She
was entirely focused on her machete, the creature before her, and
attempting to do as much damage as possible to the latter.

Deadites usually behave in a very focused manner, intent on
consuming the bodies and souls of their opponents. In contrast, the
creature in front of Joyce was rolling around on the ground in
agony, attempting to avoid the constant hail of blows that she
rained down upon it. These attempts to dodge were largely
unsuccessful.

Joyce looked up from sawing her way through a particularly difficult
tendon to see Ash and Andrew staring at her in horrified
fascination. Joyce focused her attention on Ash.

"A little help here?"

Ash shook himself out of his reverie and fired up his chainsaw. He
made quick work of the downed deadite. Afterwards, he couldn't
muster his usual glib remark.

"That was... disturbing."

Andrew nodded his agreement.

"What?" Joyce looked at them, annoyed. "You can chop them to bits
and it's no problem, but I cut off one little piece-"

"Enough!" Ash cut her off before changing the subject. "Look,
we've been wandering around here for a while, and we still have no
idea where we are. Maybe it's time to start thinking about getting
out of here- I have no idea how we're going to find your daughter."

"If I know one thing about Buffy, it's that she's somewhere in the
middle of all this. If we just keep going where there are more
deadites, we'll run into her eventually."

---

Xander groaned as he struggled back to consciousness with a pounding
headache. He sat up and took a look around. It only took a few
seconds of staring at the slaughterhouse around him to remember
where he was.

The school cafeteria. He didn't see any of the other Scoobies as he
looked around the room. He was by himself- well, he did have his
uncle's chainsaw.

Xander tried to think back and remember what had happened. He
remembered facing off an army of deadites, led by Angelus and Dawn.
He remembered the spell, then the failure of the spell, then- Buffy!
He had to find her!

Gritting his teeth, Xander struggled to his feet. He realized as he
did so that he was surprisingly undamaged- apart from the blow to
the head that had knocked him out. When he finally reached his
feet, Xander was startled to hear the sound of sarcastic applause
coming from behind him.

Xander spun around just in time to spot a familiar figure emerging
from the shadows.

"Angelus." Xander spat. "What have you done with Buffy?"

"Me?" Angelus laughed. "I haven't done anything to your precious
slayer. Dawn was very eager to take her sister into her tender
care. Something about raising the armies of hell. You know how
women are."

"You just let Dawn take Buffy after you spent all year obsessing
over her?"

"Dawn said she needed her and the Necronomicon to work some kind of
mojo with the Hellmouth. I'm never one to stand in the way of a
little Hell on Earth."

"She took the book, too? Who's calling the shots here?"

A shadow of irritation crossed Angelus's face.

"You should worry more about your own safety. How does it feel to
be stuck in a room with your arch enemy?"

"My what?" Xander blinked. "Sorry pal, Buffy was the one with the
thing for you. You're just another bloodsucker to me."

Xander fired up his chainsaw and spoke again.

"And I figure you'll die just like any of the others."

Angelus ignored this show of bravado and spoke contemplatively.

"You know, I was never really a fan of magic, before. I figured
fists and fangs were all that I needed. But that whole re-souling
debacle really changed my perspective. And working with ancient
spirits does have its advantages."

Angelus pulled a small wand out of his back pocket. It was bone
shaped, and had some suspicious looking liquids still clinging to
one end. An inscription had been burned into the bone and ran the
length of the wand.

"Want to see what my new toy can do?" Angelus didn't wait for a
response. "Imperio!"

As he spoke the word, Angelus pointed the wand at Xander and
twitched it upward.

To Xander, it felt as though he had been grabbed by a giant hand.
He lost his grip on his chainsaw with the initial impact, but that
became the least of his worries as he felt himself flying up through
the air.

He hit the ceiling with a bone jarring impact and was pinned there
while Angelus sauntered across the room towards him.

"Yep." He grinned. "I could definitely get used to this."

---

"It's funny." Joyce said to herself as she walked along.

"What?" Ash asked.

"I was just thinking, it's a good thing the evil spirits can only
possess humans."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, from what Buffy's told me, there are a lot nastier things
buried under this school than some ex-students. So it's a good
thing they can only reanimate the human corpses."

As if on cue, an inhuman growl echoed down the corridor.

"Why?" Ash half asked, half shouted. "Why would you say something
like that?"

Ash stepped forward as a hulking figure came around the corner
towards them. The beast didn't seem to walk so much as it shambled.
It stood upright like a human, but it seemed out of proportion
somehow. Its legs were too large, and its torso was massive. And
in place of a face it had a long snout.

In addition to its strange form, it had many deformities marking its
long stay in the grave. Half of its skin had rotted off, and the
tendons attaching its feet to its legs were visible.

"We've got enough trouble without you asking for more!"

Ash commented as he swiped his chainsaw across the beast's torso.
The creature didn't even try to dodge and simply stood there and
absorbed the hit. Blood and gore flew as Ash gouged a six inch deep
trench in the thing's chest. But the creature was hardly forced
back at all, and Ash watched in horror as the rotted flesh of its
chest knitted itself back together.

"I was just trying to find the silver lining." Joyce called out
plaintively, then started as an idea occurred to her. "Silver! That
looks like a werewolf- maybe something silver will hurt it."

Joyce started patting down her pockets, searching for anything made
of silver.

Ash, meanwhile, decided to try his usual tactic of cutting off limbs.
But as he brought his chainsaw down in an overhead slice, the
creature suddenly moved with preternatural quickness. It blocked his
strike with its left arm, then sent a brutal punch in with its right.

Ash was rocked by the blow, and staggered back a few steps. The
wolf-deadite was on him before he could react and quickly trapped
him in a crushing bear hug.

Ash's chainsaw was pinned to his side, and he could do little but
hit the creature ineffectively with his left hand as it ratcheted up
the pressure. Ash could feel his ribs starting to buckle and had
just about given up hope when he saw a flash of silver floating
towards him through the air. Reaching up, he caught the object in
his left hand and, in one smooth motion, buried it deep in the
creature's eye.

The wolf howled and dropped Ash on the floor. It staggered back,
clawing ineffectually at its eye. Finally overcome by the power of
the silver, it collapsed to the floor. As it died, the dissipation
of the mystical forces powering the deadite and the forces that
created the werewolf dissolved its body into a yellow goo.

Ash stood, and turned to Andrew.

"Thanks kid. I would have been screwed if you hadn't thrown me
that- what was that, anyway?"

"It was my one seventieth scale silver replica X-wing." Andrew
stared mournfully and the puddle that was the were-beast. "I had
to save for six months to buy it."

"Well, hey, it got put to good use." Ash clasped him on the
shoulder, then turned to Joyce. "Onward we go, then?"

"No!" Andrew shouted. "You guys are nuts! I'm getting the hell
out of here on my own."

Shaking off Ash's hand, Andrew ran to one of the doors lining the
hallway and, before anybody could stop him, opened it and stepped
through.

A few seconds later a bloodcurdling scream echoed down the hall and
a massive splash of blood flooded out the door, staining the
opposite wall of the hallway red. Then the door slammed shut,
seemingly on its own.

Ash met Joyce's eyes for a moment. Finally he sighed and walked
over to the door that Andrew had disappeared through.

Ash squared himself and drew his shotgun before kicking the door
open and striding through.

There was silence as Ash and the deadites within the room sized each
other up. Ash finally broke the silence.

"Look, we can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way.
Your choice."

The deadites' response was predictable.

"We're going to eat your soul!"

"Right." Ash smiled as he fired up his chainsaw. "The hard way it
is."

---

"So this is what it's come to. The great Angelus, Scourge of
Europe, has to break out the magical big guns to take down an
ordinary teenager."

"Not has to." Angelus corrected Xander as he tested out the control
of his wand. He flicked his wrist downward, sending Xander crashing
into the ground. Angelus then lifted him back up into the air
and swung his hand to the side, smashing Xander into the wall before
bringing him to rest in midair in front of the vampire.

"Wants to."

Xander was in too much pain to muster a response, so Angelus
continued.

"It's true that I've never paid a whole lot of attention to you
before. But you know, when you're stuck in hell for hundreds of
years, you have a lot of time to think.

"For the first century or so, I was pretty much obsessed with Buffy.
The things I'd do to her, the ways that I would torment her. Sure,
you were on my 'people to kill' list-"

"Who isn't?" Xander wheezed.

"True, it's more a philosophy than an actual list. The point is, I
hadn't singled you out for any special treatment. Then, some time
in the second century, the thought occurred to me: every time one of
my plans almost worked, and I almost had Buffy broken, something
went wrong at the last minute. And every time, there you were, with
that same idiot look on your face.

"I was pretty angry at first, and shifted my thoughts to how I could
best torture you to death. But the anger eventually turned to
grudging respect- I see a lot of potential in you. And besides-
what better way to torment your soul than by defiling your body?

"All of which is to say-" Angelus shifted to his game face. "That
tonight you're going to die, Xander Harris, and then you will live
again. And I'm going to be there."

Angelus pinned Xander to the ground with his wand, and walked over
to him. He was just about to sink his teeth into Xander's neck when
the cafeteria doors crashed open.

"Yo overbite!" Angelus looked up to find himself staring down the
twin barrels of Ash's shotgun. "Suck on this!"

Ash pulled the trigger as he finished speaking. The first shot
caught Angelus full in the chest and sent him staggering back away
from Xander. The second shot hit him in the arm, nearly tearing his
hand off at the wrist and forcing him to drop his magic wand. The
third and fourth shots were aimed at his legs and left Angelus
curled up in a heap on the floor.

Ash was moving in for the kill when his nephew called out.

"Wait!" Xander spoke from where he had slumped to the floor upon
being released from Angelus's spell.

Ash stepped back as Xander staggered to his feet and limped over to
his discarded chainsaw. Xander started it up and triggered the
engine before walking over to the fallen vampire.

Angelus was lying on the floor in terrible pain, and was barely able
to look up to see Xander raise his chainsaw above his head.

"This," Xander said as he revved the chainsaw up to full speed,
"is for stealing my line."

With that, Xander brought his chainsaw crashing down, hardly slowing
as it cleaved through Angelus's neck and reduced the vampire to
ashes.

Xander looked at the resulting dust pile for a minute before
spitting on it and turning to face his uncle.

"I told him I'd be there."

---

Mmm... chainsaws.

--Randy