The City of Monsters

by Matthew McCollum

  As expected, they all noticed the glowing blue barrier instantly and jumped nearly three feet. Commendably, they didn't actually open fire, which he had been worried they might. Once he was sure he had their attention, he dropped the shield and mimed taking off headphones. The melano did so, but motioned for the others to keep theirs on.

  Cautious. Good.

  “There was a girl here earlier,” Derek said, not bothering with the niceties. Melanos had a reputation as diplomats, so he probably wouldn't like it, but he'd be far too polite to mention it. “A paladin. I'm told she's the one who dropped the roof. Where can I find her?”

  The big ursa blinked at him, then just stepped aside without a word.

  With him out of the way, Derek saw what they were protecting: Laura, sitting on the floor, weeping and clutching the ring she kept on a chain around her neck.

  “Laura?” he whispered, kneeling down next to her. She didn't respond, but she was whispering something he could barely hear. He leaned in closer.

  “It should have worked. Why didn't it work it should have worked why didn't it work...”

  He turned to the melano. “How long has she been like this?”

  The melano scratched his chin with a dull claw. “About... an hour? After she killed the singer, she called MC. MC called back, and she just...” He trailed off and shrugged.

  Derek nodded. That fit with MC's timeline, but did little to illuminate what happened.

  Regardless, they didn't have time for this. They needed to get to the 'sarian redoubt. In the worst case scenario, the melano could carry her, but Derek was hoping he could snap her out of this.

  He turned back to her. “Laura, we need to go.”

  She didn't respond, she just continued muttering and crying softly.

  “It should have worked. Why didn't it work it should have worked why didn't it work...”

  They didn't have time for this. But what else could he do? He was just about to order the melano to pick her up when he had a thought. Would it work? Probably not, but...

  “If she shoots me,” he said to the big kemo, “tell her not to feel bad about it.”

  Then he kissed her full on the lips.

  He expected her to react slower than she did. He had barely even made contact when she pulled back, and he felt the cold metal barrel of her Occisor pressing against his forehead.

  “Derek,” she said calmly, as if nothing was out of the ordinary. But her eyes were hard, and cold as ice. If he said the wrong thing, she would shoot me.

  “Laura,” he answered with a smile. “Good, you're ready to go.”

  She lowered the gun with a glare, dried her eyes, and stood. Derek rose as well, and she pointed at one of the survivors, a young black baseline.

  “Protect him with your lives,” she ordered the others. They nodded, understanding some significance Derek had missed. He shrugged. It wasn't important at the moment.

  “We need to head to the Necessarian redoubt,” he said. “All the singers should be dead, but keep the headphones on anyway.” He turned to Laura again. “Did you find out if we're immune?”

  She nodded but didn't elaborate. Good enough.

  They left from the ground floor. The doors were locked from the inside, so they were easy to open. By now, the back street was filled with smoke. The screamers were fanning out, seeking more victims. But this was still safer than out in the intersection, so they went around to the redoubt from the back.

  As they should have expected, the Necessarians had constructed their fortress in a cul de sac of buildings, putting their back up to the wall, so to speak. Some of the skyscrapers had entrances on their side, but they were all boarded up and locked. Necessarius taught its soldiers well.

  Cursing, Derek motioned for the others to set up defensive positions, with Laura and the kid in the center, while he called MC.

  “I need you to call the 'sarian in charge at the redoubt,” he said once she picked up. “We're around the back, and we can't get in.”

  She muttered something under her breath he didn't quite catch. “That's gonna be tricky. The screamers are making a push, and they blocked those ways pretty well. It would take too many men to open it up again.”

  Derek frowned. They couldn't just bash through. Even if we physically could, it would leave a massive gap in the defenses.

  “Are the inner doors unlocked?” Laura asked.

  He started. He had expected her to mope for a while longer. Apparently his kiss had pissed her off enough to bring her back to her usual self.

  “What do you mean?” MC asked. Derek had her on speaker.

  “There are the doors leading in from the street we're on,” she said. “And then on the other side, there are the doors leading directly into the redoubt. Are those blocked?”

  “No,” MC said. “The Old Wolf thought they might need to use the 'scrapers as a fallback, and kept them open. What's your plan?”

  “We can climb up the side of the building, go in through a window or the roof, and just come down.”

  Derek looked up at the building with a frown. It was a server farm—most of the structures in the area were. That meant it was pretty much just a sheer cliff face. There weren't even any windows.

  “I don't think we can do that,” he said.

  Laura shrugged. “They'll ditch the nailguns and air compressors. It'll be fine.”

  “The hunter, sure, but no one else.” None of the others had claws. They wouldn't be able to find any handholds.

  “One second,” MC interrupted. They waited, and she came back a moment later. “The 'scraper behind you is taller. Break in there, find a rope or something, and zipline across.”

  Laura was incredulous. “Zipline? Across an entire street? That's your suggestion?”

  “Better than expecting these guys to climb,” Derek said.

  “It's also a kemo 'scraper,” MC added. Looking at the walls, Derek could see that she was right. It had been built with climbers in mind, with a large number of cunningly-disguised handholds worked into the architecture. “And there are some strong outcroppings on the roof you can tie the line to.”

  “If nothing else, we can have the melano climb the server building and hold the other end,” Derek said.

  “I can hear you,” the kemo in question said in an annoyed tone. “And I have a name. It's Evangel. Evangel McDowell.”

  That name sounded familiar for some reason, but Derek put it aside for the moment. “All right then Van, did you hear the plan? What do you think?”

  “It's a good one,” he said. “My main problem is that I'm worried not all of us will be able to use the zipline.”

  “The biggest is you,” Derek said. He was seven feet tall with a width to match. He probably weighed three hundred pounds or more. “And you'll be climbing the other building, to catch the line.”

  “Not everyone here is an athlete,” Van said. “I mean I don't think they'll be able to hang onto the zipline. They're tired, and they're not used to so much physical labor.”

  “We'll worry about that later,” Laura said. “We can always rest on the roof. But right now we need to move.” She nodded at the street around them. “The screamers are getting closer.”

  Indeed, the smoke was becoming thicker, glowing like fog as the moonlight dappled through it, and Derek could hear—or rather sense—the zombies circling around the back of the redoubt to their location.

  Van nodded. “Good luck to you then, Honored Paladins.” He flexed his hands, readying his large claws, and started scaling the side of the windowless building with surprising swiftness. Derek was honestly impressed. It would be a hard enough task on its own, but he hadn't bothered to drop the massive air compressor slung across his back.

  The other survivors had taken off their headphones and had probably heard the tail end of the discussion, but Derek recapped it anyway. “We're heading to the roof of that building. There shouldn't be any screamers in there, but stay sharp.”

  He took point a
nd the rest followed, Laura and the baseline boy in the middle. Derek still didn't know why he was so important, but he had faith it would become clear soon enough.

  They broke into the building in seconds. The lock was strong, but the doors were not. They barricaded it behind them. They knew that the last thing they needed was zombies nipping at their heels.

  As far as he could tell, this was an office building about halfway renovated as an apartment complex. Or maybe it was both. It was becoming more and more popular to allow workers to operate from home. Regardless, it was abandoned, as everyone had fled once Necessarius sounded the alarm.

  There weren't any screamers inside, so they had no trouble going up the stairs. They could have taken the elevators, but he didn't think anyone felt comfortable with that idea. Laura and Derek couldn't hear any screamers, but they knew they needed to be careful anyway.

  As MC had said, the roof had a number of outcroppings they could use to tie off a line—air conditioners, pipes, and so on. They could see the other rooftop, as well as Van about halfway up the side.

  “Establish a base camp,” Derek said. “I'm going to find something we can use to cross.” They hadn't bothered scavenging on the way up, knowing that the roof would be far safer. A group of scared, untrained deaf civilians would be enough trouble up here. In the cramped corridors of the building, they would probably shoot each other if they so much as saw a mouse.

  The apartment/office building wasn't that tall, about twenty stories, but Derek was a bit worried he wouldn't be able to find something they could use to cross the gap. At least not without being forced to break into someone's home. High-grade rope wasn't exactly something you needed when your job involved sitting in front of a computer all day.

  He started at the janitor closets. There were two per floor, and while he had a bit of trouble breaking into the first one, it had a spare ring of keys hanging on the wall, so the others weren't a problem. Unfortunately, there wasn't anything he could use. Plenty of cleaning supplies that Laura would probably know how to turn into interesting weapons for their last stand, but no rope.

  After the fifth closet—three floors down—he sat in one of the surprisingly comfortable chairs and sighed. One of the most advanced cities on the planet, and he couldn't find something that had been invented thousands of years ago. Seriously, everything from human hair to bark could be woven into rope. No one got really bored one day and started braiding candy wrappers together?

  That was when he had an idea. Not candy wrappers—he wasn't that desperate—but something similarly basic.

  He ran back to the janitor's closets and grabbed as many extension cords as he could. He carried them up top, ignored the confused looks of the civilians, and went looking for more. It took a while, but eventually he managed to gather a hundred different bundles, each about thirty feet long.

  The roofs they were aiming for were only fifty or sixty feet apart. Braiding the cords together and attaching the resulting ropes resulted in a good, strong line nearly a hundred feet long. It would never do as a zipline. The plugs and knots would foul that up. But if they dropped all they equipment and hung from it by they hands, they might be able to get across.

  As he was making this impromptu rope, Laura just raised an eyebrow.

  “That will never work,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone. “Even if it will hold, these people wouldn't be able to manage it at their best. They're tired and hungry—they won't make it five feet.”

  “Adrenaline can do a lot for the human body,” Derek said.

  She shook her head. “Not that much.” She sighed. “We should just have Van break open the barricade from the inside.”

  “No,” Derek said firmly. “Only as a last resort. It would open up a hole in the defenses. This will work.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I think you just want to have the experience.” She sighed again. “Whatever. I'll tell him to hold off until someone dies and you learn your lesson.” She walked to the edge, behind Derek.

  It took her a second to realize what was wrong with that. “Wait, MC said she had them smash their phones.”

  “They did,” she said. Derek looked up and saw her signing something in the direction of the server building. “But Van knows kemo battle sign and I had a spare pair of binoculars.” She stopped signing and pulled a small pair out of her pack, presumably to read his response.

  Derek blinked. There was an easy solution here. The fact that Laura hadn't thought of it first was probably a sign that she was still reeling from her freak out.

  “We could just leave the civvies here,” he said. “Get some food for them and barricade the door. Then we go across, clean everything up, and come back for them.”

  She bit her lip, then signed something to Van. Derek was terrible at kemo battle sign, but he was pretty sure it was “wait.”

  “That could work,” she said. “The main problem is that we don't know how long it will take to clean up the screamers. They could be stuck up here for days. Exposed to the weather...”

  “We'll have them barricade two floors down, instead.” Derek shrugged. “There are only two entrances on each floor, not counting the elevator. So they'll have food stores, bathrooms, and even computers.”

  “They'll be at the top of a skyscraper and facing creatures that control fire.”

  “The screamers haven't shown interest in them yet. And we'll leave the line up, so they can escape if they need to.” She started to protest to that, but he corrected himself. “And, of course, we can simply remove the barricades on the server 'scraper if we have to.”

  “Sounds good to me,” one of the survivors said. The young vampire seemed much more composed than the others. Being under a cool night sky probably made him feel better.

  Laura sighed. “Fine. Drake, go get Loga. He's coming with us.” The vampire nodded and hurried off.

  Derek raised an eyebrow. “And Loga would be...”

  “The little changeling,” she said tersely. She was signing at Van again. Then, realizing that changeling was a completely worthless descriptor, she corrected herself. “The black boy.”

  Derek nodded. He was the youngest, he needed to be protected more than the others. It was a bit odd that Laura was going to such trouble, but Derek knew to trust her judgment. She was simply smarter than him, and that was all there was to it.

  He tied one end of his completed rope to a nice, solid pipe and told the civilians to keep an eye on it and make sure nothing went wrong. He tied a hammer he found to the other end, swung it around a few times, and tossed it across the way.

  He was pretty strong—you had to be, to wrestle a territorial dumpster-dog to the ground—and he had a few minor muscle buffs. The rope made it across without difficulty. Van was wise enough to not actually try and catch it. He let it land on the roof, and just grabbed it before it could slide down to the street below. He tied it to something, though Derek wasn't sure what, and gave them a thumbs up.

  “All right, that's the signal,” Laura said unnecessarily. She turned to the changeling, who seemed to be having second thoughts. “You ready to go?”

  The boy stared at her, eyes wide. This was probably the craziest thing he had ever done. Changelings were completely baseline, and avoided the toy maker like the plague. Yes, they fought the fey, but usually with information and hacking. Some, like Jarasax, took on a more physical role, but this kid was too young for that.

  But young or not, the boy trusted Laura enough to nod once, ready to cross the urban canyon. Derek guessed that once you had seen someone intentionally and successfully bring down a roof, you gained a bit of a resistance to crazy ideas.

  “Laura will go first,” Derek said to him. “Then you, then me. Wait until she's all the way across before starting, okay?” As the lightest, he should probably be first, but seeing Laura cross successfully would give him a good morale boost. And if anyone was going to break the line, it would be Derek, so he obviously had to go last.

  Laura let herself
down slowly, sliding off the edge of the building while gripping the line with white knuckles. She was trying hard to appear calm, and she was doing an admirable job of it. The fact that she couldn't really see the street through the smoke and darkness below probably helped quell her fears.

  She headed forward on the cord, hand over hand, slowly and surely. It took her about ten minutes, but she made it across with no problems. The line didn't show any signs of breaking, and Van pulled her up when she reached the other side.

  Derek clapped Loga on the back. “Okay, it's your turn now. Go slowly. Take your time. You'll be fine.” He was a changeling, which meant that he was as close to a perfect specimen of humanity as it was possible to be. Something about the way they were freed from the fey, or what the fey did to them in the first place. Derek wasn't sure which.

  Loga nodded and took a deep breath... then another. And another.

  Derek grimaced. “You're going to hyperventilate if you keep that up. Slow breaths. Slow and steady, just like everything else.”

  Loga nodded again and took hold of the line with shaking hands. He let out the breath he had been holding and jumped down in a rush.

  It was a good idea, like how you should just jump into a swimming pool and get it over with. But in this case, the extension cords jumped wildly, and Derek was afraid they might actually snap or unravel. Loga seemed frozen in fright.

  But after a moment the bouncing stopped, and Derek called down to him. “You're doing fine, Loga. Now just start forward.” He almost said “don't look down,” but he wasn't that stupid.

  Loga made his stuttering way across, stopping when the line swayed too much, but everyone made sure to give him lots of verbal encouragement. It took almost half an hour, but he made it to the other side without major incident.

  Before heading over himself, Derek turned to the vampire. He was definitely the one nominally in charge, if only because he was the only one who was actively doing anything. They were all kids, a bit younger than Derek. Apparently Van was the only adult who had survived the initial attack.