Novels2Search

Arc 1.3

The next few hours were spent in a blur of trying to manage bodily needs, and figure out what I needed to do to not die out there. I was constantly reminded of the figure of the Centaur, drawn back and ready to strike, yet that was a fear that was overshadowed by the image of my family being at the receiving end of such a creature, not myself. Checking my phone lead me to find it was shattered entirely from falling from my wheelchair, and it meant I couldn’t call home to warn anyone, and I worried for my mother, though not so much my brother. My brother could survive on his own. I knew that much.

Noah was resourceful, he was smart, he was brave when he needed to be, and most of all he was a survivor. I thought back to when my dad died, and how he pieced us back together as my mother slowly lost her mind. Despite being the older of the two I had been in no shape to take care of them, between surgeries and doctor visits and grieving and trauma, Noah had cooked, cleaned, done the laundry, and made sure I always had a ride to my visits through his friends, his friends parents, our family, or by taking the bus with me.

To say he was our little hero was an understatement.

Despite that, I knew he couldn’t survive this trying to take care of our mom as well. Our mother was dead weight that he couldn’t carry around, even if he got one of my old junk wheel chairs to push her. Centaurs and who knew what else would be on them quicker than he could possibly run. It left me with few options, but I also knew I couldn’t rush, and I had to be prepared in a way that I wasn’t now.

The back room of the club was fortunate in that it had a few things. Many changing rooms lay across the far wall, with either side having an entrance to a bathroom-shower area that I made good use of, knowing it would be my last chance for a good one, washing the dirt and smoke from my hair and sweat and blood from my body. The blood surprised me. I hadn’t felt any scrapes, but I supposed I hadn’t felt much of any pain, even when running through flames.

The unfortunate side effect of that was that my hair certainly felt it. After the shower it was unmanageable, the burned portions causing knots and tangles that were impossible to get out with my fingers, and after surveying the room and make up stations, I found a pair of scissors and a comb.

“Okay, how hard could it be.” I muttered, glaring at my reflection. The tangles of curly brown-black hair were a mess of char and singed places, and it made me almost indecipherable. I loved my hair, I’d always let it grow out, and my dad loved my hair too. I knew I got the curls from him, where I got the pale skin from my mother, and that made me all the more fond of keeping my hair grown out.

“Enough stalling.”

I muttered to myself again, having stared at my own reflection for too long, and got to work with the snipping. It turned out that cutting my own hair was harder than I’d originally considered.

Each snip caused a piece to be lost, each cut of a tangle revealing that I’d cut far too short, or at a weird angle, slowly butchering what had once been my only redeeming feature. After too long of trying to get it even, I was left with a short mop of hair, well above my shoulders. It was still a mess, but less of a mess than before, yet I couldn’t help but feel the sting of tears while staring at my reflection.

“It’s okay, I doubt the gigantic Dragon’s or Wizard’s or other Witches or Vampire’s are gonna laugh at you. Short hair’s in with the Necromancers and spider people. Frick, I hope there’s no spider people.” I was talking to myself to keep calm, needing to fill the silence with anything. I got back dressed after that, raided the mini fridge, found some frozen pizza’s, microwaved them, ate too much and too many crackers, drank my belly bloated with water, and then raided the gift section back in the front of the club.

Who needed gifts from a strip club was beyond me, but I’d take it.

There were fortunately a lot of things that could be useful, ignoring the lewd fish plastered across them. Gigantic water bottles and back packs bags made of cheap nylon were two that I appreciated the most. I filled several water bottles, assuming that clean water would be a luxury during the end of the world, and stuffed them in the bag. Fluorescent bracelets by the handfuls, along with glow sticks, candy bars and snack packs from the bar, a multitool pocket knife with the clubs logo, and other odds and ends were stuffed into the bag, until I felt like I had a fair stash of trinkets that were either going to be incredibly useful, or completely useless.

I couldn’t decide.

The back room was pilfered as well, and I found a few extra things. Clothes that I would be hesitant on wearing, a first aid kit, a set of keys to hopefully the building, with a key fob to a car that I wasn’t willing to risk trying to drive now, even if I could find it, a nice looking watch so I could keep track of the time, and a gun. Seeing it brought me to a pause.

It was sleek black metal with a silver top half, that it was handgun was all I knew about it, and I was surprised at how small it was, and how little it weighed. It was larger than my hand, sure, but it was certainly smaller than I’d seen on television. Part of me wanted to leave it, just out of fear of actually needing to use the weapon, and another part of me knew I had to defend myself, the rational part. The rational part took its victory.

I awkwardly tried stuffing the gun into my waist band, but it didn’t feel secure, so I grabbed one of the spare hoodies, yellow and too perfumed for my liking, left by a worker, and threw it on. I stuffed the gun into the hoodies pocket, picked up both of my bags, and awkwardly pulled one on, and opted to carry the other in my hand. I was overloaded with items but neither felt heavy, and certainly didn’t slow me down.

“This is it, I’ve got this. Unless I wanna get drunk, I think I’m good, and I don’t wanna try to make any of those Molotov thingies I see people use in movies. I’d probably burn myself. Or worse.” There was nothing keeping me here anymore, but a pep talk didn’t hurt. The safety of the building had been assured to me by Peyton, sure, but it wasn’t something that I wanted to rely on, and my family took precedent. If the military came through for evacuation, or even started bombing the city, I doubted the place would hold up well anyways, or I’d miss my escape entirely.

I jogged to the front door, tried the handle, and found relief that I wasn’t locked in, and opened the door to peek out. The blue hue the city had been cast in was gone, and it was now raining rather heavily, but even that couldn’t wash the smell of smoke away. If I’d only slept six hours, and spent two mucking around inside, then it was eight hours into the invasion at most, and I’d hoped it’d been centralized for that entire time. If it had spread to my neighborhood already, then I’d be too late.

I stepped out and shut the door behind me, making sure it was locked despite the privacy. The stairs were taken two at a time, and when I glanced back at the top, the entire staircase was missing. It’d been covered by the concrete once more, and the illusion wasn’t going to be broken by anyone who didn’t know it was there already. I tested a foot, watched as it disappeared under the concrete, and quickly pulled out a glow stick. I left it at the top of the stairs so I could find the place again, if I ever needed to do so.

Optimistically, I wouldn’t need to. The blanket of rain was something of a blessing I was finding, as I moved away from the alleyway and out to the streets. The destruction was far worse than it had been when we ran through the street.

Cars were flipped entirely over, some completely in half, where one had seemingly been thrown and embedded into the upper portion of a taller building, haphazardly dangling out with every promise to fall. Lower down, the wall was completely decimated, and carved a path through several buildings where something, or someone, had been dragged along the brick and concrete. The ground was caved in at too many places, making it dangerous to step, and fire hydrants all around were still spewing water, adding to the rain to flood the streets and fill the many holes left behind.

There were bodies, too. Not as many as I’d expected, admittedly, but the ones that were there were in various states of destroyed. Smashed or cleaved, ruined and broken. My gaze fell on a body against a wall that was missing its torso, and where it should have been was a red splatter on the brick behind it instead. I gagged at the sight, and doubled over to wretch.

Fortunately, the street other than the corpses seemed to be uninhabited. There was the sound of rumblings in distant parts of the city, but I took that as a sign that this area was safer than the rest, now that it had been effectively cleared out. There had to be stragglers, survivors like me, but looking into windows of buildings overhead, I didn’t see much. It was a ghost city, and the ghosts had only just left their bodies.

I gulped, and quickly started moving down the sidewalk. If anything would be out there, I’d at least have lots of cover, and while obstacles presented themselves, like a downed section of wall or chunks of twisted metal from a nearby car, I didn’t find too much trouble navigating the section. Not that I’d ever been through this part of the city like this on a normal day, but it wasn’t too hard to guess where I was.

That vague awareness of where I was would hopefully leave me home. I’d never been down the sidewalks, but I’d seen this area on buses or in car rides through the city with my mom or dad, so I wasn’t completely lost. If I kept going west, at least at my best approximation of west, I’d start seeing more recognizable things that would lead me home. If home even still stood.

Needing to pick up speed was a weird feeling when I was so used to a casual pace that my wheelchair automatically set for me. Before long of walking, I had crept into a slight jog, and then into a run, finding my lungs were not exploding with effort, and that my legs were more than capable of the effort. Each step was almost exhilarating, if I ignored the dead city, and the explosions that I heard off in the distance. Ahead of me was a downed truck, flipped onto its side, and I ran right at it.

One hand hoisted me up and over, and I slide across the door and closed window, and over to the other side of my obstacle, before breaking back into a run without ever halting momentum. I was strong, and that was incredibly strange. Something like that, even when I could walk, would’ve left me on my ass, but I was different now, and those changes had to be explored. I built up more momentum as I ran.

Further down the street was a downed road side, at the corner of an inter section, and without worry of traffic I sped up to what felt like a rough approximation of my max speed. The world moved past me in a blur, and I wondered just how fast I was moving, and the approach to the down signed was a short one. As I approached it, I lept.

The movement put me further into the air than I expected, I was at least four feet off of the ground, and my forward momentum was carried through, and I was moving. I’d expected to clear the entire thing, and part of the street, yet miscalculations were made. As I was to sail over the downed sign, my foot clipped it, and that arrested my momentum.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

I went face down and slid in a puddle, tumbling over the pole of the sign.

“Owwww.” I muttered in defeat, one of my bags having left my grip to tumble a good distance away. Defeated, I lay in the puddle, embarrassed at myself and the failure, and before long I was able to file away the shame, and check myself for scrapes or cuts.

Nothing. Where my hands had hit the pavement, they were fine. Even the pain of tumbling and landing at such a weird angle had left as quickly as it had appeared.

“Okay so I’m faster, and I don’t get hurt as easily I guess. Stronger too, maybe, those bags weren’t quite heavy though.” I spoke to myself, as I climbed out of the puddle. An idea had struck me while doing so.

The downed sign that I had tripped over. Its logo at the top was one for a gas station that sat in ruins to my left now, while the metal pole was easily fifteen feet tall, if not more, and it had to be made of all metal. I walked over while dusting off my hands, and put both of them beneath the pole.

I hefted.

It was hard at first, my body straining with the awkward angle, and that all of the weight was on one side, but fortunately the entirety of the sign was still anchored partly into the ground at its body. My body flexed, and I felt that warmth inside of my chest spread into my arms, and before long the strain of metal filled the air.

Checking to my right, the end of the sign had been slightly lifted off of the ground and my theory was clearly correct. I was stronger. I didn’t have a good gauge for how heavy the sign was, and I gently set it back down, before feeling the warmth spread away from my arms and back to that unknown space in my chest. It was less of a warmth now.

It wasn’t like before, when we ran away from the city and its doom, but I’d lost a little bit of that warmth in picking up the sign. It was leading me to an obvious conclusion, but one my monkey brain balked at the reality of. Magic. Peyton had dropped that line prior, mentioning magic, and mana. I thought back to her words.

Your world has been bereft of mana.

That was how she explained it. She explained it was how my legs worked, among other things, she’d mentioned a mana generator in the club, and now magical creatures were running amok in my city. I ran faster, I was durable, my disability healed, and I could lift up a sign larger than me several times over. It was all thanks to magic.

I wanted to explore that more, but I was on a tight schedule, and had no idea when another monster would make itself known. Fetching my bag, I started running again, and splashing through puddles as I made my way west. It was fortunate that highway two-ninety went straight through the city, meaning most roads did as well. I could run parallel with it, and as long as I could keep myself roughly oriented with it, I could find home.

Unfortunately Chicago was a rather large city, meaning that I had further to run than I’d like, and I was also fortunate in that fact, and was counting it more as a blessing. Subjugating the entirety of it would probably take them some time, and they were likely fanning out. I had no idea how many people were in the invasion, but it seemed that the origin point was further down in the city, closer to Sherman Park than it had been to us. I assumed we only got the dredges, the outer most layer of the invasion, and that didn’t make me feel any better.

It also meant they were spreading out in a rough circle. With the lake to the east, that mean they could only spread west, and they had eight hours of progress on me. If the military were going to intervene, it meant that they would be coming from the west or south, and would take most of the attention. If I were to guess, that’s where the big forces would be. Centaur’s that could heft cars may be able to do the same to tanks, and Dragon’s would take down tanks.

Admittedly, that was optimistic, and only slightly made sense. I didn’t fully know what they wanted with our world, much less how they were likely to organize defenses, and if they would even be scared of a human army. In the most gun heavy part of the world, they’d manage to do this much damage to our city, and do it so quickly. Throw in magic, and I doubted we could fight back.

“Gigi! This area is cleared out, Lord Aifleial! The Human’s have gone into hiding, or have escaped!” Around a corner, a voice shrieked. It was loud, and with a giggled cadence, and I hit the brakes hard. My feet skidding in the puddles, and my shoes took the brunt of the stop, as I managed to not fumble past the building corner and reveal myself. Instantly I threw my back to it, and peeked around.

Six creatures, surrounding a even shorter one. The majority of the creatures were weird little things, somewhere between ape’s and monkey’s, but without hair and all were a very vibrant yellow. They were muscular, sure, but they were muscular in a goofy way. In the middle of them were Human’s. Fourteen, three of which were children, all tied up in a tight circle. The kids were crying, the men were beat unconscious, and the women were putting on a brave face.

The ring leader caught my attention most. He was very human, but was the size of a child. Short, without muscle, with a face that was more hair than it was flesh. His eyebrow’s were bushy from the one side of his face I could see, his beard was thick and scraggly, and his hair was swept back and receding at the edges. He stood shirtless, proud, covered in tattoo’s, and I noted two heavy wounds on his back that sat between the shoulder blades, not bleeding but fleshy and throbbing.

“Good, good. We can’t let them figure out their magic. Did the men show any sign of possessing abnormal abilities?” The ring leader asked, and despite his size his voice was large and booming, shaking the windows of the building I hid behind.

“Yes sir! Two did, this one and this one. His muscles swelled up, and it took all of us to take him down sir.” One of the ape creatures walked forward, and kicked the most elderly seeming of their captive’s. Then he walked over and kicked a young girl, five years old, with too much blood across her face to make out much about her. She sobbed loudly as she was kicked, and the creature made a face that only made her cry louder.

“What could she do?” The ring leader spoke.

“Water manipulation, sir. She made the rain turn into needles that stabbed at us. Flesh wounds, but a few blinded Lefray, sir!” The creature responded. Lefray was sitting at the back of the little group, and very much didn’t look blind to me, but he certain had blood on his face.

“I see. Kill the man, take the girl, burn the rest.” The ring leader gave a demand, and the creatures moved as a unit. The blinded one moved towards the little girl.

My heart jumped to my throat, and I felt that warmth in my chest suddenly expand with the rush of adrenaline. They were about to kill children, and abduct one. That thought made me start shivering hard, and it had nothing to do with the cold of the rain. I had to act.

Into the pocket of the hoodie, I drew the handgun. After seeing what I’d seen, at the outset of the invasion, I doubted the bullets would do much. Without the knowledge of how many I had loaded as well, I couldn’t be sure I could even kill all of them if somehow every shot was with perfect aim, and I certainly didn’t have perfect aim.

My dad was a baseball father, not a hunting for sport kind. I’d never held a gun before today, much less learned how to use one.

Despite that, I was forming a plan that I was almost positive would get me killed. As the creatures turned their attention from their leader to the group of people they’d gathered, the man had his back to me. My previous lifting of the sign gave me something of a indication of what to go off of, but I was flying blind.

The warmth in my chest hit an all time high, and I focused on my legs. Nothing happened for long, painful moments, until I heard one of the women shriek and start screaming for help, and then it moved. Down, through my body, and into my legs, the warmth settled and caused my muscles to all seem to tense.

I moved the second I felt it settle.

I was fast, and I was loud, but the element of surprise was on my side. I managed to reach the leader of the group in almost no time, and as he started to react, my hand caught the back of his neck, and my other put the gun to the side of his head. He stopped moving, and I shouted.

“Don’t move!”

The man listened, as did his creatures. They all stopped their approach on the humans, the screaming woman looking towards me with hope in her eyes as one had its claws inches from its throat. They seemed frozen, and as confused as I had felt all day, while their leader seemed to stay a relative calm despite being captured.

“You lot step away from them or I’m gonna paint the ground with his brains!” I yelled, and cringed inside. It wasn’t nearly as cool coming out of my shaky throat as it was in my head.

Yet they listened.

Each of the creatures scurried back, seeming to gather in a huddle as they sized me up. They stared at the gun more than me, and I realized they didn’t know what it was. I could use that to my advantage too, I figured.

“Okay girl, you have me. Now what?” The leader chuckled in my grip, and I roughly pushed the gun against his temple, which made him scowl. “Child, unless that weapon is filled with magic, it’s not going to do much to me.”

I needed to lie. I didn’t know if he was telling the truth, and he seemed to be gaining the upper hand almost immediately, while his minion’s all abruptly grinning toothy grins as they gave hyena like hoots of laughter.

“Silver bullets.” I blurted out, and the ape-creatures stopped laughing. They looked to their leader now, and from where I stood I saw him pause. It was fiction, from text books and fairytale, but I hoped after meeting Vampire’s and whatever the fuck these things were, that it’d also hold some truth.

“Silver. You’re a hunter then? We figured there weren’t many more of your kind left on Terra. What family do you hail from, young archer?” The leader spoke, and I jabbed him with the gun again.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” I had to go with it, even though I had zero clue of what he was talking about. The silver bullets were already such a huge bluff that I couldn’t offer up another one, for fear of being caught in a lie. “Not an archer either, these are bullets not arrows.”

“The difference?” He grumbled.

“An arrow moves about five times slower and can’t punch through solid steel.” Another lie I gave him, a smaller one he couldn’t fact check. I had little doubt that my tiny gun could actually do that much damage, but it was for the sake of compound interest. If he was worried at all about silver arrows, then scaling up a bullet may put actual fear in him.

“I see.” He spoke, and chuckled again. The tone was different this time, and his creatures didn’t laugh now. “You’ve caught me with my pants down then, little hunter. If I were in my true form, you would not be managing this.”

His words carried power. I noticed that each time he spoke, the air vibrated, and seemed to fill with the same sensation of the blue glow of the city prior. My brain made the connection immediately. He was so powerful that even his worlds had magic in them?

“Well Aifleial, here’s the plan. You’re going to order Lefray there to untie those people, then tie up his friends. Then you’re going to go lay down in the mud over there, away from us. My family will be here soon, and my dad is one hell of a hunter.” I lied again.

He nodded, though scrunched up his face when I called him his name.

For the most part, the creatures did what they were told. The human’s were untied, but they didn’t dare move, and the creatures were grumpily herded and wrapped in the rope. I doubted it would do much after seeing a Centaur throw a car, but I hoped it’d slow them down. Lefray, the one that had been blinded, seemed to be confused as to what to do once he was done.

I ignored him. Better to let it stand there awkwardly than to try to order it away. Too many moving pieces, I needed these people to have an escape route.

“Kneel.” I told Aifleial, and he did so. Once on his knee’s, I was able to push him down into the mud, and step back. The whole time I kept my gun trained on the back of his head. When I glanced up, the group of human’s were standing, and two were supporting the elderly man whose skin seemed to sag on his form, on closer inspection.

“Thank you.” The woman spoke, and I nodded.

“You should- go North. Their army is spreading out across the city, and I’m hoping they’ll be more west and south than north, preparing for the military. If you can get out of the city, go as far north as you can, try to get past Green Bay if you can find a car, and stay near the water, boats might be safer now.” I was making too many guesses, putting these peoples lives in jeopardy. I didn’t have any better options, and having them tag along would slow me down, especially once we tried to leave, and I felt they would flounder without proper hope.

“O-Of course, thank you really.” The woman hesitated. The little girl with them was staring at me, blood on her face still, as she seemed troubled, like she wanted to say something. Instead she nodded, and the group began moving, giving Lefray and his group a wide berth. I kept the gun trained on Aifleial until they were gone, and then for a bit longer after that.

“I’m going to walk backwards now. Remember, these bullets travel fast. Put a little magic in them, they travel faster.” I bluffed again. Aifleial stayed silent, as I walked backwards towards the street, my hand now shaking as the cold of the rain managed to completely numb it, but I didn’t dare take my gun off of him.

Now was the make or break it moment. As I made it to the buildings edge, I saw the man shift, and I turned and ran, and put everything I had into running, filling my legs with warmth and my body with a fresh dose of adrenaline.

Behind me I could hear Aifleial shout. The chase was on.