Chương 323: Book Six, Chapter 85: Blue Bloods

How the rest of the cops got there so fast, I would never know. It was obviously movie magic. Carousel would cut things to make it seem like they were inbound the whole time. The audience wouldn't even notice until they saw their universe's version of CinemaSins. Still, I didn't see them show up. Was I frozen, waiting for them, or did Carousel make me forget? Lorne's cop-summoner build was impressive to see. He ran behind them, screaming at them to arrest the floating cultists, to shoot at them.

The cops, who somehow appeared more afraid of the large screaming man in a suit than they were of the wraiths, did as commanded. They fired their guns and made contact more than once. The specters let loose screams of pain and rage, flooding the store with shadows, bursting the overhead lights, and turning the produce section into a chopped salad. Still, Lorne was on top of it.

"Don't be afraid of their, their…" His character had seen these things before, at the beginning of the movie, before he fled Off-Screen, but still, he had to be shaken up.

"These weirdos bleed. They have weaknesses, trust me, I've seen them try to run a store on Black Friday. Aim your weapon and get these guys!" I had only seen one Bruiser in action, and it was during a bleak horror movie, so it could be easy to forget that Bruisers brought levity to the screen. They just did. There was something inherently humorous about watching them do their over-the-top routines. They were human, but they weren't. They really were larger than life.

It was a good thing this story kept its tinge of comedy, because Lorne was playing it up.

"Give me a gun!" he screamed. A nearby officer complied before he had time to think it through. With Lorne's Hustle of 2, the gun was more of a deterrent than a practical weapon. Heck, it might as well have been a melee weapon. As one of the Stockers floated over toward Lorne, he didn't try to shoot it. He instead instructed nearby cops to do so. He had thirteen of them now. They hid behind registers and boxes, each perplexed and afraid, some screaming into their comms systems to no avail.

The thing was, the cops had limited utility. This story was not supposed to feature cops, even with Lorne's trope that allowed them. Real, competent cops would have been too useful here. Instead, Lorne had basically summoned a bunch of muscly stunt men and women, who could get thrown through the air by the Stockers and seemingly get taken out of the fight with no visible injuries.

I had to dodge one cop who landed in a big cardboard box full of watermelons, which exploded on contact, practically covering him in red goop. Still, the bad guys had to act like the cops were a threat, and that was to Lorne's advantage. Boy, did he take advantage of it. I heard the roar of a motor in the distance, as one Night Stocker swung a cop around in a circle and threw him, Wilhelm Screaming, into the clothing section.

As I watched, suppressing a smile, Lorne had started one of the four-wheelers on display at the front of the store and was running it full speed after a Night Stocker, who flew away as fast as he could. Lorne's Human Missile trope was a lot more flexible than I realized, because it was buffing his Hustle quite a bit in this chase.

Lorne hit an askew stack of boxes, which, somehow, utilizing an aspect of Carousel's movie magic I had very little experience with, acted as a ramp, launching Lorne and the ATV into the air in a direct arc toward a Night Stocker.

The front wheels hit the flying cultist, and the shadowy robes worn by the Stockers started getting stuck in the spinning front tires of the machine, which left Lorne, the Stocker, and the ATV floating in midair as Lorne revved the engine and the Stocker screamed as if he were in extreme pain.

"You're fired!" Lorne screamed as he punched the Stocker, who went out like a light, dropping out of the air like a brick, ATV and all. Lorne simply jumped to the next Stocker, who was on the ground. His Human Missile trope protected him from damage and again counteracted his low Hustle, allowing him to get great contact on the second Stocker as the first one was engulfed in an explosion from the ATV. It was chaos. Up close, Lorne didn't need Hustle for the gun to work.

The last of Lorne's cops were getting thrown around and out of the fight. They lay moaning and bleeding. With no allies and no remaining bullets, Lorne was now vulnerable himself. Night Stocker and regular cultists alike encircled him. He was exhausted, even with his Grit.

"At the last store I checked in on, I caught some employees smoking in the walk-in freezer," he said. He started to laugh.

"Probably should have gone easier on them, all things considered." The Night Stockers closed in and began weaving together magic and physical attack, ripping and tearing at Lorne's flesh. His suit was shredded, and his burly bare chest was visible from the damage. This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

As two Night Stockers closed in, one engulfing him in the shadows beneath his cloak, Lorne grabbed onto another and jammed him into the shadow vortex of the first. The two Stockers became a revolving nexus of shadow and screaming cultists from which Lorne dropped free. He looked around, looking for a fight. The other cultists didn't dare. Except for one. Tom, who was dressed in his work clothes, suddenly became enveloped in shadow. His cloak was larger and more elaborate than the others.

I jumped back in, surprised.

"Enough!" Tom screamed. He lifted a hand toward Lorne and summoned shadows from around the store, which bound Lorne and lifted him high into the sky.

"I dream of a world without bullies," Tom said, as the shadows lifted Lorne further into the air and then dropped him, some pulling him downward.

"This world was made for people like him, people who thrive by harming, harassing, and dominating others. Why do you think he is fighting us? On some level, he understands that we seek to fix this world. He resists it!" Lorne didn't fall all the way to the ground. He stopped suddenly with a loud crack, as if there had been a rope around his neck. There was no rope, only a shadow that didn't cease to exist or fade. Shadows pulled him in every direction. He hung there, dead. The room grew silent.

Tom dropped to his knees.

"He was a bully. He was…" Tom repeated over and over, letting the word echo in the air as if he might grow used to the sound of it. He didn't seem to like the sound.

"He will be with us in the next world. All of them will be with us. We will change this world and with it, change them. It's almost time." Night Stockers were supposed to target those they found morally depraved. They had a whole trope for it. The problem was that when you think you are fighting evil, you can call anyone who stands in your way evil, too. It was a more flexible trope than I initially thought. All bets were off.

The protection we enjoyed because we were not the sick ones in society was no longer there. I could see Tom's torn psyche struggling to deal with his actions. He was a good guy once, but in this movie, he had to be the bad guy. I wondered how this played out in the real world. Tom stood once more. He turned to me, and he must have seen the horror on my face. I wasn't even trying to put it there. I didn't have to pretend to be in over my head. I just was.

"You have to understand," Tom said.

"This isn't real. Once you understand… We're going to fix it. Your parents will be there too. Don't you hear them calling you?" I didn't want to. I didn't want to hear. But I heard something that couldn't just be wind. An image flashed in my eyes—my parents, positioned up against the headboard of their bed by their killer, lifeless but perfectly captured in a photograph. Behind them, the Pallbearer, a figure of shadows and smoke. The picture ran in tabloids and newspapers. I didn't feel sad. I felt angry.

I hated Tom for using their deaths. I hated Carousel for scripting him to do it. Nothing could be left alone. I stopped listening.

"What?" Tom asked.

"Why do you look angry?" I didn't mean to. I thought I was hiding the anger.

"Let's just do this," I said. I turned toward the employee's lounge. Then I said, "If you knew this was the price, if you knew it back at the beginning, would you still be here in this moment? Would you have said yes?" Tom took a moment to answer.

"It won't matter soon," he said mournfully. Tom used shadows to pull apart the Stockers that had been trapped in each other's vortexes. He looked around at the cops, who were at best unconscious.

"Get their names," he said.

"Gather their names! They will have a place in the new world. We have to succeed. For them. For everyone." I walked toward the secret passage leading to the cult's underground lair. Second Blood had passed. The enemy's true threat had been exposed. Not only did they have magic, but they were beyond being rationalized with. I reached down into my pockets and felt the baggies of fruit punch powder we had offered to another god. I had to hope it would be enough.

Underground, I stared at the wall covered in all of the specific requests the cult had created for their new world. A cultist next to me was taping the cops' badges on the wall as I watched, along with Lorne's driver's license. These guys thought they were the good guys, even more so than most of Carousel's well-meaning bad guys. Off-Screen. Finally. I needed to gather my thoughts. I didn't get much of a chance.

"It's a mess up there," Dina said, behind me.

"Glad to see you made it."

"Me too," I said.

"I'm glad we didn't go with the 'talk them out of it' strategy." We hadn't seriously considered that approach, but it was worth talking about. Tom did seem so normal and empathetic at first. Even empathy, though, could be weaponized.

"Told ya," she said.

"No more character-driven stuff for a while, huh?" I said.

"I want something simple."

"Good and evil and chainsaws," she said dryly. That could have been the end of the conversation. Dina wasn't much of a talker. But, I had to get something off my chest.

"Truth is, I know this story is supposed to be about grief, but I don't know what it's supposed to be saying about it. I mean, all of our characters deal with it, but what is the message? Grieving is bad? Let go of the bad stuff, or it won't let go of you?" Dina thought for a moment.

"There is no lesson to learn about grief," she said.

"All I know is that there is always more of it to go around. You pull the thread, and it's just an infinite supply. More and more of it. If I had been able to leave it all alone, none of us would be in this mess, you know? I'm no better than Tom, not in real life, even." She said it so matter-of-factly. Maybe that was the point. Carousel just wanted an infinite supply of sadness.

"I thought you were the one who found Carousel so hopeful, you know, the whole thing about it creating a way forward or whatever," I said. She shrugged.

"I still am," she said.

"I can hold two thoughts at once, even if they don't get along." I laughed.

"We are so far away from what we want," I said.

"So far away it feels like we haven't made any progress at all." Dina didn't answer for a time, but then she said, "We're not far away at all. Can't you hear it? Our perfect world is right down the hall. I can hear my son playing soccer. He's laughing. He does that a lot. He's right over there, like we could go see him if we wanted to." I listened for my parents. I didn't hear them. I heard a voice, but I didn't recognize it. I didn't want to. In my gut, I was afraid of the voice. Wasn't sure why.

"That's not exactly a good idea," I said.

"What you hear is the lure of an evil god."

"Maybe that's all life ever was," she said.

"A giant illusion meant to manipulate the desperate. What if we get to the end and we pull back the curtain and we find out that everything we ever knew was just more of this, more layers of make-believe? I don't think I'd mind." I shook my head.

"I hope we find out that all of this was for a reason, like a real reason, but that's not going to happen," I said.

"Then why look for the answers at all if you know you won't like them?" she asked.

"I just want to know," I said. Down the dark hallway, I could hear a kid kicking a soccer ball. I heard something else too, something I felt I had heard before. What was it?