3 months had passed.
It was the middle of the day and we were out on the usual supply run, scrounging around in one of the abandoned houses outside the walls.
“Oh lawdy, here, catch.” I threw a pack of strawberry laces over to Triya, who frowned as she caught it with one hand, gasping when she realised what they were.
“OO-HOo-HOo-HOo-oOO! YES!” She squealed with delight and clutched them close to her chest.
“Thankyou thankyou thankyou!” She spoke in a hushed voice as she carefully placed them into her rucksack and gave me a thumbs up, grinning.
The house itself felt hollow and lifeless, there was dust everywhere with the typical signs of a struggle of a family in a rush to get out and far, far away..If I had to guess, a family of 4 or 5 used to live here, mostly based on the drawings on the fridge.
Although certainly not going to open that mould farm.
Fridges were always a bust and full of nasty mould spores..But the cupboards in this house were sufficiently stocked which meant if our next stop was as fruitutious, we would be coming back with jam packed filled bags and would be marking this location for a return visit soon.
When looting monster infested cul-de-sacs, one of the golden rules was to avoid adventuring into the rest of the house unless you were looking for something in particular, mainly out of respect, but also because upstairs, statistically speaking, was almost always the last stand for most families.
We learnt that correlation out fairly quickly.
It had been 3 months since the pumphouse disaster, and during that time we had routinely ventured out for a couple of hours each day, knocking on doors, going inside, and basically looting the place clean if it was deserted. The looting part felt a bit scummy, but we had little choice, and we agreed that if we found anyone looking for help, we would take them in.
It’s easy to say that now, but when we start running out of food or room..what then?
We had actually taken in around 40 or 50 people in total, and there was probably space for 400-500 more to live in the estates houses and flats, as the construction people finished the half built section with the materials scavenged..And iff we started building tents or gazebos in empty places, we could probably fit in an additional 800 before it started to become unsanitary.
Although I'm sure some of the smarty-nerds like Steve could come up with clever plans to squeeze more in.
And on that topic, we had just managed to resolve a lot of the issues with sanitation, waste management and water flow, by disconnecting some of the sewage and water piping systems and plumbing them into some freshly built systems.
All thanks to Steves Majik and the construction crew.
The entire zones sewage was connected to a waste compost system that filtered the water through gravel, sand and charcoal, leaving behind waste that could be broken down over a long period of time in a comfortable pit underground. Then a huge water tank had also been fairly easily constructed, by Steve moulding metal sheets and merging them together like a human welding torch, except it was the most perfect welds you would have ever seen. This was then elevated and installed using the crane.
It took poor Anton several gruelling days to do it.
This system gave the site just enough water pressure to function, and we had dug a deep well with a wind-powered pump that would help keep the water tank topped up. Water still had to be boiled just in case, Majik came in handy for that, but we were always keeping an eye out for chlorine tabs or other disinfectant items. We had been extremely fortunate that we had the people who built most of the site around, since they still had the plans and knowledge of all the systems and how to modify them.
Food still had to be scavenged, which was what me and Triya were just doing as we headed to the next house, but as it turned out, food wasn't as much of a big deal as we had intially feared...Everyone had noticed a rather disturbing yet welcome change in our bodies in that we no longer felt as hungry or ate as much, but the weirdest thing was, even if we ate more, we were actually going to the toilet less, both number 1 and number 2. At the moment the common story was that most adults only ate a large meal every 2 days and went to the loo an astounding, once every seven days!
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Young children did seem to be exempt however, continuing to be little black holes of endless devouring, and infinite pooping..although the older they got, the more they matched adults.
7 days without having to pee or poop. I couldn’t imagine the productivity boost to office workers that would provide, if we still needed to work in offices.
The medical peeps were going nuts over all this, talking about a bunch of science I didn’t quite understand but Steve tried to explain it to me like I was five and gave an overview of our ATP processes and the possibility that Majik is some wild evolution of this that allowed us to interact with this strange new phenomena.
Yeah, it still doesn’t quite make sense, so I’ll just stick with Majik, being ‘spoooooky MaaAAaaAAaAajik!’.
...
Mentally digressing was becoming a rather bad habit of mine.
But anything to keep the scream and blood filled memories from surfacing is good with me!..And on that note, let’s see what is in house number 2!
*Knock Knock*
Triya carefully opened the letterbox and loudly spoke into it.
“Hellooo, anyone home?”
We listened intently, having grown accustomed to waiting the extra 60 seconds longer than what you normally would, a tactic that had saved our skin in quite a few situations. Twice we had walked in on something we’d labelled 'Wailers', absolute fuckers that just mostly just stand in the dark, waiting..They were humanoid and grotesquely skinny with elongated fingers, but that wasn't the bloody worst of it. Their necks stretched up half a metre or more and their jaws were excessively distended down the same length, leaving their mouths stretched wide open-
Ergo, screaming woman painting from picasso. Screamers.
And if they saw you, they started wailing. Loudly. Their eyes were tiny, black and beady, like birds, but they reflected a disturbing, glowy-yellow in the dark. Aaand then once they deafen and confuse you with their jet engine wails, they would pounce and try to engulf your head whole, hoping to suffocate you with their massively stretched mouths, but they were not noticeably strong, you just had to watch out that they didn’t stun or knock you out else you’d be in real trouble.
Well, you'd be in dead trouble.
As we came up to the end of our usual bonus time, there still hadn't been any noise and I could sense Triya was getting impatient, considering she grabbed the door handle and was about to open it.
"Ugh this is taking agessss. Let's just hop in. I reckon it's all good."
“Uhoh, you've triggered the read flag now..I bet you a snickers bar there’s something in this one..I've got a feeling..” My shield's metallic glass sound sang in the air as they deployed by themselves, clearly matching my concern.
The shields had become my lifeline and I'd dedicated time regularly over the past months to practising with them by myself, focusing on both offence and defence equally. Not only had it increased my confidence and improved my capabilities; it had also helped me reinforce my mental state.
Triya paused and half-side-eyed me from over her shoulder, keeping the rest of her focus on the door.
"Ooooo my good sir, you are about to lose your precious treasures. Daresay shall we take a gander?" She put on an overly well-spoken accent as she thumbed at the door.
I lightly chuckled through my nose and shifted my left shield to the front left side, with the right raising over my right shoulder into the mantis position. It was my preferred stance, so to speak, and as all my previous fights using it had shown it was most effective with my other combat moves.
I nodded.
Our fear was still real, but we were getting used to it so we no longer froze with terror or let our flight responses take control, we would simply face whatever we thought we could take out..but definiely run for our lives if we came upon anything we didn't think we could handle.
Yeah we're brave, but not fucking stupid.
Triya stepped back and silently pointed to the door handle and made an explosion gesture with the same hand; our agreed sign for breaching a locked door, or rather, for Xno to blow a nice hole through the lock. And on cue, Xno juddered and reconfigured itself into heavy attack mode, opening out all of its sides, exposing bizarre alien-like internal machinery that looked like a mixture of clockwork and the back of a refrigerator, before charging up a small but powerful yellow and green projectile at its centre.
The charging up always reminded me of a typical electronic music building up with electro-static clicks and hums, towards an epic bass drop.
Oh, how I miss that crappy but majestic music..
The projectile hit the lock, buzzing and crackling loudly as it produced a shower of sparks and fizzling out like a firework; the handle, lock and a portion of the frame were disintegrated, with the edges left glowing in white hot embers.
Triya had a small crowbar with the tip sharpened into a very sharp blade, so she used the claw end to push the door open and then jumped back.
What I saw as the door swung open was truly haunting...
...
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