Amazon Apocalypse 2: Chapter 54

The first apartment complex I’d visited painted a pretty grim picture of Cromwell. This was where he’d kept his lowest-value merchandise, as the second set of guards I had to kill put it.

Apparently, this was where the wives and girlfriends of men who refused to join him ended up. They had to do whatever Cromwell and his men demanded of them. And all the while, they had two decomposing bodies and numerous severed heads lining the fence across the street—presumably those of the men they’d loved—to stare at.

I couldn't make out much between all the sobbing and crying, but I was gathering that Cromwell and his men had made sure to put the severed heads of brothers, fathers, husbands, and boyfriends where each woman could see them out her window. It was a cruel and twisted way of encouraging people to join his organization.

Any man who rejected Cromwell's offer knew that their corpse would be used to torment their loved ones. Perhaps I'd been wrong to focus on dealing with the Trolls and Ogres first. They only ate people. Cromwell and his crew tortured them.

"Don't worry, it's all over now. I'm getting you out of here," I promised a sobbing woman.

She wrapped her arms around me, her tears staining my shirt. I didn't normally think that I had a very comforting face, but perhaps my charisma bonuses were changing that.

"They gutted him! Beat him to a bloody pulp and then executed him in the street while I watched helplessly..." she wailed, tears coming in thick streams.

"And they'll pay for it. If you can remember their names and faces, you should tell Terrance. If whoever did it is still alive, we'll make sure they are brought to justice." I gave her back an awkward pat.

I really wasn't any good at this.

Despite being locked away in here, she was all the way at level 8. That meant she likely would have made a capable warrior if she'd been allowed to continue leveling. It reminded me of what Craig had tried to do to Bridget and Sakura, stiffing their growth.

I wasn't particularly skilled at comforting frightened and hurt women, but I did my best until Terrance and the militia arrived.

"There are a lot more women here than I thought. We might need to radio back for more people to assist us," Terrance said as he surveyed the women lining the halls.

They'd been packed in six to a room, with most of them sleeping on the floor. How had Cromwell been feeding all these people?

"Radio back for some civilians to come help. I think these women are tired of seeing armed men in uniform. Margaret, Sakura, and Bridget should come," I suggested.

Terrance agreed before relaying my request.

This first building had ruined my good mood, so I was eager to move on. Fortunately the others weren't nearly as bad as the first one had been. Most were simply workshops where the women inside sweated away over benches littered with supplies.

An organization as big as Cromwell's required a near-constant supply of food, so several restaurants had been repurposed into kitchens. Most of these supposedly weren't under Cromwell's control; they were controlled by someone associated with him. In actuality, they were fully under his sphere of influence, so they might as well have been his shops.

In practice, that meant I had to deal with someone somewhere between level 15 and 25. These were the people who formed the backbone of those who had maintained Cromwell's sphere of influence. They were weaker powers, carving out wealth and opportunity for themselves by seeing to Cromwell's needs—either directly or indirectly.

They worked for Cromwell much in the same way that all the scrap collectors scrounging the city for wire worked for me. I didn't employ them or tell them what to do, but I created a system that would make them rich and comfortable, if they did so. The main difference between my people and Cromwell's people, however, was that with me everyone was free to make their own choices and use the obelisk as they saw fit.

For Cromwell, only his key subordinates could embark on such entrepreneurial ventures. And those that did were given a steady supply of prisoner labor to make it work. It was a heavy-handed approach, that I didn't think would scale much further than it already had.

I'd found the amount someone cared about their work often depended on their compensation for that work. And I doubted people who weren't getting paid at all were too concerned about the quality of what they were producing.

I cleared those stores out, killing anyone too closely associated with Cromwell who didn’t surrender to be tried for their crimes. My impression of the man and his organization only got worse throughout the day. If it wasn't for Terrance and the rest of the militia making arrests, I might have simply wiped out anyone I found with a Bandit class.

But if even one in ten were redeemable, as Chuck had been, I wanted to make sure they were given a chance to prove themselves. In his case, all it took was exploding his head—and forcing him to regenerate a brain free of what I’m sure were some pretty nasty memories—a few times for a clean slate.

The hardest batch to free were those who'd associated with Cromwell of their own free will. These were the lovers of Cromwell's direct subordinates—and it showed. Cromwell had taken over a gated community for them. Instead of being crammed into tiny apartments, each of them got a rather luxurious house. There were even a few generators running and some of them had electricity.

Though life here seemed good, they weren't as far along as we were downtown.

The trouble was that these people didn't want to be freed of Cromwell's influence. So long as their brothers, husbands, sons, or whoever it was Cromwell wanted kept in line behaved themselves, they remained under his protection and were free to do as they pleased. Most of them seemed to have resumed whatever it was they'd been doing before the integration.

I even found one woman with a microscope staring at a petri dish and what looked to be a tissue sample from a troll. I would have liked to ask her about her discoveries, but she turned to me as soon as I spotted her and yelled, "You're not supposed to be here! Guards! Guards! Oh, where are the guards?" She fretted nervously as she adjusted her glasses.

I left the gated community and reunited with Terrance. Sakura, Bridget, and Margaret had caught up with us.

"Seems like those people back there don't care about being let out." I shrugged. "We could make them leave and come with us to Crownhill, but they wouldn't be happy about it… and I don't want to make needless trouble for ourselves. Some of them might have classes at a high enough level to defend themselves. Those who don't will hopefully come to their senses and head somewhere safer."

"I suspect a few monsters rampaging up and down the streets ought to change their tune. Now that Cromwell's people are dead or have been arrested, they're without protection," Margaret said, then shrugged.

"Besides, if they don't want our help, then they won't get it." Sakura scowled as she stared at the beautiful, gated community.

I chuckled as I realized what she was thinking. "Sakura, you used to live around here, didn't you?"

"Yeah. Stupid squatters..." Sakura grumbled. "They tore my stuff apart already. I caught one of those women wearing my favorite dress."

I wrapped an arm around her shoulders to comfort her. This, at least, felt far more natural.

"Don't worry, Sakura. When the time comes, I'll make sure you have hundreds of dresses that are out of this world! Well, from out of this world, at any rate."

She gave my hand a comforting squeeze. "Leave these fools to their fate. We've already helped everybody who wants to be helped."

I offered to visit Sakura's old place in the gated community with her. We ended up breaking in, taking all the surviving stuff we could fit into our bags of holding, and then leaving.

"My spare car is completely trashed," Sakura moaned. "First my new one. Now the spare, too."

I placed a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. "Don't worry. You can always borrow my truck."

Sakura gave me a playful shove.

By the end of the day, we’d rescued all the survivors who wanted our help, bringing them back within the Shelter’s fortifications. When Sakura and I returned to Crownhill, we found Terrance hard at work taking testimonies from all the rescued women.

"You certainly have your work cut out for you, figuring out who's who. I bet you've never dealt with this many suspects and witnesses before. There's got to be at least a thousand witnesses and nearly a hundred suspects."

"More than that, actually." Terrance jotted down a note on his notepad, then glanced up at me. "And what do you mean by me? Aren't you—"

"Ah, I think I hear Bridget calling me. She desperately needs my company. You know how it is," I chuckled as I slipped away.

I wrapped one arm around Sakura's waist and the other around Bridget's as she came up to us before scampering off. Part of the benefit of being in charge was not needing to sort through the boring, tedious bullshit—like interviewing hundreds of witnesses. I'd leave that job to Terrance.

I checked in with Margaret again.

"Do you think killing Cromwell will make the other people from the prison keep their distance?" I asked.

Margaret shrugged. "If that won't, nothing will—short of executing the other two ‘Kings’, at least."

I stood up straighter. "You think I should do that? We haven't gotten a notification from the System about finishing its little mission to consolidate rule over the shard… maybe that's what it's waiting for."

I found myself ready to see to the task right away. After what I'd seen today, what Cromwell's organization had been up to, I wanted to put a stop to the remaining leaders from the prison right away. But Margaret had other ideas.

"No, don't do that." She shook her head. "I'm in touch with the other shelters. They're overwhelmed as it is by all the new people asking for their help and protection. It's the same for us, too. Taking out Cromwell may have destroyed a nasty and evil organization, but it also disrupted the delicate balance that's formed here since the integration."

"So... you want me to leave the other two be?" I frowned. I wasn't so sure about that.

"I want to try diplomacy first," Margaret replied. "I want to see if the remaining Two Kings can be bargained with—now that they know we're negotiating from a position of strength. Perhaps they'll see the value in the rule of law."

"And if they don't?" Somehow I doubted a man who called himself ‘Caesar’ would let go of his budding empire so easily.

Margaret shrugged. "Then we'll have bought ourselves a week to get the people we saved today settled in and clear the streets again. You took out the leadership of Cromwell's organization, but there were plenty of low-level thugs and enforcers still on the loose. Keeping the roads clear will remain a challenge—one we won't be able to handle if we make it an even bigger challenge by decapitating the other organizations that operate out of the prison."

"I don't know..." I didn't think that leaving the prison alone was the wisest course of action. Who knew what was happening there?

"I'm convinced that I can prevent more deaths through talking and delaying things. I've already spoken to some of the other groups through the radio. Everyone is nervous and scared. We hold all the cards right now… Well, the card that counts—meaning you."

I sighed. "Alright. You'll have a little more than a week. But you can let them know that if they don't turn over a new leaf, the same thing that happened to Cromwell will happen to them. I meant what I said when I said I was going to reestablish law and order on this shard."

Margaret smiled. "I didn't realize how much you meant it. And a week should be plenty of time to get everyone settled before another big shakeup."

I left Margaret's office to find where Bridget had disappeared to when I went upstairs. She was in the kitchen of what had once been a local fast food joint. It was the very same place Sakura and I had raided for donuts what seemed like an age ago.

Bridget wanted to stay the night so she could help train a few aspiring chefs. Apparently, there were quite a few women who'd picked up a Cook job while working for Cromwell's followers. Now that their fates were in their own hands, they needed a steady source of income. I'd given them all a small stipend of credits to use at the obelisk from my own account, but that would only last them a week or two.

Bridget was intent on helping them get the hang of their jobs.

Normally, I would have vetoed the idea. Me hanging around Crownhill was dangerous because of my Death Curse. That was the whole reason Sakura and I had retreated to my farmhouse in the first place. But with Sharky on patrol, the militia had reported no notable spike in monster activity.

The walls were quiet, so I reluctantly agreed. We'd need to find a place to stay for the night, though. I had to ask Frank about where a good place might be to stay.

"Don't sweat it, Carter. We actually have a place already reserved for you. It’s all yours!" Frank led me to a rooftop apartment in one of the buildings that made up the new, outer walls. The windows of the apartment faced the settlement and we looked down on the Obelisk and the Shelter around it.

I sat on the balcony facing the Obelisk, fiddling with the items I had for sale. The Obelisk worked so long as you had a direct line of sight to it, and from as high up as we were I could still see it clearly. One of these days apartments like this were going to be very valuable for anyone doing business in the city.

Anyone who bought or sold a lot of goods would want one of these places.

"Carter, close the window and come in here. I don't know whose bed this was before the integration, but I found some clean sheets," Sakura called from behind me.

I held up a hand. "One moment. Just trying to get a bit more copper wire..."

Sakura went silent for a while. Then, I heard the click of her heels as she came up behind me. She cleared her throat, then in a professional tone said as she tapped my shoulder, "Carter Smith! I need to see you in my office right away."

I finally turned my head and saw Sakura dressed much as I'd always known her to dress when she ran her father’s business. She was dressed in a black pant suit and had her arms crossed under her bosom, resting her weight on one leg.

She'd held that exact position often enough at the office that it was burned into my memory. Back then, what was virtually a management uniform had hung a bit loose on her. But following the integration and the awakening of her Oni bloodline, she'd gotten taller and gained a significant amount of toned muscle.

Now, her old outfit was so tight around her butt and chest that it seemed like the seams might burst at any moment. From the look of the straining top few buttons—one of which had already popped off—I doubted it would be on her long.

"Well, Carter? I think it's well past time I reviewed your yearly progress."

I chuckled. "Alright, Sakura. Let's go back to your 'office.'"

Naturally, Sakura led me to the bedroom.