“Mrs. Wright, what I get for you today?” Clem Anderson of Anderson Hardware asked her as she walked in. She had been shopping here since Clem’s father had opened the place decades ago. Where did the time go?
“Howdy Clem, I need a new shovel and rake, also, do you have any lawn decorations in stock?” She asked.
“Aisle seven for the tools and the garden center at the far end of the store should have some decorations that I think you’ll like. Just let me know if you need any help,” Clem said.
She thanked Clem and pushed her cart toward the garden tools. Well into her seventies, Clara Wright wasn’t as strong as she used to be and most of the shovels would just be too heavy to lift for the work that she intended for them. Instead of a shovel, she picked out a shorter handled landscaping rake. The solid metal tines were much stronger than the floppy ones for the leaf rakes, just what she needed. She placed a pair of rakes in the cart and pushed her way toward the small garden center that had been added onto the store a few years ago.
Clara knew that the store had to be struggling a bit, with the new Lowes and the Wal-Mart cutting into their business. Maynardsville was a small town and many of the folks still liked a personal touch to their shopping. These folks avoided the big box stores, which kept places like Anderson Hardware in business. The garden center had several rows filled with bags of potting soil and the like, but on a series of shelves in the last row were lawn decorations. Fall was about to hit, so many of the lawn decorations were on sale.
She scoured the shelves, knowing exactly what she was looking for. There, on the bottom shelf, were a small collection of lawn ornaments. Several were ceramic flowers, animals, and the like, but standing majestically in the corner were four lawn gnomes.
Two were of the same pose, the gnomes smiling and holding a rake. Another one was standing with a pipe in his mouth, and the final one was riding a bike. She took the best looking of the rake holding gnomes and the one on the bike. According to her instructions, she couldn’t have any duplicates and she already had the one smoking a pipe in her collection. Placing the precious pair into her cart, Clara paid for her purchases and headed home. It was late afternoon and she had a lot to do before night fell.
The drive from Anderson’s store didn’t take long, she had planned that for it to be her last stop of the day. Clara was feeling every one of her seventy-five years as she hauled her shopping bags around to the back of her house. Her home was a simple affair, a single-story brick, two-bedroom house of the type that was common in the area. A large back deck offered her a perfect view of the rolling, tree-covered hills of the national park that bordered her property. The nearest neighbor, Gretta Woodsworth, was a half-mile away, and the next closest was over a mile from Gretta.
Her husband had liked the seclusion and the small rural area around them was a great place to raise their son. Their son turned out to be a fine man, his father would have been so proud of him. Now, Clara had lost them both, her husband to cancer twenty years ago, and her son to a drunk driver last year.
His son’s wife and their granddaughter lived in another state but were planning to come and stay for Thanksgiving. That’s the curse of growing old, sure, the aches and pains were a constant problem, but the curse was outliving your loved ones.
“There’s enough worry for today and it won’t do me no good to dredge up sad memories,” Clara told herself, trying to focus on the task at hand. She placed the rakes down on the ground underneath the deck where she kept her gardening tools. Her husband would have fussed up a storm to see her leaving good tools out where the weather could get to them, but she didn’t figure it mattered at this point.
“Garrizbigoz?” A small voice called to her. From behind a foundation brick, a small hidden door opened and a diminutive little man with a red pointy hat reached his hand out to her. Clara smiled at her friend reaching down with her index finger for him to grasp. As they touched, sparkly flakes of light floated up and Clara felt an itching sensation for a moment before things went back to normal.
“Honored elder, you have brought more to join our clan?” The gnome, Fazzleflop, asked, his magic infusing her with the ability to hear and speak their language. She nodded and took the two ceramic lawn gnomes from her bag, placing them carefully on the ground.
“Wonderful, thank you for your efforts, noble one,” Fazzleflop said, the little guy knew how to turn a phrase, not that she could understand him at first. It was only a few weeks ago that she had first met the gnome, and almost blew him to pieces with her shotgun. Clara was doing her daily walk around her home when she noticed the little door that had been placed in one of the foundation bricks.
Clara knew all about the upgrade from watching her news shows but didn’t ever expect to see one of the creatures created by it. She moved as fast as she could back into the house to fetch her shotgun. When she got back, the little fellow gave her a friendly wave. That was what did it, Clara had always been able to see through any fakery.
No flimflam artist or salesman could charm her with a false smile or a fake friendly greeting. This here upgrade seemed to agree with her, granting her a skill called detect falsehood. It had a number nine next to it, whatever that meant.
Well, old Fazzleflop had given her a genuine greeting, as far as she could tell. She couldn’t understand his babbling until he held out his hand to shake. When he did the fairy dust, sparkly thing, she found she could understand him. Clara put up her shotgun and fixed a batch of sweet tea for the two of them. After pulling up one of her lawn chairs, her and old Fazzleflop had spent the afternoon exchanging life stories. His was relatively short, having only been spawned into existence a few weeks ago, but it was a sad one.
Fazzleflop and his small clan of twenty gnomes had spawned in the national forest. They were a peaceful people as long as nobody riled them up too much. Sadly, they weren’t the only critters to show up in the forest. A whole pack of things called Dire Rat’s emerged that were attacking and eating everything in their path.
These giant rats loved the taste of gnome, so they hunted down Fazzleflop’s clan nearly to extinction in just a couple of weeks. The gnomes put up a good fight but lacked the weapons and numbers to hold off the rats. His remaining clan members, which numbered only seven, sought refuge at her home. In return for letting them live there, the gnomes helped out around the yard. Her grass and flowerbeds have never looked better, and her little garden was turning out the most delicious vegetables and fruit she had ever tasted.
The food was shared with the gnomes and she found they loved anything sweet, so she made a point to bring home some extra goodies with each trip to the store. After their first chat, Clara had given Fazzleflop a tour of her house and yard, since, up to that point, his people had only cowered in her crawlspace, worried the rats would track them. When Fazzleflop laid eyes on her lawn gnomes, he kicked up such a ruckus that she was about to go back inside and get her shotgun. To Clara’s shock, the gnomes circled the cracked gnome statue she had in the yard. It turned out they were holding some kind of service for what they thought was a fallen one of their kin.
With the other lawn gnome, the newer one that was still in good shape, they all circled it again and began singing. Clara had never heard such a wonderful sound; the song was both mournful and happy at the same time. As soon as it ended, she couldn’t remember how it went, only that she couldn’t wait to hear it again. After the song finished, a layer of ceramic around the gnome statue cracked and fell off. Instead of a broken statue, a healthy living gnome was revealed.
Fazzleflop told her that the spirits of his dead people would often return to the clan in the form of a statue, waiting for the song of their kin to reawaken them. After that, Clara scoured the stores, looking for more lawn gnomes so that Fazzleflop could revive his fallen clan. Sadly, only a certain type of statue worked.
First, the lawn gnome had to be ceramic of some sort, not a cheap plastic one like the kind she picked up at Walmart. Second, it had to be without structural blemish, no cracks, or chips. Third, and the hardest one, was that it couldn’t be the same design as another statue that had been used, making her look for different poses and so forth. Finally, the statue had to appeal to the spirit of one of the clan members, who would inhabit it. Something about the local magic was needed to complete the process, if a statue was mail ordered, it might work, but Fazzleflop said it could take months for it to attune to the local magical energy before a spirit of his clan could inhabit it.
If both the statues that she bought today were acceptable, the final two clan members would be reborn. She really hoped this worked, because they didn’t have months to wait for the mail-ordered statues to attune, the rats had found them last night. Squealing at the edge of the forest the night before had woken up Clara, and she went outside to find Fazzleflop and his people battling a half dozen of the monsters. These dire rats were larger than the gnomes, but her little friends fought valiantly, using makeshift spears and daggers to defend themselves. Clara arriving with her old double-barreled shotgun turned the tide of battle and sent the varmints fleeing back into the woods.
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“Thank you, these are both acceptable to our final clan members,” Fazzleflop said as the clan gathered and that beautiful song started once more. There was a cheer when their final missing clan members emerged from the ceramic statues.
“We will celebrate later my brothers and sisters, for now, we must prepare for war. The rats last night were only a scouting party and the full weight of the beast’s numbers will be unleashed upon us once the sun goes down. We must protect our home, we must protect our land, and most importantly, we must protect our benefactor, Clara Wright,” Fazzleflop ordered.
The clan had been busy while she was gone, fashioning all her lawn equipment into weapons of war. They used their strange magic to slowly change the shape of the objects, turning a single rake into a dozen gnome-sized spears. She had offered them the shotgun to use, but they said they were unable to craft or wield the advanced weapons of this world. If they did so, they risked losing their magic.
Clara had called the sheriff, but all he could offer was a for one of the deputies to come by in the evening to check on her. They were stretched thin since they had sent several officers to help out with some kind of trouble in the next county. He urged her to leave and move into town for a few days until they could send someone of his men out to scour the woods for these dire rats, but she refused to flee her home and her new friends. Sherriff Gibbs said he was deputizing some of the locals and for her to call if there was trouble so he could send them over.
All twenty of her gnome friends were now well-armed with spears, shields, and daggers crafted from her lawn equipment. They were all as ready as they could be. For her personal preparations for war, Clara got out her trusty shotgun. It was a double-barreled twelve-gauge that her husband had taught her to shoot long ago. When he passed, she had sold off all his firearms except for this one.
Now, she was glad she had kept it. She had some old foam earplugs ready for when the shooting started, that shotgun sure was loud and would set her ears to ringing without any protection. Her box of shells still had eighteen in it after she loaded the weapon, she dumped them into the large front pocket of her apron. A pair of old work boots would protect her feet and sturdy leather gardening gloves protected her hands.
She and her friends ate a quick dinner that they gathered from the garden. Several pitchers of sweet tea and a box of candies she had purchased in town rounded things out. They were as ready as they would ever be. Clara didn’t have to worry about her neighbor Gretta, she was away visiting her sister in Florida. After cleaning up the dishes from dinner, she heard Fazzleflop calling out from the porch.
“Miss Clara, our enemies have arrived,” Clara called the sheriff’s office to let them know she was being attacked. After the call, she grabbed her shotgun and pulled on her gloves, stopping to turn on all the exterior lights. A pair of floodlights over the deck illuminated an area about fifty feet out. Gleaming pairs of eyes, far too many for her to count, were seen at the edge of the light.
With a squeal, the rats charged. Three times the size of a normal rat, these dire beasts had deadly, chisel-like teeth and they moved fast as lightning. Fazzleflop had suggested they make their stand on the deck, it was several feet in the air and the stairs leading up would help negate their numerical advantage.
When the first rat reached the bottom of the stairs, Clara let loose with the first barrel of her shotgun. At this range, she couldn’t miss, and the powerful blast didn’t leave much of the rat behind. More rats arrived, a second beast falling to her other barrel. Then, as she broke open the shotgun to reload, the rats swarmed up the deck stairs, the claws in their feet making scratching noises on the wood as they climbed. Only eight steps led from the backyard to the deck, and a wall of five gnomes stood on the seventh and eighth steps, shields and spears held at the ready.
The rats tried to use their superior weight to bull past the gnomes. For a moment, it looked like they would break through, then Fazzleflop led some gnomes from the top step to bolster their defense. Clara finished loading her shotgun and shot into the rats massed at the bottom of the stairs. There were so many rats, she couldn’t even begin to guess how many were attacking them.
She fell into a routine of load, aim, fire. By the time the last two shells were loaded, her arms were shaking from holding up the weight of the gun. On the stairs, the gnomes had done well, their tiny shield wall holding against the tide. Fazzleflop had a dozen gnomes fighting for the stairs, while the other eight patrolled the deck, stabbing down at any rats that tried to climb up.
The little monsters were actually quite good at scaling the rough wood of the deck’s support beams and eventually, one of the gnomes on patrol screamed in pain as a rat got ahold of him. Her little gnome’s scream was cut short as the rat chomped down, feeding on the gnome while others climbed over the deck. Firing her last two shots, Clara gave the gnomes on patrol time to make it over to help.
The gnomes were hard-pressed to hold the stairwell and the gnomes patrolling the deck were stretched too thin, one after another were pulled down into the mob of hungry vermin. It was time to pull back into the house to make their final stand.
“My friends, back into the house, we’ll hold them there,” she called.
“No, the house can’t be defended, these creatures can chew through the walls and door in no time. My brothers and sisters, the time has come for us to make the sacrifice we discussed earlier. A groan was heard among the gnome, their wail of despair spurred the rats to a greater frenzy. Clara wasn’t sure what Fazzleflop was saying, she didn’t discuss any sacrifice with her friends.
At the stairwell, the front rank of spears held while Fazzleflop and the second rank pulled back, holding out their weapons as their magic went to work. Where a shield and spear once was, now a miniature replica of the weapon Clara was holding was seen. That was their sacrifice, by crafting the weapons of her world, the gnomes were giving up any chance to bring their fallen back. They were doing all they could to defeat these rats, they were doing all they could to save her.
“No Fazzleflop, you don’t have to do this for me,” Clara pleaded.
“It’s not for you, honored one, it is for this world we do this, these rats will only grow more powerful if they are not stopped now. How many humans, how many more of my kind, and others will be killed if this plague is not eradicated. The second rank of gnomes lowered their weapons and began blasting their tiny version of buckshot into the mass of rats. Though smaller than a real shotgun, the mini versions still packed a punch. A single shell didn’t obliterate a rat as her own weapon had, but it did blast a big enough hole to make each hit a kill.
The gnomes around the deck were the next to transform their weapons, creating a small circle in front of Clara as they finished their conjuration. Fazzleflop’s gnomes finished reloading and fired again, opening up enough space for the rank of spears to fall back and begin transforming their weapons also. Clara could do nothing but watch as the battle unfolded on her rear deck. The gnomes fired as quickly as they could, but having to break open the shotgun to reload after every two shots took time. The rats never faltered, continuing to push the assault, a veritable flood of the beasts poured over the stairs, and climbed the deck to push the gnomes and Clara up against he back wall of her home.
Gnome after gnome was begin pulled from the line by the rats, the monsters were completely heedless of their losses. Clara had never heard them arrive, but a loud volley of gunfire rang out as a dozen men with rifles, led by one of the sheriff’s deputies, rounded the corner of her house and began to attack the rats.
“The gnomes are friendly, don’t hurt them,” she shouted out.
“Roger that, Miss Clara, we’ll be careful,” a man she recognized as Deputy Perkins said. Sensing a new threat, the rats split their forces with most going after the humans that had dared to attack them. As the rats charged, more townsfolk arrived with their guns and these guns were much more effective than the simple shotgun Clara had. The men were firing as fast as they could aim and pull the trigger, their rifles holding at least thirty shots in each magazine. For the first time, Clara realized the swarm had stopped coming out of the woods, the ones attacking now were the last of them.
The battle went on for a while, but the rats couldn’t beat the human’s superior firepower. With only a few minor wounds, the deputized townsfolk shot the last of the monsters and quiet reigned over the battlefield. Sadly, as the battle turned against them, the rats had focused most of their efforts on the gnomes, taking all but three of them down before the last was killed.
“Miss Clara, I’ll have a few of the boys stick around until morning to make sure none of these things make another try. Once it’s light enough out, we’re going to have some of the hunters do a sweep of the park to see if we got them all. I don’t know who these little folks are ma’am, but I’m glad they were there to help you,” Deputy Perkins told her. Looking down she could see the Fazzleflop and his two surviving gnomes rest their weapons and look off toward the woods.
She didn’t realize it at first that her friends had stopped moving. Whatever Fazzleflop had done to create the guns, sapped their magic just like he had warned. Standing guard in front of her, the three gnomes were no longer flesh and blood, they were ceramic decorations once again. Clara cried for her friends, the little gnomes that had brought some joy into her life and given her a purpose these last few weeks. She would honor their memory for her remaining days.
If you drive in front of Clara’s little house today, you will see lush landscaping that rivals any garden in the world. Were you to look closer, you will see three lawn gnome statues placed around the house, their tacky bright paint jobs stand out in sharp contrast to the elegant garden they watch over. Rumor has it that at the peak of summer and the first blush of spring, these three gnomes are seen galivanting around the yard and sharing a cup of sweet tea with Miss Clara. I don’t know if it’s true, I didn’t look much past this event in Clara’s life, but I hope that it is and that she gets to spend at least some time among her newfound friends.
We’ve seen people dealing with Upgrade creatures both helpful and destructive. While powerful, the creatures that emerged in the first few months tended to be things that people in our time would consider a manageable threat. But just because it was the early days of the Upgrade didn’t mean that more powerful threats weren’t created.
Horrible things that could cause untold devastation were unleashed as well. Thankfully, these early beings of power, what we would now refer to as World Bosses, were typically found in out of the way places.
It is thought that the GGS intended the world bosses to develop slowly while humanity grew into their new lives, a hidden challenge that would emerge when the time was right. That may be the case, but at least once, an elder being of great power, emerged from the dark places it had been hiding in, and only the most powerful forces and weapons available to mankind could stop it…