Do you have any ideas how many toilets there are in a city and its surrounding suburbs? Millions. Millions, on millions of stinky portals, for the Crocs to come streaming through. In droves, they appeared from a world unknown to tear us apart and paint the ground with our innards.
You’d think after mutilating hundreds of thousands of people that had been left behind when the transfer zones were deactivated, the Crocs would be sated. That was far from the case. They wandered the streets of the once great city, sometimes in packs like wolves and sometimes alone.
Like Stanthorpe, there were other creatures here preying on anything smaller than them that had a heartbeat, or else, scavenging on things that no longer did. As our small group made slow progress toward the center of the city and the beaches that lay beyond it I saw the knife-feathered emus as well as the ones that spewed fire from their beak. Elemental Wallabies darted about in every tight and shadowed area we walked near, seemingly having replaced rats and mice as the vermin of the city. Snakes ran rampant, probably attracted by the astounding amount of prey. There were so many different kinds of snakes that it made my head spin trying to remember them all. One of them sported an impressive emerald green hood and spat poison. They had no right to be pretty when they were so unbelievably deadly.
The only monsters that actually surprised me were the pigeons. They just looked like regular flying rats from the before times. Small and grey with little orange feet and short beaks. The only difference was the effect of their foul white bombs. No longer just a disgusting blob that always ruined your freshly cleaned car, now the white goop ate through whatever it hit like it was made of hydrochloric acid. You could hear the sizzle every time a flock of the devilish beasts took off into the air, leaving behind a giant pitted hole.
I crouched low on the thin platform of a billboard, my head covered by the broken and bent sign that left me and Gabby in the soothing darkness of shadow. We’d left the others behind in a relatively safe place while we scouted ahead, looking for a safe way through the destruction.
My enhanced eyesight was useful, lighting up places to hide with brilliant sparkles and making it easier to see at a long distance without the need for binoculars. I still would have preferred to have a pair but hey, beggars can't be choosers.
“It looks like the Crocs have set up base over there,” Gabby said, tilting her head toward the north.
I followed her gaze and grunted my agreement. Crocs swarmed like ants before a storm over what looked like a skyscraper made of junk. I could see cars and footbridges and doors and just huge hunks of malformed metal bound together by wire and rope. None of it looked stable but somehow it still stood, a towering mess over the rows upon rows of single-story homes, shops, and schools. This place would have been a nice place to live once upon a time.
I used my finger to trace a path through the streets that would lead away from the Croc's strange fortress but every time I thought I’d found a way, it ended in an unnatural dead end. We couldn’t go climbing over buildings without exposing ourselves even if Nigel could somehow float Stella and Sob behind us. Fighting was not much of an option either, not when there were just so many. We’d all be dead before we even made a dent in the Croc's forces.
I eyed the tall metal spire poking out of the awkward fortress with a frown. It looked like something people would make to try and catch an old radio signal. It was an odd thing for Crocs to make which led me to believe they didn’t.
I traced another route, cursing when my finger was stopped by something that had once been a park. Where there should have been trees and play equipment and maybe even a pond, there was only a cacoon of white, dew-covered web.
My heart thundered in my chest as I eyed the expansiveness of the spun silk. “Looks like Red beat us here,” I said, unable to keep the excitement from my voice. I still had so much junk to sell.
“If it is Red, that is. He can’t be the only spider monster. We do live in Australia after all. Look at all the snakes roaming around. There are bound to be just as many spiders,” Gabby said.
My shoulders slumped. She was right but I’d really needed that small win. It seemed horribly unfair for her to steal it from me.
“Why are we just lounging about looking at shit,” Nigel whined from my shoulder. “We could be halfway to Rottnest Island by now but we’re still wandering around the outskirts. We haven’t even made it over the Swan River yet.”
“Stop your bitching. We’ll get you home but I’d rather not break a bone or puncture a vital organ because you tripped over a curb running from a Croc and scraped your knee.”
“Who’s bitching now?” Nigel muttered, flicking a stray metal nut off the platform and watching it fall to the ground.
“Both of you shut up,” Gabby snapped. “Something is going on.”
I frowned and moved closer to her, looking over at the fortress. The Crocs were running wild now. Blasts of fire from the larger combustion crocs flashed into existence. We were a long way off but the breeze carried the noise of their bellowing and the thunder of the explosions to us.
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No matter how I searched the place though, I couldn’t see whatever had riled them up. All of them were crowding over the other side of the fortress. Different colored sparkles ignited in the air over there, indicating some kind of magic was being performed.
Gabby gasped and grabbed my arm, pointing at the street on our side of the fortress. I stiffened when I saw what she was pointing at.
The solid steel cover over a manhole was moved aside and a group of people climbed out. Two of them wore robes but the other five were wearing leather armor like mine and sporting swords, daggers, or bows. The group of rogues darted into the fortress and climbed the tilting tower with ridiculous speed.
Three minutes. That’s all it took for the group to get in and out of the croc's den with whatever they went in there to steal. Their coordination was impressive. Even more in sync than the scouting teams of Oliver’s Rest. The rogues dove back down through the open manhole followed by one of the two mages. The remaining mage lifted a stick into the air and shot what looked a lot like a red firework into the sky. It fizzed as it climbed high before exploding in an impressive starburst.
The mage disappeared down the manhole, covering his exit with the heavy metal disc. Slowing the roars and the explosions began to disappear until the Crocs returned to their general swarming around the scrap metal fortress. Whatever signal the mage had cast had ended the distraction on the other side.
“Not bad,” Nigel murmured in my ear.
I swatted at the gnome. I hated when he did that.
“They’re like an army,” Gabby said, her voice colored by wonder.
“Don’t let them fool you. We’ve seen too many people turned evil by this new world,” I mumbled.
“We should go to them,” Gabby said. “Maybe they can help us get through the city.”
I folded my arm and glared down at the still manhole. “We need more information before we approach them. They could be worse than the Crocs for all we know.”
“Why are you so jaded all the time? We should be celebrating that these people lived, not just jumping to being suspicious.”
I smiled and began the long climb back to the ground. “I wish I was still as hopeful as you, kid.”
“I’m not a kid anymore, and you know it,” she grumbled.
I chuckled. Gabby and Miranda had made fast friends since we’d begun traveling together and now I was beginning to see why. They were fairly similar aside from their fighting class. Theo was still uneasy about their fast friendship but he was easily distracted by Nora. Something that rubbed me the wrong way. She’d once made it clear she was just playing the man but the longer they spent together the more that seemed to change. It’s not that I was jealous, I had no interest in pursuing anything with Nora, she was awesome and all but not really my type, no, it's just I worried he was using her. I still didn’t trust the man. His motives for siding with us were suspect at best.
I paused at the bottom of the steel ladder, looking off toward the spider-infested park.
“Come on,” Gabby said, jumping down beside me and heading back the way we’d come from. “We have to get all this information back to everyone else. They’re going to be so excited.”
“Don’t you think we should check out the park first? If it is Red, we could waltz right through the place and keep heading for the river.”
“And if it’s not Red, which I’m pretty sure it’s not, then we could be putting ourselves in danger. We need to go back and consult with the others. We can send our tanks into the park if they think it’s a good idea, at least they have a good chance of surviving if it turns out to be a monster den,” Gabby said.
“We’re scouts, we’re supposed to find out what it is before we send the tanks in. We have to at least go and check it out first,” I shot back.
Gabby hesitated. Her head swung back and forth between the park and the place we’d left the rest of our crew. Her brow was furrowed and she bit her lip aggressively, trying desperately to decide what the right path was. Gabby didn’t like to do things without thinking about every possible outcome. It was a good trait, one that no doubt had kept her alive until now, but it could be very frustrating when I was in a hurry.
That was another thing, while Nora, Jacob, and Miranda often looked my way for leadership, Gabby only ever looked at her father. I couldn’t blame her for that, he was her true family, not her found family like the rest of us. But it did make for some awkward situations like we were having right now.
“No,” Gabby finally said, shaking her head emphatically. “We have to go back first. Then we can all decide the best path. The others need to know about the underground people.”
“I’m bored of this already,” Nigel said. “Can you two stop bickering like children and make up your bloody minds.”
“I just did,” Gabby snapped, rising to her full height. “We’re going back.”
“You can go back,” I said turning and marching toward the park. “I’m going to find out what’s really going on.”
“Joe, please. We need the others.”
“No, we don’t. You can go back if you want. They’re not far away, you’ll be just fine. I’ll come back once I’ve spoken to Red.”
“It’s not Red,” she wailed behind me before turning and running away.
I felt a little bad about upsetting her and even worse about letting her make her way back alone, but I had to do this. I didn’t need a tank with me. If I did, I would have brought Stella. This was just a scouting mission. That was all. Nothing else. I didn’t need to go running to Theo just because something was a little unusual. Hell, everything was unusual nowadays. It would be worse if something wasn’t unusual.
She would understand that one day. For now, she was little more than a child.
I focused on the shadows and disappeared into the soothing darkness as I rushed between and over the buildings until the web-strewn park came into view. I paused on a rooftop, hiding behind the large square box of an airconditioner unit. I waited in the shadows, eyeing the single opening into the web that looked a little too much like a tunnel. I scratched my itching forearm as I made my plan.