“YOU’VE gotta be freakin’ kidding me!”
Giganta-zombie stands over a good thirty-five feet tall. It’s way, way bigger than Boneless Ham. Naturally, its feet are large enough to hold up all that bulk and will undoubtedly turn us into splatter pancakes if it steps on us.
“Get that little brat! The world will return to being ours if she’s taken out of the picture!”
“It just had to be me, didn’t it?!”
I knew it. I so knew it, but never have I wished so hard in my life that I was wrong. Lex kicks his feet against Vianta’s flank, pulling tight on her reins to change direction. KA-BAM! KA-BAM! KA-BAM! Footsteps that sound more like small explosions follow right behind us. Vianta is doing her best, but Giganta-zombie is only getting closer.
If someone could just take Jela down while her pet’s preoccupied!
My slim hopes are dashed by the woman being smarter than she looks—two clay zombies are protecting her on both sides. Black fog swirls around them, giving them a different aura from the clay zombies we fought earlier.
Meanwhile, Giganta-zombie bends down and sweeps out its right arm. I crush myself as close to Vianta’s back as I can go under Lex. Cracking, creaking, and snapping noises—the sound of trees and branches being mowed down—blare around me. The massive shadow passes over our heads. We just barely escaped a direct hit.
We are, however, hit by the raging gust that directly followed the attack. I’m knocked off balance, but Lex’s arms hold me up, preventing me from falling off Vianta. After a relieved breath, I shoot a weary look behind me. Giganta-zombie is still gunning for us.
“It’ll catch up at this rate!”
I don’t know what face Lex is making because he’s behind me, but his silence speaks volumes—he has no good ideas.
“Miss Priestess!” calls a young voice unbefitting of the battlefield. Sir Oden has his horse, with Pino on it, gallop parallel to Vianta.
“Pino?!”
“Go to that cabin! It shouldn’t be able to attack there!”
Jela did call that place her “love nest.” She’ll surely stop her Giganta-zombie from destroying it. I feel bad for putting the king in danger, but at the rate we’re going, my only other future is being squashed or catapulted to my doom.
“Lex!”
“As you command!”
Vianta reverses directions again. Giganta-zombie is so close I can see it only from the waist down, which makes me realize just how big it is all over again. I just know if I were using my own legs, I’d be too scared to run. I’m glad from the bottom of my heart that I’m riding Vianta. Or at least I was, until now. I wish she’d stop! Why is she running straight at Giganta-zombie?!
“Hey! Why aren’t you going around it?! We’re gonna die! DIEEEEEEEEE!”
“We are going to break through between its legs!”
“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”
Giganta-zombie lifts its right leg to stomp on us. A building-sized foot is descending over my head. A few seconds more and we’ll be literal toast—and we pass through just before that happens. As the ground shakes like an earthquake, we pass by the zombie’s left leg, which had become its pivot leg.
“My heaaarrt…”
My heart is hammering in my chest. The monstrous strength of Giganta-zombie makes this my closest call yet.
“You little ants! Hurry and smash them, my lovely!” Jela’s orders send Giganta-zombie into a frenzy after us.
We had distanced ourselves from that love-nest cabin during our previous escape. It’ll take some time to get back to it. That might give her enough time to figure out our plan to use the cabin as a shield and come up with a counterplan.
My fears are needless, though, because Sir Oden starts shouting at Jela, distracting her. “Listen to me, Jela or whatever you call yourself! You’ve probably blinded yourself to it, but His Majesty and Queen Lia were a very intimate and loving couple! So loving that they have gone down in history as the ultimate husband-wife team since Grantz Kingdom was founded!”
I get it. He’s trying to get under her skin by forcing her to hear about the king and queen’s lovey-dovey relationship. Oddly enough, it doesn’t have as much of an effect on Jela as I had thought.
“Are you trying to provoke me?! I won’t fall for such a cheap trick!”
“Allow me to relate to you the special words His Majesty used to propose to Lady Lia that I wheedled out of him when he was drunk! Ahem! ‘You are more beautiful than any other! In heart, mind, and body! I would have found you no matter how far you may have been from me—’”
“Damn old goat! Don’t lie through your yellow teeth! There’s no way that cow was more beautiful than me! I’ll kill you!”
For a moment, I feared his plan wouldn’t work, but it turned out to be easier than expected to get Jela worked up. While she is getting all “passionate” over Sir Oden, we almost get within reach of the so-called love nest. Being noticed won’t be a problem for us now. Actually, not being noticed will be the problem.
“Hey! Lady! Is it okay for Giganta-zombie here to keep going like this?!” I call out.
“HUH?! Of course it’s okay! Yes, keep going, my lovely! Crush that little twerp underfoot— Ack! No, it’s not okay! Wait! HOLD UP! MY LOVE NEEEEEEEST!”
Giganta-zombie’s already-lifted foot stops midair as Jela shrieks. It’s my little secret that my heart nearly jumped out of my chest when she didn’t notice what was happening right away. Jela exhales, thoroughly relieved that she stopped her pet in time too.
Vianta uses that opening to gallop over to Giganta-zombie’s massive foot.
“Take this!”
I smack my right hand along that foot. Blinding light radiates from the gigantic three-story-house-sized body. The sheer size of the zombie means the light covers the whole area in bright white.
Too bad I can still clearly hear Jela’s deranged shrieks of “You tricked meeeee, twerrrrrrrp!”
As the light disperses, seams run over Giganta-zombie’s body like the outlines of puzzle pieces. Each piece falls away, and a variety of animals roll out, dropping onto the ground like it’s literally raining cats and dogs. Every animal is covered in a thick pink mucus. My stomach turns just looking at that slime; if I can avoid it, I’d rather not go near them.
“Blurgh,” I throw up a little in my mouth.
“For a moment, I thought we were doomed…” Lex admits.
“We somehow made it through,” I agree, holding my hand over my mouth to stop from puking.
“Indeed. All thanks to Vianta here.” Lex gently strokes Vianta’s neck.
All of a sudden, the clay zombies guarding Jela rush at us with breakneck speed. They close the distance crawling on all fours across the ground and wrap around Vianta’s legs. Spooked, Vianta bucks wildly, throwing both Lex and me off.
“Lady Mizuha!”
Lex protectively hurls himself under me. Thanks to quick thinking on his part, my body doesn’t slam into the ground, but greater danger is already upon us. One of the black fog–shrouded clay zombies lunges for my throat. Lex brandishes his already-drawn sword, intercepting the attack.
“Lex!”
The clay zombie’s onslaught has a lot of weight behind it. Lex’s face is twisting with the strain. I have to get in there and purify the zombie before—
My thoughts are interrupted by an imminent attack.
“Everything will go back to the way it was if I kill you!” Jela, propelled from behind by the black fog, slips past Lex and is heading straight at me. Her long, sharp bladelike claws are within inches of my throat. She’s coming in so fast I can’t escape.
Why now?! We’ve come so close!
Resigned to die, I slam my eyes shut. A dull thud comes immediately after. What in the zombie apocalypse happened?! I promptly open my eyes to find Jela collapsed on the ground in front of me. Out of the corner of my vision I see a statue of a high school girl—by which I mean a statue of me—rolling on the ground. Could it be—
“Divine punishment!” declares a clear, sonorous voice. In the direction of that voice stands Iris with her head held high and proud, triumph in her eyes.