Monster Empire

by Michael-Scott Earle

  I tossed my supplies in a little rowboat that no one was using, set the cage inside, glanced back to make sure I hadn’t been seen, and untied the boat in about five seconds flat. There were a few fishermen out on the wide river, but they were far from shore and paid me no mind as I pushed off and started rowing.

  The river flowed slowly, but I got up to speed quickly and watched as the village of Buckshire slowly shrunk below the tall reeds. I didn’t see the bounty hunter come out to the back of the buildings again, and I let out a sigh of relief as soon as the town faded from sight.

  That had been a close one.

  I was confident in my fighting ability, but the man carried a long sword and seemed to know how to use it. I probably would have killed him if I got the jump on him, or I could have used my pistol to end him, but shooting him would have attracted all kinds of bad attention. Killing him would also have made a big mess, and I would have had to worry about hiding the body.

  This was definitely the best outcome. No one knew I had come to the town, and no one knew I had left. I'd gotten everything I needed to make a great homestead, and I couldn't wait to get back to Nika.

  But then I thought back to the town crier and the bounty on my head.

  I was a marked man, and sooner or later someone was going to find me. If they tortured Torrance again for information, he would tell them about seeing me in Buckshire, and he would tell them about my disguise. I was glad that I had lied to him about living in the underdark. Maybe that piece of information would lead local authorities to give up the search and consider me dead or gone. Maybe Nika and I could just live in peace.

  But I knew that was just wishful thinking.

  For all I knew, there were already people searching for me in the forest between the two towns.

  They may have already found Nika.

  I pumped harder and rowed faster down the river. My worry for Nika grew with every passing moment, and I cursed myself for having left her alone. It was then that I realized that I loved her. Really loved her. I wasn’t worried about getting back to Earth anymore. I wasn’t worried about being caught and killed.

  All I was worried about was the green-skinned woman who made me laugh, and the unborn child she carried.

  My child.

  Our child.

  The first of many monster babies if Nika had her way.

  The little rowboat moved down the river at a good clip, but a jetliner couldn’t have gotten me back to camp fast enough. If anything happened to Nika, I didn’t know what I would do.

  When I came to the spot where I had emerged from the woods earlier that morning, I rowed the boat beneath the low bridge and left the road behind. The river got a little rocky further downriver, but I managed to steer it through the whitewater without banging it up too badly.

  Eventually I came to a spot where the waters became too tumultuous and steered the boat toward the shore. I was glad that the obstacle was there because it meant that other people could go no further either.

  The last thing I needed was people sailing past the homestead.

  I made landfall and pulled the boat up onto the riverbank. Then I unloaded the boat, tied the growler of ale to my pack, hauled the chicken cage off, and then hid the boat under a bunch of brush. The boat would come in handy, but I couldn’t carry it home with all the other stuff that I had with me.

  When I was satisfied that the boat would go unseen, I started west along the ridge. My backpack was probably about a hundred and twenty pounds, but I was used to rucking heavy loads across much more difficult terrain, so I pumped my arms and legs steadily as I trekked through the forest toward our home. I had one thing on my mind and one thing only, and that was getting back to Nika before someone else could find out her location.

  Chapter 8

  I hiked past the cave that Nika and I had emerged from only two days prior and eyed it warily. I was on high alert for trouble, and I imagined the beady red eyes of kobolds glaring at me from beyond that dark haunt, waiting for nightfall so that they could have their revenge.

  I made a mental note to return to the cave soon and lay some booby traps. The monsters hadn’t emerged from there since we had been at our homestead, but it was a clear path to the underdark, and I didn’t feel like being surprised at night by a war party.

  A half hour later I reached the camp that the travelers had made and ran up the hill. I put the chicken cage down and pulled my M17 when I topped the ridge. Then I surveyed the land to the north and listened for any sign of trouble. All that came to me was bird chirping, and Nika’s beautiful voice as she sang a happy song.

  Relief washed over me when I heard Nika singing, so I put away my weapon, picked up my chickens, and walked the rest of the way with a big fat grin on my face.

  “Honey, I’m home!” I called out as I entered camp.

  “Ken Jewell, you’re back!” she declared happily as she tossed aside her broom.

  We ran into each other’s arms, and I lifted her off her feet and she wrapped her arms and legs around me.

  “I was so worried about you,” I confessed after we had kissed passionately. “Is everything alright? Did anyone come by?”

  “Of course not, silly,” she gasped as I kissed her neck. “I’ve just been keeping house, but I was worried about you too.”

  Our passionate kisses led to frantic stripping, and I carried her to the new bed as she giggled.

  Nika asked me what I purchased while she rode me. For some reason, my shopping list was the hottest thing she had ever heard, and when I listed the variety of food that I had brought back for her she began to climax. As soon as she had come down, I flipped her over so I could take her from behind. As I slid inside of her and pulled her hips back into me, I told her that I had also brought her a special treat: a delicacy that humans called chocolate.

  Her resulting orgasm sent startled birds erupting from the tops of all the nearby trees.

  An hour later we rose from bed, and I brought the wares over to the table and laid everything out. Nika had a hundred questions about the new and delightful things I had bought, and I happily explained them to her. She sampled the bread, fruit, vegetables, and finally the chocolate. Her appetite for food almost matched her appetite for sex, and my heart swelled at how happy she was.

  “Can we eat those animals too?” she asked as she eyed the chickens hungrily.

  “We could, but they will provide us with eggs every day. We’ll eat some eggs, but we’ll let the rest hatch. Then we can start eating chicken once a week or so.”

  “So they will make new ones that we can eat?” Nika gasped. “Ken Jewell, you are amazing!”

  “I just want to take care of you and the baby,” I said with a shrug and smile.

  “I wish to take care of you as well,” she said as she proudly showed off a baby basket that she had fashioned from thin wooden branches. “Look what I made while you were gone.”

  “Wow, that’s beautiful, Nika,” I said. Her craftsmanship in making such things was truly impressive. “I bought some cloth as well, and some thread and a needle kit. I figured that it would come in handy if you wanted to make a blanket or a tablecloth. Oh, and I got you something else.”

  I cleaned off my hands and presented her with the lacy pink sundress. Her eyes watered as she beheld the beautiful garment, and she hugged me fiercely. “Oh, Ken Jewell, you are too good to me.”

  “I know,” I teased. “Go try it on.”

  She stripped out of my t-shirt and underwear and pulled the dress over her head. I had guessed right, and the dress fit her perfectly. It hugged every curve of her wonderful body and made her small baby bump that much more noticeable.

  “Wow, you’re really starting to show,” I noted.

  She beamed at me and caressed her tummy lovingly. “Yes, the baby is going to be very strong and healthy. You are a good provider, Ken Jewell.”

  I let Nika take over the cooking of the fish and set my focus on the construction of the house. The first thin
g I needed was to outline the frame, and that meant cutting down a lot of trees.

  Felling axe in hand, I trudged down the hill and surveyed the nearby forest. Pine was the best wood to use for a log home, and there was an abundance of it. The only problem was that the best looking trees were on the other side of the river.

  The most obvious solution was to build a bridge, but the effort would prove risky, not because I couldn’t do it, but because anyone heading down the river would see the bridge and realize there was probably a home nearby.

  Then I glanced down river and was reminded of the rapids.

  I’d gotten off my row boat because they had looked pretty dangerous, so I doubted that anyone else would bother trying to row up through them. It also meant that I really only have to worry about someone coming down the river, but they would also eventually have to worry about the rapids, so I guessed that anyone local would probably not even bother.

  It wasn’t the safest bet, but the only other option would be building a boat to haul the logs across, and that would take much longer and be much more dangerous.

  So I decided to build a bridge, and I figured that I could take it down as soon as I had collected all the logs I needed.

  I set to the task eagerly. I was in a good mood. My woman was happy, we had food, and I wasn’t in goddamn Syria fighting nutjobs. Right about then life couldn’t have gotten much better. The weather was on our side as well, and as the second sun rose in the east, I started to fell the lumber that I would need for my bridge.

  At its most narrow, the river was twenty feet wide, so I picked a couple of tall pine trees that grew on the bank and began chopping them down. They would be a bitch to move, but if all went well I wouldn’t have to do much more than budge them a little on each side to get them into position. I really needed a beast of burden for the job, and an ox would have been ideal, but I didn’t have the money for one, so for now I was going to have to make do with homemade winches and pulley systems.

  I didn’t have the technology available to create a cofferdam, and I had no way of effectively driving support beams into the middle of the river, so I was going to have to make do with a simple beam bridge. The pines I had chosen were more than thirty feet tall, and their length would make them strong enough to span the twenty foot wide river without much bending.

  “Timber!” I yelled as the first pine tree creaked and began to fall.

  I had planned the drop perfectly, and the tree fell across the river and crashed onto the distant bank. The next tree fell similarly, but it was fifteen feet away from the first. I would have to move them closer together, but first I needed to cut off all the branches.

  I stepped up onto the first tree, found my balance, and went to work carefully chopping off the branches. By the time I had finished cleaning them both, Nika called to me from up on the hill.

  It was lunchtime.

  I joined her at the table, and we enjoyed a bountiful meal of roasted fish, apples, and bread. I told Nika my plans for the bridge and the pulley system to haul the logs up the hill, and she shared with me her plans to decorate our little abode. I debated whether I should tell her about the bounty on my head or the men who had been looking for me, but I decided that honesty was my best bet. After all, I wouldn’t have wanted her to keep something like that from me, so I told her everything that had happened.

  She took the news stoically and even seemed proud that her husband had gained such a large bounty. She even laughed at the nicknames, “Crazy Ken” and “the Monster Lover from Mer Bay.” I had heard the latter in passing, and I thought it had quite a nice ring to it.

  “You are already a notorious outlaw, Ken Jewell,” she said with pride. “Soon everyone on the surface world and in the underdark will know and fear your name.”

  “I don’t want to be feared, Nika. I just want us to be left alone.”

  “I think you can have both, yes?” She nodded to herself. “Yes, if they fear you, then maybe they will leave us alone. If not, then we will just have to crush them all with our army and take their loot.”

  “What army?” I asked.

  “The army of your monster children of course, Ken Jewell,” she answered. “You will be unstoppable!”

  I shook my head and smiled at her unwavering positivity. It seemed like nothing could dampen her spirits, and that in turn made me feel like I was almost invincible.

  The food did me a lot of good, and by the time I returned to my work I felt like a man reborn. I used the rope along with the block and tackle that I had bought from the man at the tool supply store to create a simple winch. I anchored them against one of the largest of the trees adjacent to where I wanted to make the bridge, and then I nudged the big pines into place on our side of the river. I then walked across one of the trees and similarly adjusted the other side. Once the logs were in place, I secured them with stakes fashioned from the thicker branches and tied them down.

  I had set the logs six feet apart, but there weren’t any other trees in the area I could use to make baseboards. There were plenty on the far side of the river though, so I balance beamed across the water on one of the trees I had just winched into place, and then proceeded to chop down a couple of tall pines there. Once I had chopped all the branches off the felled trees, I sawed off twenty, six-foot-long logs that would connect the beams and act as a walkway.

  The twin suns burned bright overhead while I worked, and by the time I had nailed and tied down the last of my pine logs, the first sun had begun to flirt with the western horizon.

  I glanced at my watch and was surprised to find that I had been working for more than ten hours. The time difference still had me all kinds of confused, but I was beginning to get used to the long days.

  I decided it was time to take a break and joined Nika for dinner. We ate bread, cheese, and some fish Nika had caught as the chickens grazed on the hillside. I was going to need to build a chicken coop at some point, but I had so much work ahead of me already that I put the thought aside for now. Until I had built them a suitable coop, they were just going to have to sleep in the unfinished house.

  Dinner made me crave coffee, and I remembered the tea that I had bought. One of the pouches smelled like green tea, and the other hinted at Earl Grey. I brewed some green tea, added some sugar, and sat on the hillside with Nika to enjoy the new beverage.

  “Your bridge is beautiful and very clever,” she said as she admired my handywork.

  “It’s not the best I've ever made,” I admitted. “But it will get the job done. Now that it's finished I can begin hauling logs from the other side of the river.” I glanced up at the holy twins. “But we’ve only got about six hours of daylight left, and I’m pretty beat. I’ll probably just focus on cutting down the pine trees we need with what’s left of the day.”

  The next morning I awoke before sunrise and put the kettle on the fire. Nika and I watched the first sun emerge from the east and ate a breakfast of bread, apples, and cheese. Nika enjoyed the new tastes immensely, and she sat across from me and chewed with ecstasy the entire time. When she caught me staring she blushed, and her cheeks actually became a few shades greener.

  “The baby loves the new food that you have provided,” she said.

  “Oh yeah? It’s a bit of a luxury. It will only last a few days, and we’ll have to go back to fishing.”

  “That’s okay,” Nika said as she smiled at me. “The baby just likes to eat.”

  “Damn,” I chuckled, “does the baby want more?” I noticed how she eyed the chickens as they grazed on the hillside.

  “Oh yes,” she said. “The baby always wants more. He loves this surface food, but he also wants things only found in the underdark like lizard brains, glowing mushrooms, lichen pudding, tadpole soup, baby turtles on a half shell, and basilisk meat. I think you should go back into the underdark soon. We will definitely need more loot, yes? And you can get the baby the food he wants too.”

  “Back into the underdark?” I asked. “That’s ab
out the last place I want to go. But you’re right, those kobolds were carrying a surprisingly good amount of coins, and we’re going to need more supplies at some later point in time.”

  “Yup,” she said happily. “And you need to find more monster women to bring to the surface and make babies with. It is nice with just you and me here, but I can’t wait to have a big family.”

  “You mean an army?”

  “Same thing,” she said. “Clan Jewell will be legendary. You will see.”

  “It's going to take a bit of time,” I said as I glanced at her baby bump. “You've gotten bigger, but it will be a few months before he is--”

  “Oh no, Ken Jewell,” she laughed. “The baby will come in just a few weeks.”

  “A few weeks?” I gasped as I spit out my tea.

  “Of course, silly,” she giggled as she reached to wipe the tea off my chin. “How long do human women carry their unborn babies?”

  “Nine months!” I said as I calculated the time that had passed since we first had sex.

  “Yes, but don’t worry, Ken Jewell, you will have the warren finished by the time your son is born.”

  “Yeah,” I said as I stood up from the chair and grabbed my axes. “I’d better get to it.”

  The next day I redoubled my efforts. I needed to get the house built, but talk of the underdark had reminded me that there was still a cave leading to the place just a half-hour walk from our homestead, and it was a problem that needed to be remedied.

  Sooner was better than later.

  I approached the cave cautiously. There were no tracks leading from the entrance, but inside there were dozens of footprints from the little kobold devils that had chased us out more than a week before. I sniffed at the air, but smelled nothing but the musk of dark, wet places. I listened for ten long minutes, but heard nothing but the steady flow of water in the walls and distant frog songs.

  The tunnel that we had raced down to get out was more than one hundred feet long, and when I walked to the end of it, I noticed there was another passageway that we had missed because it had been behind us. M17 and flashlight in hand, I explored the new lair. The tunnel smelled like moss and fungus, and the only sound that came from within was the steady plop of distant water.