Cannibal

by Ivan Shaman

  “Three,” Alex remembered. “Three magazines of 9x19. That’s sixty bullets.”

  “Well, then it’s unnecessary to go to the warehouse. That will be enough. You’ll pick up other weapons from the dead bodies.”

  “Let’s go there, anyway,” Demon decided. “We should get some cartridges.”

  “Okay. But first to the canteen!” Jane said firmly, shutting the door. “Hurry! The Luminary will come soon.”

  Chapter 11. Northern TPS

  “Demon, hold them down with fire!” Lex shouted, hiding behind a pile of concrete plates. “Jack, are you ready?” The giant nodded, grabbed one of the construction plates, and ran towards the enemy. They’d caught the people unawares, thanks to Lex’s sensitivity and Kris’ invisibility, but they were five against five dozen. Having retreated from the road to the abandoned, unfinished construction, they lost their position. The Cannibal’s accuracy, even with the ‘Marksman’ and ‘Shooter’ skills, wasn’t ideal. The pistol’s bullets didn’t cause any visible harm to their opponents, who were wearing army bullet-proof vests type IV. They had to act.

  Lex must have thought the same because Demon felt the song coming. To hell with it. He was ready to be a pawn if it helped them to win. The Light came in waves, but instead of completely losing control, Alex realized that he saw the big picture – with Kris’ eyes, who rested in the snow after a jump, with the Goliath’s eyes, who saw nothing except the concrete block, and with Jane’s eyes, which looked in different directions, split by a bullet that had hit the bridge of her nose.

  This time, Demon perceived everything, but he had no doubts and indecision. There was a goal, one task for all of them. Jerk!

  He followed Jack so that the concrete plate protected him. Jerk!

  His perception was enough to notice how one of their foes was pulling the pin from a grenade. Marksman! The world froze for a second, and he managed to shoot, aiming straight at his enemy’s head. Instead of the man, though, the bullet hit the grenade, which fell down somewhere behind the APC. There was an explosion, and then clods of snow scattered in every direction. Jerk!

  An enemy was right in front of him. Armed to the teeth, he wore both bulletproof and load-bearing vests and a camouflage white suit. Punch! The thin blade stuck between the bulletproof vest’s plates, piercing through hundreds of Kevlar layers and tearing the internal organs. Shielding himself with the corpse, he shot back without aiming, hoping the opponents would hide, giving him a few precious seconds of respite.

  The people did exactly what he’d expected, but nobody wanted to be shot, even him. Jerk! He got into the middle of the enemy’s squad. He hit the first foe with his claws, ducked under the second enemy’s barrel, and then shot the third one.

  He was flexible, dexterous, and fast. But it was not enough. Two bullets plunged into his body almost simultaneously. Falling on one knee, Demon shielded himself with the enemy’s corpse. There was nowhere to jump, but it didn’t matter. He only had to live another five, four, three…

  With a wild roar, the Goliath attacked the squad. He didn’t use the ‘Punch’ or his claws, but instead, he flattened the soldiers’ bodies along with the bulletproof vests, ramming them like stew into a can. Each of his blows reached their goal. Bullets didn’t harm him, bouncing off his scaly black plates.

  Somewhere to the left, Kris, having waited until the recharge of her ‘Chameleon’ skill, made another jump on their opponents. Her every attack caused the loss of at least one soldier. However, her level was too low, and she had to retreat after each foray. What about him?

  Throwing the corpse aside, he jumped onto the APC, immediately killing the driver-mechanic, who was moving the gun. To hell with him. Turning the gun, he took aim at the nearest vehicle. Fire! An explosion ripped away the gun he had just been about to fire. Having got outside, he saw through the smoke the four remaining APCs were quickly leaving the battlefield.

  “Ha! Well done!” The smiling Kris shouted. “Don’t touch my corpses!”

  The Light gradually receded, and Demon looked around, examining the battlefield with his own eyes. The place where they had been able to lure people, was completely littered with shell casings and corpses. During the fifteen-minute battle, the enemy had lost twenty people, both severely wounded or killed.

  “Has anyone seen Jane?” He asked his companions, trying to find the brave girl who had shielded him in the beginning. “I remember she was at the wall.”

  “Look over there,” Jack answered cheerfully, showing him the direction. “When you find her, bring her here to eat. If I were you, I’d give her all my corpses.”

  “Yes, of course,” Demon replied calmly.

  Jumping down from the damaged vehicle, he briskly walked to the specified location. If Jane were an ordinary person, she would have certainly been dead. If a bullet hit his head, the result would have been the same. However, Jane wore a police helmet and had the skills ‘Hard skull’ and ‘Immortal’, so she would have survived.

  Demon couldn’t find her easily; she was covered with snow. Jane was conscious, but she could neither speak nor move. Her light armor was broken in several places, and her horn armor was crumbled and cracked.

  “You’re hurt pretty bad.” He carefully examined her wounds, which were covered with a purple jelly-like mass. “We’ll add a dose of regeneration, be patient.” He gently took her in his arms, trying not to disturb her. To complain that she weighed too much was, of course, silly. Firstly, because she was a slight girl, and secondly, because a significant part of this weight wasn’t natural but acquired. Her modified muscles, armor, clothes, and load-bearing vest weighed much more than she did herself.

  “Put her next to the bodies.” Kris helped, distracted from collecting experience. “Be careful, though. She’s not a stone.” She took the girl’s hand in hers and, having put Jane’s fingers to the soldier’s implant, she pushed the extraction-button. The nanomachines absorbed into Jane’s hand. “Okay, put her on my lap and start dragging the corpses here.”

  “No problem.” Demon nodded, carefully lowering Jane to lie on Kris. Without ceremony, he dragged the bodies to the girls, one by one. “Try to regenerate before they come back. I can still hear the engines running.”

  “She’s already activated everything she can,” the Ghost remarked, “Be thankful she shielded you, otherwise you’d have been dead.”

  “Thank you.” Demon peered into the snowfall. There was something strange behind the white veil. “Lex! Do you see that?” He shouted, pointing to the object.

  “With difficulty,” the Luminary said honestly. “It looks like neither APC nor tank. But it’s clearly a military vehicle of some sort.”

  Demon peered as hard as he could, but the target was five hundred yards away, and he could see only the outline – a kind of a green caterpillar vehicle with a turret.

  “Do you think it’ll fire?” He asked Lex. “We’re far too exposed here.”

  “Fortunately, they’re economizing projectiles. Otherwise, we’d have been shot with fan fire – as we were often during the first few days.” The Luminary grinned. “The warehouses on the island aren’t designed for prolonged warfare with a large enemy. It was assumed that soldiers had to hold out for a few days until the main forces came from the continent.” He carefully looked at the vehicle. “Probably, they have very few projectiles. Six months more and they’ll run out of them completely.”

  “Half a year. That’s too long.” Demon dragged another body to Jane. “In half a year of war, we’ll continually beat each other up. Maybe, we’ll have killed them all by then.”

  “Don’t get your hopes up. People aren’t even cockroaches, they’re much worse. They’ll survive and adapt to any conditions.” He took a bulletproof vest and a camouflage suit from one of the dead soldiers and put them on. “However, we also know how to adapt, only much more effectively. Kris, scout quietly. What’s up with this strange vehicle?”

  The Ghost, carefully placing Jane’s head on t
he rolled-up jacket of one of the dead soldiers, put on a camouflage suit and jogged to investigate her goal. Demon sat down beside Jane, sheltered behind the remnants of the APC.

  It was the second day of their journey northward through constant snow, blizzards and rare ambushes, and it was the first large group of soldiers they’d encountered. Most of the previous skirmishes had ended almost before they’d begun: people fled immediately after noticing the Goliath. Two groups ventured to shoot at them from afar – a decision that had cost them their lives. But, in general, the journey was quiet and unexciting.

  “It’s a discharged drone!” Kris shouted, coming back. “It’s been there for two weeks already and is almost covered with snow.”

  “It’s all good,” Jack said as he approached Demon. “Could you pump skills, for example into getting ‘Immortality’? You were lucky this time. What if the first bullet had gone a little to the left?”

  “As long as you’re with me, I don’t see the point, but whatever you’re worried about, I’ve already figured out how to make it harder for the enemy to kill me.” He took a helmet and then a second bulletproof vest from another dead man, then added this second layer of plates, “That’s it! It isn’t ‘Immortality’, but I’m not afraid of bullets anymore.”

  “What about your injuries, by the way?”

  “They are okay. Ferrum is useful to a body – if it’s full of nanomachines.” Demon probed the wounds. They didn’t hurt, although the holes hadn’t healed yet. “It’ll heal in two or three hours. But I’m able to go again right now if needed.”

  “Nanomachines are great.” Jack nodded seriously. “Previously, we thought that the level depended on them directly. One milligram of nanomachines in the body is one level. But, as you know, that’s not true.”

  “Wait, how many of them are there in your and Lex’s bodies right now?” The Cannibal suddenly realized that wasn’t able to get the figure in mind, after five hundred and twenty-two thousand milligrams he had lost count.

  “About 5 pounds.” Lex patted him on the shoulder. “Too much for a man, not enough for a technocrat. Remember the Emperor, who has much more of them. It’s likely that there is no human left in him. Just a fraction of a percent, if anything.”

  “Well, I don’t agree,” the Goliath grunted. “I think he had 110 pounds of nanomachines. I argued with him once when I was still a newbie. I hit him with the ‘Punch’. The blade went in and came out, and the wound healed instantly.”

  “So, to become such as the Emperor is all of our futures?” Kris asked, pulling out MREs from the APC.

  “It’s a scary future.” Demon shrugged.

  “No, don’t be afraid. You’ll have to absorb so many pounds of nanomachines to become an Emperor. Both the people and we have very few of them. Therefore, you would have to take nanomachines from tens of thousands of cyborgs or people. Only one out of every ten thousand, maybe only one in every million would be able to pump like this.”

  “Well, it’s not such a little figure, considering the eight billion people that were living on Earth,” Jane joined the conversation. “I read in a book that there were that many people living in the late thirties. Now, perhaps, there are even more.”

  “Well, yes, but millions of people will have to die,” Demon said quietly. “How are you?”

  “All things considered, surprisingly well.” She slowly raised her hand, feeling the bridge of her nose. “I’m lucky.”

  “Don’t get under any bullets next time. If you want to save me, just drop me on the ground.” The Cannibal smiled, squatting beside her. “After all, my life isn’t worth your life.”

  “It’s worth it,” she replied firmly. “But your stupidity is definitely not worth it. So don’t get shot yourself.”

  “Okay.” Demon nodded seriously. “I wonder why they’ve left so quickly. They still had an overwhelming numerical advantage.”

  “I don’t want to think about it,” the Goliath grunted. “A dozen more bullets and I’d die. I hope they’ve gone far away…”

  “Do you hear that?” Lex suddenly asked, looking around. Demon didn’t hear anything unusual – the snow crackled, the technocrats breathed, and somewhere in the forest, a beast ran. “To the north.”

  “Damn,” Kris whispered. The Cannibal came out from behind the APC. A faint cloud of smoke rose in the north. “It was just a cover squad.”

  “A fight is going on over there.” Peering through the snowfall, Demon said. “If they went there, we’d better do the same.”

  “It took us five hours,” Jack reported dryly. “Even if we run, spending all our strength, it won’t take less than three hours, and we’ll all be exhausted.”

  “So what? Aren’t we going to help?” Demon protested. “It’s clearly something serious there!”

  The technocrats grimly kept silent. Lex looked at the horizon.

  “How many undistributed skills do you have?” the Luminary suddenly asked, without gazing back.

  “Eighteen,” Demon replied laconically. “But why? Is there a teleport option?”

  “Unfortunately, no. But if you take the second level of the ‘Master’ skill, you’ll be able to repair the APC and drive it.” Lex chuckled. “The skill is useful in everyday life, so you can apply it later.”

  “But then I won’t be able to pump the necessary battle skill when I determine which I want,” Demon said.

  “Well, you’ll level-up and then take it.” Lex shrugged. “While you’re fixing it, the three of us will move on. You’ll then catch us up. Jane also needs time to recover.”

  “Okay. If we’re late, don’t wait, just join the battle without us.”

  “Of course! Jack, Kris, time to run!” Having put on their camouflage suits, the Luminary, the Ghost and the Goliath rushed northward. Demon noticed how funny Jack’s arms and feet looked, sticking out from the small suit. It was as if his huge hands with the sharp claws and the shoes were just hanging in the void.

  “Okay,” the Cannibal sat down, leaning against the wheel. “God knows how I’ll feel after that. Better safe than sorry, though, right.”

  Available skills: Training, Master, Shooter 2, Melee 2, Horn armor, Connection 2, Ninja, Sniper.

  Choose ‘Master’. Confirm.

  Choose ‘Master 2’. Confirm.

  Chapter 12. APC

  Demon carefully opened one eye. Everything seemed fine. His head was a bit dizzy but nothing more. No shaking, no muscle cramping. He felt relief, then he turned around and that was just the beginning.

  Looking at the APC, he saw wiring, short-circuits, components and parts, diagrams, details and fastenings, and various types of subassemblies. The information overwhelmed him. Fortunately, his ‘Intelligence’ was enough to effortlessly divide it into useful and useless. He found the schematic of the fuel line and wiring, and now he was able to quickly repair the damage.

  Getting inside, he opened the false floor and examined the main units. The explosion that had destroyed the APC turret had burned several power circuits, but any mechanic would say that the vehicle was moveable. He examined the APC again, then he opened the landing hatch and loaded Jane inside. There was no ignition key, but there was no need for it. Taking a piece of wire, he unmistakably made the key, and in one motion started the motor. The engine coughed, choked, but then kicked into life.

  Demon drove the APC as if he had been doing it for at least six months. He knew the purpose of each lever and how much he needed to press the gas pedal or turn the steering wheel to get the machine to make the desired action. Half an hour later, they caught up with Lex and the others. The Goliath threw the Ghost and the Luminary onto the vehicle on the move, and then he jumped up, sitting on top.

  “You did great!” Kris shouted, looking into the open hatch. “Now we have our own APC with our own level 30 Master Demon-Cannibal!”

  “Very funny.” Demon didn’t look away from the narrow viewing slit. “If the cameras worked it would be cool, but I still can’t manage to fix
them. Tell the others we’ll be there in an hour. They can eat for now. It’s probably hot there.”

  He tried not to break away from the control, and it was only out of the corner of his eye that noticed how the Ghost fed Jane with warm soup. In forty-five minutes, Jane came and sat beside him.

  “Are we in the middle of a fight again?” She asked, resting her head on Demon’s shoulder.

  “Yes, we’ll be there in fifteen minutes. How are you feeling?”

  “Ready to get another portion of steel for my boyfriend.” Jane smiled and kissed him on the cheek. “You should shave.”

  “Maybe later. Put on your vest and helmet. They’re in the corner.” He pointed behind his back. “And take the shield. I don’t know why they didn’t use it, but it was on the floor.”

  “It’s heavy,” she said, raising the gun shield. “How much does it weigh? Forty-five pounds?”

  “Fifty-five. Now go and tell everyone to get ready.” The road gradually widened, and they often met snow-covered, abandoned cars. The noise of gunfire and explosions could be heard getting closer. Here people obviously didn’t economize their ammunition.

  “Everybody, get ready! Demon, come on! Take us to hell! I’ll sing!” The Luminary shouted, sitting on the roof still. The Cannibal felt a burst of energy which was normal for the beginning of the song, and he noticed that they weren’t alone. A crowd of first-levelers followed the APC, caught up in Lex’s song.

  Passing another turn, they saw the battlefield before them. Hiding behind one-story buildings, the people came close to the TPS. There were more than five hundred of them. Armed to the teeth, they used slowly-moving APCs as shields. The defenders, apparently, had very few cartridges. From the TPS, only a few shots were heard. The whole place was already generously covered with corpses.

  “Lex, jump! I’ve got an idea!” The Cannibal shouted, slowing down. “Jane, go!”

  “What about you?” Jane objected, but she went to the hatch regardless.