The next few days were swarmed by unease and tension. My little town’s grotesque experience was not the only one, and most definitely not the most grandiose of displays by either a man or a beast. Both legacy and social media were flooded with images and videos of monsters wreaking havoc across civilization. The larger the population, the greater the monster, it seemed. Like everyone, I scrolled through countless posts depicting everything from mutated wildlife attacking camps to massive titans scraping their shoulders on buildings as they traipsed through city streets. Heat maps were being produced as artificial intelligence was given the task to aggregate conflicts. Officials were scarce, likely exercising their luxury to hide in bunkers or on islands… if they were smart.

I received a text from one of the men who were there when I killed the Hellkite. Even though I knew who he was, his number wasn’t in my contacts as we’d not interacted enough for the option to present itself. He was the chief of the fire department, a few years ahead of me in high school, where I barely passed him on the street and more rarely acknowledged each other with a nod. He and the others wanted to meet, to discuss what happened and where we go from there. It took some moments to weigh the benefits to entertaining the idea; surely, they’d want to form some sort of coalition of locals and make rules I don’t have the time, the energy, or the will to follow. I decided I’d listen and bring my own rules. I entered his name as ‘Chief’ in the contact info and let him know I’d be there.

I opened the door to my apartment and realized I hadn’t been out since the whole thing went down. I hadn’t slept, ate, drank, listened to music, played video games, even went to work, or took a walk. There were lots of texts outstanding in my phone I hadn’t answered, except for when Chief hit me up. I couldn’t be bothered to answer any of them now, besides they were all the same ‘crazy, huh?’ nonsense I’d been seeing online all day. Who gives a shit. May as well aske me about the weather or whatever flash-in-the-pan viral bullshit is giving people an excuse to talk this week. That kind of stuff used to bother me but now its just a data point, information to help gain social credit, or depending on one’s point of view, detract from it.

The town was very quiet for a weekend summer evening, which wasn’t much of a surprise considering the outbreak of violent monsters unleashed upon This Earth. I was half a block away from my place when I realized it would probably be a good idea to take my car. Just looking at it was a chore – with my speed at this point it would take at least ten times as long to meet with the others behind the wheel, not including stop signs. After I turned the key, I decided this was the last time I’d ever drive this thing, or anything else. Its just too cumbersome, inefficient, and boring. As soon as I broke the town line, it was pedal to the floor with the seatbelt off. The officer manning the speed trap I flew by barely put it in drive before I was a speck he’d never catch.

I knew where we were meeting. It was a defunct curling club at the crossing of two rural counties a short drag out of the village. I pulled the handbrake at the entrance to put the car into a wild spin that ended at a parking spot furthest away from everyone. There were a couple outside smoking, but by the time I slid to my stop, the rest were waiting. I put my keys on the dashboard and left the doors unlocked. I’d kicked up a lot of dust on my way in, but a few waves of the hand pushed it aside so the others could see me. They were a dozen strong, picked randomly from the community by circumstance to be in the wrong place at the right time. I knew most of them or at least who they were, an old friend, a former coworker, anyone, and everyone, even a few old flames in the mix. Social dynamics be damned, there was a much bigger picture than human complications.

I was pretty sure they were going to say what they said. That they wanted to form a group that sought answers and discussed findings, but most importantly that we do what we can to protect the community. Even though only this group was there to see the Hellkite up close, many more people saw the battle from a distance, with a few recordings from well off circulating online. No one could tell it was me, so I didn’t care. In fact, I could feel the signal from their phones watching me, even the camera mounted on the corner of the curling club aimed right at us. It had been moved recently to point right here. A slight excursion from a new part of my mind jammed them all without anyone knowing it but me.

I could hear the chief relay their pre-agreed rules for how to handle things from here on out, down to the clicking of his teeth and the smacking of his lips, and even though I absorbed every word he said, I wasn’t listening. My senses had become so sharp, I could see the floaters in his eyes, the grinding of his bum knee, the irregular heartbeat of the heavyset tow truck driver who looked on with the others. They were keen on letting the community know that we had a protector and that they were debating proving it by letting them know just who it was who defeated the Hellkite. This was when I snapped back into real time to address them. The message was delivered clearer than I ever could have made it if I had a week to practice in the mirror; the words spoke for themselves.

“You think we’re in some sort of partnership,” I said, hitting eye contact with each of them to not even hint anyone was exempt from hearing my opinion, “We’re not. I’m compelled to uphold the balance by whatever’s changed me, but who I was before, is gone.” I made sure to this was emphasized for those before me I had a more personal relationship with, because it was true. “We keep our eyes open. We have a group chat. If anything like that… thing shows up again, you let me know and I’ll be there.” This was a lie to help them feel relevant – I could already sense other anomalies in the area, but none I needed to address anytime soon, “Do not tell anyone who the protector is. I don’t want the attention.”

I think they understood. Some of them lost loved ones to the kite and were still in the early stages of their grief as the true gravity had yet to take hold. My words may have been blunt, harsh even, but I’d changed as the world had changed, and as how they too would have to change if they wanted to survive. There was no more sitting by, wasting days in a first-world nation in the lap of luxury. There was a tension now, one mankind hadn’t known since they conquered the food chain. With the talks said and done, they left one by one, until only a few lingered. I could hear everything they said under their breaths but couldn’t care less. The abandoned curling club had my attention. It was out of the way, isolated, and passed by as an age-old relic of a time that was gone forever.

I don’t know who had the key, but it didn’t matter. The deadbolt popped open with a snap of the finger, and I went in to check things out. I hadn’t been in it operational since a friend held a birthday party here when we were all kids, back in those last days before it went under. Now, there was graffiti covering the walls, most of the fixtures were smashed through vandalism, some of which done by the same friend and I back when we were teenagers. Clearly, we weren’t the only ones to pass this rite. There was a lot of partying that went down here judging by the broken bottles and roaches scattered down the lanes. The lights came on because I willed them, even though the power had been cut off for well over a decade.

It was perfect. I realized how much noise there was from my apartment in the heart of the town proper, but here, I could expand my senses outward and cover the whole territory as I awaited the next phase of my calling. My phone charged just by being near me, as was the case with the devices everyone in the parking lot carried, so a utility hookup wasn’t going to be a problem. Instead of looking manually, my senses were carried across the span of the building, showing me every room on the blueprints, including some that were not. I was also made aware of someone trying the door handle, and turned to face them as they came through.

It was one from the group outside – a tall, blonde local I knew in my not-so-distant past life. We met on a dating app years ago after we both left long relationships. It was chaos. There was fighting, cheating, lying, with loving, laughing and crying. After that we both got our shit together and moved on as well-adjusted individuals who got their poison out. She knew my worst, but also my best, and told me she was glad it was me who would not only put their neck on the line, but also protect everybody. We’d hooked up off and on over the years when we had nothing else going on, so I knew her signals, even without the modifications. The desire to procreate, or rather, simulate it, had gone nowhere since the transition, and she stayed the night.

Hellkite Home

Hellkite III: Cicero