Seconds ticked by and nothing rushed us. Eventually, a tired Sarah called out an order to move forward. We succeeded in incapacitating the next few monsters, but accidental kills were inevitable. The next time one happened, the group froze again, waiting for the immediate respawn… and once again, it didn’t happen.
Instead, a monster charged the back of the group, much to the surprise of our rearguard.
After we took it down, Byron’s voice rang out from his place deep in the middle of the crowd. “Pretty sure that’s the one we killed a little bit ago. Respawned in just under five minutes, if my count’s not too far off.”
“What? Then... the other one we killed will be back soon too?” I didn’t recognize the speaker, an older man nervously clutching a golf club.
Another stranger shouted. “We need to move! We can’t let it appear right in the middle of us!”
Their words caused a surge in the crowd. For the first time since we’d left the airport, I was pushed along by the people behind me. A few people started rushing ahead, and others sprinted after them, not wanting to be left behind.
The panic was irrational but infectious.
If it had been rational, we would have slowed the moment we’d passed the spot where the monster had died. I was only lightly injured, but I’d been both lucky and skilled. A lot of the people beside me weren’t the ones that had been on the frontlines when we left. Even Twinkles had retreated back to the center a few minutes before, after a monster had sunk its teeth into his foot, needle-like fangs puncturing easily through the eSports legend’s canvas shoes. All the healers were exhausted, and Twinkle’s injury wasn’t life-threatening, so he’d joined a growing crowd of walking wounded in the middle, shielded by a ring of fighters that grew less capable and less confident with every person injured.
Instead of slowing, the group accelerated, our organized advance devolving into a stampede as we crossed the open highway behind the parking lot.
It was dumb as fuck.
I grabbed Davi’s arm and stopped, letting the crowd flow around us.
“What?” she asked me, confused.
I waved my staff toward the people ahead of us. “I’m not speeding up to a stupid-ass pace just to stay on the frontlines for a bunch of idiots. Let’s grab Kurt and Byron and make sure the cart John is on makes it to safety.”
“You want to be in the back?!”
“Yeah,” I said. I hadn’t realized that was my plan until she’d asked me, but it made sense. “The people in front are going to get all the monsters angry, and they’re not reappearing instantly anymore. We don’t need to run, just walk fast enough to outpace any repops.”
Davi frowned. “Some of them aren’t reappearing instantly. You don’t know if that’s true for all of them, or why they stopped. Maybe they’ll start again.”
“Nah. They won’t start again.”
“Why?”
“Just a feeling.”
Davi made an incoherent noise of frustration. “Aargh! I’m not going to risk my life for your feelings!”
“Well, unless you’re very fast, you’re not going to risk it on the frontlines anymore,” I told her cheerfully.
During our brief conversation, most of the crowd had surged around us, and the frontrunners were more than a hundred feet ahead. Here and there, small knots of people had stopped to fight off attacking spacedogs, but most of the people who hadn’t been directly engaged were ignoring them, still pelting forward.
If that wasn’t bad enough, some of the carts carrying sleeping healers were being left behind.
Byron and Kurtis caught up to us. They’d moved the sleeping John off the baggage carts and into one of the wagons we’d liberated. He looked ridiculous, his feet hanging out on either side of the pull-bar and his back up against Kurt’s giant jar of caramel syrup. His arms were folded loosely in his lap, and his head hung forward limply, jouncing from side to side as the wagon wheels tilted over tussocks and hollows in the field. The metal supports of the wagon squeaked plaintively with every bounce, and I could see the bars bending slightly. Hopefully it wouldn’t break before we made it to safety.
We kept up a brisk pace, although we slowed for Byron to hand the wagon off to Kurtis and grab the handles of an abandoned baggage cart, two sleeping women piled atop of another. Kurt, for once, didn’t show a trace of hesitation at taking on extra manual labor, although he did pause to shout at the backs of the crowd ahead.
“Hey, assholes, these people were counting on you!”
Davi tried to grab the next cart, but… girl was tiny. Five-inch wheels, five-foot woman, 300-lb load in a bumpy, hilly field? Determination only gets you so far versus physics.
“Vince! Gimme a hand!” she called.
“I can’t!”
“Oh come on. You’ve got a foot on me and you’re way stronger, and I’ve almost got this moving.”
“No! That’s not… I’m guarding our backs. If I’m pushing a cart, and something comes at us from behind, what happens?”
“I… I’d fight it!” Davi said. “I did good against the ones in the tunnels. I mean, pretty good.”
She probably wasn’t half as strong as me. She didn’t have a tenth of my training.
But I wasn’t willing to leave her behind, and we didn’t have time to argue. In spite of my derision for the people rushing ahead, I still wanted to stay close to them. We needed to keep moving fast enough to not be here when the monsters they’d killed came back.
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“Fine,” I snarled, shoving my staff into her hands. “You walk backwards and yell if anything’s coming at us. I’ll push. But this is our limit, got it? We help these people, we can’t help anyone else, or we’re gonna get killed, including these people. Okay?”
“I understand.” Davi’s voice was quiet. Wavery.
I grabbed the baggage cart from her hands and pushed it up the hill. I was angry enough that it didn’t seem that heavy, but I knew I needed to calm down. A little angry at Davi, a little angry at me, a lot angry at the people who’d abandoned others in their panic… just angry about the whole situation from top to bottom. I don’t know about anger leading to suffering and all that Dark Side of the Force stuff, but it sure as hell leads to mistakes, so I tried to keep my head straight. Focus. Just a little farther until safety. Watch your sides, but don’t look too closely at the abandoned carts and wagons.
As I crested the hill, I caught sight of the group again. I could see that most of the carts and wagons were still being towed along; “only” a handful had been left behind. I grimaced: that was a shitty way to think about leaving people for dead, but at least most people hadn’t let fear turn them completely self-centered.
Many of the people ahead had taken injuries - I could see splashes of red bright against skin and light-colored clothing - but most could still walk.
Most.
I tore my gaze away from a crumpled form on the ground ahead. You can’t help them, I told myself. Just keep moving. Watch for threats.
Davi yelled and I heard the shriek of a monster. I let go of the cart and turned around.
One of the spacedogs was charging up behind us. Davi was holding her staff out in front of her, almost like it was a gun. It was enough to make the monster pause for a second, but it swiftly skittered to the side and ducked around, dashing at my co-worker’s legs. A Force Shield appeared at the last second, blocking the monster’s claws from sinking into her calf, but it didn’t extend down quite far enough. The monster’s claw sliced her ankle and Davi screamed.
I didn’t have a weapon anymore, but I’d done most of my training without weapons.
You did all of your training against human beings, a little voice said to me, but I ignored it.
Not hesitating, I tackled the monster attacking Davi, bringing my full weight down against its back. Its shrill cry cut off in a choked noise. The spacedog didn’t have a neck - it didn’t really even have a head - but it had limbs that seemed to work kind of like ours. I bent one of its legs backwards, and was alarmed when it moved freely far further than I expected. Then, it caught for a second before a popping noise suggested I’d broken bone. Success.
It was hard to feel any satisfaction, just exhaustion. I threw myself to the side, rolling to my feet with a stumble. Not what I’d usually do in a grapple, but I’d been lucky not to get on the wrong side of its claws during my thoughtless stunt.
A Fire Bolt streaked in the moment I moved aside, catching the monster’s weird leaflike fur aflame. That wouldn’t be enough to take it out, but even through the pain of her injury, Davi kept her head, slamming the staff down across the monster repeatedly. Her technique was bad, so her strikes lacked real force, but they kept the monster distracted as I moved back into position to strike.
I’d clearly screwed up its right front leg badly, to the point where the monster couldn’t use it… but it had three others, and like most quadrupeds, it could stand and walk without all four legs.
To my surprise, Kurt ran past me, golf club in hand. He skidded to a stop next to the monster and gave a swing that’d make Tiger Woods proud. There was a cracking noise as the monster’s back right leg broke and it collapsed on its side.
It wasn’t dead, and it wasn’t giving up… but it couldn’t walk.
“Let’s go. It won’t catch up,” I said.
“Davi’s hurt-” Byron started, but Davi cut him off.
“I’m fine!”
The attack, Davi’s injury… it was hard to say they were a good thing, but they helped us focus. Anxiety lent us speed and focus: we practically dashed across the rest of the field. I saw Byron cast a worried glance behind as we passed a slower group of more heavily injured people, but we were at our limit. Byron and I were pushing carts with two people each and Kurt was dragging a wagon overflowing with John. I could see an inch-long rip in the canvas near the back corner that hadn’t been there a minute before, and the metal supports were definitely bent.
Davi was moving fast, but her steps were uneven, and flecks of blood spotted the ground behind her. She’d stopped walking backwards, and was leaning on the staff I’d leant her with each step. She wasn’t whimpering, but her breathing was ragged. In a better world, someone would be helping her move.
No one was guarding our backs anymore.
We aimed for a gap in the fencing, where a section had been broken through and bent back to leave a wide gap into a paved parking lot. Splashes of blood highlighted a path to the edge of the building, where a door stood wide open.
I made a snap decision.
“Davi! Gimme the staff and take the cart. You’ll be able to push it here, even injured.”
Davi stumbled over, eyes narrowed in pain. She grabbed the handles of the cart without comment, dropping the staff.
I caught the weapon as it fell and turned backward, determined not to let any other monsters get to us in the final stretch.
When we’d gotten moving, we’d been toward the back of the crowd, but unlike many, we’d kept a steady pace. Most of the stragglers were close behind us, even a few who'd detoured to pick up some of the carts and wagons left behind, but I could see a few handfuls further away. These groups were moving slowly and awkwardly, clearly seriously injured.
Maybe a hero would have gone out to rescue them, but I didn’t. Not by myself, not alone.
I waited, though. My co-workers made it through the door, but I stopped. “I’ll be in soon,” I called. I heard Kurt acknowledge my words.
With the flat wall of the building to my back, I relaxed a little, able to narrow my focus.
A bit after my friends had entered, another pair limped into the building, a woman supporting a man who could clearly barely walk, arm pressed tightly to try to staunch a bleeding gut wound.
I could see two more groups in the distance, and as the pair arrived, the farthest group was attacked, a speedy little monster leaping to sink its claws into the rearmost figure. My grip tightened on my staff. Had that monster reappeared? If it had, there’d-
Three more monsters appeared on the hills in front of me. Two took off toward the farther group, and one bolted for the nearer one, which had just reached the gap in the fence. A man from the group, seemingly able-bodied, dropped back to try to shove the fence shut, but soon realized the futility of his task: even if he bent it back, the metal was deformed now. Even if he got it back in place, there’d be spaces large enough for a monster to fit through.
His delay had let the spacedog get closer. The man gave a strangled yell, holding his arms to protect his face and stomach as he backed away, but he was slow, and the little monster was fast. It darted through the opening in the fence and leapt.
Fortunately for the man, I’d been moving forward since I’d first seen the creature. I swept my staff downward and activated my Powerful Blow. There was a cracking noise as I hit the monster, and another as it rebounded off the pavement. The monster began to disappear.
I’d killed it in one blow.
That meant it would be back, an additional hazard for the far group to -
Ah.
The far group was fighting five monsters now.
They weren’t winning.
More monsters were appearing on the hill as I watched.
There’d be more reappearing in the parking lot soon.
I couldn’t stay here.
They’d been too slow.