In Camp Trin’s southern district, the sounds of screaming townsfolk and buzzing bugs has largely died down. The central district, in which Lex, Cannon, and Tay cleared the bugs from the central apartment complex, was hit the hardest of the three districts. Although it has a similar population density as the less well off southern district, the central district is closer by proximity to the town’s main entrance (which is, in case you don’t remember or couldn’t math it out, is in the northern district). When the bugs came in, they did what little damage there was to be done to the already-disheveled northern district, then meandered into the central district where they found a human buffet in the form of the main apartment complex. Some bugs made it to the southern district - enough to cause plenty of wanton death and destruction - but not nearly as many as our heroes found in the central district.
As such, the chorus of frenzied buzzing gets quieter by the second. To be more specific, it gets quieter by the lanyard/keyring/flail slash, as well as by the bronze knuckle/tankard/thing. Warden Morgan and Rach plow dutifully through the brick and concrete maze of streets that comprise the southern district, whittling away at the invading bugs as quickly as they can. The battlefield is starting to thin out, but the fighting isn’t done yet.
Warden Morgan bashes the brains in on a particularly nasty looking bug, one that looks uncomfortably similar to a woman who he knows lives in one of the smaller apartments on this side of town. He quiets the teetering nausea in his stomach. “You really think we can trust those three?” he asks Rach as she delivers a devastating one-two combo to a hapless bug. “I got iron butterflies in my stomach letting them go free.”
Rach wipes her brow. “You want the honest answer or the nice answer?”
“Honest.”
“Alright, then, honestly, I haven’t spent a single second thinking about it because that’s your problem, not my problem.”
Morgan makes a sound that’s somewhere between a cough and a dry laugh. “Well, I guess I appreciate the honesty. What’s your nice answer?”
“The nice answer is that you need to chill the hell out, Morgan.”
“That’s not very nice.”
“Think about it. For one of them, the pizza boy, his crime is beating up a notorious gangster. I get why that doesn’t fly with you, but, you know, hardly a sign of bad character. For another one, the prince, well, he might actually be the prince. I doubt it, but, you know, worst case scenario he’s either a harmless delusional whacko or a harmless delusional kid trying to con a quick buck. For the third one, yeah, I’m not gonna excuse what she’s done, but people can be products of their environments.” She ducks a few swipes from a claw-armed bug, then retaliates with an uppercut that knocks its jaw off its hinges. “Plant a good seed in a sick garden, it’s gonna get sick. Give it some time in a healthy patch of grass, look at what happens.”
Three nearby bugs lose their heads to a wide sweep of Morgan’s flail. “Don’t think that’s how gardening works.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Hell, I don’t know. Either way, I don’t buy it. You break the law, you get the punishment. End of story.”
“Sure, but haven’t you arguably been breaking the law by taking the Montego family’s money?”
Morgan grunts and plants an angry kick into a bug’s chest, knocking it down. The force with which he curb stomps that mother fucker makes Rach wince. “You’re surprisingly lucid, Rach.”
“I haven’t had a drink in 24 hours. My body is capable of being sober, you know.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Eat shit, Morgan.”
“Seriously, though, it’s nice to see. Rach I know wouldn’t be able to get the words out for a complex gardening metaphor. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think that little plant speech wasn’t about those three prisoners at all.”
“Excuse me?”
“On your six.” Morgan shoves past Rach in time to catch the biting maw of a bug with the lanyard of his weapon, wrapping it around the bug’s neck until the head pops off like a champaign cork.
“Thanks. All I’m saying is that those three are all pretty okay in my book. The Marauder is a little rough around the edges, but she’s alright.”
“Very touching. I’ll try to keep that in mind when I give them all life sentences.”
“So we’re not talking about execution anymore?”
“Depends on how well they followed orders and cleaned up the central district.”
“That doesn’t sound like a very law heavy judgment.”
Morgan stiffens his back and looms over Rach. He clenches his fist tight around the lanyard of his weapon plops the flail head in his other hand. His shadow falls over Rach. She gulps. “Make no mistake,” he says, his voice booming with more power than it has all night, “I live by a set of rules. Break the rules, get the punishment. Good or bad doesn’t make a difference. What the hell do you think happens when we stop playing by the rules, hmm? Where do consequences from you? Who makes it happen? Look around you.”
Rach does. There’s not a whole lot to see. Piles of dead bugs, closed doors, empty streets. “I don’t see anything,” she says, still cowering in Morgan’s shadow.
“Bugs all over the place, bugs breaking into people’s homes, bugs ending innocent life after innocent life. And yet, nobody’s out on the streets.”
“Morgan, what are you talking about? Nobody should be out on the streets right now. Everyone who’s holed up in their homes are doing the smart thing.”
“Not everyone. Anyone who can fight who isn’t out here helping us right now, everyone not doing the right thing by protecting their town, well, they’re scum as far as I’m concerned. And that’s why I need to act the way I act. Live the way I live. This town is full of people who are more than able to protect it but don’t give a rat’s ass about anything but themselves to lift a goddamn finger to help. Even with the Montego’s money, I can barely afford to pay the town watch, and they don’t have the same fighting experience as half the people in this town. And yet, when push comes to shove, where is everyone?”
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Rach hangs her head low. “The Bantam Bar,” she says, the words tasting foul in her mouth.
“The Bantam Bar,” Morgan repeats. “I can hear the noise in there from here. Whole building full of people who can handle themselves in a fight, not a single one of them out here fighting alongside you and me.”
“Yeah, they’re all self absorbed assholes. I don’t really get your point.”
“My point is that people don’t do what’s right. People are children who need their hands held to be walked from point A to point B in order to not spiral every bastion of society on the planet into chaos. That starts with a very simple formula. Break the rules, get punished. Without people who enforce that formula, we wouldn’t have anything.”
“Without people like you, you mean?”
“That’s right.”
“Don’t you think that’s a bit self important?”
“I don’t care if I sound like I’m doom saying from the top of an ivory tower. I’m right and you know it. If the rules don’t get followed, if justice doesn’t get carried out, we’re no better than the bugs.”
“Feels like a pretty gross over simplification, but, yeah, I hear you. You’ve kept me out of a lot of trouble over the years, and you’ve kept this whole place running for as long as I can remember. So, you know, thank you. For that.”
“I’m not asking for a thank you, but I’ll take it. And thank you for giving enough of a shit to help me out tonight.”
“You kinda forced me to, but, hey, thank you accepted.”
“You could’ve jumped ship any time. What am I gonna do, chase you?”
“Literally yes.”
“Not with the bugs out.”
“But if I ran now you’d chase me?”
“Why would I? You stayed and helped when it counted. Plus, you did your time in the drunk tank. You don’t owe me anything else.”
“Good, cause I think I’m out of here after tonight. For good. Think I oughta find a place where everyone doesn’t juse see me as a fuck up.”
“Fuck ups don’t stick around to clean up messes, and people who stick around to clean up messes definitely aren’t fuck ups.”
Rach rubs her neck. “Yeah. Thanks.”
For a minute, the two of them stand there in silence. They’re both sweating from all the bug killing, and the cool biting at their skin feels nice. Now that the town is quiet, people’s doors slowly open up. Nervous heads peek out of doorways, inspecting the damage done by the bugs. As more and more people feel confident that the fighting is over, people take to the streets. Most of them just hug each other, happy that they’re safe. Some, though, come over to give Rach and Morgan hugs and high fives for helping them. Morgan takes every hug the way a balloon animal would take a hug from a cactus. Rach isn’t much better. Every hug she gets, every congratulations she receives, her gaze never wanders far from the Bantam Bar down the street.
She thinks about her family there. Everyone probably shitfaced, weathering out the bug storm by numbing themselves to it. Probably getting into fights with each other. All that wasted energy, all that wasted potential. She can’t judge, though. They’re her and she’s them. If she wasn’t caught up in prison with Cannon, Tay, and Lex earlier, she’d be at the bar right now, laughing about how glad she is that she isn’t one of the poor saps who’s out there dealing with the bug problem. The thought makes her grimace. She thinks about how much better her life could be if she could just leave. Find another town, maybe go to the Seven Cities and start over. Find a new group to pal around with. A group where she isn’t queen among a colony of losers.
Her daydreaming gets cut off when Morgan prods her and says something that she doesn’t catch. He points up above the wall of buildings that separates the southern district from the central one. At first, she doesn’t know what he’s pointing at. The moon is full, the stars are bright, the smoke is heavy-- wait, the smoke? Smoke? There’s not supposed to be smoke. Why’s there smoke? Morgan and Rach both start asking these questions and more out loud, but neither of them has an answer. Morgan starts cursing Tay, Lex, and Cannon, certain that they had something to do with it (he’s right, for the most part), but he doesn’t get a chance to rip them a new one because a cluster of unfamiliar faces emerge from the tunnel, blocking anyone’s path out.
“Hi guys!” one of them says, her olive skinned face poking out from a long, black cloak. Both she and the other two dozen figures with her are all wearing the same thing. “My name is Sofi, and I’m a Marauder, and I was just wondering if you all could point me in the direction of your valuables and riches? That would be so great, thanks! And if anybody wants to try to stand in our way, I’ll tear the skin from your bones! So great. Thanks again in advance! So where are we going, hmm?”
Morgan and Rach look at each other like, well, like some valley girl just threatened to Ed Bundy them if they didn’t give up their goods. The townsfolk who were just a minute ago celebrating their newfound safety have already started to retreat back into their homes. All around Morgan and Rach, the sounds of locks clicking and windows shutting nearly turn the place into an impromptu musical number.
The warden takes a step forward to confront Sofi. “Marauders.” He grinds his teeth. “I knew something was up. Too many coincidences in one night for it to be a coincidence. I should have killed her when I had the chance. All three of them.”
“No, there’s no way,” Rach says. “Was this her plan the whole time? Earn our trust for some roundabout long con?”
“I’ll tell you one thing,” Morgan says, swinging his flail back and forth. “You won’t hear me asking any more questions.”
Sofi looks at them with a cocked puppy dog head. “Oookay. So. You guys gonna show me where all the goodies are? Or am I gonna have to start flaying?”
Morgan answers by lunging at Sofi and launching his weaponized keyring at her head. In one smooth motion, Sofi reaches her hand inside her cloak, pulls out a heavy looking rake, and holds it above her head to parry Morgan’s slash. The flail wraps around the shaft of the rake, allowing Sofi to tug it backwards like a fishing rod, sending the flail and everything attached to it (which, in this case, is Warden Morgan) careening backwards.
“Well, shucks, guess I’ll be bringing some skin home to the girls!” She twirls the rake around. The torchlight glints off the teeth of the rake, which Morgan and Rach can now see have been filed down to sharp, glinting points. Behind her, the rest of the Marauders draw their weapons and ready themselves into fighting stances.
Morgan collects himself and walks back over to Rach, who’s in a ready stance of her own with both fists up, tankard in hard. “We’re not winning this fight, Rach,” he whispers.
“What?” she says. “Morgan, it’s not like you to--”
“I count 24 of them, and I count two of us. If these were run of the mill Joe Schmos, I’d take those odds.” He shakes his head. “But Marauders, they’re no joke.”
“You dealt with them before?”
“Other than that girl Tay? Yeah. Years ago. They’re trained to kill. Just count your lucky stars that their Mother isn’t here. I’ve seen her do things I didn’t know any human could do.”
“Such as?”
“I’ll tell you over a beer some time if we survive this.”
“If we survive this,” she echoes back. “I don’t like your confidence.”
“Yeah, well I don’t like our odds. Listen. Rach.” He grabs her shoulders, his huge hands eclipsing the upper part of her torso. “I’ll hold them off. You get reinforcements.”
“Hold them off? Morgan, you said it yourself, there are 25 of them. And reinforcements? Half the town watch is unconscious in the prison, the other half is in the north district, probably dead.”
Morgan lowers his head. Rach stands there, waiting for either Morgan to give her an answer or for one of the Marauders to come over and slice her up. She widens her eyes at Morgan, as if to ask him what the hell he’s on about. He just nods slightly and keeps his gaze locked on some point behind her. When she turns around, she understands. He’s looking at one particular building down the street.
“The Bantam Bar?” she asks, incredulous. “Morgan, come on. You said it yourself, they’re all way too self absorbed to fight. They’d rather skip town then help.”
“Yeah, and you said it yourself, so would you if you were there. But you’re here. I don’t know what you and those three maniacs talked about when you were locked up, but if it was enough to keep you here fighting with me, then it’ll be good enough to keep them here fighting with us.”
Rach thinks about what she and Cannon had talked about when they were in the halls of the prison. Family. Her shitty little family whose reunion was every night at the bottom of a bottle. “No, no, no. Morgan, they’re not an army and I’m not a motivational speaker.” She closes her eyes and sees every face in the bar. Their names streak across her mind. “And, even if they were, even if I was, what about you? You can’t hold off all these Marauders.”
“Don’t worry about me. And don’t worry about you, either. I wouldn’t give you this job if I didn’t know for certain that you were capable of it.”
She frowns and looks at Morgan for a long time. A single tear runs down her cheek and she nods at him. He nods in return.
Sofi steps forward. “Right, sooooo I’m just gonna go ahead and turn you guys into lampshades. You’ll look so cute! Yay!”
Morgan says, “Go,” and steps forward to meet Sofi. Rach doesn’t stick around long enough to see what happens next. She spins around and darts down the street toward the Bantam bar.