Wasteland Warlords: Chapter 11 - The Lobby

The old-timer was waiting for them outside camp the next morning, leaning against the wall with one dusty boot propped against the metal.

“Well, what’d you young pups decide? Want to party up with an old dog today?”

Clay opened his mouth to speak for the group, but unfortunately Joe was faster on the draw and for some unfathomable reason in the mood to stir the pot.

“No offense,” he said, cocking Bertha on his hip as if she were a spoiled toddler, “but personally I’m skeptical how much help a dried-up old fart would be against an Ettin. You seem nice enough, but you’re one bad fall away from a nursing home.”

“Joe!” Alex slapped his arm.

“What? I said no offense. As long as you say no offense before saying something you’re totally covered.”

The old-timer let out a phlegmy laugh. “It’s a fair question, lass. You’re heading into dangerous territory, so you need to know you ain’t just dragging along extra baggage. Might be I have a few tricks tucked up my sleeve.”

He pushed away from the wall and stuck one gnarled hand out in front of him.

A crackling ball of plasma too bright to look directly at coalesced in his leathery palm. With a flick of his wrist, the old man sent the boiling, sparkling orb careening into a rusted-out car half-buried in the sand. It sizzled a basketball-sized hole through the wreck and slammed into the dirt on the other side, throwing clumps of vitrified dirt and sand twenty feet in the air.

A scorched, rusty fender tumbled to the ground with a clank.

Chonk, nestled on Joe’s shoulder let out a startled chirp.

Joe gulped. “And by dried-up old fart, obviously, I meant classy gentleman with many years of experience under his belt.”

Clay swallowed hard to force his heart back out of his throat. He’d known the old weed was keeping some decent skills under wraps, but seeing it in action was a whole other ballgame. The old man had just shot real, actual magic out of his hand, and there wasn’t a wand or magical item in sight. That power was all him.

“I thought you said you weren’t an Incant.” Clay dropped one hand to the butt of the wand, poking up out of a modified pistol holder at his hip.

“Go easy there, son,” the old man said, raising his hands. “Don’t go throwing around accusations. I told you true, I’m no Incant. That’s what y’all call Earth-born folks who get their powers from killing Dungeon Lords.”

“Then how did… What…” At a loss for words, Joe flailed Bertha at the smoking ruins of the car. “That?”

“You might say I ain’t from around here. Not originally, anyway.” The old-timer gave them a little half-bow, his one good eye flashing as he straightened back up. “Name’s Griff, formerly of Averi City. Back before the Merge, I fought for years in the arena before finally settling down to train heroes how to use their weapons and survive dungeon raids. It was a good, easy retirement until a young Dungeon Lord with more guts than sense recruited me to his cause. Things got a little… complicated after that. And even more complicated still when my world ended up merging with yours.”

“Holy crap. You’re from Hearthworld,” Alex whispered. “You’re from the game.”

“That I am, little lady. I’ve always had my powers, unlike the Incants you see kicking around here—and I’ve added a few new weapons to my arsenal since crossing over. Truth be told, you don’t find many of my kind skulking around out here anymore,” Griff said, tipping his hat to the side to scratch at his wiry gray hair. “Your people didn’t take too kindly to me and my folk. Most of us sided with the monsters, while others integrated, sort of hid away in plain sight like. But me, I never was a good fit for your world’s version of civilized society.”

“Welcome to the club,” Joe said.

Griff barked a laugh.

“I knew you of all people would understand,” he said, eyeing the younger man standing there in his jorts, sleeveless flannel, spiked pauldrons, and Warboots with a baby mechacoon on one shoulder and chainsaw on his hip. “So what’d’ya say? Got room for a dried-up old fart in your party?”

Clay looked from the smoking hole in the car to Griff. “We actually decided last night that we’d be glad to have your help. Joe was just causing trouble.”

“Somehow,” Alex said, glaring at Joe, “he hasn’t figured out how dangerous it can be to pick fights with strangers. Especially in the wasteland.”

Joe gave a lopsided grin. “It just means I like what you’re all about.”

Clay stuck his hand out to Griff. “Welcome aboard.”

The old-timer grabbed Clay’s proffered hand in a surprisingly strong grip. A burning heat reminiscent of that plasma ball seeped through the palm of Clay’s tactical glove.

“We best get movin’,” Griff said, slapping Clay’s shoulder. “That Ettin ain’t gonna kill itself, and so much the better if we do it before nightfall.”

Alex raised an eyebrow at him. “Before the big bads come out and we can’t make it back to Camp?”

“Katotes is the big bad, little lady, big and bad as you’re gonna find in Bakersfield, anyway. There are nasty things out there, true enough, but most of ‘em live deeper in the containment area. The real heavy hitters are in the Uninhabitable Zone ’round LA. But Katotes is more than enough for the likes of us, and he’s worse come night fall. Ettins are night-aligned,” the old man explained.

“What does that mean?” Clay asked.

“I forget how little you folks know.” He grimaced and shook his head. “But then Hearthworld was before your time, I suppose. Doesn’t help that your government scrubbed out just about every ounce of useful information on the web after the Merge. But they couldn’t scrub out what’s in here,” he said, tapping at his temple. “Our magic, it ain’t as wild and chaotic as folks make it out to be. There’s a system to it. Used to have a friend that said our magic was a great wheel with many spokes that drives the unseen world with primal power.”

He reached into one of the many pockets of his duster and pulled out a heavily creased sheet of paper, depicting an intricate wheel full of various symbols.

“Twelve spokes. Twelve primal sources,” he continued. “Divine, infernal, fire, wind, night, water, psychic, earth, toxic, life, light, and undead. Every class, every power, they all fall somewhere on that wheel. And that wheel governs how the magics interact with one another. Since the Merge, I’ve specialized as an Arcana Caster, which means my class is Light-aligned. Weak as a newborn kitten against Life-aligned paths, balanced perfectly against Night-based powers, and hell on wheels against the Undead. Creatures like Katotes, well he gets more potent come moonrise, and my powers start to wane as the sun sets. We gotta kill the three-headed bastard before that happens, or we ain’t got a Changeling’s chance in the Underworld Cairns.”

                                                                                    ***

The sun was glaring over the horizon by the time they made it to the oilfields at the outskirts of Bakersfield. The fires flared brilliant orange and yellow in the early morning light.

“I dated a gal with a flame mephit as a pet once,” Griff said, with an ironic grin. “Last time I made that mistake, I can tell you that.”

Joe snickered. “Why, did you get burned?”

Griff laughed so hard he started a hacking cough.

“You know how love is,” the old-timer said, wiping his eyes with a gnarled knuckle. “Starts off like a wildfire, but after a while all the heat goes out of it. But for what it’s worth to you, yes. Little fiery critter scorched my backside—couldn’t sit for damned near a week if it weren’t for my regen rate.”

They took the 204 interchange, keeping an eye and ear out for anything that might attack them on the way to the Marriott. A few creatures scampered through the rubble and old store fronts, but they seemed more concerned with getting out of the rising sun than with causing any mischief. Motorcycles growled in the distance, but Clay never got a clear view of the bikes. In a few minutes, the sound of their engines faded out.

At Truxton Avenue, they left the highway and struck out west. Most of the houses and businesses along the avenue had been torn apart, either by scavengers from Camp Liberty or monsters, but an old mission-style church still stood. A huge orthodox cross jutted up from the peak of the roof, with a pair of bell towers flanking the main building on each side.

At first Clay thought a piece of canvas or old blanket had been twisted around the steeple by a high wind or something, but then the canvas unwrapped itself from the cross and gazed down at them with glowing red eyes. It was some sort of winged gargoyle creature.

Clay got the thing in his sights. Then suddenly, the bell in the eastern tower started clanging like mad. Another gargoyle was in there wailing its head off, riding the bell like a bull at a rodeo. Immediately, the bell the in western tower started going nuts under the power of a third gargoyle.

“Sanctuary!” the thing on the steeple howled in a strangely deep voice. Three of its four arms clung to the cross. “Sanctuary!”

A shiver ran down Clay’s spine.

“Let’s not start a fight we aren’t equipped for just yet, kids.” Griff raised his voice to be heard over the eerie screaming and gently pushed the M4’s muzzle down. “Just a flock of greater sentient grist. They guard old cathedrals and the like. They won’t do us no harm unless we do harm to their church first.”

Alex reluctantly lowered her shotgun, but didn’t take her eyes off the howling creatures.

“There goes any element of surprise we had,” she said. “They can probably hear that all the way back in camp.”

Joe hugged Bertha to his chest. “For whom does the bell toll?” he asked, huge eyes still on the bell-riding gargoyle in the eastern tower. “I choose to believe it tolls for me. Also, that it’s a winner’s bell. That makes this a good omen.”

“Let’s go.” Clay got them moving again, eager to get away from the keening grists.

“Are there more monsters like that?” Alex asked Griff as they wound their way through the tangle of city streets. “Creatures like the gargoyles in there that won’t bother you if you don’t bother them? Back on the other side of the wall, the news feeds always made the IZ monsters out to be mindless animals. One step below a pack of feral hogs.”

That had been one of the things that had scared Alex most about Clay being deployed during Hell Gate; she’d been so afraid for him that she cried when she found out where they were sending him. They’d been just out of high school, and every news outlet was full of horror stories about the monsters the Jordanian Incant summoned. Unfortunately, Clay hadn’t seen anything during his deployment that would put her fears at ease, and his view toward monsters hadn’t grown  more favorable in the years since.

It’d been part of why Clay had been so sure Alex would talk him out of Joe’s crazy plan to come out here in the first place.

Griff scratched at the scraggly hair under his hat. “In my experience, lass, humans tend to paint anything that’s different than them as monsters. Heck, nine times outta ten they’ll make other folks out to be monsters just to have somebody to turn on. You’da thought there would’ve been less of it in Hearthworld, but people have the same nature everywhere I suppose.” His lips twitched into a wry smile.

“Truth is,” he said, “some of these things out here areone step below feral hogs, but most of ’em are smarter than that. Much smarter, more often than not. And not all of ’em are bad.” His lone eye went hazy as though he were recalling a fond memory from the distant past. “Why, some of the best men I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowin’ were monsters. The Dungeon Lords tend to be territorial and on the steep side of power-hungry, but deeper in the UZ, there are places were the dungeons have a truce of sorts—work together, even. Point is, don’t listen to everything those knuckleheads outside the Containment barrier tell you.”

They passed an old war memorial, then a library that miraculously hadn’t been reduced to rubble over the last two decades. Big round eyes peeked at them through a darkened window. When the eyes saw Clay looking back at them, a set of shades snapped shut. Obviously, whatever had holed up in there with the books wasn’t a confrontational sort.

At Q Street, a yellow and red gas truck had been overturned in the intersection.

Joe ran over and stuck his head into the tank.

“Gotta be kidding me!” His voice bounced around inside. He straightened back up and looked at Clay. “I spent two months lookin’ for gas and not a freaking drop. Then, the day after I figure out the Fyula rune, boom, full gas truck. I feel like this gas truck is a metaphor for my life somehow. Just always in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Hopefully not this time,” Clay said, nodding across the way to the looming profile of the Marriott. “Fingers crossed that we’re finally in the right place at the right time for once.”

The hotel was a towering nine stories high, looming over the one and two-story buildings that were still mostly intact. A low electric current of anticipation buzzed up and down Clay’s muscles. They had less than twelve hours to fight their way to the top before sunset.

They were coming up on the Marriott pool-side first, opposite the way they’d passed by with the Wilfords two weeks before. Palm trees and tattered cloth from the once-pristine cabanas rustled in the breeze. Something gurgled in the hot tub, sending up a fountain of mossy green water. A second later, what looked like a cross between an oarfish and the Loch Ness monster breeched in the pool. The iridescent scales covering its long neck and wide body glistened in the sun before it crashed back into the water and disappeared beneath the surface. The wave washed onto the street, running out just before it reached their boots.

“Front entrance,” Clay said.

Alex nodded. “Definitely.”

They steered well clear of the pool area, not even venturing into the parking lot until they were within rock-throwing distance of the entryway.

The glass bank of windows running along the front of the Marriott had grown over with some sort of gray-green moss, and a low ground fog billowed out of the sliding doors. A rolling chirp too deep to be a treefrog and too long to be a bullfrog sounded from somewhere inside as they approached. Several more answered it, one a booming bass.

Clay swallowed hard and tightened his grip on the M4. This was it. Their last chance to turn back. Except, Clay knew there really was no turning back. They’d come too far and burned too many bridges. Gearhead would come looking for them sooner or later and if they didn’t have some serious juice backing them up, they were as good as dead. And even if they somehow avoided Gearhead, there was no avoiding cancer. This was the only way forward.

“Me and Alex first,” Clay said, voice remarkably steady. “I’ll clear twelve to nine, you take twelve to three. Joe, you and Chonk come in behind us. Griff, you’re watching our six and keeping whatever’s in there”—he pointed toward the pool—“from cutting off our exit.”

With a rumble of assent, they crept forward, sidling through the doors. The temperature seemed to spike along with ungodly humidity. Instantly, sweat beaded on Clay’s face and soaked his clothes. The smell of damp earth, rotting foliage, and mildewy carpet hung in the air. Beneath the swirling ground fog, the floor squished with every step. Huge, primeval plants grew up out of the fog, the leaves obscuring their line of sight. It took Clay a second to realize that overhead the peaked ceiling was all skylight; vines and mossy growths dangled from the glass as if this were the rainforest, blocking out the sun.

That trilling song went suddenly quiet. Clay’s heart pounded in his ears as he scanned the primordial vegetation for movement.

A massive leaf whipped aside and a toad the size of a Great Dane bounded out, thundering a warbling war cry. Its mouth was lined with rows of shark-like teeth.

Clay fired two rounds into the nightmare toad’s head, then looked up to find two more monstrous amphibians leaping out of the vegetation behind it. Trilling thunder filled the overgrown lobby as the toads called to each other.

At his back, Alex’s shotgun boomed. Griff was engaged, too, his sizzling plasma ball casting blue-white light through the overgrown lobby.

From the doorway, Bertha roared and Joe screamed, “Eat chainsaw, flybreath!”

Clay lined up the shot for the closest nightmare toad on his side of the room and put a round through its bulging eye. He was unerringly accurate thanks to his dexterity boost, and the round hit like a freight train thanks to the hefty increase in his ranged weapon damage. He was turning to get the next one in his sights when it opened its jaws past what should’ve been possible and spewed glowing green spit at him. Clay jerked his leg out of the way, but a gob smacked the side of his boot.

It hissed and started eating into the leather.

“Shit.” His muzzle flashed as he put the acid-spewing toad down. “Guys, watch out for the spitters!”

“One word, bro,” Joe called. “Jorts!”

When Clay glanced that way, red blistering acid burns already stood out across Joe’s legs.

“You didn’t have to wear them,” Alex shouted back, racking her Mossberg. “We offered to buy you some real pants.” The shotgun barked. “We begged you!”

“It’s hot!” Joe brought Bertha crashing down on a toad’s head, cutting off its battle cry with a wet squelch. “Desert!” He swung around and sawed through another amphibian’s jaw, spraying gore across the damp foliage. “What do you people not understand about proper undercarriage ventilation?”

A nightmare toad just out of Joe’s reach unhinged its mouth, ready to vomit acid onto the jort-wearing warrior.

Clay put a bullet in its head. Instead of acid spewing out the front, brains splattered out the back.

A huge, moist body blindsided Clay. Three hundred pounds of toad drove him to the squishy lobby floor, teeth gnashing and chomping at his face. He dropped the rifle and reacted in a blaze of speed. He shoved his hands up underneath the creature’s jaw and pushed. This thing should’ve been stronger than him, but thanks to the boost from the stat potions, Clay forced the head away with ease.

Blue light flashed, and a plasma ball tore through the creature’s raised head, blasting off the top portion of its face and leaving only a lower jaw behind.

Griff shot him a wink, then went back to slinging magic at anything that tried to get between him and the doors to the street.

It took every bit of ten minutes, but they finally murdered to death the last one of the acid-spewing frogs.

While Clay reloaded and Griff poked through the remains for loot, Alex dug a Health Potion from her pack. The three of them were well enough to pass on healing for now—they had the odd bruise and mark from a stray droplet of acid here and there—but Joe’s bare legs were a weeping hellscape of blisters.

“Bless you, child,” Joe said, accepting the first bottle. He knocked the brilliant red contents back, then shook his head and grimaced as he forced it down. “Whew! That’s got some stank on it!”

In seconds, the angry red burns and weeping blisters faded back into Joe’s skin, healing over without a trace.

“Who votes we never do that again?” Joe asked, raising his hand. Chonk chittered happily from Joe’s shoulder and raised his own saw-bladed hand in agreement. “That’s right. Chonk’s always in my corner.”

A strange chime rang through the jungle. Sort of like a ding. Clay pushed into the leaves opposite the exit. Before he’d gone ten feet, he came to a set of metal doors.

An elevator. On the digital panel above the doors glowed a red number 3.

“Guys…”

Gear shifted, then leaves rustled as they came to join him.

With another ding, the glowing numeral dropped to 2.

“Is that…” Alex trailed off.

Clay nodded. He backed up and pointed the M4 at the place where the doors met.

“I think we’re about to have company.”

The red number hit 1, letting out a double-chime. With a screech and rumble, the doors slid open.

A trio of ribbon-wearing women with dog skulls for heads screamed out of the elevator.

Everybody opened fire at once.