Page 2 of Monsters within Men
Noah stared at the creature.
It stared back.
Familiarity hit him like a punch to the gut; the all-consuming heavy net of his grief threatened to drag him under.Khyan.
It wasn’t the clumps of golden hair that stubbornly clung to the type’s scalp that reminded him of his dead boyfriend, nor was it its slight, skinny frame. It certainly wasn’t its grey scaley skin, adorned with weeping sores. It was, of course, its green, green eyes. Khyan’senchanted woodeyes. Noah had stared into them for hours at a time, while he ran his—
“LT? What are you doing?”
He turned to find Habib and Vitt staring at him. Aoife and Meredith must have sounded the alarm.Traitors. Covered in blood and grime and God-knows-what-else, they aimed their rifles through the bars of the carriage, where the type had resorted to gnawing at the metal with its teeth.
“Wait!”
He half-stepped towards it, but Vitt caught his arm.
“Noah,” she said, using that soft voice she’d used on him for the last eighteen months whenever she felt sorry for him. “That’snothim. Wasn’t ever him. You know that, right?”
“Of course I do.”
Get your shit together, Lieutenant.
Without further fanfare, Habib lifted his crossbow and shot a bolt through its brain. The clanging ceased.
A familiar ache of grief squeezed Noah’s heart as he dragged his eyes away from the twitching body on the floor.
Habib gestured behind him. “King has requested we rejoin his group near the merry-go-round. They’re swamped.”
“Let’s go then,” said Noah, pushing past them to lead the way.
For a moment, the crunching of broken glass underfoot was the only sound as they passed an array of carnival games and concession stands—blue paint almost entirely peeled away—and faded posters advertising prizes long gone. The one roller coaster Lightwater Amusement Park boasted, once towering high, was now slumped and broken, its carriages scattered on the floor like broken bones.
Overgrown weeds threatened to trip them on every step, but finally the rest of the squadron came into view, next to the carousel. He scanned the perimeter. Eight soldiers in total, scattered across the fairground, but all up and standing at least. Breathing a sigh of relief at every member of his flock being alive and accounted for, he raised his crossbow in the air to take down an incoming typeA. Crawling between two creepy-looking pink horses, it scampered on its hind legs and knees, desperate to get to the blood it smelled. Noah unloaded a bolt, and then another one. Down it went, tumbling over its deformed body, a child doing a forward roll.
Savannah waved at him. His eyes shot straight to the blood on her gloves.
“Who’s bleeding? Blue tape it, pronto,” he snapped.
He stepped towards her, but was interrupted by a panicked voice screaming, “Forrest!” and then, “Noah!”
He didn’t need his interface notification to identify it as Sam’s voice. Their newest recruit sounded even younger than his sixteen years. The adrenaline coursing through his blood had him turning and instinctively running in the correct direction before he even looked at the map overlay on his screen.
Why had Sam left formation?Noah gritted his teeth. Now wasn’t the time.
Noah charged towards Sam, where three typeBs had corralled the young man—child—into a corner created by the ticket booth and a brick wall. Sam raised his rifle and fired a round, and then another, into the nearest type’s brain. It dropped like a stone. Then came the telltale click of an empty clip.
Though he should have been focussed on his attacker, Sam glanced past the remaining monster to look at Noah. Trusting him to save him. Noah unshouldered his rifle and took down another type within the space of a blink. There was still one more, however, and it lurched towards Sam, who let loose a scream that consumed Noah’s soul.
But then Wolf was there, acting every bit the beast he was named after. Lunging towards the type, the German shepherd latched his sharp canines onto the type’s neck, spraying dark blood everywhere as he tore through its carotid arteries.
“Good job, boy,” Noah said, reaching Sam at last. He scratched Wolf’s ears quickly so nobody would see him petting the canine unit. He looked up to find Sam cradling his torso like he couldn’t believe he was alive. “Jackson, I told you to reserve your bull—”
A type fell from the sky.
No, not the sky, from the roof of the ticket booth.
It lunged towards Sam, jumping onto his body sideways to clamp its legs around his thigh, a monkey clinging to a swaying tree. With its agile, sharply pointed claws, a parody of the human hands they once were, the type slashed at Sam’s body.
“Get it off me,” Sam screeched, turning this way and that, pushing the type’s face by the jaw with his gloved hand.
