7: Brains
A/N: I shall now ambush you with the actual plot! (Possibly a belated maneuver, at 24,000 words and several years later…) Warning: mildly graphic carnage.
(P.S: Her Holiness, sorry to hear you had a crap day the other day! I hope things have subsequently improved. Thank you for again taking the time to send a review!)
By the time the undead finally decided to make their move, Scarecrow was so beside himself with boredom that he was almost relieved. Traveling with meat people meant stopping for the night and being quiet, but it didn't always mean that he had to hold still. Under normal circumstances, he imagined he would have passed the night time by trying to learn to juggle, or by looking for empty snail shells, or divining any of infinite possible futures by tossing pebbles on the ground again and again and again – one of the figures was always bound to be correct, if he cast enough sets. But tonight he'd been charged with laying still and keeping Dorothy (and Toto) warm, and so felt a very temporary thrill of excitement when Tin Man hurried over to crouch next to them; what would his friend say?
"The undead are coming," Tin Man whispered. For whatever illogical reason, this hadn't been what Scarecrow had been expecting to hear, and came as rather a shock. He sat up quickly, dumping both Dorothy and Toto on the ground. Tin Man moved to wake Lion as Scarecrow tried to rouse Dorothy from her fog of sleep.
"It's the undead!" he hissed to her, shaking her shoulder. "Dorothy, it's the undead! Get up! We have to… we have to do something! Get up!"
Grudgingly, Dorothy sat up, wrapping her arms around herself to ward off the sudden cold.
"Hello?" she said sleepily, which seemed a strange response to Scarecrow, but perhaps that was what people normally said upon waking.
"Yes, hi. I said the undead are –"
"NO!" yelped Lion, so loudly that any shadow of sleep remaining in Dorothy's eyes immediately vanished. Apparently Tin Man had broken the news to their feline friend. Dorothy took Toto up into her arms and Scarecrow helped her to her feet, and quite suddenly the entire group was painfully awake, standing back-to-back, straining into the darkness to catch a glimpse of their possible doom.
"Are you sure the undead are coming?" Scarecrow asked Tin Man, after a few anxiety-warped seconds of waiting started to feel infinite.
"Yes I'm sure! I heard them, they were – "
A noise interrupted Tin Man's response; the gentle shuffle of sodden leaves. It was coming from the south, though Scarecrow couldn't be sure of directions, being a bit turned around without the sun or moon above. It was a very gentle sound, the likes of which the wind might cause while kicking up duff from a forest floor. They knew it wasn't the wind because the wind had died since they'd gone to rest, and the leaves were heavy with dampness. A moment later they could hear a distinct pattern to the shuffle.
"Those are footsteps," Dorothy whispered fearfully.
"See, I told you," Tin Man said to Scarecrow. Nevertheless, the pace of the steps was so placid and innocent that their curiosity stayed their flight, or else they were too petrified to move; Scarecrow couldn't make up his mind. They stared through the woods, waiting, wondering if the thing would pass them by, wondering if perhaps they were being frightened by an overzealous nocturnal tortoise. But a moment later they perceived a different sort of noise.
"Hhhheeeeyyyynnnth…" came the voice, floating from beyond the trees and over the rocks and wrapping the group with a ghastly chill. "Hhhheeynth," it said again, with more determination.
Then a shadow melted into distinction from between the grove of hazelnuts. Nobody watched long enough to perceive any details; the sudden visual proof was all that they needed to shatter the spell of stillness. They turned and ran. It didn't matter that they were running north; it only mattered that they were running away from the undead. Dorothy reached out and snatched for Scarecrow's hand and again they ran side-by-side. Though Scarecrow felt that the dinosaurus had been a much more obvious threat to be running from, the flight through that forest, the south forest, had somehow been incomparably more pleasant than their current flight. At least the south forest had been relatively flat and dry, not to mention they'd been chased during daylight hours. With each step in this forest, Scarecrow was lucky not to slip on the slick rock, not to trip over a boulder, not to have his foot get caught in a little crack, or not to have to pause to pull Dorothy back to her feet; she was having as much trouble as he was, with her ruby slippers and without the ability to see in the dark.
Tin Man, running ahead of them, kept glancing over his shoulder as if to see if they were being followed. Of course, it was less a matter of figuring out when was the logical time to stop running, since the thing behind them had been moving at such a dreadfully slow pace, as it was a matter of getting over the terror of being followed by an undead. Tin Man was the first to realize that they had probably outrun any chance of being caught, and so he slowed to a trot, caught Lion's arm to slow him as well, and then stopped altogether, pulling Dorothy and Scarecrow close into the group. Tin Man opened his mouth to say something – perhaps to voice a plan he'd hatched to get them out of this forest once and for all, or perhaps a plan to outwit and defeat the walking dead that surely followed on their heels, or maybe even to make a comment about what sissies they'd just proven themselves to be – but he never got the chance.
"Brains," said a shadow to their left, and then the forest boiled.
Dozens of shadows lurched into motion and began to converge upon the spot where Dorothy and her friends stood. They had blundered straight into a horde.
"Oh, please don't tell me this was a trap," moaned Tin Man, as the group pressed together and stared wide-eyed into the shadows. Lion gagged; Scarecrow noticed that the air was now cloying and fetid.
"Okay, but I think it actually is," said Scarecrow.
"Trapped by dead people?" whined Lion, wringing his tail. "Shouldn't that be illegal? What do they want?"
"Brains," insisted the closest one, stumbling over a boulder. Scarecrow felt relief wash over him, and he let out a breath he hadn't known he'd been holding. He took a little step towards the approaching creature.
"Well if that's all you want," said Scarecrow to the lurching undead, "follow us! We're going to see the Wizard of Oz, and he can – "
"Brains," the undead asserted, stumbling closer. Scarecrow's newfound relief started to melt away.
"But we have to get to Emerald City first," he said, more unsure. "You have to wait – "
"Braaains." The undead's voice broke plaintively in the middle of the plea, and Scarecrow pressed himself back into the group. Clearly this undead wasn't prepared to wait. It wanted brains now, which was a problem because there were no brains to be had in the near vicinity, unless one counted the brains of Dorothy, Lion, and Toto, which was of course completely ridiculous –
Scarecrow pushed Dorothy behind him, into the middle of their group. They backed away from the closest undead, but the rest of the horde was pressing in towards them, all moaning and muttering about their unanimous desire. Scarecrow couldn't see any way out of the stinking throng.
"I could be wrong," he hissed, in a hushed voice, "but I think their intentions might be less than noble."
"They're zombies," whimpered Dorothy. "They want to eat our brains."
"I thought they were undead!" wailed Lion.
"Zombies are undead!" said Dorothy.
"Calling them zombies sounds less frightening," Lion muttered.
"I don't care what we call them," said Tin Man. "I just care that we can get away from them!"
It was then that the zombies, as Dorothy had called them, chose to reveal something very special about themselves, which was that their sluggish, lurching motions were a façade. As a unit they sprang into action. The most vocal of the bunch was upon them immediately, and before Scarecrow could react it had bumped into him and was reaching around him as if he didn't exist, trying to seize Dorothy. Scarecrow blanched; his entire field of vision was now occupied with the horrific sight and smell of the face of a walking corpse. Its pale, pitted skin; its soiled hair, hanging in clumps; its ghastly mouth drawn into a snarl, revealing carious teeth from which a slush of yellow and red goo dripped; and its eyes, which were the worst to behold. They did not track in perfect tandem, and they were frosted with the patina of death, which brought Scarecrow straight back to little more than a day ago, when he'd been witness to the moment Gerty's spirit had fled from his eyes.
Dorothy screamed from behind Scarecrow, and Scarecrow pushed the zombie away from both of them with all the strength he could muster. The zombie stumbled backward a scant two steps before renewing its efforts. Lion roared, and Scarecrow wondered wildly what was befalling his feline friend, but he did not turn to help. There were now three zombies that seemed acutely interested in Dorothy. Tin Man rushed one of them, taking it to the ground and raising one shining fist and bringing it down upon the zombie's head. The sound of the connection made Scarecrow wince – akin to a partly-desiccated pumpkin dropped from a substantial height, which was not a sound Scarecrow had ever been able to grow used to, and now he turned involuntarily to see that Tin Man's fist had sunk straight down into the zombie's face, shattering bone, and –
"They're brainless!" Tin Man yelled in surprise, as if this were somehow relevant.
"Duh," shouted Scarecrow. "Why else would they want brains?"
Tin Man did not bother responding. Instead he tackled another of the creatures sideways, in the legs. The legs unfastened in Tin Man's grip, and the torso fell writhing to the ground. It started to pull itself towards Dorothy.
"Braaains," it pled.
"Brains? What about legs"" asked Scarecrow, puzzled by the zombie's priorities.
An arm reached past Scarecrow's head towards Dorothy; he knocked it away, but it was immediately replaced by two more. Being made of straw, he didn't have much weight to put behind each blow, but having seen the ease with which Tin Man had taken the other zombie apart, Scarecrow now leapt upon the most belligerent of their aggressors, latching his legs around the thing's chest. It stumbled backwards as Scarecrow put all his strength into ripping its arm from its body – perhaps if they were armless, they would also be unable to hurt Dorothy and Lion – but the arm remained stubbornly attached. He tried the other arm, but it was likewise secure. While the arms flailed about, Scarecrow put all his inconsiderable strength into a face-first punch; the head snapped backwards, something crunched, and the thing let out a strangled groan. Its head now seemed stuck, thrown back at an unnaturally extreme angle, which immediately upset its sense of balance; it tipped backwards and fell, smashing itself onto a protruding fin of rock. Despite the obvious damage the fall had caused, its arms suddenly found purpose and latched themselves around Scarecrow's wrists before he could leap out of the way.
Behind him, Dorothy was screaming and Lion was roaring and there was a good amount of gristly popping and ripping coming from that general area, as well as an impressive amount of snarling and growling from Toto, but Scarecrow's opponent was keeping him effectively immobile, even though the zombie itself was having more than a bit of trouble getting up off the rock that it'd impaled itself on. Scarecrow tried to get to his feet, hoping that if he tried to pull away now, perhaps he'd be able to wrench the zombie's arms straight off. Leverage was hard to find; he could do little more than gain a sort of low crouch. He gave a twisted yank and felt something tear, but the tearing had come from his own arm, rather than the zombie's arm. The fiber and burlap in his left elbow joint had begun to come apart.
Dorothy screamed again. Scarecrow's captor had writhed off of the sharp rock and was now beginning to sit up. Scarecrow kicked out at its head and began stomping on its face, gritting his teeth against the awful sensation. Despite the damage Scarecrow was causing, the zombie did not seem fazed. It let go of Scarecrow's right wrist and used its considerable strength to yank Scarecrow off his feet and then smash him down onto the unyielding rock surface.
Scarecrow was, of course, unhurt by the maneuver, though the force of the action finished tearing Scarecrow's arm from his body. He picked himself up off the ground, freed. The pulp-faced zombie, whose eyeballs were vastly more protrusive now that Scarecrow had stomped on its face, still maintained a death grip on Scarecrow's left wrist. He turned away from his absentee limb to assist Dorothy but he was bowled over from behind by yet another zombie, who simply ploughed into him as if unaware there was a scarecrow in the way. Scarecrow hit the ground hard again, felt the thing's shoes mash into his back and neck on its way to eating Dorothy's brains. Just as it stepped off, Scarecrow reached out with his remaining hand and latched onto its foot. This zombie was in a more entropic state than many of its fellows, and the joint came apart with very little force. Scarecrow found himself holding onto a foot, and the zombie itself continued forward on its stump. Gagging, Scarecrow threw the foot to the side and launched himself at its legs, Tin-Man-style. Its legs did not come off, but it crashed to its knees, which telescoped a bit, before it turned and fixed him with its one remaining eye. It smashed its hand into Scarecrow's face, much the way a child would push away a particularly distasteful-looking bowl of boiled cabbage; several of its fingers came off.
Scarecrow decided that this zombie likely wasn't their biggest threat. He pushed away its gangrenous hand and tried to get a look at what else was going on, but all he could see were zombies. He caught a flash of white and blue checkered fabric but in a moment he'd lost it and he could see nothing of the others, and he was sure that the zombies were in the very process of picking Dorothy's head clean while she screamed aloud so he shot up, knocking over the one-eyed, half-decayed zombie, and made straight for the knot of undead.
Suddenly his own hand smacked him upside the head. He stumbled and turned, and there stood the pulp-faced zombie, now using Scarecrow's left hand and forearm as a club. It swung again, and Scarecrow ducked, and tried to dodge towards where Dorothy was, if there was anything left of her, but apparently he'd managed to make the pulp-faced zombie very angry indeed because it leapt and tackled him straight to the ground. Scarecrow couldn't decide if he'd landed on his front or on his back but it didn't matter for very long anyways because the zombie landed on Scarecrow's legs, tossed Scarecrow's left arm aside, put its monstrous hands around Scarecrow's waist, and wrenched.
"No!" Scarecrow cried, and tried to get up but of course he couldn't because there was a zombie in the space between his upper half and his lower half. He twisted and saw that several clumps of zombies were moving off. It was hard to get a good view – his line of sight was broken by jagged boulders and bushes, and he could hardly raise himself above them. He heard Toto yelping, and Dorothy crying out for her friends, but they were taking her away and he had no idea which direction they were taking her and now he didn't have any legs and he suspected he was about to get shredded to bits because this lug of a zombie was reaching down towards him again. Scarecrow reached desperately for a rock but remembered too late that he didn't have a hand on that side, and the zombie lifted him by his arm stump. Straw littered the ground beneath him, and the smell of crushed sweetgrass mingled with the odor of rotting flesh. The zombie grabbed at Scarecrow's remaining wrist with its other hand, as if it intended to tear him limb from limb, but Scarecrow's body swung in an arc towards the zombie's face; he reached out and tried to grab the zombie's bulging eyes, perhaps to tear them out and render the zombie blind, but it was too fast. It got hold of Scarecrow's hand, and then it did as Scarecrow had feared it would. One swift movement later, Scarecrow was on the ground – or, at least, part of him was. The zombie standing above him was holding his left arm in one hand and his right arm in the other and the most aggravating thing about the whole situation was that the zombie didn't even look triumphant, or bloodthirsty, or even amused. It simply glanced down at him with its bubble eyes, turned, tossed the arms into the forest, and walked away. As if the struggle had never happened. As if tearing scarecrows limb from limb was a regular part of its routine.
"Come back!" Scarecrow yelled. "I'm not through with you!"
The zombie, however, was apparently quite through with him. It kept going, following the pack of others. They were melting north into the forest, and by the sounds of it they carried Dorothy and Toto with them.
"Dorothy!" Scarecrow cried. "Dorothy! Oh, no no no," he said to himself, and twisted desperately to take stock of the situation. The zombie couldn't have thrown his arms that far, and if he could just get to them, maybe he could sort of jam them back on for the time being, and then drag himself over to his legs… No, any amount of dragging was likely to do more damage than good, in this terrain. Perhaps if he got to his legs first, he'd be able to walk over to his arms, and then he could follow Dorothy –
"Urg," said a voice.
"Tin Man!" Scarecrow cried. His friend sat up from where he'd been hidden, beneath a pile of limbs. The upper half of the zombie who Tin Man had de-legged was still attacking, or doing its best to attack, but Tin Man pushed it away and it seemed to lose its sense of what it had been doing, and it settled into moaning about brains and waving its arms around half-heartedly. Tin Man rose from the carnage and struggled to his feet and Scarecrow could see that he hadn't gotten through the skirmish unscathed – his right arm was crushed, and there was an impressive puncture hole in his middle, but at least he could stand. He looked down at Scarecrow and blanched.
"Scarecrow!" he hissed, and winced. "For the love of Oz! You're… you're…"
"Everywhere, I know."
"Are you alright?" Tin Man asked, eyes wide.
"Can you sew?" Scarecrow countered.
"No."
"Then we have a problem."
"Look, I'm sorry, I'm really, really sorry, but I have to follow Dorothy. They're – "
"Wait, you're leaving me here?"
"I have to! They didn't kill her or Lion, they're taking them somewhere and I have to follow, we can't lose them! This is our only chance to save them!"
"But –… " Scarecrow began, but he knew Tin Man was right. His friend reached down, picked something up, carried it over to where Scarecrow's upper body was and set it down.
"Here's Dorothy's basket, it's where she keeps her sewing stuff," Tin Man said. "I'll come back for you, I promise." With one last apologetic glance in Scarecrow's head's direction, Tin Man had taken off into the woods.
Of course, without a hand with which to sew, having a needle and thread was meaningless, but Scarecrow hadn't thought to tell Tin Man until it was too late. He looked over at the zombie torso, which was still mumbling and grumbling. He looked down at the mess of straw around him, and tried to see where his legs had gone, and looked around in vain for his hands. He couldn't see them. He set his head back down and stared up at the sky, and tried very hard to think of a solution, but as he didn't have a brain, no ideas came to him.
"Brains," grunted the half-zombie.
"I know, right?" sighed Scarecrow.
