Chapter 9

Infernal Cascade (I)

Tian, Layla, and Tara stood in front of the lodge and watched as Ethan spent five minutes turning the car around, swearing inwardly he’d burn all the trees surrounding the lodge once he returned, before speeding away from the lodge and down the mountain. Ronald sat by his side, tinkering with the phone and going over their list once again.

Before leaving, aside from watching over Layla, he'd also tasked Tara with starting to work on the program that would scrub online news and send alerts when certain words and phrases were used. She told him it'd be at least a few weeks before the complex version of the program would be even remotely ready, but that she would write a quick script today and start running it. It would only look through a thousand or so most popular news websites and would be quite slow and have a limited array of phrases and words it could look for, but it was better than nothing.

The road down the mountain was quite rough, with the car rocking back and forth occasionally, especially when they ran over a protruding root of a tree. It took some thirty minutes of gentle speed to leave the roughhouse area and land on the paved street. As soon as they did, though, Ethan frowned; there were hundreds of cars still lying abandoned across eight lanes, making it a hellhole to navigate.

Nonetheless, he revved the engine and started driving–as he didn't have to care about hitting anything, he often scraped by the other cars and 'gently nudged' them away so that he'd have more space to move. What was usually a two-hour drive became a three-and-a-half one, but that was partly because Ethan took an early exit as he suspected either military or police would be monitoring the main one. Rather than going directly to the city with the car, he decided to leave it some ten minutes by foot away, among the seeming sea of abandoned ones, blending it in as it also looked quite roughed up from the outside.

It was rather eerie–despite the numerous skyscrapers around them, and hundreds of cars, there seemed to be no living soul anywhere. While that was definitely not true, as Ethan could physically sense gazes on them from behind the dark curtains shading the windows, it was still quite a sight.

Both he and Ronald moved quickly, beelining toward the nearest mart that was around five minutes away. On their way over, the expanse of the apocalyptic scenery continued–it was evident that the city got clogged up beyond the point of immediate salvation. Those who managed to get out sped away, and those who couldn't either abandoned their cars and ran, or abandoned their cars and returned. By now, the military had instituted martial law and likely disallowed civilians to lumber about aimlessly. Ethan was quite fuzzy on the details this early on as he spent all his time inside the military compounds, being fed leftovers and disgusting, barely-filtered water.

As such, he couldn't exactly rely precisely on his memory to carry him and would have to employ his instincts. The closer they got to the mart, the more he realised that the supply run wouldn't be anywhere as simple as he thought. The military presence was evident–from the humvees to even a couple of tanks parked about, not to mention soldiers stationed every thirty feet and around every corner. Ethan was quite used to sneaking around–as it used to be his literal lifeline in the past life–so he carefully guided Ronald around the blind spots, inching ever closer to the mart.

While the distribution of the lookouts seemed to cover the entire area, the human element was ever-present; soldiers relaxed, especially as there didn't seem to be anything of note happening recently, and blind spots were created naturally. It still wasn't easy, and it took them nearly half an hour to reach the back entrance of the mart, but they eventually did reach it. Ethan peaked through the window and saw that most of the shelves were cleaned up–as he expected–but since he didn't necessarily need food or water just yet, he looked more toward the utilities–cleaning supplies, anything flammable, and some new clothes especially as the addition of Tara and Ronald threw a wrench in that.

His initial set of supplies was enough to last Layla and him nearly half a year per his estimate, and that was without him ever needing to do a supply run. They had enough food and shampoos and soaps to last all that time, but all plans are at the mercy of the gods above and their mood. While they could still survive by ripping apart some of Ethan's clothes and sewing them back together to fit Tara, it was better to just loot.

“There are four guards,” Ethan said. “Two are mostly focused on the entrance and the checkout counters. One patrols the area around the back entrance fairly regularly judging by his gait, so he’ll have to be taken out, and the last patrols the area between the textiles and the plastic stuff. What do you think we should do?”

“H-huh?” Ronald exclaimed in shock and confusion. He mostly just waited for his orders, or to simply be told to stay outside and be ‘the lookout’ since Ethan likely still considered him a liability.

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“Read the room for me,” Ethan said. “And tell me what’s the best course of action.”

“... you’re joking?”

“You defer to Tara a lot,” Ethan said. “But you are far more detail-oriented than her. You mostly just lack the balls to go for it, unlike her. So, hurry. We are very limited with time–there’s a chance some of those fucks in the window have already reported seeing us and the word is being relayed to the boys up front that someone’s sneaking about.”

“...” Ronald met Ethan’s gaze for a moment, sighed, and spoke. “Take out the one patrolling our entrance. I’ve noticed that their patrol times match up so that when the guy here is near the doors, the other is away from the textiles. Speed over, grab as much shit as you can, and leave.”

“... eh, about as well as I’d expect from a coward,” Ethan shrugged.

“So tell me what to do!” Ronald cried out in injustice.

“Be on the lookout.”

“Oh, thank God.”

“Really? Right to my face?”

“Oh, come on,” Ronald said. “Like you didn’t know.”

“Here’s what will happen,” Ethan said. “I’ll take out the guard in the rear, take his gun, kill the remaining three, take their guns, grab everything useful, and set the mart on fire. And then we run.”

“--wait, what?! Why?! Is there really a need to go that far?”

"Simple–if there's even the slightest chance we might be seen, we can't take it. Being seen by a trained soldier isn't just a random thing–they'd feed our description, make sketches, and spread info to all other posts, military and civilian. It would be impossible, in the future, to go anywhere. So, we eliminate the chance of that ever happening. Grabbing everything useful is obvious, but there are still limits to how much two dudes can carry–you focus on getting as many clothes as you can, and I'll focus on the rest. As for why we're setting the mart on fire? Dunno, I like burning things."

“... fuck, really?!”

“Wow, you are beyond easy to fuck with. It’s actually kinda sad,” Ethan sighed. “No, it’s the most basic notion of a military operation–create a really flashy, loud, and dangerous distraction so that everyone is too busy dealing with it while you’re running away.”

“Oh.”

“There is one issue, however.”

“What?”

“There are six cameras recording the entire mart. How do we circumvent that?”

“... masks? Shit. I’ll go–yup. Of course you have them…”

"Put it on," Ethan handed Ronald one ski mask while he put on the other. "The key is speed–it will take me a second to kill the first guard, four seconds to pick up his gun, and move to the position from which I can snipe the guard that will be near the plastics. As soon as that shot is fired, two guards at the front will be immediately alerted–they will report it and move in to investigate. Your job is to sprint to the textiles and grab everything. Around the halfway point of your collecting, you'll hear the second shot–it won't be mine. Third and fourth will be, though, which will indicate that the last two guards are dead. Following that, we need to be ghosts in fifteen seconds or less."

“How will you cause a fire large enough to burn down the mart?” Ronald asked.

“You probably can’t see them, but there are several barrels of oil stashed to the front of the mart, likely for a temporary layover before they are moved to their destination. I’ll shoot at them. When you hear the big boom and when the ground starts to shake, you have to be by the back doors. So, in total, you will have less than thirty seconds to grab as much shit as you can. Are we clear on that?”

“Yes.”

“Ronald,” Ethan’s voice suddenly turned serious, causing the young man to look back at him. “This isn’t a play. I’m laying this all out because I know you will fuck up.”

“I–”

"It's not a slight on you," Ethan quickly added. "Everyone in your shoes would fuck up, including Tara. It doesn't matter if you fuck up. It doesn't matter if you drop clothes. It doesn't matter if you only manage to grab three pairs of jeans and a bra three times the size of Tara's tits, when you hear the fourth gunshot, you need to start sprinting toward the rear exit. Don't look around, don't be greedy for another item, and don't think there is time–there will be no time. Run–run like you've never run before in your life."

“...”

“Do you understand?”

“... yes,” Ronald nodded somberly. “When I hear the fourth gunshot, I run, no matter what.”

“No matter what.” Ronald nodded once again, taking a deep breath. But no breathing exercise, it felt, would likely calm his raging heart–he was nervous, excited, and terrified all at the same time. It was a concoction that did a number on his nerves, but there was also something that he missed–when Ethan told him he’d be on the lookout, his condition improved immediately… and yet, without even realising it, he was going in.

Ethan was purposeful with it–in truth, there were better ways to go about it. He could sneak in solo and simply steal things without being noticed before bolting out. He could not use guns to kill the second guard and buy even more time to loot things. But he wasn’t a charity, and he didn’t let Ronald live that night so he could baby him–there would have to come a point in time when the young boy would break and crack, and today was as good a day as any for a trial run.

"We go in ten," Ethan said, crouching in front of the back entrance, using a simple Swiss knife to unlock the doors. His hearing could pick up heartbeats nearly a hundred yards away with pinpoint precision, and so, as soon as he heard the guard move in front of the door, he slammed it open and launched himself forward. Rather than using magic, he jammed the Swiss knife into the man's throat and quickly pinned him down, hand over lips, while the other twisted the knife and slashed it outwardly, causing massive bleeding. The man died, leaving behind a pool of blood ready to be used–though one that will likely go unused as Ethan had no intention of revealing his abilities to the entire world through the cameras recording this–as well as a gun with a magazine ready to be emptied. Ethan's heart swelled for a moment, excitement flooding him. Infiltrating was what he was best at, and though he knew he'd have to live a different life and thread a different path this time around, occasionally replaying the hits was never a bad thing. And today, he would sing his favourite song as loud as he wanted.