Our healers made their way from person to person as the truck rumbled into motion. JoeyT had been among our worst injured, with painful swelling in both legs and one arm that suggested broken or fractured bones. He sighed in relief when he received the first burst of healing. He remained lying on the floor of the trailer, but as soon as the pain receded slightly, his eyes snapped open and searched until they found us sitting nearby.
“That can’t happen again,” he said. “Even if our passengers saved us… we just…” He shook his head. “I’m all for helping people, but we can’t keep making ourselves vulnerable.”
“We’re not negotiating with anyone else without a self-defense plan,” Kurt said.
“And a show of strength,” I added. “I know we’re in a hurry, but we should get everyone - including our passengers - out and visible anytime we need to stop. Those guys probably would have thought twice about attacking if they’d seen that there were over thirty of us.”
Davi nodded. “If they did still attack, at least the guy with the wind ability would have been able to use it against the mist right away. If they’d seen right away that their fog wasn’t working right…”
“Yep. Second-best defense is making people think twice before attacking you,” I said. “Best defense is just not being in a situation where you can be attacked.”
“How?” Davi asked. “We have to stick to the roads, and the roads are full of people.”
“We can travel at night. Strap our small light sources to the front of the truck as headlights. Maybe we can get by people before they wake up.”
Davi laughed. “No way we can get past people before they wake up. Even if the rams don’t come back after we kill them, we keep getting attacked by ones no one has run into yet. We have to keep people out in front of the truck. That's slowing us down a ton, and the truck is noisy. Even at night, we won't get past people before they wake up and organize. ”
I sighed. She was right. “If we could just find a way to deal with the rams, we could go so much faster…”
One of our passengers spoke up, a heavyset woman in her mid-fifties. “What you guys need is a snowplow. Catch those rams and dump them right off to the side.”
I froze.
She laughed. “You didn’t think of that, did you? Southerners.”
I smiled at her ruefully. “I should have. I grew up in the north. Do you know where we could get a plow?”
“Not off the top of my head." She raised her voice. "Hey, anyone from Parker?”
A few people in the crowd raised their hands. Ten minutes later we cautiously began making our way two miles down the highway into the city of Parker. Our locals remembered a snow removal company, although they disagreed on its exact location.
Our army of passengers made travel through the city far more feasible. The roads were jammed with cars and sometimes trucks, but with thirty-odd superpowered sets of muscles, we were able to clear the way.
The darkness helped, too. No one was out on the streets, and no one came out to investigate the lights and noise we made.
An hour later, after only a few wrong turns, we pulled into the parking lot of a store that advertised snow removal services. In August, the place was deserted, but Kurt worked his magic on the locks and opened a warehouse filled with our choice of snowplows. Some were dedicated vehicles, but others were clearly designed to be attached to trucks.
Unfortunately, our truck lacked the mounting hardware that these plows usually latched onto.
“I’m not sure if we can get it hooked up,” John said.
“We have to,” I said. “If we can crash through the rams, we can drive quickly. People won’t have enough time to organize themselves when they hear us coming. If we keep having fights like we did today, people will die.”
Kurt stretched. “Let’s take a break from traveling tomorrow. I’ll take most of TAF try to get us some more fuel while the rest of you keep JoeyT and try to get the plow Frankensteined to the truck. If you get it on by tomorrow evening, great, we drive at night. If not, well…”
His confident tone faded.
I clapped his shoulder. “If not, we’ll figure things out from there. Anyway, I like that… Frankenstein. That’s what we should call the truck. Like zombie, but tougher.”
Zephyr rolled her eyes. “That’s the scientist, not the creature.”
I shrugged. “Fine. We’ll call it Frankeinstein’s Monster. Frank for short. It’s our monster!”
Stolen story; please report.
“His name is Pacer,” John muttered.
I could see everyone else looking thoughtful. John had been pushing for “Pacer” for days now, and no one else was using the name but him.
“It’s not terrible,” Twinkles said. “Definitely better than zombie.”
“I like it!” Davi said. She patted the truck door. “Welcome to the team, Frank!”
“I don’t do people names!” John said.
JoeyT nudged him. “I don’t think your wife is going to be jealous of Frank.”
John grumbled, but shrugged.
Frank it was.
…
Our passengers took the news about our delay in Parker well enough. Some even volunteered to take guard shifts on the truck and help us get the plow attached. A trucker among them even had good advice for how to manage it, helping us sort through the various mysterious hardware to find a hitch we could attach to our truck’s frame. We needed the combined abilities of Byron and a few passengers to modify the bumper to make space for the hitch, but after it was affixed, putting the actual plow on was easy. Ish.
“Don’t know how you’re going to control it,” the trucker told us. “Nothing to attach the hydraulics lines to.”
I shrugged. “We should be able to keep it locked in one position. If we need to move it, we’ll have to rely on Kurt’s Animate Machinery ability.”
We got the truck set up by midmorning, just in time for another wave of those damn rams to spawn. I joined the crew ferrying filtered fuel from the nearest gas station, each of us carrying it over in 1- to 5-gallon gas cans, filling our massive tanks one drop at a time.
Kurt was situated safely near a pump, with sturdy alien-purchased walls hiding him from sight. He was able to use his ability in small bursts to lift fuel from the station's reservoir, keeping up a slow-but-steady output without exhausting himself. The rest of his team were occupied dumping the fuel from one container to another, passing it through whatever funnels and filters they could find before giving the cleaned product off to runners like me.
After a couple of trips, I let others do the running, devoting myself instead to keeping the route clear of monsters. I’d been a breath away from my fourth ability before we’d stopped, and the hunting grounds around here were perfect. The town of Parker seemed occupied enough to provide a reasonably steady spawn rate, but few locals were out hunting. The handful of people I saw on the road seemed more intent on barricading entryways than fighting monsters. I spoke with one or two of them, but once I’d reassured them that we had no plans of stealing or attacking, the locals left me alone.
That left me free to take my enhanced body out for a spin, easily sidestepping the rams and dodging the spacedogs. I still wasn’t quite fast enough to dodge the lightning-fast reactions of the pavemimics once I stepped on them, but one of our passengers had showed us the way around the stealthy monsters: use nails to create painful-to-grab spiked attire. With a length of sharpened copper added to either end of my staff - courtesy of JoeyT - I could fight my way clear of the flat foes with only a little trouble.
We were planning to head out again after dark, so I headed back a few hours before to catch a nap.
“Get enough for your next ability?” Davi asked.
“And then some! I’m more than a third of the way to my fifth.”
“What are you taking? Unless you already took it?”
I shook my head. “Not in the field. Not after what happened to Zephyr. I waited until I got back. I was thinking about your regeneration ability-”
“Why? It’s trash, Vince.”
“It’s trash for you, since you’re being a wuss about the biological augments.”
Davi made a grumpy noise. “I’m being cautious! That’s not the same as being a wuss. You’re being reckless. Is that why you’re taking regeneration? So you can take more risks?”
“I’m not taking it. Not yet, anyway.”
Davi tilted her head. “Then…?”
I sighed. “Last night… with the fog. As soon as I couldn’t see, the very first thing I did was run full-speed into a Force Shield. Basically punched myself in the stomach.”
My friend winced. “Sorry! That might have been… That was probably mine. I thought I saw someone throw an ability at you as the fog rolled up. I was trying to block it.”
“Maybe you did. Who knows? Anyway, if it wasn’t the Force Shield, it could just as easily have been a pothole or a person, or anything. The problem wasn’t the obstruction, the problem was that the moment I couldn’t see I became a danger to myself instead of our enemies. If we’re traveling at night, I feel like there are going to be a lot more situations like that. Even if we stick lights on every part of Frank we can reach, it won’t illuminate things very far away from the truck… so I’m thinking about a biological augment for Infrared Vision.”
Davi frowned. “I don’t remember that one on my list. Won’t fog mess that up, too?”
“It… might? I was looking for echolocation, but I could only find hearing enhancements, and I wasn’t sure if they would let me echolocate or not.”
“So you’re just going to grab some random shit, then?”
“Hey!” I defended myself. “It’s not random. I know it’ll help me see at night, which is guaranteed to be helpful. I bet I would have seen that camouflage thief, too. Maybe the pavemimics? If it helps with the fog, that’s a bonus.”
Davi stared at me flatly. “I don’t know how Meghan puts up with you.” After a moment, she shrugged. “At least you waited to get back where it was safe. I’ll play sentry. Fuck yourself up, Mutant Man.”