Monster City

by Kevin Wright

  “I hate cats.”

  Squirming down into his seat, eyes peeping over the dashboard, Peter watched as black mist rolled from the alleys and mills, converging upon the street. Just mist, just normal, everyday, black mist. Probably pollution, moving, moving against the wind, rolling along, walking? “What the—?”

  The night shadows were playing tricks on his eyes; they had to be. He rubbed them. Something was gliding through the black mist. A man? Streetlights are swaying. Must be … or, or moving. Yeah no. Peter watched despite the dread metastasizing from his stomach down to his bladder. They weren’t phantoms. He tried to swallow, but his mouth was dry.

  They were men.

  They were men who moved like ghosts, without effort, melting from one shadow to the next. Sliding almost noiselessly along the ground, they loped along like a pack of ethereal wolves. Only the soft pat of gray flesh and the click of bone and nail on concrete gave them away. The army of darkness shambled from the night. Clambering out of sewers, over fences, and emerging from within huge mill buildings, they came in droves towards the bridge. Supported by their crooked spines, their long arms hung low, knuckles scraping the concrete curbs as they lurched along. Intent upon their hunt, for they were hunting, make no mistake, they ambled past. Around the gray pickup truck, like river water around boulders, they slid, dead lolling arms tapping against the doors. They were not men.

  They were ghouls.

  “Oh my God, oh my God, if you get me through this, I promise…”

  Peter was shivering in the fetal position on the floor of the truck before he even knew what he was doing. Should’ve gone with Elliot. He pulled his hood over his head. Should have stayed home.

  With his back to the passenger’s door, he peeked up as shadows cascaded past. He froze! For a split second, a ghoul glanced in; it paused, inspecting. It was grotesque, twisted, but it had been human, once, long ago. Now it was a nightmare, a rotting, gray nightmare. Black empty eye sockets and gray chisel teeth burned into Peter’s mind, long, crooked, nasty, shards of teeth. Then it was gone.

  In silence, the parade of horror and filth marched past. Enthralled, transfixed, Peter edged up the door to watch. Beneath the obelisks, at either side of the bridge, they massed like some pre-Cambrian cult. They slid beneath the obelisks, to the parapets, jostling. Then, one by one, groping, they pulled themselves over the concrete wall headfirst like reptiles.

  What the fuck do I do? Do something, even if it’s wrong!

  Peter yanked the lock up on his door and immediately slammed it back down.

  Can’t go out. They’ll kill me. Last time they … DAMN! Just get the fuck out of here!

  Peter scrambled into the driver’s seat, fumbling with the keys. He jammed the key into the ignition and then yanked it out. “I can’t leave. Elliot. Jesus, what the fuck? I don’t even know him! You don’t even know him! He’s old! Brudnoy’s people, they’re gonna kill them.”

  Peter froze.

  “Fuck!” He slammed the steering wheel, hitting the horn. “Shit!” he yelled, not doing it again. Eyes wide with fear, he looked up. The ghouls paid him no attention, waiting their turn to go over the wall until the last had crawled over.

  “Bastards.” Peter drove the key into the ignition and started it. He popped it into drive and screeched the tires, slamming the horn the whole way.

  HAWWWWWWW!

  Screeching to a halt beneath the obelisks, Peter laid on the horn. It was the only thing he could do. He popped the truck into park, kicked open the door, and jumped out.

  Gunshots rang out beneath the bridge.

  His knife was in hand as he bolted to the parapet and screamed over it, “ELLIOT! BRUDNOY! ATTACK! GHOU—”

  He looked down. “Sweet Jesus.”

  Up the wall, the ghouls clawed their way, black grimaces and dead eyes rising.

  Turning, arms flailing, twisting and tripping, Peter sprinted back to the truck. As he reached the door, ghouls clambering over the other side of the bridge, he was wrenched from behind, neck cracking, face-to-face with a chisel-toothed nightmare! He swung the knife—

  The ghoul slammed him into the door, twisted shanks of teeth bared to the skull.

  Thunk!

  The knife sank to the handle in the ghoul’s eye, which did not stop it, or even annoy it. Peter was airborne then, crashing headfirst into the bed of the pickup truck, stars exploding before his eyes.

  Dazed, scrambling to his knees as ragged claws grasped at him from every direction, Peter’s hands found something metal and heavy, and he swung it. “Tire iron.”

  In the truck’s bed, Peter stood, swinging the tire iron about as sallow flesh and black nails grasped at him. Thwack! Bone crunched and flesh tore, but more took their place.

  “Help! HELP! FUCKING HELP!” Peter swung for his life amidst a sea of corpses, and then he fell to his knees, and they froze; they all froze.

  Peter glanced up, confused, battered, bleeding. Behind, ghouls peeled off with nary a whisper, bolting towards the gray mill towers in the distance. Those before Peter turned as one, shuddering, muttering. Afraid?

  “HAI DURENDAL!”

  A cry split the night air as a man somehow vaulted the parapet wall, landed on the bridge, and charged without hesitation into the seething pack of ghouls.

  Peter just stood, watching. “Elliot?” His eyes went wide. “The vegetable?”

  Into the fray Elliot charged, smashing ghouls aside like a sledgehammer. In his fist, he bore a rune-marked bastard sword, and Elliot knew how to wield it.

  Only a blur of light and gore was left in the wake of each swing, each stab, each hack. Like a mad beast, Elliot charged the mob again, and he slaughtered everything in his path, everything. He blasted through the thick wall of them, stomping the fallen, shattering with knees, hammering skulls and spines with elbow and fist, but that sword, that sword took its toll, and in five seconds ten ghouls were gone, and five seconds later still, it was over. Elliot, the vegetable, had cut them down; he had cut them all down. His breath was white mist in the night.

  He staggered suddenly.

  “Elliot!” Peter leaped from the truck bed.

  Elliot collapsed to one knee, hand upon the pommel of the sword to steady himself. Runnels of sweat traced down his bald head. He clutched at his chest, each breath a rasp.

  High-stepping through the mangle of corpses, Peter knelt by his side. “Stay down, Elliot. Just breathe.”

  Elliot lurched up, though, and with Peter’s reluctant help, staggered to the side of the bridge. He collapsed to his knees again.

  “Just stay down, Elliot,” Peter pleaded. “You okay? Chest pain? Don’t move. You hurt anywhere else? Let me call an ambulance.” He glanced around in vain for a phone.

  “I’ll be alright,” Elliot said. “Please … please, follow.”

  “No, no, just relax, just breathe.”

  “No time.” Elliot grasped Peter’s shoulder and hauled himself to his feet once more. “Got to go now. Come on.” Elliot lifted a leg over the parapet and, despite Peter’s attempts to stop him, slid over.

  Thud!

  “Elliot … Elliot, you okay?”

  “Come, Peter, hurry.”

  Peter peered down into the dark, then back at the massacre, and then the gray mill towers. He looked down again. “What the hell?” he said, and climbed over the parapet.

  Peter slid to a halt at the bottom of the muddy bank. “Thanks.” Peter took Elliot’s hand and stood.

  “You have to hit their heart,” Elliot beckoned Peter under the bridge, “or dismember them, unless you have Durendal. This way.”

  “Okay,” Peter said, following. “Look, this is a bad idea. I was here last night, and it didn’t go too—”

  “You’re needed down here, Peter,” Elliot said. “No harm will come to you. You have my word. Come now. Quickly.” Elliot disappeared beneath the bridge and Peter followed, stumbling into the pitch black.

  “It was a close thing.” Elliot trudged ahead.
“Nearly they broke through. Dozens. Steel and lead, tooth and claw, we broke them. That was a brave thing you did, Peter; it confused them for a moment. Long enough for us to mount a counterattack.”

  “Yeah, whatever.”

  There was a click in the darkness, and Elliot was suddenly visible ahead. Someone had a flashlight. “Over here,” called a voice, vaguely familiar.

  Following Elliot, Peter wended his way through a maze of trash littered with dozens of gray corpses. Some were cut apart as were the ones on the bridge above. Some were not. Some were torn apart in ways that made Peter shudder. “Brudnoy.” His voice echoed as he stepped gingerly past.

  Sirens began to blare in the distance.

  “Hey, Pete, quit lollygagging,” the voice said. “They won’t bite.”

  “Bullshit,” Peter muttered, glancing at the corpses as he passed. Elliot disappeared down a tunnel, the tunnel Lord Brudnoy had dragged Peter the night before. The bars once covering the entrance were twisted out like pipe cleaners. Two men pulled on them, grunting, trying to straighten them with hammer and blowtorch.

  The light disappeared down the tunnel.

  “Hey!” He hustled for the light. “Wait up!”

  Peter followed the light, turned left, and walked through an open steel door. On either side of the door stood two bent, shaggy men. Both carried sawed-off shotguns. One smoked a cigarette. Both looked extremely nervous. Their fingers caressed the triggers of their guns as they fidgeted from one foot to another. The one on the left jerked his head, telling Peter to go. Peter hurried on. Behind, the steel door screeched shut with a clang and a clack and then silence.

  “In here, Peter,” Elliot called from within a lit doorway.

  Peter stepped past him and into the room. Light blared. Peter shielded his eyes for a moment, blinded; then it passed. “Jesus Christ.”

  Benjamin Salazar stood before him, more haggard than the night before. Blood saturated his clothes and covered his arms from hand to shoulder. Frozen, he just stood there, pointing.

  Lord Brudnoy lay unconscious upon the floor, his fur coat matted to his skin with blood, four legs splayed out at unnatural angles. Patches of fur were torn from his body, and makeshift cloth bandages covered him, all soaked crimson. He was breathing, ragged, gurgling maybe, but he was breathing. His head lolled back, and his tongue hung from his mouth like some enormous black slug.

  “There were too many,” Salazar said. “They had guns. Silver bullets. Cheaters.” He blinked. “Can you save him?”

  If Peter’s jaw didn’t hit the floor, it came close. “What?”

  “Can you save him?” Elliot placed a hand on Peter’s shoulder.

  “What? He’s a — I’m not a — you’d need a trauma surgeon. For dogs. I wouldn’t know where to start.” Peter stared down at the werewolf. Jesus, and if I could save him, would I want to? “Look, guys, why me?”

  “You saved me last night,” Salazar said.

  “That was a little diff—”

  “He is dying,” Elliot said, “and his only hope lies in you. His people’s only hope. I must go. I shall return.”

  “Where the hell you going?” Peter asked.

  “To mind the gates and stem the flow,” Elliot said. “Do your best.”

  “What the hell?” Peter surveyed the scene again. “What the fuck.”

  “Please, Peter…”

  Peter glared at Lord Brudnoy and stepped over. “Go get me some more bandages,” he said to Salazar, without looking at him, “clean ones, some alcohol, strong, some trash bags, a rubber mallet, a stapler, pliers, a razor, two lampshades, and a really sharp knife, and some kind of suction … thing. Okay? And boil some water. I’ll need a few more hands, too. Oh, get me a two or three-liter bottle of soda and some tape, like duct tape. And gloves, I need rubber gloves.”

  Salazar nodded, juggling the list in his mind and bolting like a spooked rabbit.

  Peter examined his patient, starting at the head. “Okay, ABC’s, airway, needs some suctioning. He’s breathing. Good. Now, where’s he bleeding the most from? The neck. Got to be the neck.” Peter peered close at the neck and pressed down on it with his hand. “Silver bullets, huh?”

  Salazar skidded back in, briefcase wide open in either hand. A huge pyramid of junk rose from its depths. Some of it Peter had even requested. He dumped it on the floor and looked expectantly at Peter.

  “Gimme the turkey baster,” Peter said.

  Salazar stooped, rifling through the pile, “Turkey baster, hmmmm, where would I be if…?” he asked himself, picking stuff up and tossing it over his shoulder, “mallet, wiffle ball, steel wool, ron—”

  “Ron?”

  “Dominican rum, 175 proof — turkey baster. Here.” He held up a turkey baster.

  Another man stepped into the room, wearing potholders and carrying a large pot of water. Behind him came another man, carrying a hibachi; he set it down and turned the flame up high. The first man placed the pot of water on the flame.

  “Okay, Salazar,” Peter grabbed a rag and pressed it on Lord Brudnoy’s neck, “suction the blood out of his mouth.”

  “With?”

  “The turkey baster.”

  “Really, I’m more of an idea man.”

  “Do it!”

  Turkey baster in hand, Salazar probed Lord Brudnoy’s most dangerous orifice. He squeezed the bulb, sucking out blood and saliva. He squirted it out on the floor. “Is that enough?”

  “No.” Peter rummaged through the junk pile. “Put these in the water once it boils.” He handed a sharp knife and razor to one of the two men.

  “It’s almost boiling,” one man said.

  “That was fast.”

  “We were making spaghetti,” the man explained.

  “Ah,” Peter said, junk in hand and inspecting Lord Brudnoy’s silver collar.

  “Don’t touch that!” Salazar adjusted his glasses and squirted blood out onto the floor.

  Peter ignored him, still examining the collar. It was a silver circlet with a small combination lock connecting its two ends. “I have to take it off. What’s the combination?” He peered closer. Miniscule tendrils of smoke curled up from the fur and flesh beneath the collar. “It … it’s burning him.”

  “It’s supposed to,” Salazar said.

  “I need to get it off.”

  “No.”

  “It’s in the way,” Peter said. “I need to get under it.”

  Salazar leaned close, growling. “Fine,” he said, fiddling with the lock. It sprang open, and he took it off. “It goes on as soon as this is done. The second it’s done.”

  Peter ignored him, studying Lord Brudnoy’s neck. “What’re these other scars from? Hey you, spaghetti-boy, I need some direct pressure here.” Peter pointed at Brudnoy’s neck. “They’re not burns. I don’t think … they look old.”

  Salazar shrugged.

  “Grab me the knife and pliers…”

  * * * *

  The operation was gruesome. Perhaps a sawbones at Shiloh worked under worse conditions, with inferior equipment, in a less sanitary environment, and with less skill or training, and more pressure. It’s debatable.

  The trash bags were ponchos. The turkey baster kept Lord Brudnoy’s mouth clear of saliva, blood, and vomitus, of which there was more than enough to satisfy the gagging Salazar. The three-liter bottles of soda, once emptied of moonshine, along with the duct tape, were used to ventilate the werewolf lord, for though he was breathing, every little bit of oxygen helped. The rubber mallet was tough-love anesthesia. The most obvious equipment were the gloves. They protected Peter’s hands when he cut into Lord Brudnoy, when he reached inside him, searching for the silver slugs that were killing him. That was the idea, anyway.

  Peter was drenched with blood up to his trash bag-wrapped shoulders within ten seconds.

  “How is he still alive?” Peter asked.

  Salazar shrugged.

  The bullets were deep. Peter delved with flashlight and knife into the cavern
of flesh that was Lord Brudnoy’s neck and chest. The two men Salazar had brought helped hold the wound open while Peter reached in up to his shoulder. The turkey baster helped there, too, suctioning away precious blood, allowing Peter to catch the shine of bullets in the light.

  “Just a little deeper.”

  He pushed in.

  Finally, triumphantly, Peter pulled one silver slug out; then he pulled some more. Lord Brudnoy grunted in his stupor, and Peter in his. A few more slugs came out, clicking on the concrete. They, too, were silver.

  “I think that’s it,” Peter said.

  “No, there’s more,” Salazar said, spurting out more blood. “There’s got to be.”

  “How do you know?” Peter asked.

  “Trust me.”

  “Fine. One more time guys, pull.”

  Peter reached in.

  Deep.

  Feeling.

  “Rrrrg…”

  Deeper.

  Searching.

  “Come on, come on.”

  Then he brushed it with his fingertips. It was deformed, slick with lycanthropic blood, deep within Brudnoy’s chest cavity, lodged against his beating heart. Between thumb and forefinger, shoulder deep in flesh, Peter had found it. He grasped it, slipping, and then he plucked it between thumb and forefinger and pulled … and pulled. “What the—?” The cavern of dense flesh collapsed suddenly around Peter’s arm, contracting; he barely pulled free.

  “Jesus Christ,” Peter collapsed to the floor, “I got it.”

  The slug clicked on the concrete floor.

  Salazar pounced on Lord Brudnoy, wrestling the collar back on. It clicked.

  Peter tore the poncho off in pieces. “I think that’s the last one.”

  Salazar removed his glasses and peered at the wound. “How would you know? You’re hardly a doctor.”

  “Started healing as soon as I grabbed it,” Peter said. “Almost pulled me in. Jesus, couldn’t get my arm free for a second.”

  “He is healing!” Spaghetti-boy said, pointing.

  “Mother of God.” Peter shook his head. “We gotta help it along, though, Salazar. I’ll hold it shut, you staple.”

  “I’d rather not…”

  Ka-chung! Ka-chung! Ka-chung!

  Eighty-eight staples later, the rest of the bandages, another dose of anesthesia, some well-placed Ron, most of it down Salazar’s throat, though some for sterilization purposes, and the procedure was complete.