Chapter 26
Ebb and Flow of Things
Tara's nerves were stretched. The closer she drew to the city, the shakier her confidence became. Even though Ronald and she had gone over the plan for five days straight, and even though she knew it inside and out, from A-Z, front and back, it didn't help. Even reciting the steps in her head as she descended the mountain and crawled in stealth toward the city didn't dismantle the shaky confidence that overtook her. Thus far, every time Ronald and she went to dangerous and potentially hazardous 'missions', they were accompanied by Ethan. Now, however, Ethan wasn't there.
In the back of her head she remained hopeful that, perhaps, he was stealthily following after them, but she knew well enough that it was a fantasy. He'd never leave Layla alone, and even if he would, he'd straightforwardly proclaimed that this time around, they were on their own and that he would do nothing to help them. This was theirs to either complete or fail at, all else notwithstanding.
She knew that Ronald was somewhere at her rear, hiding in the woods still as she crawled out of the forest and onto the decaying pavement. The streets were still overrun by cars though it was clear that there had been a consistent effort to clean them up. Each street had enough clear width to allow at least one car to pass through without interruptions which was likely done by the military.
To her surprise and yet another bout of shock, she ran into the first checkpoint at the so-called Will’s Pond, a well-known youth-centred outing just outside the city itself. It was a complex array of entertainment that included a small skate park, a concert hall, and a few basketball and tennis courts that were all in one or another stage of disrepair. She was stopped sternly by several soldiers, though none were particularly aggressive, especially as she came into full view.
She was approached by a woman seemingly in her late thirties donning standard military gear, a gun slung over her shoulders, her expression seemingly cold and unfeeling. This was the first test, Tara knew–she had her story ready, and just waited for a chance.
“You alright?” the woman asked. Tara had done some… modifications to herself. She'd exchanged her clean, fresh clothes for the ones that she wore the night she met Ethan, she'd dishevelled her hair on purpose and even caused a few bloodstains a few days back to simulate her being in harsh conditions.
“... been better,” she said, putting on the best impression of a bitter smile that she could.
"What happened?" the woman asked, eyeing Tara from head to toe.
“You wouldn’t believe me,” Tara said. “I… I don’t believe myself. Not really.”
“Try me.”
"... a few days after, after that thing appeared," Tara began talking softly, looking away. "My boyfriend and I ran away from the city. He said he had an uncle that lived in one of those suburban hellholes and that we could go there until things calmed down. Anyway, roads were all completely filled up with cars, so we eventually started walking. We got lost in the woods, wandered for like two weeks, but found a small, like, community? Some ten miles over there," Tara pointed back behind her, though not going anywhere in the vicinity of Ethan's lodge. "We have stayed there since. It was fine, but there was no internet, so we didn't really know what was happening. Anyway, uh, about a week ago, at night, I… someone started screaming, and I woke up. We–there… this, this, I don't…" Her practised sobbing seemed to have worked as the woman reached out her arm and grasped Tara's shoulder gently, placating her in a soft voice.
“Calm down. What happened?”
“This–this monster… I–I ran out and Rick ran out and this monster, it was, it was just… just standing there. Oh my God. There was so much blood. So, so much blood. So, so we ran. We ran like hell. We didn’t look back. We ran and fell and got up and ran some more. But… it… it caught up to us. Oh my God, Rick. Rick–Rick he tried… he tried to fight it. He told me to run. Fucking run, Tara! And… and I ran. I ran away. I… I could hear him, hear him screaming–oh my God, Rick…”
The presentation was everything–even Tara knew that much. But it was also important that she didn't oversell it. The reason they settled on the story as-is was simple: zowolves were still a mystery. Their behaviour, their patterns, their everything was still being understood, and no matter what tale she spun, the details themselves didn’t really matter. While to the military these monsters might not pose much of a threat, to a hippie-sounding peace community? They were hell. So, she sold that hell, and she broke in front of the woman who suddenly hugged her and told her that she was safe.
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She was led through the checkpoint and into the nearby barracks and was given some fresh, bottled water. The woman, who introduced herself as Jane, stayed with her the whole time, not trying to extract any more info. Soon after, she was given a fresh set of clothes to change into and even a temporary bed until they found her a more permanent solution. She'd given her full name out and they immediately confirmed her identity–there was no need to fabricate anything there, at least–and as she lived in a dorm prior to the Descent, she didn't have a place of her own to return to.
“Hey,” Jane returned early the next day. Though Tara spent the whole night restless and barely sleeping, worried that she might have slipped up somewhere, nothing happened. She couldn’t sneak Ronald in just yet, naturally, but he knew as much and had brought enough supplies in his inventory to last him more than a week.
"Hey," Tara greeted her back. Jane handed her a cup of coffee and sat down on the rather hard bed next to her. The coffee was rather sweet, but it was warm and just the jolt she needed early in the morning.
“You feel better?”
“A bit,” Tara replied. “I’m sorry for yesterday. I–I thought I could–”
“Don’t worry about it,” Jane interrupted softly. “You went through something horrible. It’s only natural.”
“...”
“If you don’t mind me asking,” Jane said. “What did the creature look like? If it’s too painful, you don’t have to.”
“No, no, it’s fine,” Tara shook her head, lowering it right after in a bid to conceal fear in her eyes. “It was, uh, it was… kind of like a wolf? I–I think I saw it standing on two legs Its mouth… it was, it was really weird. I don’t know, it looked like… it looked like it didn’t have the lower part. Also, it… it had like six eyes, I think? So… so many eyes… oh my God…”
“Shh,” Jane’s arm reached out over Tara’s back and caressed it gently. “It’s alright now. You’re safe.”
“I… I didn’t think anyone would believe me,” Tara continued. “I… I thought I’d get locked up.”
“... truth be told,” Jane said. “There have been… quite a few incidents involving monsters just like the one you described.”
“W-what? There’s… there’s more than one?!” Tara exclaimed in shock and horror, jolting upward.
“I’m afraid so, yes,” Jane sighed softly. “There’s quite a few of them. But don’t worry–the city’s really safe. Not a single one managed to get in.”
“Oh my God… what the hell is happening?”
Tara eventually got assigned to a single-bedroom apartment at the southern end of the city, some two miles from the main military headquarters. She heard the whispers that whole apartments are rarely given out and that most people were roofed into communal housing, so she silently thanked Jane and felt quite bad about deceiving the woman. Chances were that, once Tara and Ronald left, she might get reprimanded or, worst case scenario, even fired for one or another misconduct.
The apartment was small, barely furnished, but definitely a viable living space. In fact, if Tara did live out the story she sold, this wouldn’t be a bad place to continue living, all things considered. However, she knew she couldn’t get too attached. As such, immediately after moving in, she scouted the entire surroundings. As it was relatively close to the military headquarters, there was a decent amount of security. Patrols moved in block-by-block patterns, paired into 2-3 soldiers each, and they passed by her apartment building at least twice in an hour.
Additionally, there was a security camera on practically every corner with no obvious blind spots. But it wasn’t airtight, not even for an ordinary person. When Tara saw that the ground was a bit complex, she looked toward the sky.
Unlike the paved streets below, rooftops were largely empty. As the apartment block wasn’t uniform with buildings of varying heights and gaps interlocking within a singular ‘unit’, it was likely that the military felt no need to station guards frequently since even Olympic jumpers would struggle to close some of the gaps necessary. For her, though, this was perfect.
On the very first night of moving into the apartment, she snuck out through the rear window and swiftly climbed up to the rooftop, not wasting any time. She still made sure to be silent, controlling her breathing and movement as she slithered along the flat rooftops, jumping fifteen feet gaps with ease.
She bounded for the eastern edge where Ronald was situated, eventually running out of the rooftops to bound as the architecture turned to more modest, downsized buildings. However, by now, due to the distance from the city centre, the security was quite lax–occasional patrols that barely looked around, uninhabited buildings, and infrequent security cameras left a lot of blind spots. While the difficulty increased as she got to the edge of the city, there was just enough room to navigate through and past the flimsy barbed wire fence they built up.
Ronald was some two hundred yards deep into a downhill crescent, hiding in one of the trees, having hung a faintly luminescent neon-green paper to indicate his position. Though sneaking him back in wasn’t particularly difficult, she knew that they’d have to be extra careful now–her story, while commonplace enough, was still a likely outlier which meant that there would be more attention on her. So, for the time being, instead of moving in with her, Ronald simply slipped past the apartment blocks and moved to the city’s outskirts where there were fewer sentries to watch out for.
They agreed to reconvene tomorrow during the two-hour-long suspension of the Martial Law where people could generally move about the wide city streets without straying too far toward either the edge or the numerous military compounds. The first part of the plan was a massive success, but it was also the easiest one to execute. The true test would be the next few days, but at the very least the success of the first portion proved to both that they had some skills and weren’t just flat-headed nothings.