“Seriously, why won't you just let us in!” he tried once more.
“Sorry mate, no hard feelings.” The guard didn’t even bother to make eye contact, chewing on something and staring straight over the top of his head, as if he wasn’t even there.
“Look, I know it’s not your problem. We just need to know what’s going on with the West Road and Tole.”
The guard kept staring, ignoring him completely. Chewing. It was infuriating, they hadn't even bothered to introduce themselves.
Brickwrath sighed, and turned to Elegantlillies, hoping she had a better idea. Two days on the road and he hadn’t learnt much about the woman. She took the time to shave every morning. She cared well for her horse. Her partner was back in the village, and between them, they had two children, but they had grown up and left years before.
One of her children, a son, was living in Tole, and that was as far as the conversation had gone before she had stopped speaking. They had continued the journey with her back ramrod straight and her gaze focused on the horizon.
Right now she was giving the guard a Look, one he knew well, and one which signalled incoming violence. He hoped it wouldn't come to that, but he was becoming resigned to it at this point. They had been trying to get into Cericil for almost an hour, at first by stating they were travellers, and then, after being refused entry by this shit-pissing guard, by demanding to talk to a superior.
It hadn’t worked. The guard was stonewalling them at every attempt, responding with meaningless phrases and generally being a prick. The guard was armed with both a spear and a large gun of a modern design, but they had made no motion to use either.
There were no others travellers waiting at the gates, and they had met nobody on the road, which had maintained the same level of overgrowth for the whole journey. Brickwrath had expected it to improve as they neared the Cericil, but it hadn’t. As best they could tell, nobody had been along here for weeks.
Now stuck here, their questions unanswered, he was getting upset, and Elegantlillies expression was becoming less stoic and more angry by the minute.
Tole had been a sprawling settlement with farms and cottages surrounding it like a blanket, Cericil, or “Big City” as the farmers and villagers referred to it, was a well-contained mass, surrounded by high walls, built up over generations.
In the past, they would have been covered with mana-absorbing plants, but those had been torn off and the walls re-plastered in preparation for winter, the white of the paint blindingly bright in the midday sun, even after a season of wear.
Brickwrath reached out a hand and laid it on Elegantlillies’ arm, holding her back from braining the guard with her pistol.
“C’mon, fuck this, we’ll circle round to the next gate.”
She gave him the Look, and then just a look, shaking her head and letting the anger go. The guard got a final last capital L Look, and then they moved back to their horses.
“I’m afraid you can’t do that”, the guard spoke. They both looked around at them, not expecting the interjection. They were still staring into the middle distance, chewing. “Boss says you can’t, next gate’s gonna be as shut as this one. Go back to your farms or whatever.”
Brickwrath stared at them, puzzled. “You haven’t spoken to anyone since we got here, kid.”
The guard's eyes flicked to him for a moment, and then back into the middle distance. “Boss told me before. Before you arrived.”
Brickwrath and Elegantlillies shared a glance, and then, without further communication, they moved. He went for the legs, ducking under the startled spear thrust, and she leapt, knocking into them and grabbing the gun from their back, snapping the shoulder strap with pure strength and chucking it off into the city.
Between the two of them they easily overpowered the young guard, confiscating the spear and pinning the struggling kid down with their weight.
Target down, Brickwrath crawled up the body, clamping a hand over their mouth before they could scream. Somewhere inside the city, he heard somebody shout, and in the distance, a single bell started to ring.
Hearing that made him realise how quiet it had been up until that point, but he was spared further contemplation by the sensation of liquid under his hand.
Looking down, he released his hand from the guard's face. Beneath him, their eyes were unfocused, blood running from their nose and through his fingers.
Well, that was a bad sign. He hadn’t hit the kid's head on the floor that hard. Both he and Elegantlillies knew how to take somebody down, and it had been as clean a jump as he’d ever seen.
Frowning, Brickwrath drew his hand back, keeping it outstretched in front of him. Beside him, Elegantlillies also moved back, frowning at the guard. "Well that's a bad sign."
Beneath his knees, the guard gave one last full-body shudder, and then was still.
He nodded, biting his lip and staring at the corpse in front of him. On the floor, the guard was obviously dead, their eyes empty and the bleeding already starting to slow.
Nothing he could do would help them now. He wished the guard had given him a name
Keeping the hand stretched out, Brickwrath wobbled to his feet, and then into the guard station, kicking the door open with his foot. This wasn't right at all.
Once inside he scanned the room with his eyes and then grabbed some soap from the station by the door. This was the entrance to a major city, and they had procedures for this sort of thing. He scrubbed his hand twice, using clean water that Elegantlillies had drawn from a pump at the back. The water barrel next to the entrance was dry and empty, as if it hadn't been refilled in weeks.
Help provided, Elegantlillies retreated back to the horses, and a moment later returned with a straight razor. A few minutes later his arms were clean and his face was clean-shaven, a sensation he hadn’t felt in years. He watched as his neatly braided beard fell to the floor, shedding a single tear. He would miss it.
After that, they raided the Plague Kit, kept in a sealed box in a locked cupboard at the back of the station. He hadn't had to wear one of these things since basic training, and now he was doing it twice in a month. This sucked.
He took a long, long drink, and then shuddered, pulling the mask up over his face. He had no idea what they were supposed to do from here, had the whole city been taken over by something?
Was that why Tole was abandoned? Had the citizens all headed west to get away, leaving the outer settlements and villages to fend for themselves?
“Stop being miserable. We have to go in there”. Elegantlillies voice came out muffled but understandable, and he sighed in agreement.
Whatever happened, they were probably dead either way, may as well go out with a bang, trying to take down some sort of telepathic plague-beast.
He was pretty sure telepathy wasn’t real, but mushrooms and plagues both were! Added to that, there were definitely creatures living deep in the forest that no human had ever seen and survived, so what did he know.
While they'd been suiting up, the noises from the city had stopped, the bell only ringing for a minute or so after the guard had died, and nobody had come to investigate.
Examination of the corpse had revealed nothing, no identifying features or obvious growths, so, after checking himself and Elegantlillies over for any missed spots of blood, the two of them advanced into the city.
-
At first, everything looked almost normal. There were shops open and people walking about in the streets, but upon closer inspection, the illusion fell apart. None of those walking the streets were interacting with each other. They merely walked from place to place on a long, slow circuit. Shops were open and shopkeepers stood behind counters, but nobody entered the shops, and the owners never moved from their posts.
Those outside had worn and rotten clothing, as if they’d been out in the rain more than once, their shoes worn to rags.
It was eerily quiet, and the two of them found themselves drifting on silent feet, as quiet as those around them. Not wanting to make too much noise, to risk breaking whatever spell these people were under.
Another strange thing was the lack of animals. There were no horses in the lower streets, no cats or dogs running around. They saw a few pigeons, but the birds kept well back, scruffy and underfed.
They ventured briefly into an area where hawkers would have cried for food, but the streets were quiet and empty. The only sign of them being one cart upturned in the middle of the road, its load of fruit and vegetables long pecked away by birds and rot.
Brickwrath was glad they’d left the horses outside the city, the noise of their hooves was not welcome here.
Leaving the lower streets, they ventured upwards. The greenways were starting to get overgrown, but there were paths through the centre, worn into the mud as if people had been walking the same routes over and over. Beneath them, the roofs creaked worryingly, and Brickwrath knew that they wouldn't hold up under another year of this.
Warily, the two of them made their way towards the city centre. Cericil wasn’t circular, but was rather a sort of awkward pentagon, the outer walls added late into the settlement's growth.
The smaller city, Tole, had been built only a few decades before, by rich eccentrics hoping to exploit nearby coal reserves. It had been a work of art in its own right and well regarded as beautiful in its simplicity, which Brickwrath disagreed with, but what did he know.
Cericil was no such work of art, having grown up organically around what he suspected was once a fortress. Rain and vandalism had destroyed whatever building had spurred the initial growth, and necessity flattened the rest, leaving an open area in the centre for markets and gatherings.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
He was almost certain by this point that Elegantlillies was ex-army, and he was glad to have her by his side as they walked through the spooky city. She had liberated the large gun they had ejected from the guard, and she held it comfortably in her arms.
He had considered taking the spear, but it would have done him no good. He had wielded a war hammer when needed, and had liked its weight and versatility, but never a spear. Good luck finding one of those, though, it wasn't a common weapon. At her insistence he had taken her pistol, and he had his machete on his other hip.
Reaching the edges of the central area, they paused, peeking down over the edge of the greenway to take in the sight. All the normal trappings of the stalls and businesses which would normally inhabit this space were gone, replaced instead by a giant, teeming mass.
Mushrooms, gods damn it. He had known the moment the guard fell dead, the moment they had turned around a spoken, but to get confirmation... It was heart-breaking.
He was dead. They were both dead.
He closed his eyes and sent a silent prayer to every god he knew. They wouldn’t, couldn't, help, but it made him feel better.
A flipped coin to The Crippled Man, a warm fire to The Crone. A movement in his peripheral vision to The Child and the Dog, a stage bow and maybe a dog biscuit for The Fool.
He didn’t plea to The Absent Mother, she wouldn’t help him and would only scorn him if he tried, he knew that. But he sent his sense of loss to the Monarch instead.
He had been good throughout his life, he had tried to make the world a better place, and this was how it ended. He was as dead as those walking the city below, his brain just hadn't realised it yet.
He opened his eyes. Next to him, Elegantlillies was doing the same. A haunted look passed between them, and then they both retreated, taking shelter in an empty house.
She looked shattered, and he imagined he didn’t look much better. Inside, they shut the doors and windows, blocking any gaps with sheets and curtains. That done, they stripped off the weapons and threw their backpacks into a corner. They did not remove their masks.
Everything they owned would have to be burnt, if they survived this. But they would not.
He stared at the backpacks with a distant stare, trying to garner some resolve. He had no regrets in his life, if this was how he went, then so be it. It was already done.
He had seen children out there, wandering the streets with their shoes worn to nothing, their eyes milky and dead. He couldn’t save them, but he could put them to rest and stop this thing from taking more of them.
Resolve kindled, between them they started to make a plan of attack. He would weep later for the children and animals, and Elegantlillies would do the same, but right now, they had a job to do.
It was difficult to burn a place made of grass and stone, but not impossible, and if anyone knew how to dismantle and destroy a city, it was him. The roofs under the greenways were thick wooden beams, tarred with a thick pitch and resin mix to prevent leakage from above. On top of that, the floors inside were wood, and the terraced houses often shared support beams and ventilation.
If a fire did get going, and it was allowed to go unchecked, then it would spread along a row with little effort. Until the roof collapsed and it went out, but… It was a start.
Elegantlillies was already moving, using a fire poker as a crowbar to pry planks from the ceiling. Correctly removed boards wouldn't compromise the structure in any meaningful way, roofs had to be repaired somehow.
He joined her, moving between houses like a mouse, collecting up firewood, avoiding the Walkers as he went. As long as he didn't get too close, they didn't seem to see him, their eyes cloudy and grey.
Over the course of the next few hours, the two of them worked together, quick and efficient, stacking up the wood around the perimeter of the market square. If they were lucky then the thing was flammable, if they weren’t… Well, there wasn't anything they could do about that.
They would set up two bonfires around the area, one around the outer edge, and then, when that was done, another as close as they could go without attracting attention.
But even if they survived this, what then. The villages and farmers nearby couldn't survive without the support of a city, they would have to evacuate. Maybe west, past Tole, following the tracks of those who had left, hoping none of them were infected.
He closed his eyes for a moment, dragging wood towards the centre, his shoulders numb with pain from the work and his mouth dry behind the mask. The village would have to fend for themselves, neither he nor Elegantlillies could go back to help.
This whole thing was going to be such a pain.
They almost got caught at several points over the next few hours. They had determined that they could approach to within ten meters of the Thing before it would react, whereupon it puffed out clouds of spores and extended worm-like tendrils from its rotten bulk.
After that discovery, the both of them had retreated, grateful for the full-face masks. They had spent almost an hour hiding and resting before daring to peek outside again.
The walkers, which hadn’t seemed to notice them before, had changed their behaviour once their controller was agitated, their eyes brightening slightly, their gazes empty but searching.
Elegantlillies was suffering as much as he was when it came time to return to work, rubbing stiffened muscles and yawning behind her mask. As she reached to open the door, he reached out, going to touch her arm, and then pulled back. She looked at him warily.
“Thank-you.” His voice was muffled, but he didn’t have anything else to say. She stared at him for a second, and then shrugged, shaking her head.
“You owe me a drink when this is all over."
He smiled, although she couldn’t see it, and they sent off back to work.
The walkers didn’t sleep. As dusk set in, they could still hear them moving. The rustling of worn clothing and shuffling footsteps were the only sounds in the night. They both kept an eye out, but neither of them had seen any signs that anyone was still alive in the city, other than them. No houses broken into, no food missing from larders. Nothing. Whatever had happened here, it had been complete.
Working through the night, they made a ring of scavenged boards and firewood around the Thing. It seemed like it had arrived at the beginning of winter, and most houses had firewood and coal stored away.
As long as the two of them stayed out of that range, and avoided the walkers, it seemed not to see them. Brickwrath said many silent thanks to the gods for that as they worked, cycling the prayers in his head. He didn't think it would do anything, but it kept his mind off of his inevitable death.
Around four in the morning, they both stopped for a break, too exhausted to stay on their feet any longer, running off adrenaline alone. A couple of hours rest, waiting for the sun to come up, and they were ready to go. He wished they could have drawn it out, built the bonfires higher, but humans can only go so long without water and rest.
Time to get this show on the road.
Brickwrath staggered to his feet, trying to convince himself that he didn’t feel worse now than before the break. Elegantlillies had a reasonable talent for Grow, and it had taken a little of the ache out of his muscles, but it had also made him ravenously hungry. He had never felt so old and tired…
Either way, enough stalling. He looked at the woman beside him, wondering if either of them would see the end of the day. She was a good person, and if that was how this went down, he would be glad to die beside her.
Time to go.
They had scavenged several oil lanterns and a good amount of lamp oil and tallow. They had boxes of matches and a couple of torches made from firewood and old rags. It was time.
He had volunteered to light the inner circle, his justification being that he was smaller and faster than her, and that he didn’t have anyone at home waiting for him. Elegantlillies had been too tired to argue, giving him a tired nod and letting him do whatever he wanted.
-
It was as he approached the woodpile, a torch in one hand and a bucket of combustibles in the other, that things started to go wrong. The Thing apparently had a sense for fire, and the walkers who had previously paid them no attention all turned at once, heading towards him at a shambling speed.
On the one hand, it was bad that they were coming for him. On the other, if the Thing disliked fire enough to send its minions after him, then this burning thing seemed like a good idea!
They ran towards him, emaciated figures in ragged clothing. The ones in the square seemed less well cared for than those further out, and he knocked the first one out of the way with a shoulder tackle. It had been a teenager, and he felt sorrow for the life lost, even as he tried to keep the torch away from the bucket of oil-soaked rags. The rest of them flinched back from the fire as he spun, swinging the torch around himself like a hammer.
Then he was closing in on the pre-bonfire, thrusting his torch into the rags and tinder that they’d piled up earlier, and throwing the bucket as hard as he could at The Thing.
It didn’t go up with a whoomph, they didn’t have any of the right chemicals to achieve that sort of effect, but it certainly went up, and within a moment he was dodging away, his shoulder aching and the fire spreading behind him. Around him, small sparks flickered in the air, as previously unseen spores ignited.
He wouldn’t have been surprised to see fire spreading in front of him already, his partner having lit her bonfire and fled, but no, he was in luck. She nodded to him as he passed, pushing an avalanche of wood into place behind him and thrusting her own readied torch into the mix, before following behind.
Then they were off, out of the city. As they ran, there was a sound in the air that wasn’t a sound at all, and it made his ears ring and bleed. Around them, the walkers were running, throwing themselves into the fire as if they could quench the growing flames with their bodies.
If it had been a small fire then that plan might have worked, but the two of them had their work well and the fire was rapidly growing out of control. They had set trails of oil and tinder into some of the houses, hoping it would start to take those down too, but that was a last "fuck you" rather than a real plan.
-
Panting and out of breath, they reached the city gates, pulling the portcullis shut behind them with a piece of rope they had jury-rigged in place hours before. They had checked the other gates and locked them already the previous day; the guards eyeing them disinterestedly but making no moves to stop them.
The people near the edge of the city, like the guard they’d taken out, seemed better cared for. Their clothes were less worn and their eyes less dim than those deeper inside. Maybe some sort of evolutionary mechanism, to convince the outside world that everything was fine, and to discourage scrutiny. He had no idea.
They didn’t stop once they reached the outside of the gates, instead sprinting towards the horses, who seemed a little unsure at their sudden appearance, already nervous from the smoke on the wind. He caught them, with Elegantlillies giving him a quick leg up. A strong kick to the sides, and they were off.
They rode the horses hard for an hour, before finding an abandoned farm. They rolled from the horses, lying on the ground for a moment, the animals frothing and panting from the charge.
A moment of rest, and then work. Brickwrath drew water from the well while his partner stripped off her clothing, building a quick bonfire in the yard. Water drawn, he did the same himself, shivering in the cold spring air.
She used an axe from the woodpile to break open the locked door to the farmhouse, a single-story, three-roomed structure, and between them they liberated enough soap from the kitchen to wash an army.
First, they scrubbed the horses, unwilling to lose the animals, and then they scrubbed themselves. One wash, and then another, before they carefully removed the masks, throwing them into the bonfire with breath held, scrubbing their faces with prepared soap and burning lungs.
After a day of entrapment, being out of that fucking thing was a relief, and his face was sore and blistered where the edges of it had chafed and sweated. His beard was starting to grow back, and he closed his eyes as Elegantlillies shaved it away along with his hair. No taking the risks. One spore might be enough to kill.
Then, a days worth of water all at once. Blessed relief for his dry, sore mouth.
As clean as they could get, they borrowed clothing and huddled down in the main room of the house, trying to pull warmth from the small grate. The kitchen had held space for a larger fire, but they had contaminated that room in their search for soap.
Staring into the fire, too exhausted to sleep, he thought of Daisygreens and hoped she was doing alright. If the two of them were gone long enough, then the villagers would pick her up, assuming nothing had come out of the forest and eaten her by then.
She was a resourceful goat, she would survive, he told himself.
Beside him, shivering in the pillaged clothing, Elegantlillies stared emptily into the fire. He watched her face for a moment, before mustering the energy to speak.
“I’m sure he’s okay." he tried, wanting the words to sound comforting, but they came out like an empty platitude.
She didn’t move, but her mouth hardened into a straight line.
“From what I saw”, he winced, this wasn't going well, “from what I saw, Tole was evacuated, not taken…”
She didn’t answer, narrowing her eyes.
“Nah, you know what. Fuck it!”
She blinked owlishly, turning towards him, the conversation headed in an unexpected direction.
“Fuck this, if we’re already dead then we’re already dead. We'll skirt by the village, shout a message not to come near us, and carry on to Tole. We can break into the market and see if there’s similar shit there, put our minds at rest before we go.”
He stood up out of defiance, and then wavered, almost falling onto the stove and dead on his feet. “Fuck everything. Tomorrow though.”
She stared at him for a second, and then nodded, letting out a single sobbing laugh. “Tomorrow. Fuck this shit, let’s get some sleep.”
And so, they did.