CHAPTER 141: 141-THE MONSTERS IN THE MAINLAND

Clementine:

What usually felt like ten minutes felt like an hour this time. We were all anxious. The squadmates right in front of the fleshmingos were losing it, and we didn’t blame them. We were scared too.

"Makes me wonder what’s going on in the North," Ian whispered, catching our attention.

We stood steady by the carriage doors, ready to fight for the other squadmates if it came to that. The plan was to push through the squads and reach the last one the second the doors opened, so we could kill the fleshmingos.

Thankfully, we had weapons with us this time. The bag we’d filled with weapons from one of the houses was finally going to come in handy.

"What do you mean?" Haiden asked Ian.

"Isn’t it weird that the last two monsters we slayed," Ian paused to make a hand gesture, "were once just normal werewolves?"

I stared at his face in confusion for a while. He wasn’t wrong, though. But before we could dwell on it, the train arrived at its stop.

We panicked, knowing the squadmates near the fleshmingos were at risk. But the minute the doors opened, before we or anyone else could do anything, the lurkers barged into the last carriage. And the next thing we knew, they were shooting the fleshmingos dead.

Screams erupted in the air. I guess the squadmates hadn’t expected anyone to rescue us. Because they usually never did. It was always just us young crusaders in the North.

"Oh, goodness," Troy sighed in relief. I did the same, finally feeling a little relaxed.

Then the doors opened again, and the ringleaders were waiting for us, or so we thought. While the lurkers collected the bodies of two squadmates who had turned to stone, one being Xenia and the other from a different squad, the ringleaders entered our carriage.

As soon as Lenora and Miss Rue stepped in, Mr. Rick walked into the White Squad’s carriage.

"Sir, they didn’t listen to us," Jack hurried to explain, trying to let his ringleader know we had messed up in the North.

But what happened next was completely out of syllabus. Mr. Rick raised his fist and smashed it into Jack’s face, knocking him down. The White Squad members had never looked so shocked and offended.

"What was taking you so long to shift into your carriage?" Mr. Rick yelled, not even letting the other ringleaders get a word in. It was pretty clear he was angry, and rightfully so. But how the hell did he know it was the White Squad causing the delay?

"Do you have any idea what you’ve done?" Mr. Rick shouted, grabbing Jack by the collar since he was the one who had stepped forward first.

I could tell Mr. Rick was meticulous. He knew Joshua was an alpha, and a very arrogant one at that. If he had grabbed Joshua by the collar, it would have either pushed him to retaliate, turn rebellious, or it would have crushed his confidence by humiliating him in front of the others.

"They carried the man who was killing our people out there," Jack finally spoke, and Mr. Rick let him go with a grunt.

"So you decided it was a wise idea to bring the monsters to the mainland?" he screamed in Jack’s face, making the others look down nervously. Joshua didn’t look down, though. He just stared at Mr. Rick bluntly. Like I said, Mr. Rick was smart. He knew yelling at Joshua would do more damage than good.

Then Lenara finally turned to us. "I heard you guys brought in a guest?" she said.

Instead of responding to her, I turned to Miss Rue, because she was our ringleader. I didn’t know why the other ringleaders had to be all up in our business. I guess this is what happens when you get a new teacher, the old ones get nosy.

"This is the man who was occupying one of the houses in the North. Those were all brown-colored houses, and he seemed to be the leader there. They were doing some kind of ritual, catching our squadmates, torturing them. And I even heard a couple talking about impregnating women. It just seemed like a cult to me," I explained.

I noticed Ms. Lenara folded her arms when I didn’t speak directly to her.

"We did the right thing, right?" I asked Miss Rue, who was staring at the man.

"What?" she asked, confused.

"I mean, should we have killed him right there? I thought he’d be able to shed some light on the North and the monsters," I asked and she started to nod.

"You did the right thing, Clementine. It was the wisest choice. We can get a lot of information from him about the North," her confirmation made me take a deeper breath to relax.

"And we’d also like you guys to come and fill us in on whatever happened in the North," she added. It was the usual thing they made us do.

"We’re heading back home after this mission, right," Ian asked.

But before the ringleaders could leave the train, Ian’s question caught up with them. Miss Rue turned to him, then looked at me. I guess they thought we’d forgotten about our deal. We weren’t children. We remembered. They couldn’t make promises to us, especially empty ones.

"We’ll discuss after we’ve gathered all the information from this mission," Miss Rue said. "Now please step out before the train takes us back to the North." She tried to joke, but nobody laughed. We’d been through a brutal week in the North, so her jokes fell flat.

We got off the train and were taken straight to the hall to record what went on. They also carried the statue of Xenia, collected by one of the squads, and another statue of a crusader from Blue Squad. With that, there were now 3 crusaders in the rest of the squads and five in black and white.

After recording our stressful statements with all the ringleaders, answering their burning questions, it felt different this time. Accusations were flying. But many squadmates, many crusaders, came to our defense when we said the White Squad was causing trouble.

Now we stood in line, waiting for the ringleaders to announce dismissal so we could finally shower and rest. We were so fucking tired. They always dragged us straight to the hall for statements, saying if we relaxed first, we might exaggerate our actions in North.