A Royal Apocalypse (Lady Slayalot Book 1)

by Louisa Lo

  That was pretty good, as far as deniability for the soldiers was concerned. It also would be a good chance for her to show the general how serious she could be about her job. She could pressure him to take in those refugees, not to mention saving them from a dire fate, all in one fell swoop.

  But there was something still bothering her. She turned to Ruiz. “Why did you say you have to fly under the radar? Why do you have to be underestimated?”

  Ruiz’s jaw hardened. “I had a few run-ins with the general before he became one. Long story, but I don’t trust the man. Why do you think I’d encouraged you to keep your finger on the pulse of things? Trust me, I have my reasons to be wary of him.”

  Alright, fair enough. After what she knew about the general, she wasn’t sure he was on her Christmas card list, either.

  Not that they lived in a world where they sent Christmas cards anymore.

  Chelsea started walking toward the door. There was not a moment to waste. Ruiz coughed behind her. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

  He opened the box he’d brought with him. There were the dozens of lipsticks she had come here to pick up in the first place.

  “Don’t forget your weapons.”

  Chapter Twenty

  The Power of Gossips

  “Where’s the clerk?” Chelsea narrowed her eyes on Ruiz.

  He smiled. “Unconscious. All it took was the use of a little pressure point on the neck.”

  Her mouth fell open. “You knocked him out?”

  He shrugged. “Don’t worry. I laid him down on the ground gently. Come on, we have to go.”

  The truck was already waiting for them, along with Emma, Nik, and Sonny. Chelsea made up some flimsy excuse to dismiss the driver for the day. He looked a bit disgruntled, but nobody could argue with a sudden day off.

  After the driver took off on foot, Chelsea gathered everyone on the cargo bed of the truck and explained everything. Thankfully, the warehouse area was quiet this time of the day, so they were able to discuss everything out in the open.

  “There are about three hundred civilians in that camp. Plus one guard,” Ruiz explained. “I got wind of this when someone from the camp showed up at the gate asking for help and was turned away.”

  “I’m in,” Nik stated.

  “Me, too,” Sonny said.

  “Alright,” Day nodded. “I know at least a few more people who would want to join us, and it shouldn’t take long to mobilize them. Good thing is, the camp is not that far from here. The problem is how to get out of the base without raising too much suspicion.”

  “Would a diversion help?” Chelsea pressed her lips together.

  “What do you have in mind?” Day asked.

  “A little bit of high school gossip.” She grinned at Emma.

  ***

  Less than ten minutes later, rumors started swirling around regarding a possible sighting of Anita, the mythical Obsessed slayer, right here at the base. The whispers began among the civilians, but soon caught the attention of the soldiers.

  The rumors soon spread like wildfire. To outsiders, it might seem strange that such baseless gossip had the largest sway among the soldiers, but the truth was they actually knew the legendary figure was real. They, or someone they knew, had encountered her in the field. Of course they all remembered General Roland’s kill-on-sight command regarding Anita, but there was no denying quite a few of them were very curious about her. Perhaps Day hadn’t been the only one reluctant to kill the monster slayer.

  The idea of seeing Anita caught the fancy of the hardened warriors, and the mood of the base took on a jubilant sense of wonder, anticipation, and hope. Some soldiers even opened up and chimed in about their own past experiences of seeing her, from the way she effectively wielded a sword, to her fearlessness in the face of danger. But through all that chattering, no one was able to give a clear description of what she looked like exactly, except for a memorable mass of long, black curly hair. In the past she had been moving too fast for them to register much of anything else.

  Amidst all the excitement, it was no wonder then that when a lone figure showed up at the front gate, demanding entry into the base and an audience with General Roland, many rushed to the gate, hoping to get a glimpse of the mysterious figure. Even Colonel Martin was said to be on his way to see the visitor for himself.

  The lone figure was shrouded in a flowing, cape-style cardigan that covered everything from her head to her knees. Even her hair was covered, making it unclear whether or not she possessed a head full of long, black curly hair.

  It didn’t matter. After weeks of bleak news and uncertainty, people needed a bit of hope, and perhaps a flair of the dramatic. Even those soldiers who couldn’t physically go to the front gate were viewing the live feed from the guard station on their own office monitors, including those who were supposed to guard the back entrance of the base.

  Just twenty-five minutes after the discussion in front of Warehouse 212, a truck arrived at the aforementioned back entrance, its driver wanting to leave the base and waving some sort of documentation for it. Since security was always more strict regarding people coming in than going out, the guard at the gate only gave a cursory look at the documentation before waving the truck through. By the time the truck started moving again, the attention of the guard had already been diverted back to the live feed.

  ***

  “How did you get Emma’s mother to agree to the charade?” Day asked as the truck rumbled away from the back entrance, driven by a buddy of Sonny’s.

  “For the starring role of ‘Anita’, I promised her a tube of lip gloss, a mascara, five eggs, and she also gets to keep the cardigan she’s wearing,” Chelsea replied.

  It wasn’t hard sneaking the woman out of the base so she could blatantly ask to come back in. After all, the smuggling of one person was very different than a truck full of a dozen soldiers, along with weapons to boot, not to mention the de facto Commander-in-Chief.

  Yes, the truck had a dozen soldiers in it, which included Day, Nik, Sonny, and Ruiz, plus friends and friends of friends they had managed to gather. It was an amazing feat, considering the limited time they had. It just went to show that the general’s position regarding the refugees wasn’t universally popular. It helped that a few soldiers also had family members at the camp. In the face of an apocalypse, the advancement of one’s military career or the fear of court martial apparently wasn’t exactly high on the priority list, especially compared to the safety of their loved ones.

  “Thank heavens Emma was able to spread the rumors so fast,” Day commented.

  “Well, an isolated environment and a bleak outlook are a perfect breeding ground for wild gossips.” Chelsea shrugged. “But it is pretty amazing how many ears Emma could whisper into, given how short and young she is.”

  “Maybe they were so gullible because she is so short and young.” Ruiz chuckled.

  There might be some truth to that.

  The ride itself took only a minute or so, given the camp was merely a kilometer away. The camp was situated in the middle of a flat, open field carpeted with a riot of wild flowers. The tips of dark green plastic tarps peeked out from among the almost-chest-high plants.

  As the truck drew closer to the camp, Chelsea prayed that they weren’t too late already.

  Then the truck came to a sudden, complete stop. Chelsea knocked into Day and gasped at the sight before her.

  About five hundred Obsessed surrounded the camp in a loose, not-so-human chain. They weren’t visible from afar because of the tall plants, but as soon as the driver had spotted them he’d stomped on the brakes. By then they were just a few hundred meters away.

  The Obsessed were swaying to some music only they could hear, their hands waving to the rhythm of the wildflowers as a soft breeze blew through them. They looked like a bunch of flower-power free hippies, or some barbarians performing a ritual dance for an ancient god.

  Except Chelsea had seen them dancing in the exact mann
er not many weeks ago, and they weren’t doing it for some ancient deity.

  They were doing it for her, worshipping her in their own weird way.

  Yep, she recognized the steps. Slightly unsteady. Two steps forward, one step back, then one to the side. Each of the Obsessed, dirty and bloody, was holding an object in his or her hands, whether it be a cell phone, a watch, or a prom tiara. They lifted the items in reverence as they chanted, “Pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty…”

  Chelsea exchanged a glance with Day, who nodded grimly. Like her, he had seen those moves before.

  “What I don’t understand is, why are they doing this here, of all places?” He frowned.

  He had a good point. Chelsea doubted there were any brand-name items at the camp that they would be clamoring after. In fact, she bet the Obsessed had more shiny stuff on them than the entire camp added together.

  “That’s because they’d tried to come to the base before, but they were turned back,” Ruiz replied quietly. “When I said turned back, I meant they were fired at, so they retreated here.”

  “They’d tried to come to the base before?” Chelsea choked.

  “Yeah.”

  If there had been any skirmishes, it must’ve happened fast and far enough from the base that she had never heard about it.

  “Do you think I…I attracted them?” she stuttered. Did the Obsessed come to the base because they’d figured out she was there? Maybe she had some kind of homing signal that the Obsessed could pick up?

  Or maybe she was just being paranoid. They were just mindless monsters, right?

  Ruiz was quick to crush that hope, “From what I could find out, they are capable of organizing themselves. Maybe they don’t operate on an intellectual level as we humans understand it, but I bet there’s some kind of hive mentality going on. And they do have a type of sixth sense about expensive things, and celebrities. It’s not unlikely that they were trying to come for you.”

  “But why retreat to here? What is here?” Nik asked.

  “The no-poo kits.” Day suddenly caught Chelsea’s shoulders in his hands, not minding how that might look to the others. “Have you started distributing them?”

  “Yes, I gave a whole bunch to Colonel Martin just yesterday. You think they’ve been distributed here already?” She couldn’t imagine the colonel being that supportive of her work.

  “Yeah, if it meant the colonel could save on giving out the real thing,” Day said darkly.

  “Hey, no-poo is a real shampoo,” Chelsea protested.

  “Focus,” Ruiz said. “My bet is that any handiwork you made is being considered as some kind of trophy for the Pretties. They must’ve sensed your scent on them or something.”

  “So they’re collecting my stuff like they’re… souvenirs?” Now that was a creepy idea.

  “It doesn’t make any sense,” Sonny said. “If a souvenir is what they want, why not raid the camp of all the poo-poo kits and be on their way?”

  “No-poo,” Chelsea corrected, but she couldn’t deny that Sonny was right about the Obsessed’s inexplicable behavior.

  “I mean, why stay here and dance and stuff?” Sonny continued. “What are they waiting for?”

  Just about then the Obsessed collectively turned their heads toward Chelsea, like five hundred pairs of laser beams focusing in on her all at once. Even though she was at a relatively safe distance away, they had nevertheless noticed her, and now their eyes gleamed with hunger and possessiveness.

  “They’ve been waiting for you.” The horror in Day’s voice matched how she felt inside.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Thunderclouds

  It would appear that since the Obsessed couldn’t get near the base, they’d somehow managed to lure Chelsea here. Who would’ve thought they could be capable of such a cunning strategy?

  Then Chelsea remembered a documentary she had had to watch for a biology class once. It was about how some hive-minded animal species might not be super smart individually, yet somehow they could achieve supremely intelligent and complex things if they acted as a group, often on a subconscious and instinctive level.

  The Obsessed started walking toward the truck, ignoring their ragged, smelly, and grimy bodies pressing against each other in their pursuit of a common goal. Day pushed Chelsea as far away from the Obsessed as possible.

  “Get us out of here,” Day yelled at the driver. At the same time he made a signal to the soldiers, and they all started firing at the Obsessed.

  Having no time to do a proper U-turn, the driver simply reversed the truck at full speed. In response the Obsessed began running toward the vehicle.

  And boy, could they run when they put their minds to it. The Obsessed quickly closed the gap between themselves and Chelsea, much to her horror, as she peeked at them through the spaces between the soldiers standing guard around her.

  The soldiers continue shooting. Unfortunately there were too many of the monsters. And they wouldn’t stop until they received a direct shot to the head, which was a little hard to do while the vehicle was moving.

  Chelsea grabbed a side railing for support. She shivered at the dark promises in the Obsessed’s eyes as they relentlessly sped forward. The creatures were brandishing ear piercing guns, Brazilian wax kits, eyebrow tweezers, and other beauty tools they were eager to torment her with.

  Ruiz paused in his shooting and kicked the banker box toward her, yelling, “Go get ‘em, girl!”

  Chelsea flung open the box, and half a dozen lipsticks spilled onto the cargo bed floor. They were the latest autumn collection featuring dark and bold colors. She grabbed a handful and squeezed through an opening between Nik and Sonny. Then she started throwing the lipsticks at the Obsessed. Hard. Her action wasn’t meant as a distraction as she’d originally intended when she acquired these beauty products, but to kill. Incredibly, her previous luck held, and her aim had an almost a hundred-percent accuracy in finding purchase at the monsters’ foreheads, often sinking the lipsticks right between the eyes.

  Although there were more bullets among the dozen soldiers than there were lipsticks in her box, she was proud of the fact that she was responsible for over a third of the kill. Not that it mattered. With the soldiers starting to run out of ammunition, and the remaining Obsessed, about a hundred, almost reaching the truck, the outcome was looking bleak.

  With the chain that the Obsessed were forming around the camp broken, the refugees were making a run for it, in the opposite direction of the truck. Chelsea sincerely hoped that they made it, because things were sure looking bad from her end.

  One of the Obsessed grabbed onto the edge of the cargo bed and proceeded to heave himself onto it, a pair of cuticle scissors in his right hand. Day tried to shoot at him, but before he could take aim the monster lurched forward, his momentum making him crash into Day. The two rolled around on the cargo bed for a while, the Obsessed struggling to get past Day to Chelsea.

  There was a shot, then the Obsessed was slumped over Day. Chelsea looked at Sonny, noticing the paleness of his face as he lowered his rifle.

  “You could’ve gotten him killed!” she yelled at Sonny, “What were you thinking, taking a shot with them locked together like that?”

  “I had to take a chance,” Sonny replied grimly.

  She dropped the lipsticks in her hands and pushed the dead creature off Day. There was blood all over Day’s upper body, and it wasn’t all from the Obsessed.

  The monster’s cuticle scissors were lodged into Day’s shoulder.

  Day’s face contorted in pain, but his eyes on her were steady. “Forget about me, you keep throwing those lipsticks of yours.”

  Chelsea pressed down her panic and nodded. He would be okay, the scissors had missed his heart. All she had to do was survive this, then they would get him help. She picked the lipsticks up from the floor, the last ones from the box, and resumed launching them at the increasing number of Obsessed who had reached the truck.

  By then the soldiers had shot an
d killed the next few Obsessed that had followed the one that injured Day. Having run out of bullets, they had no choice but to use their rifles to strike at their targets like pugil sticks. Ironically this was the exact scenario the practice tools were intended to simulate.

  It was a tough job bashing an Obsessed’s head in. They just wouldn’t stay dead.

  Chelsea lifted the last of her lipsticks over her head, ready to throw it at the Obsessed who was the closest to getting onto the cargo bed. She had no idea what to do after she had used her final weapon, but there was no point saving it for later.

  There was a flash of metal, and the Obsessed’s head detached from its body and went rolling into the dirt behind the truck’s path. Except his hands were still clutching the truck’s edges, his body dragging behind, which was creepy beyond belief.

  Chelsea looked around to see where the decapitation had come from.

  A woman, who wasn’t there just seconds ago, was running after the truck with a sword in her hand. No, it was more like she was running after the Obsessed who were chasing after the truck. She moved like lightning, cutting the monsters down even as they scrambled to get onto the moving vehicle. She chopped off not only their heads, but arms and shoulders as well if they got in her way. She sliced through flesh and bones with ease, as if they were nothing but jelly. There was confidence and intelligence blazing in her eyes. Her waist-long hair flew in the air behind her like a mass of dark thunderclouds.

  It had to be Anita. Ironically, she was near the base, just as the rumor Chelsea had engineered claimed. And oh boy, Chelsea was now officially a believer.

  Once there were no more Obsessed clinging onto the truck, Anita—Chelsea decided to call her that until it was proven otherwise—began to work on the ones a little further away.

  But during the mad clamoring to get on board, one of the Obsessed must’ve somehow managed to puncture a tire. The truck kept swerving to one side, then the other, until the driver brought it to a complete stop.

  “Let’s go!” Day yelled. Then with his face contorted in pain, he grit his teeth and joined his men in jumping down from the vehicle. They proceeded to tackle the Obsessed in hand-to-hand combat. Between the soldiers fighting and Anita making fast work of the monsters, beheading many with her sword, more and more Obsessed fell to the ground like rag dolls. Things were looking up, and Chelsea began to believe that everything would be alright after all.