Mort

“Well, well, well…” comes a sarcastic, biting voice from behind us. “Who do we have here?”

We all whirl around, our hands up… trying to look non-threatening, even though we have weapons in our hands. And that’s when I get a good look at the person who was talking. A little under 6 feet tall, her hair piled up on her head in a perfect messy bun. Her makeup is nearly runway-perfect, but with a bit of trashy smudging for taste.

My eyes stopped right then, not bothering the look at the clothing. I knew exactly who this was, and I felt a spring of excitement somewhere inside me.

Before I could react, though, Ellie ran for the tall woman, and slammed right into her, hugging the woman tightly. And then Teddy ran up to her, and then even Wood even ran up to her. I stood there, staring after them all.

They looked so happy. Only Ellie was hugging her at that moment, but everyone was super excited to see her.

Selena.

I walked toward my assembled friends, staying a few feet back from them. I felt myself getting a little giddy just thinking about Selena being back in Mars.

Of course, Mars was barely even here anymore.

Selena had worked at Mars pizzeria for years, she was practically the manager. Then she was lured away by Moon Township to be a 911 operator.

Selena had many gifts, but organization was her superpower. Work schedules, delivery drivers, the books and all ordering.

She had been sorely missed when she left.

She stood there, practically aglow as she asked everybody how they were.

The cheerleaders all gathered up behind her, even the one who had just been attacked by the spider monster. I saw that she had a few cuts on her throat. Possibly from the spiders legs.

When Selena looked back and saw that, she motion for the girl to come over, and she pulled a bottle of alcohol out of her inventory. It gloed an ethereal aquamarine as she shook it up, and then doused the wound with it.

“Let that dry, sweetie.” she told the cheerleader.

“This is Trish,” Selena added, and then pointed behind her from left to right, calling off each girl with a flick of her manicured finger. “Shaelynn, Becky, Christina, Dinah, Ashley, Kat and Rio.”

And then she was back to talking with us. Well, with my friends. She hadn’t looked at me yet. But, well, I am only 46 inches tall. And definitely not human looking.

“Oh yes,” she said, chuckling, “work was great. Well, until they came. That day was not great. They blew up the police station right away. The only reason I’m alive is I was out smoking.” She pulled a cigarette out of her inventory and gave it a little wave, then popped it back in. “They made us employees not only leave the police station, but cross the parking lot to smoke our cigarettes. There isn’t even an awning. If was raining, your shit out of luck.”

Her eyes flashed white for a second. She had pulled up her stats box. “Let me take a look at you all,” she drawled.

Her eyes went to Ellie first. “Goodness! A barbarian. I can see that.”

That made Ellie smile a little bit.

Then her eyes went to Teddy. “A thief? You?” She shook her head. Ah, but I see you’ve been working on your archery. That makes sense.”

Then she looked at Wood. “A man-at-arms. I love that for you.” She walked over to him. “Have you noticed that you can’t find ammo anywhere?”

Would nodded his head. “Yeah, I have all these guns, but nothing to put in them.”

Selena chuckled. “I think those alien fuckers just like to screw with us.”

She turned her gaze to Oz. “Oh my… a vampire.” She smiled widely. “You were a big Twilight fan.”

Was I really the only person on the planet that didn’t know that Oz liked Twilight?

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Then Selena’s eyes caught on me. Her eyebrows bunched, and I saw her bite her lip, her eyes flickering white as she was going to another screen in her stats box.

“Mort,” she said, “I was afraid to ask where you were.” She turned and looked at Ellie. “I thought maybe that’s why you looked so sad, sweetie.” Selena turned and looked toward me, her lips pursing as she placed her hands on her hips.

“So, you’ve been brought back from the dead and… put into a magically enhanced garden gnome.”

Wow. She was good.

“I see alien tech and some witchcraft in the actual gnome shell.”

I blinked. Really?

“And who’s that in there with you?”

“What do you mean in here with me?”

Teddy interrupted, chiming in and pulling everybody’s attention.

“So, who are all these cheerleaders?”

I gave him a hard stare.

“What?” I said. “I just won a super-cool magical scrap of paper for saving one of them.”

“We totally would’ve killed that thing on our own,” one of the cheerleader Kat said, sounding put off.

“One of you would’ve been dead by then,” Wood fired back.

One of the other cheerleaders opened her mouth, taking a breath to argue, but Selena looked back at her and gave her the eye.

I remember Selena giving me the eye. I’d just knocked over a tower of pizza boxes, and was about to bolt out of the pizzeria when she caught me in her gaze and I dutifully put them all back up on the shelf how they had been.

That was another one of Selena’s superpowers. She could make you do all kinds of things that you didn’t want to do, but should do.

The cheerleader said no more, clamping her mouth shut.

Selena turned to us and smiled brightly. “Well, one of the reasons I took the dispatcher job in Sewickley Heights was that’s where I’m from. Originally. Back when I was Todd.”

We all nodded our heads. We knew Salinas origin story. Before she left home, became a drag queen, and then transitioned. By the time we met her, she was fully transitioned, and 100% the best. WE also had seen her amazing gymnastics skills in action when she’d get a little “exercise” before her smoke breaks.

She’d said her hero when she was a kid was Olympic gold medalist, Mary Lou Retton.

“So,” she said, “since I was back home, and they only let you work 40 hours a week as a dispatcher, I got bored. And I heard the old cheerleading squad coach was retiring. So I threw my wig into the ring and got the job.”

“She’s the best,” one of the cheerleaders volunteered. I think it was Shaelynn.

“I want to be just like her when I grow up,” Becky, a dirty blonde, said.

I wasn’t surprised. Selena had been awesome in the time we’d known her.

I was about to ask her what she had meant about me having someone else inside the gnome with me—but Teddy said, “Are you guys The Squad?”

When he said The Squad, I felt a little thrill run through me.

“They look like a squad to me,” Ellie said, her eyebrows furrowing at Teddy.

“The Squad?” Oz said in a chant, his mouth dropping open after he said it.

Ellie looked back at him, the furrow of her brow getting more pronounced.

That’s when Wood chimed in. “Squad 666!”

We all stood there, staring at the eight girls before us. If their ninja-like fighting skills hadn’t been enough to make us fan-boys, they were The Squad. Dubbed Squad 666 by those who had fallen to them. The most infamous group of bad-assed gamers dominating Fortnite, Mario Kart, Minecraft and Call of Duty.

Squad 666!!!

“No way!” I said. “You guys are The Squad?”

“When I said that,” even Ellie perked up, her eyes getting wide.

“No fucking way,” Ellie whispered.

“We used to be,” Trish, the girl with the neck-wound said. “But now we're just a squad of girls who go out and kill monsters.”

“Right now,” Selena said, “we're trying to draw out this goblin Queen. She has a huge brood, and she's worth a fuck-ton of leveling goodness.”

She reached out and pressed her hands to the sides of Ellie’s face, and looked around at us. “I’m really happy that you all are still alive. How about all the other people that worked at the pizzeria?”

Ellie shook her head, her expression dropping back into sadness.

That hit me a little hard when I realize that Ellie always looked sad anymore.

“Mr. and Mrs. Caputo died at home. Double heart attacks, luckily.” Teddy said. “We found them that first night.”

Wood came up and clapped his hand on Ellie’s shoulder. “And Ellie here killed Cheryl.”

Fucking asshole!

Ellie spun around on him, poking her finger into his chest. “I didn't kill her.”

She turned back to Selena. “Well, I did. But she was a banshee and was trying to kill us.”

Wood chuckled. “She just hated Cheryl’s singing.”

Selena nodded, and patted Ellie on the shoulder.

“I'm not surprised she became a monster.”

Cheryl being a monster hadn't really occurred to me. But I guess she was. A banshee was definitely a monster.

“She accidentally killed somebody once,” Selena said. “When she was driving home one night, back when she was in her 40s. That's why she walked to work every day. She never wanted to drive again.”

We all kind of blinked at Selena. Oz got this look on his face that I’d never seen before.

Stricken.

Scared.

So very sad.

I said, “Do you mean people become monsters because… because they've killed somebody?”

Selena nodded. “Yeah, it's sad. We're not really sure why, just that everyone who's become a monster has killed somebody in their past.”

Ellie shook her head and looked at Oz. “But Oz has never killed anybody?”

Oz dropped his head, a bloody tear rolling from his left eye, down his cheek. “My mom,” he murmured. “When I was being born.”

The world seemed to tilt sideways.

Oh shit…