Norman the Necromancer

Before Norman went to retrieve his wayward experiment, he stopped at the cafeteria to get a snack since it was on the way to his destination. The cooks were gone for the day but Norman just headed over to one of the vending machines and picked something out. The grey wrappers that the vending machine food came in were labeled much like gron buildings, with generic titles.

Norman didn’t even bother reading the label as he randomly selected something. He tore the package open as he walked down the hallway. The food turned out to be a bland protein bar that made Norman wish he had purchased something to wash it down with. He did pause a moment and look back down the hallway, thinking he had heard something but there was nothing there.

“Must have been the janitor,” He mumbled, shoving the last of the food into his mouth.

It had been a rather exhausting day and Norman wished he could just head home and get some sleep. While sleep was ideal, he quickly dismissed the idea of turning around and going back. Finding the missing former President was too important though and he had just spotted the door he was looking for.

He hurried over to the door and used the code the President had sent him, leaving greasy fingerprints on the buttons. How a dry protein bar made his hands greasy was beyond him. He wiped his hand off on his pants as the door popped open, revealing… a fucking teleport pad.

Sighing, Norman stepped onto the pad and appeared in a similar closet-like room on the other end. When he opened that door, he found a massive warehouse filled with dead bodies lying on tables, waiting to be disposed of.

“At least I’m in the right place.”

From where Norman stood, he couldn’t see the end of the warehouse. Parts of the warehouse seemed to be sectioned off and huge steel columns interspersed the area at regular intervals, holding up the roof far above. But just in the small area Norman was able to see, there had to be tens of thousands of corpses.

The thought of collecting all of these bodies made Norman salivate a little and he had to check himself before he started drooling like an idiot. He was here to find a missing President, not fill his bags even more than he already had. Maybe after he found the President, he could gather a few.

Another thought struck Norman and he glanced back toward the door he had entered through. This place would be easy to get lost in, seeing how huge it was. It reminded Norman of those giant underground flood caverns that some cities built. Only instead of water, this one stored excess dead. Why the gron had so many unprocessed dead, Norman didn’t know and it didn’t concern him.

Norman pulled out his necklace that contained the magical crayon. As he moved amongst the endless rows of the dead, he would leave a mark. It was the only thing he had to keep track of where he had come from. After five minutes of searching, Norman spotted something out of the ordinary. He paused and backed up, turning down a different row. He stopped when he came to a table containing a dead jorik.

This was the first non-gron corpse that Norman had seen since starting his job. Norman looked around but saw no other non-gron or anything of note within sight. Not wanting to turn up the opportunity for a new corpse to experiment on, Norman quickly painted on his spell and stored the body.

“It’s a bit like shopping,” he mused.

That’s when norman heard a distant tink sound. He turned toward the direction of the sound but it seemed to come from behind one of those wall sections. Norman was going to call out but stopped himself. He wasn’t supposed to be down here, and he doubted anyone would be happy to find him here. Then again, Norman was pretty sure nobody was supposed to be down here other than corpses.

Deciding not to take any chances, Norman activated his armor. The feeling of the cold wet bone and tissues creeping up his body still made him shiver a bit but he got over the grossness of having some other being’s tissues covering his skin.

He also popped a metal ring with a tiny spike on it over his thumb. It had been sized to adjust to fit over his armor and he was glad the bone plates only covered the exterior of his hand. Ever since Norman had figured out how to use his Glimpse from Beyond spell without puncturing the eyeballs, he had trimmed his nails back to normal. The whole coke-nail thing was just so 70’s.

The metal ring was a replacement for having to pull out the pocket knife or use his nail every time he needed to draw blood for the Orb of Decay. And speaking of orb, Norman grabbed one of his most powerful ones just in case.

The rest of the orbs Norman kept clipped to his waist. He had taken steps to prevent any errant blood from accidentally activating them by simply dipping them in melted wax. It took no time at all to chip the wax off but kept him safe. It was also practically free.

Norman bent down and marked his path on the floor before cautiously moving toward where the sound had come from. He poked his head around the wall but didn’t immediately spot anything that stood out. Then he heard it again. A sort of metallic scraping sound, like someone had bumped up against one of the many tables.

It seemed the sound was echoing from farther down. So Norman kept looking around as he followed the wall, every now and then using the crayon to mark an arrow back the way he had come.

He could tell he was getting closer to the sound as it continued to get louder as he walked. Eventually, Norman came to another open section interspersed by columns, similar to the area where he entered at. But he didn’t see anyone. He was sure the sound was coming from somewhere in the room though. So Norman paused until he heard the sound, then he moved forward. This repeated until Norman was standing next to a table with a gron corpse on it, only this one’s hand was twitching back and forth erratically. It wasn’t the missing former president either.

Curious, Norman bent down to inspect the body.

“Should have figured I would find you amongst the dead.” Norman froze, slowly turning his head and spotting Eugene standing less than thirty feet away with a gun pointed at him.

Norman slowly stood and raised his hands in the air. Eugene already had a gun pointed at him and Norman didn’t want to test his armor’s defensive properties against a bullet.

“Gotta say, I’m a bit disappointed. It was far easier to locate you than I had estimated. It’s funny what information people will sell you for the right price. A couple of gems to a currency exchange agent. A few words to some shady cops, that were run out of their previous states, and boom. I had your home address and where you worked. You even left me markers that I could follow to find you down here.” Eugene sighed. “You know, you could have had a good life working for the Boss. But you decided to betray him, for what?”

“…”

“Oh, that wasn’t rhetorical. The boss wants to know. Be glad he did, otherwise I would have just shot you in the back without you even knowing that I was here.”

Norman was trying to think of something that would get Eugene not to shoot him dead here and now, when something a bit unexpected happened.

Eugene must have seen Norman’s eyes go wide as the man pivoted faster than a man his size had any right to. “What the…”

Some of the bodies on the tables behind Eugene had risen up and were staggering toward him. Eugene batted the first one away, smashing the zombie – yup, they were definitely zombies – into a nearby table. The noise only seemed to incite more nearby zombies and Eugene was forced to fire his pistol to keep the mounting hoard at bay.

What was Norman doing during that time, well, he was staring in shock. At least until a zombie bumped past him. Norman almost apologized for standing in the zombie's way before he jumped back with a high-pitched scream. The zombie gave him a look like, dude, what the hell before turning back toward where Eugene was and shuffling forward.

Norman looked behind him and almost every table nearby was waking up and heading toward Eugene. Not a single zombie seemed interested in Norman and it took him a bit to figure out why. When he did, he slapped his head. The blood powder he used in the potion. It was his. And Norman could think of no other reason that a bunch of zombies just so happened to be here. It had to be the missing president.

It was at that moment, Norman was supremely thankful that he had decided to cut his dependence on the jorik blood. He could test his theory later, but he needed to do something to help the zombies, as even with their collective numbers, Eugene was beating them back and making his way toward Norman.

“Oh, shit!” Norman ran perpendicular to the row Eugene was standing in as he readied the Orb he still held in his hand.

A shot rang out and something slammed into Norman’s shoulder, sending him tumbling to the ground. It was probably a good thing it had, the second shot pinged off the metal table where his head would have been a moment later.

Norman managed to keep hold of his orb, barely. He checked his shoulder. The bone armor was shattered in a spider web of cracks. Norman reached up and with a bit of force, managed to dislodge the bullet that hadn’t managed to break through his armor.

“Well, at least I know it's bulletproof,” he muttered as he crawled behind the tables as Eugene kept firing at him.

“You’re not getting away, Norman. I don’t care how many minions you throw at me.”

Minions? Norman supposed it did look like he was controlling the undead from Eugene’s perspective.

A bullet ricocheted off the floor nearby and tore a jagged line of pain across Norman’s cheek. He winced and pressed his hand against the wound, scrambling back behind the last table. When he took his hand away, it was full of blood so he quickly pressed it back against the wound. His other hand still held the Orb and it was active and pulsing.

Norman would only have one chance. He waited until he heard Eugene begin to reload. Then he rose to his feet and threw the orb as hard as he could.

Eugene wasn’t a fool though. The man grabbed one of the nearby undead and used it as a shield.

The Orb impacted the zombie’s body and detonated. Norman heard a grunt of pain from Eugene since he had wisely ducked back below the table after throwing the orb. It seemed Eugene wasn’t completely successful at blocking the spell. Norman expected the zombie to fall apart like everything else. But when Norman risked a glance out, he saw the creature's eyes filled with the same greenish-red light that the orb contained. And it grabbed ahold of Eugene’s damaged arm, biting down with a spray of blood.

Eugene screamed and kicked the zombie away, tearing it in half but it was too late. The energy contained in the zombie was transferred through the bite wound. Norman didn’t see much of what was going on, since he had ducked back behind the table, but going by the screams of pain coming from Eugene, he was not having a good time.

“This isn’t over you bastard!”

Norman felt a concussive force that threw him to the ground. When he looked up, he spotted Eugene flying in an arc through the air and away from him. Had he just jumped? Norman noticed Eugene was missing all of the flesh and muscle on his left arm up to the shoulder, leaving exposed bone. But Norman saw him toss away an empty bottle that he recognized as one of his potion bottles.

“Shit, that’s not good.”

Not that Norman wanted to marginalize this encounter with Eugene – he knew the man was dangerous – but what the hell was up with that escape line? That’s something a tacky villain would say as they made their getaway. Before eventually coming back to strike after the main character conveniently forgot about their existence. Not that Norman was likely to forget someone as dangerous as Eugene was after him.

Norman rubbed his head in frustration. He didn’t need the added complication of always looking over his shoulder and waiting for Eugene to strike. And Norman knew the next encounter would probably end up with him being dead. The only thing that saved him this time was the random pack of feral zombies, that were still milling about, and the fact that Eugene didn’t just shoot him in the back. Not that the man would likely make that mistake twice, Sin’s orders or not.

Pushing those issues aside, Norman pulled out a potion of his own and sucked it down, immediately basking in the relief it gave him. He was pleasantly surprised to see the potion fixed the cut on his cheek as well as the break in the armor on his shoulder. It even got rid of the bruise that he only now felt.

After his wounds healed, he quickly pulled out his phone and sent Toby and the President an emergency message about what just happened between him and Eugene. It was possible they might be able to stop the man from getting away.

He put his phone away and looked around. There were still dozens of zombies wandering about. Some were slowly heading in the direction that Eugene had gone.

“Dammit, now I gotta fix this mess too?”

Shaking his head, Norman headed over to one of the zombies. If he was going to have to clean this up, he might as well learn something from this mess.