Free Web NovelChapter 20: Legacy
The city outside hadn’t waited for us to be ready.
Somewhere in the distance, glass shattered, a car alarm screamed for several seconds and then cut off mid-wail, and then came gunfire.
Three shots and a fourth, someone shouting and someone else screaming, and then screeches before another scream broke it from a different direction.
While I couldn’t take my eyes off the chest on the table.
[Let’s do this quick.]
Tikki already had both front paws inside, doing the customs inspection he seemed to believe was his professional responsibility, and I finally looked in behind him.
And what I found inside were the very things I had been praying to find in there.
They were my guns, my exact ones, with the same scratches in the same places and the same worn edges, with the same modifications and the same stains I had scrubbed out more times than I could count before eventually giving up.
The exact weapons I lost alongside the people who had given them to me while we ran from the Alpha Variant across 300 Kilometers.
I reached in slowly, the way you reach for something you’re not certain will still be there when you touch it.
And I went for the most precious one.
The M110A2 came up in my hands with its tan finish, fitted with the suppressor, the small bipod, the IR laser, the flashlight, and the one-to-ten scope.
All attached to the leather sling we jury-rigged into it because the original sling broke by month 9.
And almost instinctively, my thumb reached the magwell.
Over the carving on it that read Nikki × Nia, crooked, uneven, and just as embarrassing as I remembered it.
Nia had been the one holding the knife by the campfire, at the night we found a secret stash of moonshine.
"You really did have terrible taste in men..." I whispered to the empty room.
I remembered her threatening to break my nose if I scratched her service rifle, and I remembered telling her that clearly the rifle meant more to her than I did, and I remembered the exact expression she made when she realized that was a trap and she had already walked into it.
I remembered her shoving the rifle into my hands during the apartment complex sweep in month seven, her eyes steeled the same way they always did when she had already made the decision, and it was not up for discussion.
"You stay outside." Her voice had a flatness that meant she had considered every counterargument in advance and rejected all of them. "... The only room clearing you should be doing is with a broom."
"Bullshit."
"You almost died twice in a single room, Nikki. I am not burying your dumb ass..."
I chuckled to myself while outside, something large hit the pavement, and a car alarm started.
[I’ll find you again... Pinky promise.]
I traced the carving once more with my thumb and set the M110A2 down carefully.
The Mossberg 590 came up next, all wood furniture with the stock and grip worn nearly smooth.
Looking at it, anyone can tell it had been used as a bludgeon more times than one, because it absolutely had been, by our furious grandpa.
Alexander, or Lexie as everyone called him.
And damn did he hate that nickname with a fury of a thousand suns. But then again, a bunch of kids calling a built-like-a-tank, celebrated war-wet named Alexander, Lexie, pretty much warranted a kick in the butt.
"Stop calling me that," I remembered him glaring at me.
"Nope," I remembered giggling like a five-year-old.
"Kid..." He told me once, eyes barely open after that seventy-two-hour run without any sleep. "If something sneaks up on you while you’re playing elite sniper, and pretending to be like your little girlfriend, use this... just aim in the general direction. I’d rather hear you complain about how your delicate shoulders hurt than find your body..."
And he had been completely right; I complained about the recoil constantly, and he had never once said Then give it back.
I set the Mossberg 510 aside.
The Glock 20 chambered in 10mm came up next.
Rubberized grip, magazine extension, fitted with an absurdly large compensator that added absurd weight to the front end.
The full-auto switch on that thing saved my life in close quarters, when infected had grabbed me at least four separate times. No, on second thought it was more than four.
Angelica, our leader, looked thoroughly exhausted when she handed it over.
"You have a tendency to freeze when infected grab you..." And she had not been wrong. "Take this. Pull the trigger and keep it there."
"Your pep talks are genuinely terrible."
She had ignored that completely.
I remembered how she had gotten the thing built by a gunsmith from a survivor camp specifically for me.
Setting the pistol aside, I reached for the final piece.
A Shorty 40 Grenade Launcher Pistol. Heavy and ridiculous and absolutely necessary. The argument preceding its presentation to me had been almost louder than a firefight. freewebnoveℓ.com
"You’re thirty meters back from the breach point every time anyway," Nia had said.
"You have the most favorable angle," Lexie had agreed.
"I almost blew you up with this thing last time..." I had pointed out.
"In your defense..." Lexie had said without looking up from the axe he was cleaning, "I walked into the blast radius."
"Yeah man, you absolutely walked into the blast radius."
I looked at the launcher in my hands, thought about how insane my people were.
Outside, more screaming resounded, and then more gunfire, closer this time, snapping me out of that trip down memory lane.
[Okay, ten slots. Gotta work fast.]
I bought a side holster from the system first and mounted the launcher against my left ribcage, the way I had carried it for two years.
I slung the M110A2, keeping it in the front, letting it hang around my waist with the muzzle down. Following that, I slung the DDM4 around the back.
The Glock slid into the holster on my chest plate where the 1911 had been before I threw it at an infected’s face.
The Mossberg went back into the chest, and I looked at it for a moment.
"Sorry, old man. The 1301 already has the universal suppressor, and it’s semi-auto, but don’t worry, gimme a bit until I buy a suppressor for that too...." I meant every word of it.
The Mossberg gave no response, on account of being a shotgun.
The loose 5.56 and the shotgun slugs went into the miscellaneous chest I had been keeping the first-aid kit in, right alongside the Mossberg.
And now I had 3 free slots in there.
Impact-triggered HEAP grenades for the launcher I bought took the slot the DDM4 had been occupying.
Thirty M110 magazines loaded with M61 AP, 150-grain 7.62x51 rounds I bought from the shop went into the one that had the 5.56.
Twenty 10 mm Glock mags with mag extension attached followed where the slugs had been.
[Alright... done.] I stood up, feeling the distribution.
M110 against my chest, Glock at my chest plate, launcher holstered against the left rib, and the DDM4 across my back.
Most of the weight settled into positions I had slept with for most of my days, in places that calmed the nagging feeling the lizard part of my brain had been tickling me about.
And for the first time since waking up to that alarm clock and a certain cat suffocating me in my own apartment, I felt like I was back in form. Back in my prime, and then some more.
I looked at the carving by Magwell one more time and swore.
"I’ll find you guys again..."
Outside, sirens and screaming ran together in layers, and a shot was fired somewhere close.
"And this time... no Alpha Variant or even god himself is taking you."
I knew where they had started. I knew where most of them had ended and the how between it all.
I knew enough from the talks we’ve had for two good years.
[Let’s move... there’s still Leo and Nora to save...] free𝑤ebnovel.com
I turned, ready to tell Kara it was time to move.
The table had nobody beside it.
The silence overtook instinct before my brain had finished processing the picture, and I had already started moving before I understood why.
[No.]
And in less than a second, I found Kara.
The chair had been dragged beside the corpse, and I had not heard it move, and Kara sat in it with her hand clutching the dead man’s pistol.
For one full heartbeat, the picture I was reading was wrong, that she was about to end it all, and a shiver unlike any other rippled through my spine.
Then I sorted out where the barrel was pointed, at the man’s ruined face, and everything reorganized.
She wanted to shoot him again. She wanted to shoot the man who had been dead for minutes because to her, a head shredded through was not punishment enough for what he had tried to do.
But still, no way I could let her do that.
"Wait!" I dashed to her, dropping beside the chair, putting my hand over the pistol. "Don’t..."
Kara turned her head slowly, and her voice came out completely flat.
"He..."
She stopped.
"He..."
"Here," I simply reached into the inventory and placed the 1301 in her lap while she was still trying. "... Use this one instead."
Kara looked down at the shotgun in her lap.
"That pistol is loud enough to draw the neighbourhood on us," I said, with full sincerity, because I was being completely serious. "This one’s whisper quiet."
She kept looking at the shotgun in her lap.
"Kicks like hell, though..." I added thoughtfully with a nod. "So plant your feet before you pull it."
Kara slowly turned to me with an expression somewhere between needing to cry and almost laughing and not having enough in reserve for either, until a short breath escaped her.
Tikki’s head appeared over her one knee.
"Mea?"
All the while outside, something heavy collapsed, and car alarms started again, and the screaming had gotten closer by at least a block.
I stayed where I was and waited, because the world could take another minute.
She had earned that much.
