It hurt like a son of a bitch. I’d wrenched one leg on the way down. My ankle felt like it had been sprained, same one the stupid rag monster had torn up earlier. I wasn’t going to win any races, but there wasn’t time to whine about it. “Yeah.”

He pulled me along, through the ruined gardens, through the evil swirling fog, and away from the breached wall. “You’ve got no idea how much it sucks being in the spirit world watching my people get their asses kicked in the world of the living and not being able to do anything about it. We can’t see everything, but we can watch those that we’re close to a little. We’re still in this fight, we just haven’t been allowed to participate yet.”

The red haze in my head had cleared a bit, enough to know that I wasn’t imagining this. I’d been rescued by a dead Monster Hunter. And judging from the gunfire in the gardens, he’d brought friends. “We?”

“See for yourself.”

I was still blinking away someone else’s blood so it was hard to see clearly, but there were several men waiting ahead of us. Some were dressed in modern MHI armor, but a few were wearing armor that seemed more old-fashioned, and a few were even in the archaic high-necked leather suits that I’d seen Bubba Shackleford in. They seemed somehow blurry. The strong winds didn’t so much as muss their hair. I could have swore that it was Chuck Mead that gave me a small nod as we passed, but Chuck had died at DeSoya Caverns.

“Terminate these insect assholes with extreme prejudice,” Sam ordered. “Be ready for him to throw anything at us. He will not let up. Keep the living safe as long as possible. They’re counting on us. Move out.” The ghostly figures faded away and were gone.

Sam carried me around the corner, where there was a bit of shelter from the screaming wind, and set me down with my back against a low wall. He squatted next to me, looking remarkably good for a dead man. I rubbed the blood off of my face and realized with a shock that the blurriness of his features wasn’t due to crap in my eyes at all. Everything else in the world was sharp and focused, but the lines that made up Sam seemed to flicker. “How’re you feeling?”

“Confused.”