There were eleven of us in all that set out from Luke's bar. I'd brought weapons with me. I'd left the guns behind to be used in defense of the hospital but kept the body armor and the baseball bat. In the weeks since, I'd had cause to pick up a few other weapons and a duffle bag to carry them, all things that I'd left outside because I was already scary enough. I had an Ax and Shovel I'd taken from an open garage, as well as a crowbar. Craig took the shovel, and a middle-aged woman named Cynthia had taken the Ax. Nobody had wanted the crowbar, so I handed off my bat and kept it for myself. It was heavy, and there wasn't much leverage. While I wasn't superhumanly strong, I was stronger than I looked. Better muscled than an average human, I'd have the easiest time wielding it.
I wasn't on board with the plan of trying to evacuate the downtown area where the Kaiju would appear, partly because I'd tried already. For weeks, I'd spawned in the area, broken into buildings, and knocked on doors. It wasn't that people didn't believe me, though only about half of them did. And it wasn't that they were scared of me, though most of them were. The main problem was there was nowhere to evacuate to.
The Kaiju attack didn't start and end with it knocking down buildings. That was the climactic finale for the creature, but it was far from the only danger. Whether the Kaiju caused the swarm of trauma monsters to spawn—which wouldn't surprise me—or the swarm of trauma monsters somehow enabled the transformation of the Kaiju.
There were two other creatures I'd seen grow to gigantic sizes—if about a tenth the size of the Kaiju. Both of the Gremlins had shown me larger sizes, but neither had ever topped twenty feet tall. Like them, the Kaiju seemed happy to kill and eat other monsters. Since joining up with the Gremlins, the bunny monster had also grown significantly in size, and I was sure I'd seen them feeding the creature one of the rounded memory crystals they created. I didn't know that there was a connection, and in the end, it didn't really matter. Either way, the entire area was overrun with monsters.
There were enough of us that, if we worked together and stayed close, we might be able to avoid being overwhelmed for a time, but only if we didn't make too much noise. Eleven people were a lot to keep quiet and stealthy, especially when one was a giant glowing werewolf. I'd need to keep an eye out for an oversized trench coat or something to try to cover my glow. In the meantime, the best our group could come up with was to keep a distance between us.
"We need to keep our voices quiet. If I need to shoot something, we should immediately fall back to Oberon," Luke said. "The noise will give away our position and maybe even attract the attention of nearby monsters, so at that point, it won't matter how visible we are. If monsters come after us, we'll slowly retreat until we're back to safety or the threats are overcome. We're going head east for five or six blocks and then head north until we run into the Bradbury Apartments."
The group was standing outside the back entrance of the bar in an ally that was momentarily empty. For me, everything was covered in a swirling green fog, a haze that made seeing any distance impossible. For the rest of the patrons, this wasn't a problem. For anybody not a full Rememberer, the air seemed mostly clear, with the occasional wisp of green fog shimmering into and out of existence. Maybe they'd have listened to me if they saw the world in all its atmospheric threat. Or maybe they needed to try for themselves. Hopefully, they were quicker learners than me; we didn't have another two weeks to realize that we couldn't prioritize the people trapped downtown.
Luke had fallen into defacto leader for the bar patrons, and he wasn't a terrible choice. He had as many memories as most of the rest and seemed to be pretty cool-headed in a crisis. He'd apparently worked as an EMT in some pretty dicey situations and had gotten used to acting first and processing later. Thankfully, he was willing to listen to most of what I had to say, even if he wasn't ready to accept that our priority needed to be getting more people to join our group. If we had a hundred people—or a thousand people—then we might be able to successfully evacuate a significant portion of Kaiju Central. With Ten people, apart from myself, I wasn't confident.
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"Most of the monsters we'll encounter won't be as big as that bunny or even me," I added at a glance from Luke. "But they won't be small either. Most will be at least the size of a German Shepherd. Some will be a little smaller, and some will be a little larger. For the most part, they are solitary and opportunistic. Stick together, and hopefully, we can make it to the Bradbury apartments without running into any trouble."
"What about you?" Alejandra said, sounding more curious than concerned. Like Luke and I, she kept her voice hushed. None of us wanted to attract attention before we even started out. "You said you'll be hanging back. Won't that put you in danger?"
It would, in fact, put me in danger. I wouldn't say I'd grown used to dying, though it certainly wasn't the same terrifying possibility it had once been. By the time I'd left the hospital, I was already growing used to dying, if not necessarily the pain that often accompanied it. In the more than three weeks of loops since then, I'd died nearly every day. It was beginning to take on the feel of a chore. I'd never look forward to it, any more than a carpenter looked forward to smashing his thumb with a hammer, but sometimes it happened, and my leg definitely wasn't shaking in nervousness.
"I'm big and easily noticeable. Some monsters will be distracted from your group and target me, but with luck, most will be intimidated by my size and leave me alone as well. If they do come after me, I've had practice defending myself." It was strange hearing the light tones of a kid saying those words, and together with my shaking leg, undercut my bravado a bit. "I'll stick as close to you as I can for as long as I can. If I get overwhelmed by a group of monsters, don't come back for me. Follow Luke and run in the opposite direction, and I'll try to lead any packs away until I can make my own escape," I hoped.
The group set out on foot, not because there were no cars, but because we all worried that the sound of the engine would attract monsters that would trail behind us and fall on us in mass when we got to our destination. Of course, without a car, retreat would be slow and fraught with danger. I was pretty sure it was how we were going to die. It wouldn't be my favorite way to teach a lesson, but they wouldn't listen, and I needed them to understand how truly outmatched we were. We needed to get stronger; it was one of the reasons I'd hoped to get Craig to become a Rememberer. If I could, I'd do the same to everyone in my group. Chances were Craig wasn't the only one who had a trauma monster out there, and the more people I could get to remember the loops, the easier evacuating Forest Lake would become.
The walk was quiet, especially for me, as the ethereal fog dampened sound as much as sight. I trailed a block or so behind the group, just keeping them in sight while keeping an eye out for any monsters that might try sneaking up on them. The fog made that a more challenging prospect for me as well; the ubiquitous pale green coloring of most monsters would blend right into the haze. Even the piebald appearance of the Gremlins would be so much camouflage to my eyes. Still, when the first attack came, it didn't come from behind.
The group of ten walked shoulder to shoulder down the middle of the street, but after going a few blocks east, a traffic jam of abandoned cars forced the group to bunch up, except for a youngish redhead named Jamie and the older black man named Franklin. They'd gone to the right around a car rather than trying to squeeze in on the left side with the rest of the group.
A monster pigeon, the size of a mastiff, was on Jamie before she had a chance to scream; its newly-toothed beak tore out her throat in a moment.
Franklin responded quickly with his makeshift weapon. He'd had a rope he used to perform lasso tricks in his truck, a skill he'd picked up working on a ranch when he was young. He'd attached a heavy bag of rocks to the opposite end and used it almost like a flail. With a spin, he brought the bag of rocks up and around, colliding with the underside of the creature's jaw, sending its head snapping back. The damage was already done, and even from a distance, I could see the bloody beak.
The pigeon monster was nearly featherless, and its body looked almost gaunt compared to my expectations, at least. It wasn't a dinosaur, but if it stood next to a raptor, you'd know they were related.
I rushed forward as fast as I could, but I wouldn't be able to get there in time to save the old man, let alone the girl. Luckily, Luke was close and maintained his head. Rather than pull out his gun and start panic firing, he leaped over the hood of the car they'd circled and brought his bat down in a one-handed swing as an immediate followup to Franklin's uppercut strike. The not-dino failed to tank the blow and it's head and chest smacked against the road.
The brutal hit bought the group some breathing room as they snapped back from their surprised and hurried to try to surround the monster. Unfortunately, the pigeon monster was only down for a bare heartbeat before rebounded back to its feet with a twitch its thick, stubby tail. It hopped out of the way of the groups follow up jabs and swings, breaking out of their closing circle in the process.
Before the group could circle their target, two more raptor-like monsters leaped down from window ledges where they'd gone unnoticed and circled the bar patrons instead.