Val successfully alighted to the second floor of the bar, there were two soldiers passed out on some blankets they had thrown on the floor. They both reeked of the smell of alcohol, but considering they seemed to have made it to bed, they were likely not as inebriated as their comrades downstairs. There may not be honor in executing sleeping soldiers, but Val was long past caring about honor after witnessing their crimes. He was a reaper, claiming his due harvest of those he judged no longer fit to walk among the living, as he did to the ghouls.
Covering their mouth, he drove his knife into the heart and twisted the blade. The soldier barely moved before falling back into a permanent sleep. He repeated the action with the other soldier, clearing the second floor of threats.
Descending the stairs quietly, four corpses became eleven in a matter of ten minutes. As Val was sending the soldier who sure enough was passed out behind the bar, he heard the sound of a chair scraping along the floor. He hid behind the stairs, listening as the sergeant seemed to be getting up from a desk.
"Gotta take a piss…" The sergeant mumbled, fumbling his way towards the restrooms with a small flashlight. The sergeant did not seem to pay any attention to the bodies littering the bar. Had he moved his flashlight in the other direction, Val's plans would be disrupted. He intended to take the leader alive, so he quietly followed, waiting next to the restroom door.
A few moments later the door swung open, concealing Val's presence. He struck the moment it closed, covering the sound of his movements.
"Ackgh! Urk—"
Putting the sergeant in a headlock, Val squeezed hard around his throat with his left arm. The sergeant flailed for a moment before reaching for a handgun strapped to his leg. Val gripped the sergeant's wrist on his right arm and squeezed it with his full strength. The hair-raising sound of bones popping out of their sockets reached Val's ears, but after nearly ten seconds of struggling, the sergeant passed out.
Val immediately set to work, dividing the rope into three lengths. He bound the sergeant's legs and feet, then used the remaining length to gag him with a piece of a tablecloth. Hoisting the sergeant over his shoulder, Val was about to return across the street to his bike when a thought occurred to him. He quickly marked all the bodies with Hagal, imagining that an appropriate afterlife awaited them.
. . .
The sergeant awoke with a start, quickly recalling the events not long before. He panicked and tried to get up but noticed his hands and feet were bound uncomfortably tight, leaving no wiggle room or regard for his blood circulation to his now very numb hands and feet.
"Mmph! Mmmmmph!" Struggling to make a sound, he could only issue sharp hums through his nose. In the darkness, he finally noticed a pair of eyes like burning coals staring at him.
"Good morning, Sergeant Vickers. Well, it will be in an hour or so." Val greeted him with an icy tone.
The sergeant felt horror grip him as he returned the fiery gaze. He could not see very well in the darkness, the disembodied glowing eyes and the cold voice brought his thoughts to depictions of the devil.
"Here's how this is going to work, in a moment I will remove the gag keeping you from talking, I will ask you questions, and you will answer."
Suddenly Val grabbed the sergeant by the back of the collar and dragged him towards a pair of double doors leading to what looked like a grocery store. Lifting him up off his feet, he put the sergeant's face next to the window.
"Before you get any ideas, first, your men are all dead, it's just you now. Second, I have not cleared this store of ghouls. They are not the brightest, but if you speak too loudly, they will surely come rushing in here. If they do, I will get on my bike and leave you here with them, nod once if you understand." Val explained quietly.
The man had horror in his eyes, but he nodded slowly just once.
"Good." Val set him down next to the doors against a pallet of what must have been new stock not yet inventoried. Val cut the short length of rope, keeping the table cloth stuffed in the sergeant's mouth, after which the sergeant spat out the fabric and stretched his sore jaw.
"Who the fuck are you and what the hell is this about? Do you realize what you've done? If I don't report back, you can bet your ass the army is going to send another team here with a fuck ton more people." The sergeant almost immediately began spewing threats.
Val's eyes flared brighter for a moment. "I will ask questions, you will answer." He repeated.
"Alternatively…" Val began to whistle in a sharp pitch.
"O-okay, alright, stop!" The sergeant stammered immediately.
"Why are you gathering survivors against their will?" Val asked coldly.
"I'm just following orders!"
"And those orders specifically state to separate families and take people against their will?"
"You don't fucking get it, we need everyone!"
"Everyone? Or just the women and youths you think are easier to control?"
"What? We were going to come back for the rest! It's less risk if we take them first. People are crazy these days."
"Really?" Val's eyes burned bright enough to illuminate some of his grim expression. "Then explain to me, the six women, bound and gagged, abused for your troops' entertainment." He added slowly, enunciating every word with a threatening tone.
"I didn't have any part in that! That's just… acceptable losses!"
The side of Val's mouth twitched as he struggled to contain his fury. The sergeant could even feel a much more oppressive presence seeming to cause his throat to lock up.
"Where did you find them?" Val asked slowly.
"W-We picked them up along the way here, they were hiding in a house and stopped us when we approached."
"Let's see if I get this straight. Proud members of our armed forces, dedicated to protecting the country, were stopped by a group of desperate survivors. You then decide to disgrace the uniform you wear by letting your troops violently abuse them for their own pleasure?" It took a frightening restraint to hold Val back from personally feeding the man to the ghouls outside.
"You don't get it! The troops, entire country has gone to shit! No homes to go back to, we're not even being paid! What good is money now! These aren't even proper soldiers, just a bunch of guys who signed up when everything went to shit and we needed bodies! Without the women and the booze, there's no good way to keep these guys in line! It's for the greater good, a few lives so we can continue to save many!"
Val sneered, the sergeant's line of reasoning was, in a twisted way, not too far off from the very ethics he accepted to slaughter the soldiers to preserve the livelihoods of the residents and save the soldier's prisoners.
"If this is really a rescue operation, why bring so many guns?"
"Same fucking reason you guys have all those guns, the ghouls are in every city!"
"Interesting. I don't believe you." Val leaned closer to the sergeant.
"W-what? What are you doing?"
"We did not collect the guns to use on ghouls. We retrieved them, in case we had to defend against bandits or violent groups, of people, not ghouls. So I'm going to ask you again, why so much firepower? I even saw grenades in those trucks, I can believe you brought guns to suppress the police officers here, but not the explosive ordinance. Neither can I believe the president is so desperate to gather so many people so quickly, to the extent of authorizing force. Your orders were fairly straightforward to me, take the women and children first, sounds chivalrous enough, so you can return and have a reason for all the men to follow suit. Families and friends will naturally want to reunite. I'm guessing your specific orders and methods were delivered by someone a little lower down the chain, now my question is, why?"
The sergeant looked hesitant, refusing to answer, to which Val began to whistle again.
"No! Stop, please!" The sergeant pleaded desperately.
Val continued to whistle. The guttural sounds of a few ghouls groaning in response to the noise could be heard not far off.
"War! We're at war!" The sergeant blurted.
"With whom? Every country is in the same situation, trying to rebuild."
"You're wrong, there's an entire city that appeared out of nowhere up north, goddamn castle and everything! Several like it across the country! Some hills and mountains don't show up on any map we have. I don't even know what it's about, but entire battalions of soldiers have been sweeping through towns, capturing and taking our people with them!"
Val raised an eyebrow, holding a curious expression to the news. "Explain."
"I-I don't know, I'm only a sergeant, I've heard rumors about… about fucking knights on horseback or something, and — and strange things that block our bullets. The army fought back with artillery and leveled one of their camps recently. We've been retreating and gathering in Carson City, moving as much of the military there as we can, it seems outside of their current range of troop movement. Aside from the zombies we've been attacked by monsters and other strange things, convoys have been destroyed with no survivors."
"Interesting, other than Carson City, where are people going? I know we've lost a lot, but I can't imagine so many that they all fit there."
"People are gathering in major cities across the South. There's another base near Dallas, Texas, and up in Massachusetts they're trying to get telecoms working again, we've had to resort to old telegram systems to restore some communication channels. Shortwave radio still works, but anything beyond fifty miles gets completely garbled. Anyone on the coasts has either evacuated or died."
"Except for us."
"Yeah, you guys are one of the last remaining groups close to the coast, we haven't found or heard from anyone else."
"I see. That's useful information, thank you." Val was indeed pleased with the information, it confirmed a lot of what he had been told. Two worlds had been forcibly merged, entire civilizations from the other world had been brought here, mostly intact. Whoever started the fight was irrelevant, but it seemed at least two powers were vying for control in the United States now.
"Is that all? You're going to let me go now, right? I answered your questions."
Val's eyes flared brightly for a moment again. "I did not say I would let you go. If things are as bad as you say, the government will probably assume the coast is completely lost to some foreign army. I doubt the President sent you people here, and I doubt the one who did will bother risking the loss of more troops and firepower."
"YOU MOTHERFUCKER!!" The sergeant shouted and flailed at Val, after which many feet could be heard shuffling along the ground outside, kicking over small objects in their path.
"Oops, a bit too loud. I am a reasonable man, however. I will return your gun. Since you seem to believe the strong can do as they fit, to the weak, prove you're strong enough to survive this. Good luck." Val placed the sergeant's handgun a few meters away, then swiftly retreated out of the back, returning to the streets.
Outside, as Val got on his bike, he heard a quick series of gunshots, followed by the howling anguish of the sergeant, then silence as he took off towards the warehouse.
Returning to the bar, he found the two ravens perched on a streetlight.
"Get anything useful out of the sergeant?" Huginn called down quietly.
"I did, I'll tell you about it later. How are they doing?"
"They have quieted down, I think they fell asleep." Muninn replied.
"Better that way, I need to go find the Chief and Doctor Chen."
"Are you alright?" Muninn asked with some concern.
"Hmm? Yeah, completely unharmed."
"Not what I was asking."
"I know, I'm fine. A bit surprised if anything, killing those who've lost their way feels no different from putting down ghouls."
The sun was beginning to rise, the residents would be up on their feet, preparing their belongings to leave with the convoy as previously explained to them. Huginn and Muninn followed Val back the one-block distance to the warehouse.
Val found Richard already up, the light on in his office. He was giving some instructions for Jim to relay to ease the process with the residents. Realizing he still felt warm and tense, Val cooled his magic, dimming his eyes, and this time, he did knock on the door, though it was still open.
"Oh, Val, where have you been—" Richard froze, his eyes widening in shock, Jim noticed it too, and his expression was complicated.
"The blood on your hands and shirt… Don't look black enough to be from ghouls." Richard spoke hesitantly, his words forming slowly as numb realization froze his mind.
"It's not, we can talk later, you may want to grab some coffee and wake up. While you're at it, I need you to wake the doctor and come with me, and… This is just for what will be obvious reasons, bring Dana and a few of your other officers — at least a few women." Val instructed with a grave tone.