Salt Storm: The Salted Series: Episodes #31-35 by Galvin, Aaron (top 5 books to read TXT) 📗

slaver’s den with as a Sancul had been emptied now. The air stank of familiar cold and damp, reeking of death and decay.

Kellen stood in the middle of the slave cage that once held him, its door conveniently unlocked and open. A lone torch flickered just beyond the threshold, and it illuminating the surrounding slave cages.

All were filled; packed tight with the corpses of drowned Selkie fighters, some of them near the age of children to Kellen’s mind. Their glazed, milky eyes were opened, lidless, and forever staring as they lay slumped atop one another in death. Seals and sea lions lay among their human counterparts also, a collection of bloated bodies, all stiff and unrelenting. Like a painted portrait of gothic horror, all were held motionless in death’s final, cold embrace.

Until they weren’t.

The dead began to move – a twitching from one of the drowned boys at first, something that Kellen told himself could not be.

The ghostly movement grew, spreading like wildfire among the rest, the seals and sea lions catching too. The corpses of man and beast all began to rise, their bones cracking as they did with some semblance of necromantic life returned to their frozen joints.

Kellen’s breath caught in his throat when some of the dead began to notice him in opposite of their cage. More even than their hollowed looks, the silence with which they stood and stared at him needled the fear in him deeper still. He screamed when the first of the rising dead began to press against the bars, their voices hoarse and moaning, their arms extending out in reach as if they might cross the gap between the cages and welcome him into theirs.

Kellen sprinted from his cage before the masses could follow the others’ example to block his escape. He snatched up the torch from its holding upon the wall, fleeing up the row.

The moaning from the dead grew louder in the darkness he left behind.

Their voices followed him as he went, his side paining as he searched for an escape, traversing the labyrinth of tunnels and staircases. For each time Kellen deemed that he recognized his location amidst the maze, the dungeons mocked his scattered memory all the same. Each turn and new room looked as unfamiliar as the last, and all filled with more cages of the Selkie dead, all reaching for him through the bars that held them back.

When Kellen glanced over his shoulder at a sudden, nearby moan, one of the dead succeeded in grabbing his left arm. The corpse’s long, sharp nails dug into his flesh.

Kellen reacted, slapping at the claw-like hand, pulling away and howling as the corpse’s fingernails rent his skin.

The fresh blood streaking down his bicep seemed to whet the appetite of the other undead.

Behind him, a Southern Elephant Seal with stab wounds littering its carcass leveraged its massive weight against the bars. The force of its massive form, along with the combined might and wall of the Selkie dead broke one of the cage doors from its hinges. The iron clanged against the cobbled stone, the corpses falling over one another to empty out in continued pursuit of Kellen. Unlike the zombie films he had watched in his life on land, those featuring the slow-walking dead easily pushed aside and with little true danger to afflict the living, the Selkie dead hunting Kellen now arose and ran with speed to match his own.

Don’t look back, you idiot! Run! Kellen screamed at himself, relenting his gaze of the dead, searching for any means of escape ahead. He bounded toward a spiraled staircase of stone, then flew up the steps, two at a time. Always ahead of him up the stairs, a pale, greenish light strengthened for each spiraled turn he made. His side ached as he continued in the ascent, his ribs paining with the feeling as though someone stabbed at them over and again.

The scurried footsteps echoing up the stairs below pressed him onward.

Come on, come on! Kellen powered through the pain, the muscles in his thighs throbbing at the never-ending climb. I’ll fight for air. Kellen swore, continuing his climbing for escape, repeating the mantra he had once heard from a fellow slave. I’m Salted. I’ll make it back!

Coming around another spiral, Kellen reached the top of the staircase.

An open door lay before him with a pair of lanterns attached to either side, both filled with blazing, greenish light. Darkness lay within, the lantern lights and even the shadows they cast all consumed by that which lived across the threshold.

Goose-pimples prickling over his body, the hairs on Kellen’s arms raised at the notion of entering into the next room.

The voices and movement of the chasing dead below grew louder still for every passing moment.

With his dislocated shoulder continuing to throb in echo of that which he felt in his sides and legs too, Kellen abandoned his instincts to turn and fight. He barreled across the open door’s threshold, his torch illuminating a larger room within. Kellen wasted no time in discernment. He whipped around the dungeon door, using all his momentum to close it before the dead could follow. His speed and weight helped to slam the heavy, oaken door to close.

A pale and withered hand shot forward to halt him from the movement.

Kellen’s attempt carried his actions through, slicing off the corpse’s arm when the dungeon door slammed home. The creature’s arm fell unmoving at Kellen’s feet. He grappled with the vertical wood beam attached to the door next, yanking it down to fall in place and brace the door closed. Had he done so a second later, the dead should have succeeded in knocking him free of the door. Instead, Kellen breathed a momentary sigh of relief when the masses thumped and slammed against the opposite side, the door continuing to hold, despite their added attempts and loathsome moans.

Kellen moved away from it, catching his breath, his torch held steady in front of him in the event that