by Arthur Stone
But if you had asked what the worst possible situation was, he could have never conceived of one this bad. He lay in a cold puddle of water and dead men’s bones. Overhead, continual lightning and thunder rent the sky, while the downpour made him wonder if the last reset had brought in Niagara Falls. Indescribable pain coursed through his leg, and he wanted to scream, loud enough for the whole cluster to hear. But he had to keep silent, for he heard the rumbling of a hungry beast on the trail of a rare meal.
Had he really not finished off that trampler? Would the beast eat Charcoal now, all the while keeping an eye on Boiler, his next snack? No, the rumbling was too soft. It wasn’t coming from one of those bone clackers. It was—it was a cat purring. The big gray feline was still alive, after all.
His leg wasn’t the only thing that hurt. He felt like a luxury set of medieval torture devices was dissecting every bone, every muscle, every last cell of his body. He turned his head and nearly lost consciousness, his neck tightening. At last he saw the source of the rumbling: a woman, dressed in a skirt, a blouse, and a still-human face, but hardly the woman from his ideal waking scenario. She stood by the security post, her hands reaching upwards. His gaze followed her hands. At the edge of the roof lay the screaming cat, and the woman was so focused on getting the unreachable pet that she was paying Boiler no mind.
She was a runner at best, or something similar. The rain had drenched her hair and clothing, and the lightning provided strobing glimpses of her appearance. She had been fit and attractive. But now she was no longer human but a monster, as her stilted movements proved beyond doubt. Nor was she too smart, or she would’ve climbed up onto the roof—or ignored the unreachable pet to feast on the unconscious immune.
Instead, there she stood, frozen in place. Boiler was seriously hurt, but his mind was still active. He had a lot of experience with these things now after four days, though most of it negative, so the last thing he wanted to do was make a bunch of noise. Shooting his shotgun would be a very loud affair. He didn’t care that he had spent six rounds already. The beasts who had heard already knew by now that a meal might be waiting.
But what Boiler was most afraid of was a human being. A specific human being. Fisher.
The raider couldn’t have gone far. He would hear the shot, realize the trampler hadn’t killed Boiler, and deduce that his former companion, having mysteriously escaped death, was still buzzing about the bloody honeycomb of the human hive. What if he was tempted to return and finish what he had started? He would figure that the beast was dead, that Boiler survived, and what’s more important, that Boiler was likely seriously injured. Finishing him off would leave his gun and ammo, both valuable items in this world, free for the taking.
The bastard was unlikely to return like that. Unlikely to be up to it. No, he’d probably run as fast as he could away from here, paying little attention to where he was going. He might even die in the bushes somewhere, from his injuries. A neck wound could be life-threatening. If he survived, he’d run. No sense taking a risk when you can avoid it.
The motionless carcass of the trampler lay a pace or two away, but Boiler doubted he had enough strength to pull his sword out of it. The lightning flared again, and Boiler saw he had pushed the blade directly through the creature until its tip poked out the other side of its body. That was odd. He could swear remembering it getting stuck somewhere in the middle of the beast’s flesh.
He grabbed his backpack and pulled out the all-metal hatchet, tied to a cord strap. Rising, he hobbled over to the ghoul, limping heavily on his Fisher-hooked leg. One substantial swing took the beast right under her spore sac. She shrieked, collapsed to her knees, and then awkwardly dropped to one side.
That was that.
The soaked cat dove off the roof and under the nearest awning, howling in fury at fate and the rain—but mostly at the rain. Boiler knew he didn’t have the strength to look for that comfortable room. He barely had the strength to step over his gray companion without kicking him. He struggled into the entryway, leaned his back against the wall, and slid down. He spent some minutes there, immobile, staring dumbly into the darkness, and then rose with a groan of pain and staggered back outside. Movement was intent on causing him every pain possible, but he had to retrieve his backpack.
Back at that spot under the roof, he retrieved the poncho from his pack first. Unfortunately he had forgotten about it up until now, but it would still help. Not to keep rain out. Boiler made a housing that would let him use his flashlight without fear of somebody seeing it through the windows.
To his surprise, the crossbow bolt was not stuck in his flesh. It had barely stuck into his shin, only staying in place this whole time because it was lodged in his pant leg. Perhaps Fisher’s bow wasn’t all that powerful, or perhaps the lead tip was to blame. These tips had much lower penetration ability than steel ones, so it hadn’t managed to pierce his bone. The bone may be cracked, but he had suffered no serious fracture.
Nevertheless, the bruise was massive. The lead tip was soft and heavily deformed, but it was still metal. The swelling was grandiose, terrible to look at, and painful enough to summon tears. Soon a bit of iodine and a tight bandage had eased the torture, but this world’s best medicine was the kind not sold in any pharmacy, so Boiler pulled out his lifejuice and allowed himself and the cat a couple of swallows. “Thanks, Charcoal. You saved my ass again back there, twice, and I won’t forget it.”
The cat lapped the liquid up with glee, and then looked lustily at the knife and food cans that Boiler pulled out next.
“I’ll give you some. Hey, quit looking at me like that. I’ll give you some, no sense trying to hypnotize me! But don’t expect any six-course meal here. We’re running low. In fact, this is our last can—that bow-toting bastard ate all the rest. And he had all the food from the last village with him.”
Most clusters had food in abundance, so sustenance would be no serious problem. As long as his leg turned out to be no serious problem. He had no idea how hurt his tibia might be, and anything more than light damage would make the last twenty miles or so very difficult to travel. For even weaker beasts, a cripple would be a tasty gift.
He had to try to put the pain out of his mind and get a good night’s sleep. Sleep was the best medicine. But how could he sleep when the person who nearly fed him to a trampler might still be lurking nearby? That choice the bastard had made was likely a stupid one in any case. Boiler remembered how the manmincer chased the quick-footed Nimbler, saving its less agile prey for later. If the trampler had been as smart, he would have likely ignored the crippled Boiler and gone for Fisher first. Two heads are better than one, as far as meals go, at least.
But perhaps Fisher hadn’t thought of that. Or had seen the treachery as his last, desperate hope. What was it he had said? “In the Hive, you have to think about yourself first of all. And second of all. And third of all.” And now his selfishness was the root cause every time Boiler gnashed his teeth in agony. It was the reason he couldn’t walk like a normal human being. It was even why he’d be sleeping on a cold floor tonight. He had neither the strength nor the willpower to go searching in the rain for that office the traitor had mentioned, that room with the leather sofa.
In addition to Fisher, who might come back any moment, there were other dangers. Boiler had killed five creatures, and two of them had been formidable, worse than the raffler that had almost ended him on day one. Who knew what others might be around? Maybe he’d hear them growling by the entryway in just a few moments.
No, these conditions were not the most conducive to sleeping. He sat alone with his thoughts. Deep, troubling thoughts.
The second trampler’s execution had been unusual. To say the least. For a moment, Boiler had accelerated his own mind and body by a factor of hundreds, making the world around him virtually stand still. He had traveled much faster than a bullet, but to him, everything seemed to move so slowly that he had to push his way through the air, through each action, through time
itself. That must have been what exhausted his body, causing him such unbearable pain any time he shifted positions. The human body simply was not made for such a supernatural load. His tendons were on fire, his joints ached, and his muscle fibers felt like they were about to snap. The time he had spent in that state had taxed his body like a fall onto pavement from a dangerous height. Like the instant when flesh contacted asphalt, breaking bones and ripping muscles.
The most sensible conclusion was that he had to pay for the power he now possessed. Hopefully the lifejuice could cope with the consequences before too much time had passed. Boiler had never felt this shitty in his entire life, not even when that metal shard had skewered his leg.
Many intense situations had forced their way into his life, both here and back on Earth, but slowing the course of time? That was something else entirely. Until then, he had experienced no indications of supernatural abilities. What had suddenly awoken that power now?
Of course, Boiler knew the answer, despite the novelty of this world to him: he remembered hearing tell of immunes’ extraordinary abilities. He recalled Nimbler zipping away from that manmincer, and Fisher lighting a cigarette with nothing more than his finger. Some newcomers’ talents manifested themselves after a short period of time had passed, others discovered them in stressful situations, and still others needed the services of healers, gifted humans who could determine what changes were happening to a person.
Boiler had experienced the second situation, one where he found himself in a desperate situation but refused to give up, instead drawing on reserves of strength he had never known existed. And in that situation, something new and incredible had awoken inside him. The Hive’s gift, its apologetic compensation for taking its victims away from their homes forever.
His supernatural ability was incredible movement and reaction speed, to the point of virtually stopping time. For a reasonable duration, he had moved at such speed that even the fastest creature was a crippled turtle by comparison. But he had to pay for it, and pay for it hard. He felt like he was falling apart. This time, things had worked out: he had survived the unsurvivable, escaped the inescapable. This time. If not for the cat, that last runner would have stripped him down to his skeleton.
But for all its drawbacks, his ability was incredibly useful. Now he just needed to figure out how to activate it and how to combat its traumatic side effects. He didn’t want to collapse into a moaning pile of debris every time he used it. Nor did he want to end up knocked out. In the Hive, losing consciousness was a ticket to tragedy.
He’d have to ask the specialists, the “healers,” since he knew nothing of this new ability of his.
And no one would explain anything to him for free, meaning he had to improve his current net worth. Banks were open for the robbing, their guards dead and their alarm systems disabled, but a whole dump truck of bills or gold was worth nothing to the locals. They needed something very different, something he could only get from the carcasses of dangerous monsters.
Five fresh monster kills lay a few steps away, and two of them were quite advanced. Boiler would sack them in the morning. Tonight, he lacked the strength to venture into the pouring night rain and take monster scalps, but he would do so as soon as tomorrow arrived. He would not enter that stable empty handed.
Chapter 26
The rays of the sun filtered into the doorway, into the windows, into the colossal weakness that racked his body. In his struggle to push himself up, Boiler coughed with a force that wracked his chest with agony. A gulp of lifejuice eased the pain back down to the level of an underzealous torture session.
His shin was swollen beyond all sightliness, but changing the bandage assured him that his wound had already dried up. It was still so odd to him to see his wounds heal so quickly. The whole limb hurt enough to bring tears, but it was bearable.
The cat nosed him meaningfully, and Boiler poured a little lifewater out. He sniffed it, tasted it, and looked at his human friend reproachfully. Clearly he had wanted food instead, but there was nothing in Boiler’s pack but chocolate, a treat the gray animal would hardly enjoy.
Surprisingly, the animal dutifully consumed the piece Boiler snapped off for him. No purring accompanied the meal, as if the cat understood that he had to eat this, like a child who had to take her medicine. Charcoal’s intelligence surprised Boiler yet again. The cat knew that he could satisfy his hunger even if the food didn’t satisfy his taste. The Hive taught everyone, even animals, to take whatever they could get.
Boiler finished off the chocolate, donned his backpack, and opened the door for a good look around. The Sun—or whatever the local star was called—illuminated a landscape covered in skeletons and stray bones. He found it very strange he hadn’t noticed the smell the day before. Actually, he had smelled it once, but Fisher had ascribed the sense to his imagination, and he himself hadn’t been sure.
Thankfully, the beasts still lay where they had fallen. Boiler couldn’t believe he had killed them all. The three runners looked human enough, but the tramplers would have nearly caused his old self to piss his pants in terror even in their state of deceased repose. Extreme physiological changes had elongated this trampler’s arms and bloated its long fingers, adding flattened claws. No trace of clothing was left, its skin had darkened significantly, though not as if by melanin, and its body was covered with a ubiquitous network of thin creases. Its jaws were terribly swollen to match its teeth and so protruded ponderously, and overgrown muscles and ligaments covered every inch of its body. The low brow of its skull ended at a bare, elongated cranium covered with patches of dirty hair. That bone then split into a convex ridge along the back of its head, concealing its spore sac.
No one could ever mistake this beast for a human, not even from satellite view. A manmincer was more developed, more unhuman, but even at this stage conjectures of resemblance would be condemned as implausible by the most suppositious of theoreticians. The beast had likely originated as a human, he knew, but it was now something entirely different, something misshapen, terrifying, and implacably hostile. And yet incalculably useful to have lying here beside him. Boiler pulled out his knife.
In the end, he had nine spores, an excellent take, and one of the tramplers had a pearl for him, too. He had no idea how much it’d be worth in the stable, but he doubted it was spare change. Plus, he had four packs of rifle bullets, another currency in this world. He should at least get some help from the healers with that. Though that was just his gut feeling. He had no concept of prices and economies in this world.
Next, he inspected the bicycle sitting by the gate, resting in the corner where the runner had attacked Fisher. Too bad the man had survived the attack.
The bike was in pretty good shape, though still wet after the rain. Boiler yearned to leave this place. There was no point in looking for the office, since a leather sofa was not currently high on his list of priorities, and neither were alcoholic beverages. There could be some foodstuffs up there, but not for a certainty.
He’d find some food soon enough. This place had tried very hard to distinguish itself as his tomb, and he had no intentions of letting it succeed.
* * *
It was great to pedal again, but his leg was killing him. His tibia was in bad shape, and he hoped to find a doctor in this stable. Fisher had been heading there for health reasons, too, and with his collected experience he had likely known what he was doing.
Just as he expected, he soon encountered a village. It was small, but there was no Ford SUV in sight. Or any SUV, for that matter. Fisher had nabbed it, or this was the wrong town, or the SUV hadn’t come in with the last reboot. Things could change with each reset, he remembered, and one such change had almost been the end of him just last night. If Fisher was to be believed, he had taken this route twice without encountering any infecteds. But there had been five at that quarry, including two tramplers. Boiler was starting to think he had quite the guardian angel—how else could he explain escaping some of the s
trongest monsters in this world relatively unscathed?
He’d be overjoyed at how things were going, if not for the pain in his leg and the weakness that washed over him in frequent tides.
At least he was moving quickly. Why hadn’t he liked bikes in the old days? They provided an excellent method of transport, healthy for the body and the soul both. And they created minimal noise.
The road he was riding had fresh tracks, made by some sort of vehicle after the rain had stopped. Perhaps by Fisher’s vehicle. He was likely heading to the same stable Boiler was, and with any luck, they would meet. That bastard would pay for his treachery. A couple of rounds in the leg would be enough. In the knee. If the bastard survived that, he’d be crippled.
Or not. Boiler had yet to grasp how immunity and medicine and healing worked here. Immunity brought quick healing and protection from disease. Did it also bring full recovery from formerly permanent disabilities? The scar on his stomach from the appendectomy he had required in childhood had all but disappeared, with only a faint pinkish strip remaining. Would serious injuries be healed, too? He could only hazard a guess. Would the victim of an amputation, circumcision, or mastectomy receive their missing body parts back? Would a deaf person hear, or a blind person see?
When he reached the next town, a few fast runners began pursuing him. They were probably full-fledged sprinters, he supposed, the final stage before raffler. They weren’t going to catch him. He pedaled along without increasing his pace, and soon they were far behind.
The TV tower rose in the distance. Fisher told it true: it stood out so much that a blind man would have trouble missing it. Not only was it tall, it straddled the crest of a bald hill that dominated the local terrain. Even without a compass, Boiler had no problem navigating by this planet’s Sun. He turned north.