Robotics and Necrotics (Book 1): As Nations Fall

by Vale, Silas

  She grabbed her backpack and walked out into the rest of the store, holding the radio under one arm. "You good?" She asked as she walked into the main portion of the store. "Should I just pack up as much food as I can?" She looked around and grabbed a mint chocolate granola bar for breakfast. Very healthy.

  "Yeah, but make sure it's the fattiest stuff. We kinda need the calories now, so no more low-calorie diets. If you were into that kinda thing." He scoffed. He had always eaten decently healthy, but he wasn't one to pass up on pretty much half a pie if it were offered to him.

  Shaun was pretty sure he would kill another man for a slice of pie these days.

  He left her in the front of the store and looked around in the staff office. There wasn't much around, besides the desk in the middle of the room. Shaun had never been a religious man; but he prayed to every God he had ever heard of before he opened that drawer.

  There are two walkie-talkies in here.

  He could have jumped for joy, but decided instead to slide them into his pockets. He walked back out to the front of the store, where Aisling was packing her bag with food, and presented her with both of the tiny radios.

  "Here you are." He said, a grin on his face. He couldn't believe his luck with this place.

  Besides the dead guy.

  "Oh, sweet!" She looked up from where she was loading a plastic bag she had found. Her face lit up with a grin, and she set the bag down to take both of the walkie-talkies. "This is great. I can probably do something with these." She put them both in her backpack, and picked up the plastic bag full of food.

  "I've filled up part of my backpack with food, too. This should be enough to get us to that settlement- if it's there. If not, we should come back here." She hesitated. "… Honestly, I'm a little bit nervous." She bit the inside of her lip, and shifted her weight from foot to foot. After a moment, she walked over to the window and touched her fingers to the glass.

  "I mean- it's freezing out there. Which is good in the sense that walkers will be frozen, but…" She furrowed her brows as she studied the snowy winterland just outside the glass. "We're going to have to spend at least one, if not two more nights out there depending on how fast we're moving. What happens if we don't find a place to stay like we did this time?"

  Shaun nodded his head, his face grim. He had been having the same thoughts, and honestly, he didn't know what would happen. He didn't know if they could survive a night out there, with the temperature rarely reaching above negative thirty. He looked at their meager sleeping bags, which were only truly meant to be used from zero degrees upwards. They didn't have clothes meant for temperatures anywhere near this cold.

  "I don't know. But if we stay here, we'll eventually attract attention. People will come by like we did, and they probably won't hesitate to pull a gun on a couple of kids. We won't be able to take a group." He tried to think rationally, but all he could think was, we should just stay here.

  "We should try to get to the compound. There'll be protection there. How about we hike out for a half day, and if we don't find anything, we hike back the rest of the day. That way we'll have a place to stay tonight, and an idea of how far we have to go tomorrow."

  He was surprised with himself. That was actually a really good plan.

  She thought over his words for a moment or two before nodding. "Okay. That sounds good." She turned back towards him. "We should take a quick look for anything we could use to keep warm. Like those icy-hot packs or gloves and shit like that." She moved past him to walk up and down the shelves.

  She silently stepped across a trail of semi-dried blood that had oozed across the floor. It was surprising how much a person could hold, truthfully.

  "Like this." She lifted up a box of said icy-hot hand warmers. "They're like little packs-" she opened the box, "-that you shake and after like five minutes they get really warm and they can heat up your hands or you stick em' in your boots to keep your toes warm." Aisling peered inside of the box. "There are four packs in here, so eight total. Two in each."

  Shaun nodded his head. "That means we can put one in each glove and each boot. That'll be nice, those are the places that usually get the coldest." He shivered, thinking that in his case, his leg was what actually got the coldest. Damn ice.

  "We'll need hats; a good majority of our body heat escapes through our head. We need to be able to counteract that." He couldn't believe he remembered that from his college biology course, but he did. And therefore he walked over to the clothing section, where he found two beanies that were suited to the cold. One was pink, and one was a dark blue.

  Shaun, obviously, pulled the hot pink beanie onto his head. It contrasted heavily with his jet black hair, and he laughed a bit. He pulled the blue one onto Aisling's head, making sure it didn't cover her eyes. The blue stood out against her bright orange hair, and he kind of liked the effect it had.

  "I'll never lose you in the snow with that hair. Now you'll never lose me." He said, pointing to the bright pink monstrosity on his head.

  She snorted, and started giggling as she reached up to slightly adjust the beanie on her head. "Now you can't ditch me if you get too annoyed with me. I'll always be able to find you." She beeped his nose with her finger and handed him two of the packs of icy hots. "There you go. They last for like 10 hours or some shit and there's another box there that I'll grab."

  She walked over to the counter and pulled herself up onto it, tearing open the packs she had and shaking them to activate whatever powders inside heated up the palm-sized bags. "Do you think there's anything else here we should grab?" She peeled off her boots to stuff two of them in the end. "I mean, we have food, something to keep us a little warmer, walkie-talkies…" She hummed. "Water."

  She slid her boots back on and skipped over to the drink coolers at the back. "… Looks like there's other stuff left here too. Do you want just water or something like iced tea or an energy drink?"

  Shaun realized something for the first time that he should have realized the moment he arrived. His eyes widened, his nostrils flared, and his slight smirk morphed into a full-out grin.

  "Holy shit. I bet you the coffee machine works."

  He practically sprinted over to the machine, where there were ground beans in a canister next to it. He pulled out the filter with practiced ease, even though it had been a year, and poured the grinds into a new filter. He laid it into the machine, closed the top, pressed the power button, and presto.

  Holy shit I'm actually going to get coffee-

  Shaun had, during his time in university, acquired an unhealthy addiction to caffeine. Coffee in particular. The zombie apocalypse had pretty much put a stop to that, but now… He could have coffee, at least one more time.

  "Is there hot chocolate? Can I make a mocha?" Ais whirled around with a gasp. Before the apocalypse, she practically lived off of a mixture of sugar and caffeine, and sometimes leftovers that her mother would bring when she'd come to visit. She flew over the counter, slamming her hands down onto it and bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet with excitement.

  "… I'm gonna see if there are thermos' around here. We're loading the fuck up." She darted away from the counter to go search through the aisles of the convenience store once again.

  After a moment or two, there was a gasp from her direction, and she sprang up from where she had been kneeling. Thermos in hand, she jabbed her arm up towards the roof victoriously. "Aha!" She grinned. "I found some!"

  "Bring like six of them, we're unloading clothes if we have to. Jesus, I'm packing for days, man. And we're coming back tonight, too. I can already taste it." Shaun's mouth was practically watering at the thought of the hot liquid running down his throat, the thought of the caffeine buzz prominent in his mind. He had missed it too much.

  He wished there was a way to bring the coffee machine with them, but he knew it would be useless without power. He honestly wished they could just bring the entire store with them, because it had everything that they needed.

>   That was, of course…

  Until the power went out.

  The lights shut off. The heater stopped humming. The freezers went dark.

  "Fuck."

  Aisling lowered the thermos. "Shit." She bit the inside of her lip and quickly shuffled back over to Shaun. She grabbed her staff from where she had fastened it onto her bag and went quiet as she tried to listen for anything around the building.

  After a moment, she looked up at Shaun, the telltale signs of worry beginning to stretch across her face. "… Do you think that was deliberate?" She whispered. "Fuck- I can probably fix it, but I don't know if it's because of the snow, or if…" She really didn't want to face what could be an ugly truth. "… Someone cut the power to flush us out."

  She squared her jaw and moved to the counter to look behind it. "There's gotta be a knife around here somewhere. And tools."

  Shaun's mind had immediately gone to foul play.

  "Maybe… Maybe it's been run on a generator, and the generator ran out of gas." He said hopefully, really wishing he believed that. "Maybe that guy's been replenishing the gas every once in a while, so when he didn't, the generator quit." It was sound logic, and any other time, it would have been believable. At that time, however, in that place, neither of them believed it was true.

  There was a rack of pocket knives at the front of the store, still locked in a glass case. With a sock over his hand, Shaun broke the glass, and pulled out the one with the largest blade he could find. He also pulled out the gun that the man had and checked the chamber. Seven rounds. That would probably, hopefully, maybe be enough.

  He nodded to the back door and whispered, "Follow me."

  He crept slowly, deliberately, toward the door marked, 'Exit'. The red sign had gone out, and he found it morbidly funny that it was the first time he had ever seen one of those exit signs unlit. He put his hand on the cold metal knob and began to twist it.

  As he threw open the door, he found…

  A boy.

  Ais grabbed what tools she could find from around the store anyways and stuffed them into her jacket pockets as she hustled to follow Shaun over to the back door. She bit the inside of her lip, silently pressing herself up against the wall as Shaun swung the door open.

  … Oh.

  Her mind took a second to quietly reboot to process what exactly she was seeing. How the hell did a five-year-old get all the way out here? After a second of slack-jawed gawking, she shoved Shaun to the side, as a gun and a knife would probably scare the kid, and knelt down. "Hey, kiddo." God, she was not good with kids. Her mother was always better at this shit than she was. "What are you doing out here? Are you alone?" Her brows furrowed with concern.

  The little boy was shivering. Intensely.

  Shaun had been right; the store had been running on generator power. The little boy had disconnected the cables and had plugged them into a tiny space heater he had with him. The amount of heat it gave off was pathetic, barely noticeable, and he held the heater tightly in his arms.

  "N-n-nobody…" He said, and that was the only word his blue lips could manage. The boy was small; slight of build, with bright blonde hair and hauntingly blue eyes. His face was sallow, bitten by the wind, and his jacket looked like it was barely hanging onto him.

  "Bring him inside." Shaun said immediately, putting the weapons away. "I'll get out my sleeping bag." The kid needed to warm up, and fast. His fingers and toes would probably be frostbitten, and he didn't want to have the kid in pain.

  "Hey, come on. Let’s get you inside." Aisling shuffled outside, quickly switching around the cables to restore power to the building again. "Hey, uh… You should deal with the guy." She called into the building after Shaun, and ushered the child into the back hallway. She quietly shut the door behind him and unzipped her coat to wrap it around his shoulders.

  She pursed her lips as she looked him over, anxiety tugging at her chest. Poor kid.

  With that, she knelt down again and pressed both of her palms to his cheeks to warm them. "What’s your name?" She smiled at him. "I’m Aisling. My friend who’s back there is Shaun. He might look silly with his pink hat, but he’s really nice." She smirked slightly, knowing full well Shaun would be able to hear her. "We’ve got lots of food, and we’re gonna get you warmed up, okay?"

  The kid was still shivering, and crossing from the cold outdoors to the warm indoors caused massive goosebumps to rise all over his skin.

  "I-I do-don't know my n-name. They c-call me I-Iyce." He stuttered. Iyce. A peculiar name, to be sure, but it suited him. His cold blue eyes were piercing, almost all-knowing. He was small, but he looked like he had seen all the crap the world had to throw at him.

  And in the apocalypse, well, maybe he had.

  Meanwhile, Shaun was in the front of the store, dragging the dead body through the front doors. He held them open, cursing as the cold wind bit at his skin, and dragged the body out into the snow. Maybe it would deter any would-be bandits from entering the gas station.

  He came back inside and walked over to where Aisling and the kid were standing. He picked up his sleeping bag and unrolled it onto the floor. "Here, crawl in here." He said, a warm smile on his face. Iyce did so, and to Shaun's surprise, promptly closed his eyes. Within moments, they heard quiet snores coming from his tiny frame.

  Aisling stared at the child for a moment or two before she sighed, lifting her hands to her face to dragging them down her cheeks. "Poor kid." She raised her gaze to Shaun, a tired, weary look in her eyes. It was different with adults, that kind of suffering. Something about it being children instead seemed to stress her out. "I guess we should probably wait a bit to set out, huh?" She moved a hand to the back of her neck. "We can’t just leave him here. He’s not gonna survive on his own, and I honestly can’t really believe he’s alive to begin with."

  After a moment of contemplation, she knelt down and took the icy-hot packs from her gloves and gently stuck them by the child’s hands to warm them up faster. "What do we do?"

  Shaun was stuck in a predicament.

  He had never been much good with kids. He simply couldn't deal with their constant bugging and questions, and yet, this child seemed to be different. And even though he didn't like kids much, he could never, with good conscience, leave one out to die like that.

  "I say we take him to the settlement with us. Then whatever adults are there can try to figure out where he's from. Maybe one will adopt him." Shaun said aloud. It seemed like a reasonable enough plan, but he hated that they would be staying at the gas station another day. He was still fearful someone would come through that door, guns blazing.

  "We shouldn't stay in the open part of the store. It would be better to find a small room, like the one we were in, and close the door. That way the heat would remain for a while if the power goes out for real."

  Even though the power was only out for a few moments, the chill of the outside had wafted into the greater part of the store.

  "But I suppose we could wait until he's rested."

  "Yeah." She nodded in agreement. "… We could move him. He’s little, and honestly I don’t think he’s going to wake up." She shook her head. "Fuck, I don’t know how to deal with kids." She leaned against the wall and thumped the back of her head against it.

  She took a deep breath to calm herself down and shut her eyes. "Let’s just stay here for now. Let him sleep and get him warmed up. Then maybe tomorrow we can set out for real. But for now maybe I’ll try and lock this place down so if anyone wants to get in, we’ll have plenty of warning before they do." She opened her eyes and looked back over at Shaun. "Does that sound like a good idea?" Her brows furrowed slightly. This wasn’t a question that was meant to make him agree with her, but more genuine. She was good with machines, but the same couldn’t always be said about her with other human beings.

  Shaun looked to her, noting the uncertainty lacing her eyes. She was scared, and so was he; there wasn't much control out there. But he nodded his head, putting up a s
mile for her benefit. "Sounds brilliant. There are probably chains around here somewhere, and we can wrap the handles of all the doors and lock them down."

  He looked down to the kid, who was in such a deep sleep that his breathing was barely noticeable. It was the kind of sleep you fell into after days without it, and Shaun could understand that. He hated seeing someone so young affected like this; his parents had probably been bitten trying to protect him. Shaun had no idea how he'd survived out in the cold by himself.

  He perused the shelves, eventually finding chains and padlocks and bringing a few over to Aisling. "You get the back doors, I'll make sure the front is secured." He said, and with that, made his way towards the glass front of the tiny gas station.

  "Alright." She nodded, walking over to the back door and wrapping the chains tightly around the handles. She clicked the lock onto them and moved on to an emergency exit to do the same. Once she was done, she walked over to the front of the store to find Shaun. "… You think there are coverings for these windows anywhere?"

  She walked up to the windows and hopped up onto the counter so she could reach the top, seeing if there was a sort of pull-down mechanism she could use. Disappointed when she found nothing, she crossed her arms in front of her chest. "We should try and make this place look desolate and uninhabited." She hummed, tilting her head to the side as she thought.

  A lightbulb went off in her brain, and she jumped off the counter. "I bet we can turn the lights off in the front of the store here."

  Shaun would have nodded his head at her. He really would have, because that sounded like a brilliant idea.

  That was, of course, until he saw the group of three people a few hundred yards from the door. At least one of them, Shaun could tell, carried a high-power hunting rifle.

  "Aisling, get behind the counter." Shaun hissed quietly, pulling her around to the side. He ducked behind it and pulled her down with him. He pulled the pistol from his belt, checking the rounds once again. Seven shots. Three people. He had a fair chance, at least until they noticed him.