After half an hour, Eliza gives Rider the thumbs up “We lost em.” she says with a cheerful sigh of relief. Rider starts to slow down, and approaches a relatively safe zone. On the roads are checkpoints, set up by the military during the first few months of The End. These checkpoints allow travelers to rest up provided the generator is running. After parking her bike, she looks around.
The place is deserted, there's a tank off to the side, but it's cannon seems warped and bent. Ghoulish corpses litter the ground. Dried blood paints the path of chaos. Most of the corpses are nothing but the bones underneath. Some withered, others in poses that tell their own stories. It was a massacre.
Jared walks over to Rider, eying the tank, before swapping to glaring at her. He’s always been near death, and whenever it was his own fault or his squad for fucking up, he could always fix that. But because they risked their asses for morality, he almost got bit. And yet they still killed a schmuck and turned him. “I almost got turned. I would’ve been a Herald by now if I was any fucking closer to that horde.” He smiles grimly, grabbing her by the collar. “All because you wanted to find someone already dead.”
His thoughts raced. If she cared that much about morality, why did she let him turn the fucker in the first place? This was something else. “Even if the fucker took too long to turn, we would’ve had prime bait by the time we reached the farm.” His other hand grips itself into a fist. “You’re trying to fuck me over aren’t you? Stupid fucking bitch, you didn’t think I’d see this coming? First you turn Mike into a soft-hearted old man, and then you get him to exile me. And now you’re trying to finish me off.”
She opens her mouth to say something, one hand gently laying over his, to calm him down. “WELL TOO FUCKING BAD!” He’s knocked her on her ass, a kidney punch causing her to double over before he kicks her down from the side. With another kick to her dome, she lays on her back, and he stomps down on her stomach, causing her to wheeze out in pain.
Eliza rushes over as he pulls out his shotgun, aiming it at her. “Slave.” He growls out, a crazed smile on his face. Her face pales as she stops in her tracks, eying the barrel. “You joined her awfully quick. Been planning this for a while haven’t you?” She shakes her head whispering out a response. “DON’T FUCKING LIE TO ME!” He roars over her, smacking her with the butt of his gun.
She falls over, face bruised and lip split. He puts the barrel against her face. ”Come on. Say something stupid. Give me a reason to pull the trigger.” His eyes are wide, bloodshot and smile gone. A furious richtor of pain and paranoia.
Rider lets out a cough, getting back up with a bit of difficulty as she holds her stomach. “You…” she coughs again, blood splattering on the inside of her visor.“...ugh… you weren't exiled…” she takes off her helmet, making it easier for her to breathe. “Your king… Michael… your father.” He turns to her finally.
“He wants to make you a better man. Better than this.” She says, indicating the current situation. “You’ve spent most of your life making… enemies... that you expect everyone to be one.” She gasps, losing her breath. “Michael learnt that paranoia can kill you faster than… your enemies can… So he chose to make allies…”
“If everyone fears you, you will fear everyone in return.” Jared frowns, opening his mouth. “Michael doesn’t want you to make the same mistakes he did. He wants you to take over as a better version of himself.” His mouth snaps shut, surprise on his face. “He doesn’t want a tyrant, he wants you to become the next King.”
Jared stares at her. “Even then, why would I warn you about the zombies if I wanted you dead?” She laughs, with a wince. “Ow. I’m.. here to teach you, not kill you.” Jared looks down at the gun in his hand, and sighs as he holsters it, before quietly stepping over to a chair and sitting down in it.
He sulks in his own thoughts, as Eliza gingerly gets up, rubbing her face. Rider walks over to her, and they help each other hobble to another chair. “We'll camp here for a while to rest. Some food will do us good.”
“I could use a fucking drink…” Jared/Rider sigh out in unison. He looks at her, cracking a hidden smile and a cold one, handing it to her.
Some time later…
After a while of searching around, Rider finds a generator, and gives it a kick. It springs to life for only a moment before it shuts down again. But it was enough. With a few blinding lights from various spots, she found what she was looking for. “Eliza, Jared, come over.” she says, eager to teach her new allies. Her eagerness keeps her talking, but her lonesome mannerisms make her difficult to understand.
“The undead hate the sunlight, they are less active during the day and become much more dangerous at night. Now, normal light wouldn't do much to them, what really keeps settlements safe are ultra violet lights, the same as the sun’s wavelength. And lucky for us, here we have one with two bulbs!” she says, walking towards a portable work lamp. “Checkpoints like these were set up in between massacres. The old world learned too late about the weakness to sunlight.” she looks towards the tank “By the looks of it, a buster found its way here and wiped the checkpoint during the day.” she picks up the lamp “This little beauty puts out a hundred thousand lumens. Only way the buster would have gone past it and survived was during the day or if it was wearing protection." She hands it to Jared, who was ignoring her during the lecture, looking offended at the item suddenly in his hands.
“There's three more around here, let's find them”. The trio splits to look for the lights. Rider remembers one of the flashes of UV light came out of the window of a nearby trailer. Various wires lead into the back, with a couple signs over the front that have been covered in grime. It appears to be a place officials frequented. She pulls on the handle, stepping inside. She sees an open and empty crate with “IRF” engraved on its side in blue letters placed upon a table. There's a set of monitors next to it, despite the non functioning generator, she can see her companions through them. Eliza sorting through their loot bags, reorganizing it, and Jared glaring at anything that seems to piss him off.
A chair lays on the floor, and on its back is a lab coat. She leans down and picks it up, and reads the name embroidered above the breast pocket. “Dr. Relim…?” getting up from her squat, she bumps into the table, changing the display on the monitor. A video plays, it's dated from 6 years ago, 4 years after The End.
“This is Dr. Martin Relim speaking. Yes, Sir. No, Sir. We’re being overrun- Yes, Sir. Of course, Sir.” The tall man in the video spoke through a radio that Rider could barely hear a muffle through, and seemed to be fiddling with the crate from before, holding several vials. He starts arranging them into a padded briefcase that quickly fills up. He takes out one more, staring into the liquid intently. “We have a working prototype already, but we need more subjects, and the Immortui seem to become docile and die shortly after being injected.”
The doctor seems to get more agitated, pacing back and forth with the single, darker, syringe laying on the table. “Yes, it's only failures and all the subjects have turned and taken over. Sir to be frank, I need immediate evac from Outpost Sierra.- What? You’re leaving me here to die!? After all the work I've done for you!” He shouts into the radio, but a groan and bang from outside pulls his attention. He rolls up his sleeve quickly.
“I’ll see you in hell, bastard.” He throws the radio to the floor, smashing it with his foot, and injects himself with the darker syringe. He shakes his body around, jogging in the spot to ready himself. And then his body cracks, back arching into an impossible angle, his arms getting bent in and out of shape. A scream tears out of his throat, inhumane and grating. After a minute of lying on the floor, he finally gets back up, clothes torn but his body looking healthier somehow.
He turns to the camera, a toothy grin spreading across his face, his eyes stare directly into Rider’s. “Project Mephistopheles has been a success.” He turns towards the door, his body becoming darker and misty. He walks through the door.
“What in the hell?” The video continues playing, with the screams of the undead fading away. Rider looks to the door, seeing a figure made out of soot splayed across the door. She replays the video again, staring at the doctor, with a familiar feeling in her gut.
She’s knocked out of her intense viewing by a knock on the door. “Oi! Lapdog! Your slave’s found the lamps. Lets get the fuck out, there’s no food and shelters unsafe. I don’t wanna be here when the horde from before shows up.” she gives him a nod, but takes another look at the screen. She drops the lab coat, and heads outside. Rider looks towards Frankie. Eliza is playing with it, moving its arms to make it dance. Rider starts up her bike, and Jared yawns out, starting his up as well “Where to now?” he asks, cracking his neck.
“We’re off to the farmlands, once we’re there we’ll set up the lights and go to the offroad path, there I'll lead the horde away with the herald, and you pick them off from a distance” Jared’s eyes light up at the thought of putting his skills to good use. He shivers in anticipation, and follows Rider closely behind.
Closing in on the farm they can see a massive horde of 700 in number. Several other undead shamble over to the horde seemingly adding to its number as it travels. “This horde is way too small to be the beast… did it split up…?” Rider says, looking over the horde “I thought they all moved together, looks like this path is still unused.” she looks over to Jared “plans changed, i want to cull both paths, we’ll clear this horde then move on to the offroad after we set up the lamps”
“As long as I can pop some heads I don't care, let's roll!” he shouts out, riding off some ways away from the horde. Rider rolls up to the horde, enticing them with the herald, and speeding off with the horde in tow. Eliza picks up a crossbow. This crossbow is specialized with an autoloader, a Rider special. She locks in a magazine of bolts and pulls the cranks on the side, pulling back the string after every bolt shot turning it into a minigun.
She tears off the leg of a zombie, toppling it over, as it topples, some zombies stumble, the weight of the horde snaps their necks, easily clearing 10 with one bolt alone. Firing into a horde claims easy hits, but without precise shots or luck, kills are difficult to come by. Precision comes from a calm state, Jared up in a windswept cliff, picks them off with his rifle. He has 50 bullets, and at the right angle he can kill multiple at a time. And with the next 10 bullets he kills around 20 with direct hits that pass through the zombies skulls, and 17 with a toppled stampede.
But, like all guns in the modern world, it makes noise, and noise attracts the undead. While too far for the horde to hear, some stragglers who didn't join in time and are still around, make their way to jared. He takes his sledge, and turns around to face the 8 chasers behind him, cracking the head of one open like an egg. The force from the strike sends it flying off the cliff. One grabs at him, and holds it off with the handle of his sledge. With the closest hand to the head of the sledge, he pushes the zombie to ground, and crushes his head under his boot. “Who’s next?!” The 6 remaining chasers rush in to grapple onto Jared, he swings his sledge caving in the sides of zombies heads one at a time. He manages to kill 2 before being overpowered.
Jared struggles over the 4 zombies on him, his leather sleeves can only take so much, and so can he. The jacket is bite proof, but it does not nullify the pain. “what a fucking waste.” howling and cheering ring in his ears, he reminisces over the raids he once held. The revving of motorcycles and engines of SUVs. The sound of chains dangled on the arms of fellow raiders, enslaving anyone they saw fit. He can see it clearly. Only there was something different, these visions felt real. And real they were. A white pick up truck rusted to hell pulled up, it looked like a project car, a Frankenstein's monster of parts rivaling Frankie herself, farmers with pitchforks, scythes, and shovels in hand drew their attention. One of the farmers has a chain wrapped around a zombie’s neck, he pulls it back hard, snapping it in the process. Another stumbles over to the truck and takes the sharp end of the shovel to the chest.
Jared, seeing the opportunity, pushes back against the 2 zombies and thrusts the sledge into its head like a spear, punching another in the face with his knuckle studded glove “Holy shit! I thought I was done for! Who the hell are you guys?” he says, trying to catch his breath.
The driver pokes his upper body out through the sunroof “we’re the farmers you folks are helpin’! Im Raylen, i go by Ray, but in comms im farmboy!” He had the hard working farmer's body, his hair was as dark as the night and his eyes were as gray as the static on TVs. “Rider’s little friend Eliza radioed us, she said you were in trouble!” Jared scoffs, he hated the idea of owing a life debt to anyone. It usually meant enslavement.
“I don't need your help. I'm perfectly fine on my own.” he focuses back on Rider leading the zombies. It seems their numbers have gone down slightly. From the looks of it, about 50 short.
“Really? That's a shame. Guess we brought the flame thrower over for nothin” Ray sighs out.
“Flame thrower?” Jared looks back at them with a sparkle in his eyes.
The revving of Rider’s bike is quickly drowned out as the pick up enters the scene, Ray runs over several crawling zombies, as the farmers ready the flamer’s gas pack on Jared's back. A flame weeder modified into a dual nozzle monstrosity to cover more ground during the annual weed killing event. A violent grin is plastered on Jared’s face.
The truck drives around the horde and Jared torches the undead laughing all the while, while more dangerous, they are short lived. The farmers kill any hoarders that shift their focus on the truck. Eliza’s eyes widen in awe, observing Jared. Seeing the look on his face inspires her, she grabs more bolts from the bike’s saddlebags and fills the zombies with holes.
After a while a little under 300 zombies made up the horde, the area was littered with corpses. Rider was running out of fuel, and so was the flamethrower. Bolts had since run out, and the truck's engine was failing. The horde was catching up, and the truck slowed down. Their plan was coming to an end and they hadn't even finished the job. But Jared didn't see it that way, if fire was the best way to clear them out, then fire they will have.
He takes glass bottles out of his backpack, grabs a gas canister from the bed of the truck, pours in the gasoline, and stuffs torn rags in them. “Anyone got a light?” he says looking around, and after getting no for an answer, he lights the rag with the flamethrower. He tosses them onto the horde, and burns the remaining zombies to a crisp, it's a slow burn, but fire is effective. With a horde this size, several bottles, over 10 in number, are necessary. Thankfully the gas can has just enough for the job.
Rider rolls up to the truck “the beast split up, this horde was small, next one at the offroad site is gonna have numbers in the thousands. Also, I got you guys UV lamps, should shield you from the zombies, set them up here and at the offroad site.” Ray tilts his head, looking down at the ground.
“See that'd be fantastic but we don't have a spare generator. But, from what I remember, Jones does.” Rider quickly grabs her radio and switches channels.
“jones? Come in, over” she speaks into it.
“Mari-... Rider. What can I help you with? Over.” he responds, stammering over his words.
“Do you happen to have a spare generator I can have?” she questions him with a hopeful influx.
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“I… no. We don't.” his voice deepened in fear.
“Alright, thank you, over”. She looks over to Ray with a shrug.
“No, that can't be right. Could've sworn the generator of the old quarters district was still there.” he scratches his head in confusion.
“Old quarters district? What do you mean?” She's been to Jone’s settlement over a hundred times and she's never heard of it.
“The old quarters. six years ago it got overrun by zombies and was abandoned. The place is haunted to hell and back, but there should still be a working generator there, just out of fuel.” rider sits on her bike, thinking the situation over. If they're gonna finish the job, they need that generator. She hands over some UV lamps.
“Set these up near the main path, and run the cables somewhere in between both paths, that's where the generator will go. But first we have to clear that horde…” she looks up, they have a few hours before the sun begins to set. “But, it would be better if we split up. Otherwise by the time the generator gets here it'd be way too dark, and the horde would be a lot harder to cull. Although, it is strange that a horde would start mobilizing so early.” no real answer comes to mind. But the thought of the zombies evolving to something that can withstand sunlight worries her.
“Fuck it, fine.” Jared stares down Rider with an intense look in his eyes.
“What?” she asks, confused by his sudden words.
“I know you're gonna send me out there, basic pattern recognition. I'll go, but she's coming with me” he points to Eliza who becomes startled by his pointing.
“Alright, do you know the way?”
“No shit I do. I've held raids on that old fucker before you got in the way. Come on slave, we’re gonna go get my bike.”
After a while of riding in silence, they finally reach the fabled walls. Off his bike, Jared looms over the mountain of concrete rubble covering the clearly defined hole in the wall. The wall itself is massive. The very top is covered in rebar spikes in a shallow sea of cluttered razor wire. Every few feet hang unlit UV lamps that aim downwards. Jared looks at the ground, the ashen shadows of the undead litter the hard dirt fields. Eliza walks around the outer edge of the rubble.
“How do we get in?” Eliza asks, and Jared shrugs, looking at the top of the rubbled hill.
“Climb it.” he growls out, touching a piece of debris that makes up the blockade. It doesn't seem to budge, and so he begins to climb. It takes him about 4 minutes of careful climbing to reach the top, and as he does he takes a peek at the other side. The sight was horrifying. Undead were everywhere, around 20ft in between, only these were unlike anything he had seen before. There stood about 100, not a sizable horde, but it didn't look like a horde, not really. He quickly radios Rider.
“Hound, what the hell am I looking at? There are some weird fucking zombies here.” there's no response from Rider. “Hound?” still nothing “Dog!” he quietly shouts into the radio before realizing “I swear to fucking God woman. OVER!”
“Oroboros here, describe what you see, over.”
“Fuck you. Tall and lanky, around 8 feet. Dry black or dark blue skin, some small shit of red on their chests. No fingertips, just bone, most of them alone or in small groups.”
“Those are Draugr. They inflate their chests and let out a sonic wave. It can send anything its path flying. If it touches you point blank your internal organs turn to soup. That red sliver expands when their chests inflate, if you shoot it they explode, but be careful they're very fast”.
Their sight now made him uneasy. A deep feeling in his chest, like his heart had sunk. He kept his cool, and started to make his way down. Only it wasn't as easy as climbing up. Not all pieces of rubble are as stable. And since he can't see which he’s stepping on, he slips, toppling over a portion of the hill. Being toppled over, the wall is pushed in, making a loud thud with every cascading piece of broken down wall, this alerted the strange undead inside the walls.
Jared lays on the ground, he fell on his side with a loud thud of his own, his shoulder was dislocated and he could barely move. Eliza ran over to him to help him up, she struggled as hard as she could, but she wasn't strong enough to lift him up. At this point, several draugr made their way to the top of the hill. They looked around for a moment, though if you could call empty gazing eye sockets looking, you may be just as mad as these monsters. Their eyes are far gone, shriveled husks of their former selves, just as the people these monsters used to be. No, instead their hearing makes up for their loss of eyesight. Due to this, it's almost impossible to lose them from a distance. Their hearing range is almost deaf when you're right up close to it, where they are most vulnerable and powerless. Just be careful not to stab its chest, else you'll explode right alongside it.
Some of the draugr breathe in, inflating their chests like frogs, exposing the soft tissues hidden in the cracks in their chests. A shot is fired from behind the two of them, it hits one in its tissue and it bursts in a violent explosion toppling over other draugr beside it and some more debris. The two of them look back, a tall bearded man in a leather jacket and cowboy hat stands over them, his arm extended with the smoking barreled revolver in his hand. This, was Jones.
He puts his revolver away, and kneels down to lift Jared off the ground “come on, son, let's get ya out of here.” together he and Eliza drag Jared behind a large rock. Jones peeks over the rock, the draugr know exactly where they are, but they seem to be keeping their distance.
“Who… who the hell…” Jared tries to fight off a concussion, he tries to readjust himself to sit in an upright position, but winces in pain. Jones looks him over “the fuck are… you doin to me old man?” Jones lifts up his arm, pulls it towards him, then slams it back into place, relocating Jared's shoulder. The intense pain wakes him from his near concussive state. “AAAAAAAAA FUCK YOU MOHER FUCKER I’LL-” and just as it had appeared, the pain dissipates. He breathes in deeply and exhales sharply.
“There ya go, you're alright now. Now, mind tellin me why you two youngin’s are here at my walls? Somethin tells me yall aint here to join my settlement.” he says poking his head out just long enough for the draugr to inflate, and kills 4 that stand close with a single bullet.
“I'm here for your generator, old man.” he sits up, and grabs his crossbow, loading it up with a bolt. Eliza follows suit.
“My generator eh? I'd ask how you knew about it if I hadn't just told my daughter i dont have it. You must be one of her new friends I've heard about.” he peeks over again, some draugr are closer now.
“Wait-wait… Rider is your daughter??” Both Jared and Eliza are shocked by the revelation. He fires into the chest of a draugr mid scream.
“Aye she is. Where is Maria anyway?” he quickfires into three draugr beginning to inflate.
“Her name is Maria????” the overload of information might be causing the concussion to creep back. “She's at the farm, but wait- why are YOU here?”
“Aside from these being my walls, I figured she or someone from her group would be here anyway. I just thought I'd bring the generator out before anyone got hurt. I may be late, but at least I was on time.”
“Yeah i can see why you didnt want anyone here, those things are fucking terrifying.'' The screaming draugr also attracts some of the straggling chasers in the area.
“Well that's not the only reason. I didn't want Maria to relapse into mourning.” with one bullet left, he fires into a roaming chaser, then reloads.
“Mourning?” Eliza asks, firing a bolt into a chaser.
“Aye. Six years ago she was tasked with securing the wall, but I underestimated the size of the horde, and at night? Even worse. The lamps worked as intended, but she was trying to show off to her girlfriend, Frankie. Frankie slipped and fell into the horde. She dove in after her. I don't know how she survived, for the next 4 years I thought they were both dead, until she just showed up at the walls naked and pale as the snow. The only word she's ever said after we found her was Frankie.” he takes aim at a draugr “as far as i can tell she's got some sort of amnesia, any time we tried to bring her back to her old self she’d burst out in tears and scream in pain. Then, she’d just relapse back into her amnesiac state soon after.”
“So… Frankie isn't her rabbit…?” Eliza says to herself, and Jones, picking it up, responds.
“As far as she lets herself know, it is. That rabbit used to belong to the real Frankie, so there might be something to that.” he pulls the trigger, clearing a draugr group.
“So her girlfriend died. So what? She's gonna cry every time she hears what happened?" he thinks back to the lesbian raiders who’d thrive on abusing their fragile slaves. “What a fucking joke” the Rider of legend cant compare to his own people’s emotional resolve.
“Have some respect, boy. That girl is the bravest person I know. Despite the horrors of the world she still works hard to make it better. If it weren't for her your people and mine would be in an endless war, and this whole side of the country would be riddled in walking corpses. She’s single handedly cleared more hives than you’ve gone on raids. And that's just in the last 4 years she’s been back.”
Jared goes to say something, an angry retort on his lips, but frowns once he thinks about it. They haven’t had to go on a raid because Rider and the vultures inspired by her pretty much supply them at this point. Then he remembered the starving people on the outskirts of his Kingdom, the restless faces looking at each other, and the savages itching for a fight.
His face looks calm, with a dark glint in his eyes. “It won’t stay that way for long.”
The approaching horde’s assault is relentless. Eliza looks over the rock, it seems to be crumbling from the soundwaves. She grabs a broken piece, it's hefty. She notices the draugr’s faces, and their lack of eyes. “Echolocation?” she thinks to herself. She looks at the rock, then at Jones firing his gun. She looks around, seeing some chasers, and decides to chuck the stone at the ground in front of them.
The draugr immediately turns to face the rock, and she can't help but laugh when a soundwave sends a chaser flying into a tree. “Hah! Well done, slave. Bastards are blind, go do more of that distraction shit.” Her joy dims at the reminder. The look in her eyes shifts, and as a retort, she sprints over to his bike. “Hey, wait a fucking minute! THAT'S MY BIKE!”
His yelling attracts the draugr’s attention, Jared quickly muttering a curse and dropping to the ground.They're soon grabbed again by Eliza as she starts up Jared’s loud ass bike. She rides directly into the crowd of undead, and at the last second sends two draugr flying as they face each other trying to blow her away. The rest chase after her while Jone’s covers Jared’s mouth.
Jared pushes him off, and Jones hops over the rock, the younger man following, but the fall from before still has him limping slightly.”Fuckers like sound, I’m taking point.” He aggressively whispers to Jones, aiming his crossbow at a lone draugr who looks like a lost child in a shopping mall. The small body gets pinned to the floor with a bolt to the head.
The two venture into the desolate district, the power lines above lead to the main generator. Jones quietly signals up above them, pointing to the wires traveling across. The streets of the district are littered in decayed corpses. Jared scours the ground, looking for anything out of place, frowning at the sight of the many corpses that still have their craniums preserved in the battlefield.
“I see you have a sledgehammer. Ever tried smashing a watermelon?”
“No? That's wasteful and retarded. Zombie heads give a better splatter anyways.”
“Well there’s one now. Go on, give it your best.” Jones says pointing at a corpse missing its bottom half, the head somehow pointed straight at them. Jared frowns, moving left and right while he approaches it, and notes that its eyes very slowly seem to follow him.
Grinning, he unties the hammer from his back, giving the hammer a slight kiss, and hefts it up. “What's that one word for scoring in golf?”
“Hole-in-one?”
Jared smiles, “Yeah that's the one.” He swings the hammer like a club, the speed causing the head of the zombie to detach with a pop, and land in the middle of a tire further away. He coughs slightly, frowning and smelling the air, while moving on. “Is it just me or does it smell like death?”
The further in they go, the harder it gets to breathe. Like a choking miasma entangling them. The smell of rot grows stronger, as they make it to the main generator. At the generator they see a horrifying sight. A lone skeleton sits atop the giant generator, resting on a powered down pylon. Below the skeleton are hordes of charred zombies reaching upwards. Melted cables lay on them, and despite it all, the zombies were unwavering, yet whoever was here was fighting with all they could. A metallic glint from next to the skeleton drew their attention.
Upon closer inspection, the pair can see what exactly happened. A hole in the side of their head. “The air here, like gas waiting to light. If we turn that thing on, we’ll end up like these zombies.” looking around, the surrounding buildings were burnt.
Jared looks the generator up and down. “No fucking way that thing’ll fit on my bike. Its like the size of a fucking car!”
“Fortunately for you, that's not the generator we’re looking for. The one we want is a private generator specifically used to keep someone alive.” there's a sorrowful look in Jones’ eyes.
“Okay so where is it? Hospital?”
“No… I know where it is.” Jones leads Jared to a fairly sizable residence. He takes out a keyring from his waist, and opens the locked door. Jared is somewhat taken aback. Jones stands in the living room, and he looks up the stairs for a long while. But they make their way to the basement. Another locked door opened by Jones’ key.
“There's the generator. Unhook the cables and carry it out, I need to… check on something.” Jared rolls his eyes and kneels down near it.
Jones slowly makes his way upstairs. He stands in front of another locked door. He takes off his hat, and places it to his chest. Slow whispery breaths can be heard at the other side of the door. As tears leave his eyes, he looks to his right to a table with dried flowers in a dusty vase emptied of water. Next to it, a picture frame. A man with black hair and beard standing next to a blonde woman, between them a small girl that resembles the woman in the picture.
He picks up the frame and his tears wash away the dust. “I'm sorry, Maisy, I know we haven't seen each other in some six years. I know my cowardice keeps you suffering. I lost our daughter, and I can't bring myself to face you. I know you're not yourself… You haven’t been for a long while now. I'm a failure as a husband, as a father, as a man.” The whispering turns to groans, and he holds the picture close to his chest. “I love you dearly, and I miss you every single day.”
He places the frame in his jacket, and makes his way down stairs to Jared, who’s limp makes the generator difficult to drag out. He grabs Jared’s shoulder, and without a word, picks up the generator in both arms. Together they walk out, Jared with a crossbow in hand. Eliza seems to have lost the draugr out in the woods, and is waiting for the two to step out.
“There you have it, the fabled generator. Hopefully now that we cleared most of the zombies, I can begin rebuilding this lost district, and call it home once again.” Jones looks up “it's getting dark. You best hurry before hordes become active.
Jared ties the generator to his bike, and picks up Eliza with one hand, and plops her down in the back seat. A growl leaves his lips, “My bike.” And he gets on.
“Thank you, Rider’s dad!” Eliza waves as Jared speeds off. Jones tips his hat, and looks back at the damaged wall. He takes out the picture frame, and begins his walk to the entrance of his settlement.
The two ride off, Eliza still thinks of what Jones had revealed to them. “That was a lot to take in…” Jared chuckles at her word choices.
“It's odd isn't it. She dove head first into a horde for her bitch. And yet, she came out unscathed. Well, four years later.”
She thinks back to when she first saw her face, that feeling she got then. And remembering her behavior near the bandit they’d end up turning.
“Wonder if I can use her name like a dog whistle.” Jared mumbles to himself, staring ahead, focused.
Eliza overhears this and pinches and pulls on his ear “With great power comes great responsibility!!”
Jared stops the bike, pulling her off of it immediately and throwing her to the floor. “Listen here slave. You’re that dogs bitch, and while she doesn’t care how you speak with her, I’m Jared, the future King, and the next time you do that shit I’m going to make your fingers into pasta.”
Eliza looks up at him fearfully, squeaking and flinching as he approaches her rapidly and picks her up. Getting her back on the backseat, he holds her wrist tightly, lips close to her ear. “Or maybe I’ll make good on my promise from before she bought you.”
Disengaging, he sits back down, and restarts the bike, a smile pulling at his lips as Eliza reluctantly grabs onto his back with shaky hands, a sob almost escapes her.