Vice Bunker 55 (Patreon)

Vice Bunker

Chapter 55

-VB-

Finding a cannibal town so close to New Brockton Bay was surprising. I did ignore the town before because the level of activity here was low enough that I didn’t think much of it. 

Now, I wasn’t sure if I should have done that. While I felt no guilt or any self-debilitating emotion, I ignored a potential threat close to my area of occupation without even doing a cursory check. And now, it may have potentially caused lower migration to my city. 

Before I wiped this town from the map, I wanted to do a more thorough investigation. What led to the deaths of the migrants was shoddy cataloging, so I wasn’t going to keep being shoddy about investigating. 

And hey, who knows, maybe there were a few survivors in the town somewhere. 

But realistically speaking, the freezing blizzards made that a non-contender. You only needed to keep fresh meat alive when storage was a problem, and the blizzard made storage a non-issue. 

Still, I rolled my nanobot slime roll forward and ordered other blobs around the area to converge on the town. Once they gathered around the edge of the town, I forced them to disperse into finer particulates, essentially clumps of nanites that looked like very thin black wisps. While these nanites couldn’t fly up against a blizzard, they were more than capable of going up against a breeze. Thankfully, that’s all there was inside this town right now.

Then I moved in.

I could see clearly because I received sensor input from all of the nanites, but it was currently 1 a.m., and the black wisp-like nanite particulates went unnoticed in the dimly lit town. Most of the people were asleep as well. There were a few guards patrolling the town, but they may as well not have the guards from how underequipped they were. 

It was clear to me that this town felt safe despite their lacking status. Or maybe it was because they lacked the bigger things in life that they felt safer? Like a mouse that might get overlooked by an owl because the owl caught sight of a rabbit. 

And I was definitely the bigger target for most marauders and raiders.

Not that they existed around my city anymore. Most of them either died shivering in the frozen hellscape or at the end of a gun in my city. 

What might have looked like wispy apparitions during the day stealthily and silently infiltrated every corner of the town, and I began to get a basic map of the town. The town currently had … a little under a thousand people, which was just over five percent of the town’s former population. Of those thousand people, most of them were concentrated in the industrial sector of the city centered around a brewery. 

It made sense why most of the people would be there. It was energy inefficient to heat every single home that every single family lived in. But if they moved into larger buildings, better insulate them, and then heat those, then they would use less fuel to keep warm. 

My nanite wisps checked basements, storages, and garages, leaving not one unchecked. 

Strangely, there were no piles of human meat in the storages. There were a few more bones, but they were wrapped up and being prepared for burial. 

Strange.

I looked around some more. 

And the more I looked, the less I was sure about this town being a cannibal town. In fact, it looked even less like one when I began to find clothes. 

If they were cannibals, then they surely would have some torn clothes or things that would have been evidence for fighting. Hell, I even checked around the kitchens in the main area to see if there were any struggles that might have taken place there. 

But I found none. 

Eventually… 

I decided to get a little personal. 

-VB-

My nanite wisps gathered together at a spot at the edge of the town right in the path of one of the patrolling guards. He looked cold, shivering in the light breeze of the winter apocalypse around us. He wore thick, padded clothes, but they looked woefully inadequate. This wasn’t just a winter but a hellish winter, after all. Temperature around here dipped to zero or even negative fahrenheit. 

The patrolling guard, an aging black man, shivered as he stopped. He fumbled with his gloves, pulled them off, and tried to warm them up with his breath. 

“Cold?”

He froze and fumbled with his M4A1 rifle. 

“Relax,” I hummed as I allowed the black wisps to converge in front of him into a shadowy version of my human body, including the tentacle legs. “I’m just here to ask you a few questions about your town.”

“I-I’m not going to say a-anything,” he stuttered through the cold and clattering teeth as he reached for his radio. 

“If you don’t answer anything, then I’m going to have to assume that you and your town are cannibals,” I replied, making him freeze. “And treat you as such.”

He stared at me before his shoulders sagged. “What do you want to know?”

“... You aren’t denying my accusation.”

He grumbled. “You obviously already scouted us out. You must have found something to bring that up right off the bat…” he muttered. “So who are you? What are you? Some cape from down south or the Big Apple?”

“No,” I hummed. “I’m the new ruler of Brockton Bay.”

“Oh.”

“And I’ve had to deal with many cannibals, even cannibalistic bandit gangs. I have little to no patience with them. You should be relieved that I thought to do a more thorough investigation. Otherwise, everyone in this town would be undergoing … reprocessing.” He shivered and it wasn’t because of the cold. “So would you kindly explain why I found human bones and remains? But mostly bones and not meat?”

He looked sullen and ashamed. “They were the ones who died first.”

“Hmm?”

“We had … a lot more people here, you know,” he muttered as he glanced toward the brewery. “Tens of thousands of us. We weren’t anything big like Boston or your Brockton Bay, but we were a happy town doing our little things. And then the winter came. People started dropping dead from the cold. And then bandits showed up. We somehow kicked them out, but food was running low and … Meat’s meat.”

I hummed. “Fair. Necessity is no sin,” I replied. 

“So why didn’t you kill us?” he asked me. 

“I saw the bodies being prepared for burlal. Or funeral. You were considerate to others, so I decided to be patient with you.”

“... Thanks, I guess. Being a decent people saved our skin.”

“Bring the leaders of your town to meet me tomorrow just outside your brewery. We have shop to talk.”

-VB-

When I returned the next day, four people awaited me. 

The same black guard from before was there along with three older men and a woman. 

“Good morning,” I greeted them with the same fog and wisp appearing trick. It made me look a lot more intimidating. I probably didn’t need to be with these four; they were extremely wary and already fearful of me. “I am Yal’Manus, the ruler of New Brockton Bay.”

The oldest man among them opened his mouth with a snarl to say something but the woman slapped the back of his head. He shut up and clicked his tongue instead, looking away. They looked like they were a married couple from that sort of interaction. 

The black guard, or probably someone more important than just a patrol guard, stepped up. “My name is Daniel O’hara, formerly first lieutenant of the 30th Infantry Regiment. I’m in charge of all of the militia.”

“We’re the Karlenssons,” the woman spoke up. “I’m Mary and my husband Jack.”

“And I’m Jacob Retouta,” the last man finished off. “I’m the mayor… of whatever is left of us, anyway.”

“I have a proposal for your people,” I said. “Join me as a vassal, and I will provide food and protection.”

“You have food?” the gruff one, Jack Karlensson, asked. 

“Yes. We have hydroponics and fish regularly. Currently, there are a few thousand people living under my protection.”

Daniel chimed in here. “You talk like you own the place.”

I shrugged. “I obviously do. There are no hostile gangs. I have eliminated all bandits, cannibal or not. The Slaughterhouse Nine came to cause trouble but I ended them. PRT and Protectorate ENE work alongside me. Alexandria is in New York and she’s yet to denounce me for declaring my own state.” I sighed. “The United States of America is gone. It died when it refused to pay a few million dollars to keep a powerful Tinker in check. Billions - no, humanity - has paid the price for their folly.”

“... You killed the Nine?” Jack asked me.

“Yes. I have video proof and heroes from before the apocalypse to collaborate the story.”

“Then I’m in,” he gruffed. 

“Jack!” Mary hissed. “You can’t just make the decision for the town!” 

“The guy’s being nice,” he replied as he stared at his wife. “And he’s offering food, too. As long as I don’t have to eat my own flesh and blood again, I’m in.”

Ah. 

So that was the kind of story that was in this town. Just a tragedy of necessity. 

“My condolensces,” I told him.

He grunted. “The idiot tried to eke it out on his own. Got him and his entire family killed, that’s what he did. If Janette didn’t decide to stick with us, then we wouldn’t have anyone else left. You promise, though? You promise food and protection?” 

I smiled, but that only seemed to make them hesitate. 

“Yes. Food delivery will take a week to come, but protection is already here.”

I raised my right hand and snapped my finger theatrically.

And under the cloudy sky and the freezing cold, human-shaped blobs rose up from the snow and ground wielding guns and spears. 

Jack barked out a laugh. “Well, the guy’s obviously well prepared! Jacob, get the town to vote on this shit or something already. I don’t want to eat human meat again if I don’t have to!” Then he turned to me. “You’ll send that video for us to look, right? Me and Mary lost some folks to those shits.”

I smirked. “I’ll send something over, including a hero. I’m sure you’ve heard of New Wave?”

That did the trick, and they relaxed a bit more. 

I supposed that I got my first vassal town.