The mass of red dots was already starting to shift toward us. Thankfully they were painfully slow. I could take a nap before they’d reach this hall.
“Carl, thank you,” Brandon said. “You are helping us to your own detriment. You are a good man.”
I smiled. “If we get to the point where we don’t help each other anymore, that’s when we stop being human.” I felt something catch in my throat, and I coughed.
Zev (Admin): Carl, that was great. Can you say that for me again, but this time, don’t cough.
I stopped dead. My neck tingled with goosebumps. I knew we were being watched and followed, but having someone actually comment in my mind was one of the most unnerving sensations I’d ever felt.
Carclass="underline" Are you kidding me with this? No, I’m not going to say it again. Have you been watching this whole time?
Zev (Admin): You and my other clients. This save-the-elderly storyline is playing great with most viewers. That said, about 20% of the focus group thinks you’re wasting time and being stupid. “Dead weight,” I think was the term some of them have used. But most of them understand what you’re doing. Donut is right, however. It’s a little dry. Maybe you can… Oh shit, oh fuck. Carl, Donut. Run. Run to the safe room now.
“No, Jack, Jack, no!” Yolanda called.
I turned to see Jack, Cincinnati Bengals hat sitting cockeyed on his head. He’d stood to his full height, using the wheelchair with Mrs. McGibbons and Donut as a brace. His pants were down to his ankles, dick out, pissing directly on the wall.
38
The next several seconds seemed to happen in slow motion. Donut was the first to react. She jumped up, claws out, as if she meant to decapitate the elderly man. She pulled back at the last moment, instead pushing off his shoulder and sailing through the air, flying until she landed three platforms down.
Yolanda also reacted, just a fraction of a moment behind Donut. She didn’t pull her attack. An arrow sprouted from the side of Jack’s skull, pinning the hat to his head. She’d been forced to shoot him, but it didn’t matter. She’d reacted too late. The now-dead man fell off the trailer and to the ground, still pissing in death. The curved pee stain on the dungeon wall started to sizzle and boil. Smoke rose directly from the point of contact. I realized I was running, running toward the back of the train. Behind me, Brandon shouted. The safe room was only a hundred feet away. Chris and Imani were already picking up speed. The second man on the last car, Randall, went flying off the train as it lurched forward. He hit the ground with a loud, painful crunch, his walker flying over his head just as the monster appeared.
“Holy fuck!” I cried. “Donut, run!” I continued to sprint toward the thing.
Purple and black smoke kept hissing and spitting from the wet stain on the wall. The monster coalesced, coming into existence ten feet behind Yolanda and Randall, just above the prone form of the now-dead Jack. Yolanda hit the monster with two arrows, and the shafts just shattered against the smoke. It didn’t even form a health bar, indicating she’d done no damage whatsoever.
The thing was fifteen feet tall and just as wide, made of fulminating, sizzling black and purple smoke. It had six legs, each gleaming with obsidian claws the size of rakes. The claws seemed to be the only corporeal parts of its body. The legs were all the same, but the two forward claws were longer, finger-like with extra joints. A flickering, horned skull sat amongst the smokey mass, its eyes made of glowing red fire that poured smoke. It was the skull of some sort of animal, maybe a colossal badger, but with curved, goat-like horns. It roared, and the ground shook.
Rage Elemental – Level 93
The first recorded summoning of a Rage Elemental, blah, blah, blah. If you are reading this, you likely don’t give a shit about the monster’s (rather interesting and tragic) history. You’re probably running. It’s not going to matter. The almost-indestructible Rage Elemental is said to only dissipate after it has claimed 666 souls.
In other words, you are fucked. Absolutely, bite-the-pillow, fucked.
A magic missile bounced off the monster’s head, and a health bar appeared for a half-second before disappearing. It’s self-healing.
I came skidding to a stop as the train rocketed past me. Donut landed on my shoulder. She was screaming something about not running unless I ran too. Yolanda stood over the fallen form of Randall. The creature was still growing, the last of the black and purple mist twirling around it.
“Fog!” I yelled. Donut, who had read my mind, activated her scroll of Confusing Fog at the same moment.
The monstrosity finished forming just as the wall of fog billowed into the hallway. The creature fell to all six legs. The monster spun toward us, impossibly fast, its movements cleaving through the cloud like a boat cutting through waves. It ripped at the dead form of Jack, and the man’s body shredded. It leaped forward, clawing at Yolanda and Randall.
I never got to know Yolanda Martinez as much as I would’ve liked to.
But I didn’t have to know her very well to know who she was. I knew she was a quiet, sweet woman who’d been a nurse her entire life. She’d worked sixty hours a week for years to pay for her son to go to college. Her husband had owned a landscaping company. At only 4’11, the woman had a presence much bigger than her stature suggested. There was a warmth about her, something I’d never felt as a kid. Just being in her presence imparted a feeling of longing in me, something difficult to describe. Like I wished I could relive my childhood, but this time, I’d have her as my mother, and she would have never, ever left me.
When the apocalypse came for Yolanda, she didn’t once waver in her dedication to her patients. She was quick to laugh, quick to smile.
And even though Yolanda Martinez was just as terrified as the rest of us, she stood her ground against a force she couldn’t possibly hold back.
She lived her entire life as a hero. She died as one, too.
One moment they were there, the next they were gone. Through the still developing cloud of confusing fog, the monster’s claws ripped forward, cutting through the nurse and the elderly man as if they weren’t even there. Yolanda’s body disintegrated in a red cloud of ribbon-like flesh like she was a knitted sweater that had been unraveled all at once.
The monster didn’t even break stride, it came for us despite the fog. It swung a mighty claw just as I smashed down on Protective Shell.
The monster flew back, as if it was a charging dog that had reached the end of its leash. The transparent, glowing, semi-circle shell spread around me, completely filling this section of the hallway, floor to ceiling.
The rage elemental hissed and squealed with fury as it went flying back, skidding. It jumped up, charging again. Its badger head made it through the shield, but the moment its giant claws touched the force field, it rebounded yet again. It seemed the sharp tips of the monster’s claws couldn’t make it through the protection.
“Holy shit!” I cried. I hadn’t expected that to work. “Run!” Donut leaped off my shoulder as I turned and rushed toward the others, who were struggling to get everyone into the safe room. The individual cars were too wide for the entrance. Imani and Chris were bodily pulling people off their chairs and tossing them into the open door.
The round shield remained firmly in place, and I felt an odd pop in my ears as we left its area of effect. The spell was only going to last 20 seconds, and I’d already wasted five of them being dumbfounded.