Shadow Sun Survival

by Dave Willmarth

  Not wanting to risk a cave-in by digging, he went back down and out the way they’d come in. Stepping into what was left of the ground floor of the station, he began to pick through the rubble looking for useful items.

  He found six boxes of ammo for his shotgun, and several hundred rounds of .40 and 9mm – standard issue for most cops. He also found three more shotguns, though one of them was useless, the barrel bent. He kept it anyway, in case one of them developed some skill in blacksmithing and could repair it. After some more digging, he found two battery-powered lanterns, a mostly intact first aid cabinet, a pair of pink furry handcuffs that he made a mental note to ask Sean about, several sets of black fatigues, and three big black duffel bags with the sheriff dept. logo on them. Filling them with all that he found, he took a few more minutes to search. He noted several chairs that were still intact and would be worth coming back for. And he found three thin, narrow foam mattresses that must have been in the holding cells up here. Not great, but better than sleeping on stone.

  Just as he was about to leave, he spotted a shiny set of keys on the floor. Picking them up, he saw that they were car keys. A quick scan of the area showed him a patrol car half a block away. The front end was crushed, the engine block protruding from the hood. But the vehicle was still intact from the dashboard back.

  Allistor grabbed the least-filled of the duffels and transferred its contents to the other two. Then he jogged over to the car, unlocked the trunk first, and nearly shouted for joy. Inside were two more shotguns, an AR-15 style rifle, two armored vests, several flares, six packets that each contained one of the light foil blankets, and ammo for each of the weapons. There was also an empty coffee thermos, and a pair of combat-style boots, size ten. Too small for Allistor, but somebody might be able to use them.

  Cramming all but the vests into the duffel, he put one of the vests on and looped his arm through the other. Then he lifted the bag, returned to gather up the other two, and headed back downstairs with his loot.

  He ran into Sam on his way down. The man took one look at him and began to laugh. “I was just coming up to do the same thing. Did you leave anything up there?

  Allistor grinned. “Just big stuff. There are some chairs, a few mattresses, stuff like that. Let me drop this stuff off, and I’ll come help.” He continued through the tunnel and deposited everything on the table. Reaching into the duffel he’d filled from the trunk, he grabbed a handful of the blankets. “Nancy? Thought these might be useful. And we’re bringing some furniture down next.”

  Seeing Chloe approaching, he added, “There are lots of guns in there.”

  Nancy took the hint and nodded her thanks. She was distracting the little girl with the shiny foil blankets when he left the room.

  Back up top, he found Sam moving two of the mattresses over near the stairs. The two of them got to work hauling anything that looked useful. Twenty minutes later there were six more chairs, three mattresses, two sets of shelves, several crates that could be tilted on end and used as tables in the cells, one intact metal desk, and a second table all arranged in their new quarters.

  Since there were more cells than people, Doc, who Allistor had learned was named Amanda, had commandeered one of them to be used as their medical facility. It was the one closest to the bathroom, which would hopefully also be their water supply. She had them place the extra table in there to be used as a bed for patients. At least until they could find a better one. She set up the first aid cabinet, rolled in one of the chairs, and declared their “ER” open for business.

  Sean came back downstairs and was instantly greeted by Meg. “Well?”

  He smiled and shook his head. “It’ll take some work to get this one running again.” He paused to take in the disappointed look on her face. “But don’t worry. We found a working bathroom up there. There’s no light, so take a candle with you. There’s a mop sink up there too…”

  Meg had a candle in hand and was dashing up the stairs before he’d even finished talking. Nancy and Chloe drifted up the stairs behind her. Sean went to examine the pipes above the toilet.

  It was approaching noon, and Allistor’s stomach reminded him he hadn’t eaten much since the day before. He’d snacked on a jerky stick from the convenience store as they walked, but that was it. He was reaching into his bag, an old backpack he’d grabbed out of habit as he evacuated his house the morning before, when he noticed the shelves had been stocked with food and drink.

  Putting his bag back on his back, he helped himself to a candy bar, another stick of jerky, and a bottle of water. There wasn’t much in the way of real food in a convenience store, especially if one didn’t have a microwave.

  He took a seat at the table and tried to relax as he ate. Amanda joined him, snacking on a bag of sour cream and onion chips and a soda. When she saw what he was eating, she grinned. “Not exactly the breakfast of champions.”

  “Yeah. Hopefully this afternoon we can find some real food. Maybe a few intact refrigerators or basement freezers. Though without power, nothing will last long. We’re going to need to start hunting for food. Or raising livestock.”

  “Or maybe buy some on this ‘open market’ the system info mentions,” Amanda added.

  Meg joined them, taking a break from cleaning. “We need a way to cook. Maybe a propane stove? Or somebody’s grill? There’s got to be at least a few intact propane tanks around.”

  Allistor nodded. “I’ll make that my next priority. We’ve got enough bottled water for a few days, and running water upstairs, for now. This junk food will last us a couple days too. But we are going to need real food ASAP. We had a grill behind my house. It’s not far. I’ll check there first.”

  His meal complete, he hefted his spear and headed out. Checking in with Sam on the way, he told him roughly where he’d be scavenging. Sam nodded. “Be careful out there. You’re the highest level among us right now, but those monsters are no joke.”

  Allistor exited the cellar doors behind the sheriff’s office and turned west. He moved as quietly as he could, using debris piles as cover. His family home was only a short walk from City Hall. Actually, everything in the town proper was a short walk. The entire town was only about a dozen blocks long. Most of the citizens lived out on farms or one of the three subdivisions that had sprouted up between the town and the interstate.

  Main Street consisted of mostly retail spaces. City Hall and the sheriff’s office were near the center of town, and there was the library at one end. The rest of Main Street had been restaurants, a coffee shop, bakery, florist, three bars, a bookstore, a mom and pop grocery, department store, hardware store, a music shop that sold both records and instruments, a feed store, a used car dealership, two gas stations (one on either end of town), and several empty buildings.

  On the blocks off Main Street, there had mostly been homes on quarter to half-acre lots with old oak trees and green lawns. Old homes built in the early 1900s when the town was growing. Some had been replaced over the years, but many were craftsmen homes, built to last. Mixed in were a couple of small parks, schools, and assorted businesses like the convenience store they’d already looted.

  Allistor noticed for the first time that few of the trees had been damaged. It was as if the titan had been programmed to target man-made structures and leave the natural features intact.

  He passed behind the former car dealership on his way home. Most of the vehicles on the lot had been crushed or flipped over. But a couple pickups and an old Mustang looked intact. More importantly, he spotted a flatbed trailer on the back lot. With two axles and a ramp that folded off the back, the thing was capable of carrying the weight of a car. Allistor thought about all the heavy objects he wanted to retrieve – the grill, some beds, or at least mattresses, maybe a couple of chest freezers. The trailer would allow him to make one trip.

  Testing his strength, he lifted the hitch on the front end and tried to pull the trailer forward. It resisted initially, then slowly began to move. Once he got it go
ing, it wasn’t much of an effort to pull it behind him. Of course, things would be different with more weight on it. And it was awkward walking backward. Especially when he needed to keep an eye out for mobs.

  What he needed was a harness of some kind.

  Poking around in the rubble of the dealership, he found a pile of old tire chains. And a set of jumper cables. He also found a metal box full of car keys with numbered tags. He set that aside where he could find it again, planning to spend some time finding the keys for the working vehicles. He would have preferred to use one of the trucks to pull the trailer, but until they knew more about the monsters roaming the town, he didn’t want the sound of an engine attracting attention.

  Taking the chains with him back to the trailer, he took about ten minutes to improvise a sort of harness by hooking them to the frame of the trailer and creating two loops. He could slide his arms through those loops and hitch them over his shoulders. In this manner, he could pull the thing walking forward, even lean into it to decrease the strain on his back.

  You have learned the skill: Improvisation

  Finding a creative way to use materials found in the wild to improvise a useful tool has unlocked the Improvisation skill. Your high Adaptability attribute provides a 20% bonus to skill level advancement.

  Allistor pulled the trailer with him, moving slowly and maneuvering around the debris in the road. It took another ten minutes to reach what was left of his home. He dropped the chains and left the trailer in the street out front. Then he walked up the driveway, stepping carefully over a shattered roof truss and piles of broken bricks.

  First things first. He needed to look for his parents’ bodies. He knew where his mother should be. She’d been in the yard next to the tree, having just fled out the front door with Allistor. A splintered two-by-four propelled by the force of the titan’s kick had impaled her from behind. The wound was instantly fatal, and he didn’t think she’d felt much pain.

  Despite the giant monster bearing down on them, he had turned and stared in shock, his body frozen in place. He heard his father’s anguished shout as he called out his wife’s name. Turning from his mother, he found his father just in time to see him crushed by a huge section of the two-story front wall of their brick house. The moments after that were mostly a blank for Allistor. He’d eventually turned and fled, one among many as his frantic neighbors joined him.

  Standing under the oak tree in the center of his front yard, he stared at the ground. The only sign of his mother was a patch of blood-stained grass. There were paw prints in the bloodied soil. Tears rolled down his face as he imagined his mother’s corpse being consumed by monsters.

  Moving to the still mostly intact wall that had crushed his father, he debated with himself. The bricks formed an effective burial mound, and there was no evidence they had been disturbed. He said a quick prayer over his father’s grave and stepped away.

  Allistor walked into the devastated structure. Nothing taller than six feet remained intact. Turning to look at the street, he could see the cone-shaped dispersal pattern of all the bits of his house that had been launched outward as the titan lifted its foot and stepped forward.

  Turning toward the back of the house, he was pleased to find his father’s gas grill still intact on the rear patio. He stepped through the debris to retrieve it, wheeling it around the side of the house and loading it onto the trailer. Next, he went to their shed, which sat at the back of their yard, and was still mostly intact. Some incidental contact from the titan had made it lean drastically to one side.

  He grabbed everything useful from inside the shed. Several lengths of rope, his father’s tools and workbench with clamps, more lengths of chain. There were boxes of nails and screws, and a hydraulic nail gun, which he left behind. He grabbed a full-sized axe and a hatchet, as well as a gas-powered chainsaw. When he lifted that, he had visions of slicing through the titan’s tendons and making the thing fall on its face.

  Once he had loaded all those items onto the trailer, he went back to the house. He found most of the kitchen was smushed flat. The titan had stepped directly on top of that room. The doorway to the basement was gone, but after he cleared some debris, he found the stairs still intact. Moving downward, he sighed in relief. The basement was nearly untouched. Still in disarray after the octopoid’s rampage, but undamaged by the weight of the titan. The only visible damage was a foot of water from leaking pipes above. He made a mental note to organize a group to turn off all the water valves in town.

  Descending into the water, he waded over to his highest priority item. The gun safe. His father was a collector of rifles and shotguns. The safe was three feet wide and seven feet tall. Inside were two racks, upper and lower, filled with weapons. A shelf under each held boxes of ammunition. More ammunition was stacked on top of the safe.

  Laying an old blanket out on the even older sofa, he began to stack the weapons. Then he rolled up the blanket and used some twine to tie it into a bundle. While he had the twine, he looped some around his spear near both ends, the line between allowing him to sling it over his shoulder, almost like a bow. The ammo all went into his father’s old footlocker. Grabbing the footlocker by its end handle with one hand, and with the bundle of weapons under his other arm, he began to ascend the stairs.

  Just two steps up, he froze. A snuffling sound from above came to him. Followed by the sound of shifting debris in the kitchen. He stood completely still, holding his breath as he listened. The snuffling grew closer. If something had caught his scent, it would appear at the stop of the stairs any second.

  He very carefully retreated down the one step he’d already climbed, then quietly set down the chest and bundle. Unfortunately, the rifles clacked together inside the bundle as he set them down, and a startled growl echoed down from above. He quickly unslung his spear and held it at the ready.

  A canine head with a bloody snout appeared at the top of the steps. Standing in the sunlight, Allistor doubted it could see him well in the comparative darkness of the basement. He took a second to Examine it.

  Canid

  Level 4

  Health 650/650

  It was basically a wolf, but with six legs. Comparative in size to a Siberian wolf, its shoulders stood about waist high to Allistor. The beast’s entire body bulged with muscle. Its eyes were crystal blue with red irises, the color combination giving him chills as he stared at the thing.

  A low growl grew in the canid’s chest, getting louder as it crouched low and bared its fangs. Allistor’s pulse raced and his mouth went dry as the canid took a step forward, beginning a slow creep down the stairs above him. He raised his spear and spoke to it.

  “Are you the one that ate my mom? Is that her blood? You’re gonna pay for that. Come get me!”

  Allistor jabbed the spear in the monster’s direction, knowing it was well out of range. He wanted to show it he wasn’t afraid, though he very much was. He thought he remembered something about dogs being able to sense fear. And he didn’t want to give it the satisfaction.

  The growl increased to a slavering snarl as it took another step down. Now only eight steps separated the two combatants. The canid sprang forward, jaws aimed directly for Allistor’s head. He managed to dodge to one side and club the flying wolf-thing with the butt end of his spear. It yelped in pain as it flew past him and splashed into the water.

  Faster than Allistor would have imagined possible, it was back on its feet and lunging at him. He didn’t have time to dodge, and it barreled into him. The canid’s forepaws struck his chest, driving him back to fall against the stairs. He managed to get his spear between him and the thing’s chest, holding back its snapping jaws.

  Still, it clawed at his legs with its back and middle sets of feet, trying to find purchase to push forward and eat his face. He heard his jeans rip and felt his flesh tearing under the onslaught. His health bar decreased by about twenty percent.

  Planting one elbow against the stair beneath him, he used the spear to leve
r the thing to one side as he pushed himself up. The canid crashed against the stair railing, causing it to crack and give way as it and the beast fell over into the water.

  This time, the canid was slower to recover as its legs were tangled in the railing’s balusters. Allistor regained his feet and stabbed at the canid’s face with the spear. It managed to pull its head to one side, leaving the spear to puncture its shoulder instead. Making the most of the strike, Allistor twisted the metal, the sharpened threads of the rebar tearing at muscle as he ripped it free. The canid yelped and tried to retreat, its legs still fouled by the railing.

  Allistor leaped from the bottom step, turned the spear and swung it like a club down onto the thing’s skull. The blow pushed its head underwater, stunning it briefly. That was all Allistor needed. He reversed the spear again and drove the point down into its neck right below its left ear. Using his weight, he pressed down, pushing the point deeper into its flesh and holding its head below the water. “This is for my mom!” he growled at the creature as he pressed downward.

  The canid thrashed weakly, concussed, losing blood and unable to breathe. Allistor held it in place until it stopped moving altogether and a green +3000 flashed on his interface. He also got a notification that he’d increased his blunt weapon skill by one point.

  Breathing hard, he tried his best to be still and listen for any other mobs above. Canids were known to move in packs. He looked down at himself as he listened. His legs and belly were bleeding profusely from dozens of long scratches. A blood stain was pooling around him, his blood mingling with that of the canid.

  After half a minute with no sounds from above, he bent to loot the wolf. He received thirty klax, a wolf pelt, four pieces of canid meat, and a set a canid fangs.

  Unsure how to stop the bleeding, he sat down on one of the steps and began ripping his already tattered shirt into strips. He tied several of them around his legs over the top of the scratches, trying to restrict the blood loss. By the time he was done, his health bar was down to sixty percent, still ticking downward due to the bleed debuff, and he was starting to feel weak. He pulled a piece of jerky from his bag and took a few bites. Allistor hoped this new Earth was like his games, and eating would heal him more quickly.