Chapter One Hundred and Forty-Seven - Itineranting

  The interior section of the guard station, which was just off the highway, was fenced in on three sides, but it was open on the road. The fences weren't anything too special either, just about twice as tall as I was, with angled-barb-wired tops. The building itself was a big grey block, with two 'wings' off to the sides and a larger central building. Every wall had been covered in graffiti and repainted, but poorly, so there were still vague markings left over from where fresher paint had been applied.

  I was leaning against one of the concrete walls of the fortress when someone called out to me. "Hey! Fuck off, no homeless here."

  I blinked awake. Not that I'd been sleeping, exactly, but my mind was a little fuzzy. Ahead of me was a guard. Dude in brown pants and shirt, with a tactical vest on that had a flashlight in one pouch and a radio in another. He was packing, just a little handgun, but it was strapped to his side at his hip, and he had his hand close to it already. He would have been a lot more intimidating if he weighed about fifty pounds less.

  "I'm sorry, what?" I asked.

  "I said no itinerants," he said. "This isn't a space for you to have a nap."

  "Look, sorry," I said. "I'm waiting for something."

  "Well, go wait somewhere else, you tramp."

  I twitched. "What the fuck is wrong with you?" I asked. "No, nevermind. Don't answer that. Look, man, I've had a shit day, alright? My eyes are itchy. I have a stitch in my armpit, my back hurts from sleeping in a fucking motel. I think I might have picked up bedbugs or something, and some fucking punks stole my bike. I've had it up to here with today already, and this is only my first attempt at the day, so how about you spin around and fuck right the fuck off?"

  Somehow, this failed to intimidate.

  "I don't care how bad your day was. Go have it elsewhere."

  "Oh, for the love of--" I began.

  We both jumped as a car came barrelling into the driveway of the watch-station. It was a beater of a car, all patched up and rough with a fender that didn't quite match the colour of the rest of the car. It bumped over the ridge protecting the sidewalk, then came to a stop just a few yards from the entrance.

  The side door banged open, and a dude stepped one foot out. He was sweaty, looking like he was wide-eyed and maybe tweaking out on something. "Hey!" he shouted.

  "What the hell," the guard said. "You can't park there!"

  I mean, he could. He was just taking up two and a bit spots angled that way, but it wasn't like anyone else was there. "Yo! There's monsters out there!" he shouted.

  "Get outta here," the guard said.

  I glanced at the time display in the corner of my augs. It was seven ten in the morning. The sun had only just come up maybe an hour ago. "Hey, man, there's monsters out there."

  "Do I need to call a tow truck?" the guard asked.

  "Hey," I said over the guard. "What kind of monster? Which direction did they come in from?"

  The man glanced ay me, then pointed back the way he'd come, more or less to the west of where we were. "They're just off Seventh. Big fucking... ball of goop or something."

  I nodded along. "Bring me over, yeah? I want to see."

  "What?" he asked. "Man, I rushed outta there. One of those trucks ran into it and it got stopped cold."

  "I'm a D-ranker," I said. "I can probably help."

  "Oh shit, really?" he asked.

  "She's a tramp," the guard snapped.

  I flicked a Shadow Bolt so close to him that it ruffled his hair and he flinched. "Reach for that and it's the last thing you'll do," I warned. "Do what ya gotta to call it in." I turned back to the driver. "C'mon?"

  He nodded, slipped back into the car, then reached over and unlocked the passenger side door.

  I slid in, wincing a little as I had to move some bottles and trash aside with a foot. Still, he put it in reverse and we were out and onto the highway in a few seconds, before I'd even decided to buckle in.

  The guard was yapping on his radio was we left. I might have just messed up the loop. He didn't seem the sort to call things in usually, so maybe the response would have been delayed by a few minutes if I wasn't here.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  "Tell me about the thing, what were you doing when you saw it? What was it like? Were there more than one?" I asked.

  The man flicked off the radio, which had been filling his car with the low thrum of some bass-heavy rap. "Just doin' deliveries, ya know? Lots of early morning folk order shit out here around this time, and there's not a lot of gig drivers out this early, so I get a premium. Anyway, turn the corner, saw this fat fucking thing on the road, then saw the truck smash right into it. Look, it's around here."

  We turned around a corner and I gripped onto the door to keep steady.

  Seventh was another one of those plain industrial roads. Bit narrow, with fences running on both sides and no real sidewalk, but there was a ditch on one side of the road. The area was mostly warehouses, large parking spaces, and a few dozen smaller factories making... something or another. It wasn't a front-facing place. Not the sort of area normal people hung out in unless they were here for work.

  Down the street was a truck. It was halfway in the ditch, and there was very clearly something crawling on its side.

  "What the hell is that?" I muttered. "Drive closer."

  "Aight, but if my ride gets messed up, you're playing for it, miss D-ranker. I'm not insured, ya know?"

  "Just get me closer," I said. I already had an idea of what we were dealing with, but getting close enough to see couldn't hurt.

  As we came closer, I noticed that the blob on the side of the truck wasn't the only thing around. There were more of them, most congregated in the massive parking lot of some long factory. They varied in height, from about as tall as my knee, to tall enough that I might not be able to see over them.

  Slimes.

  There were only so many monsters that they could be, but... yeah, these were definitely slimes.

  They were kind of a joke as far as monsters went. Physically no stronger than an aggressive bowl of jello, and magically they had all of the resistances of a wet paper towel. That was to say, they were very weak and rather unimpressive across the board.

  That was the general consensus. Right now, there was a slime covering a full quarter of the front of a semi-trailer. It looked like the driver had kicked in the window to one side and had tried to climb out. I could see bones and melting flesh stuck inside of the monster. "Damn," I said.

  The slime might have heard us approaching, because it started to detach itself from the truck, long tendrils of a pale, bluish goop stringing out towards us, almost questing through the air. Where it had been attached, the paint of the truck was eaten through and it looked like even some of the steel beneath was partially melted.

  So, not a little baby slime. That thing had some magic to it, potent too. A D-rank? C?

  "Oh, shit, there's more of them!"

  The side wall of the factory looked like it was halfway melted, and more slimes were coming out. "Let's not stick around," I said.

  "You're not gonna do anything about this?" he asked.

  "No. It's a breach. Let's get back to the fort, alright?"

  "Ah, man," he muttered, but he pulled a u-turn a bit further ahead and we raced out of the area. There were still people around here, though, and it didn't look like anyone had really sounded the alarm yet.

  The news had been a bit off, then. This breach had started long before eight in the morning.

  I kind of expected to get back to the watchstation and find people setting up for trouble, but instead, there was... a lot of nothing going on. Even the guard wasn't standing outside. "Hey, let me off here. Then... I dunno, keep on doing your own thing."

  "Yeah. Bet I'll have to keep working, too. Shit, what an ass morning."

  "Yeah, tell me about it," I said. I reached into my pocket, pulled out my wallet, and gave him all the cash I had. It wasn't too much, but what I was gonna do with it? At least this one, temporary version of the man would be happy for a while. That'd make one of us.

  ***