Free Web NovelChapter 32: Home Stretch
The two infected on the road went under the Ascender before I had to think about either of them; I just kept my eyes forward and my foot on the gas.
Tikki rode my left shoulder the way he always did, periodically lifting his front left paw to lick at it before setting it carefully back down.
Kara sat in the passenger seat with both hands on the shotgun in her lap, her eyes fixed on a point somewhere around dashboard level, still not all the way back from wherever the last hour had put her.
I let it go for two blocks before I said anything.
"As I said... It’s okay. Things like that are going to happen. I mean, look at me. Anyone else would’ve long passed out... But that also doesn’t mean we start treating injuries like nothing. I’ve seen people die from the stupidest of wounds."
"I know," Kara murmured to her lap rather than to me.
"Look, I get it," I said, taking the next corner hard enough that the Ascender’s wheels almost lifted. "It happened because you froze... And now you know, freezing will get you or someone else killed. So, next time, kick, thrash, do whatever... just don’t freeze."
"Nikki, I-I can’t," she said, her voice cracking partway through the word. "I just can’t."
I gave it two full seconds before I reached into my chest carrier with my right hand, drew the Glock 20, and dropped it in her lap.
Kara’s hands came up immediately, and the moment her fingers found the grip, they started shaking.
"Then save mine, Tikki’s, Nora’s, and Leo’s lives, and put one to your head," I said, eyes on the road. "Trust me, you won’t even feel it. I’ll tell them an infected got to you before I could. Or you didn’t have the immunity to the airborne strain."
The barrel began moving in small, unsteady arcs from the shaking.
"Because it doesn’t matter whether you could or not... The four of us will rush to save you, no matter the circumstances. Every single time. And we will not get out of it dandy every single time. Tikki here is the greatest example of it. And believe me, he got out cheap."
Kara said nothing to that for a long stretch of road; she just sat there holding the pistol in both hands, and the silence from her side told me the message had reached where I wanted it to.
I drove through the slums for the next several minutes with infected collecting under the wheels whenever they stepped into the road, letting the ride do the work that more words would have taken longer to accomplish.
And slowly, the houses and buildings thinned by degrees, and the roads widened, and the streets became the kind of streets where people lived under the tyranny of HOAs.
Silver Oaks looked exactly as clear as those expensive shoes had told me it would be.
Duplexes and triplexes behind private gardens and driveways, small villas with low fences and carefully laid gravel paths, the entire neighborhood sitting quiet and undisturbed in a way the slums had never been.
I rounded a long curve in the road, and something parked in a driveway on my left shoved my foot on the brake before I had finished deciding why.
-Screech-!
Kara lurched forward in her seat.
"Stay in," I said, already lifting the shotgun from her lap as I stepped out.
The driveway was clean, the gate still standing, and the thing sitting in front of the garage was a Tesla Cybertruck.
[This just might work...]
I swept the yard with the shotgun, confirmed nothing was waiting in the shadows, and crossed to the truck as I pulled the M110A2 out of my inventory, slung it properly onto my shoulder, and put my hand on the hood.
The inventory accepted the Cybertruck immediately.
"System, can you make me a key for it?"
-Ding!
{Yes... Unable. Insufficient space in the inventory}
"Right..."
I pulled the Diavel out to open a slot.
"Now try again..."
-Ding!
{Fabricating Backup RFID Key Card... Complete.}
"Now do the same upgrades you did with the Ascender to this..."
-Ding!
{Vehicle Modification Invoice
Vehicle: Tesla Cybertruck Cyberbeast
Selected Modifications: Front Push Bar Assembly
Material: ASTM A36 Structural Steel Ram Plate Thickness: 0.75 inches
Configuration: Three-piece wedge design, direct frame integration, replaceable lower wear strip
Finished Weight: 214 lbs
Fabrication Cost: 3,220 Credits Mounting Hardware: 290 Credits Frame Reinforcement
Plates: 460 Credits Installation
Labor: 630 Credits
Subtotal: 4,600 Credits
----
Selected Modifications: Reinforced Window Protection Package
Material: 304 Stainless Expanded Steel Mesh Strand Thickness: 0.120 inches Diamond Opening Size: 1.5 inches
Coverage: Windshield, Driver Window, Passenger Window, Rear Driver Window, Rear Passenger Window, Rear Cabin Glass
Configuration: Fixed exterior mounting frames, Manual door-release clearance preserved, Corrosion-resistant mounting hardware
Finished Weight: 92 lbs
Mesh Fabrication: 1,860 Credits Mounting Frames: 320 Credits Quick-Release
Hardware: 80 Credits
Installation Labor: 540 Credits
Subtotal: 2,800 Credits
Total Vehicle Weight Increase: 306 lbs
Total Modification Cost: 7,400 Credits
---- freēwēbηovel.c૦m
Advisory: Selected modifications are optimized to redirect and disperse repeated impacts from human-sized obstacles. Performance degradation may occur during sustained contact with fixed structures, large vehicles, or Host negligence. Emergency egress functionality has been preserved where applicable.
No warranty implied.}
"Yeah, still enough for Tikki..."
That was the upside of running an apocalyptic operation funded entirely by turning infected into paste. The budget stayed flexible.
I pulled the Cybertruck back out of inventory along with the key, sent the Diavel back in, and kept the M110A2 slung where it was.
The truck sat in the driveway with steel mesh across every window and a push bar across the front that had not existed a minute earlier.
Walking up to it, I pressed the exterior door release, and the powered door swung open, and the touchscreen lit up the moment I climbed inside.
The M110A2 went on the back seat.
Brake pressed, Drive swiped, and the truck rolled out toward the Ascender with exactly zero noise and exactly as much force as I asked of it.
Kara got out before I said anything, crossed the gap between the two vehicles, got in, looked me straight in the eye, and shoved the Glock 20 back into my palm.
And I kept grinning at her the whole time as I placed the shotgun back into her lap, got out, put the Ascender into the Inventory, and got back in.
"I need you to teach me how to shoot," Kara said immediately, her voice lower and harder than usual.
"Yeah, no shit," I laughed.
Then immediately winced because the laugh pulled at my waist wound hard enough to make my eyes water for two full seconds before I got it back under control, while Kara gave me the classic Kara look.
"Ready or not," I chuckled and shoved my feet into the accelerator, and the Cybertruck zipped instantly, pulling Kara’s hand toward the door handle before she had thought about reaching for it.
The engine produced no noise at all, no diesel thunder through the floor, just instant torque and a road beginning to move faster underneath.
"Smart..." Kara said quietly.
"I know, right?" I said, keeping my eyes on the road. "Once we’re out of Silver Oaks, we’ve got to maneuver through the hordes again. The Ascender would’ve rung the dinner bell for the whole lot of them."
"Buy some painkillers for Tikki."
"Nope," I said. "He’ll instantly stop treating the leg like it’s fractured."
"Weaoo!" Tikki declared from my shoulder, at a volume that left no ambiguity about his professional opinion on the matter.
Kara looked at him, then at me, and went back to watching the road. free𝑤ebnovel.com
Silver Oaks ended, and the city proper started up where it had left off, taller buildings and wider roads, and everything frozen in the exact position it had been in the moment the whole shit-show began.
Shops with open doors, apartments with lights still burning, vehicles abandoned or crashed in intersections.
A face appeared briefly in the ground-floor blinds of a building we rolled past, somebody watching the street from inside.
And Kara straightened immediately.
"Stop."
"Hell no." I laughed and kept driving, because pulling over in the middle of the city to play rescue was not on any list I was working from tonight.
And the glare I got was frankly a pretty fair response to that.
The first infected on the open road came at the Cybertruck, the way fresh infected always did, fast and without any plan behind it.
Two stepped into the lane together, and the ram handled both of them without any fanfare.
-BAM-!-Thud-
The truck took the hits with a jerk I could feel through the frame while I held the wheel steady.
The Ascender at full weight would have barely registered either of those contacts.
But then again, that was an 11-ton Expedition Vehicle.
An infected launched from the left at a dead sprint and threw itself at the passenger door, hitting the mesh, holding on for two full seconds before the grip failed, and it spun off into the road behind us.
"See," Kara said. "Didn’t I always tell you, electrics are the best?"
"For the first weeks, sure," I said. "But the hell are you going to charge them once the electricity goes out? We’d mostly be on the road."
"Can’t your System charge them?" Kara countered.
"Fair," I admitted, and left it at that.
And something that was almost a laugh came from her direction.
I threaded the Cybertruck through the longer city stretches, weaving between the abandoned vehicles clogging the wider intersections, along with the crashed cars.
Some families still sat inside their vehicles, or at least what used to be families.
They all had turned and pressed their faces against the glass from the inside; some were just still.
The quiet operation of the CyberTruck kept the infected reactions local the entire way through.
The ones on the next block never heard us pass.
The ones in the apartments stayed where they were.
Only the infected already out in the street with a direct line of sight on the truck had any real reaction time, and I was moving fast enough that reaction time alone was not going to be their saving grace.
And much earlier than I had anticipated, we arrived at the long open road, at the far end of which sat the building that’d be our safe haven for the coming weeks.
"There," I pointed through the windshield. "Home stretch..."
