Fearful Symmetry

by septithol

In the time of the Future Imperfect events, a girl grows up, trying to save what is left of the animals in the Bronx Zoo from the ravages of war. In a world ruled by one monster, can another monster be any better? What makes the difference between a monster and a man, anyways? Tags Maestro, Hulk, Morbius, Vampire

27. Chapter 27

Chapter 27. The Making of a Monster

I was a highwayman, along the coach roads I did ride
With sword and pistol by my side
Many a young maid lost her baubles to my trade
Many a soldier shed his lifeblood on my blade
The bastards hung me in the spring of twenty-five
But I am still alive... - Highwayman - Johnny Cash

The result of all this was that the next day, in addition to continuing training with the Army of Darkness, Aster started extra lessons with two teachers. She did not enjoy either of her new lessons, and wasn't sure which of the two she disliked more.

Her first lesson, in the early morning, was in General Monroe's chambers. He had another woman, Aster wasn't sure who she was, but based on the fact that unlike all the other women in the Army, she was clean, as if she had washed with soap, rather than just hot water and rough cloths, Aster figured she was probably General Monroe's personal whore. Her suspicions regarding at least the soap were confirmed, when Aster was given a bar of her own.

"Try to use as little as possible." General Monroe told her. "We don't have a whole lot."

Aster didn't know why that should be. Making soap wasn't that hard. You just needed ashes, water, and fat, and to be a little careful about what temperature you mixed things at. But then, maybe the fat was the problem. The Army of Darkness was filled with hungry people, and they needed every calorie they could get.

At first, the fact that Aster was obviously getting to wash with soap made the other members of the Army jealous, especially the women. They made some snide comments to her about being "Puta" and "Monroe's New Whore." At least, until Aster knocked down three of the rudest women (there were at least some advantages to being 6 or more inches taller than most of the other women in the Army), and General Monroe chewed them out and said that Aster was most certainly NOT his 'New Whore' and he had his Reasons for letting her use soap, and they would be told the Reasons if and when they Needed To Know. Which was to say, Never. After that, they were still jealous, but did not make their rude remarks where Aster could hear them. Besides which, Aster had about six inches of height and a corresponding amount of muscles more than most of the other women in the army. Fighting with her, even with a few friends - if the friends were other women - was a losing proposition. And the men didn't seem to care if Aster got to use soap or not.

Other than the soap, though, Aster didn't like the lessons. It was all so damned repugnant and alien. The woman who was teaching her (who wouldn't give a name other than 'Missy') moved much like the Betty's often had, when they were trying to get favors from the guards. She acted as if she were in the early stages of having sex with any convenient object, including bottles of wine, biscuits, the wooden support beams in the mine, her own clothing, and even the air itself. She would shift and open her clothing slightly, as if she were going to take it off, but then would stop after revealing only a few more inches of skin than had been seen before. Sometimes she would very lightly touch the General's hair, or chest, or leg, but rather than continuing to give the man himself attention (which is what Aster would have done if she had actually been at all interested in the man, rather than repulsed by him) she would then coyly move away and go back to doing something with whatever nearby object struck her fancy. In fact, it seemed to Aster that what Missy was doing was seducing pretty much anything and everything around her except General Monroe. It seemed dishonest and cruel to Aster. A false promise of what she could do to a man (but never actually would in reality).

But General Monroe seemed to enjoy it, at least to the extent that he said that Aster needed to learn to imitate what Missy was doing, and if that was what was needed to get past the guards, then so be it. There was little other choice. Aster was the only woman there who knew the layout of the Palace and the behavior expected of the Betties. Not to mention the only one there, male or female, who had enjoyed the attentions of a dentist any time recently (Trying to pass a woman with rotting teeth off as a Betty would be unlikely to work). And the fact that Aster was larger than any other woman there gave her a slight advantage that General Monroe mentioned once or twice, but that Aster didn't like to think about. She was big enough to survive a hit that would be lethal to a smaller woman. 'Survive' in this case being a euphemistic term to mean that Aster might possibly live long enough after being shot to kill the guards and pull the fuses, before bleeding to death. Or dying later on of infection.

"The best strategy is to not get shot." Wolfkiller told her. General Monroe was having Wolfkiller show Aster the best, fastest ways to take a man out, both with a gun, and with other weapons, including hands and feet. Aster learned quickly, and knew enough about human anatomy that she showed Wolf killer a few things even he hadn't thought of.

"Use surprise, and every dirty trick you can think of." He told her. "Women are not only weaker than men, they're slower. You'll either take out the guards in 5 seconds, or you won't do it at all."

Aster believed the bit about 'weaker', having rather little choice since she still couldn't get over that damn wall that was on the Army's training course, but didn't really buy the bit about 'slower', thinking that was just chauvinistic crap, until Wolfkiller told her to block a punch he would aiming at her head. Aster got her arms into the usual bent, defensive position that the former horsemaster had taught her, but didn't even see the punch he threw at her, until it was an inch away from her nose, where it stopped, while Aster blinked crosseyed at the scarred fingers in front of her face. Only then, did she realize the degree to which the former horsemaster had been pulling his blows during their training.

"Like I said," He said in a mild tone. "Slower. I don't know what crap pre-war books or articles you might have read about it, but you are not faster or stronger than most men. Very few women are. Your job is to kill the guards, by whatever dirty trick you have to use, and as fast as you can do it. Not to get in a fight with them, in order to prove you're tougher than them. Because you aren't. You might have been able to take out those three bitches that were giving you a hard time about the soap, but believe me when I tell you that is nothing."

Aster nodded. Other than the pre-pubescent boys she had sometimes punched at the zoo for teasing the animals, back when she was a child, she had never taken on a man, one on one before, in a fight. Unless you counted the Maestro's rape of her and he really wasn't a normal man anyways, so didn't really count. It was quite an eye opener, and she paid much closer attention to her lessons in seduction after that, despite still finding the entire concept dishonest and cruel. Fighting fair was not part of survival, she decided. She remembered the book The Call of the Wild, in which the sled dog, 'Buck' had proven he was fit for survival by stealing fish, and getting another dog blamed for it. No animal, except human beings fighting for amusement rather than survival, ever fought 'fair'. It was hardly 'fair' to a rabbit, for instance, that a lynx like Mr. Stubs had sharp teeth and claws and the rabbit didn't, but the lynx would hardly shrink from using those weapons on the rabbit in order to be 'fair'. Well, so be it. If she were weaker and slower than a man, she would just have to be smarter. She would be unfair. She would use seduction, or the darkness, or any other unfair weapon she could think of and use.

After all, the Maestro's gamma given strength was hardly fair either, was it?

Aster was given a set of the green, nearly transparent, silk clothing that the Betty's wore, along with a pair of what had once been the same sort of high-heeled shoes that were available in the palace. The shoes had been modified, the high heels lowered to a bare half inch tall. "Not many women as tall as you." General Monroe told her. "We need to do things to make you look shorter."

The visual tricks to make her look shorter not only included the fake high-heels shoes, but decorations on the dress, as well as on Aster's body. Horizontal lines were added, wherever they could be. A broad sash made of metallic green fabric was tied around the waist of the dress, the loincloth in front was widened slightly. Strings of green beads were sewn in graceful loops across the front of the dress. Aster was given a garters and anklets for her legs, and wide bracelets for her arms.

"We're working on curling the hair on that wig." She was told. "Make that look wider, too."

Eventually, Aster learned to imitate 'Missy' fairly well. To move and act the way the other woman did. Though it was hard to keep herself from sometimes bursting out with laughter. Really, wiggling your hips like that when you walked, so you could only make half the speed you otherwise would have? How the hell could one get anything done? Of course, the Betty's really hadn't gotten a whole lot done, now that she thought about it. Other than sometimes having sex, and even that they had never really actually done most of the time if they could help it. Pretty much everything they had done had merely been looking good and teasing. When it came to anything that really needed doing, like fixing the toilet, it had been Aster who had had to do it. The rest of the Betty's had been useless. At least for anything practical. All they could do well, really, was wear clothes and put on makeup. The latter of which Aster also had to be taught to do, by Missy. She would need put it on herself and wear it in the palace.

Aster was given some weapons. Finding a gun for her was difficult. Her hands were larger than most women's, but smaller than most men's. Eventually, she found one she liked, which said 'Taurus' in engraved lettering on the metal. Aster wasn't sure what 'Taurus' meant other than the bull from the zodiac, and a type of a car from before the war that one could sometimes find. Perhaps whatever factory had made the cars before the war had made the guns as well. It was difficult to find a way to hide the gun beneath the rather skimpy outfit Aster needed to wear, but eventually they came up with the idea of making a sort of narrow loincloth out of the same green metallic material her sash was made out of, but only in back. They needed to avoid vertical lines as much as possible in front. A holster was made for her out of braided leather strips, which rubbed uncomfortably on her skin and threatened to cut her if worn for any length of time. Aster rubbed the leather with a bit of grease, which didn't help much, and wore it anyways. It hid the gun well under the metallic sash and loincloth, and she would only need to use it for a little while. Besides which, the holster came off fairly easily, and had a sharp metal circle with spikes at one end. It could be used as a weapon, in and of itself. It was a good thing to have, even if it hurt. She could always bitch about it later.

Which she intended to.

Wolfkiller, who had gained a great deal of skill at blacksmithing from having to make shoes for horses, made her a small curved knife, that could be hidden in the garter she wore on her leg.

"Always have a backup weapon." He told her. "Or three. Especially when you are walking into a trap."

"It's a trap for them, not me." Aster told him.

He just shook his head. "The bars on a cage work both ways."

But having a backup weapon made sense. Aster suggested to General Monroe that they poison a bottle of wine, and if she were lucky, perhaps she could convince the guards to drink it. He considered the idea for a few moments, then shook his head.

"Poison has always been a woman's weapon." He told Aster. "There's a big chance they'll insist you drink first. I don't have any fancy poisons with antidotes. Maybe if that Dr. Llewellyn were here, we could have come up with something. As it is, we need you to look and act like a woman, but fight like a man. The… contradiction might surprise them enough to slow them down. Like Wolfkiller told you, you'll have about five seconds to take them out, if you're going to."

Aster thought about this. "Could a wine bottle itself be a weapon? A club, or breaking it to slash someone with?"

General Monroe thought about this. "Too short to make a good club. You'd have to get close to them, and the Maestro picks larger men to be his guards. But breaking it… a good idea, but not in the time we have. It's tricky to break a bottle, if you don't know exactly how. Especially for … someone who isn't that strong in the arms. And every bottle is different. You could cut yourself in the process."

Aster was annoyed. There had to be a way to use something as large as a wine bottle as a weapon. Or to hide a weapon. She thought about it for a minute, so intent that she missed something else that General Monroe said to her. Inwardly, she was visualizing the entire Consolidated Iron Mines, and everything in it, and all the components that those things were made of. There had to be something she could use. Something. She pictured the storage rooms, and the supplies, and the equipment used, and the things they made, then mentally went through all of them again, in greater detail. There had to be something she could use. Something unfair.

There was.

She opened her half lidded eyes, and asked General Monroe a question. He didn't understand it at first, because she used the technical term for what she needed. She asked him again, using the common name for what she wanted.

"Yeah, we got a fair amount of that. We steal some, make some when we have to. Which isn't easy. But you're right, we do need it, so we have it on hand. Why do you ask?"

Aster told him what she had in mind.

"Nasty." It was a tone of admiration and approval. Probably the most he had approved of her since she had fed him power with her idea about his keeping the cameras and film to take pictures of all the members of the Army. "Very nasty. And very dangerous. How will you protect yourself from it, if you use it?"

Aster had some ideas as to that, as well. General Monroe nodded.

"Brilliant. Nasty, but brilliant. Glad you're on my side, you'd be too dangerous to let live if you were an enemy, you know that?" That was actually a compliment, coming from General Monroe. "You are a monster, you know that? You just might actually pull this off and live. If you do, I'll tell Wolfkiller to promote you."

Aster didn't much care about being 'promoted'. Except that maybe rank could get things done that she needed done, that she couldn't get done otherwise. But again, that hint that he wasn't going to be around much longer. His cancer must have been worse than it seemed. But there was nothing Aster could do about it. She could only do what she could do, which would be - if she were very lucky and smart - to get the lights off in the Maestro's palace so that the rest of the Army could take the place with as few casualties as possible.

"I'll only be able to bring a little with me." Aster said. "In a bottle or something. But bring more, with the Army. As much as you can. It's useful stuff."

"Don't go asking for it." he warned her. "I'll get you the stuff on some pretext or the other. And don't even mention it to anyone. I caught one spy, but there could be more."

Aster's other lesson was, as General Monroe had promised, in learning to drive the trucks. She disliked that lesson as much as she did the lessons in seduction, but for different reasons. The seduction she found to be cruel, dishonest, and alien. She found driving the trucks to be purely frightening.

She didn't know herself, why she was so afraid of the trucks. Part of it was their height. Aster had never liked heights, she had been nervous even riding on Wolfkiller's Percheron's, and the trucks positioned her even higher than that. Then there was the sheer power of the damn things. The trucks could pull as much, or possibly even more, than the Maestro could lift. It was because of their power that she needed to be able to drive them. She had envisioned in her mind one possible way, one slim chance, of finally getting her revenge on the Maestro. And the trucks were a part of it. She needed several things done, that only a truck could do. Some of them would need to be done fairly soon, others would not have to be done for a long time (at least if she were lucky). And there was no way to do it with her own weak body. Even a man, or even one of Wolfkiller's draft horses would not be able to do what needed to be done. She needed to be able to control strength close to that of the Maestro himself.

But it was, perhaps, the very strength that she needed, that frightened her. Despite the fact that the truck had no will of it's own, it went exactly where Aster steered it (at least when she didn't stall it out by pressing the clutch and brake in the wrong order), the huge machines reminded her very much of the Maestro. Sitting in them was like sitting in his lap, back when she had been a child, during the feast he threw to celebrate the fact that he was going to rape her nearly to death that night.

Aster did not even know how to drive, which the various men who were teaching her about the truck said was actually a good thing. She had no bad habits to 'unlearn'. But there were many controls in the truck, and the things were finicky. You had to get them up to a certain speed, which you would know either by looking at the 'tachyometer', or preferably, by listening to the sound of the engine. Then it was clutch, and brake, and clutch, and shift, and then accelerate before you stalled out. And then again. Upshift, upshift, upshift. Or in reverse. Downshift, downshift, until it was safe to stop the truck and park it. The transmission in the truck was finicky, as might be expected of a hundred or more year old machine, and Aster had to suffer through often stalling it out, or grinding the gears (and getting subsequently chewed out by whoever was teaching her at the moment) before she learned the particular quirks of the machine well enough to successfully shift it at least 90% of the time.

After a few days of lessons, Aster got the truck up to a speed where it wasn't safe to go in the small circles that there was room for in the cleared area in front of the mines, and the various men who were teaching her had her drive up and down the muddy, icy trail leading to the mines, threatening her with dire consequences if she 'skidded on the mud and sent the truck into the ditch'. She didn't send the truck into the ditch, but there were only a few miles of trail they were allowed to go on. The end of the trail was roped and flagged off, and there were several guards there. Nobody was allowed to leave the Underworld without permission, and it had been in attempting to leave without permission that the spy that General Monroe had hung had been caught. Aster asked General Monroe once about the location of the guard post and was just answered with a shrug. She knew him better than to press the matter. Probably there was a Reason, but she did not Need To Know. Her best guess was that the metal in the hills around the mines interfered with radio transmission, but that once one got past the point where the guards were, radio transmission would be possible again, and a spy who got past that point could possibly contact the Maestro by that means and betray them. Their belongings had been searched, and any radio transmitters or objects that even looked like they could either have hidden transmitters or be modified to be transmitters had been taken. But that meant little. There was a lot of wilderness around the mines, and a spy could have hidden a radio a few miles away, and it would be unlikely to be found by anyone who didn't know where it was.

Since Aster did not want to be hung, and there was plenty of trail to practice driving on, she always stopped when she got to the guard post. Occassionally, she would get out to get a drink of water from the barrel they had, or use the crude pit toilet. Once the guards told her to bring them 'some beer and bread'. The guards were not allowed to drink on duty. General Monroe was actually far more strict when it came to that sort of disciplinary point than the Maestro had been. However, Aster got out of the truck when she drove back to the mines, managed to beg for a loaf of bread and a few apples from the kitchen staff, and brought those to the guards on her next trip down the trail. They seemed grateful for them, but teased her a little that she 'hadn't brought any beer'. At least Aster thought it was teasing, it was often hard for her to tell whether people were joking with her or not.

Most of her instructors with the truck did not notice how afraid Aster was of the huge, Maestro-like machines. She was that good at hiding her fear and functioning in spite of it. The few who did notice, merely thought Aster was 'a little nervous', and reassured her that she would 'get over it'. One older man thought that Aster's nervousness was due to the fact that everyone who would be driving the trucks would take a large hit of radiation, and suggested that she ought to leave it to those who were 'so old they would die soon anyways.'. But it wasn't the thought of the radiation that was scaring Aster, it was the trucks themselves; and she simply told the man that General Monroe had promised her her own truck, and she was going to get one, and if the old man didn't bloody well like it, he could just go complain to General Monroe.

The old man did not care to do that, so simply muttered some rude words under his breath, and kept giving Aster her lesson.

The one man who did notice Aster's fear of the trucks was Wolfkiller. He occasionally was the one giving Aster her driving lessons, and it was one day, after Aster had been learning to use the trucks for three weeks, that Wolfkiller noticed her slight gasp when she ground the gears again, reached across the cab of the truck. He noticed the way she was gripping the wheel with white knuckled hands, and holding her body stiffly, as if she thought she were made out of glass and likely to shatter at the slightest blow. Not good, he thought, and put his hand on the side of her throat. Aster pulled away from the unwanted contact with a man.

"What are you doing?" She said angrily. She might have to put up with that sort of thing during her seduction lessons with General Monroe, but she would be damned if she had to put up with it any other time.

But the brief contact had been enough for the former horsemaster to tell that Aster's pulse was racing. Probably at least 160, or twice as fast as it should have been, while just sitting. And he knew enough about panicked horses to be able to recognize a panicked horse, or a panicked Aster, when he saw one, no matter how well she disguised it.

"You're terrified!" He said. "Your heart rate is through the roof. What are you scared of? The truck? You've been driving it for nearly a month. You ought to be used to it by now. What's wrong with you?"

"I don't know." Aster couldn't put it into words. Most of her fear was below her level of consciousness. "The trucks are just scary."

The large man shook his head. "Why are you doing this? You don't need to. We got plenty of drivers. Forget about this, and ride in the back with everyone else. It's safer, anyways. There's no way to shield the cabs from radiation."

Aster did not mention that she thought there was a way to shield everyone, even the drivers, from the radiation. She wasn't sure if what she thought was correct, and wouldn't give anyone false hopes. And it wasn't the radiation that was frightening her.

"I do need to do it." She told Wolfkiller.

"Why?" he demanded. "Why do you want this so badly when it's obviously scaring the hell out of you?"

But Aster was not about to tell him that. "I just do."

Daniel Wolfkiller shook his head and said nothing. He finished her driving lesson for the day, then after the truck was parked, went to see Erick Monroe.

"I don't like this notion of teaching Aster to drive a truck." He complained to the General. "I want you to order her to give up on the idea."

"I'm sorry, I really can't do that." The older man did not sound sorry at all.

"You're in charge here, you can do whatever the hell you want!"

"Actually, no, I can't." General Monroe's guts were paining him worse than usual that afternoon, and he sat down and rubbed his side. "I can't force a few hundred people to fight for me, unless they're willing to do so. And I can't force Aster Aversa to break into the palace, kill two guards, and pull the damn fuses, unless SHE wants to do so. Her price is a truck. So be it. I'll give it to her. We've got plenty of other trucks. We don't have another woman who knows the palace and the protocol like she does."

"Well, I don't like it." Wolfkiller groused. "She didn't ask for this truck on a lark. In fact, she's terrified of the damn thing. Terrified, and learning to drive it anyways. She wants it for a Reason, I'm damned sure of that, and she refuses to tell me why she wants it. And I don't like that."

"You don't need to like it." General Monroe pointed out. "You just need to follow orders and teach her."

"So, you don't even care why she wants a truck?" He folded his arms in disgust.

"Oh, I care." General Monroe said. "Or at least I'm curious. I'll be watching from hell, if I'm able, to see what she has planned for it. But trust me when I say it's pretty low down on my list of priorities. I'm fairly sure she doesn't want it for any reason that's a threat to me or my children, which is about the only thing that might slightly worry me. As for whatever other insane reason she might have in that twisted little head of hers for wanting the truck, I honestly don't give a damn. For all I know, she's horny for the damn thing, and fat lot I care if she puts on a public tomato show" he used a current slang term for a live sex show, "with the damn thing, if that's what it takes to get her to get those damn fucking lights out."

"Do you care that she's scared out of her head?"Wolfkiller said. "She's more scared of that truck than she is of breaking into the palace. That's not sane. It's a damn machine. She shouldn't be scared. At least, not that scared."

"We're all afraid." said General Monroe. "She's not special in that regard."

Wolfkiller shook his head. He lacked the language ability to adequately express the sheer terror that he could see in Aster. "Nobody should be that afraid. They shouldn't be that afraid, and they shouldn't be able to work, despite that much fear. It just makes me wonder, just how much has she been through, in the Maestro's palace, to have had to learn to live with that much fear. It isn't right. She's just a kid."

"A kid…" General Monroe drummed his fingers. "She's twenty years old, Daniel. Or is it nineteen? No matter. She's not a kid. Most women her age are married and have a kid or two of their own. Stop picturing her as the girl she was, back in that Zoo she lived in. Because from what you told me, that girl died when she was 14 years old. When the Maestro put her in a cage like an animal, and raped her. What's left… well, it's not what she would have been. I'd almost use the word undead, like Vampires like this Morbius are supposed to be. She shouldn't have survived what happened, and what did survive isn't human any more at all. I won't lie. I don't feel sorry for her. Ten years ago, I probably would have raped her myself."

"Well, things change. A General can't really get away with that like a bandit can. You told me that once, and I'm starting to see it for myself. It's going to take an army to save Evan and Gina, to get them somewhere safe, so I have to be a leader, not a criminal. In fact, more than an army. A nation, probably, but I won't live to found it. Probably you will. Possibly that freak Aster might, and that will be really interesting." His face wrinkled. "It sucks. I'm not cut out for this, but if I don't keep them safe, who will? Nobody. It sucks for me, I'd rather be spending my last days eating and drinking than trying to organize these people. It sucks for you. It sucks for Aster, after what happened to her, I doubt anything but death is going to put an end to fear in her. Well, there's nothing I can do to help her, or myself. The only thing I can do, is make things better for Evan and Gina. And the other kids here."

The last sentence was an obvious afterthought. A man like Monroe cared about little except himself and his own family. "Give them a better life and a better future than you or I or that little Zookeeping bitch have. If I have to hurt and frighten her more than she's already been through, to get that done, then so be it."

"Besides," A good leader always held out a carrot. "She's got a fair chance. She came up with a damn good idea about taking out the guards. She might survive. Even the radiation. She's young enough to take a big hit, and she has a good point about there likely being a cure for it, where you're going. Something is keeping all the people and plants there alive, at any rate. If she does make it, maybe she'll find a life for herself, in this Wisconsin place. Time doesn't always heal wounds, not ones as bad as we have, but it does sometimes scar them over so it doesn't hurt quite so badly."

Eventually, things came together. Aster learned to imitate the seduction other women seemed to know by instinct well enough to please General Monroe. She learned to drive the truck better than most men, though she was never comfortable in it. She was a good shot with the gun, and knew a few good, deadly blows with both her hands, and her little curved knife. Like everyone else in the army, she was good at finding her way even in total darkness. She was tired and hungry all the time, but so was everyone else in the Army of Darkness. Given the amount of training they had to do, none of them could get as much sleep as they ought to have gotten. It made them hate their enemy, the Maestro and his pampered guards worse than ever. After all, it was the enemy's fault that they had been driven to such a desperate course of action. General Monroe reminded them of that fact at least several times a day.

On the last day of March, when the winter snows and ice had melted into cold mud, except for a few lingering piles where snow had been plowed off the clearing in front of the mines where they had all trained, General Monroe assembled everyone in the Army of Darkness to stand before him. He was up on his usual wooden platform, and they were all in rows. The sun had gone down an hour earlier, and the only light was from a tall torch standing next to the General himself, and a cooking fire off to one side of the assembled soldiers that had been used earlier in the day, and was now nothing but dim coals. There were several dozen practice dummies set into the ground about 100 feet away on the left, and numerous barrels behind them. He said nothing for a few minutes, and Aster wondered what was up, as most of the other people probably were. Usually, they were given their orders for exercises almost immediately, and in a rude tone of voice.

Finally, their General spoke.

"Soldiers!" He told them, and everyone straightened. "Left Face! Assemble your positions!"

Aster moved with the rest of the soldiers Everyone moved quickly, into a shallow, U shaped formation, pointed towards the dummies like a wide, gaping jaw. Men in the front and center, women and children to either side, and forward just slightly, at least for their starting positions. That would change. The only light was from the dim coals and the torch next to General Monroe, but they did not need more light than that. They were the Army of Darkness, and they had been trained to fight in the dark. And they knew who the enemy was. It was the green clad dummies. Nobody in the Army ever wore green. It was not forbidden, but none of them would ever wear it, nevertheless. Green was the color of their enemy.

"Guns! Attack the enemy!" Monroe ordered. The men dropped to one knee, and the women and teenagers between the ages of 12 and 16 crouched behind them. The men and women had larger rifles and pistols, the smaller teenagers had mostly what General Monroe called 'Twenty-twos'. They all shot at the dummies, using hand loaded low powered rounds that did not make nearly as much noise as the regular ammunition that was used in the soundproofed target range inside the mines. It was still loud, but not so loud that it could be heard miles away, by someone who might report the shooting to the Maestro.

The women and teenagers, partly shielded by the kneeling men, fired over the heads and shoulders of the shooting men. Shreds of cloth, chips of wood, and clumps of hay flew off the dummies. Aster was shooting as well, in an uncomfortable crouching position. Being taller than most of the other women, she had to get lower, in order to use the men in front of her as sheilds.

"Forward!" They were ordered, and the men got from their knees to a crouching position, scurrying forwards, the women and teenagers at full height behind them, still shooting at the dummies.

"Cease fire!" Came a loud order. Then, another command. "Hand weapons! Women and children on Arrows and Slings! You men on Spears and Axes! Cease ranged fire when the men are within 20 feet of the enemy.

This was necessary, and they had been trained for it. They had a lot of ammunition, but did not know how much they would need to use when they attacked the Maestro's palace, and they could not break off the attack if they ran out. The women and children rained rocks and arrows at the dummies, as the men ran forward with spears. Once they had used the spears, they would switch to axes. Aster was using a bow. She had the size and strength for it. About 2/3 of the other women, the stronger ones, as well as some of the stronger teenagers were using bows as well. The smaller and weaker women and teenagers were slingers, using the whirling motion to get the range and speed they would not have had with a light bow. And the combination of both arrows and rocks would hopefully be more confusing to their enemy than arrows alone.

The men got close enough to the dummies that it was no longer safe to fire the slings and bows over their heads, and General Monroe ordered: "Bows and slings! Cease forward fire! Defend the perimeter!"

Aster and the other women and the teenagers looked right and left, and sure enough, large stuffed sacks on the ends of ropes were arcing through the air, to both sides, or being pulled along the ground. They rained arrows and rocks on them, protecting the men and their army from a side attack. It wasn't easy to hit a moving target, but they had learned to do it in three months of hard training, and most of the archers and slingers hit their mark. There were large crates and barrels set around. These were 'cover' and now that they were no longer directly behind the men, they hid and fired from behind them, whenever they could, darting from one piece of 'cover' to another, to get closer to their 'enemy'.

The men, meanwhile, had impaled the dummies with spears, and were in the process of hacking them up with axes and the short, wide swords that General Monroe called a 'Gladius'. Aster was one of the few people in the Army who knew that a 'Gladius' was the standard weapon for Roman soldiers, who had lived over 2000 years ago, when Jesus had supposedly been alive. She had mentioned it to a few other soldiers who were interested, but most of them didn't care. It cut through the enemy like a knife through soft cheese, and that was all they cared about. Aster did not have a Gladius, which made her a bit jealous. She and the other women and teenagers had thinner swords, dirks, that were about the same length as the gladius, but much lighter. And they had not been trained in them all that much. General Monroe said they would be more useful with bows and slings than they would in hand to hand combat. Which was probably true. The advantage in close combat was almost always to whoever was bigger and stronger. Besides, General Monroe wanted to protect his Seed Corn as much as was possible in the battle.

"Cease fire!" General Monroe ordered again. A second later, there was silence, then in a few moments, a loud clatter. Barrels were being rolled at them from several directions, down the incline of the large hills the mines were dug into. In the darkness, Aster did not see who was rolling the barrels, but assumed they were high enough on the hills that they were not likely to be hit by what came next.

"Wardogs!" came a cry from General Monroe. "Attack!"

He did not tell them HOW to attack, but by this time, they knew their stuff. They charged forward, and there was shooting with guns, bows, and slings. Then, as the army and barrels got close to one another, the men switched to spears, axes, and the gladius, smashing and hacking the main group of wooden barrels that were directly in front of them, while the women and teenagers shot arrows and stones at those 'wardog' barrels that were on one side.

There was a sudden squealing. A few dozen pigs, who had been in the mines, had apparently been brought onto the hills along with the barrels, and were now being released, and driven down the hill.

"More Wardogs!" came the cry. There was only a moment's hesitation about it now being a living enemy, then like the barrels and dummies before them, the frantic pigs were subjected to bullets, and arrows, and stones, and the hacking and stabbing of edged weapons. The pigs squealed frantically, and a few tried to charge the army, or run back up the hills they had come from, but there was simply too much death raining down on them from too many directions. Not one of them escaped.

In only a few minutes, the barrels and pigs stopped. Whoever was rolling them down the hills had obvious run out of them. There was silence, and they regarded the devastation before them. What had been carefully constructed stuffed dummies and barrels, was now little more than scraps and splinters and tufts of trampled straw. The pigs were crudely butchered corpses, surrounded by blood, and hacked off limbs and bits of flesh. Mud and blood covered everything, especially the members of the Army of Darkness. A few members of the Army were bleeding, from falls and one had an arrow stuck in his leg and was lying on one side being treated by one of the Army's medics. The clearing and all the objects in it looked like it had been demolished by some terrifying monster of inhuman strength and fury, a monster worse than the Maestro himself. Aster and all the other soldiers were panting and trying to catch their breath and slow their hearts.

There was pig blood around Aster's mouth. Or perhaps it was human blood, from one of the other soldiers, or even herself. She tasted it with her tongue, but got no clue as to it's source. She put her tongue back into her mouth. The taste of blood was strangely good, after their battle, but pigs were dirty animals, almost as disgusting as the Maestro himself, and raw pig blood could carry nasty parasites. Human blood would actually be better. Aster tasted the blood a moment more, then spat the stuff back out onto the ground, just in case it was pig blood. She shook out her arms, unsure what to do next. Nobody else seemed to know, either. General Monroe let them wait for several calculated seconds, then stepped onto the battlefield, carrying his torch with him, and regarded the utter devastation.

"You have done well." He finally said. "Three months ago, you were all helpless recruits, running away for your very lives! Now you are soldiers, you will turn around and destroy the bastards who drove you from your homes and lives! The bastards who have been taking the best of your food, and women, and children for that Green Devil! You'll kill them, and take back from them what you stole, take from them what you need not only to survive, but to create a new nation! A nation where our children will be safe from the Maestro, that Green Devil! And their children, or grandchildren, God willing, may someday rise against him! And throw the raping, child eating devil back in the Hell where he belongs!"

The cheers were deafening. They only got to cheer for about ten seconds, however, when General Monroe raised his arm, calling for silence.

"You have all earned your place in the Army of Darkness!" he told them. "You will be given the uniforms you have earned! Line up in parade positions!"

That meant - line up by gender, age, and height. Men first, then women, then the teenagers between twelve and sixteen who were fighting. Aster was a bit of an incongruity in the line, taller than the shortest man who was standing directly in front of her, but noticeably taller than the next tallest woman, directly behind her. As they waited while a few men brought out some rough tables and boxes and bags of the 'uniforms', Aster glanced backwards and noticed the on other person who stuck out so awkwardly, a gangly teenage boy, over a foot taller than the short woman who was ahead of his. He noticed Aster glancing at him, and shrugged sheepishly. He was actually taller than Aster; the difference in height between him and the woman ahead of him was much greater than the difference in height between Aster and either the woman behind her, or the man ahead of her. But the boy behind him, at least, was not that much shorter than he was. Aster stuck out oddly no matter which way you looked in the line.

Nobody really cared, though. They were all too eager to get their uniforms. Which consisted of a cloak and an iron pin that could either fasten it shut, or be used as an ornament. Both had been made, in secret, during the past three months, by some of the very old men and women in the Underworld. They were too old to be part of the Army of Darkness, too old to fight, but they could still sew and do metalwork. And it actually had not been all that much of a 'secret' as to what they had been doing, but by collective tacit agreement, everyone in the Army pretended that it was.

The cloak had slits for their arms, was made of warm wool, and colored a dark, nearly black, grey, with a hind of mottling. It had a hood that could be pulled to cover nearly all of their face, or folded over to cover just the head, and was cut and hemmed in a scalloped fashion on the bottom like a bat's wings. Indeed, if they held it up (which the first few men to get their cloaks were gleefully doing) it made them look very much like giant bats. Aster approved of the dark grey color. Night was only very rarely a dead, pitch black. There was almost always some small amount of light, from the moon, or stars, or fires, or even the air itself (odd as that seemed). A true, jet black color would have been more noticeable than the dark grey.

The metal pins were in three styles. One was shaped like a bat, with outstretched wings. The second was shaped like the crescent moon. The last was shaped like a star. The bat pins were for the men, the moons for the women, the stars for the teenagers between twelve and sixteen. Except when Aster reached the tables where they were being handed out, and the man behind the table tried to hand her a moon pin, she shook her head.

"I want a bat pin." There were still some left in the box. And bats, especially Vampire bats were predators. They attacked, like she was going to have to do in the palace. They didn't just sit there and look pretty like the moon. Or like the Betties in the palace did. And it was the only one that was an animal. Appropriate for a Zookeeper.

"Bats are for men, moons are for women." The man behind the table said absently, as if it were a line he had memorized by rote, without knowing or caring about it's meaning.

But Aster could be stubborn. She slung the cloak she had just gotten (a size 'extra large') over her shoulder, and squinted and glared at the man. How dare he tell her what pin she could and couldn't have, when she was the one who was going to have to risk herself in such a dangerous and repugnant way to try and get the lights out in the Maestro's palace in order to reduce the danger for all the rest of the Army. But she could not tell the man that that is what she was going to do. General Monroe had warned her not to talk about what he wanted her to do, lest there be another spy (or three) in the Underworld, who might warn the Maestro of it. So she just glared at him, and snatched a bat pin out of the box anyways. Stealing it, like she had stolen the bottle from Daniel Wolfkiller so long ago. She may not have deserved the bottle, that had been a childish, little kid thing to do, but she damn sure had earned that bat.

"I want a bat pin." She told him, holding the pin firmly in her dirty fist. "And I'm going to bloody well have one. You don't like it, why don't you just go crying to Mommy Monroe?"

The man apparently did not want to go crying, either to his 'mommy', or to General Monroe, or both. He looked around in confusion, but nobody else behind the tables or in front of them seemed to care that Aster had taken the wrong pin for her gender. Finally he shrugged, and decided to ignore the matter. He turned to the next person in line, the woman behind Aster, and handed her a moon pin. The second tallest woman in the army didn't care about getting a moon pin, and the line went on.

After about an hour, everyone in the Army of Darkness had their uniforms and was wearing them. Aster was especially impressed by the pins (whether they were bats or moons). They looked to her like real, solid silver. Not iron like she had thought at first. Classy. It impressed everyone else in the Army as well, once it was known. Apparently General Monroe had given up a fair amount of the coins he had obtained during his nefarious past as a bandit chieftain. A few people noticed that Aster had the 'wrong' pin for her gender, and teased her a little about that, and there were a few jokes as to whether certain men who were known to be into buggery ought not to be given a moon pin. But nobody really cared. They were all part of the Army of Darkness, and male or female, into buggery or worse things, that was all that mattered at the moment.

During the chaos of getting their uniforms, and the subsequent mutual admiration, a tall object, nearly ten feet tall, and covered with a sheet, had been brought out, and put down below the platform, near the dim coals in the cooking pit. Aster did not notice it until General Monroe tossed a glass of something, probably the wood alcohol that was in such common use in the Underworld for so many purposes, into the fire pit, and flames shot up, illuminating himself and the large object towering next to him. Everyone else was looking at the sudden, rude flash of firelight as well, and when he had their attention, General Monroe pulled the sheet off the object next to him.

It was the Maestro!

There was a gasp of horror.

Then realization.

It was, of course, not the Maestro himself, but another dummy. This one, just larger and better made than the others. Logs had been carefully sculpted and put together, probably by whoever had made the ornately carved chair of new wood that Aster had noticed in General Monroe's chambers. The work done in actual secret, unlike the pretend 'secret' work of the old men and women who had made their uniforms. Then, painted bright green, given hair of wool and eyes of glass, and dressed in royal clothing, purple and gold, much like the Maestro wore.

No, exactly like he wore.

"And this is our enemy!" General Monroe said. "The green devil himself, who has taken all the good from us! Taken the food from our mouths, and our women to be raped and our children to be roasted like a pig for his table! The enemy that our Army, the Army of Darkness, will take back our lives from and the enemy that the nation we will found, the nation of Monrovia, will someday rise against, and destroy! And what does our enemy deserve?"

"DEATH!" was the unanimous answer, shouted in hundreds of voices.

"Then give it to him! Give him death, and roast the bomb making devil in the fires of his own hell!"

It took only a few moments for the members of the army to seize up weapons. The dirk and gladius and spear and especially the axes, whenever they could be found. A furious mob rushed the image of their enemy, and it was toppled, and dismembered, and if there had been entrails inside the wood, they would have been torn out and trampled into the mud as well. The fine clothes were ripped to shreds, the expensive bits of silk and metal being held aloft as prizes by those who had been robbed for far too long. The pieces of wooden limbs were thrown onto the flaring coals, and eventually, two men seized the head, which had had the eyes torn out (the green glass orbs also held aloft as trophies by the two soldiers lucky enough to get them), and amid cheers even louder than before, the head itself was thrown into the flames!

"Take the meat, the meat you killed and earned, and eat it!" General Monroe told them. "Our enemies have fattened themselves long enough, while we starved! Now, we will feast on what we take back from them!"

He pointed behind them, and they saw that the pigs they had killed an hour before had been gutted and laid out, poles skewering them. The axes were brought out again, making frameworks to put the poles on, and chopping more wood for the fire. Large shards of the remains of the barrels, the 'Wardogs' they had destroyed, were thrown along the remains of the ruined effigy of the 'Maestro', bringing more cheers, and making the fire larger yet.

Soon, the pork was cooked, and the roasted pigs were chopped apart with swords, or even ripped from the bones with the bare hands of the starving and furious. Grease and blood spattered their bodies and their new uniforms, but no-one cared. It was the blood of the enemy. Soon, more blood would be joining it.

For some reason, the green glass eyes (or perhaps they were even gems) that had been in the head of the wooden 'Maestro' had attracted the attention of a few women in the Army, and the two men lucky enough to have gouged them out were enjoying their attentions. Eventually, both of them, along with the women, went off into the shadows several feet away, bringing large chunks of roasted meat with them. They weren't entirely out of sight, and although actual sex was forbidden (lest it create a deformed infant) until a month after they had successfully made it through the radiation, the women were doing rather creative and obscene things to the men with their hands and their mouths. Aster glanced at it for a moment, but didn't really care. She had seen far more blatant and obscene orgies in the Maestro's palace, and at least this one was not done for the amusement of a monster who thought it funny to see people degrading themselves. The sight and thought of what was going on did make her slightly aroused, but she didn't join in. The Maestro had ruined her for men, and she wouldn't offer what she couldn't deliver. Besides, the men in the Army didn't really seem her type, or good enough for her. Wolfkiller was sort of interesting, as tall as he was, but she really didn't like him. Or did she. She shook her head. She had had two or three glasses of the strong wine that was being poured around, and wasn't thinking straight. Or perhaps it was actually apple brandy. The stuff was strong, and they had the distilling apparatus, that they used to make the wood alcohol to run the trucks.

One of the women came out of the shadows, after a while, holding a green glass eye above her head. There were cheers, then she looked a bit embarrassed and ran back and returned it to the man it belonged to. Aster didn't care to participate in that sort of celebration, but there was plenty of pork, and tart baked apples, and cold water and even a small cup of wine for everyone. Or four cups. How many had she had, anyways. Maybe she needed another.

She thought drunkenly about the name General Monroe had given to the nation her proposed. Monrovia. What an ego! Not only to name it after himself, but to completely ignore the fact that the people who already lived in Wisconsin no doubt had their own names for the places where they lived. Typical of a man like Monroe, who would be King, and who wanted to found a dynasty. But it really didn't matter. Let the place be called what Monroe wanted it to be called, if there were a way to get the name to stick. Let it be called Purple Pickle Land, for all she cared. The important thing was, that she was not going to let the character of the land be what Monroe likely wanted. Nor would his children, Evan and Gina, be the tyrants he no doubt wanted them to be. Not if she had anything to say about it. And she didn't have cancer, like Monroe did. Despite the danger of the mission she was going on, she had far more chance of surviving to see the new land and shaping it's character than General Monroe did.

Even if she didn't survive her mission (and that was also possible, though she didn't like to think of it), she didn't think that the new land would have the sort of character General Monroe might want it to have. There would be all the people in Wisconsin, who no doubt greatly outnumbered them, who would have their own way of doing things. And even if you discounted them (which you couldn't, really), it was rather doubtful to Aster if even the other members of the Army of Darkness would go for such a thing. The Army might have been made by General Monroe. And he was a very bad man. But despite that, the Army and the people in it were bigger and better than Monroe himself was. More than he was. He had, though no doubt unintentionally, surpassed himself in the thing he had created. It was actually rather funny, if you thought about it, and Aster snickered and stuck out her tongue briefly in the General's direction. Though she was careful to hide it behind her hand. An idea, of sorts, formed in her head.

During the celebration, General Monroe sat on a chair on his platform, at one point accepting one of the Army cloaks that someone brought him and placed over his shoulders. It was a cold night, and the cancer did not help his circulation. His limbs often tended to go numb. He regarded the bacchanal destruction and celebration in front of him impassively. Daniel Wolfkiller went up by him.

"So… what do you think of our Army?" General Monroe asked the former horsemaster."

Wolfkiller looked at the same scene, and shook his head. Even Aster, who normally was very straightlaced, was slightly drunk, and her face and hair covered with blood and mud and bits of meat and grease. "Monsters. That's what they are. Monsters."

"Good." The general nodded. "We're robbing one monster, and going straight into the den of another one. If the Zookeeper lives, and has her way, we might be able to tame the second monster. Though more likely we'll have to kill him. But the monster - the devil - here will definitely have to die someday. And it will take monsters to do it. Monsters to kill the devil."

There were screams, and someone poured a bucket of alcohol onto the fire, making the flames flare almost ten feet high, higher than the effigy of the Maestro had been, and singe the roasting pigs. It was Aster. Who knew how she had gotten into the store of alcohol, but trust her to find trouble, or to make it. Though judging from the cheers, it was trouble that everyone else highly approved of. There were cries of death, damnation, and roasting in Hell to the Maestro from most of those nearby, and more meat was seized and devoured.

A few minutes passed, and there was a sudden rumbling. The celebrants looked up, and saw that one of the trucks was approaching. There was a brief panic, but then it swung to one side, away from them. Headlights flashed, the horn honked, and then the truck crashed at a veering angle into the wooden wall that was on the training course they had all used. It fell over, of course, no match for the weight and sheer power of the trailer. The truck stopped, the engine shut off, and a few members of the Army approached cautiously, weapons in hand.

Aster got out, dangling the keys triumphantly. The headlights of the truck were still on, and she leaped onto the remains of the wall and did a rather drunken jig.

"Only woman in the whole Army to get over that damn wall!" She pumped her fist in the air. "Now what do you all say to that?!"

There were more cheers, and several people climbed onto the top of the truck to enjoy drinking from a higher vantage point. The wall itself, which had broken when Aster drove the truck over it, was torn apart with axes, and the boards added gleefully to the fire.

"She is a monster, our little Aster." General Monroe decided. Aster looked happier and more confident than she had in all the months he had known her. Had it only been three months? It seemed longer. He smiled grimly. "A little monster. Your Doctor Llewellyn was right about that. And not only her, all of them are monsters. My monsters."

He didn't stand up, but the expression on his face was as proud as if he had been standing at full height. He thought about the Army he had made, a wave of human destruction, rising up like a sword and a shield to protect his children, his only future, from that green devil. And if the monster in Wisconsin, the Vampire, could be tamed, and used to protect them, all the better. He was a bad man, and had spent his life doing bad things, but this, perhaps, he had finally done right.

"Monsters." He said with emphasis. "I'll play these. And give them damn good odds. Because they're my monsters."