SA AU #1 - Chapter Four (Patreon)

Warning: This is word vomit. Pretty much exclusively. It has not been through dev, copy, or Tao edits yet. I have only gone over it myself. There could be inconsistencies in the System because I am working in Tao's world. Any of these will be rectified before the book is published. Book is set in Australia - I can use all the lingo I want hahaha

Note: I welcome comments and feedback. Hope you all enjoy this.

Chapter Four

Not a Game

Change of plan. Getting to the city center was a good few clicks away and I was pretty sure there’d be carnage on the freeway. Initially I’d assumed there might have been more damage done during peak hour, but the traffic at that time was often bumper to bumper. At eleven at night the vehicles were spaced and could cruise at the speed limit.

I didn’t even want to imagine the feeling of dread when the EMP took out all electrical systems. Most people wouldn’t have even been able to open their doors.

Since most of our traveling was likely to be done on foot, I was no longer sure heading there was a good idea. My parents had been preppers for as long as I could remember. Not the bunker type, but the food and tool and water filtration sort. Sure, they’d toned down when we moved from the States, but they’d never fully left it behind.

Dad always joked that if the world came to an end, he knew where we’d meet up. The more I thought about it, the more sense it made.

Garden City. A massive shopping center that was only a few clicks away in the opposite direction. It would have been closed when the wave took over, so hopefully there was little if any destruction inside the actual complex. The way there however was either along Logan Road, or else the Freeway. And both of those were going to be piled high with death.

Still, it was a shorter route than the City, and we didn’t have to cross a river to get there. I might have loved swimming, but drowning was not a way I wanted to go. All my Seismic Awareness gave me from that direction was darkness, foreboding. Not to mention there was a slight chance that my brother might remember dad’s constant joking too. Twins were connected I guess. And in a way I was quite certain Kyle was still alive. He’d better stay that way, or I’d kill him.

Dale approached me cautiously. “Mind if we tag along?”

There was a layer of uncertainty in his voice that I instinctually knew wasn’t directed at me, but at all of this. He was barely holding it together, and only just managing for his son.

I nodded, raking my gaze over the ragtag bunch of survivors. The area around us seemed almost too quiet, making my shoulders ache with tension. Darren seemed extremely skittish, but his arm appeared to be healed and usable again. I could use another set of eyes who was handy with a baseball bat, and I wasn't about to say no to an EMT and healer considering all the creatures we were likely to come up against.

The other survivors milled around the underpass. I couldn’t just leave them all standing there. They seemed so lost. If our most recent encounter was anything to go by, the Toohey Forest wildlife was about to severely diversify. Damn that compassionate streak of mine. Though, if the system hadn’t called out how it could get me killed, I probably wouldn’t have been as hesitant.

“Hey.” I called out, hoping I wouldn’t end up regretting the decision. There were reasons I chose my profession. Plants were a hell of a lot easier to organize and talk to than humans, especially when the latter panicked.

Most of the adults swiveled their attention around to me, their worry leveled just under the surface. Panic wasn’t going to help anyone right then.

“There’ll be more like those cockbats.” I grasped at the first name I could think of and pulled it out. I hadn’t expected the partially hysterical giggles that greeted me. Some of the tension eased a bit, but there was still more of it laying underneath.

“Yeah. Cockbats are the least of our worries. Cockroaches, cane toads, huntsmen, magpies… you name it, think of how they’re going to mutate.” Shudders even ran down my back. “It’s probably best to stick together with people you trust. Get somewhere big, barricadable, and safer.”

Dale stood next to me, nodding, like he was reinforcing my words despite the fact that he still looked green in complexion and like he’d throw up at any given moment. I carefully dropped my gaze and turned to my children, ushering them onto their bikes as Dale and Darren pulled two of the bikes from the rack at the back of a totaled car. It was pretty clear that the vehicle had been his. I knew it. He lost at least another kid and probably his spouse. Shit. What the hell was this?

The feeling of something approaching tickled at the base of my brain, prickled like I was being stung by nettles. It wasn’t imminent, but the longer we didn’t move, the closer it’d get. We really needed to move now.

Glancing overhead at the destroyed guardrail with a car most of the way out, I took a breath. I had small torches in each of our survival kits and extra batteries, but I’d save them until we moved away especially since I wasn’t sure how people would react to anything right then. It was dark and weaving our way through any streets of traffic was going to be difficult.

“Should…” Dale began, glancing behind him at where others stood trying to pull themselves from their shock. “People can be so unpredictable.”

I knew what he was saying. To be honest, I wouldn’t have been reacting so clearly if it wasn’t for the kids. I had to protect them first. “True. Freeway is probably the better way to go. Less people and potentially less panic.”

Dale let out a breath, a sigh of relief. He needed to push on. Standing around near his dead family members probably wasn’t helping. No one moved toward us, and I was done waiting. I’d given what advice I could.

With a glance back toward the rest of the group, some of which were watching me intently, I motioned for the kids to get on their bikes and went up the Klump road off ramp and onto the freeway.

❖

Jackson rode next to Darren, carefully. Those little friction lights gave us some illumination but fortunately not enough for Wisp to see the gruesome details if she looked up from trying to navigate her way. With the amount of glass on the road, it was only a matter of time before we had to abandon the bikes anyway. I didn’t have enough spare tubes for that.

I was glad that Dale didn’t seem to want to talk, I was too busy focusing on our surroundings and trying to hear oncoming danger. Seismic Awareness didn’t work as well when traveling by bicycle. Perhaps because I wasn’t in mostly direct contact with some form of the earth.

It was easy to get caught up in the surrounding sounds, and I almost stacked it before I realized everyone else had stopped.

Right in front of us, a semi-trailer had careened sideways and blocked almost the entire side of the freeway. Not even the median strip managed to stop it. Wisp was starting to flag and I guided her away from the cab of the truck. It wasn’t a pretty sight in there. Broken glass, blood, and pieces of goopy flesh. I couldn’t begin to imagine the force required for that.

For us, the silver lining came in the form of being able to traverse to the other side of the freeway.

Standing still, I reactivated the one security alarm I had. There were constant rumblings, sensations that turned my stomach and made me nauseous. I could pay that price though. Nothing imminent as far as I could tell, but everything around us was: unsettled, collapsing, gurgling. The entire area that I could sense felt like lava just waiting to burst through the earth's crust.

“What do we do?” Dale seemed tired, and his eyes were filled with about as much fear as I was ignoring. I couldn’t blame him.

“We keep going. We should be able to jump over to the bus way and through to Garbo soon.” I glanced around at this side of the road, waves of intensity flowing underfoot like something was coming. Wish it would print me out a nice list of potential incoming threats or something. How to be not useful.

“It’s the only plan I have.” I added, trying not to let the strain show in my tone. This side looked worse, but there was no getting around the crashed semi. I didn’t have those sorts of skills. So many more cars on this side. I fished out a flashlight and held my breath as I depressed the switch. It turned on, but its light was weak and barely made a difference. I handed it to Wisp and she grabbed it with a brave smile.

“Better plan than my: wait until the nightmare is over and pinching myself works.” Dale’s humor was forced, but I appreciated it nevertheless. After all, I was fairly certain his other option was to scream. And boy, could I feel that.

“Excellent.” I glanced at Wisp, who was attempting to hold her bike up while she was juggling the flashlight. Frankly it was doing more of that than she was, and its tires were flat as a tac. I grimmaced. “I think we have to ditch the bikes.”

“I’ve been riding on rims for a while.” Dale agreed and motioned for the boys to come over.

We hadn’t made it nearly as far as I’d liked. Constant car crashes, navigating broken glass, broken bodies, and climbing over car hoods was slow going. So far though, there’d been a few empty cars, which meant more survivors, only I didn’t have the energy to look for them right now. I could only hope they got to safety or help them if we eventually encountered them.

I really hadn’t thought it would take us this long to traverse a couple of kilometers. A shot of fear plummeted down my spine and I took a breath. Something was coming. We need to get to the busway. Most of the busses would have been on their last route of the night, a lot of them would have already been done.

“Something’s coming.” I said, trying to sound matter of fact as I hoisted Wisp up on my hip and tossed her backpack at Jackson. It was difficult to orient myself and figure out where the warning was coming from. It was close. Behind or in front - there was something brewing and if I had spider senses, I’d say they’re tingling.

Dale picked up on my alarm and ushered Darren closer as we began to pick our way through the car wrecks. Just up ahead there was a break in partition giving us a way into the bus lanes. Relief hit me harder than I expected, and it was only as I climbed over the next car, fueled by adrenaline and the need to get to our goal that I realize the warning came from up here.

I stared around trying to take in the ever dim surroundings. It's not like it was last time and I didn’t know how this all works well enough to know what it is it's trying to tell me. The sensations were larger this time, whatever was coming, whatever it tried to inform me about. At the end of our path to the far left, I could see people stumbling about, and a soft blue glow emanating from the ground, the color of the initial wave back in the lab when I was checking my samples.

The brief blue glow and gut wrenching pain was all I got as my ability warned me a split second before the massive swell of mana appeared. It flowed across the bitumen like bright blue magma, lighting up the night in a gorgeous way even as it chewed through the cars and remains exposed to the liquid, melting them into it seamlessly.

Then, slowly, almost as if in timelapse, spiders begin to crawl out of the hole the flow came from. Or, I thought they were spiders at first, Instead, their limbs shone like Christmas lights until they hit the pavement next to the fount of mana lava. Their limbs were long and spindly like a huntsman spider, but the bodies appeared thicker, armored, almost like a scorpion. You know, except they were about the size of a medium sized dog.

Huntsman spiders were bad enough when they appeared next to my head in the middle of the night on the wall. Armored versions were so not my cup of tea. Two screams echoed toward us from the survivors directly in their path. Survivors we hadn’t reached in time. The mana noise in my head receded and so did the well until it disappeared like it had never been there.

Except for the armored mana fueled creatures skittering toward us.

❖

Their blood was purple. No matter how much we killed, the light from Jackson's spell never failed to illuminate it. Like maybe the mana affected more than just mutating the creatures far beyond their original form. Granted, the critical thought was fantastic at misdirecting my attention away from the creatures we were fighting and the amount of their blood I had spattered on me.

It had a pretty undertone to it, a stark juxtaposition to the creatures trying to tear my face off.

“These things are smart.” Dale huffed out as he caught another one of them in a sharp uppercut with his metal bat.

I had to agree, I just didn’t have the spare energy. It wasn't like the cockbats. These didn't travel in a massive flock but in a small pack. And they seemed to communicate together. They backed each other up, feinted, moved as a unit like they'd been trained some how. The level ups we'd previously gained were our one boon. If we moved around with our backs mostly to each other we could keep an eye out, we could help each other.

Reaching out with my Earth Barrier readied, I wasn’t sure what I was expecting. I pulled at the earth beneath us, through the bitumen, determined to help us somehow.

The loud cracking and shifting of the ground nearly sent me to my knees, and my first thought was for Wisp, tucked away behind a car and covered in our family shielding.

Swinging bats wasn't the best weapon, but with the skills we'd gained my Barrier allowed me to make sure our back side was mostly protected. It made it far more difficult for anything to reach us. It drained a decent chunk of mana though. From what I could tell through the barrage of attacks, which was extremely distracting, my mana regeneration happened faster than I’d anticipated. I needed more information - we needed to pick our perks.

Still though, I was going to run out.

Seven more of them. Even with Dale healing us we were down to about half health each, and the boys magic also drained out of them consistently. I needed time to sit down and examine how all of these abilities worked. I'd bitten my lip somewhere along the line and could taste blood in my mouth. The baseball bats didn't do as much damage to the carapaces of these opponents as they did back then to the cockbats.

Each hit carried a heavy thud. Each slug from all of us only chipped away at its health like we were throwing pebbles at window panes. It felt useless but we kept at it. Finally, I dropped to one knee as the dizziness washed over me just as my son fried the last of the creatures. He fried it. This was so weird. I knew he’d picked another skill. The flashing notifications at the corner of my vision were really getting on my nerves and I’d just waved away his choice. I needed to be more invested in the direction he was taking.

"Shit." Dale's tone was higher pitched than usual, or the usual I'd gotten to know over the last four or so hours. Seriously. Invading us in the middle of the night? Bloody Brilliant plan. Half of the city was still asleep. I didn't want to think about how many had died.

"Yeah. This is so cool!" Darren smiled, excited by the prospect of more adventure, of more real life computer gaming. Maybe it was the best way for him to deal with the death of his family members. Focusing on surviving himself.

Speaking of which. I had messages waiting for me to open them. More experience no doubt. But right now there were several people walking toward us. Perhaps stumbling was a better word. I had to remember that not everyone had been totally coherent, sober, and working on a ecology experiment when the mana wave hit, when this apocalypse happened.

Some of these guys were exhausted after a day’s work. Coming back from a baseball game. Or perhaps going to the nightshift. I could tell, just from the way they walked, supporting each other, their eyes wide and scared. There was no way they'd realized what the system was when it flashed across their eyes in all its blue glory. They didn't have their classes, and probably had no clue what they were doing.

My screens were going to have to wait. I pulled up my big girl pants, got my friendly smile on my face, forgetting for a moment that I was mostly covered in the remnants of cockbats and the pretty splash of mana spiders remains. They needed as friendly an encounter as they could have and I needed for them not to lose their shit.

I wasn't sure if I was imagining it or not, but their expressions crinkled in that fearful ... or was it disgusted way? I guess we’d found some of the survivors. And then it hit me.

The drawback about the pretty purple blood was that it stunk to high hell.