I couldn’t examine her spells, so I had to rely on what she told me. I knew she had four spells, not including this new one. She had the heal spell everyone started with, Torch, Magic Missile, and Puddle Jumper, which she’d only tried once. She also had a tome of Minion Army she couldn’t yet read, and I had that tome of Wisp Armor.
“It’s called Second Chance. It costs 10 mana to cast. I can raise a monster from the dead. It has to be a lower level than me. They will fight for us for as many minutes as the spell’s level. The level is one, so it’ll only last for a minute.”
“Holy crap,” I said. “That’s badass. It’s a necromancy spell!”
“It’s disgusting,” Donut said. She shuddered. “The dead are gross enough. It’s much worse when they’re moving around. It probably groans and stuff, too. You know how I feel about groaning.”
I had a quick memory of being slashed at once while Bea and I were getting busy. It wasn’t very funny at the time, but we’d laughed about it later. Donut had gotten banned from the bedroom during sexy time after that. She’d howl at the door, and we’d have to put music on to drown her out.
“Whatever happened to killing them with style?” I said, trying not to laugh.
“One doesn’t have to resort to gore-themed violence in order to be stylish.”
“Yeah,” I said. “But imagine raising one of those dingoes back from the dead and using it to kill another dingo. And then raising that one too. You’d be like the Lucia Mar kid with her two dogs, but yours will be zombie dogs.”
Her eyes got huge. “This is the best spell ever.”
31
Brandon and crew were still bringing people into the safe room as the next episode premiered.
Right when the show started, the timer finally ran out. The world rumbled, and the ground under my feet shook. The shaking lasted but a second. I stopped and gazed at the number on the television screen. It flashed, going from just over two million to 1,292,526.
More people had made it down to the next level than I expected. Still, those numbers. Those goddamned numbers. I wished we didn’t have to look at them. In that brief moment, as I helped push a woman—her name was Elle McGibbons—in a wheelchair into the storm shelter, over 700,000 people died. A third of the remaining crawlers. The first floor had claimed a little more than 10 million people.
“Thank you, honey,” the woman said as I rolled her to the others. “Can you put Divorce Court on the television? My Barry used to watch that show. It reminds me of him.”
“I don’t think that show is on anymore, Mrs. McGibbons,” I said.
“That’s okay,” she said.
Above the number with the remaining crawlers, the countdown to level collapse blinked a few times then reset. Six days and counting.
“Six days?” Brandon said, coming to stand beside me. “Mistress Tiatha had said it would be ten.”
“Yeah, our guy said the same thing,” I said. “At least we know where the stairs are this time.”
As the scenes of carnage played out on the television—they were showing a man and a woman running from a three-headed baboon—I took stock of the room.
We’d only gained six more residents from the Waffle House safe room, meaning 24 of them had elected to stay behind. I thought about that for a moment. Good for them, I decided. They’d gained a measure of control in those last few moments. They went out on their own terms. Brandon said they’d all been singing when he’d last seen them.
Agatha remained missing. Chris sat in the corner, his head low. He might’ve been crying. I wanted to give the man space. Imani and Yolanda worked their way around the residents. Yolanda helped them to the bathrooms while Imani handed out crawler biscuits.
Donut paced the floor in front of the television screen, waiting for the second half of the program. We wouldn’t be able to watch Odette’s show, and we still didn’t know if we’d get any airtime on the main program.
“After everyone sleeps, I was hoping to get your help with something,” Brandon said.
I already knew what he was going to ask.
“You’re going to send them all down the stairs to the third floor early.”
“Yes,” he said. “They can’t train, so there’s no point in keeping them here.”
“What about you?” I asked. “Your levels need work.”
He shook his head. “We talked about it. All of us are going to go down. We’ll take our chances on the third floor. We don’t want to risk getting separated.”
On the screen, a woman screamed as her arm was bitten off by a monster that looked like an eggplant with teeth.
“We’ll scout the way and clear it out for you,” I said.
“Thank you,” Brandon said.
“Did you get anything good in your boss box?” I asked. He now had a bright, silver star next to his name in the interface, along with the rest of us.
He grinned. “I got a magic boomerang. Chris got some book of the club thing. Imani doesn’t tell us what she gets, and Yolanda received a new type of quiver.”
“There’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you about Agatha,” I said.
“Everyone, quiet! Quiet!” Donut called. “It’s time for the good part!”
The screen focused on that group of men from Africa. Their party name was “Le Mouvement.” They’d gone from 150 to about 80 after some internal strife. Several of the members sported skulls by their avatars now.
The show had helpfully added a graphic showing how much ammunition they had left. The 80 men were down to under 500 rounds. Hopefully they were training themselves in other weapon types.
Lucia Mar and her dogs obliterated a nest of brown, shaggy monsters before descending the stairs. I knew right afterward she’d been whisked away to appear on Odette’s show. She’d been on stage just before us, where one of her dogs had attacked a producer. The woman with the Valkyrie helmet had teamed up with a group of three more women. They worked together to kill a yeti borough boss thing before using the stairs to descend.
And just like that, there we were.
Beside me, Donut gasped as we appeared. We were on screen for less than 15 seconds. The program was playing scenes from multiple groups of crawlers, rapid-fire, all of them fighting bosses or running toward the stairs as the timer ran down. I knew some of these scenes must have played out just thirty minutes earlier.
It showed us huddled underneath the redoubt as Donut screamed, “Here it comes!”
The view changed to the ball of swine rolling up the ramp, getting stuck. It moved back inside our miniature fort as the brace broke and smashed Yolanda in the head. It showed the ball break apart, and then it cut to Donut screaming as she fired magic missiles point-blank into the tusklings. It ended with Imani making a sour face as she dropped the strap-on dildo on the floor.
All of our mugshots appeared. A moment, later, the show moved onto another group.
“They didn’t put Agatha’s picture on the screen,” Yolanda said. “Does that mean she’s dead?”
“I think that’s exactly what it means,” I said, my voice grim. There was no way the crazy old woman could survive down here on her own. Nobody had said it out loud yet, but we were all thinking it.
“Wait,” Chris said. Brandon’s older brother had a deeper voice, and it surprised me when he spoke. This was only the second time I’d heard him speak. “There’s more to it. She was edited out of the scene. She was next to me under the speedbump, but she wasn’t there when they showed it.”
“Oh yeah,” Brandon said. “Weird.”
“What does that mean?” Yolanda asked.
“Who the hell knows?” I said.
Donut was ignoring all of this as she hopped up and down. “Two shows in one day, Carl. Two shows! Maybe there is more, too. Do you think we’re on more shows?”