Chapter 60 - Life Finds A Way

We found Alfred and his people at the next building over. After leaving the greenhouse, we continued deeper into the campus. Everything was dark; without lights, without even moonlight, it was difficult for me to find my way around. I kept my eyes peeled for any signs of life, figuring wherever they were they might have torches or candles lit, at least. But there was nothing. We had to rely on Kara’s NightVision to keep us from running smack into chunks of debris littering the ground.

It hadn’t even been a week, and things were utterly falling apart. I was surprised how fast everything went to shit, but I suppose I shouldn’t have been, given everything that changed with the Event. What little I could see of the campus looked like a bombed-out war zone.

A whistle from somewhere up ahead caught our attention, and we looked up. I couldn’t see anything, but Kara could.

“It’s them! They’re on top of the Aiken Center!” Kara told me. She waved a hand, and atop the two-story building, someone waved back, barely visible against the night sky.

A few minutes later ropes were lowered for us. I ordered all my undead to hunker down and keep watch. If anything dangerous came close, they’d give me some advance warning. Then we looped the ropes around ourselves so the folks topside could haul us up.

Alfred was waiting at the edge of the roof when we arrived. He looked haggard, far more exhausted than the last time I’d seen him, which was saying something. But he was still alive, anyway, and it looked like his people were, too.

“We were worried when we saw the other building,” I said. “What happened?”

“I took what you said to heart, about them tossing fireballs inside,” Alfred replied. “We boarded the lower floors up, but we couldn’t keep them out well enough. It held at first, but once they got some of the boards removed, getting inside wasn’t hard. They did exactly what you thought they would—they started fires on the bottom level. Didn’t even have to use magic. They gathered gasoline from the cars in the parking lot and doused the ground floor, then set it alight.”

“Shit,” I replied. What else could I say? Sometimes, being right isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. “How did you escape?”

“That elevator shaft we left open,” Alfred said. “We started moving people out of the building through it as soon as the fires were lit, and we knew staying would just get us all killed. Even if the fires didn’t reach the upper floors, the smoke would. Most of us were able to get out in time, but we lost a few to smoke inhalation, and a couple of our fighters defending the place against the goblins. Thank god you found us before they discovered our new hideout. What’s the story with the Air Force?”

“Air Guard,” I corrected. “They’re exactly what we need. They’re defending the base, taking in civilians, and fending off monsters. It’s the perfect setup. They do require everyone work, mind. There’s no exceptions. They find a job for everyone, and if you want to stay, you’re expected to contribute. At least the grownups are, anyway—not sure how they’re handling kids.”

I added the last comment because I saw that there were still a good number of children huddled together on the rooftop. Best I could tell Alfred still had a little over two dozen people. He’d kept them all alive throughout some nightmarish crap. I had to admit, I was impressed.

“That’s good news. Did they send more troops, or just you two?” Alfred asked.

I shook my head. “Just us. They’ve got a fight of their own. Bunch of bird people have taken over the civilian airport, and they’re at a nasty detente with one another right now. They couldn’t afford to send a strong enough force to bust through, because it would leave the base too weak.”

“So of course we came anyway,” Kara said, grinning.

Alfred put a hand on her shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “And we’re all grateful you did. Now we need to figure out how to get everyone back there, though. How was the trip here?”

“Not easy,” I replied. “We had to fight our way through a bunch of goblins who were battling rat-people down on Route Two.” Alfred stared at me, his eyes big. “Yeah, I know how it sounds. This is life now, I guess?”

He chuckled at that. “Yeah, I guess. Okay, then, what’s the plan? How do we get these people through?”

Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

I looked over his shoulder, checking out his band of refugees. Some of them were armed, which was good to see. But my guess is maybe a quarter of his group were combat-ready. The rest might be able to defend themselves in desperation, but they weren’t going to be much use in a fight, and would be more likely to get themselves killed.

There was someone I didn’t see, though, and figured it was just the darkness. “Hey, where’s Kat?”

“Selena, I’m sorry,” Alfred said, his voice thick with emotion. “She…didn’t make it out. Kat helped herd all the kids to the elevator shaft, helped them get down, but then she kept helping other people, too. She took an arrow through a window before we got everyone out. Kat’s gone.”

There was a roaring in my ears, and I wasn’t sure I’d heard what he said correctly. Before I knew it, I was sitting down on the hard rooftop, and my thoughts felt like they were moving through molasses. Kat was gone? Dead?

I’d known her less than a month. She wasn’t a lifelong friend, not someone I loved. She wasn’t family. We’d barely been roommates for long enough to really get to know each other, and we hadn’t even been close friends, before the Event.

But I’d fought to keep her alive, tried to save her, get her to safety. I gave her crystals to help her heal better, got her help from the healer at the police station, protected her when I could. And now she was dead, killed by those same goblins who’d been shitting on everything for days now.

“Hey, are you okay?” Kara asked. I looked her way; she’d crouched down next to where I’d landed when I sat abruptly. “Selena?”

I just shook my head. No, I wasn’t okay.

All this time, I’d been dealing with things as best I could. When monsters woke up in my classroom, I’d fought them off. I rescued a classmate and my roommate, and fought still more monsters. Then I was betrayed by people, who tried to kill me. I’d gone off on my own and done okay, but everything had been rushed. Surviving took priority. There was no time to process any of the things I’d been through, and now it was all crashing down on my like massive ocean waves in my mind.

I ground my teeth together, pulling my mind back into some semblance of order. The grief I felt at Kat’s death was still there, still vibrant and alive in my head and heart. I’d cry real tears for her.

Later.

The other emotion that rose through the grief, pushing it aside and supplanting it, was rage.

I closed my eyes, thoughts suddenly racing ahead at full-steam again. I saw a way forward. There was a way to get the remainder of Alfred’s people to safety, and path that would also make those horrible creatures pay! And I was going to take it.

I opened my eyes again, saw Kara still there, staring at my face.

“Selena?”

“I’ll be…all right,” I said. “I’ve got a plan. Kara, I want you to stay here with Alfred and get his people ready to move. We want everyone at the ground floor, but hidden. I’m going to go get something, and then we’re going to escort everyone back to the Guard base.”

And we’re going to take care of the goblin problem along the way, I thought but didn’t say aloud.

“Get something?” Kara asked. Then her eyes got wide, as she remembered what we’d discussed before. “Ohhhh! That. Gotcha. I’ll make it happen.”

“Thanks,” I replied, flashing her a smile as I stood back up. “Alfred, I need to get back down to the ground floor. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes or so, and if I’m right, I’ll have the solution to all of our problems with me when I return.”

He looked confused, but didn’t ask questions. He passed me a pair of glowsticks, instead. “Take these. For some reason, they still work, so you won’t be in the dark.”

Then he helped me get the rope looped back around my waist and personally lowered me back to the ground. Once I was down, I gathered all my undead again. With luck, I wouldn’t need them, but I was going into a building I hadn’t explored, which meant anything might have taken up residence inside. Always better to be safe than sorry.

We moved as a group north, toward the Marsh Life Sciences building. It was too dark to see details, but the place looked fairly intact, from what I could tell. The front door was unlocked, and I sent my undead into the place ahead of me, joining them once they’d moved a dozen feet into the interior space.

The exhibit had been set up in the next room over, really the only room in the building large enough. I read they’d even had to make alterations, tear down a wall or something just to make it fit well. I cracked the glowstick, pleased when it lit up right away in a brilliant lime glow. It cast a little light, enough to see by as we slowly moved through the space, watching for danger.

Then we were in the makeshift exhibit hall. But as soon as we entered the room, I knew something was wrong.

The platform was empty.

It was a big platform, over twenty feet across, and it dominated the center of the space. There was no mistaking that the object which should have been there, wasn’t anymore. I started sweating.

The Fields Museum didn’t send their exhibits out into the world very often. It was a rare enough thing. But Vermont had a paucity of museums, so they’d made an exception, not only sending extremely valuable exhibits to another state, but allowing them to be housed at the University rather than a proper museum. There just weren’t any museums in the area capable of handling the exhibit, not with the security requirements the Fields Museum insisted upon.

I’d read about all this in the news on my phone, and from the college newsletter as well. It was admittedly cool stuff, even though I wasn’t much of a history buff. There was no way the exhibit could just be gone.

Something big shifted behind me, and I dove sideways just in time to look up at enormous jaws closing on one of my skeletons. The creature’s maw slammed shut with a crunching sound, then lifted the skeleton into the air. It shook its head side to side, breaking the skeleton apart entirely and sending splintered pieces of bone flying in all directions.

Then the tyrannosaurus skeleton opened that mouth again, and let out an earth-shaking roar.