Everything felt chaotic and I tried my best to not have a look of panic all over my face. I knew that at some point there would be multiple portal defense failures, but I also knew that no one with the power to implement any ideas I had would listen to the likes of me. I got on the radio with Colonel Smolders.

  “Command, how many breaches and where?”

  “Command here, we have three portals losing containment. One of them is on the SLU campus. Second one is in Compton Heights near Compton Hill, and the last one is down several blocks in Fox Park.”

  “How evacuated are people there?”

  “We haven’t expedited evacuations that far into the city.”

  This is a clusterfuck. We needed to get people out as much as we needed to attempt to contain the threat. Right now, I wasn’t sure if either was possible. I got my communication stone out to reach Billy on a more secure line. “Billy, how many troops can you spare for the outbreaks?”

  I waited about twenty seconds and was about to call him again when his voice came back through the stone, “How many breaches? We were told it was only one breach. I can spare about 400, but only some of them will have extra abilities.”

  “400 sounds great. Send them up highway 30. They will have to turn north to head up through Shrewsbury at some point. Have as many buses as we can possibly spare to transport civilians with minimal possessions. I think our municipality is about to find new meaning in population density.”

  “That’s a lot of buses that we’ve cobbled together. Are you sure about all of them?”

  “Yes, absolutely. And send an extra 100 folks to help get Crestwood and Sunset hills evacuated in the next two hours. If someone bitches about leaving their stuff, then leave them. We’ve run out of time to do this the nice convenient way.”

  “Not a problem.” I could also hear a smirk on the other end of the stone. Of course, Billy doesn’t have a problem pissing people off. His entire vibe is a Dennis Leary song at times like this.

  Natalie immediately rallied the Hound News crew and told them they were coming with us to cover our assistance live. All the guys with guns, had a positive effect on their willingness to participate.

  Frank didn’t wait for me; he had already grabbed a bullhorn from his SUV. He was itching to use this when he first saw it in my basement, but there was never a perfect time to before now. It was turned to max volume, “Residents listen up, you are going to be evacuated. Buses are on their way. One small carryon item per person. We won’t have space to stow people and lots of belongings.”

  A few people started coming out of their houses from across the street. These people looked like they had been stuck in their house on quarantine. Frazzled hair, unshaven faces, and kids that had gotten way too much screen time greeted us. I took one long good look at them before speaking into the stone one last time, “Billy, you had better hurry on all of this. Otherwise, I’m making you go do public speaking.”

  From Nora behind me and from the stone the response was, “Fuck, that’s mean.”

  With that bit of stick based encouragement complete I turned my attention back to my surroundings. I saw a large group of men approach me from a building to my east. I wasn’t sure who they were, but they all looked very serious. The probable leader of the group came right up to me, “I’m Bishop Burch, and you, young man, are the person from the YouTubes. We would like to help.”

  I used assess really quickly before answering, as the skill took less time than it did at first level.

  Human, Bishop, Level 5

  “Why yes, I would like some help. We need to get as much of Shrewsbury as we can gathered together in an orderly fashion. Where exactly did you come from?”

  He pointed behind him, “Our seminary school is right there,” and then he pointed to my right, “Over there is the archdiocese’s local offices, among other important charitable buildings.”

  “I’ll take all the help I can get, but what’s the catch?” I looked at him like I was simply waiting for the part of this trade that mattered to him.

  “Try to help all the elderly and sick that we have. We don’t want to abandon them.”

  “We promise to do what we can, but some people are too sick to move.” I replied as earnestly as I could, this man seemed to have some gravitas about him, and that presence almost demanded me to be as honest as I could.

  “I understand child. We will do what we can to organize the folks in the surrounding neighborhoods. How soon will transports be here?”

  “Not exactly sure, probably about 30 minutes or so. While you are organizing people, my people and I need to get towards the portals. There are probably a whole lot of people in imminent danger, and every time I hear that more people are being left in danger, the angrier I get.”

  “Then let me bless your force of soldiers. I shall anoint them as warriors of God.”

  “No complaints here about that.” I allowed him to go about blessing every single soldier that wanted it. I am not sure if he has a shit ton of uses of it a day, but his blessing made me feel a little bit more energetic, positive, and resolute. Meanwhile all the lesser priests were anointing weapons with holy water. I wonder if a blessed weapon also bypasses the damage resistance? Well, there is no time like the present to figure that out.

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  Once we had our blessings, and with some vials of holy water we headed in our vehicles towards the closest portal. I hoped that we could help shut down the one that would be at our rear before we engaged any ahead of us. All three of those portals sounded fairly clustered together. None of that boded well for us. With just Sixty people I am not sure how we lock down a portal. Hopefully, I get a little lucky.

  We quickly made our way up to interstate 44. From there we set a path towards Saint Louis University or SLU for short. There were people fleeing the city finally. Perhaps, the military could only prevent civilian movements for so long. These people should have been evacuated days ago. It almost made me wonder if there were reasons beyond simple convenience for the evacuation of the suburbs furthest away from the city, or if more subversive instincts were at play. Such a concept was a bit much for me to think about at the moment. Saving some of these people, and hopefully stemming the tide of monsters temporarily was the best we could do. Simply slowing the demons down was a victory in itself.

  The radio chimed in again. “Captain Cassland, this is command. Do you copy?”

  “This is Captain Cassland, I copy.”

  “Fourth portal losing containment. This is closer to Shrewsbury. Hampton Avenue, just south of the St. Louis Zoo.”

  “Diverting everyone there. You need to send other troops to secure downtown then.”

  “We copy. Reobtain containment on the Hampton Avenue portal. We have been evacuating people near Forest Park.”

  We quickly relayed the direction change and the convoy exited the interstate to a mess. We were dodging civilians running down the middle of the damn road. We blasted our horns to get people to not run down the street, but that did work well at all.

  We had to get off the road and exit our vehicles. There was a car wreck in the middle of Hampton Avenue. I counted at least 5 cars, and it looked recent. Today recent, but not the last hour recent. There were no explosions, just vehicle on vehicle action. I directed the second squad to try and move the vehicles out of the way while the rest of us kept a perimeter. We needed to get the Humvees up Hampton. 50 caliber machine guns were particularly effective. Without Katnessa, who was now sidelined safely Fenton, we had no mobile 50 caliber sniper support.

  I flagged down civilians, and one did decide to come over. He looked at me like I was crazy to be going the opposite direction, and I didn’t entirely disagree with him. “Hi sir, what exactly are you running from?”

  “M…M…monster. It ate people on the bus. It… ate… the bus.” He was visibly panicking. I pulled some Cinna-spins out and handed them to him.

  “You should eat these. You’ll feel much better.”

  He looked at me like I was crazy, but ate them anyways. He looked for a few seconds like he was trying to come up with reasons to refuse the cookies, but his panicked brain looked to be short circuiting in most logical areas just now. It took a minute, but he calmed down a finally remarked, “These taste great.”

  I gave a slight smirk, “Most girl scout cookies taste great, but these are special. They relax the mind.”

  He looked at me with a peculiar expression that I couldn’t quite place, but he ended up smiling. “They sure do, son. We all need to get out of here though. There was a giant monster with some sort of spider body with grotesque looking man’s upper body attached to the top. Just looking at it made my blood run cold and I felt the overwhelming desire to run. Oh shit, where’s my wife! Damnit, did I lose my wife?” I gave him two more cookies. It seems that his fear and panic had multiple layers to it. I motioned for Nora and a soldier to guide the man over to the sidewalk.

  We started collecting people and putting them to the side of the first intersection. As soon as buses got here, they could be transported out of the area. I kept the troops moving forward and we got the pile up cleared easily enough. It was just that every time we had to get out of vehicles and move something was a delay. Eventually, half the troops stayed on foot to keep the roads cleared while the Humvees, our two remaining SUVs, and the TV van stayed mobile.

  I saw my forces stretching every so slightly. Soldiers getting civilians headed towards what was becoming a busing staging area. We had others forming a perimeter for the moment that monsters showed up. We kept the vehicles in the middle towards the front, just behind the fourth squad which had the unenviable job of moving car accidents and getting people out of the road. The Fifth squad got stuck with running people back towards the staging point and keeping an eye on our rear. There were too many directions problems could come from.

  In the distance we kept hearing screams and roars in between bouts of gunfire and explosions. I didn’t know what was going to happen next, but it all felt prescient. Everything also felt overbearing, but I couldn’t lose focus. That constant blessing reinforced my will to continue, despite the anxiety and fears. It really was making a difference for me.

  Then we saw them, a rough line of advancing abyssal orcs. They looked completely unafraid. They were just walking towards us full of confidence. Then we fired enchanted bullets, or fired from our few enchanted rifles. That confidence disappeared in an instant. They started diving for cover. They just got introduced to American ingenuity. 50 caliber machine guns kept their advance hemmed in. Our riot shield bearers got out of their hummers, leaving a driver and a gunner in each and formed into a tight wedge of shields. We had a few guys with magical weapons at this point, but not many. Those guys got behind the shield bearers to take advantage of locked down orc combatants.

  We still drove forward slowly. There was less vehicular obstacles in the road, and now just dead bodies. With every second we added a few more orcs to the growing piles. They never got close to the Hummers themselves, and I was feeling pretty good about our chances. That is when I got to relearn a very valuable lesson: never let yourself get your hopes up too high.

  Three massive spears of ice descended from the sky to slam into our engine. We all scrambled to get out of the vehicle that stopped working immediately. Memories of the last time I saw that flashed back through my mind. I scanned the road and at the edge of my vision I could make out that feathered headdress that scared me so badly a few nights ago. “Fuck!” I didn’t even realize I said it out loud until Natalie looked at me.

  “What, Neal?” Despite the circumstances she merely looked perturbed that our ride was damaged. Being down to our last original SUV is not exactly how I wanted things to go. I never should have gotten out of the Humvee I had started using.

  I pointed towards the orc shaman, “That orc. He is going to be a serious fucking problem. Last time I had the benefit of terrain, prep time, and being on defense. None of those are a part of our current situation. We haven’t even seen these giant spider creatures yet.”

  I had spoke too soon. As if speaking about them somehow invited or even summoned them to the scene, I saw the outline of something obscured by a building and signage. That didn’t remain the case as it stepped into the street on all eight of its legs. The upper body of an ogre of some type attached to a 4x4 truck sized spider body. Yet it was those legs which segmented up from the body before going down. This thing wasn’t even standing at its full height.

  Yup, Fuck indeed.