Kyle was decidedly not doing okay. Medical school, surviving an apocalypse, refining his skills, nothing quite stacked up to the challenge of making these beetles taste good. He had tried every tool available to him to try to make the beetle meat more appetizing. Nothing he did made a meaningful impact on the flavor. He’d tried sautéing them, grilling them, and baking them to little effect. He’d considered boiling, but clean water was an important resource he didn’t want to waste on this fruitless endeavor.

Ultimately the best way he’d found to cook them was to cut the meat into strips and smoke them using wood he’d liberated from the nearby forest. The flavor was still repulsive, to say the least, but it was a significant improvement from raw or charred on a fire.

Over the past week he’d gone out and hunted the majority of the smaller groups of beetles, fully stocking one of his functional refrigerators with meat. Between his hunts and culinary misadventures, he’d also spent a significant amount of time reviewing the footage C.H.A.D.D. had stored of his sparring sessions with Garth, watching the older man’s movements with interest and comparing them to Kyle’s own.

It was clear that despite the training, Kyle was still incredibly inefficient in the way he moved, and he hoped to gain some insights to continue to improve by watching a more seasoned fighter. The challenge, Kyle discovered, was that Garth’s style assumed a few things that Kyle couldn’t. His movements were powerful and direct, with the promise that each movement had the ability to finish a fight. The problem was that Kyle didn’t have that going for him.

Sure, he could use an infused HASTE to try and land a decisive strike, but that wasn’t something he could do against larger groups of enemies, or even against one sufficiently powerful and durable opponent. He thought back to the giant mutated ant he'd encountered, and had no illusions that without striking the proper weak points he still wouldn’t have been able to cause meaningful harm to the creature. He thought about the possibility of an entire hive of the creatures and shuddered. For all the power he’d been accumulating, he was still a far cry from being safe in this new world in which he found himself.

That was illustrated to him as well by C.H.A.D.D., who detected that the smaller groups of beetles had largely joined with the largest group, turning into a full-blown swarm. Kyle didn’t know much about insect social structures, but had a strong feeling it was due to his active hunting. Even more frustrating, it was a really effective tactic. The swarm had swelled to nearly thirty of the creatures, and he knew that in a direct confrontation anything other than escape was going to be risky. So his dismay was palpable when C.H.A.D.D. returned from his morning scan.

[DR. MAYHEW, A GROUP OF THREE HUMANS ENTERED THE CITY THIS MORNING. ALL UNAWAKENED, MOVING SLOWLY FROM THE SOUTHEASTERN END OF THE CITY.] Southeast, it wouldn’t make sense for them to have come from Nierburg. Kyle hated that his first thought went to a trap, a reflection of how the past months had changed him. Just because he hated it didn’t mean it was the wrong way to think. No way they’d send three unawakened after me. Pretty lousy scouting party too – if they don’t make it back there’s any number of things that could have happened to them.

“C.H.A.D.D., did you pick up any other life signatures?”

[ONLY THE SWARM OF BEETLES HEADING THEIR DIRECTION, DR. MAYHEW.] Well, crap. Kyle’s stomach sunk as he considered his next steps. One of his biggest advantages was his tucked away hiding place. The beetles had never come too close, and it was tucked away enough that he had confidence C.H.A.D.D. would be able to detect a larger group of awakened moving in and searching for him. If they knew right where he was…. Well, C.H.A.D.D. was a diagnostic drone, not a radar station. At range he could pick up mana signatures for health and little else – and a group of awakened making straight for him wouldn’t give him much time to react, if any. The smart thing to do was to stay hunkered down and leave them to their fate. He’d had to make it on his own, and if they’d survived this long, they should know the risks too. It was the right decision. It was the smart decision. Dammit.

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“How far?”

“Can we stop? My feet are tired Grandpa.” Frank looked at the little girl and smiled, her big brown eyes always had a way of melting his heart. He was about to respond and acquiesce, but before he could his other granddaughter, Arianna, spoke up.

“Amalia, we’ve only been on the road for a few hours. We should at least try to make it into town.” His heart ached as he heard the hardness in Arianna’s voice, forced to grow up far too fast. He still hurt for the loss of his son and daughter-in-law, but that hurt was overcome with a desire to see their babies, his granddaughters, taken care of even though the hurt they were still feeling wasn’t something his old bones could fix. He saw the tears welling up in Amalia’s eyes, and decided to jump in.

“Let’s go a little further and find a nice place to take a break. We’ll rest a little, then go for another hour or so to get across town, how does that sound?” Amalia’s tears disappeared almost as soon as they appeared, nodding her head vigorously. She was only ten, and for her this compromise felt like she had completely gotten her way. Arianna rolled her eyes but didn’t say anything as she followed her now-skipping younger sister. Frank couldn’t help but chuckle to himself, hand running through his slate gray beard. Even at the end of the world teenagers will be teenagers he thought wistfully, thinking back to when he and Susanna were raising their boys. His hand went absently down to the sticks at his waist, remembering all the days of training and bonding over their heritage, passed down from the old world. Amalia’s voice snapped him from his reverie.

“Come on Grandpa! You’re being slow!” His smile was a mix of sadness and hope as he took off after the little ones.

They were resting in an old park, Frank having taken off his pack and shared some of the rations they’d brought with them. Amalia was eating hungrily, while Arianna just sat, looking at her hands. His heart broke a little bit at the sight, but he just didn’t know what to say. A faint clicking sound made him jump to his feet, hands drawing out the carbon fiber sticks he wore on his side. They were less than a meter long and light, but they’d served him well over the last several months.

The clicking grew louder, and he saw a beetle round the corner and begin to move right towards him. Amalia shrieked and ran towards Arianna, who hugged her sister close. This wasn’t the first time they’d seen one of these mutated bugs, and Frank took up his fighting stance between the beetle and his girls. He lashed out at the beetle as it drew near, the Escrima sticks striking the carapace in rapid succession. The beetle focused its attention on him, trying to bite and claw at him, with little success. Frank got into his rhythm, a constant cascade of blows raining down from both hands. When one hand moved to defend, the other was striking the joint of a leg. That stick then moved to turn aside pinching mandibles while the other came down in a vertical strike.

That isn’t to say that Frank came out unscathed, bleeding from several glancing strikes along the way. Eventually though, the outcome became clear as the beetle could no longer stand, Frank finishing it off with a series of heavy strikes to its head. Gasping for air, Frank put his weapons back into their holsters and looked up towards the sky. I’m getting way too old for this he thought, wincing again as his girls came crashing into him with a big hug.

“Ouch, ouch! Be gentle, I’m not as young and tough as you two.” That got a giggle out of Amalia, but Arianna looked concerned.

“That was one of the biggest we’ve seen, are you sure we should be trying to go this way? I don’t care if Nierburg is supposed to be safer, that doesn’t help us deal with the dangers along the way.” Peeling Amalia off him, he met Arianna’s eyes.

“I recognize the risk. And I want the two of you in a place where you’ll have opportunities to grow, and learn, and build a life. We’ll make it, and we’ll make it together.” She looked like she had something else to say, but she froze as she looked to the distance. Then Frank heard it, still faint but growing louder. A chorus of clicking, heading their direction. Before he could open his mouth, a man radiating a glowing blue light burst into the park.

“Dammit, there’s kids! Old man! Get your girls and follow this drone, it’ll take you somewhere safe.” Bewildered, Frank could just nod as the man released a small white drone that floated over.

[THIS WAY PLEASE. AS NEW EMPLOYEES OF CENTRAL HEALTH, LET ME -] The drone was cut off by the man shouting at it.

“Not the time for the act, C.H.A.D.D. Get them to safety!”

[I APOLOGIZE FOR DR. MAYHEW, HE’S QUITE RUDE. PLEASE FOLLOW ME.]

The drone took off at a brisk pace, Frank and the girls in tow. What the hell is going on here? He thought, but as they turned a corner his eyes widened, just making out the shapes of more than four beetles, each as large as the one he’d taken down. Knowing there was nothing but death behind him, he spurred the girls on to follow the drone into the unknown.