Mike’s safe zone isn’t outrageously far away, a little over five miles in a straight line. It would take the average adult about two hours to walk that far, but considering we’re all mana enhanced and our light jogs look like olympic sprinting, it would probably take a quarter of the time.
Riding the pets makes it even faster. They bolt across the uneven terrain, going over hills and around obstacles without breaking a sweat. I don’t expect it to take more than twenty minutes, if that.
I’m in the lead atop Luna, holding onto Emily from behind. She yelps and cries out whenever the giant puppy takes a leap or abruptly changes direction. Jessica is to my left, with a smiling William holding onto her. Whenever we catch each other’s eye, he grins at me. Derek and Carter are to my right, seemingly enjoying the speed and the bumpy ride.
The others are trailing behind us in a long and narrow line.
We come across a few bands of survivors, but we only stop long enough for me to point them towards downtown. We also find the occasional group of monsters, and the first few times, the gunmen waste ammo on them. I quickly talk them out of it, and I’m surprised how easily people listen to me.
After that, we either don’t stop or let the pets and the melee fighters take care of the monsters. Emily and I climb back on top of Luna after one such occasion, and as we ride off, I contemplate what I’m about to say. I’ve been silent so far, not in the least bit eager to start this conversation, but time is running out.
I can’t delay indefinitely.
“Emily?” I say, leaning in so she’ll hear me over the air rushing past us.
She stiffens like a board, the breath catching in her throat.
“We need to talk about…well, what happened back there. In the apartment.”
I leave a short pause in case she wants to say anything, which she doesn’t. I wait, but she won’t as much as move, let alone talk.
“Look, I’m bad at this whole thing, okay?” I continue. “So I’ll just say what I have to say. I want you around, but not…like that.”
Hearing those words, she shifts around so fast that she nearly knocks me off our ride. I flail for balance for a moment, clamping my legs around Luna to stop myself from falling. When I look back up, I find Emily giving me perhaps the most hurt and insulted expression I’ve ever seen from anyone.
“Not what I meant,” I say.
The question in her eyes is clear. What did you mean, then?
I search for the right words to say, but I’m interrupted. We come across Dianne’s neighborhood turned safe zone, and they’re in the middle of fighting back against a monster assault. A couple hundred of them are testing the defenses, just like they did to the downtown safe zone.
I stop Luna, and the others form up around me. Emily turns around fully to face me and looks at me expectantly, so I push the words out and pray they make sense.
“What I mean is that you shouldn’t treat this…me…us like some fucked up puzzle that needs solving. I don’t know what you’ve been through before to make you think you had to do that to keep me around, and I won’t force you to tell me, but I want you for you. I want a partner, not a sex slave.”
She breaks eye contact, looking down and away from me. I take her hands in mine and ask, “partners?”
“Partners,” she says with a small nod.
“Good,” I say, giving her hands a squeeze before I jump off of Luna.
She jumps off as well and takes her position by my side. I know I didn’t say everything that needed to be said, but I hope it’s enough for now. I don’t yet want to say more because Pops was right, I myself still don’t fully understand my feelings right now. They’re all a jumbled mess in my head, and I don’t have the time or the space to untangle them.
So we drop it for now, and I observe the safe zone for a minute as I try to decide on the best course of action. The buildings here aren’t as tightly packed as the ones downtown, with bigger yards and wider streets. Mike did his best to wall off the neighborhood, surrounding it with trenches and packed dirt walls. They also used whatever wasn’t bolted to the floors to reinforce their defenses, stuff like furniture, bulky electronics, the now useless vehicles.
It’s a familiar sight.
But they didn’t shut themselves in completely. They have a few chokepoints set up, where melee fighters go toe to toe against the funneled monsters. Skills shoot out every which way, burning swathes of creatures to a crisp, freezing bunches of them, or just turning them to paste with sheer kinetic energy.
A plasma lance flies through the horde, leaving fist sized holes in the monsters. It lands a little to our right, bursting into light and heat and leaving behind a truck sized crater. That’s bound to be a solar mage.
“Okay, people!” I yell to get everyone’s attention. “The ranged fighters, I want you guys and gals up on those rooftops! Start offering support to the melee fighters! Go, go, go!”
The thirty or so people with ranged classes, which includes Emily, all get on the move. Mike doesn’t have many of them by the looks of it, only a handful of mages and about ten gunmen.
I turn to the rest.
“Jessica, you and the pets are on harassment duty! I want a person on each pet to avoid confusion! The rest of us go in on foot! Half of us will reinforce the chokepoints and give these people a chance to switch out! The other half, scour the safe zone for stray monsters!”
Everyone gets going, and the irony of it all when compared to what I just told William earlier isn’t lost on me. I can lead a relatively small group like this with little trouble, but then again, it’s nothing special. I’m not a master tactician by any means.
Our ranged guys make their way over the trenches and dirt walls, and soon enough, they provide support from the rooftops. Jessica and her pets split up, picking off monsters from the edges of the hordes. She takes another twenty people with her to keep her pets ridden and hopefully avoid friendly fire, which leaves me with fifty fighters.
I break them up into groups of ten. Mike’s safe zone has five chokepoints slash entrances, but only three of them are seeing any significant monster numbers. William takes two of the groups and goes through the two free entrances to scour the interior. That leaves three more groups, one led by me, one by Pops, and one by Derek and Carter.
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I know that Pops is technically a ranged fighter so he should be up on one of those rooftops, but oh well. I needed someone else to help me lead.
“Okay, people! Let’s give them hell!”
They answer with booming battle cries, and we wade into the thick of it. I tell my guys to keep about a hundred feet behind me, then I rush ahead with a dash, sledgehammer at the ready. I jump over one monster, land on the back of another, and I leap into the middle of them.
I swing the sledgehammer down as I fall, unleashing a ground point. The skill isn’t directional, so I didn’t want anyone in the way. A shockwave explodes with me in the center, staggering tens of monsters at once and stunning some. The one I hit directly is ripped in two, the halves flying off in different directions.
My frenzy meter fills up over half-way just like that. As soon as I have even a morsel of it, the rage returns to whisper to me. I expected it to, and I try to steel myself against it. But I freeze up, and a monster jumps at me, jaws wide open.
Death flashes before my eyes. Phantom pain from the previous battle shoots through me. For a moment, I feel like I can’t breathe all over again. I feel like I’m drowning. I look around, and I see Karen’s mangled face staring back at me from within the horde. I’m here, and yet, I’m not. Part of me plunges back into that whirlwind that makes my ears ring, under that ocean of pain and rage.
It’s an arrow from Emily that saves me. She shoots the monster right between the eyes and it dies. Momentum keeps it going, tumbling through the dirt and nearly knocking into me.
Such a shame, the rage whispers.
“Fuck. Off,” I growl through gritted teeth as I struggle for breath.
The other melee fighters rush into the fray, using the opening I made to kill the stunned monsters. They surround me, and one of them helps me to my feet.
“You okay?” He asks.
He’s a man I don’t know, but the short description above his head reads Robert Garcia. He’s a level 16 adept class called a Pulverizer.
“Yeah,” I say, taking a deep breath and composing myself.
We form up into pairs of two, lashing out in turns as we slowly work our way through the horde and into the chokepoint. Mike’s defenders help us in, but they’re uncoordinated.
Another familiar sight.
As soon as we’re into their ranks, I start barking orders about formations, calling out skills, and conserving mana.
----------------------------------------
The defense barely takes any time at all. With the numbers we brought in, we have a fighter for every two or three monsters here.
I’m right in the middle of it, helping to hold the formation. With every kill, with every howl, with every cut, scrape, and bruise, I feel the rage roiling. Asking, begging, then demanding to be released. I hold it down with everything I’ve got, too scared to let it take a hold of me again.
Not yet, not so soon. Not when the mental scars are still bleeding.
Every pound and swing and slash fills me with terror. But it’s not because I might get injured again or die. It’s because of how seamlessly the anticipation of pain, the fear, mixes with the thrill. They go hand in hand — one pulling me down as the other pushes me forward — and caught between them, I’m left confused by my own excitement.
When it becomes apparent that we have the upper hand, I push our front outward. We leave the mouth of the chokepoint and take the monsters on more directly.
It goes well for a few minutes, then someone trips and falls. A woman from Mike’s group named Amanda. One of the monsters bites down into her leg and starts dragging her away. The rage jumps on the opportunity, and I nearly cave in. I nearly let it out.
But then, one of the ranged fighters peppers the monster with shots. It lets go of Amanda and a man carries her back into our fold.
“She’s out!” I yell. “Take her in and let her heal!”
“But…” Amanda tries to complain.
The injury isn’t too severe. I have eyes, I can see as much. But I won’t — I can’t — keep her here. It’s an unnecessary risk that we can do without.
“Out!” I repeat.
Despite her protests, the man carries her away. He shoots me a look filled with relief and gratitude over his shoulder, and I realize he’s probably her boyfriend or husband.
We wrap things up quickly after that, and we’re the last group to do so. We all stand there, beaten, bloodied, and gasping for air, but victorious. I myself am buck ass naked except for my boots by this point, my clothes torn away in the melee. A few others are in similar situations, with barely anything left to cover their modesty besides a thick layer of blood and gore.
I go around collecting Emily’s arrows, and I find the marked one. It’s the very first shot she took, the one that saved me when I froze up. I add the fourth mark, and the arrow flashes briefly in my hands. I can’t see any changes at first, until I check out the description.
“Everyone take five!” I yell, walking back towards the safe zone. “Ranged fighters, stay up there and keep watch! That includes you, Emily!”
I mainly tell her that so she won’t be around me to see my junk before I have a chance to find a fresh set of clothes. She doesn’t like it, but she catches on when she sees me try to cover up with one hand.
God damn it all, we really need some armor. Or sturdier clothes.
She waves me over and throws me a bunched up pair of boxers. They’re clean and white, with little red hearts on them. I catch them, pull them into the inventory, and equip them from there.
In return, I toss her the marked arrow.
“Check it out, the description changed.”
Item: Marked Arrow.
Description: This arrow has been repeatedly used to save the life of one Jack Harrington. Each mark on the arrow's shaft, added by Jack himself, represents one such occasion.
Current marks: 4.
Damage: 11.
Durability: 15/23.
Emily catches the arrow, looking puzzled. She pulls it into her own inventory to read it.
“Partners,” I say again.
She nods and smiles.
The other groups send in runners to report back to me and ask for further instructions, and they bunch up around me as we enter the safe zone proper.
I keep the orders simple. Take a breather. Heal. Regenerate mana. Then start reinforcing the defenses and keep men all around the perimeter. William’s two groups can go around to assess the situation, do a rough count of survivors, supplies, and see how we can all mix. I’m sure that Mike has his own plans in place that we need to take into account.
The runners take off one by one, leaving me alone as I walk. People stare at me in shock, awe, and thinly veiled amusement, but I just smile and wave. I know how weird and out of place I must look.
I reach Dianne’s house, and I find Mike outside on the front porch. He’s surrounded by his own men, giving out his own orders. One of them notices me. He elbows the man next to him, and one by one, all their eyes turn on me.
Mike, busy with some idea or another, is the last to notice. I know that look on his face all too well, the way his eyebrows bunch up and the way his mouth does that half-tilted frown. He’s deep in thought. When he finally looks up at me, he does a double take.
I’m not sure he can tell it’s me, and I can’t tell him either. A tight knot forms in my throat at the sight of my little brother, safe and sound.
“Mike?” I force out the word.
“Holy shit, Jack?!”
He rushes off the porch and tackles me, not giving the gore and stench a second thought. I hug him back, but we don’t hold it for long. We have too much to do to celebrate just yet.
“What the hell happened to you?” He asks as we walk up to the house, an arm around each other’s shoulders. “Did they blow up a slaughterhouse with you inside?”
“See, it’s a funny story. We rode in to save your asses, and then…”