Chapter 4: The Dead Rise

Disclaimer: I do not own Diablo or any of its characters, places, skills, or whatever else. I will not be making money from this story as I am just doing it for fun. All credit for the amazing Diablo series goes to Blizzard. Nor do I own the world of Harry Potter as it belongs to the author J.K. Rowling, and all characters and places belong to her.

There was only one thing going through Holden's mind at the moment and that was, damn his luck.

So far today he had fallen and got stuck upside down, got a major headache from headbutting a fist as it was trying to punch his face, got in a fight with another kid who was a bully, had to deal with a creepy skeleton snake thing as it hissed things into the bullies ear to kill him, then tearing said snake in two as he continued to whisper into his own mind, and now to top it off the dead were rising from under their feet.

Boy, today was just plain awesome!

So once again, damn his luck.

He jumped backwards before the hand that had grabbed him could get too strong a hold on him and making him fall backwards so that he landed on his ass. He immediately jumping back up and hearing screams as other people had the same thing happen to them as hands, some fully fleshed, some skeletal, and some with strands of flesh hanging on them as they reached through the ground attempting to grab the person closest to it. Most of the other kids escaped like Holden had, but one boy who couldn't have been more than fourteen wasn't so lucky as the hand got a firm hold before he could get away.

At first the hands were just that, hands. Than came the bodies that were connected to the hands. Now they were pulling themselves out of the ground. This day just kept getting better and better for Holden.

Holden ran forward and tried to free the boy that had been caught by the corpse, who they could now see was a female with part of her cheek and an entire ear missing. She was wearing a dress that looked like it was from the 1800's, her skin gray as a cloudy day. "Let go of him!" Holden yelled as he tried to pry her off of him but lost his grip and fell backwards. The corpse latched onto the boys neck and started chewing while he stared at Holden with such fear in his eyes that it was like it radiated from him, blood splattered the front dress of the corpse as it kept feasting on the neck of the young boy as though it hadn't eaten in years, which of course it hadn't.

The boy's eyes seemed to widen even more before the light in them disappeared as his life left his body. The woman turned her head away from the boy and looked at Holden, screeched, and launched herself at him. Apparently, this dead girl was ether a whole new kind of zombie, or old horror flicks with zombies got them so wrong that it wasn't even funny. This girl bolted at him with the speed of an Olympic runner as she reached out for him, however due to a sever case of Foottothefacetitis, her feet swept out from under her and she planted right on her back. Not wasting a single moment he picked up a rock near him that was the size of his hand and smashed it repeatedly onto her face, until her brains were a gooey mess that didn't do wonders for his stomach.

Looking up from the corpse that just laid there now, not moving once again, he looked at the younger boy that he had tried to help with remorse. He was about to get up and ether get the hell out of there but was stopped when he saw the boy twitch.

"Oh thank God!" He gasped out as he moved forward to help the boy up, but stopped when the younger boy looked up at him.

The entirety of the front of his throat was torn out, with warm blood still pumping from it as it stared at him, not with gratitude, but with pure hunger and dead eyes. He stood up slowly, and sprinted forward towards him just as fast as the other one. He was stunned for a split second before the boy crashed into him bringing them both down to the ground. Holden wrestled with the boy, grappling him to try and prevent him from biting down on him like the corpse had down to the boy moments before hand.

The creature had a lot more strength than he did, so much that it wasn't just inhuman it was like someone gave steroids to a elephant. Luckily for him the corpse was trying to eat him, not kill him outright, because if that was the case he would have been dead right after the fight started, probably because of a crushed head had the corpse desired to do that to him.

The creature finally broke through his guard and started to lean down to bite him wherever it wanted to. Did these zombies eat brains? Holden decided to wait until later to try to figure that out. For now all he had to do was survive.

So far he was wasn't succeeding very well at survival.

However what happened next was something that he only thought actually happened during school. He was saved by the bell. Holden was able to laugh at the small joke he made in his head as he saw a bell post that had been ripped from the ground protrude through the boys skull, causing what looked more like a fountain of blood that pooled around the post where it stuck into the ground.

He looked at his savor expecting to find another kid or two who had seen he needed help and stepped in, but to his surprise he found a grown man who stood at almost seven foot tall, and was heavily muscled, standing in a clock that though it looked big enough to completely swamp the already large Holden, it was still too tight to conceal his form. His hair was wild and brown in color, while his eyes were a dark amber color that made him seem even more impressive than he already was.

He looked down at Holden with a hint of mischief in his amber eyes and held out a hand. Holden looked at it suspiciously at first before deciding to take it. He lifted up Holden as though he was a penny that he had found on the ground.

"Wait here," He said in a heavy tone that demanded obedience from any who heard it, and after saying those words he leaped away. Not leaped away as the normal sense of someone running away, but he actually leaped what looked to be at least fifteen feet into the air, a feat not possible for the normal human. He landed in the middle of a group of corpses that had been attempting to get to a small group of kids that had gathered together in hopes of fending off the dead.

As he landed, the ground seemed to indent as all the corpses fell towards him. He then spun in a circle revealing a large sword that Holden failed to notice before, though he wasn't sure how. As he spun he stuck the sword out, catching the corpses on their chests and arms, causing them to bleed out. However it wasn't enough it seemed, at least until they all suddenly fell to the ground and didn't move again.

However the odds were still against him it seemed, even with his inhuman acts of strength they just kept coming, and coming. The man suddenly let out a bellow that sounded like a challenge, and four undead appeared around him. There were two very large differences between these and the ones that had appeared before. For one they were wearing armor and weapons, and two they seemed to be the leaders of the undead, as the others stood back from them and stood still.

The four circled the man, the air seeming to go silent from the suspense that laid thick around them. Suddenly, as one, the four attacked and brought their weapons down on the man. Several people screamed and looked away, but the ones who hadn't where stunned into a silence from what they had witnessed. Holden now stood, slack jawed, at what he was looking at.

The four swords that had struck at him had hit him directly, but simply stopped.

The man just stood there calmly as the undead looked at each other unsure of what to think about this man that they were fighting. When they saw the man begin to move they started sawing and hacking at his cloak, until it was in ribbons. What they saw underneath shocked everyone even more than the initial act did.

He wasn't wearing anything other than pants underneath the cloak.

He looked up, seemingly bored and spoke in a calm voice that surprised everyone and would ensure that it would be heard even in the middle of a thunder storm. "That's enough out of all of you." Suddenly he leaped straight up and came back down, summoning what looked like a small earthquake in the general area that he had landed. The undead was shook to pieces as the rest of them returned to the earth, with their leaders gone, there was nothing holding them there any longer.

Everyone stood stunned at the sudden end of things, and at the man who stood in the middle of a field of death. Slowly oldest of the group, and some of the youngest, did what they could to bring everyone under-control and to find if any others survived other than the seven in the group that was saved by the man. At the end it turned out that out of the fifteen kids that had been there, only nine survived the attack from the undead. They found that Jim for some reason had survived, despite being defenseless.

Holden, after helping find some of the kids and sending them home, found himself face to face with the man who had saved them from the undead. They stood in silence, staring at each other, studying each other. Finally Holden decided to break the silence that they were in.

"Who are-"

"Are you-"

Holden and the man stopped suddenly realizing that the other was talking at the exact same time. To Holden's surprise, the man burst out in laughter, and Holden soon joined him. They spent a while just laughing, before they slowly stopped. This time the man got his words in first.

"We are more alike than I thought we would be."

"Anyways, are you okay?" He asked, looking concerned for Holden.

"Yeah I am, thanks to you," Holden replied, "But who are you and how did you fight like that?"

The man laughed again, a deep hearty one that came from the bottom of his soul.

"My name is Gerdan. I learned to fight like that along time ago from my family, who are barbarians, and we have been learning to fight like that for thousands of years." He answered.

"Even if you are a barbarian that doesn't explain how you survived blows like that, they should have cut right through your skin!" Holden exclaimed, shocked at his calmness with this subject.

"I wouldn't even get a scratch facing creatures as weak as them! That would shame my clan! Anyways, to be honest there is a little bit more than that, but the reason I came here because I have need of an apprentice to learn my skills, and to succeed me when the time comes that I fall in combat. Or just die of old age."

"So there is someone here that is like that? How will you find them?"

Gerdan laughed again and replied, "I already found someone who can succeed me! Of course it will be you, if you are willing."

"I was almost killed by one of those things though!" Holden exclaimed, "If it wasn't for you I would be dead!"

"I think you're missing something, you held one of them off for a short while, which is impossible for a mere human, and even knocked one down that was charging you, which on a normal human would have shattered their legs." Gerdan grinned, "Trust me you are worthy."

"I see.." For a moment Holden considered, finally determining what was the best path to him. His parents had died a long time ago, so there was nothing to keep him here. "I'll accept. And what did you mean by we are more alike than you thought we were?"

"Well honestly we are blood kin. You have the blood of my family running in your veins. You will be traveling with me and learning my skills. Prepare yourself, you're in for one hell of a ride." He grinned at his new friend, and apprentice.

AUTHORS NOTES: This chapter allowed me to finally put in one of my favorite classes of the diablo universe, the Barbarian. I hope that you guys enjoyed and will continue to read. I'm gonna start ending my stories and author's notes with a saying that I came up with in high school. One for the Money, Two for the Show, Three for the Chopsticks, and Hear we Go!