‘HAG’—god I cringed so hard even thinking that nickname now — Not cool, past Kai, not cool. Anyway, she dropped my hand after I got running, and together we rushed headlong towards the high school.
"Thank…" I puffed between breaths. "...You."
"Yeah, yeah, whatever," She hissed. "I'm doing this because it's the right thing to do, not because I like you, Kai. Plus, your friends would probably knife me or something if I didn't."
Ah, that meant my friends were alive! I winced, though. Things weren't exactly cordial between her and my group of friends — especially during our last year of high school. It'd long since become a twisted back and forth of low-level sniping insults, rude stares, and the occasional explosive argument. I really hoped we could finally calm it down. I hated it — I never actively participated, that was for sure.
"Oh…" I mumbled as we slowed down a little. The raccoon hadn't chased us. "I'm sorry."
"Sorry for what?" She demanded.
When I glanced at her, I felt a bubbling anxiety well up in the pit of my stomach. The feeling of being unable to fit into my own skin returned again with a vengeance. "For… my friends?"
She rolled her eyes. "Forgive me if I don't believe it."
"I, um…" I stammered. Damn, but she was pretty. Her face was this perfect blend between approachable and hot. It was the type of face about which one of my friends had commented, "It's a shame she didn't decide to be a cheerleader or something. Big girl-next-door vibes."
Of course, none of my friends were cheerleaders. The school had a hard time filling that role now that it wasn't the eighties. Most of the girls who did that around here were ultra-christians.
We slowed when we realised we'd lost the monster, and stopped to catch our breath.
"Your name is Chloe, right?" I asked tentatively. How did she get her eyeliner so perfect? Plus her shoulder-length hair, which was straight for a couple inches before it devolved into ringlets.
She snorted. "Oh, you know my actual name? Not just going to call me a ‘hag’?"
"Uh—" I stammered, shrinking in on myself. "I… uh… you know what that stands for, right?"
"Nope." She said angrily. "All I know is you're the one who came up with it."
Was it a good idea to tell her? Probably not. Was the truth better than a misunderstanding? Almost certainly.
"It's Hot Angry Goth," I said, wincing and fighting a flush that crept up from my neck. "Because you were hissing at everyone. Uh, and it got kind of solidified when you deliberately tripped my friend Estelle in the cafeteria that one time."
Her face went red, and she looked away. "Ew, what the fuck? That's so cringe.”
She was right. It was absolutely ‘cringe’ — it was just a stupid joke I blurted in the moment.
Anger surged immediately in her tone, though, and she flashed me a furious glare. “That fucking nickname fucked my life up, Kai, so fuck you. Fuck your friend, too, she needed to catch some fucking consequences.”
I winced, my stomach boiling with… shame, I think. Yeah. I wanted to apologise. I still thought it was a misunderstand, or… something. Truthfully, I couldn’t get my stupid brain to actually consider the idea of what she was saying. Like a coward, I only addressed the last part of her speech.
"What did she do?"
Already, Chloe was closing off. She shrugged. "Nothing, it doesn't even matter."
"Okay…"
Like a pendulum swinging, her rage returned, and she spat, "You know what, I don't need your fucking judgement right now. I saved your fucking life, you useless sack of shit."
I took a step away from her and stared in shock. What the heck? That wasn’t what I meant!
"I wasn't… I wasn't judging! I was just—" I stammered, trying to clear the air — to get an explanation out, but my breath caught.
Then, she cut a hand through any words I might’ve added. "I don't care. Let's just get back to the high school so we can go back to avoiding each other."
What on Earth was going on. This conversation was like riding a rollercoaster blindfolded. She was acting like I'd spent all of middle and high school bullying her, but we'd never even spoken until now. Sure, my friends had been kinda shitty sometimes, but I'd always thought it was pretty… not great. It's not like she didn't hit back, either!
Chloe started walking again, not waiting to see if I'd follow. I jogged for a moment to catch up, but neither of us spoke. She was right. Head to Edgewood High, our old school, then go our separate ways. Gosh, she was scary.
Edgewood High school was what you'd expect, out here in a rich, but small and fringe suburb of a minor city. The main building was a huge L shaped thing made of red brick, concrete, and glass. It looked like all the creativity had been surgically removed from the architect before they designed it.
Then, there was the newer building set into the crook of the L. That building looked like the first architect's son was attempting to make up for his father's lack of aesthetic vision.
In the open space between the two buildings was a sort of plaza area with trees, benches, the sculpture of some old guy, plus a bunch of gross drinking fountains. Out beyond and behind the modern building, a set of open grass sports fields were sitting with their pitch markings fading. Around the whole school, a brick fence stood strong and suddenly very useful.
As we approached, I could see people busy pushing cars around. It wasn't until they began to tip one on its side that I realised they were blocking off the front of the school with a makeshift barricade.
“Hey!” Chloe called out. “Found another one!”
“Were there many monsters in the school?” I asked as a few people broke off to greet us.
She grunted, but was nice enough to answer despite her dislike of me. “Like one or two squirrels, I think. It’s the elementary school that’s the problem. There’s something nasty going on there, but we can’t tell because the windows don’t work anymore.”
“The windows don’t work anymore?” I asked, confused.
“Yup,” she said, popping the P sound. “Like they’re tinted by the worst black-grey smog you’ve ever seen. Only place you can even enter is the front door, but the two folks who went inside didn’t come out. So yeah, the Fire Captain dude said it’s off limits.”
“Fire Captain, he’s in charge?”
“Yup,” she said, but didn’t elaborate further.
Alright then. The other folks were here now anyway.
The one to speak was an older looking dude who was fighting a losing battle against hair loss. What he wasn’t fighting a losing battle on was his build. Holy heck, this guy clearly worked out a whole lot— Ah, almost like it was his job.
“I’m the fire captain,” he said, then grimaced. “Or at least, I was until all of this happened and all my engines stopped working. Can I get your name, kid?”
“U-um,” I stammered, still taking him in, along with the two firefighters beside him. “Uh… Kaiden Aguilar.”
Pulling out a notepad from his shirt pocket, he noted my name down and waved me through. “Finn, can you give him the run-down?”
“Sure thing cap,” one of the firefighters said.
Finn was a tall dude, with the typical firefighter’s body but a face that was just a little… off, somehow. It was too angular. He seemed like a pretty genuine guy from his smile, though. Well, or maybe I just really liked smiles. Especially on guys, like… guys were always supposed to be tough, so when you saw one give you a big goofy grin… it was nice.
“So, yeah,” he said, when the Captain wandered off with Chloe for what seemed like a debrief. “Welcome to what’s left of the Edgewood suburb.”
He started out with a cheerful tone, but when we both realised how morbid the statement was, we wilted. God, how many people had died in the past few hours. This was probably worldwide too, if I had to guess, which meant… fuck, there were probably already a billion or more dead.
“How many…” I began, but my throat was too dry and I had to clear it. “How many people made it here?”
“Edgewood is about eight thousand people, but we’ve only had two and a half turn up so far. There’s a lot of dead in the houses,” he said seriously. “We were going door to door originally, since that was what the cops wanted, but then they got jumped by a demon bear thing and were slaughtered. After that, we basically had to sneak around trying to find people before the monsters did. It’s like for every one raccoon, squirrel, or bear that were in the area, there’s ten or twenty of them now.”
“What about the rest of the city?” I asked, terrified of the answer.
“We had two people make it back from the inner city,” he said, closing his eyes and shaking his head. “One died of his wounds before we could do anything for him. The last guy, a father who had a real old car he drove to work sometimes, said it was chaos. Monsters way scarier than what we have in Edgewood just… slaughtering everyone. As for further out of the city, we’ve had a few people come in. Seems the real insane shit is out there in the country. Mountain lions the size of cars and stuff.”
Fuck. It was just like the angel said it would be. The ‘Storm’ was twisting our world, taking what was already there and changing it into some monstrous parody of how it used to be. All those people, too. No understanding of what was happening, suddenly assaulted by hideous creatures. People watching their loved ones get torn apart by what used to be woodland animals… It was awful, and… oh god, the deaths would keep going too. This wasn’t the end. This was just the beginning.
“My mum and dad were down there in the city,” I said, feeling sad but, like… not overwhelmingly so. They were probably dead already. It was hard to mourn for them with how titanic the scale of the ongoing tragedy was.
“Ah shit, I’m sorry buddy,” Finn said with a compassionate look. “We’re still getting folks like you coming in, maybe they’re hunkered down in an office tower or whatever.”
“Maybe…” I mumbled, then remembered. “Oh! I have some stuff for the Captain, I guess. I met this chick called Silver out there, she helped me.”
“Oh, boss wants to know about her!” Finn said, and turned to look out for where he was still speaking to Chloe. “Come on.”
We trotted back over to just inside the barricade and approached the Fire Captain. He looked up when we approached and Chloe muttered something, shooting me a look before she left.
“What can I do for you?” the man asked.
Finn gestured to me. “Kid here met with that Silver girl that folks have been talking about. Said she told him some stuff?”
The Captain’s eyebrows rose. “That so?”
“Yeah, um,” I said, unsure where to start. I decided to take the garbage bag off my shoulder and hand it to him. “This is full of squirrel teeth and armour plates. She said that anything that comes from monsters is way better at killing them than normal stuff. She had this axe made out of one of their teeth and just… chopped them to bits. Oh, and she also said that the metal plates might be better at stopping attacks than regular stuff too.”
“Huh,” he grunted, staring at the bag pensively. “How’d she know these would work for killing them?”
“She said she tested it,” I shrugged. “Kitchen knife did jack shit. Woodsplitting axe just knocked the squirrels around. Guns got a bit further, but ultimately couldn’t get through bone. The squirrel tooth axe though — it cracked their skulls like eggs.”
“If that’s true, it’s extremely helpful,” he said, then sighed. “It’d be better if we could hear it from her though. People have been coming in for hours saying she was the one who sent them here. Hell, I wasn’t even intending to set up here until people started talking about this place. It makes sense, especially with that old brick wall surrounding the fields. Did she say when she was coming in?”
Doing my very best to keep a straight face, I replied, “I don’t think so? She was talking as though she didn’t intend to come in at all tonight.”
He grimaced. “Let’s hope she lives through the night then. We need all the fighters we can get our hands on. Too many people were given what the kids are calling crafting classes.”
“Yeah, I got one of those,” I said. Shit, I felt terrible for not revealing that I was Silver, but… I just couldn’t.
“What did you get?” he asked, looking only vaguely curious about the answer.
“Um, Tinker? I’m pretty sure I can actually turn the monster parts into weapons if you bring me the stuff,” I said hopefully. I just wanted to be useful!
My offer of weapons brightened him up immediately. “That actually sounds good. Finn, after this is over, can you get Kaiden here set up with the other crafters? I think Charles could make use of the boy.”
“I was hoping to see my friends, too,” I interjected quickly. I didn’t want to get whisked off too fast.
“If they're here, you'll find them by asking around. I don’t have the full list of survivors. My wife is doing admin work in the school offices if you want to ask her.”
I nodded eagerly. “Thank you, and I’ll get right on making those weapons. We have tools here, right?”
“I believe so. Alright, Finn, show him to the workshops.”