This Land of Monsters

by Tim Gabrielle

“This is bad,” said Nash as he stood with everyone else at the windows and watched as Dietrich and Emma disappeared from view.

  “Who’s Duncan?” asked Jessica as she rose with her sister and looked out the window.

  “He’s one of the higher ups at the Mansion,” said Nash. “How the hell didn’t we see him following us?”

  “We need to move,” said Sullivan as he started to take all his notes and maps off the wall.

  “They have to stop him,” said Nash as he helped Sullivan with the papers.

  “It doesn’t matter at this point. Whether he gets back or not, Fletcher will know. We need to prepare for the worst.”

  Melissa and the twins quickly filled an empty duffle bag with the food stored in the room and Nash and Sullivan did the same with the plans scattered across the walls. As they worked, a gunshot rang across the dead subdivision, followed by the sound of Emma’s screams. They all froze in unison before running to the window to see if they could view anything.

  “This is the last thing we needed today,” said Sullivan as he listened to Emma’s cries from the window. “Grab the bags, we’re going down there.”

  Sullivan grabbed the heavy bags full of food and barreled out of the room, made his way down the stairs in a flash, creating a path from the others to follow behind. They filed out of the house together as Dietrich and Emma returned in a frenzy, holding up Sam between them as his legs listlessly tried to match their pace. He was shirtless and covered in blood as he held his balled up shirt against his chest.

  “Oh God, no!” yelled Melissa as she placed a hand over her mouth.

  “Duncan shot him,” said Dietrich as he and Emma supported Sam the best they could between them.

  Sam made no attempt to talk, but simply looked at them all with eyes that seemed to stare right through them.

  “This is serious,” said Sullivan as he replaced Emma in helping to carry Sam. “We need to move.”

  “He’s going to have people tearing these houses apart to find us,” said Dietrich. “We need to hurry.”

  Sullivan and Dietrich led the way while they supported Allan between them his balled shirt soaking wet.

  “We lost our window, didn’t we?” said Dietrich quietly as they walked.

  “Let’s just focus on getting to safety,” said Sullivan as the group disappeared deeper into the subdivision, each of them knowing their world had just changed drastically.

  Chapter 30

  The sun set softly over the houses nestled inside the walls of the Mansion and cast long shadows across the well-maintained lawns. The inhabitants gathered outside, laughing and cheering as the sound of the dead fought to be heard. Fletcher Crawford stood in the middle of the street that led to the front gate and smoked a cigar as his parishioners continued their riotous symphony.

  Loud, heavy metal music vibrated through speakers as the men and women inside cheered with delight and chanted lyrics of a song they’d heard hundreds of times. Most of them were inebriated in some way, reveling in their extra rations of communion. Fletcher watched the howlers outside that were pressing against the reinforced iron gates. Their long, gnarled limbs reached viciously toward him as their faces smashed angrily against the hard metal. He smirked slightly as he puffed cigar smoke into the air, not taking his eyes off them. It was a perfect image of what he’d created; a community where nobody comes in, or leaves, without his permission.

  Except of course the traitors. But they wouldn’t be traitors for long. His fingers itched to wrap around Melissa’s throat – to force her to drink his special undead cocktail. She would be the perfect addition to his harem.

  Duncan approached the wall with a ladder and placed it against the stone wall near where it connected to the gate. He climbed to the top, taking particular care to make sure he was completely out of reach of the dead, before he unzipped the duffle bag that hung from his shoulder. He reached in and took out two round objects and placed them on the ledge of the wall, making sure they were not in danger of rolling forward into the crowd of ghouls below. He turned and raised his hands triumphantly in the air to the cheers of the drunkards behind him.

  Fletcher puffed more cigar smoke into the air as he and Duncan locked eyes. He nodded in approval as Duncan climbed down the ladder and flung it against the side of the wall. With a stoic look on his face, Fletcher admired the sixteen objects Duncan had deposited; eight lining the wall on each side of the gate. The heavy metal music continued to pump into the air as he finished the cigar and flung it to the ground crushing it with his designer shoe.

  He walked back to the church as his congregation continued to cheer—the tables were turning.

  Chapter 31

  Allan died in the night as the sound of distant, muffled music flowed into the home they’d taken refuge in. Emma held him long after he’d passed, weeping softly as the rest of the group sat in shock. Sullivan stood guard through the night, watching from the upstairs windows for any sign of movement in the dark street. The music finally died after midnight as the group was already asleep except Sullivan, Dietrich, Emma, and Nash.

  “I feel like I need to prepare you for something,” said Dietrich as he scanned the street with Sullivan.

  “I know she’s dead, Dietrich,” said Sullivan as he crossed his arms in front of him. “Probably the rest of them too. I know the kind of man he is.”

  “Why bother returning then?” asked Nash. “We have nothing to go back to, so why risk it?”

  “Your group isn’t the first he’s done this to,” said Dietrich. “The amount of people he’s killed is staggering. We can’t leave him alone to just do it again to someone else.”

  Nash sat beside Melissa on the king sized bed as the twins slept beside her. He held her hand, rubbing it softly while he thought about the days to come. Emma stood and made her way to the second window, wiping tears from her eyes as she scanned the darkness.

  “He knows I’m involved now,” said Dietrich. “Sherry’s gone, I know it. When we get inside the Mansion, I’m the one to kill Fletcher.”

  The room stood silent, the soft breathing of the girls in bed was the only thing that broke the quiet.

  “Understood,” said Sullivan. “Everyone should get some rest. We don’t know what tomorrow will bring.”

  Dietrich and Sullivan took Sam’s body into the garage of the home and laid him on the concrete floor with a sheet tucked around his body. Emma leaned in the doorway, watching them as she wiped fresh tears from her face.

  “He needs to suffer,” she said as she joined them beside Sam’s body.

  “I know, dear,” said Dietrich, as he pulled her into a hug. Sullivan placed a hand on her back before he left the two of them alone in the garage.

  “I’m going to stay in here tonight, if that’s okay,” she said.

  “Of course,” said Dietrich, letting her go as he disappeared into the house. He returned with some couch cushions and blankets.

  “Thank you,” she said as she laid the cushions on the floor and walked to the garage door, looking out the window into the deserted street.

  “Get some sleep,” said Dietrich as he closed the door behind him and left her alone with Sam in the garage.

  Sullivan stayed awake the entire night and watched the streets for any sign of life as the rest of the group struggled through a restless sleep. Just as the sun began to warm the house, Courtney erupted from a nightmare with a scream. The entire house burst from their beds on high alert.

  “What is it?” Nash demanded, scanning the room.

  “I’m so sorry,” Courtney sniffed as she rubbed her eyes. “I…I…I had a nightmare.”

  Nash’s body visible relaxed, and Melissa dropped her knife to sit next to Courtney.

  “It’s okay, we all have nightmares.” Courtney nodded, her sister holding tightly to her hand.

  Emma joined them in the panic, a look of fear across her tired face.

  “It’s okay,” said Dietrich as he started to open cans of food for every
one’s breakfast. “Courtney had a nightmare.”

  “I’m sorry,” Courtney said again. Emma gave her a sad smile and sat at the dirty table with Dietrich.

  “What’s our plan?” asked Nash as he joined Sullivan at the window and handed him a can of baked beans.

  “As of yesterday, I was leaning more toward a tactical approach,” he said while he was still staring out the window. “But now, I’ve changed my mind.”

  Sullivan turned around and held a grenade in the palm of his hand.

  “Where the hell did you get that?” Emma asked, staring at the grenade.

  “I swiped it from Fletcher’s armory awhile ago,” said Dietrich. “Given our current situation, I guess that’s a good thing.”

  “What do you suppose we can do with one grenade?” asked Emma, taken back by Sullivan’s change of plan.

  “With one grenade? Very little, but think about what a hoard of howlers would do to that place. I think we blow the gates and let the howlers do the work for us.”

  “What about our people?” Melissa asked with alarm.

  “Mel, honey, I can guarantee you they are all dead by now,” said Dietrich. “He knows Sullivan’s alive now. There’s no way he’d allow them to stay alive, communion or not.”

  “Don’t you think he’d keep them alive to try and lure us in?” asked Nash.

  Dietrich shook his head no. “I know him. It’s not his style. Now that he knows, he’s going to purge the Treefort group, then come after us. I’ve seen him do it before.”

  “Then we come to him first,” Sullivan said. “I can’t leave him alive to do this to some other group.”

  “Before we do anything, we’ll need to find weapons,” said Emma. “Not everyone is going to die from the howler attack, especially Fletcher. I think it’s safe to assume that whoever survives the initial attack will be heavily armed.”

  “Where do you suppose we’re going to find the kind of weapons we’ll need to finish the job?” asked Melissa.

  “I can get us guns,” said Sullivan. “Back at the Fort, I always kept a cache of weapons buried in the ground. When I woke up that day, there wasn’t a chance in hell I was going to be able to get them with the fire, so I left. Nash, Melissa, and I will go and get the cache and regroup here later this afternoon.”

  “Take the twins with you,” said Dietrich. “In the event that we run into trouble, they’d be safer with you, away from here. Emma and I can hold our own until you get back.”

  Sullivan led the way, moving quickly through the streets until they reached the interstate. It was clogged with cars and trucks, just like any other major roadway, and it didn’t take them long to find an SUV with the keys still in the ignition.

  Sullivan drove it across a grass field until he reached a back road and turned onto it, leaving a cloud of dust in their wake.

  “This brings back bad memories,” said Nash, sitting in the passenger seat as Sullivan drove.

  “Yes. Yes, it does,” he said as he squinted through the sun as they drove.

  They’d been driving in silence for about an hour before Sullivan pulled the SUV into a familiar town, which Nash quickly recognized as the town they’d used to exile Duncan. A lot of the buildings were now burned to the ground; some of them crumbled completely into ashen piles.

  “Fletcher likes to see things burn, doesn’t he?” said Nash as they watched the blackened buildings fly by quickly as they exited the town. They drove past the remains of the SUV from the day Eliza died, which was still sitting upside down. Sullivan didn’t slow in the least.

  “That’s where she died, isn’t it?” asked Melissa. Neither Nash nor Sullivan responded.

  Sullivan pulled the SUV over to the side of the road in the same area where Nash and Melissa had originally been loaded into Fletcher’s trucks. They got out and stood at the edge of the blackened landscape, while they scanned the field of burned and fallen trees in front of them.

  “I never thought it would look so awful,” whispered Melissa, almost to herself.

  “Come on,” said Sullivan, squeezing Melissa’s shoulder softly as he guided them into the remains of the forest.

  The ground was covered in thick soot that crackled under their feet as they moved and sent black and gray ghosts into to the air as they walked. They crossed the murky creek, complete with a few burned slowpokes that had congregated there the morning of Fletcher’s attack.

  “Here we go,” said Melissa as they approached the burned shell of the Treefort.

  Parts of the fence still stood upright among the fallen trees and debris like blackened tombstones. The burned remains of both the people who once lived there and the people who came to destroy it lay strewn about the silent grounds. The RVs were nothing but charred skeletons, sitting eerily in the shadow of the once dense woods like phantoms in wait. Sullivan walked to the middle of the Fort and stopped at a pair of charred, flaking masses.

  “Scott and Meghan,” he said as he stood reverently above them while Nash, Melissa, and the twins joined him.

  “Once this is all over, we’re coming back to give them all a proper burial,” said Nash as he stared down at their remains.

  Sullivan walked away toward one of the burned down trailers along the fence. He disappeared inside, only to reappear a moment later with an old, rusty shovel. He walked to the corner of the Treefort and speared the shovel into the ash, which created a plume of soot around him. It only took him a few powerful strokes before he pulled out a large, black duffel bag.

  “This is how we win this fight,” he said as he unzipped the military-grade canvas bag and the group circled around it. The inside of the bag was full of rifles, handguns, and ammunition. There were a few knives, which Sullivan reached in and passed out to everyone. Courtney and Jessica looked at the sheathed knives, their lack of comfort visible on their faces.

  “They’ll come a time when you’ll need it, trust me,” said Nash as he clipped his sheathed blade to his belt. Melissa nodded her head, clipping her own knife to her beltline.

  “Let’s head back,” said Sullivan. “It’s still early enough that we could do this tonight.”

  They walked together through the blackened woods and left a roadmap of footprints behind.

  Chapter 32

  Sullivan parked the SUV and the group rushed back to the house. The afternoon sun rested harshly on their shoulders as they moved through the dilapidated subdivisions. Dodging a few howlers as they maneuvered toward the house, Sullivan guided them into the backyard of a house nearby. the home they’d slept in the night before.

  “Stay here,” he said. “I want to make sure Dietrich and Emma are safe before we go marching in. Wait for my whistle.”

  He disappeared around the house and left them in the overgrown backyard, the rusty playground equipment squeaking as it moved slightly in the wind.

  “We’re not going to have to fight, are we?” asked Courtney.

  “No,” said Nash. “You, your sister, and Melissa are going to stay back during the attack.”

  “Excuse me?” asked Melissa. “That isn’t your decision to make!”

  “I’m not taking you back there, Mel. If anything happens and he gets his hands on you, I’d never be able to forgive myself.”

  Melissa gave him an irritated look but didn’t press the issue. A sharp whistle rang in their ears as Sullivan reached the house. They ran together, Nash in front, and filed quickly into the house and up the stairs. They entered the room they’d slept in as Dietrich fitted a rifle around his back and clipped handguns to his waist as well.

  “Wait; we’re doing this now?” asked Nash, surprised at seeing Sullivan and Dietrich arming themselves.

  “Not yet, but soon,” said Dietrich. “We’re going to survey the area. We need to get a lay of the land before we mount our attack. We won’t be long, Emma will break down the plan for you.”

  “We’re going to attack as soon as they get back,” said Emma. “We figure that Fletcher won’t suspect us comi
ng so soon after our cover was blown.”

  “This is of course assuming that our friends are dead, right?” Melissa asked solemnly.

  “If Sullivan and Dietrich see anyone from your group left alive, they’re going to stand down.”

  “What’s the plan?” Nash asked as he took Melissa’s hand.

  “It’s incredibly simple, actually. I’ll use Sullivan’s grenade to blast the front gates open. There’s a good chance that we kill a lot of howlers; but not all of them. With the gate gone, they’ll flood inside and make quick work of the people inside. Most of them won’t even know what hit them. Sullivan and Dietrich will come around the rear and scale the back fence. Anyone trying to escape that way, we’ll get.”

  “So we’re just going to kill all these people?” asked Melissa, incredulous.

  “We don’t have a choice, Mel,” said Nash. “The people living with him aren’t good people. If they had the chance, they’d kill us themselves.”

  “Trust me when I say that running away isn’t an option for us,” said Emma. “We bested him; we planned to kill him. He won’t stop looking until we’re dead.”

  “What am I doing?” asked Nash.

  “You’ll stay outside the walls in the rear, should any of his men try and escape. I’ll be doing the same at the front.”

  “You really think that two men, alone for the most part, can take down the entire community?” asked Courtney, who was sitting with Jessica on the bed.

  “I think we can count on a great number of Fletcher’s men being killed by the howlers,” said Emma. “The ones that remain shouldn’t be an issue for Sullivan and Dietrich. Jessica, Courtney, and Melissa, you’ll stay back here. I have a flare gun. If things don’t go our way, I’ll fire it. If you see the flare, that means you need to run. Run for as long as you can and hide.”

  “We have Sullivan on our side. We won’t have to use the flare,” said Nash as he took Melissa’s hand and gave a reassuring look to the twins.