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“Who the hell are the Others?”
“They’d call themselves the originals,” Order explains to me. “They’re the monsters who have stalked humanity from the beginning. They were not made in a laboratory as we were. They were conjured out of the horror of the human spirit.”
“So you mean…”
“Vampires and werewolves,” Order says.
At this point, I just want Obigor’s dog food, oh, and to get far the fuck away from here. I am planning my escape from this strangeness as quickly as possible. Any loyalty I felt to Order is quickly eroding in the face of explosions, monster battles, and now the revelation that vampires and werewolves are trying to kill a World War Two era set of cryptid monsters. This isn’t just weird, this is incredibly dangerous.
“How far out is Justice?” Order asks.
“About an hour, I think. We took different routes. don’t want to convoy. It’s night too. So we need to be careful.”
“Just as well you blew the roof off,” I mutter.
Stealth gives me a hard stare. I wonder if that intimidates most people. I do find myself having the odd urge to freeze in place, so perhaps it does work on me after all.
“If I can blow the roof off, it wasn’t that useful in the way of protection anyway. We need to weld it shut once Justice and his brood get here. I don’t think the Others have any idea where our backup locations are, but they’re hunting,” Stealth says.
“Alright, well, I’m going to…” I start.
“Stay,” Order snaps firmly. “I don’t want you going anywhere. This is dangerous. Sit down and wait. Your friend will be here soon enough.”
The problem with vaults is that they are single entry and egress. The problem with Order is that I cannot make a move. Those eight eyes allow him to pay attention to his periphery without looking directly at me.
Order and Stealth watch the hole in the roof, standing guard together. Obigor passes out on my lap, and I try to keep myself from making a run for it that I know will never work. It’s times like this I hate that my wounds have forever weakened me. I might not be able to escape the vault if I was fully physically able, but at least I’d have the chance.
I have to keep Sally in mind. She’s coming. She’ll help me, and I’ll help her. We’ll both get the absolute hell out of dodge. It’s going to be okay just as soon as Sally gets here.
6
“They’re here!”
I must have fallen asleep along with Obigor. I startle awake at some unknown time of the night or maybe early morning. Justice is standing inside the vault, his wings tucked tightly behind his back with the effort to get in through the relatively narrow hole above. He is a mothman, and he looks like one. He is tall, he has large moth wings and big red moth eyes, and he has a very particularly long and curled tongue that I understand to be very, er,effective.
I don’t see Sally.
“Where is Sally?” My voice is sharper than I want it to be.
“I’m here!” She steps out from behind Justice, whose stupid moth wings and massive monster stature make it possible to hide a much cherished friend completely. She rushes over to me, looking like she’s missed me almost as much as I’ve missed her.
She brings a rush of normality into a very strange situation. The two of us are just so pedestrian and human compared to the one, two, three mutants who surround us. It is such a huge relief to see her. I feel tears pricking my eyes as I wrap my arms around her and give her a big hug.
“Where the hell have you been?” I try not to cry the words at her.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I got busy.”
Sounds like an understatement to me, but all that matters is that she’s okay. She looks the same as she always has, pretty red hair and all the expected features of Celtic heritage. I do think she looks tired, but she has been the captive of a mothman for weeks. God only knows what ravages she has endured during that time.
Before I can murmur an escape plan in her ear, she’s pulling back and smiling at me in the way she smiles when she knows something that I don’t know yet. The next words out of her mouth are the most confusing ones I’ve heard in a long time.
“I need to go check on the kids,” she says. “Come with me? I need an extra pair of hands.”
Kids? What kids? Sally and I have always been career girls. We don’t have kids or plans for them. Maybe they had to rescue some locals on their way through. Maybe…
All I know is that she’s leading me up and out of the vault, and nobody is stopping us. Before her arrival I wasn’t allowed near the dangerous surface, but for some reason nobody seems to question Sally one bit.
When we reach the surface, I see that there’s another car parked next to mine. A black sedan. It doesn’t draw much in the way of interest to me, because I am much more concerned by the prospect that children have somehow been dragged into this situation.
