The City of Monsters

by Matthew McCollum

  “Uh—ow—yeah, mostly.” Talking hurt. Well, everything hurt. “I'm stuck about a hundred feet from the ground. Alex is still with me.” Mostly because his arm had tightened like a vise as he fell. He was pretty sure he had broken some of her ribs. “I'm not sure how long I can stay here. Can MC send the chopper?”

  “No can do,” MC said. “It's a drone. Full auto, no place for passengers. But there are kemos in the 'sarian group that's cleaning up the bleeders. Hang tight, a couple will climb up to you in a minute.”

  “Okay, I can hang on for a little while longer. But make it quick.” Adam had a thought. “And tell the cleaners to be careful. The screamers should be bleeding, and I don't think they have to be conscious to be infectious.”

  “Don't worry,” she said. “They know, and they've got full body gloves on. Just save up your strength. You're done for today.”

  Chapter 47: EXPERGEFACIO

  DEREK

  Derek woke up slowly and groggily, with a massive headache. There was a bright light above him, a little to the left, which wasn't helping his head. He blinked and shielded his eyes with his hand, looking away. In the process, he saw bookshelves with monster magazines, above him and to the right.

  Ah. He was in bed. His bed. All right, that was the where. Now for the how.

  The last thing he remembered was fighting the screamers. The Necessarians had been overrun, and...

  He groaned. Akane had put him in a sleeper hold. One he had taught her, no less. Wonderful. He had always been curious how those felt. Apparently, they felt like crap.

  He rubbed his head and sat up. He needed to find Laura, figure out what exactly had happened. The fact that he was in his room rather than a 'sarian hospital was a good sign, but he needed more details.

  He glanced at the clock. It was noon. Of course, he had no idea what day it was, so that didn't help much. On the other hand, his headache was already fading, so there was some good news.

  The door opened. “Oh good, you're awake.”

  It was Akane, dressed in black cut-off jeans and a t-shirt, with her bagged sword over her shoulder and Derek's sheets under her arm. She tossed the sheets onto his bed, before turning to him again.

  Derek frowned, more out of confusion than anything. “What were you doing with my sheets?”

  She shrugged. “They were dirty.”

  Okay, whatever. He guessed he probably wasn't changing them often enough. “Report, please.”

  “After I knocked you unconscious, Ling and I had to run. We couldn't hope to fight effectively while protecting you. Unfortunately, the majority of the horde followed us.

  “Luckily, Adam, Laura, and the retinue managed to call in an airstrike of sleeper gas. You got a pretty heavy dose, which is most of the reason you were out so long. Ling and I didn't have masks either, but we managed to keep away from the worst of it, so we just got really, really drowsy.

  “Regardless, before they could call in the airstrike, they had to get the horde into position. They found a tall building, and used Alex's blinders to draw the screamers in, which was when MC dropped the gas. The 'sarians moved in, rolled up the zombies, and we were done. Adam dislocated his arm saving Alex from a fall, but otherwise there were no other injuries.”

  It always felt weird when she talked this much. Sure, she always talked more when people weren't around, but this was a bit odd.

  “Good,” Derek said, when it became clear she wasn't going to continue. “How many dead screamers?”

  “About two dozen. Nearly a thousand captured. This was the biggest group yet.”

  He whistled. “Hopefully the Composer won't try and use these guys again. I'm not sure we could handle them.”

  Akane shrugged. “Maybe. They were easy enough once we knew what we were dealing with. Clarke and Laura are off doing tests right now.”

  He nodded. “Good, good. But that reminds me: What day is it, exactly?”

  “Tuesday. Same as when the bleeders attacked.”

  Derek blinked. “That means we missed Politics and Geography.” There was a possibility Akane had gone without him, but practical joking aside, she was loyal. She wouldn't leave him unconscious and unattended.

  “Don't worry, I got some of our classmates to take notes.” She smiled sheepishly. “Well, I got MC to ask them. Anyway, they'll drop them off soon enough.”

  “Perfect.” He searched around for his clothes. He was still wearing the same ensemble as last night, and he needed to change. “We have about an hour to get to that gargant that's been hunting around the Dresden mall.”

  Akane frowned. “What? No, you're still injured. You're not fighting anything in your condition.”

  “We'll grab Adam, and Flynn too. Ling's busy, but that should be enough.”

  She looked frozen. “Not Flynn,” she whispered. Then she regained her composure. “And not anyone else, either. You're in no shape to take on a gargant, help or no.”

  “Akane, I've been asleep for eleven hours.”

  “No, you've been unconscious for eleven hours. There's a difference.”

  Derek threw up his hands. “Somebody has to do it. We're contracted for the job, I'm not going to just give up because I'm too tired.”

  She grabbed his shoulders and carefully guided him until he was sitting on his bed. “I'll go, with Adam and Ling. Maybe the retinue too. We'll take care of the gargant, while you rest.”

  “I don't know—”

  “Adam has been keeping up on his training,” she said. “Mohamed the Silver is teaching combat tactics and monster slaying, remember?”

  “I remember.” Derek had been the one who put in a good word for Adam.

  She headed to the door. “Play around on your computer. See what's going on outside your little world.” She opened the door and smiled. “I'll see you later.” Then she was gone.

  Derek sighed. She had a point, he wasn't as aware of current events as he should be. Especially considering he was having a large impact on them, personally. Besides, she was pretty inflexible when he was injured.

  He fired up his laptop and logged in. Domina's internet, maintained by MC, was built on the foundation of a system called the Fundamentum. Fundie was a pretty basic code, just enough to give everyone a single user name they could use everywhere. Log onto a brand new site for the first time, and Fundie would automatically import all your settings and avatars. Pretty convenient.

  For most of Derek's life, the system had just been there. He hadn't really appreciated it at all. But in the last few weeks, after talking to Laura for the first time in seven years, he began to understand its purpose a bit more. She had been outside the city a few times, and had launched off in more than one rant about all the problems out there. It was odd, but also somehow fitting, that one of her biggest complaints was simply that you had to create a unique account for every site you visited.

  Derek searched around randomly for a little while, not really finding anything useful. Most of the news was on the screamers, some factual, but a lot of speculation. Clarke's techs were doing damage control, promising that they were studying the problem as much as possible in hopes of finding a cure, but it wasn't helping much.

  Interestingly, according to a few stats on sites he trusted, the actual deaths caused by the screamers was less than he had thought. The burners were the worst, but even then casualties were relatively low. Over ninety-five percent of anyone who engaged the zombies were either fine, or zombies themselves. If they did find a cure, this whole thing would soon go from a tragedy to a minor inconvenience.

  It was when he was browsing the Monster Slayer's Information Database that a chat window from “many-arrows” opened up. That would be Obould, the orc Derek had sold the giant alley crawlers to.

 

  Derek smiled. Obould was one of the first orcs, the trusted lieutenant of Orcus himself. Technically speaking, he was the leader of the subculture ever since his boss died in a fight with Malcanthet, but he took a v
ery hands-off approach to command.

 

 

  Derek frowned.

 

 

 

  This was Obould's real strength. He wasn't a monster slayer, he was the support system. Monsters always had fatal flaws, even if those flaws only existed on a cellular level. It was his job to find those weaknesses and expose them. If he had to whip up some crazy new chemical in the process, he would.

  he replied quickly.

  Obould was one of the few outside of Necessarius who knew of their status as the Paladins. He and Derek had a good working relationship, and the guy you bought equipment from needed to know exactly what you'd be facing.

 

  It took Derek a minute to respond to that.

 

  Huh. That actually sounded good.

  There was a brief pause before he replied. <...liquefy?>

 

 

  That was his mistake.

 

 

 

  Derek typed, smiling.

 

 

 

 

 

  Derek frowned. Elves were a pretty rare subculture in Domina, not because there was anything wrong with them, but just because the cosmos they used were barely even noticeable. Wow, you had pointy ears. Big deal. Derek would have been surprised if there were more than a couple hundred throughout the entire city.

 

 

 

 

 

  The Emporium was Domina's online marketplace. Brick and mortar stores were still more popular, if only because when ordering online there was always the chance the truck delivering your goods could get hijacked. But they were getting much better about that.

  Derek promised.

 

 

 

 

  There was a pause, probably caused by Obould doing a quick search to see what model that would be.

 

 

  Derek shook his head, chuckling.

 

 

  Chapter 48: GIGAS

  AKANE

  With Derek still injured, it fell to Akane to manage their missions alone. Ling was busy since she had class, but Akane collected Adam and the retinue, which would be enough to put down one crazy gargant.

  Adam was prepared this time, with his full assortment of weapons holstered to his hips and back. He didn't have any real body armor, which she thought was odd, but then she didn't have any either, so maybe she shouldn't talk. It would probably be a better idea to worry about his obviously still injured arm. Was he going to be all right for this?

  Akane had been a little worried the retinue wouldn't be available, but it turned out they all had that Insomniac buff that came out a few years ago, so they didn't need to sleep. That went a long way to explaining why they were always fighting fit no matter the hour, at any rate.

  “Sorry,” Akane said quietly. She was getting used to them, but I still didn't talk more than necessary. “Derek needs rest.”

  Kelly looked up from checking her pistol, her eyes covered by daygoggles. “No worries. He's had a rough day.” She turned to her crew. “Everyone ready?”

  They all nodded, and the group headed forward.

  They were at a large square-shaped park, nestled in the shadow of three skyscrapers, with the fourth side open to the street. A large concrete wall separated the park abruptly from the street, but there was no gate, just an opening hidden behind a smaller wall. The purpose wasn't to keep people out, but simply to make sure no one tried to drive a car around the well-kept lawns.

  The wall currently had a very large hole in it, maybe ten feet wide, from where the gargant had crashed through.

  It wasn't hard to follow. It had left a trail of destruction in its wake, ripping massive scars in the lush green landscape and scattering trees aside like toothpicks. The gardener would probably weep at the sight. Thankfully, the trail was not littered with bodies. The gargant had been rampaging since last night, but it wasn't specifically hunting down victims or even doing all that much damage to the environment. That was why Derek had been able to delay so long.

  The group just followed the concrete path. The park wasn't so big that they risked losing sight of the trail. In a few moments, even that became moot, since they spotted the creature bathing in the small artificial lake.

  Gargants, as the name implied, were giant monsters, ranging from the size of a car to the size of a bus. They were the twisted and mutated result of fey experimentation, and were the monstrous equivalent of tanks—with all the same implications.

  Luckily, making such a huge creature was by no means easy, never mind all the extra modifications such as durability and strength. Making such a beast capable of actually breeding new gargants was simply impossible. Each gargant was individually tailored by the fey, thus greatly limiting how fast they could be produced.

 
; This one was on the middle end of the scale, about the size of a pickup truck. It was a four-legged creature, coated in thick, dark brown fur, nearly black. Its face was completely covered with white bone plating, making it seem as though its skull was poking out at us. If Akane was any judge, that armor would be able to take a rocket without cracking.

  It hooted softly in contentment, splashing around the lake without a care in the world. At that, Jarasax looked uncertain.

  “Do... do we really have to kill it?” he said quietly. “I mean, what's the harm in just locking it up?”

  “Killed a bus already,” Akane said. “Bus was full.”

  Sax blinked. “But...”

  “Ate them.”

  He nodded, holding up his hand. “Got it, got it. Right, need to kill it.”

  “Soon,” Akane said. But first, she held up her phone and took a few pictures of the beast. They were decent quality, though her camera wasn't good enough to do anything professional. She wouldn't get paid extra for them, but Obould would appreciate the courtesy.

  “So what's this thing called?” Adam asked. “I didn't see it in that gargant book Derek lent me.”

  Jarasax clapped him on the back. “This one's brand-new. The fey are field testing it. If it does well, they'll make more. And since they don't really care about names, that means we get to name it.” He scratched his chin. “Something with 'skull' in it, obviously. Hmm... hairy hardskull?”

  Akane snorted in derision. “Works.” She headed forward before anyone could suggest any more stupid names.

  They followed, but it didn't stop them from talking. “I don't know,” Kelly said. “Traditionally gargants always have 'gargant' in there somewhere. How about just hardskull gargant?”

  Jarasax drummed his fingers on his gun as he contemplated. “Hm, I'm not sure...”

  “We can discuss this later,” Adam said, to Akane's relief. “Right now, we just need to kill the thing.” He pulled out his shotgun with obvious enthusiasm. “I've got a god slayer right here. If the anti-armor doesn't work, that will.” He calmed down a little, which Akane appreciated. Nobody wanted to be on a team with a loose cannon. “Akane, if you would do the honors?”