Hey guys! Hope you enjoy this latest chapter. I've got a long car trip I'm taking for the holidays, so I'm probably going to get a lot more time to push out the next chapter a bit faster (though I don't know how reliable my internet connection will at the place I'm heading to). So buckle up, guys, because next chapter should give you a big hint/taste of just what Fitz has become in this brave, new world.

Also, if you find any typos/mistakes, please point them out so I can eliminate those pesky things. Thanks!

----------------------------------------

Of Monsters and men

Chapter Six

“What?” the desk manager asked shakily. The stench of terror hung about him as he quivered within my grasp like jelly, and dark pit stains discolored the jolly red shirt and tailored evergreen vest stretched taut across his paunch.

“Did you,” I repeated slowly, “just try to attack me with a stapler?” My gaze turned pointedly to the man’s hands, both upraised as if to show me he meant no harm, and the subject of our conversation.

The desk manager didn’t dare to move even a muscle, not with my sword close enough to shave the whiskers of the neatly trimmed beard masking his surprisingly youthful face. Instead, with his chin held high to avoid my blade’s cool touch, the manager’s eyes darted to his clenched fist.

The stapler fell from the man’s numb fingers and clattered onto the ground. “Please, you have to understand. I wasn’t—” He swallowed audibly, struggling to speak. “I thought you were one of those things. If I’d known you were human, I would’ve never—never—tried to attack you. It was just self-defense, I swear.”

“Good, good,” I drawled while nodding. “Knowing that you mistakenly tried to bludgeon me to death is very reassuring. But more importantly, why a stapler?”

The heavyset man blinked at the question. But then a slow realization crept across his face and his cheeks immediately flushed. “There wasn’t anything else around,” he sputtered defensively.

Fair point.

Not everyone has the luxury, or the luck of ancestral swords and antique shields just laying around for an apocalyptic monster invasion. Besides, didn’t I have a somewhat recent experience involving a troll, and a pair of plaid socks?

Yeah…

“Hey, do you—do you think you could maybe lower your sword?” The desk manager’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he stuttered out the request, but he made no move to push aside the offending weapon.

“That depends.”

“On what?” the man asked cautiously.

“You got any other staplers or office supplies I need to worry about?”

The man seemed at a loss for words, his mouth opening and closing, as if he were a fish drinking in water, before he finally managed an uncertain, “No?”

“Good.” Grinning sheepishly, I slid my sword into its sheath—after two tries—and released the fabric of the man’s shirt clenched in my other fist.

Collapsing against the wall in a slouch, the man seemed to deflate as he puffed out a relieved breath. His hand wiped away the stinging sweat dripping into his bloodshot eyes.

 “Sorry about all that. Here, let me just…” I awkwardly tried to straighten up the man’s rumpled uniform after my rough handling. But at the sound of crunching snow from outside, beyond the shattered windows, the desk manager lunged forward and grabbed my arm. He pulled me down behind the desk, then, so we were out of sight.

The man poked his head out, like a paranoid prairie dog from its burrow, but ducked back down when a few humanoid shadows darted past the windows, their features completely hidden by the swirling snows of a worsening blizzard and the flickering street lamp.

“See anything?”

“Keep your voice down,” the man warned with a hissing whisper, his round face returning to its original ghostly pallor. He peeked around the corner of the desk, as if worried something might’ve heard us. But after a few uneventful seconds he withdrew, releasing a pent up breath. “I think we’re safe. For now.”

But the desk manager flinched as a cacophony of automatic gunfire—from not one, but multiple weapons—suddenly erupted from somewhere outside, maybe a few blocks away.

“Those gunshots started about half an hour ago,” the man whispered as he moved up next to me, still crouched. He warily eyed the wintry night beyond the lobby. “Sounds like there’s a war going on out there.”

“Do you know when they first started appearing?” I asked, ignoring his comment. The ‘they’ I was referring to was obvious, and the desk manager’s knowing gaze met my own.

“I don’t know,” the desk manager muttered. “An hour ago? Checking the time wasn’t exactly on the list of my priorities when the freaking apocalypse happened.” But he dipped a couple of fingers into his vest’s pocket and took out a phone.

It’s screen illuminated and my eyes lit up.

“Your phone still works?” My question was more of a statement as I saw the current time—11:46—displayed across the phone’s glitching home screen, and I needed to resist the urge to snatch it out of his hands. “Can you make any calls?”

The man shook his head sadly. “No such luck. Believe me, I’ve been trying since all this…stuff started. It’s as if the entire network is down, not to mention that something seems to be messing with my phone itself.”

Well, that was just fan-fucking-tastic.

My original plan was still on then.

Glancing over my shoulder, I saw a nearby door bearing a stairwell placard. Above it were the words ‘Garage Access’ painted in white. “You’re not thinking about going out there, are you?” the desk manager asked when he noticed me eying the exit.

“What’s the alternative? Staying here?”

“Yes!” the man whispered vehemently—anxiously—as if he didn’t want to be left all alone again. “The smart thing to do would be to stay here where its safe until help arrives.”

“’Safe?’” I repeated sarcastically. The howling wind blew through the open windows just at that moment, as if to accentuate my point, and causing the man to shiver. “Listen. You go ahead and do what you want. As for me though, I’ve got places to go and people to meet.”

“It’s suicide to go outside,” the man tried one last time with a touch of desperation in his voice. “I’ve seen what’s out there. I’ve seen them, and what they’re capable of. You won’t last long out there. Not alone.”

“You can come along,” I offered.

“To die?” he asked with a grim chuckle. “No thanks. It’s smarter to just sit tight and wait until the police arrive to evacuate us. Trust me.”

“The police?” I shook my head. “Those guys can’t handle this shit. Dude, I’m pretty sure I saw an honest-to-God dragon flying over the downtown area. A fucking dragon. You know, those big scary lizards that can probably piss out napalm. You think underpaid civil servants are equipped to deal with that?”

 “Then the military—”

“—will be covering their own asses first,” I finished for him. “Most likely, they’ll be bunkering down until they can figure out what the fuck is going on.” Not to mention it was a major holiday, meaning only essential personnel were probably active on the near-deserted military bases; so they’d be scrambling even more.

Hearing my reasoning, then, the desk manager seemed torn. But as the cogs of his mind turned, he finally—reluctantly—nodded. “Damnit, you’re right,” he bemoaned, none too pleased at the thought trekking off into the night.

“So,” I extended my hand, “Partners?”

“I…guess so.” He reached out to engulf my hand between his clammy palms.  “My name’s Gary, by the way. Gary Turner.”

“Fitzroy,” I offered in return before pulling back my hand. An uncomfortably cold and sticky sweat slathered my hand, and I had to resist the urge to wipe it away on my pants. “But my friends call me Fitz.”

Gary nodded and then got right to the point. “So you’ve got a car, right?”

I took out the keys and spun them around on my index finger, the movement causing a light jangle. My hand snapped shut around the keys as they smacked into my palm. “What do you think?”

Gary forced out a slight smile. “Good. We should definitely grab some quick supplies then. Food and drinks and whatever else might be important.”

“Ah, yeah, those would be good things to get,” I agreed with a self-deprecating titter. I’d totally forgotten about those little, but important details in my grand plan to find Paige. Definitely a bit of an oversight…

“Don’t worry,” Gary said. “There’s a side room connected to this lobby with a few vending machines. We should be able to get some supplies from there.”

Still crouched, he awkwardly waddled over to the leg space of the front desk, reaching inside to pull out an unzipped backpack. Inside I saw a silver thermos and a brown paper bag, along with a couple of spiral notebooks.

He slung one of the straps over his shoulder and glanced outside, peering through the hazy snowfall, to make sure everything was clear. Then he shuffled to the side alcove he’d mentioned, giving a very wide berth to the bodies on the ground, and waved for me to quickly follow.

Together, we entered a small room, where a few vending machines lined the wall. Their well-stocked interiors were illuminated by an unsteady glow, and Gary waddled up to one with an obvious familiarity. Unslinging his backpack and putting it down, he began to root around within and pulled out a ziplock bag nearly bursting with loose change.

“Keep watch while I handle this,” Gary said as he slipped a nickel—not even a fucking quarter—into the snack machine.

The apocalypse had arrived, and I’d found the one man willing to still count out the dimes and nickels for a candy bar. I was stunned. No actually, that didn’t even come close to describing how I felt. Instead, I’d use the word ‘gobsmacked’.

That’s right.

I was fucking gobsmacked.

“You’re kidding me with the coin thing, right?”

Gary slotted another nickel into the machine as his gaze roved over the unhealthy, yet delicious goodies inside. “How else can we get what’s inside? I don’t have the keys, and this glass is resilient enough to shrug off even the—”

My elbow shattered the glass pane of the snack machine next to Gary, which made surprisingly little noise. I cleared away the glass shards and reached inside to grab a handful of candy bars, stuffing them inside Gary’s bag.

“Huh,” Gary said simply, staring. Then his thoughtful gaze shifted between the machine I’d just broken into and the one before him. With an explosive grunt for added power, he threw an elbow forward. It slammed into the glass—

—and bounced off.

“Gah!” Gary hopped around in circles with his arm cradled against his chest. His nostrils flared, and rapid breaths hissed out from between his clenched teeth as the vending machine’s glass rattled mockingly.

My hands full with chip bags, I paused from my pilfering to watch Gary in abject amazement. First the stapler, then the nickels, and now this—the man was like an almost excruciatingly derpy panda. “Maybe you should just keep watch while I finish this up,” I suggested to Gary.

The man mumbled his assent as he nursed his bruised elbow and stepped aside. Meanwhile, I smashed my elbow into the pane of a soda machine, my face averted to protect my eyes from any stray glass fragments.

“So why do you have a sword and shield, anyways?” Gary asked as I began looting the machine of its contents. The backpack was now fat and heavy with our ill-gotten goods.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

“It’s sort of a long story,” I said, stuffing a fizzy Grape Blast into Gary’s backpack. “Suffice to say, the simplest explanation involves a troll, lemons, socks, and a party gone awry. So nothing too interesting.”

Gary gave me a strange look. “I can’t tell if you’re being serious…”

“No one ever can,” I said with a forced grin.

My fingers tugged at the backpack’s pull tab, and I needed to pull the zipper’s teeth together in order to zip the stuffed bag shut. Lifting the heavy backpack as if it were nothing then, I shrugged one strap over my shoulder. “You ready?” I asked.

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” Gary mutters unenthusiastically.

“Got your trusty stapler?”

His cheeks heating up, Gary’s gloomy demeanor shifted into one of embarrassment. “Ugh, god, can we just forget about that entire thing?”

“Sorry man, but I’ve still got a few more jokes to milk outta’ that,” I said with a faint smile. “Now, let’s get going. We’ve got places to be and cities to ditch.”

First checking to make sure the coast was clear, we jogged across the lobby and I pushed open the stairwell door leading to the basement garage. Our footsteps echoed in the enclosed chamber as we quickly descended.

“I forgot to ask earlier, but where exactly will we be heading?” Gary asked in a whisper so that his voice wouldn’t carry in the stairwell. “There’s a military base not too far from here. Fort Howers, I think it’s called. Maybe we can find refuge there if they’re hunkering down like you said.”

“I was thinkin’ of something a little different actually.”

“Like what? Somewhere rural perhaps, where we can wait until this whole thing blows over and the government gets a handle on things?” Gary asked with a far more optimistic outlook than me.

“Maybe. But first, I want to cruise downtown and pick up a couple of chicks,” I said lightly, remembering the face of the mystery girl that I’d seen through my link to Paige. “We’ll see where the night takes us after that, yeah?”

Gary’s footsteps behind me abruptly halted as I touched down on the bottom landing, where I found the door to the garage. Turning around, I found Gary standing in the middle of the stairs as he stared down at me. “Is this you joking again?”

“Not this time,” I told him. “I’ve got someone that I need to pick up before high-tailing my ass out of this city for greener and less monster-infested pastures. That shouldn’t be a problem, right?”

“So we just pick up this person—”

“My girlfriend,” I corrected.

“This girlfriend of yours,” Gary continued with a nod, “from wherever she is downtown? Listen, not to be a downer or anything, but how do you expect to find her in this mess? How do you even know if she’s still, well, you know…?”

“Alive?” I said. “Oh, don’t you worry about that. Trust me when I say that she’s most definitely alive. My little Sweet Pea is a tough one.”

Okay, okay. I might be omitting a few key details with that vague explanation, but in my defense, I’d only just met the guy. Blabbing about ‘mysterious connections’ and ‘strange visions’ wasn’t something you shared with strangers, not unless you were billing by the hour and had a crystal ball in front of you.

“Fine,” Gary said with resignation. Besides, I was the one with the car after all. He trudged down the steps to stand beside me. “Just so long as we’re getting out of this city afterwords, I’m in.”

“That’s what I like to hear!” I lightly punched Gary’s shoulder as if we were already on the fast track to being the best of friends.

“Oof,” Gary grunted with a pained look as he rocked back from the power of my friendly jab. “Damn, you’re really strong,” Gary mumbled as he massaged his aching shoulder.

Yikes. I needed a lot more practice at controlling my new strength, especially if I was going to keep my change under wraps. “Sorry about that,” I said. “Guess I forget my own strength sometimes.”

“It’s fine,” Gary said, shrugging off my concern. He stepped past me then and pulled open the door to the garage. “Let’s just get out of…” His voice trailed off as he stared into the inky-black gloom beyond the threshold.

Now, there’s dark and then there’s fucking dark. This was the latter. It was the kind of malevolent darkness that had once forced primitive man to huddle around campfires for sanctuary, even as hidden, hungry eyes watched from beyond the dying firelight.

Just staring into it felt as if someone had run a cold finger down my spine. I spared a brief glance at Gary, his face seemingly drained of blood. “Say, you wouldn’t happen to have a flashlight, would you?”

Gary took out his phone and switched on the light function. The waxed metal of nearby cars glinted beneath the hazy cone of light as it cut into the gloom. “Fitz,” he said with a touch of worry.

I slowly drew out my sword. “Yeah?”

“You sure about this?”

“On a scale of one-to-ten?” I asked.

“Sure.”

“I’m at about a four.”

“Is that good or bad?”

“I’ll let you know when I figure that out,” I answered with a daring grin. Then I stepped inside and the oily darkness seemed to slither over me. Gary reluctantly trailed after me, his light sweeping side-to-side, revealing drab gray walls and pillars of concrete. I could almost hear the big man quivering behind me with each step.

“Press the key button so we can find the car,” Gary whispered anxiously in my ear, his wide eyes darting around at the many shadows cast by each sweep of his light.

“Sorry. No can do, amigo.” I held up the keys so they were dangling from my fingers, showing him the plain, unadorned steel instead of the electronic plastic keys of today’s modern vehicles. “We’ve got to do this the hard way.”

Gary muttered a curse beneath his breath.

My eyes narrowed as I tried to pick out Cole’s car amongst the shadows. Based on the keys in my hand, stamped with the imprint of a galloping horse, I was looking for an old Mustang. It was most likely a—

Shrccch.

I immediately went still, and Gary almost bumped into me. “Hey,” Gary whispered to me, confused. “Why’d you—”

My raised hand cut him off, and I scanned the darkness. Gary shined the light around us. However, there were only cars, lined up like coffins in some dusty tomb, surrounding us. “Must have been my imagination,” I finally relented after a few long seconds of unbroken silence.

But I picked up my pace, regardless.

In little under a minute, after skirting the wall and nearing the garage’s back corner, I found our ride beneath a protective tarp. It was a dark blue 1967 Shelby Mustang, and she was an aching beauty.

My fingers played along the muscle car’s smooth hood, its surface as cold as ice, as I went over to the driver’s side. “You had some good taste, Cole,” I murmured, my quiet words too soft for Gary to hear as he circled around to the other side. But I shook off the creeping melancholy and refocused myself on the task at hand.

The key fit into door slot and a twist unlocked it. My door popped open with a soft click when I pulled at the latch, and Gary opened the passenger side door. Immediately, the car’s bright dome light flickered on.

Shrccch.

My head snapped in the direction of the sound, a light scratching upon concrete, and Gary’s light swung around, too. “What was that noise?” Gary demanded, his quiet voice cracking.

Something caught our attention, then, in one of Gary’s sweeps. The beam of his flashlight settled on something a mere dozen feet away, right before the headlights of the Mustang.

Staying rooted beside the car, because I’d seen more than enough horror flicks to not go chasing after strange sounds in the dark, I narrowed my eyes on the object.

It was a man’s dress shoe, and around it was a dark patch of blood with drag marks leading deeper into the darkness. Then I heard Gary’s terrified voice. “Fitz…”

I glanced up—not towards Gary, but into the darkness. Countless eyes stared back at me at varying heights, all reflecting the pathetically dim light of Gary’s phone. But one pair of beady eyes stood out from the rest as it swung its head in our direction.

Perched upon the roof of a car across from us was large shadow.  A man-sized shadow. The blood trail led straight to it. “What’s this?” the shadow asked with a raspy voice. “Have more tasty morsels wandered into my new den?”

The creature raised a thin arm, pointing. At us. “Bring them to me, children,” the raspy voice commanded. And a chittering chorus erupted as a black tide of rats rolled forward.

Okay, fuck that.

Fuck that so much.

My sword slammed into its sheath. I shrugged off the backpack and threw it into the back of the car. Then I hopped into the driver’s seat and slammed my door shut. Gary heaved his bulk into the passenger seat as just I slid the key into the ignition.

I gave it a sharp twist.

A sputtering cough came from the Mustang. “Come on, come on, come on!” I muttered. “Just purr for me, baby. I know you can do it.” I gave the key another twist and got another weak sputter. Fuck!

“They’re almost here!” Gary screamed.

Outside, I could see the frenzied rat swarm almost ready to wash over us. One of my hands clenched the steering wheel in a death grip as I squeezed my eyes shut. Start, damn it. Start! Then I turned the key hard once more—

—and I heard the roar of an engine. “Fuck yeah!”

The car’s headlights flared to life and flooded the area before us with glorious light. Bathed in repulsing brilliance, the seething mass of rats rolled back as they furiously chattered.

Uttering an annoyed ‘Tsk,’ the shadowy humanoid atop the car unhurriedly crept on all-fours down the hood and onto the ground. Rats parted for the creature’s path, as if they were loyal subjects before a king, and it stalked into the light, dragging the hairless tail of a massive rodent behind it.

Dirty layers of clothing—the rags of the homeless—hung loosely from the monster’s scrawny frame, half hiding the patchy brown fur of a rodent riddled with mange. Even worse, open sores dotted the creature’s disease-ridden hide, oozing rot and pus that made me want to gag from just seeing it.

Scenting the air, the monster’s long snout twitched and its lips peeled back, as if it were smiling, to reveal a massive plaque-stained incisor. Slowly, the ratman rose onto its hind legs to stand upright like a man. “There’s no—”

A hacking, phlegm-filled cough racked the creature’s entire body. But it quickly passed, reducing the unhealthy creature to a wheezing wreck. “There’s no escape,” the ratman breathed out, his unsettling rasp even more raw now.

“They’ve got us trapped,” Gary said, hyperventilating as his head whipped left and then right, seeing only the blackened mass of rats surrounding us, hovering at the edge of the light. “There’s nowhere for us to go!”

“Well, there is one way,” I said before clicking in my seatbelt. The engine roared as I fed it a little gas, and the car’s frame shook at the sheer power contained within. Hearing that, the ratman only wheezed out a breathy chuckle.

My hand fell to the leather-wrapped gear lever and my other hand tightened around the top of the steering wheel. “Gary.” My gaze never wavered from the rat horde and the evil parody of Master Splinter leading them. “You should really buckle up. Safety first and all.”

I heard the click of his seatbelt. “Also, about that question of yours earlier. I think I’ve changed my mind. On a scale of one-to-ten, and given our current situation, I’m leaning to more of a two now.”

“That’s bad isn’t it?” Gary asked, panic and regret thick in his cracking voice as he watched the ratman take a confident step forward, its rat swarm surging behind it as if bolstered by their leader’s presence.

Unlike Gary, though, I was calm despite my racing heart. Focused. A devilish grin tugged at the corner of my lips, and the Mustang rumbled once more as I continued to feed it even more gas. “We’re about to find out.”

I floored it.