It took a second for me to realize everyone was waiting on me for an answer. In the corner of my eye, I noticed Pants on the other side of the table beginning to manspread (thanks to her pants), slowly taking over the bench as she glared.
“I…” I glanced at Bryce. He sat straight, the picture of supposed confidence, but didn’t say anything. I had no idea how to go about saving the world either. “We will crush the undead scum like the vermin they are,” I announced with gusto.
Amazingly, everyone nodded, grinning like that was a valid plan.
Great. Perfect.
“And how will we do that, my lady?” Cuthbert asked. His enthusiasm was insatiable.
“By using inspiration from mighty warriors in days gone by.”Fake it till you make ithad gotten me shockingly far in life, so why stop now? “You guys ever heard of Leeroy Jenkins?”
Attention glued to me, they all huddled in, except for Pants, who’d taken way more than her fair share of the bench by now. Cuthbert and Winston had to keep wiggling over to accommodate her, but their earnest expressions never wavered.
“I do believe I ’ave herd of ol’ Leeroy,” the blacksmith mused. “In that new ballad. ’Eard a bard sing it last week, I did.”
“I sincerely doubt it,” Bryce said, his unhinged smile still stapled to his face.
“No, I think he’s right!” Winston said. “Weren’t he the one who single-handedly fought off the trolls at—”
Pants manspread a little too far and Cuthbert toppled off the end of the bench. He amiably crossed his legs and sat on the floor as everyone else continued their conversation about Leeroy Jenkins.
“Okay, okay,” I called over the increasingly impassioned discussion of a man whose one accomplishment had been shouting his own name while playing a video game and charging into a mass of enemies, resulting in the death of himself and his whole group of friends. Maybe not the best person to emulate. “The point is, if you call upon Leeroy Jenkins’s name in your time of need, legend has it you will become unstoppable, and everyone will live in wonder of your great works for eons to come.”
Everyone whispered Leeroy Jenkins’s name in awed and hushed tones.
This plan couldn’t possibly fail.
CHAPTER 39INWHICHWESTOPZOMBIE-TINGAROUNDTHEBUSH
BRYCE
Courtney’s plan was very simple and very stupid: march up to the army and threaten them until they went away.
So simple, it might work. Or, at least, that’s what my hero mouth told everyone. My Bryce brain told me we were going to die.
With Courtney on my right and four buffoons flanking us, we nobly stood together as the city gate creaked open—a side gate where no one could catch us, and the door only opened enough for us to squeeze through one by one. The blacksmith got stuck halfway, and it became A Whole Affair trying to get him out. The entire time, the skeleton army watched, which was really embarrassing.
At last, with Cuthbert pushing from the inside and the rest of us pulling tug-of-war-style on the other, he popped out like some kind of medieval Winnie the Pooh.
We reassembled our tough-guy formation and resumed our march, boots thudding into the soft grass as wildflowers swayed and bumblebees buzzed lazily through the pleasant spring air.
The stench of the undead was like roadkill on a hot summer day and only got worse as we approached. They stood motionless,wind flapping through the tattered remnants of their banners, their undead horses stamping flies off their rotting flesh. Some pesticide would’ve improved these guys’ quality of life—er, death.
Courtney came to a stop before the army, and with some bumping and jostling, the misfits formed a line behind her. She squinted against the sun like John Wayne gearing up for a shoot-out. “Hi,” she said. “I’m Courtney Westra of Lower-Middle-Class America, first of my name, rightful Chosen One, Protector of Nothing, Mother of… Pearl? Ruler of a Pretty-Okay Residential-Duplex, the Sunburnt, the Breaker of Toaster Ovens.” Face set, Courtney looked up and down the line of zombies before addressing them again. “What you guys are doing here is not so chill.”
“I don’t think their being chilly has anything to do with their wanting to burn our city,” Cuthbert piped up from the peanut gallery. “Though I do see how one might suppose so, fire being warm and them lacking skin and whatnot.”
Courtney turned slowly, and I sensed her wanting to glare. “Thank you so much for your contribution.” She’d apparently discovered, as I had, that if we made sarcasm sound sincere enough, we could sneak it through the potion filter.
“Right-ho,” said Cuthbert. “Mayhap we could barter some blankets and coats in exchange for them leaving us alone. Things to keep them warm, like.”
“Yes,” she said excitedly, like she was genuinely encouraging him. “Maybe you could throw in a strudel as a peace offering.”
Cuthbert rubbed the back of his neck and kicked the ground. “That be…” He pointed at Winston. “He makes the strudel, not I, though I’m flattered you mistook me for someone who could make such a fine thing as award-winning strudel.”
I diverted my attention to a skeleton standing a little way ahead of the rest—an exceptionally ugly bastard with a caved-in skull, a missing arm, and a long skin tag dangling from his chin that I desperately wanted to cut off. “What do you guys want?”
The skeleton didn’t blink. Partly because he had no eyes. But I also sensed he didn’t blink figuratively either. Instead, he slowly pointed to the city behind us, tilting his head to the side.
