"Nothing at all," said Mikkel. "Like I said, this one comes from one of my coworkers. He thought he saw something and I overheard him telling someone else about it. Since it had all the signs, I got some specifics from him."
As a monster hunter, you listen for signs in stories whether someone thinks they have a monster problem or not. Bites, claws, cuts, missing people, strange occurrences, mysterious figures, lumbering crowds, etc. These are all common descriptions for many of the creatures we encounter. If we hear a few mentions, then we investigate. If these signs don't come up in the story, odds are it's nothing. Even when the signs are all there, sometimes it's a bust. I tend to only describe our exciting adventures, but there are plenty of times we don't find anything at all and we kill nothing but time.
"Look at this," said Mikkel. "If these two people had just parked closer, there would be a room for a whole other car. This is why everyone says not to have a car in this city."
"Or a van," I said sarcastically.
"It's not that the city won't support it, it's just that people park like assholes," said Mikkel. "Let me circle the block again."
We were looking for a place to park in Kensington by the river. North of the Egan neighborhoods and the construction, Kensington was once just a poor and shoddy neighborhood. But an influx of bohemian tenants looking for someplace other than Southend had gentrified it. It was now a nice area masquerading as a shitty area. It mixed rich renovation with struggling desperation from residents that didn't want to get priced out of their own neighborhood. Here you could find a hip investment banker in a heavily renovated small fourth floor walkup apartment above a Polish deli that was barely making each month's rent. The combination of the two actually made for some great bars, since urban bohemians had money to burn on alcohol and loved high class dive bars, but I soon learned that translated to good beer at astronomical prices. Great when you have money, but I was always on the verge of being broke, so they weren't worthwhile. I knew all this because I had been in Kensington more often lately. Yasmin lived in this neighborhood, her expenses assisted by her overprotective Pakistani parents. Visiting her had made Kensington a more familiar territory.
Parking was a problem in Kensington, probably more than in most neighborhoods. From what Yasmin told me, people who owned cars stalked parking spots. They might already have a spot, but when they saw someone get out of a better one, they would run to their own car and take that new spot. This doesn't sound quite as weird when you realize their old spot was three blocks away from their home, which was actually pretty good for Kensington parking. We were encountering that sort of problem. Since we were trying to park near the river to lug equipment as short a distance as we could, it meant we were driving around for a while. Mikkel figured since we were trying to park during a weekday, people might have taken their cars to work, but that theory wasn't working well. I had suggested we just park farther off and walk, but he was adamant he could find a better spot.
"There! A spot!" said Mikkel, his head swung around to point behind us.
"Well, turn around and get it!" I said.
"We're on a one way street," he said. "Gotta loop around."
"It's not going to be there by then," I said. Twice we had seen a vacated parking spot occupied within a minute.
"Exactly, so you're going to get out and hold it."
"Hold it? What am I going to do? Hold back other cars with my super powers?"
"Stand in that spot," he said. "They can't park there with a person in it. Running you over is illegal and stuff."
"But what if -"
"Get out so I can loop around!" he said urgently. "The longer you wait the more likely we're going to lose it!"
With a sigh I got out of the car and jogged over to the space. It was in front of a deli, the smell of coffee wafting out. I considered getting a cup myself, but I knew I couldn't abandon my post. I felt a little stupid standing in a parking spot by the side of the road. I got a few looks from pedestrians, including one guy walking five dogs at once. I awaited someone else trying to take the space before Mikkel arrived.
The first challenger arrived. A silver compact car with an "Avalon is Beautiful" sticker on the front bumper; God know how many stickers they had on the back if they were putting them on the front too. They pointed their car toward the space, stopping a few feet in front of me. Their intention was thereby declared and they waited for me to get out of the way. Unfortunately for them, I didn't move; I folded my arms in front of me to try to show my own intention. The driver honked at me. I did not move.
"Get the fuck out of the space!" yelled the driver out his window.
Has anyone ever told you that New Avalonians are the nicest people? If so, they are liars. Or have never fought for a parking space.
"I'm not moving! Go somewhere else!" My voice wasn't quite as confident as I wanted, because this was Mikkel's plan and I hadn't totally bought into it. I couldn't remember if what I was doing was legal or not. It was definitely a dick move. But some dick moves are also illegal.
The driver started to say something else, but there was a series of honks from cars behind him, including someone seriously laying hard down on their horn, so there was a long sustained beep. All the pedestrians now turned to look at me and the driver who was blocking traffic because he couldn't get into the space. I smiled uneasily, embarrassed by the attention, but I wasn't going to move. Flustered that he was now suddenly the one causing a problem, the driver just flipped me off, turned back into the flow of traffic and continued moving down the street.
A few moments later, Mikkel started pulling into the spot and I stepped back to the curb.
"Man, I thought we were going to lose this one," said Mikkel. "Good thing I honked the horn really loud!"
We grabbed the gear and headed over to the river. On the southeast side of Avalon, Riverside stretched between the residential neighborhoods and the river, a collection of docks, warehouses, and a smattering of apartment buildings. But starting around North Egan and continuing up to at least Asher, there were neither docks nor shipping warehouses, so Kensington went right to the water. An antique metal fence stood on the stone and concrete that edged the river, nearly a straight drop down beyond it to the water. For anyone who lived facing this, it was a nice view, assuming you liked looking at the Husks on the other side.
We hopped the fence near the maintenance gate, handing over our bags of equipment. A locked gate is mainly a symbolic deterrent when the fence is short enough to hop over. Maintenance gates meant we were near maintenance stairs and walkways, which is what we wanted. Though it's almost a sheer drop of about twenty five feet from the fence to the river, there's still a way to get down to the water. Along this end of the river there were maintenance walkways and drainage tunnels. A fair amount of water washes out these tunnels when it rains, particularly in Spring. There needed to be some way for maintenance workers to check them without coming out in boats. So the maintenance walkways are about four feet of concrete which hug the wall without even a railing separating you from the dark water that rushed by only a few feet below you on the other side.
I'm not one of the locals who have a phobia of the lake or water, but after my experience with Jabberwock Jack, I had to pause at least a moment to look uneasily into the impenetrable water of the lake. Jack was supposed to be dead and the albino alligators were far below the city. The river was just a river. People swim in it and the lake in the summer. It's not a big deal. But I spared a glance at that water before getting my head back on what we were doing.
Mikkel's coworker had been on the other side of the river in the Husks when the story began. Mikkel believes by the context that he might have been doing some illegal scavenging by the context, but Mikkel wasn't sure and it didn't matter. Hell, maybe he was there for the new Night Market. What mattered was that the coworker looked across the river and saw men coming out of the drainage tunnels. But they weren't moving either brashly or furtively like teens messing around. They we
re instead moving awkwardly. They lurched out of the tunnel and had surrounded a small dog that possibly had fallen from the other side of the fence. The coworker wasn't sure what was happening, but the barking is what had caught his attention. The men had seized the dog, which now began barking even louder and more desperately, then returned to the drainage tunnel, disappearing and not emerging in the remaining minute the coworker watched.
I agreed with Mikkel, that was worth investigating. While it could be just a group of men who hated dogs and disposed of them in drainage tunnels, that seemed like the less likely option. Based on the description, my guess would be that what the coworker witnessed were either ghouls or zombies, both some of our common foes. Ghouls were the quintessential cannibalistic humanoid underground dwellers. Pale, hairless, and savage, they would often attack enemies in small packs, making off with dogs, cats, small children, and even adults to feed their pack. Recently we discovered that they weren't as beastial as we thought, some of them even talking. I still didn't know how I felt about that.
The other possibility was zombies. In some ways, they're just like your favorite movie creature feature of the same name. They're lumbering sacks of decaying flesh that once were people like us. They want to eat your flesh and you can kill them by hitting them in the head. But they also differ. They're not the global pandemic that you see in films. Yes, their bite can infect you, but it takes over a week to turn you and medicine to treat it is plentiful. So while some people still get infected and become zeds, it's not the biggest concern. The big concern is that they're a mob of shambling corpses who want to eat you, your neighbors, and your neighbor's dog.
We walked down to the most likely drainage tunnel that the presumed monsters had used. I don't want to say we had some kind of fancy triangulation based on viewpoints in the Husks and Kensington. The coworker had said Kensington, so we knew where to start looking. And once we were walking along the river, there was an obvious drainage tunnel where the bars and grate had been twisted and torn, leaving a nice big entryway that any man-sized person could get through with ease. It was maybe two feet up from the maintenance path, so while it was a step up, even zombies should have had no problem getting in.
Mikkel and I took a quick moment to bet on the monsters' identity. He chose ghouls so I went Team Zombie. Loser would buy a round at Twin Eagles. Then we opened up our bag and decided on gear. The drainage tunnel was about ten feet in diameter, so not necessarily cramped, but neither was it really wide open. And it wasn't a flat surface that we would be walking on, as the whole thing was round. So we weren't taking any big gear, and we realized that we might be going single file.
We settled on leather jackets but no additional protection like helmets or shoulder pads. Mikkel pulled out his katana because of course he was using it. That sword and he had gone through a lot, and he was going to use it whenever he could. I don't think he could perform a good overhead strike in the tunnel due to the semi-cramped space, but otherwise it would be useful. I put a machete in my belt and then decided on a lead pipe. I had lost my favorite lead pipe when Jabberwock Jack had fucked me up. Since then I had been collecting new ones of various length[7]. I had them arrayed in a foldable leather sleeve like workman's tools. I selected a medium length pipe and then stuffed the sleeve back into the bag. We were leaving the bag at the tunnel entrance, expecting nobody would want to steal a duffel bag full of deadly weapons right in front of a tunnel. That's how movie thrillers start.
"Masks?" I said.
Mikkel sniffed the air from the tunnel and I did the same. It smelled moldy and a little putrid, but I didn't smell gas or chemicals. "Keep 'em around our necks," he said, "but I think we can do this without. Goggles or lights?"
For some reason, I didn't think this was a friendly question. I thought he was quizzing me. The choice was more preference than right or wrong, however. We each had a pair of night vision goggles. Prolonged use made my eyes hurt, but they were rather effective for their lack of bulk.
"Goggles, I think," I said. "I don't think we'll need to go far, and we can turn on lights if our eyes bother us. But with both ghouls and zombies, I think advertising our presence with lights is to our disadvantage. Thoughts?"
"Agreed," he said. We both clipped an LED to our jackets and grabbed flashlights, but they stayed off. I clipped my little video camera on me, hoping to get some footage for my funding campaign. Mikkel grabbed the drainage pipe and pulled himself in. From there he reached down and offered his hand. "Are you ready for this, brother?"
I grabbed the offered hand and showed off my bravado. "I was born ready for this."
I was in fact not born ready for this. I was excited, nay, thrilled at the idea of working out some aggression by bludgeoning non-human monsters who would just as soon eat me given the chance. Unfortunately, before that we did our best impression of rats in a maze. I've often wanted to have words with the long dead architect of the city's underground, Roger Carmichael, and after trudging through these drainage tunnels, my opinion was just as strong. Who creates such an unfathomable labyrinth of tunnels for regular city use? How the hell are New Avalon maintenance workers intended to find their way in all this? Even with maps, it was horrible. That monsters in the underground kept maintenance to the minimum required was perhaps a godsend for maintenance workers with a poor sense of direction.
For lack of any other words, the sewer was dank. Not like illegal drugs or a meme, but like something that was damp, musty, and moldy. Since the city hadn't had a good rain in weeks, the drainage tunnels weren't very wet. We only had to deal with puddles of standing water in some of the tunnels. By the same note, since we hadn't had fresh rain to flush everything out, the water was tepid and moldy. If it had been warmer, maybe it would have evaporated, but the drainage tunnels were colder than the temperature was outside. It smelled dead in these tunnels - not the scent of something putrid, but more the stale vacancy of standing water that seemed ill suited to even breed mosquitoes. After a few minutes in these tunnels, I was tempted to put on my gas mask simply to avoid the smell, but I decided I'd rather keep communication fresh. We were already seeing the tunnels in night vision green, we didn't need to also muffle our voices. But even with the option to talk freely, we didn't say anything for quite a while.
"I'm not seeing shit," I said, finally breaking the silence.
"Patience, brother," said Mikkel.
"Have you seen any signs or tracks?" I said. "It's been fifteen minutes. How far in are we going to go?"
"We've gone on longer hunts," he said.
"Yeah, but with no signs? We usually have some sort of evidence! A track, a corpse, garbage - something!" I said. "We don't even know for sure this is the right tunnel."
"You think all the tunnel grates are torn open like this one was?"
"It's unlikely, but maybe there are," I said. "Kids vandalizing or something. Who knows? The point is, we need a sign, or something!"
"Are you sure you're doing okay?" said Mikkel. "It's your first time back underground. You seem tense. I don't want to be taking an unnecessary risk. We can go back if you're not feeling okay..."
"Of course I'm tense!" I said. "I haven't killed a monster in months!"
"Most people call that 'being a normal person'. Monster killing shouldn't be something you have withdrawal from."
"I just... I just do, okay? Things are going crappy in my life... with Yasmin... with my bills... with everything. I just want to work out some frustration. And it's the only damn thing I'm good at! I just want to get back to being good at something."
"You're good at plenty of things," said Mikkel. "You're a good brother."
"First off, ha! - you know I'm probably not," I said sourly. "And two, that's such a mom response."
"I'm just saying you have more to define you being good at something than hunting," he said.
"Maybe, but I am a hunter and we're here, so I really want to kill some things," I said. I paused, realizing the rant I had just gone off on. "I'm
sorry. That was uncalled for. Things aren't going well for me. It's not your fault. We cool?"
"We're cool," said Mikkel. "But you know I can help if you need it. I'm your Big Brother. I'm here for you."
"I know, but that's not what I need. I've had so much down time since the hospital. I want to get back to living life. I want to get back to being the Szandor who doesn't need everybody's help."
"Everybody needs help sometime," said my brother in an awful platitude.
"Yeah, well, I've had enough for a lifetime," I said. "I just want to stop being The Dude Who Needs People's Help."
"That's not who you are -"
"Can we just drop this? Just drop it. Bad conversation. Stricken from the record."
Mikkel shook his head in disappointment. "Sure. It's probably for the best. Remember how you said you wanted a sign? Here's your sign."
At the end of the tunnel, just where our vision ended, there was movement. Then a few more movements. And then came a low moan.
Arguing had its own use, as the noise drew them to us. So I finally had my sign.
The zombies had arrived.
It's amusingly true that you can tell the difference between zombies and ghouls easily by their fashion. Zombies vary in the nuances of their dress, but they're typically wearing something out of the latest Fall catalog of Ripped and Bloody. They often are dressed in regular human clothes, just torn up by days lumbering underground, splattered with the dried blood from their original wounds or their recent victims. Unfortunately, there is almost always at least one New Avalon maintenance worker in each crowd, his yellow neon vest ripped and showing as a stark example of why not all jobs working for the city of New Avalon are created equal.
Ghouls, on the other hand, are never wearing the latest fashions. Sometimes they're not wearing anything at all. For a long time, Mikkel and I only ever encountered ghouls that were naked or wearing loin cloths, in some rare cases, a decent pair of pants. That meant we had to put up with some pale nude bodies, since ghouls otherwise look remarkably human-like. It can be distracting seeing their white butts, their jiggling junk, or floppy breasts. But it's helpful to instead focus on their sharp teeth and even sharper claws, since that's what going to get you. Recently, we had encountered a group of ghouls that talked, wore crocodile hides, and had jewelry. They still didn't look like modern humans, but neither did they look like escaped slaves from a gladiator movie. However, they were still easily distinguishable from zombies at a distance.
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