Rise of the Night Stalkers

by Kurtis Eckstein

  Granted, as we both scanned the streets far below, neither of us saw any signs of life.

  The majority of the city was truly a wasteland. A ghost town, full of hibernating monsters.

  Finally, I dropped down about a mile away from the church and flew low as we neared it.

  We both sighed in relief when we found my stash exactly where I had left it. Granted, I knew I was just being paranoid, especially considering this would have been an extreme distance for Lindsay to travel on foot, not to mention the associated risk of encountering me while she was so weak.

  Having dropped the tire off on the pavement as planned, I walked up a set of concrete steps and through the large wooden doors, discovering a set of glass doors just inside. It was obvious the building was quite old, but had been modernized within.

  The interior antechamber was nearly pitch-black of course, except for the sanctuary, which allowed sunlight to pour through the numerous stained-glass windows. Everything was still intact, including all the pews on the ground floor, as well as those on a balcony in the back, as if this place hadn’t been deserted for months.

  Eventually climbing up a set of stairs, with the makeshift bag in hand and Harper still on my back, I found the way up into the bell tower, which had an upper room like I imagined. The only problem was that a narrow spiral staircase appeared to be the only method of entrance, and I was an above-average sized humanoid. At least I felt confident I could fit through the trap-door style opening, but it would be easier for me to climb on the outer edge, rather than try to get up there by curving around the steps like a normal person.

  Thus, considering Harper was still a little weak, I dropped my catch and pulled her in front of me in order to place my hand on her rear and push her towards the ceiling with one arm, intending to shove her through the opening. Then, once she was inside and confirmed it would work for what we needed, I brought my tail around while holding onto the upper railing, my blade springing out in order to slice through the metal bars.

  A few strikes and I was able to peel away a whole section of the railing while leaving the stairs intact, allowing me to climb up the side like I intended, without having to try to squeeze myself onto the top steps. Now, I could comfortably hoist myself up through the opening, and climb into the small square room.

  Of course, it wasn’t as large as the boiler room, but once I got the tarp of isopods up there too, we discovered it was still spacious enough. While smaller than a typical bedroom, I could lay out flat without touching the walls, indicating that it was at least seven-by-seven feet, if not a little bigger.

  This was also the location of the wheel-like contraption used to ring the bell, with the cables and pulley-system appearing to be inside the stone wall. There was also a small rug on the floor, but otherwise the room was bare.

  There was no way to see or get to the actual bell from this room, the ceiling being solid.

  After taking a moment to get settled, we both began working on our own isopod, with me being full after only eating a fifth of one, leaving me with 47 points digesting. At that rate, I estimated we had several thousand points to work with between the seventeen parasites, which was amazing in its own right.

  Honestly, in my opinion, my own personal quest to save the humans had a much better reward than the system’s ‘Target Practice’ quest, though I certainly didn’t underappreciate the Area of Effect skill that I had obtained. But still, getting rewarded with ‘experience points’ essentially was much more in line with what I’d expect as a realistic reward from a game.

  And thus far, Harper hadn’t asked for the details on where I found these, sensing that I was hiding something from her, but willing to respect that desire. Likewise, I had successfully managed to keep it completely out of my thoughts, locking it away as if it had never even happened.

  I knew I might slip up one day, but for now my focus was ironclad and Harper wasn’t attempting to pry, knowing that I was specifically trying to protect her from something.

  Once I was finished eating, I patted Harper on the head before climbing back out of the room with the intention to barricade all the ground-floor entrances. She was well aware that I had no intention on taking her with me, and that after I was finished I would be leaving, so she closed the trap-door behind me.

  Considering that the church had locks on the doors that had gone unused on the front ones, I started off by just locking them. I thought about doing more to seal the place up, such as by ripping out the pews, but honestly the thick wooden doors were a better barrier than everything else I had created thus far. And if something could break through them, then it could easily break through a wall of pews as well. Still, I’d rather be safe than sorry, so I ended up yanking up pews anyway and piling them in between the wooden doors and the glass ones.

  I then did the same to two other side doors, making sure entry wasn’t possible.

  Granted, for Night Stalkers, a closed door could be good enough to blind them from seeing an entrance, so long as they didn’t sense any heat coming from the cracks.

  Thus, with that done, the only real issue I faced was figuring out how I would get in and out myself, without allowing others to do so.

  My solution ended up being simple.

  The upper floor over the lobby, which led to the balcony in the sanctuary, had more normal windows installed on each end of the hallway. And, the windowsill was plenty large enough to stand on from the outside, so I figured I could just fly onto the stone ledge and open the unlocked window to get in and out.

  It was basically the same setup as our old home, except not as tall. Still, a normal Night Stalker would have no reason to attempt entry that way, even if they had some capacity to get up that high.

  Deciding I had done all I could do, and knowing that Harper was basically hidden away in a closet inside a small fortress, I finally let her know mentally that I was leaving.

  At first, she wished me goodbye, only for us both to quickly realize that such a sentiment was pointless now that the telepathy went both ways. Even while she was silent most of the way back, her mental presence kept me company continuously.

  It was actually kind of nice, despite what I originally imagined.

  Thus, with a big ass tire in hand, I flew in the direction of the soldiers, only deciding to make one stop along the way. Considering the entire betrayal was all assumption at this point, I wanted to verify that Lindsay really had stolen the isopod, only to end up feeling a new wave of anger wash over me when I confirmed it was true.

  Hopefully for her, I’d never come across her ever again, because I had no intention of letting this go. If I did see her, I’d hunt her down without mercy.

  Oddly enough, just like how the situation with Sarah rubbed me the wrong way, this did too, eliciting powerful emotions that seemed to come from nowhere. I knew it had to be from something I had experienced as a human, but of course I had no memory of what had happened to stir up such rage in my heart.

  Honestly, I felt like I could have lost myself in that rage, had it not been for Harper, her mental presence serving as an anchor in a violent storm. In the end, I was able to push it aside to focus on the next task at hand – dealing with the soldiers, and hopefully learning more about the apocalypse that had created the Night Stalkers.

  Chapter 21: Assault

  Ah, shit!

  Seriously?!

  Seriously!

  The dumbass soldiers were gone! Dammit, they must have had two spare tires! Those bastards!

  Shit.

  I just stared at the spot where they should have been, while flying in the air, before climbing higher to scan the area, searching for any signs of their vehicle on the horizon. Of course, it had been at least an hour since then, and that was more than enough time to have disappeared somewhere far away, assuming they could drive as fast as they wanted.

  But wait.

  Could the system locate them?

  Activating systemic assist.

  Processing…<
br />
  No detectable enemies within vicinity.

  Dammit.

  Annoyed, I tossed the spare tire I was carrying to the ground, wishing it would break or something, instead of bouncing fifty feet back up into the air, before falling, only to do it again.

  Ugh, whatever.

  Well, I supposed calling them dumbasses wasn’t accurate. On the contrary, from their perspective, they were smart to not wait around for a potential enemy to force them to take ‘said enemy’ back to their base.

  Really, doing such an act would probably be treason or some shit, but still…

  I was hoping to get some answers, and the last thing I needed was to get on the military’s bad side, like Savannah suggested. It was bad enough I had to deal with enemy Night Stalkers – I didn’t want to deal with bombs and missiles too.

  Stupid humans.

  Deciding there was nothing else I could do about it, not even having a clue of where their base was located, or how far away, I began flying back from where I had come. Technically, I could just go in the direction the humans had been traveling and hope I get lucky, but they could have changed directions in any which way, and even a minor shift would make a huge difference after thirty or forty miles. Not to mention, the idea that they were headed in a straight line the whole way just seemed way too unlikely.

  And I didn’t want to waste hours trying to track them down, when I instead needed to be focusing on strengthening my stats, and giving Harper fire magic.

  Which was exactly what I was going to do for the next few days, after I paid the humans at the hospital a short visit.

  ‘Can I come?’ Harper’s voice chimed in my mind.

  I hadn’t been focusing on her at all, forcing her to do the mental equivalent of a yell to get through to me, though it didn’t come through as a yell in my head – it just required more effort on her end to be heard.

  ‘I guess,’ I agreed, since it was still daylight out.

  Jeez, so much had happened in just one day, between the powerplant shit and then Harper getting kidnapped, not to mention Lindsay’s betrayal. I could certainly use another string of days where no new shit happened, though if I wanted to ensure that we remained unbothered, then I needed to try to figure out a way to avoid being tracked by the military.

  Considering that thought, I looked up into the sky above as I flew, scanning for any signs of something that might be a drone. Really, assuming the military wasn’t full of idiots – which thus far they had proved quite intelligent overall – they probably had a drone already waiting for me to return with the tire, so that it could begin tracking me.

  However, even glancing behind me, I didn’t see anything.

  ‘System! Can you locate a drone?’

  I assumed it was a shot in the dark, but it couldn’t hurt to try.

  Processing systemic assist request…

  Establishing electrometric protocol…

  Complete.

  Electrometric Protocol Established.

  Evaluating proximal vicinity…

  Complete.

  Upgrading systemic assist.

  Instantly, a single sphere appeared at the upper edge of my vision, with it remaining there as I looked up, indicating to me that whatever the system had detected was both above and behind me.

  Beginning to circle around, I looked up at the sphere, finally noticing the faintest pinpoint of gray in the center. There was no detectable heat-signature, making my sharp color vision the only reason why I could barely perceive it with my physical eyes.

  There were two problems though. For one, as fast as I was, I doubted I could catch up to a drone if the military decided to outfly me. And since they were probably focused on me already, they would notice my approach.

  And the second issue was that I didn’t think my base fire magic skill, Heat-Ray Pulse, could reach that far, never mind the near impossibility of being accurate! Moving my hand a tenth of an inch would be enough to miss at this distance!

  So I had to get closer somehow, and I had to increase the range of my attack – it was powerful up close, but it lost steam quickly. Technically, I could use my skill Heat-Particle Boost to close the distance, but it was a major resource guzzler, and I hadn’t completely filled up to capacity, my one meal only bringing my resources to 47 points total, as opposed to my maximum of 57 resources.

  Was there a way I could increase the distance of my attack?

  Processing enhancement request…

  Analyzing handler biometric values…

  Complete.

  Displaying applicable handler biometric values…

  Thermoacoustic: 25

  Valid.

  Detecting available upgrades…

  Skill: Heat-Ray Pulse [Stage 2] upgrade available.

  Estimated Resource Requirement (Efficiency): 19

  Estimated increase in range: +370

  Estimated new resource requirement: 0.10

  Whoa, a decrease in resources from 0.25 to 0.10? That was a huge deal! I could get ten shots out of a single resource, instead of only four! Hell yeah! Sign me up!

  Assigning resources…

  Complete.

  Current Fire Magic Skills: Heat-Ray Pulse [s1], Heat-Wave Burst [s1], Heat-Particle Boost [s1]

  Upgrading Skill…

  Complete.

  Upgraded Fire Magic Skill: Heat-Ray Pulse [s2]

  Effect: Continuous fire

  Resource Requirement: 0.10

  Distributable Resources: 28

  Continuous fire, huh? I wondered why it displayed the effect this time, whereas it hadn’t for my other skills prior to using them. Was it because this was an upgrade, instead of a new skill entirely?

  I honestly didn’t know, although I supposed it had told me for the Heat-Particle Boost skill…

  And why was the system only now telling me about the availability of this upgrade?! Shouldn’t it be possible for me to see all upgrades available for the Thermoacoustic Skill?

  Processing biometric request…

  Complete.

  Displaying applicable handler biometric values…

  Thermoacoustic: 25

  Valid.

  Detecting available upgrades…

  Invalid.

  Result: Thermoacoustic insufficient. No available upgrades.

  Seriously? This system can’t display possible upgrades? Or possible skills that were obtainable?

  Shitty game.

  When nothing else showed up, I groaned internally, realizing I needed to take care of this drone problem before whoever was controlling it realized I had spotted them.

  Knowing my best course of action was to try to just go for it as fast as possible, I pulled up my available resources with the intent to mentally divide them between the two skills I would be using. I had no idea how fast this new upgrade would drain my points, so I figured that of the 28 I had available, I’d use 20 resources to try to get as close – and as fast – as possible, and then use the remaining 8 points to shoot it down.

  Hypothetically, that would be 80 shots with this new reduced resource requirement, but I had no idea how continuous fire would affect that result.

  Hopefully 8 points would be enough.

  Ready to strike, vibrant red cracks formed on my body, pinpricks of glowing red light beginning to float all around me in the air. Beginning to fly as fast as I could with my wings, I aimed upwards, fighting gravity in an attempt to close the gap, propelled by the heat coming from my body. Just as before, my resources rapidly declined by 1 point every few seconds, until I was finally almost at 10 points, being down by 18, so I held up my hand to aim.

  The vibrant red cracks grew brighter on my arm, converging into the palm of my hand.

  Instantly, the white rings in my vision collapsed onto the sphere and I let out a stream of white-hot energy that erupted away from me like a rocket, except this time I kept the blast going, my resources depleting much faster than I would have assumed, especially given the lower requirement per sho
t. But I supposed a continuous blast was like five shots a second, considering my resources were now dropping by about a point every two seconds.

  Meaning, I only had sixteen seconds to make this work.

  I half expected for the targeting sphere to disappear right away, but it didn’t, instead the series of rings reappearing.

  Dammit!

  I quickly moved my hand over just slightly, keeping the blast going, knowing I was about to run out.

  Then, suddenly the targeting sphere disappeared.

  Target Destroyed.

  Distributable Resources: 3

  Dammit, that was too close for comfort. At least for me.

  Sure, I doubted the drone had the capacity to fight back, but allowing the humans to see where my home was could be inviting death to my doorstep – ironic, since our new home was in a church. But, at least this way we could visit the hospital and get back home before they got another drone out here to try to track us down.

  And then we would just have to see what we did after that, since destroying one of those things cost me almost all my resources.

  If only there was a way to increase my storage capacity somehow.

  But, right now, my primary goal was just getting stronger, which meant we didn’t have any reason to go anywhere, considering how many isopod points we had available. I knew Harper would want to visit her family, even without reading her thoughts, but otherwise we just needed to level our stats as fast as possible.