Everyone here was holding some sort of weapon. Someone had managed to disassemble stanchions as well, and that was the majority of what we saw, but it wasn’t all. I saw people with knives, people with broken lengths of wood or plastic, people with hammers… it wasn’t uniform, but everyone had something.
No one upstairs was fighting, though, and the attitude of people around the staircase down to baggage claim seemed almost casual, in spite of the shouts I could hear below.
I walked over to a tired-looking college-aged kid filling his water bottle at a drinking fountain. “Are people fighting monsters downstairs?”
“Yeah, yeah.” His voice seemed familiar, but I couldn’t place it. “We’ve kinda built a bunker down there. Tipped over some of the walls they were using to hide an area under construction to give us some cover, and we’re rotating fighters downstairs. Just got off myself. Gonna take a nap for a little bit. Get some ‘mana’ back, you know?” He laughed as he said ‘mana’ and did air-quotes with his fingers, making it clear he wasn’t being literal.
Davi snapped her fingers. “Wait a second! I know who you are. You’re TAF Twinkles!”
The tired kid tried to flash a casual smile, and suddenly, I did recognize him - the star mage of a prominent eSports team. “In the flesh. We were on our way to a charity invitational in New York City and...” he shrugged. “Guess we’re not making it.
Davi’s eyes were wide. “Holy shit, dude! All of TAF is fighting monsters? I don’t know if you noticed, but this isn’t Legend Scramble, this is real life.”
He rolled his eyes. “Kind of, anyway. First time I ever got points away from a keyboard.”
“Points?” I asked.
“Yeah. After you fight something, check your Interface. You’ll see. Get lots of points, get more abilities. Just like Legend Scramble... except the bleeding. Anyway, nice to meet a fan, but I gotta crash. Get some rest, keep grinding, outlevel these fools. That’s how TAF rolls!”
Twinkles punched a fist into the air as he walked off, the energy of the motion quickly fading away into a tired stumble.
“We can get more abilities?” Davi’s eyes went unfocused. “I don’t see that option. Maybe I need more points? I only have 14.”
I checked my own interface. “I’ve got 32 points. I don’t see an ability option either.”
A woman in line for the drinking fountain heard us talking, and interrupted in a southern twang. “Not nearly enough, honey. Y’all need around 150. Still working on it myself.”
Byron frowned. “There’s a fighter rotation, that guy said?”
She nodded. “Yeah. Talk to Sarah if you want a spot on the barricades. She’s sitting near the bottom of the escalator. It’s all organized.”
We left John resting at the top of the now-still escalator and made our way down. I’d thought we might have to ask around, but Sarah’s identity was obvious. She was sitting midway down the steps, just barely able to see under the ceiling of the ground floor. She had a clipboard on her lap with a whole sheaf of papers attached. On one side of her was an enormous decorative hourglass with a base decorated with curling metal palm trees and engraved with “Remember your TIME in Hawaii!” On her other side was a bin of LEGO blocks, and as we approached, I saw her take one and pitch it out toward a monster that was charging through the opened door.
The block missed, but it hadn’t been the only missile heading toward the monster. A large plywood board had been pushed against the bottom of the stairs, and people stood on the bottom three steps. I saw four of them raise their hands. Two orbs of fire and a bolt of ice shot out. No missile emerged from the last guy's hand, but his fingertips glowed purple and I saw a matching glow shimmer around the monster for a moment as well. One Fire Bolt missed, but the other hit, as did the ice orb. The monster was knocked aside, and when it staggered forward it was slowed even beyond that. It got close enough that I couldn’t see it directly, but I saw the people in the front lean over the barricade, weapons jabbing downward.
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I didn’t actually notice the next monster right away, preoccupied with watching how the defenders dealt with the first one, but the defenders did. The woman with the clipboard threw another LEGO, and a wave of ranged attacks accompanied it.
“Wow,” said Davi. “Two monsters in a row.”
The woman noticed us for the first time, glancing up and laughing. It was a bleak sound, almost a bark. “You must be new here.”
I nodded. “We just got here. We started out in Concourse B this morning.”
“B? Not A? You’re the first we’ve seen from Concourse B. Can you fill me in on the situation there?” Her voice was interested, but she didn’t continue looking at us as she spoke. Another monster ran in and she chucked another block at it, missing this time.
“Uh, not very well. We actually left soon after everything went to hell. We made our way through the baggage tunnels to A, mostly.” I scraped my memory. “I can tell you a plane broke one of the windows, but that’s about all.”
“Monsters in the concourse?”
I shook my head. “Not when we left.”
“Hunh. Well, alright. You guys looking to join the barricades? I can put you in Group R. We’re rotating through Group N right now, so it wouldn’t be too long. If you want, you can skip the line. Go outside on your own -” she paused for a second to chuck a block at a monster “-but I can’t recommend that. Seen about twenty try it so far, and less than half of them made it back.”
Less than half?
“Put us in Group R, please.”
The wait gave us long enough for us to see the system. Whenever anyone got tired, Sarah would send them up and the next person in line would go down. Whenever there were five people or fewer in line, the next group would be called up to join the wait. Simple, but it worked.
More or less.
A few times we heard Sarah’s angry voice.
“Got an idiot! Need some volunteers to carry him up.”
Then four of those waiting would head down and awkwardly carry someone’s sleeping body away from the fighting. I noticed that these people weren’t treated with particular care. No one was cracking their heads against the walls or anything, but they were just set down in the middle of the floor, unconscious. No blankets or pillows or anything. Sometimes, people would come and drag someone they knew away, to prop them up in a more comfortable position where people weren't stepping over them every couple seconds. There were still five or six people sprawled out, unconscious, near the top.
John had woken up by our turn, although he was still kind of out of it.
Trying to ask him about his points was an exercise in frustration for both of us. It seemed like he didn’t have any, but I wasn’t completely certain he just wasn’t looking in the right place. The discussion gave me flashbacks to one of the first times I’d met him, over a decade before. I’d been on a college internship, and John had asked for my help to attach a file to an e-mail. To his credit, he’d wanted to learn to do it himself. Admirable, but as a young intern, spending 45 minutes explaining a 10-second process had me nearly clawing out my eyeballs.
Sarah glared at him as we edged past her. “Hey! You! You already look half-asleep, and you’re a big guy. If you spend yourself out and make people carry you, I’m blacklisting you!”
“He’s just here to smack things!” I hastened to assure her. “I don’t think his ability will help him earn points, since we think he hasn’t gotten any yet.”
She gave us a second look. “That’s right. You’re that Concourse B group. He does healing, then, I’m guessing?”
John nodded, and her expression softened.
“Yeah, same here. No points for that. Just touch ‘em. Throw something at them. Any old how, don’t seem to matter. Good luck.”
Subconsciously, I hadn’t expected fighting the monsters to be that difficult. We had a barricade protecting our legs and plenty of help, and although the evening light was dimming, we could still see exactly where they were coming from.
The monsters - which people here were calling spacedogs, I’d heard - were pretty small. Bigger than a housecat, but not by much. They could jump surprisingly well, but they weren’t that tough or strong. Their bones, or whatever they had instead, snapped fairly easily.
I was used to doing aikido for hours on end. Adults’ class at aikido was two hours twice a week, and in the past few years I’d started coming an hour early to help Sensei run the kids’ class first. Sarah had said she’d pull us out after a half-hour if any of us were still going at that point, and I’d assumed lasting that long would be easy for me.
I’d underestimated real combat. This wasn’t drills, or kata, or even sparring. This was real, life-or-death combat. The enemies were weak, but they were relentless. No matter how many we killed, it didn’t seem to slow them down. They kept coming in at irregular intervals, sometimes right on each other’s heels, sometimes together, and - very occasionally - after a break of several seconds. I heard Byron mutter “I’m out” after only a few minutes. Kurt and John lasted longer, presumably since they weren’t using abilities to fight, just swiping at things, but they fell back also. When Sarah called out for the rest of Group R to head upstairs, Davi and I were the only ones still at the barricade.