Monsters continued to be an issue. We still had to fight just as many - more with the hellbats - and we had fewer people to do it with.
Those people were stronger, true. Frank had crushed vast quantities of spacedogs beneath his wheels and splattered a few hundred rams against his snowplow. The points had been distributed randomly between us and our hitchhhikers. Maybe it counted us all as jointly wielding the truck as a weapon? Even with many of the points going to our pool of temporary passengers, John - who’d been spending his energy on healing, not fighting - still had three abilities and was close to a fourth. Everyone else had four abilities, with Byron and Davi close to a fifth.
Davi continued to regret her choice of Rapid Regeneration - “It’s strictly worse than Healing Touch, Vince. I don’t care if it’s passive! It’s just worse!” - and had filled out her arsenal with a few more abilities that synergized with her Force Shield: Knockback and Powerful Blow. She’d become a force to be reckoned with, but the ability to send monsters spinning through the air did little against the pavemimics.
Byron had continued to amplify his fire and heat abilities, although he planned to take Freeze for his fifth ability. The data we’d gotten from Captain Beember suggested that fire and ice had a lot of synergy, probably because they both manipulated the energy levels of matter. He might not be as flexible a combatant as I was - his only defense was killing monsters before they got to him - but the white-hot points of flame he could now generate and manipulate did more to take down the pavemimic Monstrosities than even the spikeball he’d forged.
His synergy’s higher than mine even though he has one fewer ability! Although that shitty Powerful Blow isn’t doing much for me.
The ability I’d rushed into taking had come in handy in the early days, but it was getting less and less useful as I grew in strength, and it synergized poorly with everything else.
Kurt was a bit of an outlier, maintaining his role as a “utility” member of our group, but he still helped out with combat frequently, not needing to keep energy back for possible emergencies. For his fourth ability, he’d taken the same one JoeyT had used to re-form the wires in Frank, in case we needed to do repairs after we parted ways with TAF.
We hadn’t expected that parting to come so soon.
Since he’d taken the ability a few days before, Kurt spent a lot of our travel time wrangling with electronics, trying to see if he could get them working again. “I’m not a double-E!,” he said. “I’m aero! And it’s been years since the electrical engineering courses I did have.”
“No one’s making you do this,” I said.
Kurt just grunted at me. In spite of his complaints, he seemed determined. All he’d gotten working so far were a few simple battery-powered flashlights, but I had faith he’d make progress with more complex devices.
His work was continually disrupted by fight after fight. Even with our increased strength, it still took us a lot of time to clear monstrosities off the wheels. We had to get ready to stop, immediately leaping clear of the vehicle to take down any rams in the area before they could damage the suddenly-reachable Frank. Then we had to kill all the strays in a wide area. Finally, we had to irritate the Monstrosities stuck to our axles and pick at them until we got them separated into groups small enough to take down with knives.
Without TAF, all of that took much longer.
We actually had to start taking breaks, resting when we ought to have been driving. It stung, but what could we do? If it only took ten minutes to drive to another ten or fifteen-minute fight, there wasn’t enough time to rest. When we got tired, we made more mistakes and took more injuries. John’s healing ability had improved somewhat, but he had limits.
Hitchhikers gave us extra hands - for a while - but explanations and coordination took up extra time. Negotiation, too. A lot of people were willing to threaten us for our food and water, but most backed down when we offered to give them a ride to the next Shop we saw.
The first hitchhikers we picked up on faith, hoping we’d find more Shops eventually - although the fact that there had been none in Walsenburg made us uncertain how uncommon they’d be.
Even if they turned out to be vanishingly rare, we didn’t feel we had to be nearly as defensive of our food and water. As long as we kept a few days’ supply secured in the cab, we’d be able to turn back to Walsenburg and TAF in a worst-case scenario.
It was nice, being able to offer charity without feeling like I was putting my own survival at risk. It… felt good.
I don’t think that feeling was unique to me. Even if people met us with hostility, it vanished in the face of freely-offered food. When people learned that the alien Money could be transferred by touch, most people were willing to repay us, and many even gave us extra, wanting us to continue offering charity to people we found further down the road, the apocalypse version of one of those “pay-it-forward” chains at coffeeshops.
We were rescuing people, and not just from hunger and thirst. I watched them transform in front of my eyes. Many seemed like hardened bandits, but a few hours later, fed and given hope, they were chatting amiably, and I could see the regular joes and janes they’d been a few weeks prior.
It was good. Undeniably good. But… it slowed us down.
The small town ahead was bigger than Walsenburg, but it still didn’t have any shops. We paused outside to rest and wait for dark, although Davi talked me into a short expedition before we napped. She dragged me into a house on the outskirts of town to look for paint and a stepstool, of all things.
I hefted one of the half-used buckets we found in the garage as we headed back to the truck. “Why did you want this, again?”
“You’ll see! Just… get back, and go to sleep. It’ll be ready before we start driving again, I hope.”
I almost gave her a hard time - after all, she was apparently planning to nap while we moved, leaving more of the fighting to me - but a glimpse of her face made me think better of it. This was important to her, and I knew she was hurting even more than the rest of us after leaving TAF.
When we woke up, the side of the truck was emblazoned with a large, slightly drippy, Team Always Forward logo - the letters “TAF” with every horizontal line extending into an arrow.
“That’s huge, Davi! I’m amazed you got it done so quickly.”
“They… they said we were part of the team. If that’s the case, we have to represent. I’m just sad I could only find red paint. Oh, and I only got one side of the truck done.”
I threw an arm around her shoulders and squeezed. “You did great. If we ever pass a home improvement store, we’ll stop for a few minutes to look for orange.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Absolutely. And… I think we’d all like to help you paint the other side, next time we stop.”
Byron, Kurtis, and John were quick to back me up, drawing a tremulous smile from Davi as we climbed aboard and hit the road again.
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It took us a long time to find another Shop after we left Walsenburg, long enough that we were starting to get worried. When we finally found one, about 50 miles after we’d separated from TAF, it was a huge relief. Even better, the Shopowners were excited to see us too, and delighted to welcome the thirty-or-so hitchhikers we’d crammed into Frank’s trailer. We spent out our Money to replenish our rations and water supplies.
The second Shop, which we found only ten miles later in a moderately-sized town, had raised taxes enough to make food and water cost three Money each. We didn’t buy more food at that stop, although we still dropped off our hitchhikers. The price-gouging didn’t sit well with me, but prices were still low enough that people could reasonably afford to feed and hydrate themselves.
That was the only Shop we saw near houses. Most towns didn’t have any visible, which worried me. John insisted on stopping to let people know that Shops existed, and what they looked like, but we made sure to do so on the far side, where nothing stood between us and a quick departure. We’d park Frank and get someone’s attention, shout the information at them, then leave.
“This is so awkward,” Kurtis muttered after our second such stop. “You really think people are going to take us seriously?”
“We’re leaving behind a little water and a small pile of ration bars at each stop. The water jugs don’t look like anything I’ve seen on Earth before. I don’t see why they wouldn’t believe us,” Davi said.
“You sure this isn’t just because you guys don’t want to talk with people?”
“Do you?” I asked. “If we stop in the middle of town, it’d be real easy for people to just stand in front of Frank to keep us from leaving.”
Kurt grimaced. “Fine. We’ll just keep shouting at people and running, like we’re preteens making our first love confession.”
We found a third Shop shortly after we started traveling the next night, about twenty miles further down the highway.
“That’s so confusing,” Davi muttered. “There are definitely more people in towns than on the roads. I don’t think it’s random that they aren’t getting as much Novelty. But what’s the difference? It’s not traveling. A lot of these people on the highways hadn’t gone anywhere. Is it fighting? We got more every time we fought a Monstrosity, at least until we hit 144. No. It can’t be. The people in Walsenburg had fought plenty, and none of them had high Novelty. Maybe just… weird fighting?”
The Novelty issue really bothered her. She seemed to take it personally, and given its connection to Twinkles’ death, I didn’t press her on her fixation.
The fourth Shop was once again on the highway, but this time it was literally on the highway.
“What in tarnation…” John said, slowing the truck to a stop.
The roadway ahead was entirely blocked off by what seemed to be some kind of fort. Blueprint-purchased walls formed a wide perimeter. I could see the top of the Shop’s roof poking over the edge, as well as the boxy profile of several semi trailers. The red light of the Shop’s pillar was contrasted with ring upon ring of smaller, brighter, white lights.
“Someone had a Small Light Source Blueprint to input and no one to tell them no,” Kurt said.
“Reminds me of Christmas lights,” Byron said.
In spite of their positive words, neither man sounded happy.
It was pretty, the lights ringing the edge of the edifice in front of us and dotting the hills to the sides of the road.
It was also completely impassable.
“Damnit,” I groaned. “We need to backtrack at least 30 miles from here. Maybe more.”
“Honestly, we’ve been kind of lucky not to run into anything like this until now,” Byron said. “I was holding my breath every time we needed to find a bridge across a river.”
There was a sharp crack, and I looked down. My fingers had tensed, and I’d snapped off the last few inches of the armrest. It was still held on to the rest by fabric, but it was clearly hanging loose, no longer securely connected.
“Sorry,” I muttered sheepishly. “It’s frustrating, but you’re right. This is going to keep happening.”
“Then how the hell are we going to get anywhere?” asked Kurt. “We’ve been on the road for over a week, and we’ve barely made it out of Colorado.”
The cold truth of his statement was like a slap. I answered him without thinking. “Not by driving.”
“What?” Kurt said. “You want to walk? I guess that would get us around the barricade but-”
I cut him off. “No.”
The wheels in my mind were turning. An idea I’d first brought up days ago was occurring to me again, but this time it was more than just an idle thought. I spun in my seat. “I won’t say building Frank was a mistake - he was the best we had available - but we can do better. We’re aeronautical engineers with abilities that practically break physics. If we can’t build something that flies, we should give back our degrees.”
Byron looked skeptical. “That sounds great, Vince, but we can’t make something outta nothing.”
“So we head for a big city. Any big city.”
“And then what? We build some little rinky-dink biplane that can run on kitchen oil?” Byron shook his head. “We won’t get any time in the air with our trash fuel, and a pavemimic will snap us in half on takeoff.”
“Vertical takeoff! Blimps, or hot air balloons. I mentioned them before. We’d have to find some way to steer, but you might be able to heat the air with just your fire abilities.”
That made Byron pause thoughtfully. “I’m not nearly strong enough for that yet…”
“But you’re getting stronger.”
Davi cut in. “How are we going to steer a hot air balloon? Those things are about as aerodynamic as a rock. They’re like a giant floaty sail. You’d need some huge propellers to go against the wind at all and an equally ridiculous power source.”
“We’re living a pretty ridiculous life,” I countered. “I think we can figure it out.”
Kurt looked between my face and the hateful, cheerful barricade keeping us from driving forward. He looked conflicted, torn between hope and skepticism. “I don’t think ‘any big city’ is going to cut it, Vince. What do you want to do, find a fabric store and raid their quilting supplies for balloon fabric? Stitch it together one yard at a time? I don’t think that’s going to work.”
“There must be something-”
John cut in, his voice quiet. “Be a lot easier if we could start with balloon envelopes someone else had already made, wouldn’t it?”
Kurt shrugged. “Obviously, but it’s not like we can look up hot air balloon businesses on Google. None of us are from this part of the country. None of us know where to find something like that.”
“I do,” John said.
He grinned at our expressions of shock. “What? You rugrats might know all this game stuff, but it’s not like I’ve been doing nothing the past sixty years.”
“Never said that, John. We couldn’t have gotten Frank running without you,” Kurt said. “But… how the hell do you know about hot air balloon businesses near Colorado?”
For once, John let the vulgarity pass, clearly basking in the moment. “Y’all heard about the Alabama Jubilee?”
The name sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place it. “Is that a hot air balloon thing?”
“‘Is that a hot air balloon thing,’ he asks. Jesus wept, Vince! It’s one of the biggest hot air balloon festivals in the south, and it’s less’n a half hour from your house! I go every spring.”
“Oh.” That did sound cool. “Sounds like something I should have taken the kids to.”
“Darn tootin’ you should have! They let you right out on the field as they’re inflating the balloons. You can stand right next to them as they lift off!”
“Sounds pretty cool,”
“‘Pretty cool,’ he says.” John rolled his eyes. “Yes. It is. And what’s even better is if you show up early, you can talk to all the aeronauts as they get set up. Mosta them are more than happy to answer questions or just shoot the breeze. Lot of them go to festivals all across the country, and let me tell you, they have some awesome stories. Love listening to them.”
We were hanging on John’s every word, and he knew it. He stood, grabbing the atlas from behind the driver’s seat and paging through it slowly, glancing at us smugly, with a showman’s air. “You know where the biggest hot air balloon festival in the world is?”
He paused, waiting for us to shake our heads, then flipped the book around, stabbing a weathered finger onto the map of New Mexico.
“About 200 miles southwest of us. Albuquerque.”