Moira glanced at her phone. “Shouldn’t it be dark by now?”
Jeremy looked up. The sun had sunk below the rooftops at least half an hour ago, which meant it should be getting dark. The sky should be rosy with the sunset, and shadows should meld into the dim dusk. The shadows were long, but the sky was still bright.
“What time is it?” He asked.
“One in the morning.”
“Damn. Maybe the days are longer now?” He wondered, “It has felt like a long day. Hey, can I borrow your phone?”
“It’s on five percent.” She clutched it protectively to her chest. Jeremy should have thought about grabbing a charging cable when he was at the gas station. He looked around to gauge where they were. Moira did not have an Android phone, which meant none of the charging cables at his apartment would work for her. They needed to pick one up on the way.
“About two blocks that way is a convenience store.” He pointed to their right, “We should go pick up a charger.”
Moira readily agreed, and they changed course. The townhomes had transitioned into high-rise apartments and office buildings by now. A few more pedestrians meandered the streets with them. They all eyed each other warily, but no one tried to stop them or start any trouble. It seemed like everyone had other things on their mind or places to be. The streets were devoid of cars. At this point, Jeremy doubted there was any access into the city by car, given how quickly the roads around it seemed to have been blocked by either the military, crashes, or encounters like the one with the dragon. He could not even hear any sirens. There would be no need for them on such ghostly streets.
“Yeah,” Moira muttered under her breath, “It has been a long day. Only one day into the apocalypse, and the streets already look like humanity has disappeared.”
The apocalypse. They had not quite put a label on it yet. Jeremy still hesitated to do so. It felt wrong. They did not understand what had occurred back at Moira’s mansion, but the world certainly had not ended. If anything, this felt like a turning point or a beginning. But he was still alive to think about these things. To others, like the man who was eaten by the dragon or the people being evacuated from the areas around the gates, it was an end.
The convenience store windows were broken. Glass scattered across the sidewalk and crunched against the linoleum floor when Jeremy stepped through the battered door. There were no super Wal-Marts downtown for people to raid for food and supplies. Places like this must have been hit swiftly in the panic after the press releases, perhaps even before the government advisements to shelter in place. The cash register hung open, and the metal shelves were bare.
“Not even a twinkie.” Moira walked between the shelves. Jeremy rolled his eyes and went over to the little plastic tower of phone accessories on the counter. It had not been as thoroughly picked over as the food. He found a cord and charging block and then tossed them to Moira.
“Any food?” He asked.
“Some gum.”
He wandered over and looked over the selection of gum packets left. After hemming and hawing for a few seconds, he put them all in the bag with the granola bars. From within the fluorescent lighting, the streets outside did look dark. Perhaps dusk was falling over the city.
“We should hurry,” Jeremy said. They were still at least half an hour from his apartment building. Once dusk fell, it quickly became dark. As they walked along, the alleys loomed black beside them. The night sky loomed above them, stars peeking out one by one, mostly washed out by the light pollution and the gigantic, bright moon.
“Is that the fucking moon?” Moira asked. Jeremy looked up. It certainly looked like the moon. He could pick out the face, or rabbit, or whatever people saw on it. But it was several times larger than usual. It was not quite full, but because of its size, it illuminated the night more brightly than Jeremy had ever seen.
“I guess so,” he said.
“Jesus. I’d hate to be living anywhere with tides right now.” Moira shook her head, “They have to be all messed up. Aw shit, hang on, my shoes untied again.”
She bent down to tie her laces. Jeremy paused and looked around. Maybe he should not have been so worried about getting to his apartment before dark. It was truly extraordinary how bright the moon was. Everything was lit nearly as brightly as during the daytime, except the shadows were deeper and the light less golden and more milky. Moira straightened and brushed her hands off. Then her eyes widened.
“What is that?”
In the shadows of the alley behind them, something large moved. Jeremy’s hand flew to the pocket where he’d stowed a dragon scale for easy access. He pulled it out and wrapped his fingers around it as best he could while the shadows shifted, and a humanoid beast stepped out of them. In the moonlight, the green of its skin seemed washed out, but the harsh edges of its strange face stood out in greater contrast. Its fangs glowed white. It clutched a club in one hand.
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“That’s…” Jeremy swallowed, “That’s an actual goblin.”
“They kill people, too, right? Like the dragon?” Moira asked. The goblin tilted its head while it considered them with beady eyes. Its overlay was the same dark red as everyone else, with a few runes he did not recognize. It took a step toward them.
“Yes, they do.” Jeremy made a split-second decision. This was a full-sized goblin, not like one of the mini-ones that could be launched through the air by a well-aimed baseball bat strike delivered by a ten-year-old. The army was using tanks to gun these suckers down. Moira had exhausted herself earlier by turning into a dragon. She only took a half-hour nap. They had been walking for at least three hours.
He grabbed Moira’s hand and ran. Hopefully, goblins were not like bears. You aren’t supposed to run from bears. Moira shrieked. She nearly wrenched his shoulder out of its socket as she tripped and crashed to her knees. Jeremy swung around to stare at her.
“Ow.” She tried to regain control of her limbs, but she seemed to have a difficult time getting her feet under her. Exhaustion made her steps clumsy. She had been tripping over curbs, cracks in the sidewalk, or even her own feet for the last few hours. The goblin lumbered after them. He looked from her to it and had a terrible intrusive thought. You only have to run faster than the person you are with to escape a bear attack. He shook the thought away and reached down to haul her to her feet.
“I thought you just tied your shoelaces!” He huffed as he tried to pull her back into a run. The goblin was nearly upon them. Moira huffed out a half-hearted laugh and promptly stumbled over her feet again. Jeremy nearly went down with her.
“I can’t even see straight.” She told him, “I…”
Jeremy dropped his bag and stepped around her to block the goblin’s approach. “Just try to get away.”
He flexed his fingers around the dragon scale and clenched his jaw. The goblin had big scary fangs and wicked sharp claws if they were anything like the mini goblin’s. But it was not much taller than the average man and was thin and wiry. If Jeremy could land a hit, getting a vital organ or artery would not be difficult. He just hoped a goblin’s anatomy was similar to a human's. It probably was not, but he could hope for the best.
The goblin lifted the club over its head with both arms. That was an incredible opening. Jeremy darted forward. He stabbed the goblin twice in its side. The scale pierced the skin with relative ease even though it was not sharpened. Its edge and the force Jeremy put behind the blows were enough to split skin and muscle. The goblin howled and swept the club at him. Jeremy darted back. The club swung back, and he ducked just in time to hear it whistle over his head.
Blood trickled from the goblin’s side. It was dark against its skin, but Jeremy could not discern its color in the moonlight. The stab wounds seemed to do little to stop it. They only enraged it. He would have to find a kill spot quickly. He stepped aside to avoid another swing.
The club crashed into the asphalt. It left a sizeable dent. He thought back to the kids using the baseball bat against the mini goblin. Maybe blunt force was more useful against goblins. When another opportunity opened up, he darted in close again. He aimed for the goblin’s exposed armpit, sinking the blade into where nerves and an artery would run under a person’s skin.
Heat raked across his back. The goblin yanked him away by the back of his shirt, tossing him aside. He landed on his bruised hip and grimaced. With everything that had occurred since then, he nearly forgot that he’d been banged up pretty badly while falling and crawling around the tunnels below Moira’s pond. Getting back on his feet took more effort than he was comfortable with.
But the goblin had dropped the club. Its injured arm hung loosely at its side, so Jeremy must have hit a nerve. The goblin’s anatomy couldn’t be that different, which was reassuring. He scrambled for the club while the goblin howled about its injured arm. Then he put everything he had behind a swing at the goblin’s head. The club landed with an audible crunch. It spun the goblin’s head to the side. Its body followed.
Jeremy did not give it a moment to get back up. It might not have gotten back up anyway, given the size of the dent in its head, but just to be sure, he used the scale to stab its throat a few times. A swirl of colors emanated from the goblin and faded into his own overlay, once again lightening the color by a shade.
He stumbled back and let himself take a deep breath. His fingers trembled around the club and the scale. Behind him, something scraped across the asphalt. He swung around, weapons at the ready.
“Jer?” It was just Moira picking herself up from the ground on legs that wobbled like a newborn fawn’s.
“I’m okay.” He told her.
She shook her head and approached him slowly. “No, you’re bleeding.”
“What?”
“It got your back.” She put a hand on his arm and turned him around. He looked down at the crumpled body of the goblin. He tilted his head. It had only really taken one blow to kill it. All the knife wounds helped create an opportunity for him to deliver that blow, but he doubted they contributed much to the goblin’s actual mortality. So, it technically took a similar amount of effort to kill the regular goblin as it did the mini goblin. One well-aimed, forceful blow to the head. Of course, a ten-year-old child’s swing might not have as much force as Jeremy’s. He dropped the club and tucked the scale back into his pocket. Then he wiped the blood on his hands onto his pants and pulled out his notebook.
“What are you doing?” Moira’s voice was careful, as though talking to a spooked animal. Jeremy frowned at her.
“I need to write something down.” He clicked his pen and turned to a fresh page to write ‘goblin: regular’ at the top.
“Jer,” Moira coaxed, “You’re bleeding.”
He did not even feel anything, but he had to admit that the letters swam around the page as he tried to write. Wounds did not always hurt, but that did not mean they were not serious. He closed his eyes and took a steadying breath. The last of the buzzing adrenaline faded from his veins. His hands shook too badly to continue writing. His back burned.