Brian laid back on his bed pallet and sighed. Danny handed him the flask he had been sipping from and burped.
“Pardon,” Danny said, leaning back in the leather office chair, making it creak in ways that Brian always assumed was the chair screaming for mercy. “What do you make of the newcomers?”
“Well,” Brian chewed his lip and scratched his cheek, noting that he should shave soon. “I still think it wasn’t the wrong choice to bring the anomaly in, but I’m worried.”
“Why do you keep calling her an anomaly? Do you have proof she’s one?”
“Her eyes, Danny. Have you ever seen golden eyes?” Brian looked up at his closest friend and met his gaze. He was the only person he felt comfortable being vulnerable with and he let the giant see his fear. “And something in my gut tells me to get away from her.”
“I think that’s only fair. We’ve seen some horrible things.” Danny held out his hand for the flask and Brian passed it back untouched. “But Ana seems like a scared kid, nothing more.”
“Ana?” Brian frowned.
“You keep calling her an anomaly and I just figured she could use an actual name, not an accusation that could get her killed.”
“No one else knows that slang we use, Danny. We are a nation unto ourselves in these catacombs. Every roaming band we encounter uses different names for the monsters.”
“Anomaly, mutant, freak, changeling. Doesn’t matter what you call it, you still think she was born different because of the Cataclysm.”
“I do, don’t you?” Brian put his hands behind his head and looked away from Danny, his eyes tracing shapes in the cracks of the bricks on the arched ceiling above him. But the giant man was silent for too long. Brian looked back to his face to see him frowning in a confused way.
“No, I don’t,” Danny said finally. “I think she’s too old to have been born different.”
“She can’t be older than maybe fifteen.” Brian shook his head. “She’s a child, and any older than fifteen puts her on the edge of being conceived or born around the time of the Cataclysm.”
“She told you she was older than thirty.” Danny reminded him, sipping from the flask again. The chair creaked as he tipped his head back.
“She’s confused, traumatized. Besides, Sylvie thinks she’s foreign.”
“We’re foreign,” Danny said with a smirk.
“Ok, fair, but I meant non-English speaking.”
“Your nationalism is showing,” Danny said and he stood and stretched, his too-small shirt rising above his hairy belly.
“Your paunch is showing,” Brian retorted. “Turn the light off on your way out.”
“Aye, aye,” Danny said and the lights powered down in a soft whirr.
The longer Brian tried to sleep, the more restless he became. He couldn’t shake his gut reaction to holding Ana’s hand. Her hands were cold, but they were all cold in the unheated tunnels. It was the middle of winter in northern England after all. But the shock and the voice he had heard set him on edge. Brian knew it wasn’t his instinct, the prodigal gut feeling he usually had about things. It had been a voice whispering, insisting that he run. Was it a literal voice? Brian couldn’t really make up his mind. He wanted to say no, of course not. Then again, if asked twenty years ago if monsters were real, he’d have answered the same. Of course not.
Abandoning his attempts at rest and wishing he had taken a few sips of Danny’s homebrewed liquor despite his distaste for it, Brian got up and put on his holey socks and boots. Without turning back on the mini-generator for the light, he crept out of his own quarters and into the larger area that had been partitioned off for small groups. He picked his way quietly toward the entrance of the cave and paused at the gates.
“Commander,” Cameron said, saluting Brian in a sharp jerk of his hand. Brian didn’t bother to wave his salute down. Cameron was ex-military and took a lot of comfort in the drilled rituals of his former life.
“Report?” Brian asked. His tone was questioning, not demanding.
“Yes, sir,” Cameron replied, animated at the idea of performing his duty. “Silent since lockdown was lifted. Three hunting teams out, all nine of them back within an hour. All three had small game.” Brian assumed with such a quick outing the “small game” was likely to be rats. He had grown to not question where the meat came from but his gut didn’t rest and it volunteered that information up to him with a gurgle.
“Very good, thank you. And the newcomers? Did they leave after the lockdown was lifted?” Brian asked. Cameron shook his head.
“The two new males met the hunters at the gates and helped clean the catch. The two females have not left their quarters.”
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
“Right,” Brian said and thanked Cameron. He motioned for the gates to be opened and slipped out. He pulled his knit cap low on his brow and shrugged his coat closer to his neck then quietly walked down the long exit cave to the sound of the gates being locked firmly behind him. As he passed the intercom he pushed the button and waited for a response.
“Sir?” Cameron’s voice was pitched up and had a slight echo.
“Keep them locked. No one out until I’m back.”
“Roger.” The communication ended with a static click and Brian felt more alone than he had been just a second before.
The snow had stopped but the clouds had not cleared at all. The sky was a grey-black that left only the dim outlines of large shapes visible. Brian relieved himself near a tree and then took the small flashlight out of his pocket and began swinging it back and forth across the ground. He had become fairly good at reading tracks in the dirt, mud and snow. Scanning the ground for any activity that he couldn’t account for was one way that he made himself feel like he was doing his part for their small community. Being the book-keeper, quartermaster, and commander wasn’t enough for him.
He could see the footprints of the hunting parties and the faded tracks of a rabbit. He followed some deer tracks to a tree that had a large strip of bark skinned from its trunk at about shoulder height. The tracks lead away from the cave, down the sloping hill toward the dense forest.
Brian turned to head back to the cave when he heard a snapping sound to his right. He panned his small light over the sparse trees and pivoted toward the sound. He let out a low whistle, a sound he had taught everyone to use instead of calling out to avoid drawing too much attention to themselves. Silence, just his heart hammering and his gut telling him to get back to the cave. Then, a returning whistle, imitating his own in the same tone and length, but warbly and uncertain.
Brian flicked the light around the trees back and forth, searching for the source of the response. He let out his own brief whistle again. This time, the echo was more confident and precise and was followed by a hissing giggle that was quickly stifled.
“Shit,” Brian said under his breath and he ran just as the leathery wings began flapping. “Shit, shit, shit.” His boots crunched in the shallow snowfall, the traction poor on the slick hill leading to the caves, the impish giggling in his ears gaining on him. As he rounded the corner of the entrance he let out a loud one note whistle with his tongue between his teeth. It was his personal alert to the guards on the gates and he heard it being unlocked as he ran full tilt toward it. Without slowing, he slipped in between the gates and they slammed behind him.
“Sir?” Cameron asked, correctly reading Brian’s urgency. Two small leathery bodies slammed into the thick gates, rattling them loudly in the tunnel. Cameron leapt away from the gates and reached for his sword.
“Imps,” Brian said breathlessly, running to wake up his second in command. “Ten swords in the common area and two for each tunnel entrance. I’ll handle the gates with Danny.”
When Brian got to Danny’s sleeping area, he was gone but so was his sword and the helmet he kept near him. Nodding his approval, Brian switched gears and ran back to his own area and grabbed his gun and two daggers, shoving one hastily into his belt and attaching the other to his pistol. It affected his accuracy but he was prepared for close quarters combat, anyway. As long as he could nick an imp with his silver, it would die. Bullet or blade did not matter.
When Brian came back to the gates he glanced once to Danny, who must have heard Brian leaving and had prepared himself just in case. The bulky man looked ridiculous in the conical helmet, but Brian had insisted on him wearing it when he was swinging the enormous two-handed claymore he liked to use. It was a heavy weapon, even before it had been electroplated in silver, and Brian saw how many times the enormous man had nearly lost control of the weapon and hit himself in the head with the cross guard or pommel. He was the only one of them strong enough to swing it with any real force more than once, but once he got tired he got sloppy.
“There’s three imps. I haven’t seen anything else but that doesn’t mean much.”
“Let’s bait them closer to the gates and I’ll try to shoot them.” Brian suggested but Danny shook his head.
“That Smith and Wesson will sound like an explosion in this cave. And if the bullets ricochet off the walls it could hit someone. I’m in.”
“Damn it,” Brian said under his breath. Danny was right, of course. The gun was a bad choice.
“I know,” Danny agreed, clearly understanding that he had taken the choice out of Brian’s hands. He grinned through his fuzzy beard. “It’s ok. I’m Untouchable Angus.” He lifted his sword and nodded at Cameron. “Open the gates on my mark and slam them on my ass.”
“And lock them,” Brian said before Danny could. He wanted the responsibility on his own shoulders, not anyone else’s.
“Now!” Danny roared and he charged through the gates. They slammed loudly behind him. Brian leapt closer, clinging to the bars tightly, his heart in his throat and his guts acid and ice as he watched the three imps swarm directly at his closest friend, chattering in their demonic cackle.
“Oh, you stupid bastards!” roared the giant as they tried to grab at the lip of his helm and rip it off his head. He swung wildly at one and caught it in the wing. It careened down onto the stone floor, shrieking and gurgling. It shriveled into a vaguely imp-shaped pile of ash.
The two imps watched their companion wither and flapped their wings harder to get a little height. Unfortunately for them, the ceilings in the cave were not much higher than Danny could reach and as he swung his sword like a baseball bat, trying to knock them out of the air, he caught them both at the same time and slapped them down. The blade had not pierced them, though, and they picked themselves back up and flapped around his head once more.
“Damn imps!” Danny grunted as he aimed once more and swung. “Just die already!” He missed and one of the imps dived down to claw at his face but he brought the pommel of the sword down and knocked it on the head, sending it flying away in a crazy spiral. It lay on the floor and didn’t move, but it didn’t shrivel which meant it couldn’t be counted out yet.
The last one seemed to wisen up from the loss of its two companions and it gnashed its tiny sharp teeth at Danny, spitting its venom at him in disgusting globs. Danny danced backward and held the sword aloft again, waiting. The imp bobbed up and down in the air in time with the beat of his red-black wings.
“Come on, you ugly shit,” Danny said between his clenched jaws. Sweat was running into his eyes and Brian could smell his fear coming off him in cold waves. He knew that the giant man had not come to terms with the fact that something about him set him apart when it came to the monsters. He really did seem untouchable when it came to the vast majority of the beasts.
The second imp stirred on the floor, making weird chattering noises that Brian had never heard. The imp still in flight snapped its head toward it, tilting its head as though listening. The chittering imp fell silent and the other echoed the noise and Brian’s eyes widened. They were communicating. Some kind of high-pitched screeching, like a tiny monkey. He hadn’t heard them do that before.
Suddenly, the airborne imp dove down and landed on the other, grasping it in his claws and started to heave it up. The imp on the ground beat its own wings, trying to help it but Danny pounced. With two hands, he skewered them both on his sword, the force of the blow ringing loudly in the chamber and shaking up into his hands and making his arms go numb. He dropped the sword, swearing.
“Christ, that hurts,” he said as he rubbed his hands and arms. He shook them out and watched the imps wither away and then finally bent to pick up the sword. “Done.” He said, shouldering the blade. “Hopefully,” he muttered as he came up to the gates.
“Get in here before more come,” Brian said, gesturing for Cameron to open the gates. “Let’s go check on the rest of our people.” He turned and led the way back into the common area, already dreading the worst.