Free Web NovelChapter 8: First Quest
October had been warm all week, just enough warm to makes people leave their jackets at home and regret it by evening, but the sky had already turned a flat, pale grey sometime in the last hour, and the wind coming down the strip had teeth in it now, carrying the smell of coming rain and something else underneath it, something burnt, faint and distant, that I didn’t acknowledge out loud.
The Ascender sat in the loading area with the rear storage compartments and the door to the living space open, where Maya had already positioned a loading dolley beside the stacked gear on the bay floor.
We worked fast, both of us, shoving boxes in without organizing them because organization takes time I did not have.
We loaded the generators first, two of them, shoving them deep into the exterior storage where their weight would sit low over the rear axle. Fuel containers went in beside them, full, sealed. Battery banks. Solar charging kits still in their flat packaging. Portable heaters broken out of boxes and stacked. Propane canisters loaded in their carry cases. Flash Lights.
While somewhere two streets over, someone was leaning on a car horn and not stopping.
Winter gear came next. I had moved fast through the clothing section earlier while Maya pulled items and I confirmed them, thermal base layers in four sizes to cover the spread, insulated waterproof jackets, snow boots, wool socks in vacuum bags, insulated gloves, and balaclavas still tagged.
We pulled out cold-weather sleeping bags, fleece blankets in compression sacks. All of it went into the living space storage, or whatever they’d fit.
After all, winter is coming.
[Freezing to death after surviving the infected would be genuinely embarrassing,] I thought, shoving a compression bag into and moving back to the dolley.
The water systems went in carefully. Industrial portable filters. Two gravity-fed purification rigs still in flat-pack boxes. Purification tablets by the case, four cases. Collapsible containers nested together. Spare pumps still blister-packed.
Clean water was going to become the single most negotiated resource by month two, especially when the lakes, rivers, and borewells would be frozen solid, and I was not going to be negotiating for it.
The hunting gear took the least space compared to everything else.
Compound bows broken down, crossbows cased, arrows and bolts bundled and wrapped, broadheads in their safe containers, survival knives in sheaths, hatchets and compact axes with blade guards on. Sharpening kits. Snares and animal traps still in packaging. Fishing rods broken down, line, hooks, and tackle in a waterproof box.
No gunshots advertising position to every infected within a half-kilometer radius for a rabbit.
The camping and field equipment took the longest.
Tents, tarps, coils of rope and climbing cord, waterproof containers of every size, five full emergency medkits and one trauma kit, camping cookware nested together, fire starters, two portable stoves, duct tape in four rolls, repair kits for fabric, a heavy-duty tool kit in a hard case.
Contrary to what it might’ve looked like, I was not hoarding.
Everything I was cramming in had a specific function in a specific scenario, and I knew exactly which scenario it was because I had lived through the version of it where I didn’t have that gear, very much wishing I had.
Somewhere during the second run, I noticed Maya had stopped asking questions.
She had been watching what was being loaded and doing the math on it while she kept handing me items from the dolley, kept matching my pace.
She did not even once ask why I needed four cases of purification tablets or what exactly I was planning to do with four compound bows and a case of broadheads.
[Good instincts...] I thought.
We were hauling the last run from the bay, last of the trauma kits and the tool cases, when-
-BOOOM-!!
An explosion loud enough to rattle the chest ripped through the air while a fireball, trailing black smoke, rose above the rooftops three blocks east.
Every car alarm on the strip triggered simultaneously, and from somewhere behind the buildings, a mass of birds went up all at once.
Maya went completely still beside me with a box in both hands and her mouth slightly open.
[Fuck!]
I had spent too long on the tour. Too long on the paperwork. And now the window I had been counting on was turning out to be even shorter than I had calculated, and it had just gotten shorter again.
"Maya." I turned to her.
But she kept staring at the smoke.
I walked to her, took the box from her hands, and put it in the Ascender myself, and then I put both hands on her shoulders and waited until her eyes came to mine.
"Maya!" I shouted, snapping her out of it, " Listen to me carefully... When we’re done loading, I need you to pack enough supplies to last a few months. Steal one of the RVs from the warehouse... and get out of the city."
"Why? What’s happening?" She stared at me.
"Just trust me."
She searched my face for a few seconds, found her answer, whatever it was, and nodded once.
And the second I took my hands off her shoulders, she turned around and ran.
Not to help me with the last two cases, but straight back through the store’s side entrance, and through the glass, I watched her moving straight to the wall of knives and hatchets.
[She’ll survive longer than most...]
I loaded the last two cases myself, closed the compartments, and closed the living space door shut before pulling out the phone and calling Kara.
But she didn’t pick it up.
[Is she in class or something?]
So I called Nora, and she picked up on the second ring.
"Nikki, where are you?!" Her voice came through before I could even open my mouth, already fractured, breath fast and short.
My hand on the phone instinctively tightened. "What happened?"
"Professor Wilson... She’s dead, Nikki! A student just... with a fork, in the cafeteria, just stabbed her, and then everyone started! There’s blood everywhere and people are fighting, and nobody knows why, and I don’t-"
"Nora!" I said it at full volume, cutting through her panic, "Is Leo with you?"
"Yes, he’s... yes."
"Good... Listen to me. Find the nearest janitor supply room. The ones with the metal doors. Lock yourselves in, and do not open it for any voice that isn’t mine... If you can grab food and water on the way, do it. But only if it’s safe... Otherwise go straight there."
"Nikki, what is happening? Why are you... What is going on?" freewebnovёl.ƈom
"Look, I’m coming to you guys. I just need you somewhere safe first." I kept my voice level. "... Put Leo on."
A shuffle and a beat of silence followed from the other side before a deep, rough voice came that was trying its best to sound steady.
"Big bro."
"You heard everything I told Nora?"
"Yeah."
"Do it. Can you manage that?"
"Yeah. Already moving."
I could hear it in the background, Nora’s voice asking something, Leo answering it with two words, a door opening.
"You’d better keep her safe... and don’t let anyone bite you," I said.
"Got it."
And with that, the line went quiet, while I stood with the phone in my hand beside the Ascender and the smoke column still visible ahead, doing the calculation one more time with the new numbers.
The turning would begin late evening at the current pace.
Maybe even earlier.
And I still needed a supermarket run for medications, cat supplies, and enough food to at least survive the first two weeks.
And I still needed to get to the location I had been planning to use as a base since this morning.
[It’s 3 PM right now... I can still make it...] I thought.
And underneath swam a quieter one [I must make it!]
I called Kara.
It rang, and rang, and rang while I stared at the man across the car park, shouting at his phone with both hands shaking, and while my call went to voicemail.
I hung up and opened the location share.
And my stomach dropped the moment the map loaded.
The blue dot that was Kara’s phone was not on campus.
It was not on the route between campus and home, at a small alleyway two blocks from the university’s east exit, between a row of commercial buildings and a drainage service road, and it was not moving.
Not the same alley. Not the exact place I had lost her last time.
But still an alley.
[No...] The thought surfaced by itself [Please don’t... not again...]
-Ding!
{
Quest Received!
Objective: Rescue Kara Woodbrew.
Reward: Legacy Gear.
}
