You are Summoned

“Hey, get out of there and head to the cave!” I shouted to the gnomes inside the barn as I moved the mech forward to place it between them and the giant zombie.

The zombie crashed through the last of the house debris and stomped toward me. As fast as I could, I began triggering magic missiles. The missiles flew from the tubes and slammed into the giant, each shot tearing gouts of rotten flesh from the monster. I backed the mech slowly away as the people inside the barn fled.

If I could keep the monster at a distance, I would pick it apart with the magic missiles, but I didn’t like my chances if that thing closed into melee range. Behind me, an older gnome led a weeping young woman from the barn. Two small children followed right on their heels and the woman snatched them up, handing one to the older gnome. They weren’t breaking any land speed records with their tiny gnome legs as they fled, and the monster was closing the distance.

Just before the giant reached me, I began to spin the upper torso of the mech as fast as it would go, both bladed spears were held out to turn my mech into what I hoped was a giant blender. I felt the machine shudder as the giant crashed in. My left arm blade had struck the monster as it reached me, ripping open its chest and slicing through the rib cage. In retaliation, the monster grabbed the arm that had severely injured it and pulled.

The legs on one side of the mech were lifted off the ground and I heard metal snapping and the hiss of mana escaping from the tube things that helped power the contraption. The arm gave way, snapping off at the shoulder. My mech righted itself after the giant pulled the machine’s arm free. Using the severed mech arm as a club, the giant zombie started to batter my poor mech.

I continued to pump magic missiles into the monster, but its attacks with the makeshift club hit the launcher tubes I was using. The mount holding the tubes bent down at an angle and they could only hit the giant in his left leg. With my mech’s remaining arm, I stabbed the creature’s torso. The gears and metal of the arm squealed in protest as I forced the bladed spear deeper into the zombified body of the monster.

The zombie collapsed as my constant barrage of magic missiles into its leg finally broke through the bones. As it fell, the giant tore at the chest of my mech with its hands. Corrupted claws found a gap in the armor, and ripped off the cockpit door, removing any protection I had. Fetid air rushed into the cockpit, and with the zombie that close it was all I could do to keep from vomiting instead of piloting. I tried to rotate the torso of the mech to keep me from its teeth and claws, but the spear I had impaled in its body made moving the torso difficult.

Unable to stand on its broken leg, the giant started to pull itself up the mech using only its arms. The thing was impossibly strong, and all I could do was shove the spear deeper into its chest and continue to trigger magic missiles at it. With the zombie falling over, my magic missiles were now slamming into its face, one after the other.

I silently thanked the gnome that had decided on inscribing acceleration runes into the tubes, that little addition allowed the missiles to hit with incredible force. The first few shots blasted away the monster’s flesh, leaving the thick bone of the skull. After three more hits, the skull cracked. The next shot penetrated deep into the zombie’s rotting brain. As durable as the monster was, the brain hits were doing critical damage to it. In response, the zombie went berserk tearing at anything it could get ahold of.

The second arm of my mech was finally ripped free from the stress placed on it. My mech then began to topple over as the zombie ripped off one of the legs. The machine could stand on three legs, but it couldn’t do it with the giant’s weight pulling against it, pushing it off balance. Even as the mech collapsed, I continued to fire magic missiles. Most of the barrels on my mech had been bent or torn free, but there were a few that could still come to bear on my foe.

As the mech tipped over, I fell out of the cockpit. There were no safety straps or seat belts on the gnomish invention, so out I went, right toward the belly of the zombie. I hit the dead flesh, which helped cushion my fall, and I rolled off the zombie belly onto the ground, waiting for either the mech to crush me, or the zombie to grab me as a quick snack.

I was face down in the dirt and before I could turn over, the mech landed. Something sharp ripped into my left calf, and I was shoved further up against the now-still giant zombie. Every move pushed fresh pain into my calf, but I sucked it up, refusing to be suffocated by a fat zombie belly.

Pushing myself away from the zombie, I was able to take a deep breath. Instantly, the stench of the monster overpowered me, and I heaved out what seemed like everything I’d eaten in the last week. The whole time I was vomiting, I was scooting further and further from the monster, waiting for it to resume its attack.

The zombie was still not moving by the time I had crawled ten feet away from the wreckage. The further away I got from the monster the less of its stench I had to breathe in. The mech falling on it had crushed the monster, finally finishing it off.

Taking stock of my injuries, I could see that my left calf had been torn open by a jagged piece of the broken mech. If the mech had fallen just a few feet closer, it would have sliced me in half. The ragged wound was still bleeding, but the flow was slowing, and I shouldn’t be in danger of bleeding out. It was now standard practice for me to stash a few bandages in my pockets in case of summoning. I wouldn’t be able to run, but I could walk on my injured leg without too much pain.

After patching myself up as well as I could, I reviewed the situation. My earlier attack had cleared out the zombies in the area, and the farm was safe for the moment. The family that I had just rescued were still running toward the cave, taking a wide loop around the village to avoid attracting any zombie attention.

Zombies swarmed at the main gate of the village, but I could see Fitzfazzle’s mech was there, cutting down the monsters one after another. That other gnome, Flunzzlebump, was still making his way around the village wall from the other side, firing away at the zombie horde as he went. The cave was too far for me to make out any detail, but there were still three mechs standing guard at the entrance.

My mech was toast, maybe the gnomes could repair it if given enough time, but it wasn’t going to do anything for me right now. I needed to get back into the fight. These were real people being attacked, and every zombie I killed might mean a life saved.

The mech might not be functional, but nobody said I couldn’t take any of the surviving magic missile wands with me. I felt okay about fighting with my mace, but from my prior experience with zombies, I knew I was one infected bite away from joining their team. If I could stand back at a distance and pelt them with magic missiles, I could probably make a dent in their numbers.

Most of the tubes holding the wands had been bent or damaged in some way, and both arm mounted launchers were now just scrap metal from the damage the zombie had dished out while ripping them off. The shoulder mounted launchers had some tubes intact, but without any tools, it was hard to access most of them. In the end, I managed to pull and pry a total of five wands from the wreckage.

One of the wands had a small crack in it from my clumsy efforts at getting it out of the tube. Unfortunately, I couldn’t link to it with my mana, so that left me with four wands to work with. Each wand was fresh and hadn’t been fired, so I had a total of anywhere between 48 to 60 shots. That should be enough to help thin out the horde of attackers.

Before I could start walking my way back to the village, I felt the ground shake as another of the zombie giants approached. There was no way I could outrun the thing while limping along. From the way the zombies had swarmed the farm, they must have had some way to sniff out living creatures. Maybe if I masked my scent, the undead wouldn’t be able to detect me.

It couldn’t hurt, and if I was discovered I would be no worse off than if I tried to limp my way across the field. Where the mech had fallen on top of the giant zombie it had left a small space I could squeeze into between the mech and the zombie’s shoulder. The stench would be horrible up against the monster again, but I would be out of sight, and was counting on the smell to cover my presence.

I could feel the ground move with each step the monster made. It stopped somewhere behind the corpse I was hiding behind, and I really hoped it didn’t bump into my hiding place. If the corpse was jostled, there was the chance that the mech would fall on my head. Tying a bandage around my nose to help block out the smell, I tried with everything I had not to gag.

“So, the gnomes wish to bring their toys to play. No matter, we have more than a few ways of dealing with them,” A gravelly voice said from the other side of the giant corpse.