Free Web NovelChapter 25: Safer Than Inside A Tank
The DDM4 jammed again, and I cleared it without thinking about it; the motion was automatic at this point: rack the charging handle, check the chamber, push forward, fire again.
Ahead were infected drowning the front of the ascender. The same went for just about every direction while the Ascender crawled forward another meter.
The dead beneath the tires kept turning the road into a literal quagmire of flesh and blood, and I sat there with the rifle smoking in my hands and finally coming to the realization I should have come to five minutes earlier.
[This is stupid.]
The thought arrived flat and almost annoyed, the way you’d react to discovering you’d been driving the wrong direction for an hour.
I had an eleven-ton vehicle. I had a rifle that could punch through three bodies in a row. I had a System turning every dead infected into purchasing power for more ammunition. I had upgrades worth ten thousand credits bolted directly onto the chassis.
And I was still losing this fight to a neighborhood.
The infected were not the thing trapping me here.
The Ascender was the thing trapping me here.
It was too large for these roads anyway, too loud for the early days, too visible from every direction at once.
I had driven an expedition vehicle built for off-grid wilderness into slum streets designed for motorcycles and foot traffic and then acted surprised when the entire district came looking.
But then again, I had no choice. With Kara in tow, I would not have been able to stealth my way to the penthouse.
Another body slammed into the mesh beside me, and the steel groaned under the impact.
And I stopped looking at infected and started looking at the actual terrain around us.
Narrow roads on every side. Concrete houses packed close enough that their walls touched. No front yards anywhere, no driveways, no gates, just doors opening straight onto the street.
And among those houses, one caught my attention immediately, a small two-story structure with its entrance sitting against the road, no steps leading up to it, no obstruction in front of the doorway at all.
"Kara."
She looked over fast enough that I could tell exactly how strung out she’d become.
"What?"
"New plan."
"That’s not reassuring, coming from you right now."
"Fair." I pointed through the cracked mesh at the house. "That one... Steer us against that doorway."
She followed my finger, then looked back at me. "Why?"
"Because I’m done pretending this approach is working."
She held my eyes for a second, then nodded once. "Okay."
"Passenger side door against the entrance. Make sure there are no gaps... You only got one shot."
Understanding spread across her face slowly, not complete understanding, just enough to act on, and she tightened her hand on the wheel and started easing us toward the house while bodies kept disappearing under the tires before being shredded by my bullets.
"Little more left," I said, as the ascender crawled towards the door. Took us a lot of minutes to get there, but we were there at least.
The Ascender’s side scraped against the neighboring wall with a long grinding shriek.
"Good. Closer."
She adjusted again, and the passenger side drifted toward the doorway while the vehicle kept rocking under the weight piling onto it from every direction, the engine roaring under the strain, the mesh groaning continuously now.
"Closer..."
The side mirror broke as it scraped and gave out between the wall and the ascender, and slowly the doorway lined up perfectly with the passenger door.
"Stop."
The Ascender lurched to a halt and for one full second nobody moved at all.
Then I unbuckled. "Out."
Kara stared at me. "What?"
"Out. Now." I repeated, "We’re going inside."
Something in my tone must have carried, because she unbuckled immediately and pulled the passenger door open.
And instead of stepping into a street full of infected, she stepped directly into the house, no gap between the vehicle and the doorway at all, the Ascender itself sealing the only entrance into this house from the street.
The moment her feet hit the floor, Tikki abandoned her lap entirely.
He launched across the cabin, hit my shoulder, and slid straight into his usual spot.
[Of course.]
I climbed out behind Kara and the passenger door shut, and the noise outside changed immediately, still loud, still horrifying, but filtered now through the vehicle and the walls.
The Ascender kept rocking where it sat. The infected outside kept banging on the Ascender, unable to come inside the house, and that was exactly what I needed.
The house itself looked painfully ordinary. Family photographs hung along one wall. A television sat across from a couch with a folded blanket draped over the arm.
Children’s drawings were taped to a refrigerator visible through the kitchen doorway. A pair of shoes sat beside the entrance, left there by someone who had clearly planned on coming back for them.
"Nikki?"
I didn’t answer her, already moving through the living room and down the hallway, searching for something.
Then I finally found it, or rather, I found something even better.
A large metal storage chest sat against the far wall of the second bedroom, big enough, solid enough, tucked into a corner.
"Nikki?" Kara called out again. freewebnovёl.ƈom
I crossed the room and grabbed the lid and pulled it open.
Blankets filled most of the interior, along with folded winter clothes and old household storage that had probably sat untouched for years.
And I started throwing everything onto the floor, blankets and sweaters and bedsheets, clearing it out as fast as my hands would move.
Kara finally caught up to me. "What are you doing?"
"Making you a hiding spot..."
The chest emptied completely, and I looked inside it and immediately noticed the problem.
No airflow.
"Right..."
I raised the DDM4 and Kara’s eyes went wide. "What are you-"
-Tissh-!-Tissh-!-Tissh-!
Three suppressed rounds punched clean holes through the steel sidewall, small enough to matter for breathing and small enough not to matter for anything trying to see in.
I stepped back from the chest. "Get in."
Kara froze completely. "What?"
"Get in the chest."
She looked at it, then at me, then back at the chest, and I watched her work through what I hadn’t said yet, the part underneath the hiding plan.
"You’re leaving," she said. Not a question.
Glass shattered somewhere deeper in the house, and both of us turned toward the sound for a second before I looked back at her.
"Temporarily."
"Nikki-"
Another crash sounded, closer than the last one. I lowered the rifle slightly.
"Listen, I’m playing bait. You stay hidden and stay quiet... I’ll lose them somewhere in these streets, and then I’ll come back for you."
"Nikki-"
"That’s the plan, Kara. It’s not a good one. But it’s the one I got. So hop in."
She hated it. I could see exactly how much she hated it on her face, and honestly I hated it just as much, but it remained the least terrible option sitting on the table. fгeewebnovёl.com
Outside, the Ascender groaned under another impact that told me the infected won’t stop trying to get into the house.
And I knew it’s only a matter of time before they start getting inside the windshield, then through the window of the passenger side door, and even beneath the Ascender.
Kara nodded slowly, reluctant and terrified but trusting me anyway before climbing into the chest.
I looked at Tikki. "You too."
He responded by digging his claws straight through my jacket and into the shoulder beneath it with what I can only describe as full conviction.
"You’re not helping your case here."
He responded by digging in significantly harder.
Kara reached over from inside the chest and grabbed him, and what followed looked less like a transfer of a cat and more like a wrestling match against eight pounds of pure disagreement.
"Seriously?" she muttered, pulling him loose claw by claw. "You weigh less than my purse..."
"Mrrrow!"
She got him settled against her chest inside the chest, and he kept making his displeasure known the entire time.
I looked down at both of them just as another crash echoed through the house.
"Nikki..." Kara looked up at me from inside the chest, and for one second she looked exactly like what she actually was underneath everything that had happened today: a college student living through the single worst day of her entire life.
I didn’t have anything useful left to say to that.
So I lowered the lid instead, leaving the locking bar disengaged so a single push from the inside would open it without resistance.
The lid clicked shut, and the room went quiet on my side of the metal.
And the very next second, the Ascender’s window broke.
They were inside the house now.
I checked the DDM4, looked toward the hallway leading back to the front door, and finally breathed a sigh of relief.
The horde wasn’t Kara’s problem anymore.
It was entirely mine. And that was something I could manage.
Three years into the apocalypse had taught me a long list of things, and one of the more important lessons on that list was simple enough to fit in a single sentence.
On foot is safer than inside a tank so long as you know what you’re doing.
