That Risen Snow: A Scary Tale of Snow White and Zombies (Wattys 2014 Award Winner)

Chapter Twenty-Three

Captain Ritchards

CAPTAIN RITCHARDS INVENTORIES HIS grunts. Battson is scraped and bruised, but otherwise fine. A cut on Shrub’s forehead streams blood. Monk is relatively unscathed—too much to hope that a falling rock would break his jaw and silence his constant yammering. Hays’ right ear is bleeding. This is all that’s left of the Blue Meridian platoon.

He shivers, surprised by the mine’s cooler temperature. He and his grunts sit on the cave-in rubble. The dwarfs sit on the staging area floor, where the Page rocks slowly back and forth on top of a locker.

“So, we’re stuck here?” Battson says. “I’m just saying. Great plan, stumps.”

Ritchards smacks Battson’s shoulder. “Not helping. It’ll take them hours to dig through the tunnel. Plenty of time to organize a stand against them.”

“Agreed,” Grouchy says. “But first, let’s make sure no Horrors are in here with us.”

Ritchards bites back a smile at the bearded dwarf’s high-pitched voice. “What do you mean?”

Tchk. Tchk. Tchk.

Grouchy points at the Page. “That gash on your ankle. Were you bit?”

Cobb blinks his teary eyes. “I don’t know. One of those things came into my tent after you left. I threw a mirror and a trunk of clothes at it. The tent collapsed, and I crawled out. There were shards of mirror everywhere.”

Ritchards stands, and stars spiral in the periphery of his vision. What the hell is wrong with him? “If he was bit, he’d be one of those monsters now, right?”

“We call them Horrors.” Merry offers a crooked smile. “The undead ones, we’ve been calling the cold Horrors. If they bite you, it takes hours for the curse to overtake you. That’s what happened to Blushful.

“Explain,” Ritchards says, a ball of ice churning in his stomach.

“He was just weak at first,” Merry says. “His wound didn’t hurt, but was numb, tingling. Soon his body slowed down. He grew cold and tired, pale.” Merry smacks his hands together. “Then he turned into one of those hissing maniacs. We call them the hot Horrors.”

No. Dammit, no.

“We tried giving him raylee root,” says Snoozy, the new dwarf who’s staring hard at Merry. “But the patient was so impatient.”

The dwarf’s inflection and Merry’s darting eyes tell him that something’s amiss between these dwarfs. Something about this raylee root?

Tchk. Tchk. Tchk.

Ritchards eyes Cobb’s wound. “Does your wound hurt? Does it tingle?”

“No. Yes. I mean, it hurts quite a lot. It doesn’t tingle.”

Monk wipes the wound with a dirty rag. “Doesn’t look like a bite to me, Captain. And I know a thing or two about bites. My girl once had this pet rabbit that would—­”

“Then let’s not worry about it,” Ritchards says. He loses his legs and hides it by falling backward onto the rubble.

Tchk. Tchk. Tchk.

“The digging is getting louder,” Grouchy says.

Merry nods. “Closer.”

“Any weapons in here?” Monk rummages through a trunk. “If we’re going to be taking on that entire horde, we need more weapons. Oh! Do you have arrows? What am I talking about? Why would you?” He squats next to Grouchy. “Don’t probably fire a lot of arrows in the mining business, do you? But I’m wagering you have some more shovels?”

Grouchy grunts. “There’s another option.”

Ritchards blinks hard through wobbling vision. His heart flutters. “Go on.”

“We trap them in the northwest passage. There’s a doctor in the town downriver, in Abundance.”

“Dr. Killington? He told the Prince about your Snow.”

Grouchy frowns at that. “We think he can cure them.”

Tchk. Tchk. Tchk.

Battson waves his hands, casting flickering shadows over his battered face. “Why the hell would we capture these things? I’m just saying. We kill them. End of problem.”

Monk clears his throat. “The Horrors will be bottlenecked as they come through the cave-in. We can take them down one at a time.”

“Some of those Horrors are our friends,” Grouchy says, between clenched teeth.

“And the rest are our friends.” Battson points at the cave-in. “So don’t think—”

“No, Battson,” Ritchards says. “The rest are my grunts. I’ll decide what’s best for them. Besides, what do you think our Queen Theabella would say if we came home without her Prince? If we didn’t try everything in our power to cure her son?”

Battson lowers his head. Ritchards knows he’s a smart kid and a hell of a fighter, but he’s undisciplined. And he’s got a boulder on his back as big a whale. So much anger. Not unlike this dwarf Grouchy.

He motions toward the dwarf. “Continue.”

“You ever been in a mine?”

He shakes his head.

Tchk. Tchk. Tchk.

Grouchy grabs a fist-sized diamond from a split bag on the floor and scratches onto the wall a diagram of the northwest passage. While Grouchy is drawing, introductions are made. Monk helps Merry with Snoozy’s lacerated shoulder. The dwarfs all have worn eyes and numb faces.

Numb. Damn it.

It all happened so fast, back on the trail. Ritchards fingers the tear in his boot where, earlier, Cracker bit into the leather. His fingers come back wet with blood. He rubs the tingling, numb wound beneath.

Tchk. Tchk. Tchk.