Cavern of the Blood Zombies (2011) (20 page)

Mr. Iron-face was a competent, intelligent man who knew how to prevent blood zombies from becoming powerful, and he used a special method to remove the male corpse from the armor. Then he sealed the corpse inside a stone coffin and placed it in a nearby tomb of secondary importance.

Following the plan constructed for him by Mr. Iron-face, the Ruler of Dead Soldiers swallowed a harmless pill that he told everyone was deadly poison and pretended to die before the eyes of the emperor. Believing the Ruler could really come and go freely between the human world and the world of the dead and fearing his power, the emperor gave him a funeral much grander than those of any of the other noblemen in the State of Lu.

The Ruler of Dead Soldiers, while excavating the cave, had built a fanlike tomb on top of the Western Zhou imperial tomb. Because he was an expert grave robber, he set many cunning traps to mislead anyone who might come to the cave, including the trap of the Seven Deceptive Coffins, then hid himself in the tomb of the Western Zhou dynasty which he placed inside the thousand-year-old hydra-cypress.

Before he entered his own coffin, he killed every worker who was involved in this project by drowning them in the river. Then he poisoned the rest of his entourage, leaving only a man and a woman who were his two most loyal subordinates to place him inside the coffin. After these two people had completed their tasks, they committed suicide by taking poison.

By the time I finished reading I was convinced that most of the ancient corpses in the carcass cave we had found at the beginning of our journey had probably been killed by the Ruler.

“It doesn’t say what happened to Mr. Iron-face,” I asked my uncle, “Could he have been interred with the dead?”

Uncle Three shook his head and said, “That type of person is very clever. He must have known beforehand that the Ruler would kill everyone to prevent his secrets from being divulged. He would not so blindly let himself be buried with the murdered bodies.”

“Of course not,” Poker-face muttered. “Because the person lying in that jade armor is not the Ruler of Dead Soldiers—it’s Mr. Iron-face.”

Once I heard this, a flash of light crossed through my mind as if I had come up with the solution myself. “So the two were switched at the last minute?” I asked.

Poker-face nodded. He looked at the corpse and said, “This person was incessantly scheming all along. He only wanted to use the influence of the Ruler of Dead Soldiers in order to achieve his own goal of immortality.”

“How do you know all this? You seem like you’ve lived through it all yourself.”

“Of course I didn’t live through it,” Poker-face shook his head. “A few years ago I went to rob a grave from the Song dynasty and found a complete silk manuscript from the Warring States Period. It was Mr. Iron-face’s autobiography. After he gave the Ruler all of the details of his plan, he set his own home on fire and burned his entire family to death. He threw in the body of a beggar so people would believe he had died in the fire as well, and then disguised himself as a beggar in order to escape detection. Finally, he waited for the Ruler of Dead Soldiers to be buried, and then easily sneaked into the tomb. He dragged the frail and powerless Ruler out of the jade armor and put it on himself. With all of the trouble the Ruler of Dead Soldiers had gone through, he ended up at last as somebody else’s pawn.”

Shocked and bewildered, I said, “When the Ruler’s corpse was dragged out of the armor, doesn’t that mean that created another blood zombie? So aren’t there two somewhere in this place?”

“Mr. Iron-face didn’t say anything about that in his autobiography. Perhaps the time that the Ruler spent within the jade armor was too short for him to have become a blood zombie.” Poker-face’s eyes looked a little uneasy as he embarked upon this theory. “Mr. Iron-face probably didn’t enlarge upon this in his autobiography because it was never an issue.”

I glanced at Poker-face and for some reason I felt he wasn’t telling us everything he knew. I looked over at Uncle Three and saw that he also looked doubtful. But after Poker-face finished speaking, he acted as if there was no more to be said. Recovering his usual emotionless countenance, he stood up and said, “It’s almost daybreak. We had better be going.”

“No way. We haven’t found the devil’s imperial seal yet!” Fats yelped. “You can see all the good stuff that’s in here— wouldn’t we be fools if we left without the treasures we’ve been seeking all along?”

Poker-face stared at him coldly and with a certain measure of hostility in his gaze. Fats shrugged and muttered, “All right, all right. But we have to get this jade armor out somehow, right? It’s probably the only one of its kind on this entire planet. I’m only looking out for all of our interests here.”

That seemed to make sense. Uncle Three slapped Fats on the butt and said, “Then why are you dawdling around in slow motion? Do what you have to do and let’s get out of this fucking place!”

Suddenly I lost all interest in what they were about to do, and did not want to help. I closed my eyes to take a break and felt a few drops of water fall on my face.

I thought it had begun to rain, opened my eyes to look, and there was the blood zombie’s severed head, peering over the side of the jade bed. His eerie eyes were fixed upon my own eyebrows.

Leaping up in fear, I saw the head roll off the bed and fall to the ground; it looked to me as if there was something hidden inside its skull. Fats moved to look more closely but he was pulled back by Poker-face who warned, “Don’t move. Let’s observe this.”

As Fats nodded, we all saw a tiny red corpse-eating bug chew its way through the zombie’s scalp and climb out. Big Kui saw it and screamed, “Shit! How dare this tiny fucker show his face anywhere near me?” He raised his crowbar, ready to crush the insect.

Uncle Three held him back, saying, “You brainless moron. This is the goddamn king of all corpse-eaters—if you kill it, you’ll be in big trouble.”

Big Kui stared at my uncle in disbelief and asked, “This tiny thing is the king of corpse-eaters? How did the big ones let that happen?”

Poker-face looked shaken; he tapped my shoulder and said, “Let’s get out of here now—if the king of the corpse-eating bugs is here, I won’t be able to control any of those little bastards. They’re extremely powerful when their leader is at hand.”

The little red corpse-eater began to make its creaking sound, flapped its wings, looked in our direction, and came flying straight towards us. Poker-face screamed, “It’s poisonous! You’ll die if it touches you. Get out!”

Uncle Three came rapidly to our side but slow-witted Big Kui reached out and instinctively grabbed the bug with his right hand. He stood as still as a wooden statue for a second and then let out a hair-raising shriek. The flesh on his hand instantly turned bloodred and the color quickly spread up his arm to his shoulder.

“He’s poisoned,” Fats shouted. “Hurry up—cut off his arm!” He grabbed at Poker-face’s sword, and taken by surprise, Poker-face let it fall. Catching it in midair, Fats sank to his knees, cursing, “Holy shit! How come this is so heavy?” He tried several times to pick up the sword but couldn’t manage it.

It was too late. Big Kui was in such agony that his limbs began to twist convulsively. In only a few seconds, his entire body turned scarlet as if all of his skin was suddenly melting into lava.

He looked at his hand, opened his mouth to scream, and was unable to utter a noise. Poker-face saw that I wanted to go over and help, and pulled me back, saying sternly, “You can’t touch him. Once you touch him, you’ll die!”

Big Kui saw us backing away as if we were looking at a monster and became even more petrified. He rushed over to me with his mouth wide open as if shouting, “Help me!” I was too scared to move so Uncle Three dashed over and pulled me aside. Big Kui then jumped at the air like a madman and leaped towards Panzi. Panzi was in such bad shape that he couldn’t react fast enough to save himself so Fats cried out and grabbed my gun. Knowing he was going to open fire, I began to fight with him to get it back and in the struggle, the gun went off.

We all heard the gunshot that struck Big Kui in the head. His body shook and he dropped to the ground.

A buzzing sounded in my head, and I fell to my knees. Everything was happening too fast. A minute ago I had been perfectly okay and now I was another person. My mind went blank and I had no idea of what to do.

The red corpse-eater made another creaking noise and, flapping its wings, crawled out of the palm of Big Kui’s hand. Fats muttered to himself as Poker-face shouted, “Don’t!” But it was too late. Fats had already run over, picked up the serpentine box and smashed the bug flat.

For a time not a sound could be heard in the cave. Then Poker-face abruptly picked up some stone dust from the ground and scattered it all over his body. He yelled, “Come on quick or it’ll be too late!”

Fats looked around—nothing had happened. Surprised, he asked, “Why are we in such a rush?”

His voice had hardly faded when the dead silence in the cave was quickly filled with noise. Countless creaking sounds came from all directions. Then we saw from the openings on the cliffs, both large and small, one, two, three, ten, a hundred…an uncountable number of green corpse-eaters poured out. The scale of their empire could not be described by any words in any human language. They gushed out in wave after wave, ones in the rear crawling on top of the ones that led the way. They came in swarms, blotting out the sky and covering the earth.

I was stunned at the sight of them but Uncle Three smacked me on the head and shouted, “Run!”

He picked up Panzi and carried him on his back. Fats was still obsessed with the serpentine box and turned back to rescue it. Uncle Three yelled, “Aren’t you worried about your goddamn life?” Seeing it was impossible to reach the box, Fats grabbed the gold-trimmed silk scroll instead and stuffed it in his pocket.

We all scrambled up the tree, grateful for the many concave and convex spots on the leafy branches, making it an easy climb. At the same time, all the corpse-eaters had surged toward the bottom of the tree—I looked down and saw the entire base of the hydra-cypress was covered with a green swarm. If anyone of us fell, not even a splinter of his bones would be left.

The corpse-eaters gathered together, and suddenly began to leap upward. They were much faster at climbing trees than we were and they were soon at our ankles.

Fats, climbing in front of me, turned and asked, “Didn’t you say that weird guy’s blood was more powerful than mosquito repellent against these creatures? Why don’t we spill a little of it to use now?”

My mind was still reliving the scene of Big Kui falling down dead just a moment ago. I simply didn’t care about anything Fats had to say. He saw I had no intention of discussing his suggestion and muttered, “Fuck your mother.” Suddenly I felt a sharp pain on my leg—a corpse-eater had bitten me on my calf. I kicked it off and looked down again at what resembled a pot boiling with corpse-eaters, all scrambling their way up the tree.

Uncle Three yelled from above me, “Explosives! There’s a bag of explosives on the side of the jade bed!”

I asked, “Where?”

Uncle Three cursed, “You were sitting by the goddamn edge of the bed and you don’t remember seeing it—it’s on the left side.” I looked down and could only see an ocean of corpse-eaters. Their bodies had already buried the jade bed and the bag of explosives. Firing a few gunshots, I hit perhaps only a dozen among thousands of the bugs. Then I saw Poker-face take a bunch of matches from his pocket, light them and throw them down at the spot where we knew the bed was.

Although the corpse-eaters were no longer deterred by Poker-face’s blood, they were still terrified of fire. Once the flaming matches hit the ground, the insects quickly retreated and formed a huge open circle, leaving the backpack with its load of explosives exposed to view.

A few bugs clung to Fats’s butt and he screamed, “God damn it! Light those firecrackers quickly. I can’t hold on any longer!”

Panzi shouted from above, “Shit! No way. There’s too much firepower in that bag—blow it up and we’re all going to hell!”

More and more corpse-eaters had crawled up the tree and I knew that to hesitate now meant a slow and agonizing death for all of us. I screamed, “Who cares at this point? If we die, let’s die quickly!” Gritting my teeth, I fired at the bag.

The explosion went off immediately. I heard a loud crash, wobbled a bit, and felt like my chin, butt, and thighs were all hit by a pile driver at the same time. My whole body soared from the force of the blast, then I collided heavily with God-knows-what. My head was whirling and reeling. My throat turned wet, and I spat out blood. Everything before my eyes went black, there was a faint ringing in my head, and I couldn’t hear a thing.

It was a while before I could prop myself up. I looked and saw that many corpse-eaters below us had been blasted into smithereens, I looked for my companions but saw nobody. Hurriedly, I moved my arms and legs to continue my ascent.

Because I had coated myself with a layer of the dust from the stone platform, the devil-armed vines moved away from me in droves, but there was a new wave of sound below. I looked down to see the corpse-eaters again surging forward. They were crawling rapidly and I knew I had to keep going no matter how much pain I was in. Closing my eyes, I climbed upward like a crazed baboon.