Path of Dragons

Alyssa kept her hand on her pistol as she walked down the center of the street. Behind her followed Carmen, their son Miguel, and Trish. Bringing up the rear was Roman, who was holding his bow.

With her shotgun in hand, Trish complained, “Is all this really necessary?”

“Maybe. Maybe not,” Carmen said. “But I’ve watched enough zombie movies that I’m more than willing to be overly cautious.”

“There are zombies? Cool,” said Miguel.

“I still can’t believe you let him watch Walking Dead,” Alyssa muttered just loud enough that her wife could hear it.

“In my defense, I didn’t expect him to like it so much,” Carmen remarked. “Especially after the first season when the quality went downhill.”

“I liked it!” Miguel countered.

“Because you’re eight, and you don’t have taste. It’s not your fault. You just haven’t experienced enough variety to know when you’re watching trash,” Carmen stated. She reached out to ruffle his black hair. “But I still love you even if your taste leaves a lot to be desired.”

He dodged to the side, avoiding her hand as he whined, “Mom…c’mon…”

Alyssa ignored their back-and-forth as Carmen teased their son. Instead, she focused on her surroundings. It had been a troubling discovery to find that none of their vehicles worked. Even Carmen, who knew a bit about working on cars, had been stumped as to why they were inoperable. She’d tried to change the batteries and even inspected the spark plugs, but everything appeared to be in working order. They just wouldn’t start.

So, the group had been forced to head out on foot as they sought supplies at the local grocery store, Manning’s Market. It was only a couple miles away, so they reasoned that the trip shouldn’t prove too arduous.

By the time Alyssa and the others reached the end of their street, she was beginning to rethink that assessment – chiefly because of the hole that had been ripped in the side of one of the houses.

“How did we not hear that?” she asked, ready to draw her pistol. She also had an old machete sheathed on her other hip, but she hoped she wouldn’t need to get close to whatever was capable of tearing a hole in a building. “What even could do that?”

“I don’t know,” said Roman, having already nocked an arrow. “And I don’t want to find out, either.”

The house was barely standing, with a good portion of the roof having collapsed when something had torn through a load bearing wall.

“We need to check it,” Alyssa said. “In case someone inside needs help.”

Roman started to respond, and judging by his expression, he intended to argue for ignoring it. It was strange, how quickly he’d abandoned his role as a public servant dedicated to the safety of the townspeople. But then again, judging by what she’d seen so far, the town didn’t really exist anymore. Not in any way that mattered, at least.

“If someone’s hurt, I can help them,” said Trish, already moving to cross the lawn.

“Honey, don’t –”

She turned, backpedaling for a moment as she said, “It’s fine. It was probably just a –”

She never got the chance to finish her thought before something came tearing out of the house, moving so fast that Alyssa had difficulty tracking it. In the space of a second, it was already bearing down on Trish.

She screamed and tried to run, but as panicked as she was, she only got a step before stumbling. And then, the creature was upon her, latching onto a hastily raised forearm. Blood misted, and the sound of a breaking bone filled the air, accompanied by Trish’s agonized shout.

And then gunshots sounded.

Alyssa fired once. Twice. Then three times. Each shot took the furry creature in the ribs, but it didn’t release Trish’s arm. Suddenly, an arrow sprouted from just behind its foreleg. Then Alyssa heard the thwap of a bowstring before another joined the first.

It yelped, releasing Trish, who fell to the lawn where she clutched her arm as a mewling sound escaped from between her lips. But Alyssa only had eyes for the creature before her.

It resembled a wolf, though it was at least the size of a pony. And its coloring was different from any canine she’d ever seen. Predominantly black, the thing’s fur had green-and-blue streaks as well, which gave it a distinctly alien appearance. Alyssa advanced, firing her weapon over and over again as she emptied the magazine into the monster.

It didn’t die, though.

Instead, it leaped to its feet and stumbled back towards the house. It never got to its destination. As Alyssa fired her gun, Roman continued to loose one arrow after another until, after seven, it finally slumped to the ground. Still, it wasn’t dead, though that wouldn’t last much longer. Alyssa had been hunting with her father enough that she could recognize when an animal was on its last leg. Soon, it would bleed out.

She wasn’t willing to trust that assumption, though. So, Alyssa strode forward, dragging the machete from the sheath at her waist, until she stood over it. Then, without further hesitation, she reached back and chopped into the monster’s neck. The blade cut deep, splattering blood on her pants, but the monster still clung to life. So, she swung again, and, at last, it perished.

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Breathing hard, more from panic as exertion, she turned and demanded, “What the ever-living fuck was that?”

No one paid any attention to her, though. Instead, they’d all descended upon the injured Trish. When Alyssa joined them, she saw that the other woman’s arm was misshapen, covered in blood, and had bones sticking out in multiple places. More, it looked the wolf-creature’s claws had clipped Trish’s upper thigh, which was gushing blood. Clearly, it had hit an artery.

“You have to use your ability,” Carmen was saying.

“Spell…”

“What?”

“It’s a spell. Not an ability…”

“Whatever it’s called, use it now or you’re going to bleed out!” Carmen spat.

It made perfect sense, but still, Trish looked at Roman and waited for his approval before she closed her eyes and cast her spell. Alyssa felt something stir, almost like an ephemeral wind, before Trish’s body erupted into golden light. When it faded, her arm was entirely healed, and the bleeding had stopped.

“Whoa,” gasped Miguel, his eyes wide as saucers. “Magic.”

“Trish,” said Alyssa, holstering her pistol. As she shoved her machete back in its sheath, she spat, “What the hell were you thinking? You saw a house that looked like a monster had torn through it, and you thought you should just traipse across the lawn without any sort of precautions?! What the fuck were you thinking?”

“I…I don’t know…I just thought I could help,” she sobbed. “I didn’t think there was a monster. Why would I think there was a monster? I just thought…I don’t know…I don’t know what I thought…”

“You didn’t think at all!” Alyssa growled. “This isn’t –”

“Enough,” interrupted Roman, reaching out to grab her by the arm. “She knows that what she did was stupid, Alyssa. Just leave it. Nobody’s hurt, so we can just –”

Alyssa pulled away. “She just wasted her spell. That means she can’t use it again for a while.”

“It wasn’t a waste,” said Roman. “But it’s done, now. We can’t undo it, so we just have to keep going.”

Alyssa clenched her fists in frustration. If they didn’t take things seriously, they were all going to die. However, harping on Trish’s mistake wasn’t going to change anything. Hopefully, the woman had learned her lesson.

“Fine. But we need to do better.”

“Agreed,” Roman said, a steely glint in his eyes. He glanced at the pile of fur that had once been a monster, then asked, “So…what was that?”

“Looked like a wolf,” she said. “Sort of. Lots of things were wrong, though. Its snout’s too short, the fur is all the wrong colors, and its legs are a little longer than normal.”

“And it’s the size of a pony,” added Carmen, her hand on Miguel’s shoulder. She wasn’t going to let him get too far away, especially after what had just happened.

“That, too.”’

Carmen reached down to help Trish up, saying, “It’s a monster. Doesn’t matter where it came from. Maybe it’s a wolf that got mutated. That wouldn’t be that surprising, given the fact that Trish here just cast an honest-to-God healing spell. Or it could’ve been brought here from somewhere else. It might’ve just manifested for all we know. The point is that it doesn’t matter for now. All we need to know is that the world just got a lot more dangerous, right?”

“The people who lived there are probably dead, too,” Alyssa said, gesturing to the ruined house. “If they’re not, they ran away. No way they fought it off.”

“You don’t know that,” Trish said, wiping her tears. She must’ve forgotten that she was coated in blood, because she left red smears across her cheeks.

“If they had fought it off, it would’ve been injured. And I’m pretty damn sure doors couldn’t stop that thing. Hell, walls would barely slow it down,” Alyssa stated. “If they were still in that house, it would’ve killed them. Same with any other houses we see. Let’s just go to the store, get what we need, then head back home. We can hole up there until…”

She let the statement trail off because the idea of rescue seemed absolutely ridiculous. The city was gone. If those notifications were to be believed, the whole world had been randomized. That meant the army wasn’t coming. No – they were all alone, and if they wanted to survive, they needed to do so on their own.

Perhaps someone would eventually come. The government still existed, after all. But Alyssa expected that it would be a long time before they got around to rescuing anyone.

“What are you thinking?” asked Roman.

“I don’t think we should go back to the house,” she said. “Not permanently, at least. We need somewhere more defensible.”

Roman didn’t immediately respond. Carmen and Trish did, though. Neither were terribly supportive of the idea, but that wasn’t surprising, given their personalities. Carmen was concerned with uprooting Miguel, while Trish still wasn’t convinced they needed to move at all.

Miguel, for his part, seemed excited about it.

“Where?” asked Roman.

“I don’t know. Maybe the elementary school?” she suggested.

“Too open.”

“The bank?”

“Too small.”

“The station?” was her next suggestion.

Roman tapped his finger against his chin, then said, “You know what? That would probably work. It’s got size. It’s closer to the lake, so we would have an easier time getting water. And it’s sturdier than any house.”

Indeed, the police station was made of brick, and it was a FEMA-approved shelter. That, plus the fact that it was equipped with a sturdy fence and a relatively huge arsenal of weapons made it the perfect choice.

“Plus, we kind of need to go there anyway,” Roman said. “Once we’re sure Trish and your family are safe, we need to start working on the rest of the town. The station’s the best place to do that.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Alyssa said. She wasn’t nearly as concerned with her duty as she was with making certain that Carmen and Miguel were safe, but she hadn’t abandoned it altogether. “Store first. Then back to the house to gather our other supplies. We probably need to spend the night there before heading out first thing in the morning.”

Roman nodded.

For their part, the others only made minor objections. However, they were quickly convinced when Alyssa pointed at the house, reminding them that a monster had ripped its wall to pieces. After that, they fell into line.

So, with that, the group continued down the street as they made their way to the grocery store. When they reached the market over an hour later, they found that more than a few people had already picked it clean. There were still some supplies to be had, but it was far less than any of them hoped.

In the end, they had to be satisfied with one cart full of canned goods, another shopping cart filled with bottled water, and another with a variety of dry goods. Thus supplied, the group started back to the house, studiously ignoring the evidence of fighting they passed along the way. A few storefronts had been bashed in, and a couple of houses had taken even more damage than the one where they’d encountered the wolf monster.

Still, they didn’t see any other people, which they all found more than a little curious. Alyssa hoped that they were all just hiding, mostly because she didn’t want to think about the alternative.

Finally, they returned to the house, where they set about arranging everything they might need to take with them when they left for the station in the morning.

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