Live and Let Drood

accumulated weight and numbers; but I’d just break their arms and throw them away again. Sometimes, several of them at once would hang on to my arms, and I could feel their squirming hands through the armour like bloated wet spiders. And then I’d throw them off me so violently they left their hands behind and I had to scrape them off me. Torn off heads rolled back and forth on the bare floorboards and I kicked them around like footballs. Sometimes the mouths still moved, jaws opening and closing as though trying to say something. I didn’t listen. It wasn’t going to be anything I wanted to hear.
    I struck them down, I tore them apart, picked them up and threw them away. And laughed while I did it.
    Inevitably, some of the dead got past me, ignoring me to head straight for Molly. Probably seeing her as an easier target. More fools, them. I caught glimpses of Molly through the fog as I fought, her standing her ground, her face calm and thoughtful as she lashed out at them with all the magics at her command. She called lightning and it stabbed down through the fog, blasting bodies into pieces and setting others on fire. But some of them were so damp, so saturated with water from their time in the sea, the flames couldn’t get a hold. Steam boiled off them, but they kept going. She gestured sharply, and some of the dead just exploded, chunks of rotting flesh flying through the air like soft shrapnel. The explosive spells worked well, but I knew how much that kind of magic took out of Molly. She could only target one dead man at a time. And there were so very many of them.…
    They pressed forward, reaching out to her with cold implacable hands, and she had no choice but to back away. She threw up a shimmering protective screen between them and her, and the dead men hesitated. Molly forced out a series of powerful Words, and the base of her screen dug deep into the floorboards, securing it in place. It had been powerful enough to hold off the shades in Egypt, but the raiseddead were more solid. They pressed right up against the protective screen, throwing all their weight against it, and as more and more joined in, they slowly forced the shimmering screen back inch by inch. The screen’s energies burnt dead flesh where it touched, but they didn’t care. They couldn’t feel it. They forced the screen back through sheer weight of numbers, and Molly had no choice but to back away before it.
    The dead shouldn’t have been able to do that. They were just bodies. But Crow Lee had put a power in them that would not be denied.…
    And it happened that I looked back just at the moment when the screen collapsed and the dead surged forward, reaching out for Molly. The fog seemed to hold back just so I could see it. And just like that, my cold and vicious rage fell away from me. Molly was in danger, and that was all that mattered. I turned round immediately and fought my way back through the army of the dead, desperate to get to Molly before the dead could get to her. The dead between us immediately closed together, blocking my way with their bodies, soaking up my increasingly desperate blows with their yielding flesh. And even though I struck them down and threw them aside, there were just so many of them. I’d allowed myself to be drawn away, separated from Molly. I surged forward with all my strength, smashing through bodies like they were made of paper, and cried out to Molly.
    “Hold on, love! I’m on my way! Hold on till I can get to you!”
    She heard me; I know she did. She looked right at me. But I was so far away and there were so many of them almost upon her. Both of us knew there was no way I could get to her in time. I screamed so hard it hurt my throat, fighting desperately to throw off the dead as they clung to me, grabbing at my legs to bring me down. I fought on, knowing it was useless. Knowing they were going to hurt her and kill her and drag her off with them down into the depths of the sea. I knew there was nothing I could do and I thought I’d lose my mind.
    But fortunately she was Molly Metcalf.
    She yelled out to me to brace myself, and immediately I stopped fighting and grabbed on to the safety railings looming up out of the fog before me. I grabbed on with both hands, ignoring the dead men as they hammered at me, trying to pry me loose. They swarmed all over me and I ignored them and just hung on. Praying for a miracle.
    And Molly came through. She carefully pronounced one really powerful