Peter the monster didn’t have much of value on him. No weapons, no survival gear. Only the clothes on his back, all those shiny bits of metal and cracked light bulbs, a canteen, and a little bag of nuts. The nuts were interesting, I hadn’t seen any in years, and never in this part of the city before. It made me wonder where he had got them.

“Where did he come from?” I asked Mari, as a rifled through the dead man’s pockets. {If he was chasing you, how did he get here so fast?}

{I don’t know. From far away.} She sat a short distance away, loading loose bullets into her magazines with an intensity that unnerved me a little. Killers weren’t uncommon out in the city, in fact they might have been the majority, but to see such ruthlessness from one so young?

I finished my search and looked at her, perhaps in a different manner than I might have earlier that day. The sort of look you might give a placid looking dog that has blood all over its muzzle. I wondered if under that black visor, I might find glowing yellow eyes, like Peters, staring right back at me.

{Where did you come from?} I asked. {Where did they chase you from?}

{Far to the east,} she sent back. She didn’t say any more until she’d finished loading her magazine. I didn’t hold back my irritation at the vagueness, and I’m sure she could feel it. Eventually she sighed, and said, {I can show you.}

Another image pushed its way into my mind’s eye. Verdant rolling hills of emerald grass, a clear and cool flowing river, copses of blossoming trees, a distant shell of a city reclaimed by climbing vines. Then I was on the back of a horse, clinging to my father, as my family chased raced after six-horned deer, arrows whistling through the air. I woke up sleepy in a filter tent that was as much warm fur as it was clean plastic. The aging air pump rattled as it sent a stuttering breeze through the knuckle bone charms that dangled from the ceiling. They clinked together gently as they swayed. It smelt of leather, and spice, and… home.

“Your home is beautiful,” I said, around a lump in my throat. I wasn’t sure if the longing in my bones belonged to myself or the girl. I pushed the images away, gently, blinking away tears. “Perhaps you will return some day.”

She looked down at the pistol. It still looked comically over-sized in her child’s hands. {Home is family. Family is home. There’s nothing for me back there now.}

And what could I really say to that? I’d presumed to dictate our course. She’d been a vulnerable innocent in need of protection, and I was the only one that could provide it. But in that moment, it occurred to me she might know what was best for her more than I did.

{What do you want to do?} I asked, simply.

Her empty hand balled into a fist. {I want to get revenge.}

{You’ll die before you get it.}

{Maybe I don’t care.}

{I think you do.}

Her rage pressed hot against my mind. {What do you know?}

I shrugged. {Perhaps I don’t know anything. Think about it though.}

I turned away from her and traipsed over to the dead dog.

{Shouldn’t we get out of here?} Mari asked.

{Perhaps where you’re from there’s rivers of meat charging around the landscape, but I’m not leaving all this behind.} My belly was doing the thinking again, but I was very aware that more dogs, or yellow robed monster men, or a curious Loner, could arrive at any moment. {Can you and Thunder keep watch?}

I didn’t butcher the animal as thoroughly as I would have if I felt completely safe, I took the liver, the heart, a few choice cuts from the legs and rump. I still had enough salt to rub the steaks down, they’d keep for a while. The organs we could share that night, when we’d found a good spot for a fire.

Before we left, Mari and I searched the perimeter and my traps one last time. We found one of my noise makers carefully dismantled, definitely not the work of hounds, and one of my snares had actually caught a rat. It squealed in terror as we loomed over it, its stubby limbs flailing in the air.

I began to reach for it, but Mari put a hand on my arm to stop me.

{Let me try something.}

She stared at the rat, and something dark and menacing brushed my mind as it passed. The creature’s squeals of terror became squeals of pain.

Mari’s hand gripped my arm tighter, and she teetered as if dizzy. The darkness passed.

I sent her a questioning thought, and she shook her head in response. {It didn’t work. I’m too tired, I think.}

I was also exhausted. I’d recovered a little since Peter’s defeat, my strength was coming back slowly, but fighting him had taken a lot out of me.

{Using your… gift. It drains you?}

{Yes. I can usually do something big, like hurt someone, three, maybe four, times before I start to pass out. How about you?}

{I haven’t used it enough to know. Perhaps less than that.} I hesitated for a while, considering whether I really wanted an answer to my next question. {You said you’d killed before. Was that a bluff?}

The sickly heat of guilt bloomed, and I think she might have sobbed. {Not on purpose. Not until…}

{You don’t have to tell me. If it’s difficult.}

She hesitated for a moment, and then nodded her head.

I killed the rat the more traditional way, snapping its neck.

When we returned to the warehouse, there was a murder of crows pecking at what was left of the bodies. We left them to it, and they stared at us from their gory perches as we packed up the camp, showing no signs of fear.

One of them was bigger than the others, with a bulging third eye.

{Have you been following me?} I asked the bird.

{Death comes,} it said, unhelpfully.

I took that as a sign that we should leave the area sooner rather than later, and hurriedly packed up our camp.

Not far from warehouse, at the other end of the industrial complex, we found what could only be described as a ‘chariot’ of sorts. It was built from scavenged wood nailed together crudely, but there was no mistaking who it had belonged to. It was painted a garish mustard color, and yellow light bulbs, shining gold tinsel, and dangling bits of jewelry adorned the vehicle.

I shifted uneasily in the saddle as I scanned the shadows of the surrounding buildings. Mari’s mind was even more alert than mine.

{Wolves,} Thunder snorted, though he didn’t panic. The scent must have been old.

We urged him away from the spot as quickly as possible.

As we rode, I reached out to Mari. {The four dogs we met could have pulled that thing, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t more of them around.}

{Where there’s one Gold Robe, there’s always more, and a lot of dogs, but I’ve never seen them share a chariot.}

{That’s a relief.} I shuddered. {How are they even alive? Not wearing masks like that?}

{I don’t know.}

{I know people can survive for while breathing magic, but they should be utterly mad after twenty minutes.}

{Did he not seem mad to you?}

{He could talk. Have you ever met a human that’s gone Monster before? They aren’t exactly eloquent.}

{Your right, but I still don’t know.}

My questions were clearly annoying her, so I changed the subject. We were approaching an intersection, and with that came the choice of direction I’d decided to offer Mari.

{Where do you want to go?} I asked.

She was silent for a while, her nervous mind churning.

{This Witch of the Weir. You think she can help me get better at using my gift?}

{I’m not entirely sure the witch is a ‘she,’ but yes, if anyone can, it’ll be them.}

{Then I’d like to meet them.}

I urged Thunder into a canter to get us away from the chariot as quickly as possible and directed him towards the river.

“The witch lives on an island just above the weir,” I explained, with my mind as much my voice. I reasoned that doing both at once might eventually teach the girl to speak ‘normal’ English. “The quickest way is through Sniper Town, but going through Sniper Town is usually suicide, so we’ll take the scenic route.”

{Sniper Town?}

I stopped to point. “You see the tops of those tower buildings way over there? The ones with the red flowers? That’s Sniper Town. You’re safe as long as you don’t cross the bridges over the canals. But if you do cross, the sniper will shoot you. If we end up separated, keep that in mind.”

Her mind shrank a little as I issued my warning, a touch of cold fear leaking out. It had sunk in. {So… what’s the scenic route?}

“The park.” I smiled beneath my mask. “I think you’ll like it.”

The park was technically the territory of the Green Wardens. The wardens usually avoid avoided interaction with outsiders, leaving travelers and hunters alone. Tribes that tried to permanently settle the territory, or hunted too greedily, soon found themselves on the receiving end of a very bloody lesson. Loners like us would be fine, which meant running into other Loners was likely, but most Loners would think twice before picking a fight with someone as heavily armed as we were, and even the worst of them couldn’t have been as dangerous as the sniper.

We spotted the smoke of a campfire on our approach, not far from the bridge that would take us to the park. The city had a lot of bridges and a lot of canals. Crossing them was always the most dangerous part of traveling. I usually avoided the bridges when I could, rafting or wading across instead. But gold men were searching for us, if they weren’t on our trail already, and I didn’t want to give them a chance to catch up.

Still though, one could never be too careful.

I searched around for a good hiding spot for Mari and Thunder and found an out-of-the-way building with two walls and half-a-roof.

{If you need help, fire the gun,} I said, and went to scout the bridge alone.

I didn’t see anyone. No sign of movement in the buildings on either side, no shadow figures lurking in the foliage. I waited for ten minutes to be sure. There was still a chance of someone laying in ambush, but that was true of wherever I stepped.

What I did find, was tire tracks. A heavy four wheeled vehicle had passed through, as well as at least three bikes, and something with caterpillar treads. It hadn’t been long ago, perhaps earlier that day, and the vehicles hadn’t returned yet.

My mind immediately went to the Sweepers. The Gear Jocks were the only other Tribe with anything like that number of vehicles, and they would have been traveling in the opposite direction.

Were the Sweepers looking for us too? If they were, they’d overshot us. Even the Sweepers weren’t foolish enough to mess with the Wardens, but perhaps they were going to trade with the Tribes on the other side of the park. Or attack them.

“Perhaps you should ask those people for help,” Mother said, from somewhere behind me. “They might have seen something.”

I looked toward the campfire smoke I assumed she was talking about. “They might also try to kill me.”

“You have a machine gun.”

She did have a point, but still, the thought of approaching a stranger’s camp and deliberately being seen turned my stomach. “I could also just take a longer way around, avoid the bridge entirely.”

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“You could…” Mother considered. “But you can’t go west, because of the sniper, and you can’t go east, because of the Gold Robes.”

I half-turned towards her, letting her silhouette linger at the edge of my vision. “You’ve seen the Gold Robes?”

“Enough to know they’re coming from the east, so you probably don’t want to go that way. Besides, go too far east and you reach the Pain Princes.”

I shuddered. “I see your point. Are you coming?”

She didn’t say anything for a while, and I knew that had hurt her.

“You know I don’t like people seeing me.”

“I know,” I sighed, “I’m sorry. I’m just a bit nervous about… meeting people.”

She put her hand on my shoulder. There was a familiar warmth to her squeeze. “You’ll be fine, Alan. People like you, when give them a chance.”

I reached up to squeeze her hand back, took a deep breath, then stepped away. “Thank you, Mother.”

I crept away from the bridge, checked my gun was ready to fire, and approached the thin column of smoke that seemed to originate a little way off the main road.

A man in a tattered brown jacket and filthy filter mask watched from the second story window of a roofless, overgrown, building. The lookout had a spear, but there was no sign of a gun, and his mind was alert but calm. So, I took another deep breath and stepped out into the open.

He ducked low behind the windowsill as soon he saw me, readying his spear as if to fend off a cavalry charge.

“Who goes there?” He shouted, loud enough to alert whoever else was hiding inside.

I raised my empty palms but did nothing to hide the bulky machine gun dangling on its shoulder strap.

“Red?” The lookout asked. “That you?”

His voice was familiar, and the… ‘pattern’ of his mind. Minds are similar to one another and entirely unique, like faces. The way they swirl, the tempo of their cogitation, the emotional state they fall into when at rest. It all combines to create a signature of sorts.

“That’s me,” I called up. “Fisher, right?”

Fisher stood up, relaxing a little. “Aye. Been a while, Red. You been down south?”

“I have.”

“How’s the hunting down there?”

“Safe, but sparse. The Sweepers scare off the worst of the beasties, but also a lot of the game.”

“Gah. Sweepers. Won’t catch me going near those nutters. I think it was them that tore through here this morning, scared all the fish away from my spot with their cursed music, the bastards.”

“That certainly sounds like the Sweepers all right.”

“Aye. Oh, where’s my manners? Come on in, Red.”

The rest of Fisher’s small group were waiting just over the doorway. Both had spears at hand, and they’d clearly been waiting for a signal to either storm out and rush me or stand down. Sparrow, Fisher’s partner, and their son Mallard, who’d been a head shorter than me the last time I’d seen him and was now half-a-head taller.

Fisher’s family were nervous around the gun, I kept catching their eyes darting to it from behind their masks, but I’d met this particular group enough times to earn a little faith.

Fish was cooking on a small fire in the middle of the building.

“Go on watch, boy,” Fisher said to his son. “Let the grown-ups catch up.”

We traded information about where we’d been and what we’d seen since last bumping into one another. The Pain Princes were at war with the Plague Mongers again, which had caused the Mudmen to start more aggressively guarding the borders of their swamp, and as a result more Loners had moved south to hunt and scavenge. A terrible monster was harrying the Homebrewers to the far northwest, which meant the Hound Masters and the Lawyers were now getting their grog from the Agony Aunts instead. The usual twisting and turning of politics, war, and trade amongst the Tribes.

I told him about the Horse People and the massacre but left out that I was escorting the sole survivors to safety.

“Looks like you’ve had a run-in with a Sweeper yourself,” Sparrow noted. Nodding at my gun.

“A dead Sweeper,” I said, then realized how that sounded. “Erm, I mean I found a dead one. Got some luck for once. I’m not crazy enough to take one of those maniacs on.”

There was an awkward pause as the couple exchanged a look. Even without the ability to sense minds, I knew what it meant. I’ve never been a very good liar.

“Still,” Fisher said slowly, “best hope they don’t catch you with that.”

“One of the reasons I’m heading north again. You said they came by here?”

“Yeah, toward the park. There were in a real hurry. Didn’t see me fishing down at the canal and I didn’t want them to.”

They offered to let me stay for dinner, but I excused myself, saying I had to get going. We did trade though. It would have been impolite not to. A fish for a few hunks of salty dog steak. I did far better out of the trade, Fisher was generous like that, which made me feel all the more guilty for lying to him.

“Oh, one more thing,” I said before I left. “There’s some strange men about. All dressed in yellow, they have some vicious dogs and… they don’t wear masks.”

Fisher’s bushy brows shot up from behind his visor.

“They’re dangerous,” I said, “think they might all be witches of some sort. Keep your distance if you see them.”

“Aye,” Fisher said, “that does sound like trouble. Thanks, Red. Safe travels.”

He offered his hand.

“Safe travels.” I said, hesitating for a moment before shaking.

Mother emerged to walk alongside me once I’d walked far enough from their camp to be out of sight.

“See,” she said, “that went very well, didn’t it?”

“Must you always eavesdrop? I thought you didn’t want to risk being seen.”

She laughed. “Please. No one sees me unless I want them to.”

I found the girl and the horse exactly where I’d left them.

Thunder was happy to see me, trotting over and flicking his main with a snort. {Friend back.}

Animals give their friendship much more easily than people, I find. That doesn’t make it any less valuable.

{You were gone a long time,} Mari said, the thought tinged with accusation.

“I got talking to some people. Don’t worry, I didn’t tell them you were with me. The Sweepers—the Gun People—are up ahead though. They went into the park today.”

{So, are we not going through there anymore?}

I’d been considering that on the walk back over. “I think we should still go through. The alternatives are all riskier.”

{Whatever you think is best.}

And so we crossed the bridge and found ourselves at the boundary of the park.

From the outside, the park seemed to be an impenetrable maze of overgrown trees and foliage. If you climbed something tall, you could see that it extended for at least a few kilometers before the forest gave way to the husks of concrete once more, but the park was considered to extend far beyond its original boundary.

{Stay close to me,} I said. {And if we get split up, stay on the road. The trees move sometimes. It’s easy to get lost.}

{What do you mean the trees move?}

{I… don’t really know. They don’t do it when you’re looking at them.}

It was dark under the canopy. Not the pitch black of the hospital, but the dim, flat, green tinged lighting of a place that only received light after it had bounced from dozens of leaves. Nature chirped and rustled at us from every direction.

There was an old road through the park, not yet entirely consumed by gnarled tree roots, and we stuck to it for the most part. The Sweepers had as well, judging by the tire tracks through the dirt. We moved slowly, on foot, keeping an ear out for the distant growl of engines. Occasionally we would hear a growl of a different variety, or the distant clap of gunfire—single shots, so likely hunters rather than warring Tribes.

We crept through the trees for half an hour before it became obvious something was stalking us.

{Wolves,} Thunder declared, his ears twitching, and stopped, looking back the way we had come.

I stared into the shadows. Something big slunk back, the faint impression of a distant mind slipping out of the range that I could perceive them. I caught the telltale glint of bright yellow. A nervous chill ran down my spine, and I flipped the machine gun onto full auto. Mari had already drawn her pistol.

{Let’s keep moving,} I said, {if we shoot them, we might bring the Sweepers down on us.}

Mari silently agreed, and we kept going as we had been, along the old road. But I knew where those hounds appeared, one of their masters couldn’t have been far behind.

Several tense minutes later, we began to hear the music, a ghostly echo of the Sweepers usual style reverberating around the trees. Someone was barking orders too.

“Great,” I sighed.

{What do we do?}

“They must be parked up ahead. We go around. Far from the road.”

{But the dogs…}

She had a point. Amongst the trees we’d be more vulnerable, and even if we could kill the dogs, we were so close to the Sweepers that making any noise would be a death sentence. I clicked the gun onto safe and drew my two remaining spears out from their shoulder quiver. I handed one to Mari.

She looked at the piece of wood for a long moment.

“Do you think you can use it?” I asked.

“Um, yes, I can,” she said, in English this time, and holstered her pistol.

I smiled, hoping she could see it in my eyes. “Let’s hope neither of us have to. They’ll probably keep their distance.”

The three of us crept into the underbrush, weaving around twisted trees and pushing our way through scratchy bushes. I trusted Thunder’s superior hearing to alert us if the dogs came charging at us from behind and focused on keeping an eye out in front. It was uphill for the most part, and I must have gotten slightly disoriented under the seemingly infinite maze, because I walked out from behind a tree and found myself staring down an incline at a convoy of vehicles.

{Stop,} I sent to the others, and ducked behind the tree. We were a good thirty meters away, and above them, so the chance that they’d spotted me in that half-second of exposure was low. But my heart still seemed to stop for a while.

When I’d recovered, my first thought was to immediately backtrack and take a wider circle around. Subsequent thoughts all came from the old books I’d been forced to read as a child. ‘Know your enemy,’ and ‘knowledge is power,’ and ‘time spent in reconnaissance is seldom wasted.’

If I knew what the Sweepers were up to, and what their capabilities were, then I could better plan to avoid them. That was how I rationalized taking the risk of poking my head around the tree trunk to get a look another look, but it might have just been morbid curiosity.

The Sweeper’s truck sat in the middle of the road, pitched forward awkwardly with one wheel buried in a hole in the asphalt. There were at least thirty of the bullet encrusted maniacs swarming around their stranded vehicle. Some of them were grunting and groaning, trying to rock the truck free of the hole, but most of them were sitting and watching, cleaning their guns, bobbing their heads to their cacophonous music, snoozing on the grass. They had three dirt bikes with them too, all leaning on their kickstands, engines silent.

The first question to pop into my head: Why were the Sweepers out here in the park with the damned truck? It obviously wasn’t suited for these sorts of conditions. They must have needed the raw numbers it let them transport for something, and quickly. Were they at war with someone?

{We should go,} Mari said, tugging on the back of my coat.

I agreed and was about to pull back when a new sound cut through the scene below. The grinding, metallic screech of metal on metal, heavy machinery or something similar. The Sweepers seemed to notice the sound at the same time I did and made a great show of getting to their feet and looking busy.

The noise grew louder as whatever it was approached from the front of the convoy, until eventually another vehicle trundled into view. It was squat and sturdy, about the size of a very small car, and with caterpillar treads like those you see on old digging machines.

There was a driver, and behind that driver on a flat platform sat a hulking metal statue. Or at least, that’s what I thought it was, until it stood up and spoke.

“What the hell are you lot playing at?” The voice was a deep metallic echo, deafeningly loud without shouting. The metal man hopped down from his platform, and I actually felt the earth tremor under his foot falls.

I’d heard stories of the Sweeper’s leader but never really believed them. Some sort of machine man they’d said: a steel juggernaut as big as house, brought to life by some dark magic. I’d dismissed them as the fanciful tales they seemed to be.

Now that I saw this hulking behemoth with my own two eyes, I knew the stories had been an exaggeration, but not much of one.

The thing moved like a man might underwater. Still organic, but too slow somehow. A long dark tube was attached to its right forearm—an enormous gun of some kind. The whole scene satisfied a twisted sort of logic: the gun worshipers being led by some kind of living weapon.

“Step aside you idiots,” the thing said, and the Sweepers seemed eager to obey. It stomped towards the truck, bent down, and lifted the front of the vehicle half a meter off the ground with ease. The metal man pushed the truck back until it was no longer over the hole, and then set it down. “Be more careful next time, if I have to come back for you again, someone is getting liquefied.”

A high-pitched mechanical whir saturated the air as the tube on the thing’s arm began to vibrate. The Sweepers all flinched back away from their leader.

{Wolves!} Thunder squealed.

I whirled around, readying my spear. Dark shapes were bounding between the trees, drawing closer by the second. It was hard to count them, but there were more than three, more than Peter’s surviving hounds.

{With me,} I sent, and led the others away from the Sweepers, closer to the circling dogs. We were giving them the opportunity to surround us, but if we fought within line of sight of the convoy, we’d have far more lethal things to worry about than teeth and claws.

I tracked the minds of the dogs as they surged in for all directions at once. There were seven of them, the three we’d met before and four new ones. Only the densely packed trees saved us from being completely overwhelmed.

One beast charged me from the front but halted and jumped back as I lowered my spear. It barked and snapped, yellow eyes gleaming.

{Prey! Master, prey here!}

{Shut up!} I threw the thought at it, jabbing with my spear at the same time. The dog hopped back further, and then something huge hit me in the side.

I slammed against a trunk, the wind bursting from my chest, and fell limply to the ground. A hound was on top of me, jaws locked around the arm I’d thrown up in front of my throat. Its breath reeked of rot and decay.

A pain lanced up my leg as a second set of jaws clamped around my ankle.

{Get off!} My mind screamed, but the thought was smothered under the blood lust and rage that poured from hounds.

The gun was trapped under me, so I reached for my knife with my free hand—the new, very sharp one. I plunged it into the neck of the dog attached to my arm. Its hot blood sprayed across my lenses as it leaped back, a burst of pain and fear erupting from its consciousness.

I hacked blindly at the one on my leg, but couldn’t reach, so I kicked with my free foot. Boot connected with soft canine nose, once, then twice. Something crunched, and it released me with a yelp.

I wiped blood from my lenses, smearing the world red.

Thunder kicked out with his back legs, sending three dogs leaping back from his hooves. Mari was to his front, backed up against a tree and jabbing her spear at two more of the beasts.

One pounced for her, and I screamed a useless warning.

Girl and hound fell together, the beast on top of her, its jaws clamped tight around the haft of her spear.

I reached for the gun, scrabbling to my feet.

The beast wrenched the spear aside, out of Mari’s grip, sending it spinning off into the underbrush.

I took aim at the dog as it reared back, its glistening jaws open wide.

Pain ripped through my shoulder, crushing weight flattening me.

I tried to wrench my arm around, but the monster on my shoulder was too strong. Through the red haze, the hound atop Mari went for her throat.

{NO!} The thought exploded from the girl and smashed against my consciousness, like a hammer between the eyes, and the world went black. I was nothing and no one, a thoughtless drifter in an airless void. I was trapped in that realm for one second and one eternity simultaneously, before the world returned. It came back in patches, like ashes burning in reverse until they became a photograph again.

Mari lay still on the ground, as did the dog on top of her, as did everything else. Thunder lay on his side, an unlucky hound flattened beneath his bulk. The rest of the dogs were scattered around like discarded toys, limbs splayed and long tongues lolling from their heads.

I rolled over, throwing the dog on my back aside. It was still breathing. To my side, another dog was in a much worse state, shredded by a dozen red gashes. That didn’t make sense for a moment, and then with a cold dread touched the barrel of the gun.

It was hot. When… whatever it was had happened, my body must have clenched up, my finger must have tightened around the trigger.

In the distance, that metallic voice boomed, too distorted to make out the words.

“Oh no,” I said. My mind raced. The dog nearest me began to stir.

I put a bullet through its head. We’d already been heard, and if the creatures roused before Mari and Thunder, I wouldn’t be able to fight them off alone.

There was no need to do so for the one that lay atop Mari. Thick, blackish, blood oozed from its eyes and ears and mouth. Perhaps because it had been closer to the source, perhaps because it had been the intended target, it had received a much more powerful mental blow.

I rolled the beast aside and stooped to check on the girl. She was breathing.

Vehicles roared to life back down on the road. Not the deep grumble of the truck, but the deafening buzz of the dirt bikes’ naked engines. Those things would be able to climb the incline and weave between the trees. They’d be on top of us any moment.

{Wake up,} I sent to Mari, forcefully at first. When that did nothing, I tried more gently, as if I were just trying to rouse her from a nap. She began to stir, so I left her to do the same for the horse.

{What… what happened?} Mari thought, putting a hand on a tree to steady herself.

There was no time to explain.

{Get Thunder up,} I sent back. {We have to run!}