Chicago, USA, 2021
“Don’t forget, I need them green apples for the pie, honey.”
“I’ll just get the pies already made, Grammy.”
“That frozen stuff? Child, you know there’s nothing like home-baked love. Especially, times like this.”
“You don’t have to make everything yourself, Grammy. The store’s got ready made stuff. Why can’t we just get those? All we have to do is heat them up and boom! Thanksgiving dinner without all that work!”
“The little ones need a loving, home-cooked meal.”
Her grammy’s warm smile hid the iron in the soul.
She regarded the dozen or so noisy children in her grammy’s small apartment living room and tried to remember why they were there in the first place to stamp down on the annoyance in her heart.
It wasn’t their fault that keeping them fed was slowly draining the strength from her grammy.
Still, it was a close thing on whether their noise bothered her more than the ever-present rumble of the diesel generator out on the balcony. The sliding door was closed to keep the heat in and winter out, but she could still hear it puttering away, shaking the glass and floor.
Although pushing 80, her grammy had been a vibrant, boisterous woman that loved to dance.
The nearly two years since the spires popped up had turned her grammy into a thin, bent old woman that needed the help of a walker to putter in her kitchen in the constant struggle to feed, not just the kids she had taken in, but the others in the rest of the apartment building.
Sure, she tried to help when she could, but that was in the brief snatches of time she had between killing monsters and warning off the gangs and random crews that seemed to keep popping up like those mutant rats in the basement apartments.
Too many fools kept trying her.
She took a moment to breathe.
It was a trying existence. Living with the constant aches of her body. Muscles, joints, even bones seemed to be always nagging her in that incessant way.
She couldn’t remember what it was like to feel normal.
Not since the first time she had stepped into a spire.
“Alright, Grammy, but maybe we get some of those moochers to help out?”
“You know there’s only one queen in my kitchen.”
“Queen’s got servants,” she shrugged.
She grabbed her grammy’s fold-up shopping cart in one hand and the splitting axe in the other before stepping out into the dark hallway.
She sighed.
Couldn’t anyone do what they were supposed to?
Was it so hard to make sure the lanterns stayed lit?
Nothing jumped out of the shadows as she took her lighter to the candle lantern near her grammy’s door.
Her irritation only grew when she checked the kerosene one and found it empty.
She wasted time moving across her floor on the way to the stairs lighting lanterns and banging on doors yelling at people to keep their lanterns lit.
“Yo, girl, why you—” a young man peeked out from behind his door.
“Lanterns. Lit. Monsters.”
She continued down several flights of stairs.
Noting the lack of lantern awareness on each floor with a shake of her head.
And they complain when there’s an attack.
The cold air greeted her on the street.
Well, that wasn’t true anymore.
It was supposed to be cold, sometimes near-freezing at night.
She knew this from the thick coats and caps the rare person she saw outdoors wore. From each visible exhale. From the morning frost.
Except, here she stood in jeans and a long-sleeved shirt.
The slight metallic sheen to her skin protected her from the elements just as well as it protected her from violence.
She crossed a dark alley.
A gremlin leapt on her.
It bit down on her raised arm.
She grabbed its throat and crushed it before flinging the dying monster out into the deserted street.
She held her torn sleeve up to the moonlight and found tiny indentations in her skin.
No penetration.
The attack itself had been surprising only in that such attacks had been becoming rarer as time went on and she grew stronger.
Gremlins, big and small, didn’t usually lurk alone, especially out on the streets.
Nothing troubled her as she continued on her journey.
Dark, silent blocks with the only sounds to accompany her were her boot steps and breaths.
A long walk in the winter.
She used to love strolling through Millennium Park during the rare day when she had the time.
It had been a rare treat since she had to work multiple jobs, while studying for school just for the desperate chance that she’d find a way out and not end up like her mama, who had ended up dying from overwork at forty-five.
She crossed a street and was approached by a group of men, ten visible and probably more hiding in the alleys or derelict vehicles.
“Yo, lemme hol—”
“Fuck. Off,” she stared eye to eye with the thick-necked bruiser.
She recognized the face ink and the shiny grill, but didn’t remember the name.
The last time she had faced off with this particular gang had been a month or two ago.
Back then she had been looking up into the man’s eyes.
“Listen, I ain’t gonna be extendin’ the olive branch forever, so to speak.”
“I wasn’t thinking that we had a problem?”
“We don’t… least not at the moment. Things change,” he shrugged.
With that he gestured and the group parted before her like the sea did for Moses.
“Jus’ think about it. We can be good for each other!” he called after her.
Just another gang looking for what scraps of power and control they could grab.
North, west, east, south-siders. Numbers. Streets. Animals.
They melded together and split apart like a school of fish. Each little one trying to stay alive the longest all while the sharks snapped in from out of the depths.
As she kept walking she entered the nicer area, well, what was once the nicer area. The monsters didn’t care if you had gentrification money. Rich or poor, it didn’t matter. Meat tasted the same.
Ironically, these blocks were largely abandoned.
The rich people that had managed to survive the early days fled to the government shelters and safe-ish zones. And there they remained. Still waiting for the government to come swoop in and fix things like it always did for their kind.
No one was coming.
She knew that.
It was how she and those like her had lived all their lives going all the way back to the beginning when their ancestors were placed in chains.
Millennium Park was one such place protected by a mixture of military and police, at least the ones that kept to the veneer. Many of them decided to remove the masks. These ones grabbed for their own power and control. Ruling small tracts of territory like the gangs they had always been.
She encountered more people lurking in the darkness.
The sounds of a fight filtered in from an alley.
Growls meant monsters.
She was thankful for that.
If it was a rape she’d have to do something about it.
“Hey, girl, lemme—”
“Shut up! It’s her!”
Young men, boys really, ducked away.
She turned the corner and saw something that hadn’t been there on her last shopping trip.
“They put it up last week.”
A familiar face stepped out of an alley.
Did everyone lurk in alleys now?
What about the monsters?
She supposed people were getting strong enough with those classes that they could handle the bigger gremlins.
“Caleb,” she gave him a head nod, “who put it up?” she gestured at the chain-link fence topped with barbed wire blocking the street.
“Sup, Wonder Woman. Who do you think? Cops, army, national guard. Take your pick, they be lookin’ alike these days.”
She cursed.
She’d have to find a way around wasting valuable time.
Her grammy’s apartment should’ve been safe in her name, but she didn’t like trusting the spires’ rules.
From her experience rules were only there for the ones that had made them in the first place.
They could be changed in an instant or ignored outright.
“You going on a food run?” Caleb regarded the folded-up cart in her hand. “You’re gonna have to go somewhere else. They’ve fenced it off. Created a little pocket around it running all the way to the freeway. Got a whole bunch of pasty shooters manning the place. They emptying it out on the daily. Rest of us can’t even get close without catching a bullet.”
“They’re killing—”
“Not so far. Warning shots. But, you know that ain’t gonna last long. Say… there’s a party back at—”
“Not. Interested.”
“I ain’t fitting to get at you. Thinking we can get a collab going. People need that store. Food’s gonna run out. Already did for them’s that ain’t forward thinking enough to grab more than they need. That shiny skin of yours bulletproof? You’d be helping a lot—”
“I don’t join gangs.”
“Not saying you got to put in the shit with us… just thinking that you can’t pull that Geneva Convention shit forever, you feel me? Word is some of the OG’s are starting to think they’re getting strong enough, you know, leveling. Some might be putting together lick squads just to test you out. Me and my boys ain’t cause we don’t roll that way. And we’d never mess with your grandma and what she’s doing for all them kids,” Caleb crossed himself, “God bless her. Reminds of my own. Rest her soul.”
“You wouldn’t happen to have names?”
“I might, but I ain’t sharing. Gotta look out for my own, you feel? Nothing personal, but—”
“Caleb, the moment I take a side is the moment the rest won’t have a reason to hold back and I ain’t no fool. You spread the word— words,” she bared her teeth. “Fuck around and find out! That’s for them fools thinking they’re hard enough. Ain’t no one harder than me, you feel?”
“Ain’t never thought otherwise,” Caleb raised his hands and backed a step away from the looming young woman.
“Two… you might want to get your people heading to the store. Bring bags,” she strode to the fence, placed her axe and cart on the ground and ripped the fence down.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Greedy, racist fuckers would see to it that her grammy and the kids would starve.
They had earned what she was about to give them.
The entire shopping center with the grocery store was surrounded by another chain-link fence.
A handful of military trucks armed with roof guns and regular trucks armed with guns in the back sat in the parking lot. There was a truck at each entrance where a movable barricade sat closed.
She strode right to the closest one.
Men dressed in combat gear barked orders as they trained their lights and guns on her.
“Stop right there or we’ll shoot!” one barked the loudest. “This is property of the United States Government under the authority of the Mayor of Chicago. As a citizen of said entity you are obligated to obey. Turn around and clear the area or we will forcibly remove you.”
“By what right do you take away our one source of food?”
“You deaf, you dumb nigger. I just said—”
“I heard. That sounds like a rule. I asked what right you had? There’s a difference. Not that you’d ever have to think about that.”
“Move along. We don’t have to pretend anymore.”
“Like you ever did. I’m asking you, again, what right do you have to leave us to starve?”
“We aren’t doing anything of the sort. You’re free to go get food… somewhere else.”
“It. Is. Thanksgiving.”
“I know and we had a great Thanksgiving lunch. Turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, pie, the works. And my family, back home, is having a great Thanksgiving dinner with all the food we’ve sent back. That’s our right,” the man raised his rifle.
She looked down at the red dot on her chest.
Several red dots.
“I’m here to get food for my grandmother and the children,” she said flatly.
“You stupid, girl. I said git or get shot. I’m already being nice. You understand me? We have orders to blow away anyone that even remotely looks like a threat and the only reason you’re still standing there giving me lip is cause it’s Thanksgiving and I don’t want blood on my hands.”
“Or you just don’t want to attract monsters.”
“You’ve got no rights here. Go home. Hug your mammy and your four kids with four different guys,” he sneered.
“Last chance,” she said flatly.
Blood on her hands.
Human blood.
She’d shed her fair share since the apocalypse started.
Law and order had been a thin strand of thread easily snipped.
The strong killed, raped and did whatever else they wanted to the weak.
As far as she was concerned the monsters weren’t new.
They had always been around her.
As they were now.
She had always hated the gangs.
In their reds, whites and blues.
Making things harder than they had to be.
She had always been powerless.
Kept her head down and pray that they didn’t notice you and decide to ruin your life.
Like swimming through a sea of sharks.
Now, she was the biggest shark.
“Hey, hold up, sarge,” another man leered down from the truck’s roof-mounted gun, “she’s— what do their people call em? There’s that song…”
“Built like a brickhouse or something like that,” another said.
“Don’t know about that, but she’s stacked,” yet another smirked.
The sergeant regarded her with a roving eye. “Listen, we don’t do that sort of thing. We’re better than them. However, if you want to earn some food then you can work something out with my boys,” he raised a brow.
She let the fold-up cart fall to the ground.
She took one stride.
Superhuman muscles propelled her across the distance before the men could react.
She crushed the sergeant’s face with her free hand hurling him at the gunner on the truck.
The man’s dead body crushed the gunner.
Shock wore off for some of the men.
Their training kicked in.
Guns barked.
Bullets tore through her clothing and— bounced off her flesh.
The sound reminded her of rain drops hitting the roof of her mama’s beater as they drove to school.
It hurt in the same way that someone flicking her with a finger hurt.
Which was to say, not very much.
She raised the splitting axe and brought it down on the closest man.
The young man’s helmet did nothing to prevent his head from being split, turned into pulp.
She reached out with a wet, stained hand and used the body as a shield.
Monsters came in many forms.
These men learned that fact in the moments before they died.
Every move she made left one less man barring her path to food for her grammy and the children.
A ball of fire exploded against her face.
Thankfully, her eyes had closed reflexively.
Still, she choked and coughed smoke. Some of it had gotten into her mouth and lungs.
It was a bad habit, she knew, to let her mouth open in a fight.
More men and a few women began to emerge from the grocery store.
Spells bombarded her.
Okay—
Those hurt more than the bullets.
She ran behind the truck to catch her breath while patting out the flames on her tattered shirt.
They moved to surround her.
She didn’t give them time.
She pushed the truck into their midst, quicker than they could reasonably expected to anticipate from the sounds of impacts and shouts.
She kept pushing.
The truck jolted as if rolling over a speed bump.
Bodies appeared.
They were still moving.
She stomped until they stopped.
Up the truck she went.
Into a flying leap.
Another fireball exploded.
This time against her outstretched palm.
She landed on the mage.
The man’s cry was silenced by the loud cracking sound of his ribs going into his lungs and heart.
At least that’s what it looked like from the deep red liquid bubbling out of his mouth.
She put him out of his misery with a punch.
She had always hated them, but she didn’t want to be cruel.
Cold comfort.
What would grammy say if she knew what her precious honey had done?
“Weapon Break!” a high-pitched voice.
Her axe’s handle shattered at the hit.
She swung the broken half and silenced the voice.
“Piercing Stab!”
Pain, actual pain.
Wetness trickled down her back.
She spun with a backhand and hit air.
“Something’s up with her skin! Like barkskin or ironskin!”
“Those aren’t spells!”
“That we know of! Look at her! She’s shiny!”
“But, I’m not sensing any mana in her!”
“Has to be a Skill!”
“Cover me! I’ll try again!”
Stupid to talk.
Spells and bullets peppered her.
She rushed forward with a punch that left bone and brains on her fist.
“Pier—”
Stupid.
She knew rogue-types.
They always liked going for the back. She’d have seen it coming the second time even if the idiot hadn’t broadcast his intent.
She held the young man tightly in a bear hug with arms as strong and hard as steel.
He stared up at her with wide eyes.
So much fear.
Young.
Her age.
Had the spires not appeared would they be sharing the same college classes?
She hesitated.
His gaze hardened.
“Gutting Slice!”
Somehow, he had managed to get his blade across her stomach.
Stinging pain, but less than he had hoped for.
She squeezed.
Crack!
She let the limp body fall to the ground.
The others cursed at her promising violent retribution.
She closed her ears to their words. Her heart to their faces.
Remembered her hatred. Remembered the countless injustices of the past done to her, her family, her people. Remembered how they would happily make the only person she had left starve to death.
Spell and Skills barely got through skin like metal.
Muscle and bone of the same make smashed and crushed.
She knew what she was.
The spires had told her.
A woman transformed.
Made of biological metal.
A woman growing further away from her humanity by the day.
It ended abruptly.
The last fighter in a crumpled heap at her feet.
She stared down at herself.
What was left of her torn and burned shirt hung in tattered threads.
Her sports bra had weathered the violence in better shape.
Blood soaked it as it ran down her body to her legs where most of her jeans remained to preserve some semblance of modesty.
Most of the gore wasn’t hers.
She bled from a handful of shallow stabs and cuts.
The burns from the spells hurt more.
Though not as much as the sickness welling up from her stomach as the full magnitude of her slaughter began to dawn on her.
She had killed, yes, but never on such a scale.
How many dozens lay in broken piles all around her?
“Forget Wonder Woman. Skinny white girl ain’t got nothing on you!”
She blinked as if waking from a nightmare.
Caleb walked toward her holding out her grammy's fold-up cart.
Dozens of other people flowed cautiously into the light of the grocery store’s sign.
Looks of disgust mingled with shock on their faces.
Do you see me for what I am now? I’ve been holding back, she thought.
“Hold up,” Caleb said.
“You ain’t our shotcaller,” a tattooed man smirked.
“We got to get in there, grab our shit and bounce before they bring in reinforcements and shit,” another said.
Multiple gangs and groups had converged once Caleb had spread the word.
“She killed them all. Ain’t no backup coming for awhile. Sides, she gets first pick,” Caleb jerked a thumb toward her.
“I ain’t bout to stand in no freezing ass—”
She silenced the huge man with a look.
“Aight, queen gets to go first,” he backed away.
“You wanna get cleaned up before you grab your grub, girl?” Caleb lowered his voice. “I can get you some healing?”
“No.”
Caleb followed her into the grocery store. “You ain’t got nothing to be ashamed of. They got plenty of stores in their territory. That’s how they set it up back then, ain’t no surprise that they’d do the same now. They brought you down on them like the wrath of God. Ain’t your fault they got greedy like always. We’d be starving over the winter if it wasn’t for what you just done. You find out who people are when things ain’t so nice and comfortable no more.”
He didn’t mean her, but she knew better.
“Course, we still got a problem,” he continued. “They’re gonna be gunning for payback. Blood’s running the streets anyways. Only difference now is that it’s gonna be on for real. Us against them. Blood’s gotta be earned. So… I’ll have my boys run the food to your grammy’s…”
He chirped like an incessant bird on her shoulder while she stomped through the aisles filling the cart up with the items on her blood-stained list.
“Don’t want nothing from you,” she glared down at him. “The only side I’m on is my grammy’s and those kids.”
“Whitey ain’t gonna see it that way. Like I said, blood’s flowing from us to them and now them to us thanks to you. They’re gonna want to get one or a hundred back. Your grammy and those kids gonna get caught in it.”
“You planning on letting word slip out?”
“Nah. Too late for that. Plenty of eyes seen what you done out there. Word like that don’t stay quiet for long. Listen, ain’t no going back for you. You really gonna keep your head down while they roll in here and kill us? The way I see it, you’ve got a responsibility now.”
“I didn’t start a war.”
The words tasted bitter on her tongue.
“I’m not fighting a war.”
“Nah. You have. We all have. Even before them spires bullshit. They’d been fighting us from the beginning. They ain’t never stopped. Just kept making it sound all legitimate with their laws. It’s all out in the open now. Ain’t no use in hiding and pretending any different. Sides, ain’t no one time thing. Food runs out. What’s the point if you ain’t gonna hold on to this place? They’ll be coming to take it back. Remember, we don’t got this place… we die. You gonna do your people like that?”
“Caleb. I’m going to finish. Then I’m going to go home and have Thanksgiving dinner.”
“Sure, ain’t saying you can’t. Just really hoping that when you’re done with fam time, you’ll be right back here. Cause this is yours now. They took it from the Southside Bulls and now you took it from them.”
That’s right.
In her numbness she hadn’t processed the text and voice telling her that the corner shopping center was now hers.
She had a few options.
Give it up and let someone else reclaim it.
Transfer it back to the southsiders or—
“You can have it, Caleb.”
“You fitting to get me and my crew killed,” he laughed.
Or… she could keep it.
“I’m thinking of proposing a palaver with all the gangs. Make you a queen. Thinking after seeing what you can really do they’ll be cool with it. You wouldn’t even have to do more than you already do. Kill monsters. Keep the worst shit in line. Fight the government. Might be good to get under one leader, so we can stop just hanging and actually start doing shit. We’ve fallen behind. They’ve got more people, more weapons, better classes, higher levels. That’s what happens when they’re spotted with a huge lead.”
“Caleb—”
“Nah, girl. Let me say my piece,” he sighed. “We’re bleeding out slowly. Won’t be long before they can just roll up here and start taking people. I’m talking slaves. They ain’t never stopped wanting to keep their boots on our necks and their chains on our wrists. You can stop all that by showing them that they ain’t got shit on you.”
She had no words.
Caleb made sense.
She could see it happening.
“Listen, I ain’t telling you what to do. Ain’t no way I can make you do shit. I’m asking. Begging. Don’t let them step on us like they always did. You’ve got the power now. Ain’t no one had it like you before. Go home, have dinner with your grammy, but come back here before more of them show up. I’m thinking you’ll need a repeat, but let some of them go back home to tell their homies what’s what. You feel me?”
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
“You want a queen? Then spread the word. I’m making the rules from now on. No more fighting for scraps of territory. No more rapes. Shakedowns. All that bullshit. I don’t got no more time for fools. You tell them anyone that comes after me and mine get done like I did those… those guys outside. If you got a problem with that then you can fuck off,” she loomed over him.
“Ain’t no problems on my end,” Caleb took a step back.
She could still hear the sounds of her fists hitting those people.
Like a hammer.