When we headed inside, we were greeted by a crowd.

“I heard the engine!”

“You got it running!”

“Please, I need to get back to my family.”

“Where are you headed?”

“Take me with you!”

We hadn’t made a secret of our plans to repair a semi, and we weren’t even the only group making an effort. Two other groups of fighters had found similarly-aged semi cabs and were doing their best to copy our work. We’d been sharing advice with them freely, but they had started later than us and were both less than half-finished.

Most people hadn’t seemed very interested in our efforts. I guess they hadn’t expected us to succeed. Now that we had, their interest level had shot straight from “minimal” to “extreme.”

It would have been a great time for Kurt to be awake, to charm the crowd into calming down and leaving us alone, but instead he was slumped across my shoulders. Behind the crowd, I saw some of the people we’d been working with to fix their own vehicles. I could see that they were talking. Trying to calm the people around them down? It didn’t look like anyone was listening.

John lifted a hand to wave at the crowd. “We’re headed south. If any of y’all need a ride to, say, Castle Rock or Larkspur, you could hitch on with us.”

“I live to the north.”

“What about Commerce City? A whole bunch of us live in Commerce City!”

“I’m from Thornton! It’s just north of Commerce City.”

I frowned. I’d seen those names in the atlases, suburbs in the Denver metro area. “We’re not heading into Denver!”

“Why not?”

“You could take all of us. It wouldn’t take you long.”

I shook my head. “We have no idea what we’ll find in Denver, but I doubt the roads will be very drivable, not with cars stopped everywhere. Sorry. It’s too risky.”

No one looked happy about this. If looks could kill, I’d have died right there.

“I’d be happy to tell you how to repair your own vehicles,” John said, trying to play peacemaker. “It’s right manageable, if you can find an old one.”

One of the people we’d been working with raised their voice from the back of the crowd. “He’s right! It’s really not so bad, just time-consuming. We’ve been-”

A voice shouted out, “If they won’t take us, we should just take the truck ourselves! Selfish assholes!”

“This is probably why they lied about the new monsters! They were trying to keep us inside so they could steal the truck!”

There was a chorus of agreement. I could see many people in the crowd stepping away, either unwilling to rob us or distancing themselves from the Monster Deniers.

Even with some people bowing out, there were still way too many angry people in front of me.

I took a step backward.

The crowd surged forward into the space I’d vacated.

Davi threw a Force Shield up in front of me, then another. A third and fourth appeared, giving us time to retreat outside. I was the last to edge through the door. I leaned my and Kurt’s weight against it, trying to hold it closed. I could feel my feet slipping as I fought against the strength of the entire crowd.

“Here!” yelled Davi. She had grabbed a wedge, likely around to hold the door open, and jammed it underneath. Avalanche came up behind her, kicking the wedge fiercely to ensure the fit was snug enough to keep it closed.

The door shook behind me as I stepped away.

“We’ve got to go now,” I said.

“How?” Twinkles asked. “Kurt’s asleep! He’s the one who can start it.”

“We’re going to have to find a way.” The door behind me slid open another half-inch. “If we don’t, there’s a good chance someone else will. It’s basically working right now. Byron, we set it up so we don’t really need Kurt’s ability, right?”

“Yeah…” Byron looked uncertain. “We can try hotwiring it. John, do you know how?”

The older man was staring at the door, eyes wide with shock and horror. “Never done it, but I probably could. I think.”

“It can’t be that hard,” I snapped. “You guys figure it out. The rest of us will give you as much time as we can.”

Bolero’s critters skittered out across the parking lot ahead of us, checking for pavemimics. We’d walked this way just moments before, but it paid to be careful. The stealthy monsters could appear anywhere with no warning. In spite of the name we’d given them, they could even appear in the grass, winding and twisting their way among the taller stands and mimicking the texture of shorter tussocks. Whether in the grassland or on the pavement, none of us had been able to spot them before they attacked.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

We made it back to our truck cab quickly, and I dumped Kurtis on the floor in front of the passenger’s seat before grabbing my rebar staff back from Twinkles, who’d been carrying it for me.

TAF, Davi, and I spread out in a loose semicircle about twenty feet away from the truck.

“Time to guard the nexus, guys,” Bolero muttered.

Zephyr laughed, although the sound was abbreviated, higher-pitched than her normal laugh. She adjusted her grip on her axe.

Just then, someone managed to get our wedge out of the way and fling the door to the warehouse wide open.

“There they are!” A woman shouted, pointing at us.

“Watch out for the monsters!” I called back.

The flow of people slowed noticeably at my words. Everyone seemed to want someone else to go first.

“We don’t have to do this,” I said. “We’ve been telling you for days that we were fixing a truck, and none of you had a problem with it until now. If you’re going to try to take it from us, we’re going to stop you. I’d rather not hurt you, but if you make me… I will.”

Some of the people heading toward us stopped at my words. A few even began slinking back inside, but more people exiting replaced them.

“Don’t be selfish!” A man called, still advancing. “We all have people we want to get home to.”

“It’s not selfish to keep your own hard work!” JoeyT yelled. “Fix your own damn truck if you want one so bad.”

The leading edge of the crowd was less than 15 feet away.

Someone threw a Fire Bolt at me. I managed to dodge that, but felt stinging pain as a Missile close behind it hit my stomach.

I’d hoped we could talk them out of attacking, but that hope died. When you’re outnumbered or surrounded, you absolutely cannot stay on the defense. Our best hope was shock and awe, intense violence. If we didn’t convince our attackers to give up, we’d be dead.

While some of the crowd was armed with golf clubs and ski poles, a frightening number of knives were catching the glint of the sun. Any of those could kill any of us, with the possible exception of Zephyr.

I can’t hold back.

I threw myself forward.

I swung my staff out, slamming it into the side of a man’s head and then reversing it to bash into the side of a woman’s knee.

Someone managed to grab my staff. I could have tried breaking their grip - and I would probably have succeeded - but another woman was coming at me with a knife. These people were untrained, and terrible at dodging, but if they forced me to the ground or stabbed me in the right place, they’d kill me. I couldn’t ignore her knife. I stepped to the side and caught her wrist, bending it upwards harder than I had ever done in practice. There was a snapping sound and she dropped her weapon.

There was no time to dwell on it. No time to think about anything. I'd fought other people before, but only as part of training. Now, enemies were all around me, opponents more numerous than any randori drill, and many of them were armed. At least I had trained for this, kind of. I fell back on instinct, executing moves without really thinking about them.

Catch his arm as he attacks. Break his balance and throw him at the oncoming woman with a knife.

Something hits my helmet. Am I okay? I think so.

Sidestep this woman. Catch her arm - no, here comes another man.

Goddamnit, another knife. Step in. Use my palm to deliver a blow to his nose, then grab the knife he was carrying as his fingers loosen.

Pain in my side.

Shit, missed someone behind me.

I stab the knife into another woman’s shoulder as I turn to grab the arm that stabbed me. I break his wrist and pull the injured limb behind his back, using him as a shield for a moment as I get my bearings.

Another Fire Bolt is coming toward me. I realize too late to dodge. It splashes off my helmet, dealing me a blow to the head but not lighting me afire. Embers drift down onto the man I have restrained, still screaming about his broken wrist.

I take a deep breath before throwing the man to the ground between me and his friends. “You want more of this? I can go all day!”

A boy beside me swings a golf club, but I step in fast and move with his strike, grabbing his weapon and using it to pull him to the ground. Then I’m dodging again, pulling my next attacker’s arm into a joint lock and breaking his elbow.

I step away, turning as I do to catch anyone sneaking up behind me.

No one is.

Ruining attackers’ joints was brutal, and I definitely might have killed the guy I hit in the head with my staff, but I didn’t feel I had any other option with such skewed odds. My furious onslaught had bought me breathing room, a halo of space around me where no one wanted to enter.

My friends, my allies, were still in trouble, but none of them had thrown themselves into the midst of the group like I had. Davi, closest to me, was fending off two attackers. A constellation of Force Shields around her seemed to be the only reason she wasn’t bleeding yet.

I kicked one of her attackers in the back of the knee, then hit him against the side of the head with a cupped hand as he dropped, relying on the burst of air to break his eardrums. His sharp yell let me know I had succeeded. He should be out of the fight, at least for a bit. A splat of red on the side of his head confused me, and I glanced at my own hand. A red line split my palm. Shit. When I practiced disarming people, there wasn’t much penalty for making a mistake and grabbing the smooth wooden practice tanto by the “blade.” Real knives weren’t so forgiving.

No time to think about it. His friend turned at the noise. When he saw me, or maybe the crumpled form of his buddy behind me, his eyes went wide. He stopped attacking Davi and backed away.

I let him go. Why wouldn’t I? I don’t want to fight every person here. We needed to make them run.

I turned toward the crowd and roared. “It’s not the monsters you should be most afraid of, fuckers! I’m the most dangerous thing out here!”

My antics got the attention of many of the people fighting TAF, as well as the portion of the crowd who had hung back. A flurry of ranged abilities arced toward me as I finished speaking, but I threw myself to the ground in a roll, letting most of them fly uselessly over my head. A soft glow and burning itch near my knuckles suggested I’d been hit with the Hex ability I’d seen some people use on monsters. Undodgeable. I'd need healing later.

I already would. I could feel a searing pain from my back every time I moved, and I had a long shallow cut along my left arm that I didn’t remember getting.

I yelled again, the scream of a berserker, and charged at the crowd. I wasn’t really berserking, but people really hate being screamed at. Yelling like a madman is a great way to convince people not to fight you, which is why we work kiai yells into a lot of our kata. It worked: people scattered rather than let me reach them. One person ran too far to the side, into an area we hadn’t cleared on the way to the truck. A pavemimic snapped up around them.

“They’ve got the monsters working for them!” someone screamed.

That was nonsense, of course, but the assertion was terrifying. Between me and the new threat, our attackers’ resolve crumpled. Many people bolted for the door like death itself was on their heels. A few stopped to cut down the pavemimic, but their inexpert knife blows left the monster’s victim bleeding heavily when they cut him free.

The few people still fighting my allies lost their resolve as they found themselves alone. One by one, they backed away from us, then turned tail and ran.

I scooped up my staff from the ground, where the person who’d wrenched it away from me had dropped it as they fled.

“Jesus, Vince,” Davi said. “You’re terrifying.”

I lowered my voice, keeping my eyes locked on the people still peeking timidly out of the open warehouse door. “That’s the idea.”