by Arthur Stone
“Depends on the person and the situation. Somebody in as bad shape as I am needs a whole bottle of the stuff, but a small cup each day is fine if you’re in good health and not under too much stress. And if you have not a scratch on you and have somehow found your way to living a life of ease, a liter is more than enough for a week. Two spores’ worth, that is.”
They heard a muted scratching sound from beyond the door. Fisher, startled, let out a barely audible whisper. “What the hell is that? I’ve never heard those things creep around that quietly before.”
“That’s not one of them.”
Boiler opened the bolt and pulled the door up a few inches. Charcoal slipped underneath, sauntered over to the corner across from Fisher, sat down next to a pile of tires, and began to lick his paws.
“A cat!”
“Yeah. His name’s Charcoal.”
“So he’s yours?”
“He and I met on the road.”
“So he’s like your dog, then.”
“Watch your mouth. He’s no idiot. If he figures out what you just compared him to, he’ll hold a grudge till we’re all dead.”
Fisher let out a quiet laugh, sprinkled with small fits of coughing.
“You’re nothing if not the most fascinating newcomer I’ve met to date, Boiler.”
“There’s a lot about me you don’t know yet.”
“Well, I know enough.”
Leland might have blushed a bit, but Boiler moved on unfazed. “I have a request.”
“I’ve got nothing, like I said.”
“No, not something tangible. I have to reach a decent stable. From what I understand, life in this world revolves around stables.”
“Stables come in all shapes and sizes.”
“You know full well that I mean an inhabited stable.”
“Of course. I remember when I reached my first stable. What a shock! So many people, but none of them trying to club you or eat you or shoot you. They even had showers.”
“Oh man, I would kill for a shower.”
“I know, right?”
“So if I give you my lifejuice, can you tell me how to reach that stable?”
“I’d like too, but... frankly, Boiler, I really need to get there myself, too. As urgently as you do, or even more so.”
“Alright. So what do we do?”
“I help you out, and you help me out. We go together.”
“How long will you have to rest first?”
“I’ve been in the Hive for almost half a year now, so I have better regen than you do. If I have food and ambrosia I’ll be ready to set off tomorrow. With a limp, of course, but able to walk. So you won’t have to wait long. What do you think?”
“Alright, I’m in.”
“Did you kill all of those bastards outside?”
“There were three of them.”
“One runner and a sprinter. The runners can have spores, but most of them are empty. But sprinters almost always have one or two, and a some of them even have three.”
“So gutting the three of them will pay off.”
“Unless you’re the most unlucky fellow in the world, yeah. And I sincerely doubt you are. That sprinter almost caught me. Things are just too fucking fast. But they’re a good catch on a hunt since they’re our best source of spores. Too bad they never have peas. The rafflers are the weakest creatures to have those, and they don’t have them very often. I took out that trampler, though, and that thing is sure to have spores and maybe even a pea. But you likely won’t get to it. I was stupid enough to risk trying. Made a ton of noise, left a small swimming pool of blood on the ground, and those walkers came running.”
“Do you have any alcohol?”
“No. Best to avoid that temptation unless you’re in a safe stable.”
“So how do you make lifejuice?”
“With goat’s milk.”
“What? You can do that?”
“Hah! No, I’m kidding. Seen any goats around? But there’s booze everywhere you go. No need to cart it around.”
“I have some alcohol in my first aid kit. Would that work?”
“One eighth of a cup per half-liter of water. There’s plenty of water here in this garage, which is the only reason I’m still alive, so that part won’t be a problem.”
“I’ve got some water, too. You hungry?”
“What do you have?”
“Canned stew.”
“Alright, thanks. Meat is good for regen. Though there are those, of course, who would hesitate to call canned stew ‘meat.’”
“This stew’s actually not bad.”
“Sure, sure. I’m just keeping up conversation. I haven’t heard a human’s voice in a long time—not even a scream.”
“Then I’ll ask you questions and you answer them. Voila. Conversation.”
“Whatever. Shoot. Just not too many right now since I need sleep. I lost a lot of blood out there. I’m guessing you don’t have any med solution.”
“Med solution?”
“Healing mix.”
“Where the hell would I get that?”
“It’s useful for serious injuries. The quacks in the stables add a bit of lifejuice to it, and the resulting mix has you back on your feet fast. But anybody can make it. Distilled water and pure salt, in the right proportions. Some people are masters at creating the stuff. Not me, I’m afraid. Anyway, enough rambling, I... I’m off to bed. Good night.”
“You don’t want to eat?”
“Oh, I completely forgot about that. Got caught up in our conversation. Alright, you win. I need my strength, after all, or I’ll hardly be ready to go in the morning.”
“Can you open a can?”
“Hah! First thing I learned here.”
“Give the cat some or he won’t like you. Assuming he’s forgiven you for calling him my canine, that is.”
“I’m not greedy, and this cat of yours is quite a sight. Where’d you pick him up?”
“Like I said, we just ran into each other.”
“Very rare animal.”
“A cat?”
“Here, anyway. This is no place like home, Boiler. Some rare animals from our old world are common here, and vice versa. Not all species can cope with the transition. Some kinds are transformed by the infection, and others die from it. Cats, meanwhile, are a pure delicacy for infecteds. One look at them drives the beasts mad, drooling ravenously and crashing into things in their haste to nab some fresh feline fillet. Some people carry cat corpses around until they can’t bear the smell anymore. So when some dire manmincer comes after them, they can toss the cat its way. The monster might ignore it, of course, but then again he might stop to enjoy the treat. It won’t buy you much time, but it’ll buy you some, and that might save your life if you use it well. So our friend here may come in quite useful.”
“He already has. Just after we met, he lured a raffler away from me. Like you said, the creature lost all interest in me when it saw the cat.”
“Yeah, that’s how it goes.”
“Here you go. Got a spoon?”
“Never leave home without one. Anyway, yeah, you got lucky with your pet. Now go relieve your prey of their valuables while it’s still quiet. We’re both low on lifejuice. We need one more solid dose, one and a half to be safe, then I can go with you to the nearest stable—I know the way very well. Be careful with the door, though. Pull it up too hard and it’ll screech like a witch out of Oz. And we’ll die wishing we could’ve just faced her flying monkeys instead.”
* * *
Fisher was right. If Boiler stayed, his new acquaintance would just get worse, making more bad puns and less good sense. Boiler bumped the garage door open, almost too careful to breathe. He listened to the sounds outside for several minutes. Nothing but birds singing.
The beasts he had killed hadn’t gone anywhere. They still lay where he had shot them, and it was time to get dirty. He still hated harvesting this stuff.
The first zombie was empty, but
the second gave him one spore, and the third gave him two. That was enough for three doses of lifejuice, and Fisher had said one and a half would be enough. He could make double that. That made life a little easier, at least.
He didn’t have much alcohol— probably not enough for three whole doses. But like Fisher had noted, this place was full of bottles of the stuff. Every house had it, and the stores were stuffed to the rafters with it. This town must have had some serious drinkers.
As he got closer to the stable, Boiler worried more and more about buying power. He had no spores, and in this world, spores were money. He had some rifle bullets he didn’t need, but no idea what price they would fetch. Maybe they were barely worth anything. Still, money wasn’t his biggest need at this juncture. What he really needed was a shower, a day or two of rest, advice from experienced Hivers, and some sort of future employment. That wasn’t too overwhelming.
He climbed up onto the garage roof and took out his binoculars. It wasn’t much higher than the ground, but he could see a decent distance. He examined the area in every direction without seeing any monsters. Perhaps there had been none around to hear the shots, or maybe the sounds had been so brief the beasts had just ignored them. Near the five-floor building he noticed a store that hadn’t been visible from the industrial area. It was large, a good bet for food and for the alcohol he needed. He’d have to cross a few open areas to get to it, but they didn’t seem so bad. Boiler had been daring to use open spaces a little more often recently, and had gotten away with it this far.
No sense in unnecessary risks, though. He had enough food and water in his pack for now. He would keep the store in mind for later. He double checked that he had grabbed the spores and looked around again, noticing nothing amiss. Time to head back.
Chapter 21
“What are you flicking on and off back there? That little red light.”
In the darkness of the garage, the sudden question made Boiler jump. He was unaware the man was up. Fisher slept a silent sleep devoid of snoring, and someone passing by would have no idea he was there unless they shone a light on him or stepped on him. “I’m trying to figure out these night vision goggles.”
“Geez. I’ve never seen a newcomer as lucky as you.”
“I found it in an abandoned vehicle, which is where I found the gun, too. The former owner was prepared. That didn’t save him, though.”
“Very few people are immune.”
“I noticed. How many? One percent? Less?”
“It depends. Differs from one reset to the next.”
“Why?”
“Nobody knows, but the Hive is big, and conditions vary wildly from one place to the next. Sometimes a cluster will fill with empties almost instantly, resetting over and over with a short time, as little as a few hours, in between resets. Those almost never have any immunes. ‘Dead zones,’ some people call them, as if there’s any zone in this place that can’t be called a ‘dead zone.’ In those clusters, new runners appear before even a full day passes. Other places take two days or more to produce runners, as the populace changes slowly. They start to feel ill, then start to act like idiots as their intellect evaporates, and then start to transform physically. Not all at once, and a few will turn earlier than all the rest. These clusters produce more immunes than the dead zones, but still not many. We call them standard clusters, or just ‘standards.’ There are slow clusters, too. I’m sure you get the point.”
“So the slow clusters take a long time to turn?”
“They say some take as much as a week, which leads to some absurd situations. You can have a town come in and watch as its residents continue going to work, its hospital still functions, and the cops track down the raiders, locking them up and booking them for unlawful possession of weapons. Once a poor raider I knew died locked up in a station. The cops all turned and made dinner out of him. As I said, there are stuck clusters, too—places where resets happen in rapid succession. Those are something else entirely. The whole cycle restarts every couple of days, and the clusterfucks continue that way for months or even years. Streams of people, streams of beast. Cheerful places.”
“Who are raiders?”
“What’s your occupation?”
“Like I said, I’m looking for a stable.”
“That’s your destination, not your occupation. In that way, you and I are the same. We’re just moving towards another point, with no particular purpose in any areas in between, other than survival. So we’re raiders.”
“Huh?” The term sounded more purposeful than Fisher implied.
“Anyone who roams outside of stable clusters is called a ‘raider.’ Raiders who go out to collect weapons, ammo, and whatever other junk comes in during resets are called ‘stalkers.’ Raiders who hunt infecteds to collect the goodies from their sporesacs are called ‘tracers.’ Then there are the ‘commandos,’ people who set ambushes for the edgers. There are ‘dealers,’ too, people who engage in commerce between stables. They’re still worthy of the title of raiders, even though many of them don’t like it. But the moles aren’t worthy of any respect or title. They’re human garbage. The jackals of the Hive, only with shittier lives, and shorter ones, too. For every ten or so raiders out there, there’s a mole slinking through the filth.
“Anyway, if you’re trying to figure out who you are and can’t peg yourself as a tracer raider, or a stalker, you’re just a raider. It’s a catch-all. Some people try longer titles. I think it’s silly to go around saying you’re a ‘stalker tracer raider.’ But we humans always try really hard to differentiate ourselves, even in this world.”
“Have those always been the names of these occupations?”
“We didn’t even used to have names. But the newer guys coming in are from a world that demands cool names for everything. If you bump into someone who doesn’t use these terms, they’re probably a real dinosaur.”
“Got it.”
“Raiders roam, alone, in groups, or even in whole squads, grabbing everything they find or everything they loot from edgers and carting it back to the stables. Then they squander their loot and head back out again. And so the cycle continues, for most of us anyway.”
“These stables sound like fun places.”
“Not always. Some are pretty harsh. They’ll punish you for bringing spec in, especially if you’re dealing a lot of it. Yeah, the war on drugs is still a thing. But some places aren’t so prudish. The general rule is: the closer you are to the Edge, the more relaxed the law. Some stables are so lawless that you have to sleep gun in hand behind a barred door or you’ll get your throat cut and nobody will bother to punish your killer.”
“So what kind of stable are we heading to?”
“In between. Not too strict, not too lawless. It used to be one of those anything-goes places, but it’s better now. Seriously, those goggles you have are crap,” said Fisher, suddenly changing the subject. “The infecteds see at least as well as we do in the dark. They’ll see that light from a mile away.”
“It’s not really that bright.”
“They’ll see it anyway.”
“Only if you turn the light on.”
“Those are infrared, pretty much blind without that light. It won’t go for much, if you can sell it at all. Might get you a drink. It’s just that no one will use it since there are better night vision devices available.”
“Alright. So how are you feeling? Physically, I mean.”
“Pretty shitty, but a little better. How many spores did you get?”
“Three.”
“Decent. I’ll regen quick when I sleep.”
“Does everybody here have quicker regen?”
“Yeah. Immunes and infecteds alike. We need both food and ambrosia to heal our wounds quickly, but they just need enough food. Meaning life is simpler for them—if you can call it ‘life’ at all.”
“So you’ll be able to walk tomorrow.”
“I have to. But I doubt I’ll be able to run from anything or anyone
. Maybe you could find a couple of bicycles in these garages.”
“You’ll be able to ride a bike?”
“I’ll give it a shot.”
“They’re all locked, and breaking into them might make a lot of noise.”
“Worth looking. This garage was open, after all.”
“Alright, I’ll check it out in the morning. Too dangerous at night.”
“The beasts see worse in the dark, too.”
“But they hear and smell just as well. And I stink enough to pull the whole cluster in. Comfort’s not my only reason for wanting a shower, you know. I wish I could smell them, too, but every time I try I just get a whiff of myself.”
“Same with me. A whiff of you, that is.”
“And the elites come out at night.”
“Wait, where’d you hear that?”
“I bumped into some cops along the way. Like you said, they cuffed me and read me my rights.”
“You’ve got a gun with you.”
“I didn’t have this one then, just a rifle with a silencer on it.”
“A silencer? I can only imagine what they were thinking, then.”
“I talked my head off trying to convince them about the new... changes to their environment.”
“Did they believe you?”
“Eventually. By that time one of them had turned already, or most of the way. I got my shotgun back, but I only had one round for it, and they kept my ax.”
“What happened to them?”
“An elite killed them. Flew out of nowhere onto the roof of their car. Big beast.”
“Maybe it was just a manmincer.”
“No, I’ve seen manmincers. They’re smaller.”
“But nobody knows the exact point where manmincers end and low-level elites begin, Boiler. These things aren’t black and white.”
“Then this being was the mother of all manmincers.”
“Maybe. You remember where that was? Cause you could go grab their stuff. They had their guns, right?”
“I could possibly find it, but it was dark and far away from here, so maybe not.”
“You were driving in the dark?”
“Yeah.”
“With headlights on?”
