Armageddon Outta Here - The World of Skulduggery Pleasant Read Free Page A

and he brought them up the hill, over the heads of the foul-tempered dead.
    “I’m out,” said Hopeless, returning his pistols to his belt. His rifle, a Sharps, fell into his waiting hands and he brought it to his shoulder and resumed firing.
    Rue was next, and he made his Winchester sing, using the butt whenever a corpse got too eager. Shudder had the shotgun, a double-barrelled monstrosity he liked to call Daisy. He fired that from the hip, blowing apart any zombie dumb enough to go up against him. The others all had Henrys, except for Pleasant himself, who favoured the Spencer. They dug in their pockets for shells, reloading as fast as they were able, but it was clear there were more zombies than there were bullets.
    A big zombie, a man who’d died scarcely two weeks before, charged into the circle and the circle split apart. Any rational mind watching might think that this’d be the moment to panic, but the Dead Men went about their business, hurried but calm, knowing that one mistake, one fumble or misfire, could lead to being swarmed and torn apart. They dodged among the grasping hands, firing and lashing out, reloading whenever they had a moment.
    One by one, rifles were dropped and balls of fire flew. Coloured streams of light burst from Vex’s hands, sizzled right through necrotic flesh. Rue went to work with his bowie knife and Hopeless took out that machete of his. Only Shudder was still firing, his pockets providing a seemingly endless supply of shells.
    “To the church,” Pleasant shouted when it became clear they were about to be overrun, and each of them started making their way back up the hill.
    A wave of his hand opened the double doors and they grouped together once more, backing into the shelter of the Lord. But the Lord must’ve been busy that night, or else He was sleeping on the job, because there was no respite in here. The carnivorous corpses kept coming, clambering over the pews, and the Dead Men kept backing up, shoulder to shoulder. They slowed their retreat some, only stopping when they had to, when the sheer numbers forced them to.
    Bespoke gestured behind them and the makeshift altar and the pulpit slid to the side, out of their way. By the time they reached the single door at the other end of the church, every zombie still moving was packed inside.
    At Pleasant’s signal, Hopeless kicked open the door, held it for his friends, and the Dead Men turned and got the hell out of there. Shudder was last, but instead of running, he turned in the doorway and pulled open his shirt. Pleasant, Bespoke and Ravel held out their hands, forming a wall of solid air, keeping the zombies from getting at their friend. They dropped the wall when Shudder nodded. The zombies rushed forward.
    There are types of magic that are easy, relatively speaking, that take no particular toll on the sorcerer using them. They’ll get tired, sure. They’ll get worn out, and drained. That’s what happens when magic is used. Same as anything a body does.
    But then there are types of magic that demand a price. Anton Shudder’s magic was one such. The risk he took every time he used it, the pain and anguish it caused him, were immense. Few people ever mastered that discipline of magic. There were those who said it could never
be
mastered. Shudder himself was one such person.
    His gist burst from his chest – a screaming, squawking, nightmarish version of Shudder himself. It was made up of every bad thought and feeling the man possessed, and by the look of the fangs and the claws and the madness, those bad thoughts were many, and resourceful. Attached to Shudder by a twisting stream of light and dark, it went at the zombies like they were the things it hated most in the world. Which, at that moment, they were. It went through them and over them and back again, that stream looping over itself like an ever-growing snake. The zombies, with no room to duck even if they’d had a mind to, were reduced to tatters.
    Shudder’s