This Land of Monsters

by Tim Gabrielle

“Give me some time. He’s really expedited our timetable here. It’s happening soon, just know that.”

  With the two of the digging in unison, the grave was finished quickly. They rolled Samantha onto the plastic tarp; her body covered with wet grass and blood. They stood looking down at her draped in the blue plastic.

  “Should we get Melissa for this?” asked Dietrich as he looked back at the house. He caught a glimpse as she watched from the second floor window before the blinds shut in a flash.

  “No, I don’t think so. I don’t think she could handle it right now.”

  The two of them shoveled dirt into the hole, covering the tarp until it was no longer visible. Nash wiped the sweat from his forehead and once again caught a glimpse of Duncan, who stood down the street in the shade of a tree.

  “Duncan’s been spying on us,” said Nash. “That’s how he found out that we weren’t doing anything with Samantha.”

  “He’s been standing there since you took Melissa inside,” said Dietrich as he looked back to see Duncan walking away from them. “I know that you already went out today with Emma but I want to take you out on another run.”

  “Sounds good; any reason in particular?” asked Nash.

  “There’s something I’ve been wanting to show the two of you and today seems like the day. Meet us in an hour at the exit point.”

  Dietrich walked around the grave and patted Nash on the shoulder before he disappeared down the road. Nash grabbed his shovel and walked back toward the house. He felt a flash of anxiety as he made his way around the blood-streaked grass and up the stairs to the front door. He hadn’t noticed it before, but there were splashes of blood on the steps and porch, which he slyly dodged as he disappeared into the house. Melissa was dressed and leaning on Samantha’s doorframe.

  “You okay?” he asked as he put his arms around her and placed his chin on her shoulder.

  “He’s just so cruel. She was living fine with us, away from all those horny bastards.”

  “I know,” he said. “I’m going to go shower. Dietrich wants to take us out on another run today. Are you feeling up to it?”

  “There’s no way in hell I’m staying in here alone. Why does he want us to go out again?”

  “No clue. The fact that he wants to show us personally means it could be big.”

  He kissed her on the forehead before he disappeared into the bedroom to shower and get ready to meet Dietrich. As he stood underneath the hot water, letting the events of the morning wash away, the shower door opened and Melissa stepped in with him, fully clothed as fresh tears ran down her cheeks. She closed the door behind her and hugged him tighter than she ever had.

  “I can’t live like this any longer,” she wept as the water ran down her clothing and stuck to her skin. “It’s too much; he’s too much!”

  They stood together in the hot water as she continued to cry and the underlying stress of living in the Mansion finally bubbled to the surface. He held her until she stopped crying, the steam rising above them like a dense fog.

  “I’m sorry,” she sighed, opening the shower door.

  “It’s not your fault,” he said.

  Nash quickly scrubbed all of Samantha’s blood off his skin before he stepped out to dry off. He could hear Melissa still crying in the bedroom as she changed out of her wet clothes. Fletcher’s threat of having to find a replacement for Samantha in his brothel terrified him. He shivered at the thought of Melissa sitting in the front row of his church, smiling as she waited to be given to someone as their communion. Listening to her sob in the next room, he felt more committed to that promise than ever.

  He dressed quickly and found Melissa sitting listlessly on the bed as she stared blankly out the window. Seeing her lost in her sadness brought him to the edge of tears, her posture reminded him of all the girls in the pews.

  “Mel?”

  “Practicing,” she spat. “If we stay here much longer he’ll make me take her place.”

  Nash grabbed his backpack from the corner of the room and pulled out the empty Pop Tart package she’d given him in the first few days at the Treefort. The little red heart she’d drawn on the silver packaging stared up at her as she looked down at it with a smile.

  “It might not feel like it right now but it’s going to be okay,” said Nash with his arm around her as he sat next to her on the bed.

  “I know. When do we need to meet Emma and Dietrich?”

  “Half hour or so. I’m going to go make us some food before we have to go. Are you okay?”

  “I’ll be fine,” she said.

  Nash kissed her on the forehead and left their room, closing Samantha’s door before he headed to the kitchen. Melissa joined him shortly after and ate quickly before they left on their second run. Dietrich met them halfway, greeted them with a smile, and gave Melissa a hug.

  “I’m sorry about what happened this morning. I promise it’ll all be over soon.”

  “Either way it will be,” she replied, her voice hollow.

  “Emma will be joining us again. She’ll be meeting us in a half hour. I told you to come early because I wanted to introduce you to someone.”

  The armed guards stood at the ready as the three of them walked in front of the church. Dietrich nodded to them as they walked and each of the guards nodded back as the trio passed by the church. The green space across the church was filled with people Nash had never seen before.

  “I’ve never seen so many of Fletcher’s people outside before,” said Nash while he watched the crowd of people congregating outside.

  “They’re all between communions,” said Dietrich. “When the streets aren’t as busy, you can assume people are inside and strung out. We have a lot of drug users here.”

  They stopped in front of a large house, smaller than Nash and Melissa’s but larger than many of the others around it. They walked up the sidewalk and Dietrich opened the door, letting them in first before he joined them inside.

  “Welcome to my home,” he said and closed the door behind them.

  “It’s beautiful in here, Dietrich,” said Melissa as she looked around at the immaculately decorated home.

  “Sherry always liked a neatly decorated house. I do it for her. Please, have a seat.”

  Nash and Melissa sat on a couch in the living room as Dietrich disappeared down a hallway. Nash could see Duncan on the road outside.

  “Go to hell,” said Melissa as they watched him pass.

  Dietrich walked slowly into the room with a slowpoke at his side that had an emotionless face.

  “This is Sherry,” said Dietrich, as Nash and Melissa stood to meet her. “She’s not a smiler, as you can see.”

  Sherry stood in front of them, dressed in a knee length dress and bare feet. Her chocolate brown hair was pulled back into a bun on the top of her head, with streaks of gray starting to appear at the base of her scalp.

  “She’s beautiful,” said Melissa as she looked at the well-kept woman who stood in front of them.

  “Thank you,” said Dietrich with his arm around his wife. “It’s not easy seeing her like this, but it’s better than not having her at all. I’m sorry it took me so long to introduce you to her. I keep her private for the most part for fear of what happened this morning.”

  “You don’t need to explain,” said Nash. “We understand.”

  “I don’t know why I brought you here,” he said with a chuckle as they stood together in his living room. “I just wanted you to meet her.”

  “We’re glad you did,” said Melissa.

  “I miss her terribly,” he said while he looked at her longingly with a sad smile. “I’m sorry. Let me take her back to her room and then we can head out.”

  “I feel awful for him,” whispered Nash as he watched Dietrich move slowly with his wife.

  “It’s actually kind of beautiful,” said Melissa. “In a creepy way.”

  Nash nodded, “I can understand his refusal to let her go.” Melissa squeezed his fingers once as
they waited.

  “We should go,” said Dietrich as he closed Sherry’s door and joined them in the living room. “I have something to show you outside the walls.”

  “I thought meeting Sherry was what you meant when you said you had something to show us,” said Nash.

  “Oh, no, not at all. Come with me and I’ll show you something special.”

  They joined Emma at the sewer exit, her patience obviously stretched thin by one of Brad’s advances as she stood with an angry scowl on her face.

  “This cold is going to be the death of me,” she said as she handed them each their guns before she disappeared into the manhole.

  Dietrich tossed the empty duffle bags down the hole before climbing in himself as the cover slammed back into place. They were at the second ladder quickly and moved up fast after Emma knocked on the cover five times, as she always did.

  “Hello again,” said Allan with a smile as they each filed out of the sewer. He tried to kiss her on the lips but diverted him to her cheek before she sneezed into the wind.

  “Steer clear, Al. She’s a mess,” said Dietrich with a smile as they shook hands. “Keep an eye out for us. If someone comes through, we’ll need you to keep them busy.”

  “Will do,” said Allan and smiled at Emma again before he climbed back onto the van and continued to survey the area.

  “How have the twins been,” asked Nash as they walked through the decimated streets.

  “They have been amazing, actually,” said Emma. “We’ve been making sure they’re fed and healthy. I think you’re going to be surprised by how much better they look.”

  “Oh, we’re going to see them today?” asked Melissa with a smile.

  “We’re going there right now,” said Emma.

  Since the first time Nash and Melissa had come outside the walls with Emma, they’d looted hundreds of houses, each having an orange X on both sides of the door. They’d killed dozens of howlers and the area was vastly more secure than it had been back then, even though the area around the Mansion was thicker with howlers that it had ever been. They approached the home the girls had been hiding but Emma and Dietrich kept moving.

  “Weren’t they staying there?” asked Nash as they passed.

  “We moved them shortly after you found them,” said Dietrich. “We wanted them to be hidden farther away from the Mansion, just in case. We moved them about three weeks ago.”

  They walked down a street filled with mostly burned houses; a few dotted here and there were untouched by the flames. They walked up to a home with burn marks covering the entire right side of the home but otherwise in good shape. There were orange X’s on each side of the door, which indicated it had long been looted and left behind to crumble.

  Dietrich opened the door and stepped in, letting the rest of them walk in too before he closed it behind them. The stairway that led to the upstairs was a disaster, with broken furniture and glass sprayed up and down the steps. Dietrich knocked seven times on the wall before he scaled the disaster of a staircase.

  “Watch how I climb, but stay here until I call you,” he said as he moved up the stairs with ease.

  It looked as if a howler had, at one point, peeled through the house and tore things from wall to wall, but as Dietrich moved up the steps and found precise footing among the debris, it was easy to see it all had been placed there intentionally. Dietrich disappeared down a hallway up the stairs as the sound of a door opening and closing echoed through the house. He was gone for s short moment before the door opened and shut again, followed by Dietrich reappearing at the top of the stairs to wave them up.

  They climbed up easily enough, taking care not to disrupt the carefully crafted disaster scene. The top of the stairs was less obstructed than the steps, but still enough to ward off anyone who came looking.

  “Here we go,” said Dietrich as he came to a stop in front of a closed door at the end of the hall.

  He turned the doorknob and pushed it open.

  “Nash! Melissa!” said Courtney, who was sitting on the bed next to Jessica.

  The twins shot to their feet and greeted them at the door with a hug. They each glowed with health, having spent the last two months being able to eat and drink freely and living a relatively tension free life as they awaited Fletcher’s demise. There was something else in the room that quickly drew their attention away from the twins and reduced everything else to a blur. Both Nash and Melissa looked with tunnel-like focus.

  Sitting in an armchair beside the bed with his legs propped up was Sullivan Grant.

  Chapter 29

  “Hey,” said Sullivan with a smile, taking his feet down from the bed as Melissa and Nash looked at him from the doorway.

  His trademark thick, straggly beard had been replaced with stubble, which revealed a bare patch on his left cheek where he’d been burned by the grenade blast at the Treefort. Melissa walked toward him quickly with watery eyes, collapsing into his arms as he caught her.

  “How?” asked Nash as he looked at Dietrich. “He was confirmed dead.”

  “He was confirmed dead,” said Dietrich. “By one of our friends, who I placed on the team that attacked the Treefort.”

  “How’d you find us here?” asked Nash as he struggled to believe Sullivan was in front of him.

  “The last thing I remember was a grenade going off near me.”

  “Our guy found him shortly after that, passed out on the ground, but alive,” said Dietrich as he ushered them into the room and shut the door behind them. “There wasn’t much our guy could do to help during the attack, seeing how he was outnumbered by Fletcher’s men, but he did his best to hide Sullivan and confirmed the kill.”

  “I woke up that night, the woods on fire around me. I’m lucky I woke up when I did because I would have easily burned to death. There’s not much left in the woods; it’s basically all gone.”

  “Fletcher’s group left but circled back and torched the trees. He’s luckier than he knows,” said Dietrich, patting Sullivan on the shoulder as he looked out the curtained window.

  “After that, I made my way the best I could. I was slow moving at first, seeing how this was healing and intensely painful.” He pointed at his face, wrinkled and scarred from the grenade blast. “It’s healing nicely and I look a lot more badass.”

  “That you do,” said Nash as he shook his hand with a smile. “It’s good to have you back around.”

  “Out there on your own, it’s a nightmare, but here I am.”

  Nash looked around the room and realized it was covered in maps and written plans, as well as the names of key Mansion personnel.

  “You’ve built another war room, haven’t you?” asked Nash.

  “I supposed I have.”

  “You’re going to like the state of our group,” said Nash. “It’s disappointing.”

  “You haven’t told them yet?” asked Sullivan while he stared at Emma and Dietrich as they stood in the doorway.

  “Told us what?” asked Melissa as she sat on the bed with the twins.

  “It was in your best interest that you didn’t know yet,” said Dietrich. “I felt horrible keeping this from you, but I had to keep you safe.”

  “I feel like today is just full of surprises,” said Nash while he prepared for the news.

  “Fletcher’s been bluffing you. I just realized it myself last week.”

  “Bluffing how?” asked Nash as Melissa grabbed his hand.

  “He’s been killing off most of the Treefort group,” said Sullivan. “It’s been happening from day one. Anyone who wouldn’t partake in his communion, he’s been having them killed or thrown outside the wall.”

  Nash and Melissa stood silent, trying to make sense of the news that had just been told to them.

  “Think about it, Nash,” said Emma. “The only people from your group you’ve seen are the ones whoring around with those slowpokes or strung out on his drugs.”

  “Oh my God,” said Melissa, letting the truth of the situat
ion settle in as she connected the pieces in her head. “How many are left?”

  “Less than half,” said Sullivan. “The only reason Dianna is alive right now is because of the damn alcohol she’s drowning in. Pretty much all of the remaining civilians from the Treefort are taking his communion regularly, just to stay alive.”

  “He knows we haven’t taken his communion,” said Melissa.

  “I know. Dietrich briefed me before bringing you up,” said Sullivan. “That is why things are moving quickly now. We don’t know how much time we have.”

  “Why don’t we just stay outside the walls?” asked Melissa. “Tell him we ran, tell him we died, I don’t care! We’re safer hiding out here than we are in there.”

  “If we don’t come back, he’ll know something’s up,” said Nash. “We have no choice, we have to go back and play his game.”

  “He’s right,” said Emma. “You’re on his radar in a big way after this morning. The pieces of the revolt are all in front of him; he just can’t see it yet. If you run now, it won’t take much for him to put the pieces together. You’d be putting the entire operation in jeopardy.”

  “Quiet!” hissed Sullivan. They became silent and gazed at him with nervous anticipation. From behind the door, there came a soft crunching, followed by the sound of banging down the stairway. Dietrich crashed through the door quickly, looking down the stairs to see the front door thrown open into the foyer.

  “Look outside!” yelled Dietrich as he flew down the stairs quickly with Emma right behind him.

  Nash flung open the curtains just in time to see Duncan disappear behind a row of houses as Dietrich and Emma spilled out onto the street. He opened the window and leaned out, pointing in the direction Duncan had run off.

  “It’s Duncan! He went that way!” he yelled and his voice cracking from frustration and fear.

  Dietrich and Emma took off running in the direction Nash had pointed them in. Dietrich moved like an Olympic runner, jumping fences as he moved through the backyards of the homes to catch up to Duncan. Emma kept pace behind him with her gun drawn and held at her side as she ran.