Pain started to register as my adrenaline ebbed. Cut hand, cut side, bruises on my arms - probably from blocking - and an aching right leg that I had no idea about.
“I could use healing,” I said, keeping my voice low. “But I think I can wait until we’re on the road. How’s everyone else doing? And why isn’t the truck running yet?”
“We’ve only had a minute!” Byron said. “We’re doing our best.”
“I’m… okay,” Davi said, poking gingerly at a cut on her arm. “I think it’s not too bad.”
All of us were injured somehow. Even Byron and John had taken a few hits from ranged abilities. Twinkles was the worst off, with a stab to his gut that made us all nervous.
“Need to hose that out,” said Zephyr.
“We don’t have any water on us,” Avalanche said.
“It’s… fine…” Twinkles said. He had both hands over the wound and his face was white. “I’m… keeping it held closed.”
Avalanche looked as though she was about to argue, but a fitful rumble interrupted us as Byron and John figured out the wiring. The engine slowed, almost whining, clearly straining. For a moment, I worried that it wouldn’t start… but then there was a noisy growl as something caught, and it evened out to a steady purr.
The noise drew people into the parking lot again. They weren’t attacking - for now - but they were staring at our truck with expressions of longing.
“We need to go,” Twinkles said. “I’ll be… okay. For a bit.”
We piled inside.
If the cab we’d repaired had been one of the little day cabs, it would never have worked, but it was a sleeper cab. A tiny room behind the driver’s seat left enough space for ten people to cram inside, if uncomfortably. I went in last, helping JoeyT lift Twinkles up as Avalanche and Byron pulled him in the rest of the way. Twinkles helped only the slightest bit, his face twisted in pain as the motion put stress on his abdomen. We let him take the bunk in the cabin, stretching his lanky body out atop the musty sheets.
We’d had to strike a delicate balance when preparing for our trip, especially after the people in the warehouse began controlling access to drinks, not letting anyone carry them away from the eating area. The trailers outside gave us an avenue to leave with adequate supplies anyway, but if anyone caught us searching them, they’d be alerted to our plan. We’d also opted not to inform John of our larcenous intent, which further limited our chances to inspect the trailers.
Even so, we’d found opportunities to quickly peek inside a few. We’d figured out that our side of the building was for deliveries to the warehouse, while the other side was the loading zone, where a more diverse variety of products were collected to be shipped to individual ValuCo stores. The trucks were all packed tight, but after we found one with a pallet of water bottles visible near the back door, we marked it, re-locked it, and called off our search.
Byron began inching the cab forward before I was even all the way inside. The motion made the crowd creeping toward us stop and start retreating. They’d been willing to fight us for access to transportation, but none were delusional enough to fight a semi truck.
We rolled around the building toward our marked trailer. Byron backed up to it, letting the cab’s clamps grab the hitch with a metallic clang.
“What was that?” John asked.
“Back in a minute!” I said. Kurtis had spoken with some of the truckers in the warehouse, figuring out what we’d need to do to steal a trailer. He’d told me we had to hook up the brake lines, a fairly simple process. I could hear their voices echo through the walls of the truck cab as I worked.
“Where’d he go?” John asked, confused.
“Shit, I should go grab a bottle of water for Twinkles before we get going,” Bolero said.
“You can’t!” I heard Avalanche snap. “We locked it back up, remember? We didn’t want anyone to take it or see us carrying stuff around and start asking questions.”
“Fucking hell,” Bolero groaned. “We really didn’t count on Kurt being asleep when we left. Should I go back inside?”
Someone must have responded, too quietly for me to hear. Maybe Twinkles?
Bolero’s voice again. “But-”
Zephyr. “He’s right. ‘Ince is hurt too. Who fights the thousand inside? Kurt can open the truck soon.”
I swung myself into the cabin. Bolero was standing next to the bunk, opening and closing his right hand. “We’re just gonna wait to heal him?!”
“I’ll be okay for a while,” Twinkles said, teeth gritted. “You were asleep when Zephyr had a similar wound, and we had to wait to get healing for her. I can hang on a little bit.”
“We all hooked up?” Byron asked me.
“I think so. Give it a shot.”
Byron took his foot off the brake and the semi cab rolled forward. He hadn’t seemed to have trouble moving the steering wheel before, but the weight of the trailer behind us it made it harder. He actually stood up halfway from his seat for extra leverage, and it still didn't seem to be enough. I stepped forward and added my weight and muscle. Between the pair of us, we made it out of the parking lot.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
As we turned onto the road, the feet from the trailer - which, with Kurt asleep, we hadn’t been able to retract - scraped the ground. It was lucky we weren’t moving too quickly, because the friction made it feel like Byron had slammed on the brakes, causing almost everyone to stumble and Twinkles to let out a gasp of pain. A second later, the rear wheels hit the road and the feet lifted.
The incident seemed to make something click for John. “You… you stole a semi trailer, didn’t you? Good lord. That’s got to be thousands upon thousands of dollars of goods! I’d have to sell my house to pay for this!”
Bolero’s voice was tight with anger. “Wake up, asshole! Twinkles might be dying back here. As soon as Kurt wakes up, we might be able to use the water in that trailer to save him. Is that okay with you?”
“No! Yes. Of course! I-”
“Then shut up and help me get everyone else stable.”
Davi groaned. “Having Kurt out is so bad. We had a plan! Step one was to take the truck and the trailer. Step two was to get out of sight of the warehouse. Step three was to stop the truck and take inventory. We can’t turn off the truck with him asleep, and we can’t unlock the padlock on the truck doors. And we need the water inside a lot more badly than we expected! Ugh, we’ve got to rethink this.”
“I can still put on the brakes,” Byron said. “If we can’t unlock the padlock, maybe we can destroy it without damaging the doors? I don’t think we should wait for Kurt to wake up…”
"Don't stop yet! I can still see the warehouse. They can see us, too!"
I sank into the passenger seat, letting them talk. Byron was on a straight road now, and would stay on it for a few miles until we reached a T-intersection where we’d turn right. Until then, he’d only need to make gentle turns around any obstructions in the road. There were several of those - cars and trucks that had stopped when the aliens screwed us over - but they were visible from a long way away, and widely-spaced. This clearly wasn’t a heavily-traveled thoroughfare. Byron shouldn’t need my help to steer.
The spacedogs, at least, were no problem. A few passed under the truck entirely, while others got crushed beneath our wheels, disappearing before I could even see the roadkill they would have left in our rearview mirrors.
My own wounds ached, but I hoped they weren’t too bad. Clenching my fist only seemed to make my palm bleed more, so I held it pressed flat against my other arm while I waited. I didn’t know how deep the wound in my side was, but hopefully not too deep? As long as they hadn’t nicked any intestines, I should be okay. I’d long been frustrated about the layer of fat around my middle that stubbornly refused to shrink in the face of exercise. My son Gavin liked to rest his head on my stomach and call it a squish pillow. I loved the cuddles, but the guileless truth of his description burned.
My fat layer might be helping me now. Twinkles had been stabbed, straight-on, and his bony frame lacked any padding. His gut wound was bleeding copiously and smelled badly. None of us doubted that his intestines had been cut. My wound was more of a slash than a stab, falling just below my ribs, and… I leaned over to peer at my side. It was bleeding, but not that badly. Long live the dad bod, I guess?
Bolero was with me soon enough, while John tended to Davi. We hadn’t been able to take the water needed to flush out big wounds, but other goods were less controlled. They swiped at my hand with some antibacterial wipes and I pulled my shirt out of the way so they could inspect my side.
“What’s the damage, doc?” I asked, then bit back a gasp as Bolero pushed a wipe into the cut on my side. “Damnit!”
The younger man didn’t seem like he’d enjoyed the experience either: he looked queasy as he removed the wipe. “I think it’s okay to heal? Your call, though.”
I considered. “Go for it.”
The wound crusted over, and Bolero swayed, a motion I didn’t think had much to do with the road. “That’s what you get for now. Try to stay still for now.”
“Got it. No prob.”
I found the handle on the side of the seat and reclined it, letting myself relax. The road seemed to be getting bumpier and bumpier, but at least I wasn’t actively bleeding anymore.
God. Those people were so fragile.
The thought popped into my head the moment my brain left “emergency mode.”
Getting through that fight with as few injuries as I’d received seemed like a miracle, even if my opponents seemed slow as molasses next to the speed the Sprinter augment granted me. That speed had gotten even more extreme after I’d taken the augment to reinforce my skeleton. I didn’t even feel as winded as I ought to. Abilities were a cheat code. I’d trained multiple times a week for years and years, slowly and incrementally improving my finesse and stamina. Biological Augments and alien reinforcement had practically turned me into a superhero overnight.
I assumed many of the people I’d fought had two abilities - it was hard to get here from the airport without picking up a few points - but most of them had relied on knives and weapons to fight, and none of them had moved as though they’d had any Biological Augments and only a few had anything like a balanced stance or proper footwork. When I’d been fighting, I hadn’t really been thinking about what I was doing, not in anything more than an immediate sense. I’d fallen back on my training. It had almost been comfortable, in a way. I’d trained to defend against humans, after all, not rodents. I’d never really expected to fight another human, but part of what we worked on at the dojo was always being ready in case you did have to: always keep your “ma-ai” - or safe distance - from strangers; recognize what objects in your environment could be used as weapons; keep awareness of your surroundings at all times… that kind of thing. It was something I often thought about when I was out with Meghan and the kids, especially if someone near us seemed unpredictable for some reason, overly emotional or drunk. Based on the fact that I was still standing, I had to believe all that preparation had paid off.
The people we’d fought hadn’t been prepared. They didn’t anticipate my moves at all. Sometimes, stepping out of their way was all it took to get them tangled up with another attacker.
The people I grappled didn’t move with me. Where a practice partner would have anticipated my actions and let me throw them, rolling away to avoid injury, these people just… took it, full force.
That force had been easier to apply than I’d expected, too. I knew I was stronger than I had been; I’d had to be careful picking up paper bowls of food in the past few days, because it was easy to apply too much strength and crumple them. In a fight for my life, I hadn’t distracted myself with trying to moderate my strength. I’d just executed the moves I’d practiced… with a lot more strength than I’d had when learning the moves. Many of the injuries I’d dealt out wouldn’t be simple to heal.
How many people’s elbows and wrists had I ruined today? And that first guy, the one I’d hit in the head with my metal rebar… Had he died? Had I killed him? I must have. Maybe, maybe he could have survived if he got healing quickly enough, but I hadn’t even checked on him. I didn’t know.
It was them or me, I told myself. Those knives were deadly. Twinkles is still in danger.
It was true.
I’ll do it again if I have to.
I snorted, shaking my head bitterly.
If. Who was I kidding?
It was more than a thousand miles to my home. This had been the first time we’d had to fight human beings, but it almost certainly wouldn't be the last.