It was eerily quiet. The streets were still empty, with only the odd, misplaced car to attest to the fact that anything strange had happened. Some of the buildings, like the street lights from the highway, had changed.
“It’s a hell of a hike even just to the base of the mountain,” Mitch said. “Isn’t there anything closer?”
“I’m not sure of anything,” Isaac said. “I’ve never been here before.”
Mitch turned and started to walk back-wards so he could look at Isaac. “So how do you work?”
Isaac raised an eyebrow. “Food goes in one end and eventually comes out the other?”
“I mean like, you’re not a current person, you’re a future person. Sort of. Were you born? Are your parents here? How does it work?” Mitch pressed.
Isaac shrugged. “I wasn’t born, as far as I know.” He said. “Things are fuzzy if you go back far enough, but it seems like I just… woke up. There’s no childhood. No parents. I was alone.” His eyes moved restlessly over the buildings they walked past. Sometimes he’d stare at dark windows as though he’d seen something.
“Where were you?” Mitch asked.
“I don’t know how to answer that,” Isaac said. “A forest. Sometimes there were ruins. Sometimes other people. Sometimes monsters.”
“But where did you sleep? How did you learn English?” Mitch pressed.
“I have no idea. Day and night didn’t seem very important, neither did sleep.” He shrugged. “You have to understand, there really wasn’t much definition to anything here before you came. Were there caves on the mountain before?” He asked.
“Nothing deep,” Aidan said. “Some shallow depressions I think, but I’ve never heard of anything particularly interesting. Doesn’t mean there aren’t now though, does it?”
“I don’t think we can assume much of anything anymore. Oh hey!” Mitch stopped and broke the window of a parked car with his elbow.
“Jesus! Mitch!” Aidan yelled and then stared as Mitch pulled out an old metal megaphone. “What are you going to do with that?”
“No power, just a cone to amplify the sound. “ Mitch put the receiver to his lips and announced clearly, “Anyone requiring shelter, or medical attention, should make their way to the Royal Hobart Hospital on Argyle street. Please move around outside only during the day. Only the emergency department entrance is usable, all other doors have been sealed.”
“Nice,” Aidan said. “Terrifying, but it’s a good idea. Let me know when you get sick of it and I’ll take over for a while.
They continued towards kunanyi, which seemed notably bigger than it had been before, and was now covered in thicker, darker vegetation. Several times people came out of their homes in twos and threes. They were shaken and frightened, some seemed shellshocked and Aidan had the distinct impression that one young man had seen something on that first night that he’d never recover from. One such supplicant was a little boy of perhaps nine. He came out of his house, his face dry but tear-stained. His parents were gone and Aidan had looked around helplessly trying to think of a solution when another woman wandered down the street towards them. He was able to hand the boy to her and send them both to the hospital with promises that there would be help there.
“You’re getting soft,” Mitch said once they’d set them on their way. “Or is someone making you that way?” He looked pointedly at his friend and waggled his eyebrows.
Aidan shook his head. “It’s not like that,” He said firmly as he turned them back toward the mountain.
“Right. You can’t stop touching each other and you’re all kissy and shit. It’s kind of sickening.” Mitch grinned. “Hey, far be it from me to disparage, I’m a lover after all.”
“It’s not...” Aidan pulled himself up short and shook his head. “It’s just not like that. Just drop it.”
“Sure thing, fearless leader.”
Isaac pointed towards the lower slopes. “There should be Skrayling there… or maybe goblins, in under the trees where the sun won’t bother them during the day.”
“And what, pray tell, is the best way to hunt Skrayling?” Mitch asked flamboyantly.
Isaac shrugged. “Well… generally speaking, if we get close enough they’ll start hunting us. I’ve never seen them in big groups before, usually three at the most. They’re tough, but not that tough, and we’re all armed. It should be OK.” He looked at the others dubiously.
“Do you have any experience with this kind of thing?” Aidan asked him.
“I’ve run them off with burning sticks,” Isaac admitted. “But we don’t want them to run, do we?”
“Maybe stay behind us once we make contact. We have to kill it, but we can’t chop it into mincemeat either, it needs to be recognisable.” Aidan said.
“Recognisable as something they’ve never seen before?” Mitch quipped.
“Exactly. Otherwise we could just use the ones from last night, but Keary and I turned them into chum.”
The climb up through what had once been West Hobart was gruelling before, but in the wake of the veil’s collapse the roads and footpaths in that part of the city had been churned up with massive roots and broken in many places by what looked like the tunnels of massive creatures.
“That makes me very uncomfortable,” Mitch said as he looked down one of the holes.
The houses too were drastically altered, with most having the look of ancient ruins. Aidan was convinced there had never been a massive building in the suburbs complete with gigantic Grecian columns, and yet there was the ruin of such a building to his right, at the end of the broken street.
“It’s a temple to Minerva. Do the humans still worship Minerva?” Isaac asked.
Aidan shook his head. “Not for hundreds of years, and never here. Everything’s all messed up. It’s like the mist just put everything in a bag, shook it up and emptied it on the table. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are dinosaurs out there somewhere.”
“What’s a dinosaur?” Isaac asked.
“It’s like a big lizard. A really really big lizard.” Mitch told him.
“Oh.” Isaac nodded. “We call those dragons.”
The moment they stepped off the road and under the trees at the base of kunanyi, the temperature dropped and the atmosphere became gloomy and foreboding.
“Jeeze, it’s like one step and we’re in a whole other place,” Mitch said. His breath misted in the suddenly frigid air.
“Pay attention,” Aidan admonished him. “We should be getting close… I hope. I don’t want to have to climb half way up there to find what we need.”
“We won't,” Isaac said and gestured off into the trees. “Look.”
There were massive scratches in the trunks of trees leading down into the gully. Signs that great creatures had played or fought in the rich loam at their feet.
“Caves are more likely in the creases,” Isaac said, “where water gouges away the rock. That’s where they’ll be.”
While Isaac didn’t lead, Aidan took his directions seriously and they moved over the small rise and into a crease created by the intersection of two foothills. Somewhere below them was a creek, they could hear it bubbling over rocks with a kind of incessant cheerfulness which seemed obscene in the dappled light under the trees. Mitch and Aidan moved forward carefully, though without the practised silence of Isaac’s steps.
“Down there.” Isaac hissed and nodded towards a darkness that seemed to breathe under an overhanging rock.
“How far back do you think it goes?” Aidan asked.
“No way to know.” Isaac told him, “But I don’t suggest we go in. They see better in the dark that we do. We should draw them out.”
“How?” Mitch asked, though his expression suggested he already knew the answer.
“I’ll do it. Get ready.” Isaac leaned the shield Vivien had lent him against a tree and picked his way carefully down so that he was level with the cave. He reached down with one slightly trembling hand and picked up a rock the size of a cricket ball. After he hefted it in his hand a few times he took a deep breath, wound up and then pitched it through the cave mouth. Somewhere in the dark, the stone hit the rock wall of the cave and from the sound of it, shattered into gravel.
Isaac bounced on the balls of his feet and stared with intense concentration at the cave mouth. He bent slowly, his eyes still fixed on the darkness, and his fingers closed around another rock. As he prepared to throw again, a rumbling growl sounded inside the cave.
“Get ready,” Isaac said without shifting his gaze. “When it clears the mouth of the cave, I’m going to run past you as fast as I can. They’re pretty single-minded so…”
The Skrayling appeared in the cave mouth and the horror of it in reasonable light made Isaac press his lips and teeth together to keep from whimpering.
A dark-skinned elongated head sat on massive muscular shoulders. It went on all fours like a bear but gave the impression that it could stand on its hind legs if it chose. Small, sickly green eyes looked at Isaac from under the heavy brow ridges and the urge to freeze that often overtakes small prey animals when confronted with a predator started to creep in at the edges of Isaac’s mind. He swallowed hard and squashed the urge down as hard as he could.
As the Skrayling bunched its muscles and prepared to launch itself at its dinner, Isaac spun and scrambled back up the embankment. The terrain gave the Skrayling the advantage to begin with, so it closed on its quarry alarmingly fast. As Isaac crested the embankment and dashed past the treeline though, he started to pull away. The beast snarled in annoyance and redoubled its efforts. So focused was it on not losing its meal that Aidan was able to slash low at its back legs without it taking any evasive action at all. Mitch then skewered it under its left shoulder and into its chest cavity with his short lance.
The precise blow dropped the great monster and it flopped to the loamy forest floor to twitch away the last of its life. Isaac skidded to a halt and then trotted back towards them once he was sure he wasn’t being chased anymore.
“You’re fast!” Aidan said appreciatively.
Isaac grinned. “Running is a survival trait.”
Mitch kicked at the huge dead weight with the toe of his boot. “How about carrying?”
People began to arrive at the hospital almost the moment the others left on their hunt. Keary, large and looming, was told in no uncertain terms to get away from the door as his constant scowl and unwillingness to put down his shield and lance had noticeably terrified the first arrivals. Instead, Vivien sent him out into the city with an ever-growing band of helpers to scavenge food and supplies.
The doctor, Benson, helped her begin to organise people and assign rooms to families.
“I don’t understand why we haven’t heard from anyone.” Dr Benson groused as he looked over a group of new arrivals and assessed them for injury. “Surely the cops should be doing something by now.”
“Assuming they’re all still here.” Vivien pointed out. “You said yourself, better than half the people in this hospital seem to have experienced the rapture or something. Most of the cops could be gone…”
“That’d explain it I guess.”
Vivien put her hand on his arm. “Just deal with what’s in front of you. If you knew exactly what happened, you wouldn’t be doing anything different. You’d still be helping these people.”
Dr Benson looked at her for a long time and then turned his attention to Keary when he walked in with a trolley from the supermarket laden with fresh fruit and vegetables. He was followed by a half dozen others with trolleys of their own.
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“Is this looting?” One of them asked nervously.
Keary shook his head. “It’s survival, we’re not hoarding it or charging anyone for it. I wouldn’t worry anyway, it’s probably going to be a while before our problems get dealt with to the point where looters become a priority.”
“Get it all through to the cafeteria.” Dr Benson said. “Shouldn’t you have gone for non-perishables? Cans, that kind of thing?”
“We will,” Keary said, “but the fresh stuff won’t last, we eat it now or it’s compost.” He shrugged. “I didn’t want to waste it.”
“Fair enough.” He waved them through. “Don’t yank your stitches open again!”
Keary only grunted.
“How are we doing for space?” Vivien asked.
“Fine,” Benson replied. “The staff are set up in a couple of the on-call rooms, and we’re trying to arrange people into rooms and wards based on injuries, family group size, all that jazz.”
“You’re pretty good at this administrative stuff, I wouldn’t have any idea how to do any of that,” Vivien said.
Benson laughed. “It’s not as hard as it looks. Eventually, we’re going to run out of room though, I don’t know what we’re going to do then?”
Vivien shrugged. “Expand I guess.” She said. “I mean, there are plenty of big buildings around here, we’ll be OK.”
Noise and screams from the emergency entrance stopped their conversation and both ran to see what was causing the ruckus. Vivien skidded to a stop part way through the double security doors. Isaac, Mitch and Aidan had killed a Skrayling, skewered it through with branches the thickness of Vivien’s arm, and used them to help carry the great beast back through the suburbs to the hospital. Then they’d unceremoniously dumped it on the white tiled floor.
Mitch and Isaac both slumped into the hard green plastic chairs, one side of each covered in the thick, dark blood of the Skrayling. Aidan wriggled out of the harness he used to carry his sabre and dropped it on the floor. Vivien scrambled around the huge body and hugged him tightly.
“Are you OK?” She asked.
Aidan squeezed her back and smiled. “We’re fine. Turns out Isaac could run in the Olympics and Mitch is a master at heart shots on moving targets.” He looked down at the carcass. “Actually it was all pretty straightforward. The biggest pain in the ass was getting it back here.”
“What the hell is that?” Dr. Benson asked as he inspected the huge thing that took up most of the entryway to his ER.
“Whatever they are,” Aidan said carefully, “there are tons of them out there, and that’s not even the weirdest thing we saw.”
Vivien looked up at him from under the protective arm he had around her shoulders and then across at the others to see what they would do.
“Why in God’s name would you bring it here?” Dr. Benson demanded.
“Honestly,” Aidan said, “we didn’t think anyone would believe us otherwise. We need to start taking some defensive measures.”
“What kind of defensive measures?” Benson asked.
“Well for a start, I think we should advise people not to go out at night right now,” Aidan said. He opened his mouth to continue but Keary barrelled through the security doors with his shield and lance at the ready.
“Clear?” He asked briskly when he saw the others.
“Clear Keary, everyone’s fine,” Aidan said.
Keary’s eyes flicked over his friends, Isaac and then Vivien, before he put his lance down and lowered the shield. “You were making a lot of noise.”
“That happens when you drop a monster on the floor.” Aidan looked pointedly at the Skrayling. “There are tons of them out there. And other things… we’re going to have to secure the perimeter and get people to stay in at night. Maybe not go anywhere alone.”
“The city is in a weird way,” Keary said, his face completely calm. “The buildings aren’t normal. Some of them seem to be in styles that I’ve never seen before. Others are in ruins.”
“What the hell is going on out there?” Dr. Benson asked no one in particular.
“Knowing doesn’t make any difference,” Aidan said. Benson looked at him sharply, then at Vivien, but said nothing. “We’ll get this guy outside, but it’s probably a good idea for people to be able to see it for a couple of days. Might head off any arguments about taking precautions.” He squeezed Vivien and then let her go. “How are you guys doing here?”
“People have been trickling in all day. Dr. Benson has a gift for organisation, so he’s got everyone squared away. For the moment there’s enough room, but we’ll have to expand before long.” Vivien said.
“We’re filling up the public and Private hospital wards.” Benson explained, “I don’t want to put people in the operating theatres in case we need them. I’d say we’re at about 70% capacity at the moment. The big problem is going to be food. I’m not sure we can store enough here for so many people.”
“Would any of the buildings next door work?” Aidan asked.
Benson shook his head. “Not nearly as well as here. There’s town hall, a parking garage, a supermarket, and the old courthouse.” He scratched his cheek thoughtfully. “There’s a run of small apartments across Campbell street, but keeping them secure and keeping anyone in them fed might be difficult. The closest big building we might be able to use is the Grand Chancellor hotel.”
Mitch snapped his fingers. “Fancy. But he’s right, it’s big enough that it could hold a lot of people. Multistory, shouldn’t be too hard to make it secure, and even better we could convert the TSO offices and concert hall for storage.”
“TSO?” Isaac asked.
“The Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, their office is in the hotel,” Aidan said.
“Is that normal?” Isaac frowned.
“Who the hell knows, and at this point who cares?” Mitch quipped. “I suggest we move small family groups with no medical issues. Maybe see if we can get some sort of security in place before nightfall.”
“I don’t think there’s enough time to do it today.” Keary disagreed. “Moving people takes time, and sorting things out takes longer. Then we have to move the food. Tell them today, do all the arguing, then move tomorrow.”
“We’re going to have trouble protecting multiple buildings, streets apart, without more men.” Aidan pointed out after Dr Benson had left to make arrangements.
“We were always going to have to do some recruiting, Aidan,” Keary said. “Better start sooner rather than later. Might want to have a go at raiding the cop shop too. I doubt we could make guns or bullets anymore, but it’s just chemistry, it should still work.”
“You want to give guns to a bunch of civilians?” Mitch asked, aghast.
Keary shrugged. “You want to get dragged off by a bunch of Fomorians and roasted over a low fire?”
“What makes you think the cops won’t object?” Aidan asked.
Keary just shrugged again. “Because I’ve been looting this city for about eighteen hours and I haven’t seen any. There were probably three of them in the cop-shop overnight, the rest were home. Looks like the statistics fairy screwed them and they didn’t make it through.”
“Alright, Keary take Isaac and go see what you can find. Mitch, Vivien and I will see if Dr. Benson needs any help with the civilians.” Aidan decided. “We might need to parade a few of them past our dead monster, to head off arguments.”
Mitch bounced into the main foyer where Aidan and Vivien had gone to talk, and he had a grin from ear to ear.
"I found something!" he announced happily.
"You look like the duck that shagged the pony," Aidan laughed.
Vivien choked on the reference. "OK," Mitch ushered a woman out from behind him and presented her proudly. "This is Tess."
"Hi Tess." Aidan and Vivien said in unison.
"Uh... Hi. Gees, I feel like I should start talking about how I'm an alcoholic." She mumbled nervously.
"Tess here is a witch!" Mitch said happily.
No one seemed overly impressed. "Mitch, Witchcraft is an almost entirely internal magic system. Human beings haven't been able to wield true power for centuries." Aidan pointed out.
"Ah," Mitch held up a finger. "Up until this little shit storm I'd have agreed with you, but this is the dawn of a brave new world, and Tess can do some serious shit. Show 'em!"
Tess coughed uncomfortably and held her hands out in front of her. She drew in a deep, slow breath and then blew it out even slower. Her palms began to glow, then her arms, then symbols carved themselves in pale blue light on the floor until she was completely encircled.
"Awesome light show," Aidan said. "What does it do?"
"Throw something at me," Tess said.
Without any hesitation, Mitch picked up an empty coffee cup and hurled it as hard as he could at Tess’ head. It sailed through the air, hit the edge of the pool of light cast by her symbols on the floor, and dissolved into a fine powder.
"Holy shit!" Aidan jumped out of his seat and hurried over to examine the symbols on the floor. "What are these?"
Tess looked abashed, "They're nothing really... just the names of my gods in runic. I think of them as being protective, I've been practising this to keep myself calm for years... It never had this kind of effect until everything turned off..."
Aidan looked at Tess speculatively. "You don't happen to have any friends with similar capabilities do you?"
"I dunno. I mean, I was a member of the local groups and everything, but it's not like we can call each other right now."
"The point is," Mitch interrupted them, "Magic works again! Human magic! We can't do that crap, but if one of them can then the others must be able to learn it, at least to some degree, right?"
"Not necessarily," Aidan disagreed. "Tess here could be a prodigy. Or she could be part something else and just doesn't know. There are any number of scenarios where she'd be the only one who could do this kind of thing." He eyed off the symbols. "How long will those last?"
Tess shrugged. "Without any input from me? A few hours... I have no idea how that'd be affected by, you know, throwing shit at it though."
"How about size?" Aidan asked. "How big could you make it?"
"I've never done anything bigger than this..."
Aidan looked at the others. "Alright, if you're willing I'd like you to go with Mitch and comb the building. If you happen to know of anyone who might be able to do what you do, make a list and we'll try to find them. We need to know how much you can do."
"I'm not a soldier..." Tess said uncomfortably.
"No," Aidan agreed. "We can turn anyone into a soldier, you're a witch."
“Come on,” Mitch said happily, “let’s go play with it a bit and see what else you can do!”
Tess appeared befuddled as Mitch grabbed her hand and dragged her off through the glass doors and out of sight.
Keary returned with Isaac an hour later. He was laden down with black duffle bags, and Isaac looked both profoundly traumatised and a little singed.
“Hey, you OK?” Vivien asked him.
“How did it go?” Aidan asked Keary at the same time.
“Cleaned ‘em out.” The huge man dumped his mass of duffle bags on the long white table and took a deep breath. “This is Hobart, not New York, so it’s not like we got bazookas and AK47s, but we scored a reasonable selection of shotguns, handguns and even a couple of tactical assault rifles.” He gestured to Isaac who was just as laden down but struggling to unhook all the straps.
“You nearly blew off my eyebrows!” Isaac hissed painfully, as Vivien took pity on him and helped him to get out from under his pile of bags.
“What?” Vivien gasped.
Aidan raised an eyebrow and Keary chuckled. “I told you to get down.” He looked at Aidan. “You don’t think they left the gun safes unlocked, do you?”
“But the C4 was just lying around?” Aidan asked.
“He made something with the crap he got from the supply closet!” Isaac said.
Aidan laughed. “Alright MacGyver, well you’re not the only one who found cool weapons today. Mitch found an honest to God witch.”
“So?” Keary shrugged, unimpressed. “Humans don’t have the power to affect the physical world, and the ability to influence minds other than their own is confined to the oldest and wisest of practitioners. What would we do with a bunch of witches? Learn to feel good about ourselves?”
“What was true before doesn’t seem to be true now,” Aidan disagreed. “Tess, that nurse who was having a nervous breakdown when we got here, she put down a protective shield that disintegrated a mug when it was thrown at her.”
Keary scratched his chin in thought while Isaac looked confused. “Is that really going to be helpful in a fight?” Isaac asked. “I don’t imagine they’ll throw mugs at us.”
“Traditionally Human witches worked in covens to build power in their spells…” Keary said thoughtfully. “If we could round up a few more.”
“Mitch and Tess are on it. Hopefully, we’ll know a bit more by the end of today,” Aidan told him. “You OK to lay out how to use these for any volunteers we get?”
Keary nodded. “No problem.”
That afternoon and early evening were uncomfortable. As predicted, Keary, Aidan, Mitch and Dr Benson had to lead group after group out onto the ramp which led from the street down to the emergency room entrance to behold the great stinking beast. Reactions ran the gamut from cold acceptance to the odd loss of faculty and lunch.
Mitch muttered a stream of complaints under his breath while he hosed down the entryway for the third time to get rid of the acidic smell of vomit. Aidan clapped him on the shoulder and helped him coil the hose when he was done.
“How did it go with Tess?” He asked.
“We got six all up,” Mitch said. “Tess knew two of them and then we ‘six degrees of seperation’ed the rest of them.”
“Can they all do what she can do?”
Mitch shrugged, “To a greater or lesser degree. It’s hard to measure that kind of shit and we don’t have time to do extensive testing.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “They’re practising together now. Trying to see how big they can make it, and how much they can throw at it.”
Aidan nodded. “If humans can work magic, real magic, then Justin is going to get a nasty surprise.”
“I don’t want to be all negative Nancy or anything, but have you considered that you’re giving Isaac access to a lot of information we’d really rather the bad guys not have. All on the basis that he comes off as a nice enough guy.” Mitch said pointedly.
“You’re not the only one thinking it,” Aidan admitted. “And Keary has already been to talk to me. He’s keeping an eye on Isaac…”
Mitch looked at his friend carefully. “That’s why you never leave him alone with Vivien, isn’t it? ‘Come hunt the Skrayling, go get the guns’... it’s all to keep him away from her.”
“If he’s after anything nefarious, I doubt it’s information. Firbolg aren’t that sophisticated and Justin has a one track mind.” Aidan shook his head. “If he’s here for anything, it’s her.”
“What if it turns out he’s still his grandfather’s little worker bee?”
“Then I’ll do whatever I have to,” Aidan said between clenched teeth.
They stood in silence for a while, Aidan looked off into the sinking darkness and Mitch, in turn, looked at him. “You care about her a lot for some girl we found on the mountain, man.”
Aidan gave a short, ugly laugh. “Just leave it alone Mitch.” He stopped and looked contrite. “Sorry. Just… I just don’t know what to do with it for now, OK? The others will come back, we’ll get everything sorted, and then there’ll be time to deal with it.”