Chapter 27 - Cliff Banger

  I’m not sure what I was expecting to find when we went outside, but it for sure wasn’t empty streets.

  That’s what we saw, though.

  The wind blew through the street, stirring up a few leaves and bits of trash, spinning into a small dust devil near the building across the road. Empty, dead cars were everywhere. What was missing were the people. Even on a slow weekend day, there were always people out and about on the streets of Boston, but not that day.

  “Where is everyone?” I asked aloud.

  “Hiding, most likely,” Alex replied. “They’re afraid. Justifiably so.”

  “Sure, but hiding in our apartments isn’t going to solve the problem,” I protested. Far from it. The only way to get strong enough to handle the monsters appearing all over was to face the monsters.

  “You and I know that, but how many people out there haven’t killed any of these creatures yet? How many of them are helpless? It doesn’t shock me that they’re hiding.”

  I grumbled under my breath a little. If people were going to hide rather than fight, that was going to make everything a hell of a lot more difficult. If every Bostonian fought back together, we could retake the city for ourselves, kick the monsters out, and win back some sort of normal lives again. It might not be the same as things were before, but it would at least be something better than this.

  Alex and I had come to the conclusion that the Event was likely global, or at least very widespread. It was day two and there was no help arriving. The Army hadn’t rolled in with troops, and helicopters hadn’t arrived with supplies. Heck, by this time if this mess was limited to Boston, someone outside the affected area should have been able to send in help by horse and buggy, if nothing else.

  We were on our own, which was going to be hard.

  “Well, let’s patrol toward the water. We’ll try the river first, then move toward the harbor along the edge of the city,” I said. “That seems like our best shot at winning you some more of those blue crystals so you can rank up.”

  “Thanks for that, Castle. With your help, I’m sure I can power up some.”

  We headed up the street in a roughly western direction, moving toward Lederman Park. I thought I’d seen activity there the day before, and since I didn’t think it was likely people hanging out there, it was probably monsters.

  As we walked, we saw more signs of the creatures that had taken up residence around us. A gigantic spiderweb hung between two buildings; I couldn’t spot the spider, but I knew it had to be there, somewhere. On top of the same building I spotted two of the monstrous bird-creatures building a nest. These were things we couldn’t face off against, not easily anyway. Not yet. We needed to get stronger first.

  We took the pedestrian bridge over Charles Street and Storrow Drive, but paused before descending from the bridge. It was better to get a good look at where we were headed, first.

  The park was a nice one, full of mowed lawns, benches, a few paths, and plenty of trees. In the distance, closer to the edge of the river, there were a few baseball diamonds. But that’s not all that was out there, not anymore.

  “Someone was a busy beaver last night,” Alex said as we stared.

  “Yup.”

  The center of the field used to be a wide open space. Now it was occupied by a set of wooden walls. Someone had chopped dozens of trees from the row of them that lined the river and then turned them into a palisade about ten feet tall. It was a proper fort, really. They’d mounded up dirt to create a low hill with a pit around it, then established roughly circular walls on top of the mound.

  “That must have taken them all night,” I said. I couldn’t imagine how they got that much work done so quickly! But then I recalled reading something about how Roman legions built a new camp every night when they were on the march, complete with crude walls. With enough hands and the right skills, I supposed anything was possible.

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  “Maybe. Can you see who ‘they’ are?” Alex asked. “I don’t see any movement down there.”

  Neither did I, at least at first. Then I saw it—a green head rising just above the pointed tips of the logs that made up the wall. Even at this distance, I knew what I was looking at.

  “Goblins,” I said, pointing.

  “Where?”

  “Just to the right of that darker log.”

  Alex spotted the goblin as well. He ducked down and turned toward me. “What are you thinking? Can we take these things on, or should be head elsewhere and try another target instead?”

  That was the million dollar question, wasn’t it? “I can’t see their tier at this range. I need a better look at them. Even if they’re tier one or two, we don’t know how many are down there or what defenses they have. Plus, we’d have to get through their walls. I’m strong, but I don’t know if I can break those logs.”

  Alex nodded. “Then we move on. Let them be, at least for now.”

  We descended the steps with care, then darted north along the river. I didn’t know if the goblins spotted us or not, but they didn’t chase, which was good enough for me. If they had come after us, I’d have been more than willing to fight them, but I had to wonder if fighting was the only option.

  After all, I’d reached a sort of peaceful arrangement with the Rat King. Maybe similar agreements could be made with the goblins, too? If some of these ‘monsters’ were smart enough to make agreements and keep them, peace could still work. It was at least worth a shot.

  We skirted the State Police barracks, which looked completely empty. I wondered where the police were at. Had they moved themselves to some central point? If they had, maybe that would be a good place to head toward. Join our strength with that of others.

  “We should check out the museum,” Alex said.

  “Why?” I asked. It was the Boston Museum of Science, and there were a lot of cool exhibits there, but from everything I’d seen so far, most of our old science wasn’t working anymore.

  “Maybe someone there knows more than we do,” Alex replied, already setting off onto the bridge.

  Stopped cars were everywhere, here. The traffic had been brisk when the Event hit. Now cars clogged the street, all of them empty. Many of them still had doors wide open, but others had been locked up before their owners left them.

  Here and there, I saw signs that there’d been fighting on the bridge; a bloodstain here, shreds of clothing there. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to make it obvious that this place wasn’t safe. We both kept tight grips on our weapons and our eyes peeled.

  As we got closer to the brick wall of the museum, things got explosive. Almost literally.

  The wall blew out toward us. I stepped between chunks of brick and Alex as quick as my Agility allowed. Pieces of mortar and brick rained down, smacking me in the head, face, and chest. Thankfully, my Natural Armor was high enough that it didn’t make much of an impact. I was pushed back a step by the force of those blows, and they hurt, but they didn’t so much as scratch my skin.

  Something big strolled out through the hole it had made in the wall. I couldn’t see what it was, at first. “Alex, get back! Something big and nasty coming our way!”

  “It’s Cliff,” he replied, chuckling to himself. “I can’t believe it’s Cliff!”

  I didn’t understand what he meant, at first. Who the heck was Cliff and what did that have to do with the explosion we’d just seen?

  Then the wind blew away the dust and I got a good look at what we were dealing with. It hadn’t been an explosion at all. All that flying brick was the result of something big making its exit from the museum—straight through the brick wall.

  It was a triceratops. Well, a triceratops skeleton, anyway. Now it was wandering around like it was a real dinosaur, and it looked seriously pissed off.

  “That’s Cliff,” Alex explained. “The museum has that skeleton on loan from somewhere, but that’s its name.”

  “Good to know what it’s called, but I don’t think it’s going to play fetch and heel,” I replied. Damn, that thing was big! “What’s the plan?”

  “What tier is it?”

  An excellent question. I stared at the creature and immediately saw the answer, which wasn’t awesome news. “Tier five!”

  It was the toughest thing we’d faced so far, by a long shot. Of course, I was tier six, so maybe I could beat it, but anything that high a tier probably had the capacity to bust through my Natural Armor. I was leaning toward discretion being the better part of valor. If we beat a retreat before it spotted us, then maybe we could get away. This thing was too big for us to face safely.

  “Alex, let’s back away slowly,” I said. “We can hide in the cars over there…”

  “Good plan,” he replied.

  We both backed away, moving onto the street. We’d almost reached the first row of cars when our movement caught Cliff’s eye. Since both of us were backing up, watching the dino carefully, we both saw it when his gaze turned on us. We did the smart thing and froze.

  “Can it see us if we’re not moving?” I asked.

  “How do you expect me to know what an undead dinosaur can and can’t see?” Alex hissed back.

  Then Cliff pawed the ground with one of his front claws. He looked for all the world like a bull scraping at the dirt, getting ready to charge. I knew what was about to happen just seconds before it did.

  “Alex…!”

  “I see it!”

  Cliff stopped pawing the ground and started a lumbering charge toward us. The first two steps were slow, but he built up steam with each pounding footfall. In seconds he was moving faster than the old me could run—which mean faster than Alex could run now.

  “Run!” I said.

  Alex did as I suggested, turning and bolting toward the cars, trying to put the vehicles between him and the beast.

  I kept my eyes locked on the triceratops bearing down on me and prepared myself to meet its charge.