Downtime and Death (Apocalypse Gates Author's Cut Book 5)

by Daniel Schinhofen

  Kuro and Becky slid off the bench, allowing Alvin to shift and lay back. Desiree rose above him. “Round two— fight!” Alvin smirked as his hands tightened on her hips.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Alvin was wearing what Jarvis thought of as his shit-eating grin when he came out of the bedroom the next morning. “Morning, sir. Breakfast has been ready for over an hour. If you give me a few minutes, I will get it reheated for you all.”

  “Sorry, Jarvis,” Alvin chuckled. “The women will be out in another minute or five.”

  “I take it that Desiree joined you last night, then?”

  “Demanding little fuck that she is,” Alvin smirked.

  “Is she going to end up like Mousie, or be temporary like Wintersbreath?”

  “Good question,” Alvin shrugged. “No idea yet. Why?”

  “I will have to make some adjustments if your group has grown again.”

  “Ah, we’ll figure it out. We’re going to get her home, try to make a deal with Mithrilblood, and then come back to Earth and head east again.”

  “I’m sure it will go as smoothly as returning to Mousie’s previous home to report did,” Jarvis said as he turned the stove on. “The coffee is still hot. I’ll get the food ready now.”

  “Hopefully it won’t be as complicated as that,” Alvin laughed.

  Sipping his coffee, Alvin smiled at the three women when they left the bedroom. “Ladies, food will be ready shortly.”

  “Did you apologize for us?” Becky asked, taking her seat and pouring herself some coffee.

  “Nope. I don’t think he was surprised.”

  “I wasn’t surprised in the least,” Jarvis said, turning the stove off. “I find that miss normally gets what she wants.”

  “Oh, was I just another conquest, then?” Desiree smirked as she poured her own coffee, frowning when she failed to find the whiskey.

  “I hope not,” Becky smiled broadly.

  “What do we have, Jarvis?”

  “A breakfast casserole, sir. Cheese, croissants, bacon, sausage, and eggs.”

  “Looks and smells good,” Alvin grinned.

  “Thank you, sir. I shall leave the serving spoon and return with whiskey for you, miss Desiree.”

  “Thank you, Jarvis,” Desiree smiled.

  “I do my best to keep those under my care happy,” Jarvis replied, stepping back into the kitchen for his tea and the whiskey.

  ~*~*~

  Meeting at the Humvee five minutes after they finished breakfast, everyone was ready to go back out and wondering what the day would give them. Becky took shotgun, while Kuro climbed into the gunner’s position. Desiree was in the back seat, her nerves jingling with the anticipation of combat. All of them had three bottles of homemade napalm, with Alvin holding onto the extras.

  Starting the Humvee, Alvin touched his radio. “Desiree, can you hear me?”

  “Yes, Hero. This radio is amazing. I must see if we can integrate them into the next armor prototypes.”

  “Let’s head out. Be ready for combat as soon as we clear the portal.” Alvin removed the parking brake and got the Humvee rolling.

  The moment the Humvee left the base, Kuro began to fire the M2 with one hand while she used her other to throw the three molotovs she had. While the bottles were still in the air, she pulled the gun up and shattered them, coating the fungals below in the sticky flammable substance.

  “Gothy, light them up,” Alvin said as he drove into the mass of fungals that were not coated in napalm to their left.

  Becky already had one of her bottles out, a zippo in her other hand. “On it, Hero.”

  “I can disperse them if I get out,” Desiree said, one hand going to her necklace.

  “Not yet, I need to see if this will work,” Alvin said as he pushed the pedal down, downshifting to force his way through the mob.

  Becky’s window opened just enough for her to chuck the flaming bottle through it. The sound of breaking glass was quickly drowned out by the whoomph of the napalm catching. The fungals coated in the sticky substance panicked, running around, and spread the flames.

  The fire did what Alvin hoped it would do; broke the morale of the mob. Gunning the engine, he got them out of the now chaotic and panicked horde, shifting back into drive to gain more speed.

  “Good, they do panic if the fire doesn’t go out right away,” Alvin nodded. “Okay, let’s back off and see if we can do more. Desiree, feel free to jump out and pile on.”

  “Thank you,” Desiree said, her door opening before the Humvee came to a stop. “I’ll break them.” Her anklets were already starting to expand, covering her feet. “The downside to the armor is that it takes a bit to fully activate.”

  Becky looked back at Desiree, watching the armor rise from her ankles up. “Couldn’t you do that while running?”

  “No, the system needs to stabilize before movement really works. If I had tried to get my armor on yesterday, the fungals would have been able to catch me, or at least hit me with their spores.”

  The Humvee was facing back toward the horde of fungals. “Go ahead and jump out. We’ll go play with them until you get there.”

  “On it,” Desiree smiled as she stepped out of the Humvee. The armor had completely covered her legs and was now climbing her torso.

  Kuro began to fire into the fungals again as Alvin drove at them. Becky grimaced from the passenger seat, knowing her guns did next to nothing against them.

  “We need sets of Dwarven armor,” Alvin told her. “If we had it, you could go out there and have fun with the hammer, at least.”

  “Yeah, but I’m not going to go out there when they can spore me.”

  “Don’t want a fungal eating its way out of you,” Alvin nodded. “Get a barrier glyph ready in case we need to help Mousie.”

  “I already have one ready,” Becky chuckled. “Desiree, how’s that armor coming?”

  “Helmet activating n—,” Desiree was saying when she cut off.

  “Guess radio doesn’t work with her armor currently,” Alvin sighed.

  “While she’s cut off,” Becky began, “what did you think of last night?”

  “She’s as sex crazed as you two,” Alvin smirked when he ran over the first fungal. “Other than that, no idea yet. We’ll have to see how she handles crunch time. Remember how Wintersbreath did?”

  “Failed to listen, yeah. I think Desiree will be better than that. She’s very regimented when it comes to combat. If she accepts you as leader, she’ll do what’s needed.”

  “Girl talk?” Alvin asked.

  “While you were busy mixing up napalm yesterday. I think we can fleece the fuck out of their King. Desiree has been unable to hide her desire for a lot of what we can offer. If you set up the kiosk network, they’ll do what Night did and flood you with XP. It’ll be even better if you can get them to buy stuff from Green River, Ely, Beatty, and Bridgeport. That surge of XP to them would get you a cut, as well as the settlements getting XP to spend.”

  “Pretty much what I was thinking,” Alvin said. He was turning the Humvee around after driving through the slowly regathering fungal horde. “Think these are the guys that ran yesterday?”

  “Plus some,” Becky frowned.

  “Desiree is about to enter combat,” Kuro added. “The fungals are turning toward her. They don’t look to be worried about her weapons.”

  Desiree got to the horde, and even though her flames started to burn them, the fungals did not break. Instead, they jumped at her, trying to overwhelm her with numbers.

  “Mousie, help her,” Alvin shouted, gunning the Humvee back toward the fight.

  A larger fungal stepped out of the trees, a contingent of regular fungals with him. Grinning, with two gleaming white tusks jutting prominently from his lower jaw, the big one pointed at the Humvee and appeared to be giving orders.

  “Now that is an orc,” Becky said. “Focus fire, Mousie. I bet if we take him, they break and run.”

  “Take these
and get him covered,” Alvin said, pulling out more bottles and holding them up to Kuro.

  Kuro reached down, grabbing the two bottles by their necks. “Gothy, give us a barrier, please.”

  Becky’s will triggered the blue barrier in front of them right before a volley of puff balls hit it. “Fuckers are trying to infect my toy,” Becky growled as she pulled out her own molotov and her lighter.

  The barrier hit the fungals and shoved them along in front of it. Kuro nodded, throwing the two bottles high and far, then shattering them with two well placed rounds. The falling liquid covered the leader and his guards. The moment the leader felt the liquid hit him, he began to flee.

  “Fucker understands that it’s a bad idea to be here,” Becky growled as she lit and threw the bottle in her hand. The bottle shattered on the fungals still being pushed and the fire spread quickly. The leader left a trail of the liquid behind him, and the fire burned along it.

  “I hope we didn’t just start a forest fire,” Alvin laughed.

  “Yeah, because we’ve never done that before,” Becky snickered.

  “They are breaking again, Hero,” Kuro called out.

  “Okay, pulling up short. Help Desiree out.”

  It took a couple of minutes, but when the barrier finally dropped, Desiree was the only thing still standing. The area around them was littered with the charred remains of fungals.

  “Let’s loot them,” Alvin said. “Mousie, stay on the gun. Gothy, Desiree, and I will handle the looting.”

  “Understood, Hero.”

  ~*~*~

  It took them almost as long to loot everything as it had to kill them all, and Alvin was only eighty-six dead and looted mobs away from finishing his quest. Climbing back into the driver’s seat, he waited for the women to get settled before he got them moving again.

  “Okay, Desiree, tell us about the leader,” Alvin said.

  “They are a newer development. Only in the last twenty years have we suspected that there were fungals that could command the others. It was five years ago when we finally had confirmation for the first time. We still don’t know how to kill one; they always flee, even if on fire, and we can never find them afterward. Their followers will do everything they can to hinder us when we’ve tried to follow them.”

  “Hmm... hive mind, maybe?” Becky suggested.

  “Possible. From the little we’ve seen of them, they are plant based, but since they’re clearly thinking, maybe they do have a shared consciousness.”

  “Without a leader, they are overly aggressive and can be put down easily,” Desiree added. “Once one of the leaders appears, they start using tactics, like trying to swarm me and keeping you away while they did.”

  “How quickly do they adapt?” Alvin asked.

  “We don’t know, but we do know that they can learn.”

  “Have you ever captured any to study?” Kuro asked.

  “No. The smaller ones explode into a cloud of spores if you capture them. We’ve never been able to corner a larger one, but we believe it would be the same, only worse.”

  “We should probably let Green River know about them,” Becky said. “They’re the closest settlement we know of. It’d be bad if a swarm of these things showed up and they were unprepared to handle them.”

  “I’ll send a message tonight.”

  “I wonder how many more of them have come through, and with how many leaders?” Kuro said. “How many did you encounter before we met you, Desiree?”

  “None until we tried to return to the portal. We met one swarm that separated us, so we fell back. We scattered and tried to rendezvous at the predetermined location, but only half of us made it. It makes sense now that I know there’s a leader here. When they have a leader, they can sometimes beat us by sheer numbers, forcing us to use up our weapons, then pulling us down and tearing our armor apart. The night before I met you, we were ambushed by them. We scattered again, but this time, our orders were to circle back and do our best to break through the portal by stealth or strength. As you saw, it wasn’t working.”

  “Any chance some of your allies made it?” Becky asked.

  “Doubtful, though maybe we’ll find one or two as we get closer to the portal,” Desiree said. “I can hope that my squad isn’t entirely gone, but I fear they are.”

  The mood was somber, and the only sound was the rumble of the engine for a few minutes. Alvin requested soft music to help break the tension as the Turtle drove on toward Engineer Mountain.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  For the next hour, they skirted around north of Black Mesa and southwest of Dolores Peak, encountering small bands of fungals. Kuro was able to kill some and drive the rest away each time, allowing them to loot before continuing on. As they continued to drive, fat snowflakes fell from the sky.

  Coming out of the shadow of the two mountains, Kuro caught sight of some buildings to the south of them. “Hero, there are houses to the south.”

  “Not houses. It’s Dunton,” Alvin replied. “It’s a hot spring.”

  “A hot spring? Are we stopping?” Becky asked.

  “Nope, we’re taking the split north, instead. Our bathroom is better than any hot spring.”

  “This snow doesn’t bother you?” Desiree asked.

  “Our vehicle can handle it,” Alvin said. “We might have to go slow, but we can keep going.”

  “Much slower than we would normally go,” Becky sighed. “Ah well, it can’t be helped.”

  Turning north away from Dunton when the trail split, Alvin glanced at the sign that told them the road was closed during the winter. With a shake of his head, he ignored it and kept them moving.

  “How bad do you think that means it’s going to be?” Becky asked.

  “Not pretty, but we should still be able to do it,” Alvin replied. “This is one of the few places we can cross this ridge without a major detour. We’ll end up next to Flattop Mountain, crossing over State Route 145, and staying on the ranger trails.”

  “I believe you can get us there,” Desiree said from the backseat.

  The next two miles had all of them a little stretched; the Humvee had trouble with some parts of the trail where the snow was packed and had gone icy. When they finally connected with State Route 145, Alvin summoned the portal to their base.

  “Taking five to stretch and get something to eat and drink,” he told them when they looked at him questioningly.

  Five minutes later, Alvin drove them back onto State Route 145. Taking the road marked 578, he drove them around the southern base of Flattop Mountain.

  As they went, Alvin kept his eyes on the road, but also on the mountain, wondering if anything was going to come crashing down on them. One eyebrow went up when he caught sight of a mountain goat watching them.

  “How is that creature able to stand on the sheer cliff?” Desiree asked, staring at the same goat.

  “Goats can find purchase on the slimmest of ledges,” Becky explained, though even she was impressed by it. “Never seen one doing it in real life before. I think this one has mutated to be even better at clinging to sheer mountainsides.”

  The goat let out a loud bleat and sprang away from them, quickly going up the side of the mountain. Alvin slowed the Humvee as all of them watched it go, the snow starting to fall faster.

  “Hero, I’m buttoning up,” Kuro said, following her words with action. “I don’t think we’ll have trouble with the snow coming down like it is.”

  “We call it in another few hours. That should leave us just short of Purgatory.”

  “Purgatory? Like hell?” Becky asked.

  “Like a resort. There’s also a small town there, but it didn’t have any name on the map I could find,” Alvin shook his head. “I was going to miss it altogether originally, but we need to hook up with the 550 there to go north to Engineer Mountain. We’re going to stop short of it today, then blast through in the morning. It’ll be a straight shot up the 550 to where we want to go, but I figure hitting it
with plenty of light is better.”

  “Zombies, you think?” Kuro asked.

  “Zombies or fungals are most likely. I doubt we’ll find any survivors,” Alvin replied.

  “You think it’ll take another day to reach the portal?” Desiree asked, only partially able to follow the conversation.

  “Yeah, sorry,” Alvin replied. “If the weather was better and the fungals weren’t as prevalent in the area, we might not have had to go as slow as we have been.”