“Nnnghh.”

  Everything hurt.

  Half of her body was on fire: the wound in her arm; the grazes and lacerations that covered her legs and hand; the cut that had opened up her back. She could feel each of them stinging. Burning.

  The other half of her was cold. Damp from the water and sweat that had little reason to dry in this place where there was no sun and barely any breeze. The ground had leeched the heat from her core as she’d slept.

  She didn’t want to get up. Didn’t want to open her eyes and have to face whatever came next. She almost certainly had a fever. She could feel a fogginess in her brain, though the announcement in her mind was clear as day.

  I guess yesterday was something of a challenge.

  Was that how this worked? The more she overcame the more she levelled? It seemed to make sense, but what did she know? She was bordering on delirium.

  But pottery reconstruction? Seriously, whatever you are? Putain de merde. That was the one thing I had to look forward to when I got out - and now a Skill will do it for me?

  She lay and simply breathed in and out for a few moments. Then came to a decision.

  IF I get out, I can use it or not, but if you don’t get up, Marie, you will die here. Then yesterday will have been for nothing. So open your eyes, get up, and find your tent, you lazy pu-

  Marie opened her eyes and froze.

  There was a face, inches from her own.

  A face made of bone.

  An elongated snout. Sharp incisors. Powerful canines. Jaw hanging open. A cavity where its nose and eyes would once have been.

  Marie had always been more of a cat person, and when it came to the undead… the animated skeleton crouching over her did nothing to change that feeling.

  It could have been a fairly large breed in life - something like a doberman or alsatian. Death had stripped the mass and muscle from it but that was little consolation right now; those changes had not made the other skeletons she’d encountered so far any less dangerous.

  Ten seconds passed with the undead hound looming over her, skull hovering inches from her nose.

  It swayed slightly, keeping its eyeless gaze fixed on her, as if assessing what it was about to do.

  After another ten seconds her lungs began to protest and she slowly let out the breath she was holding.

  Feeling around with glacial slowness for whatever she could find within her grasp, her hands came up empty. Wherever her spade or the sword or the pot were, they weren’t within reach. She had her glasses… and the pouch in her pocket.

  An idea began to form in the muggy fog of her brain and, ever so slowly, she reached in for the etched stone that lay alongside the coins in her jeans.

  “Hey there mon ami.” Her face pulled into a tight grimace as she heard the rasp in her voice. Not great for a real dog, but hopefully a dead one wouldn’t care… “How about you and I play a game?”

  Whether or not it understood her, the dog shuffled back a bit, and Marie took the opportunity to lever herself up onto her elbow, ignoring the pain and effort for the greater present danger.

  The stone slipped out of her pocket and she fumbled it into her palm.

  “How about I throw a ball, and you fetch?”

  It could work. Right?

  The skeletons she’d seen around the city had displayed some residual form of memory or at least habits. Surely it would be no different for dogs…

  The creature moved, and half in a panic Marie tossed the stone across the ground in front of it at the same time as she threw herself backwards, putting as much space she could between her and the undead jaws.

  A ringing clinking sound made her look back, and she saw the dog loping across the barren yard in pursuit of the stone, the sound coming from a metal chain and collar around its neck.

  Scrambling back, she spotted the place where the chain was secured to the wall and didn’t stop moving until she judged herself well out of its reach.

  Her spade and sword and pot of pottery were, however, still very much in the danger zone, but as she watched she realised she might not have too much to worry about.

  The undead dog stopped with a jerk as its leash brought it up short, the stone ‘ball’ a couple of feet beyond where it could bite.

  But rather than return to maul her, it stayed where it was, alternately straining at the restraint and pawing the ground with one bone paw.

  It couldn’t reach, but it really wanted the stone.

  Marie sat there for a moment, watching it. There was something off about its skeletal structure. It was close to a dog in shape and layout, but there was something odd about it. She wasn’t a vet and she was feeling too hazy to work it out, and ‘dog’ was the closest thing she could think of.

  It looked so forlorn, though it had no ears or eyes or face at all to show it. It took her a moment to place what made her think that way until she saw its tail.

  Her heart went out to this poor creature, who’d been chained up for the last moments of its life and for millennia of death - nothing to do. Nowhere to go. Unable to escape. Trapped.

  “You are just like me.” she whispered.

  She didn’t have to, but she took a risk.

  Staying well outside of the chain’s range, Marie skirted the mostly-empty courtyard until she was on the opposite side of the stone to the dog. She reached down, picked the stone up, and tossed it gently into the dog-thing’s area.

  The reaction was instant. The undead hound spun and darted after it. It grabbed it in its jaws and trotted back as close as he could get and dropped it at its feet.

  Marie’s eyebrows had risen into her hair.

  She hadn’t really thought…hadn’t really expected…

  It nudged the ‘ball’ out of its space towards her.

  So she bent down and tossed it again.

  After six or seven more retrievals of the stone, Marie tried something else.

  Kneeling down just outside its range, she extended a hand inch by inch, speaking as softly as she could with her parched throat.

  “How about a deal? I will not hurt you, and then you will not hurt me? On est d'accord? Were you lonely? Do you just want some attention?”

  It had clearly been a pet at some point…

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Her hand passed the invisible boundary that marked the skeletal dog’s limit and she exhaled a sigh of relief when it didn’t immediately attack.

  It simply sat on its bony haunches and titled its head as it gazed up at her…without any eyes.

  “Pat, pat.”

  She let out a nervous giggle as her hand gently stroked the bone of the dog’s skull.

  Its tail bones began to wag.

  “This is perhaps the most strange thing I have ever done,” she confided to the skeletal mutt, “but this is only my second day here.”

  Day.

  She glanced up at the sky.

  Day was a strange term for this place when it seemed to be in perpetual twilight. It was impossible to know the time. Even her best guess was only based on how weak and thirsty she felt.

  She studied the creature as closely as she could whilst it consented to being petted. Or rather, she studied its collar.

  There was something etched on the metal that was keeping the creature prisoner.

  “In my world, that would be your name.”

  There was definitely a style to it; it wasn’t random, but if it was a language then she couldn’t read the script.

  “That is no surprise I suppose. I doubt there’s a Rosetta Stone for whatever this place is. Say, dog, I do not suppose you know where I can find some fresh water?”

  The skeletal hound remained silent, straining upwards slightly at the patting, jaw hanging down in what seemed to be an undead canine grin.

  “Well, I will make you another deal since our first has gone so successfully. I need to go and find my tent and my supplies or I will soon end up like you. If you keep watch over my sword and my pot,” she pointed across the yard to where they lay, and the undead dog’s eyeless sockets followed, “then I will free you when I come back.” She paused. “If I come back.”

  Taking the dog’s continued silence as assent, she reluctantly pushed herself to her feet and retrieved her spade.

  Then she tossed the stone into the creature’s area.

  “Just in case I do not return…”

  —

  The cracked and broken walls of the ancient, destroyed townhouse began to disappear behind her as Marie crept out into the city once more and pushed her glasses up higher on the bridge of her nose; she swore they were getting looser.

  She’d escaped the undead hordes the night before, but she really felt as though she was running on empty now.

  I do not think Skills will save me if I have nothing left to give.

  Using the spade more as a walking stick than anything else, Marie began to traverse the slopes of scree and rubble. The broken mounds of shattered stone had been mostly free from skeletons as far as she had seen up till now; bony feet did not seem to do so well on uneven terrain.

  “And I have [Sure Footing], and now [Silent Steps]?”

  It did seem as she walked that her footfalls made no sound, though the constant low-level throbbing running through her head made her question the reliability of her observations.

  Another Skill was definitely working though.

  As Marie picked her way silently through the ruined city, she could almost see a mental picture of the places she was travelling through forming. She didn’t realise at first, but as soon as she began to make use of her [Direction Sense] and [Gauge Distance] the surrounding landscape began to pop into place.

  [Precise Cartography]. Useful.

  With yesterday’s places proving fruitless, or tentless, Marie only had one location left on her list to explore before she either had to give up or find a new vantage point and begin surveying the area again, so, after half an hour or so of cautious searching, it was with immense relief that she began to recognise bits and pieces from the fragmented memory of her first-day’s flight on her approach to the location of the third market square.

  Of course, when she got there, the relief was short-lived.

  —

  The undead could hardly have been packed into the area any tighter if they’d tried.

  “Merde.” Marie muttered under her breath from where she crouched, her hiding spot fifty feet away from the nearest cluster. “If I gave them tuxedos they could pass for penguins.”

  She stifled a giggle, then realised she was becoming increasingly delirious. She calmed herself with slow, focused breaths. She needed to be steady. She needed to be careful, despite the urgency of her situation.

  Rows and rows of fractured, chipped and broken but animated bones made for a sea of the undead that flooded the area she wanted to investigate.

  After twenty minutes of observation, she concluded they weren’t going to move.

  Not without a reason to do so, and even in her state she didn’t think attempting a distraction would go well.

  There was nothing for it as far as she could tell.

  “Move slowly. Move quietly. Keep to the shadows. Keep as far out as you can, Marie. You can do it.”

  Marie muttered her thanks to herself and swayed as she stood, the blood rushing from her head as she rose.

  She leaned on her spade for support and a rock dislodged from the sudden pressure.

  It clattered, and Marie went white with fear.

  Moments passed as she held herself perfectly still.

  But it seemed this time luck was with her, and nothing was drawn to the noise.

  After a minute, she moved off.

  —

  By the time she finally spotted the outline of her tent, she’d made it almost half the way round the edge of the marketplace.

  She was sweating at the exertion of moving so cautiously and the mental strain it was taking to keep calm as thousands of the undead milled about barely thirty feet from her at times.

  Sometimes closer - when one wandered out of the group and passed near enough to touch.

  Keeping to the shadows and crawling on the far sides of the meagre cover that ruined walls provided was the only way she’d kept from being spotted.

  After the third time it had happened, she’d decided to move further out as she swept the area, and to only come in closer every minute or so to get a better look.

  It had taken what felt like hours, but it had finally paid off.

  Now though, she didn’t know how to proceed.

  She could see it. It was right there.

  With a dozen of the undead clustered round it.

  Okay. It could be worse. It could be in the middle of them all. And they look like they were civilians.

  Civilians who’d been slaughtered so brutally that it was a wonder there was anything left to animate. Some of them had had cracks running half way down their skulls, entire missing bones…and one even had the remains of an axehead embedded in its pelvis.

  Is this why you hate the living so? Do you remember that they brought your death?

  It seemed unfair if it was, though as she crouched, thinking, she supposed she’d made the same kind of generalisation about the undead.

  It was only most of them that would try to kill her on sight. On un-sight?

  It didn’t matter.

  Whatever she was going to do, she needed to get to that tent. There was bottled water in there. And a first aid kit at the bottom of her rucksack. And snacks.

  And there would be no better time for it than now.

  The rising gloom had just peaked as far as she could tell. ‘Midday’, for want of a better term. The skeletons definitely seemed more sluggish.

  A few options came to her and she discarded them after brief consideration.

  Dashing in with [Adrenaline Sure] was a last resort.

  Fighting was impossible against those numbers.

  Causing some sort of a distraction on the far side would take too long to get back from - they’d regroup or others would take their place.

  She couldn’t see an option other than stealth.

  Or, perhaps, deception?

  —

  Ten minutes later Marie returned to the packed plaza.

  She felt wrong, but she looked the part.

  It had only taken a minute to find a large enough. isolated skeleton nearby and kill it… for a second time… with a [Swift Blow] of her spade.

  The remaining time had been taken up figuring out what pieces she could fit into her clothing and how she’d make them stick.

  It actually helped that the bones were notched and fragmented in places. She’d hooked the femurs onto the top of her jeans where they rubbed uncomfortably against her skin. She’d tucked a couple of the ribs into the straps of her bra, and others were woven through some holes in her t-shirt - and she’d made a few extra ones to stick another couple through. A pair of humeruses were poking up the short sleeves too. A tibia and a fibula protruded her left and right socks respectively, and she’d tucked as many of the foot bones as she could into and under her laces.

  The skull was the most unpleasant part: she’d needed to cave in the back enough so that she could fit it over her head like a helmet. The jaw had nowhere to fit but the rest of it covered the majority of her face.

  In order to put the final touches on her disguise, she held the pelvis in place with both hands - it had been cracked in two - and simultaneously tried to wedge a radius in each palm that would cover her forearms.

  She could only move at a shambling shuffle without the risk of it all falling apart, but she supposed that might add to the performance.

  For someone at the edge of her endurance, swaying from lack of food and water, trying not to twitch as she walked towards things that would tear her apart if they recognised her as living, she thought she was doing pretty damned well.

  ...of course her back was uncovered. There’d been no way she could find to get the vertebrae to stay in place.

  …and she was clearly human beneath the bones.

  …and fewer than half the bones were actually in the right places.

  But somehow, this seemed like the best chance.

  —

  Breathing so shallowly she could have been mistaken for the dead, Marie shuffled closer to the tent, inch by inch.

  Even with her [Silent Steps] the bones rattled.

  She kept to the very edge of the ruined houses - keeping her back to what was left of the walls - stopping every time a skeleton came within arms length.

  Beneath the skull-mask her eyes were wide, pupils dilated as she tried to take in everything, desperate to notice any danger before it came too close.

  All the while…shuffling.

  So focused on the threats was she, that she didn’t realise she’d made it to her tent until her leg bumped up against one of the pegs, not fixed in the ground but caught in the rubble.

  She froze, heart pounding, as the gentle impact nudged the fibula out of her sock and it clattered to the ground.

  A couple of nearby skeletons shifted in her direction, but when nothing else happened they seemed to lose interest and returned to their mindless shambling.

  Slowly. So slowly that she could almost sense the light growing dimmer, she crouched in front of the tent, making herself small, laying bones down whenever she thought the closest undead weren’t ‘looking’.

  And backed into the tent.

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