Chapter 50: Book 1: Chapter 19 (Part 3 of 3)

Several hours later, my crew of three and I were up on the deck of the freshly christened Marena’s Mercy. Anastasia had created a nameplate with the name in foot-tall red lettering on either side of the prow and the stern of the ship, so any who got close enough, and lived to tell the tale, would know whom they encountered.

Those of us who needed to eat had done so in the galley earlier. We had been slowly sailing down the Grand River for maybe four hours and it was almost eight in the evening. We had maybe an hour before the light faded and had turned North as the crow flies as we prepared to circumnavigate the bend in the river that would take us around and through downtown Grand Rapids.

From where we had been on the river, we couldn’t get much of a look at the city, but what we could see clearly, were multiple plumes of smoke coming from within the city limits. It had been several days since integration into the Darkwyrlds, and though it was possible fires from that initial chaos could still be raging, I doubted it.

After three days the fires would have either burned themselves out or the entire city would be ablaze. My head and gut told me these were fresh blazes and that meant trouble of some kind.

As we had approached the city from the East, we had been suitably far away that whatever had been going down wouldn’t affect us or allow us to be spotted by whoever was causing the ruckus. However, once we hit the apex of the bend and turned southward again, we would be sailing through the city, as opposed to edging around its outskirts.

The safest play would have been to halt for a few hours, let the sun go down fully, and then pass through under the cover of night. But I discarded such a notion for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, I wanted to know what the fuck was going on. Although we’d be concealed at night, so would whatever agents were at large in Grand Rapids.

Secondly, I was the big dog in the yard, they should be the ones cowering, not me.

We sailed up the river, armed and armoured, with our eyes peeled. We didn’t see much until we passed a marina for an artificial lake on our left just as the river turned.

The rattle of gunfire alerted us to what was happening before we could see it clearly ourselves. The trees on the left of the ship obscured our sight to begin with, and we were too far away to make use of my Quixbix cheat, but when we cleared the bend and could see the bridge over the river up ahead, the tree line on the left cleared giving us a view of events.

Before we could see southward into the city, Jackson pointed out that the road on the bridge had been very effectively blockaded. How, I don’t know, but a row of trucks had been wheeled in front of the way onto the southern end of the bridge.

Our examination of that was interrupted as we got a good view of what was happening just ahead of the bridge. We could see the ruins of a few buildings that had been burned down. There was no sign of smouldering, so this must have been done a few days ago. Most of what we could see was a collection of car parks, many of the cars now burned-out wrecks.

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There was an ongoing firefight between two groups turning the highway and the car parks into a war zone.

The group closest to us appeared to be in full retreat and were dressed in the navy blue and black of the police department sporting tactical protection vests. Those forcing them back up to the river and the blockaded bridge were wearing armour like ours, over tracksuits, jeans, and other regular clothing.

That wasn’t the only difference between the two warring groups. The police were armed primarily with handguns and a few shotguns. Their attackers either used assault rifles or crossbows and bows. Also, every officer I could see was human and their attackers were a mixture of new Darkwyrlds species.

I spotted several different species as part of the offensive group. A few orcs and gnolls, and what I took to be some kind of Lizardfolk. However, the majority were tawny-haired cat people.

<Leonids> Quixbix informed us. <Or Lionblood humans to be precise, though most prides prefer the term Leonid.>

I nodded my head in silence, we’d all ducked down behind the taffrail to avoid any stray bullets.

From what I observed, in the few minutes it took us to pass under the bridge and out of sight, the cops were being overwhelmed. Most of the officers seemed to be carrying wounds and from the look of them, they hadn’t adjusted to the new Darkwyrlds reality. They were garbed in old-world armour while their opponents wore something that actually worked.

The approaching army, because that is what it was, could press the cops with little fear of the fire coming their way. The police, on the other hand, had half a dozen of their people go down in the few minutes that we watched them. With the bridge behind them blocked, they were doomed.

Somebody had made a play to take control of Grand Rapids and from what we’d seen, they were on the verge of being successful.

“Everybody stay sharp,” I ordered. “The next hour could be interesting.”

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