“See you all soon,” Alvin said, heading for the composite armory. “Just want to switch out some stuff first.”
~*~*~
Alvin walked into Susan’s office without knocking. He stopped, bemused. “Should I come back?” he asked.
Jerking away from each other, James and Susan both had guns in hand, aimed at Alvin, before they realized who interrupted them. “God damn it, Al,” James sighed as he put the gun away. “Do you want to get shot?”
“Not really.”
“You need to learn how to knock,” Susan growled, her gun vanishing a second afterward.
“There is a lock on this door,” Alvin commented. “I mean, I would have used it if I was going to start making out.”
“I’ll see you later,” James sighed, kissing Susan’s cheek.
“I’m looking forward to it,” Susan replied, smiling warmly at him and taking her seat behind the desk.
“I need the key to the base,” Alvin told James as he came even with him.
“Susan has it,” James said.
“Okay.”
“Al, take a seat,” Susan said levelly, the warmth gone from her face. “Here are all the keys for your base.” Susan pushed the small pile to him. “Now, dad said you wanted to take the teens into your training room. Why?”
Alvin gave her a brief recap of what had happened with Gee and his friends, and his plan. “I think overall it’ll help, especially since they can’t actually be killed in there. We’ll be leaving in a couple of days, so if you approve this, I’m going to start today and blitz them all through it today and possibly into tomorrow.”
“You’re not going to stay and help with the fish-demon?” Susan asked, frowning.
“I’d suggest just going defensive with that thing for now,” Alvin said. “One of the things we’ll be looking for is anything that can hurt it better.”
“I’ll talk to dad about that, then. He’s getting David to brew up a lot of his new explosive.”
“It’ll help, but unless you can pin that fucking thing down, it won’t be enough.”
“Okay. I approve of you taking the teens in groups of five through the training room. I’ll send out a settlement-wide announcement. Would you consider running other groups through it?”
“No, because dipshit would want to. He isn’t stepping foot into my base, and if I told him no, it’d cause more headaches for you.”
Susan sighed, “That is likely true. Okay, just the teens. You already set up with Gee for his group, so he’ll be first. I’ll have all the other older kids assemble at the inn so you can get them easily. Anyone who doesn’t want to do it will be excluded. This will be for the teens who volunteer.”
“Works,” Alvin said. “See you later, Susan.”
“Next time knock, or I’ll shoot you,” Susan replied as he headed for the door.
“Pregnant women are violent. I’ll remember that,” Alvin laughed and left.
“Asshole,” Susan yelled after him.
Chuckling, he headed out, stopping when a soft voice called his name. Looking back, Alvin saw Nohel standing there. “Huh?”
“I said I’m sorry for what I said before,” Nohel said, looking at the ground. “I didn’t mean to upset you or Gothy.”
“You didn’t upset me; you were right,” Alvin said bluntly. “I’m a violent asshole. The difference is that I’m only violent to those that need it. I’m not your mother’s boyfriend, I’m the guy who puts them down. Besides, not all men are violent. Look at Tadashi.”
“Maybe. Is Gothy still upset with me?”
“Not that I know of, but what you’re looking for isn’t with her, Nohel,” Alvin told her. “You’d never fit in with our family, and she won’t leave me.”
“Even if I—?”
“Stop,” Alvin said the word softly but firmly. “You’d hate it. Don’t throw away who you are to chase after what you can’t have. I think you should talk to Gran.”
“Terry?” Nohel asked, beginning to cry as her last hope was crushed.
“Gran is a wise woman. She can help you see what you really need.” Leaving the tearful girl behind him, Alvin walked away.
He came out of the bunker and saw Gee and his group of friends heading his way. “Gee, you guys ready?”
“Hell yeah!”
Leading the excited young men to the inn, Alvin found another half dozen teens eagerly awaiting their chance sitting in the taproom. “Okay, spread the word. If you have a group of people you want to run with, team up in groups of five. If you don’t have anyone you specifically want to work with, you’ll end up on a team I pick for you.”
“Fuck, it’s like dodgeball all over again,” one boy sighed.
“Only if the dodgeball features undead,” Alvin said. “Gee and his team are first. Depending on how they do, we might be back in just a few minutes or it could be an hour.”
“Is it true that your base has a holographic training room?” one girl asked.
“You’ll find out,” Alvin said, brushing them off. “Don’t worry about gear for this. We’ll provide for you.”
“Damn, and we scraped all of this together,” Gee said.
“Well, if you survive what we’re about to do, then you’ll have a use for it,” Alvin replied, leading them across the taproom to the stairs.
“Al? What is this all about?” Terry asked, coming out of the kitchen with drinks.
“Testing,” Alvin replied. “If you can help them form groups and make up a list for me so I don’t have to pick as I go, Gran, it would be amazingly helpful.”
“I’ll do what I can,” Terry said. “Frank, I could use your help,” she shouted into the kitchen.
Chapter Sixteen
Alvin raised an eyebrow when he ushered Gee and his friends into the base. Jarvis was standing in the living room, waiting for them. “Welcome to Alvin’s base. I’m Jarvis, Alvin’s butler. After your training, I will have refreshing drinks for you.”
“Dude, you got a butl— Wait. Jarvis? Weren’t you the hologram?”
“Indeed,” Jarvis replied. “Best of luck to you all.”
“Follow me,” Alvin said, leading them to the training room.
“Dude, this place is fucking amazing,” one of the other boys said as they followed him.
“Wait for it,” Alvin chuckled. “In you go,” he said, opening the training room door and motioning them in.
Gee was the first one into the mostly empty room. Becky and Kuro were talking softly against the far wall. The other teens followed Gee in, and Ian murmured to his friend, “I could use that kind of training,” nudging his friend and motioning with his head at the women.
Kuro’s ear twitched and her cold eyes landed on Ian, promising death. The boy stumbled when he saw her look.
“She’d gut you like a fish if we let her,” Alvin said from behind him. “Mousie doesn’t like men. Thankfully for you, she’s an observer only.”
“Observing what?” Gee asked, looking at the empty room.
“Simulation one,” Becky said, “start and pause until told to resume.”
The empty room vanished, replaced by the middle of Green River the day after the apocalypse. Startled and excited shouts came from all of them as they looked at their surroundings.
“This is a simulation,” Alvin said. “All of your gear is simulated so that nothing you’re currently wearing will be hurt. Pain is lessened here, but it still hurts, and death will paralyze you and make you unable to speak. The simulation ends when either all of you or all of the monsters are dead. If you survive, we’ll let you move onto a new simulation, but if all of you die, your training is over.”
“Hell yeah,” Alan laughed. “We got this.”
“Be warned, this is the easiest simulation. For some of them, you will be given different equipment. This is just a warm up to make sure you can handle the easiest shit left in the world. Don’t get cocky unless you like dying.”
“We understand,” Gee said. “Alan, calm
down. We need to treat this like it’s real, like we’ve talked about. If we can do that, Susan will listen when we ask her to join the hunters.”
“He’s right,” Wes said, checking over the shotgun in his hands.
“Still reminds me of our days playing MMOs,” Brian added, “but no healer and on hardcore mode.”
“You ready?” Alvin asked.
“What are you going to do?” Ian asked Alvin.
“Observe,” Alvin said. “Maybe give you advice if I think you’ll listen to it.”
“We’d be grateful,” Gee said. “We’re ready, Al.”
“Simulation, continue first scenario,” Becky’s voice seemed to drift to them.
Alvin blinked as the scenario dimmed. Glancing over, he caught sight of Becky and Kuro walking toward him. Looking at them questioningly, he walked over to them as the small group of boys looked around wildly, wondering where Alvin had gone.
“What the hell?” Alvin asked Becky and Kuro.
“It’s part of the room. As observers, we get this view,” Becky said.
“What does that do if they split up?” Alvin asked.
“Not sure yet. Also, they can’t hear you unless you want them to,” Becky grinned. “Now, let’s see what they can do.”
It took half an hour, but Gee’s team finished the scenario. Ian was the only casualty— he missed seeing the mutated house cat with tentacles until it was on top of him.
“Well done,” Alvin said, suddenly visible to them. “You work well together, but you all let Ian die.”
“Assholes,” Ian said, sitting up as the paralysis was removed.
“What could we do? It already had him by the time we realized he needed help,” Wes said.
“Shoot it off him,” Alvin replied. “Or use your knives. It took the cat time to get through his armor. If you had reacted right away, you might have saved him. Now that the warm up is over, let’s move onto the next scenario.”
“What is it?” Gee asked.
“Something we found when we were driving toward Nevada,” Alvin replied. “Good luck.”
Alvin vanished and a large pickup appeared next to the group. They looked at the empty road around them, and Gee checked the truck, finding a key in it. “Looks like a road trip. Wes, you’re the best driver. Brian, you get shotgun. The rest of us, into the bed.”
“I’m a better driver than Wes,” Ian said.
“Dude, shut up,” Alan sighed. “You always want to argue over every little thing.”
“Fuck you, too,” Ian snapped. “Fine.” Climbing into the bed of the truck, he stopped arguing.
“Let’s go,” Gee sighed.
“What is this second one?” Alvin asked Becky as she laughed at the kids.
“Skinhead trap.”
“Decent. Let’s see how they handle being shot at.”
Watching them roll into the town, Alvin chuckled. “Wes is slowing down. He’s eyeing the cars set up to trap them.”
“Ian’s being a dick,” Kuro murmured.
“He’s their weak point,” Becky nodded.
Wes rolled forward a bit more, putting them into the box. Vehicles shot out of side streets and blocked them in. They started firing on the drivers that had trapped them. The drivers bailed, using their cars as extra armor between them and the group.
Alan took a hit to the back, warning them that other people were in the buildings flanking the road. “Flanked,” Alan yelled out as he ducked and tried to find who had shot him.
The three in the bed of the truck ducked down and started exchanging bullets with the gang members in the buildings. Wes cursed— the gang’s vehicles were bigger and heavier than the truck they were in, making it nearly impossible to try breaking through, even though Brian told him to.
The firefight lasted for a few minutes, and both Alan and Gee were dead in the truck bed when the last shot was exchanged. Wes got out of the badly damaged truck to check on Ian, who was gravely wounded. “We fucked this one up.”
“You could have gotten us out of the trap,” Ian hissed.
“He couldn’t,” Brian said, climbing into the back and slapping a medkit to Ian’s gut. “If he could have, he would have.”
Wes looked around with a sense of dread, “Why hasn’t the scenario stopped yet?”
“Because it’s not done,” Alvin’s voice surrounded them briefly.
“Fuck,” Brian exhaled. “Okay, take one of their vehicles, and then… leave?”
“Check the dead,” Ian said, climbing out of the truck gingerly. “Maybe they have something we can use.”
The three moved together to loot the dead. They got normal loot, but also picked up a key to the gym doors of a local school.
“Okay, this has to be a clue,” Brian said. “Maybe it’s to the skinheads’ base.”
“Do we really want to tangle with them?” Wes asked. “We could just leave.”
“What?” Ian said. “They have to have good loot at their base.”
“And who knows how many of them are there,” Wes countered. “The eight here almost killed all of us. Alan and Gee are already dead.”
“I think we should go,” Brian said.
“We lose two of our friends and then just let the fuckers live!?” Ian yelled at them.
“Is that how you look at it?” Wes asked stiffly. “I see it as a tactical retreat. Regroup, come back, and then kill them.”
“One thing is certain; we need more medkits,” Brian added. “We all need at least one. If they had medkits, they might have survived the shootout.”
“This is bullshit,” Ian snapped. “What-the-fuck-ever!” Storming out to the street, Ian headed for one of the other trucks.
A few minutes later, they were going down the road and the simulation ended, leaving the five teens in a blank room.
Alvin appeared a few feet from them, “That was underwhelming.”
“What did you do?” Gee asked as he got to his feet.
“Used deception to bring them closer, killed them, then went to the school and finished them,” Alvin replied. “The main difference there was that you got boxed in and engaged right away. Wes, you saw the trap, didn’t you?”
“The side streets with cars blocking them was making me uneasy. They could have just ended up wrecked that way… but the main street was empty too, and that really bothered me.”
“Why did you keep going, then?”
“The others thought it would be fine.”
“I told him to keep going,” Gee admitted. “We should have flanked around the trap, instead.”
“That would have worked,” Alvin nodded. “Some of you survived.” Turning to Ian, Alvin spoke firmly, “This isn’t about tit for tat. People die, but going off to avenge them would have likely gotten the rest of you killed. It’s not a game. Sometimes, you need to run.”
Ian looked away from him. “Yeah, we know that.”
“Next scenario is a learning experience,” Alvin said as he faded from their sight.
The next scenario was set in Beatty. They started at the body of a drake being skinned, and Alvin informed them that they were guarding the workers. When the ants burrowed up and attacked, Ian lost it, running from the bugs, getting into a vehicle, and speeding off. The other four pushed the ants back until they finally stopped crawling out of the tunnel.
There was some conversation between the four remaining boys and a few looks toward where Ian had fled before they went inside the tunnels. Minutes went by as they killed any ants they came across. In time, they found the larder, and then the Queen. Retreating, the kids discussed what they should do. When they made it to the entrance, one of the workers was holding a package for them. Taking the explosive, Gee and Alan went back into the tunnels, and Wes and Brian stayed out because it had been hard for the four of them to move quickly.
When the explosive was thrown, the two teens retreated as fast as they could while the tunnels collapsed around them. Both of them made it out alive, covered in dirt and gr
ime.
“Guess we can’t loot that thing,” Gee sighed as he watched the ground cave in in the distance.
“You all survived, though,” Alvin said, stepping into the scenario. “I think you realize who your weak link is. He’ll be here before we shift to the last one, but you all need to know that.”
“Ian is good people,” Gee said with a grimace, “but yeah, we know he’s a problem. The giant bugs making him run was a new one, though.”
Downtime and Death (Apocalypse Gates Author's Cut Book 5) Page 15