Then

Cal ran past rows of tents. The commotion that his group had created was finally drawing people out of their slumber. Here and there he could see several people emerging from their small tents. It didn’t escape his notice that without exception they were all women and that they were of a variety of different ethnicities with the one exception. It seemed that the racists were trying to bring back segregation and one other thing. The very thought of which threatened to pull a murderous rage from somewhere deep within Cal. It was a feeling that he didn’t like.

He would see to it that Jay and his group paid for what they probably did to these women. A month in such vile clutches was undoubtedly a terrible experience.

As Cal went by people he urged them all to take cover, just in case. He shouted out promises that they’d be soon free.

It didn’t take him long to reach the other end zone. What he saw there brought the gorge rising up his throat.

In a separate fenced in area was a group of ragged-looking men and boys. He counted twenty-three. He immediately realized that number was greatly out of proportion to the number of women. Meatshields, Ron had told him. He expected to find this. He thought he had prepared himself, but he was wrong. To see it with his own eyes. To smell the decay, the dying. He was wrong, there was no way he was ever going to be ready to face such evil.

The captives had nothing, but the rags on them. They were right out in the open, exposed to the elements. No tents, sleeping bags, even a simple tarp. The racist cops truly lived up to the monsters they idolized. Such filth all of them. The rage built inside of Cal, but he reluctantly swallowed it back down alongside the bile. He couldn’t allow himself to descend to the same level as the racists, especially where his family could see him.

Not a single man or boy was free from an injury of some kind. They were practically covered in bruises and cuts. Dried blood crusted on their skin. From the stench and the pus that he could see leaking out of the worst of the wounds they were badly infected as well.

“Damn it,” Cal muttered. The scale of what lay in front of him was overwhelming. How was he going to help them? He looked back to the gathering crowd of women and girls. How was he going to help all of these people? Suddenly, it didn’t seem enough to simply guide them back to the community center and bid them good luck.

A familiar chime rang in Cal’s ears. “Damn it,” he said flatly.

You have discovered a quest!

Guide the prisoners to safety.

Success Parameters: Varied.

Failure Parameters: Varied.

Reward: Contingent.

Failure: Contingent.

Will you accept?

You have discovered a quest!

Heal the prisoners.

Success Parameters: Varied.

Failure Parameters: Varied.

Reward: Contingent.

Failure: Contingent.

Will you accept?

“Yes,” Cal whispered. He didn’t see that there was truly a choice.

The issue settled for the moment Cal grabbed the master lock holding the fence door that separated the end zone with the wounded from the rest of the field. He grit his teeth and twisted and turned the lock in his hands until it broke. The act surprised him. The last time he did that he needed to use a pry bar. It seemed that he was significantly stronger than he was just two months ago.

The wounded looked at him with hope, with fear, with nothing at all. Cal tried to smile, but found it impossible. “Just hang on a bit longer, we’re going to get you out of here,” he said in a soft voice.

Cal came to the back of the end zone. What he saw on the other side stopped him cold for just a moment. Gathering himself, he grabbed the chain link fence. If he could break a padlock then the fence was no barrier to him. He tore himself a hole and stepped through into a scene of pure carnage.

“Hey, Cal.”

Eron’s voice was practically a whisper, but he could hear it clearly in the eerie quiet of the night.

“I saw the guys in the end zone and… and,” Eron choked, shook his head as if unwilling to remember. “I’m sorry, man, but I don’t know what came over me. I was trying to pull my punches, until… I wasn’t…”

Cal looked in horror at the scattered men all around Eron. A quick count confirmed that they were what remained of Jay’s force. Most were wounded, unconscious, limbs sticking out in the entirely wrong directions and angles. At least those men were still alive, as far as he could tell.

The problem was the handful of men, maybe five or six that were definitely no longer alive. A man with his face punched inward. The broken remains of his face was like a bowl of blood and brain soup. Another body was headless. It took a few seconds for Cal to locate the head a good twenty yards out in the distance, just on the edge of the torch light. There was a corpse that was folded over backwards at the waist. The sight would go on to haunt him for months. For the second time in as many minutes Cal felt himself about to be sick. He forced it down for Eron’s sake as much as his own.

Cal tried to tell himself that these men were evil and that they deserved their fates. That they had brought it upon themselves by their own evil actions. He was about to tell Eron the same, but the look in his youngest brother’s eyes told him that would be a mistake.

Eron was a good person, their parents had done their best to raise them to know the difference between what was right and what was wrong. To do what was right. And in losing control Eron had gone against what he was taught. All he had now was guilt for his failure and no words could assuage that. Cal didn’t need to look into his brother’s thoughts to see that. It was written plainly on Eron’s stricken face.

“It’s not okay, but I know that you know that already,” Cal said. He refused to pander to his brother. Eron wouldn’t have appreciated it. “The only thing you can do now is atone. Balance the scales later. For now there are people that need our help. Can you focus on that?” He spoke in a gentler tone.

A glazed look came over Eron’s face. Cal recognized it. After several seconds Eron’s attention snapped back into focus. “Did you get these quests? Take the prisoners to safety and heal the prisoners?”

“Yeah, so why don’t you clean up a bit,” Cal tossed his pack to Eron, “and head to the other end zone. We got Megan and the kids!” He brightened.

“I’m glad,” Eron said dully.

“Just wipe yourself down,” Cal said. “All that blood is a bit scary.” He grinned to lighten the sting of the words.

“What about…” Eron looked at the scattered men around them.

“I’ll take care of it,” Cal said. “Just go.” He gently guided Eron by the shoulder and pushed him in the direction of the football field.

Once his brother was gone, Cal turned to the grim task before him. The wounded he discounted immediately, they could be attended to later. The dead bodies were another matter. They were a particularly horrific sight and he didn’t want to risk anyone else seeing them. One by one he dragged them further away from the light of the torches. Once he gathered them together he flung them as far away as he could into the darkness. Let the monsters and mutated animals take care of them. Once more he told himself that it was their actions that led them to their ultimate fates. Evil deeds lead to bad ends. Karmic retribution. Justice. All of it.

“They got what they deserved.”

Cal didn’t believe in his own words, but for his brother’s sake he’d make himself believe.

“I need two volunteers!” Cal had to raise his voice to be heard all the way back to midfield, where the crowd of people extended. He wasn’t comfortable speaking to such a large crowd. Even just raising his voice was difficult. He always had a problem where his voice sounded louder to him than it was in reality, which caused him to be rather soft-spoken even with his naturally deep voice. “If you know how to safely operate one of these,” he held up a shotgun, “please come here.”

A handful of women made their way to the crowd to stand in front of Cal.

“Right, thanks for volunteering. Why don’t we go from left to right. Tell me about your proficiency level, please.”

The first woman had gone shooting a handful of times with her boyfriend, just once with a shotgun. The second woman was an avid skeet shooter. The third had been in the army to pay for college several decades ago. The fourth was an actual police officer, but due to her race and gender ended up imprisoned by Jay’s racist group. The remaining two were much like the first, their experience was mostly with handguns.

Cal gave the three captured shotguns to the skeet shooter, ex-army infantry woman, and the police officer. He thanked the rest and sent them back as he went over what he expected from the three now armed women.

There were many other matters to settle. It felt like it took much too long to get everyone ready to leave. Cal couldn’t hear anything from the building where they left Jay and his einherjar with the man-sized gremlins. He had Eron on watch in case things changed, it was also partly to keep him away from the others. It hadn’t gone unnoticed that Eron was being uncharacteristically morose and silent.

Both Remy and Nila had asked him what was a matter, but Cal demurred, told them that it wasn’t his place to talk and to drop it for the moment.

“We can’t just leave them there,” Nila said.

Cal’s gaze went to the injured racists in the end zone that once held the captive men and boys used as meatshields. “I don’t see that we have a choice.”

Nila’s face twisted. “God, look at them. Did Eron really do that?”

Cal nodded. “With how fast his strength is growing and the way they swarmed him… it’s unfortunate, but not entirely unexpected.”

“It’d be wrong to not do anything.”

Cal frowned. “We don’t have the skills to treat broken bones.”

“There’s a few doctors and nurses among the women, they can do it.”

“Would they be willing too?” Cal challenged.

Nila bit her lip.

“You already asked them?”

“They said they had to do triage.” Nila looked as if she bit into a lemon. “Treat the ones they could do something for easily first, then get to the really bad cases, while ignoring the ones that are hopeless.”

“I don’t remember anyone coming to check on these guys.”

“They did bad things to these women,” Nila said, disgust plain on her face. “I thought they all swore the Hippocratic Oath, at least the doctors.”

“They can make the case that the triage excuse is valid in this case. Some of those poor men and boys they used as meatshields,” Cal spat the word, “need help badly and I’d rather they get it before those scum.”

“It still feels wrong just to leave them like that,” Nila sighed.

“I’m not arguing that, but we need to prioritize the peoples’ safety first. They were put into this position against their will. They’re the victims here.” Cal jabbed a finger at the racist cops. “If they didn’t decide to make their own concentration camps—”

“—they wouldn’t be in the position they’re in now.” Nila glared at Cal. “That’s a dangerous way of thinking.”

“It’s true though,” Cal shrugged. “Okay, why don’t we get the people to safety first. Make sure the badly injured ones are out of immediate danger. Then we can come back for the racists and maybe convince the medical people to see to their injuries.”

“We’ll need to grab supplies, medicine, from the hospital or a clinic,” Nila said. “I gave all of our first aid stuff to the doctors and nurses, but they said it wasn’t going to be enough.”

“After we get these people out of this place,” Cal said. “It’s going to be a difficult enough walk, especially with all the wounded. I’m afraid that all that blood in the dark is going to attract monsters. I hope our pl—”

A sudden chime rang in Cal’s ears. In everyone’s ears.

Martin Luther King Jr. High School Encounter Challenge.

Emergency Notification:

Failure to keep active monster spawns under specified threshold.

Alpha Class Monster will spawn in minus - 5:00.

Failure to kill Alpha Class Monster will result in creation of Monster Spawn Zone.

The timer counted down. Annoyingly, it somehow did so simultaneously and separately as text in Cal’s vision and as a voice in his ears.

“Everyone!” Cal raised his voice above the tumult that the emergency announcement cause. It seemed that they all got the same notification. “It’s time to go, moved quickly, but calmly. We have plenty of time.”

The group of women tasked with protecting the rest gathered around Cal and Nila. In addition to the three armed with shotguns. Another fifteen were included. These women all claimed some sort of athletic or fighting experience. They were armed with gear taken from the racist cops. The bulletproof vests that weren’t destroyed in Eron’s rampage, the police batons, pepper spray and a few other makeshift melee weapons.

“You all know what to do?”

No one gainsaid Cal.

“Alright, you’re the lead. Take them to the community center.” Cal squeezed Nila’s hand and gave her a kiss. “You’ve got this. I’ll be at the back with Eron.”

Nila, the skeet shooter, and a few armed women headed out through the giant gap in the chain link fence that Eron had torn down. The rest of the unarmed group followed behind them. Torches were distributed throughout the human caravan. The rest of the armed women walked on both flanks. Those too injured to walk on their own were dragged on makeshift stretchers made out of cannibalized tents and fence posts. Everyone helped each other, no one was left behind.

Cal exchanged nods with Remy as he passed by with Megan and the kids right beside him. He was positioned in the middle of the convoy. The idea was to spread their power throughout the group. He and Eron were bringing up the rear since they figured it was the most likely spot to be attacked.

As the last of the group reached the gap in the fence one of the racist cops called out. “You can’t just leave us here.”

Cal ignored him as he directed Eron to go ahead.

More of the cops joined in with pleas, then threats. Cal ignored all of them as he walked away.

Their route took them to the western side of the campus. Through the baseball diamond and past a series of storage sheds, until they finally reached the parking lot that led out to the street. The same street that led from the community center.

The front half of the group was off the campus when disaster struck. It was heralded by a snarl, a deep, booming sound that reverberated inside of Cal’s chest.

A giant gremlin appeared on top of the long, narrow office building across the parking lot. This was a true giant of a gremlin, easily ten feet tall and as wide as three large men standing side by side. Someone in the group fired a flare gun in the gremlin’s direction. The red glare illuminated the dark parking lot, driving away the shadows. The gremlin’s pale skin was given a pinkish tint in the flare light. It was pulled taut over bulging muscles, as though it had grown much too large to be properly contained. In some places raw muscle glistened wetly through open tears.

“Shit! That’s got to be the boss,” Eron whispered.

“Remy!” Cal waved to get his brother’s attention. “Keep going! It’s the boss monster. There’s a chance it can’t leave school grounds.” He raised his voice for the benefit of the entire group.

The people in the back half of the convoy broke out in panic, running with everything that was left in their weary legs.

Cal was worried about people getting trampled, but he couldn’t do anything about it as the giant gremlin landed on the concrete with an audible thud. It bellowed and charged right for them.

“I’ll keep it busy!” Eron moved to meet it.

“Wait!” Cal reached out for his brother in vain. “We need a plan…”