Chapter 13 - I’m Not Lunch!

  I stood there staring at the row of seats for probably longer than I should have, wondering what the hell I was supposed to do now. Looking around the train car, I quickly saw what I’d been too distracted to notice previously: all of the bodies were gone, not just Amanda’s.

  Part of me wanted to hope that it was all a bad dream, that I’d somehow hallucinated everything that happened there, but I knew better. There was no way I’d imagined everything that had happened—the attack on the train, the death and carnage, the long walk out of the tunnel, the giant pill bugs, goblins, and the mess of the outside world… I had a vivid imagination, but all of that was pushing things even for me.

  Besides, there were red streaks on the floor of the train where each body had been dragged to the doors.

  I wasn’t looking for survivors. Was it worth going after whatever had taken the bodies away, just to recover the dead? I thought about it for all of thirty seconds before my gut told me there was no way I was leaving without her. If going after her killed me, then we’d hopefully be together again. I figured if magic was real, then probably the whole afterlife thing was, too. Most of all, though, I just couldn’t bear the thought of abandoning her down there in the dark.

  Someone or something had forced the side doors open on the train car. That’s where they’d hauled the bodies out. I stepped outside and immediately ran into another problem: the blood trail split. One path went deeper into the tunnels while the other went back out the way I’d come. I hadn’t spotted the trail on my way in because I’d been too busy watching out for monsters hiding in the shadows, but now that I knew it was there, the trails were easy enough to follow.

  “Which way to go?” I wondered aloud.

  The only monsters I’d seen back toward the tunnel entrance were the pill bugs. I already knew they’d eat people if they had a chance. They’d bitten and taken Emmy, after all. Odds were good they’d go after dead bodies just as readily as live ones. My guess was the right-hand path would lead directly to their doorstep.

  The left path went deeper into the darkness of the tunnel ahead. I had no idea what lay in that direction. The rat-creatures that killed Amanda had to come from somewhere. They might live down there. Or it could be something worse. Either way, given that the choice was between a known danger and an unknown one, I figured I’d be better off going with the known danger first. Those bugs weren’t all that serious a threat to me anymore.

  I stepped from the train and turned right, following the trail back the way I’d come. It didn’t take me long to reach the crack in the wall that led to the pill bugs’ lair, and sure enough the blood trail went straight in. Two bugs crawled from the entrance as I stared at it, dashing straight toward me.

  “I’m not lunch, boys,” I warned, readying my spear.

  They kept coming anyway, of course.

  Two quick blows later, and they were both dead. That made me feel a lot more confident about going back in there. After all, before I’d had the kids to watch my back. This time I was totally alone; it was valid to feel some trepidation. Taking those two bugs down so quickly was a good confidence booster.

  I tapped each of the dead bugs, getting two new grey stones for my troubles. Digging back into my pouch, I realized there were already two grey stones there. I needed exactly four more Natural Armor stones to rank it up a notch. What were the odds all four of those crystals were for Natural Armor? I wanted to find out, for sure, so I dug those stones out and held all four grey crystals in my hand.

  Sure enough, as soon as all four crystals were alone in my palm they sort of…flowed together. It was odd to watch, almost like they were liquid, but also somehow not. Once they were finished combining, the new, larger grey stone sank dutifully into my palm, merging with the other Natural Armor stones I’d already taken in to rise to tier four.

  More ‘memories’ flooded my mind, same as the previous times. It was almost like the information was being downloaded into my brain, which made me wonder if this was some sort of weird nanite tech. In a way, that would be more understandable than magic, which was my current hypothesis.

  Either way, that info dump was telling me I still wasn’t invulnerable, but I was going to be much more difficult to damage. Tier one monsters weren’t going to be a major threat unless they piled on more numbers than I could handle.

  I had three spare clear crystals as well, but they definitely weren’t Agility, because none of them sank into my hand and merged with the one I had. No worries; I had a feeling I was about to get a lot more of the things soon enough.

  Magical Stones

  Point 1: Clear Stone (Tier 3) - Strength

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  Point 2: Clear Stone (Tier 4) - Stamina

  Point 3: Grey Stone (Tier 4) - Natural Armor

  Point 4: Clear Stone (Tier 1) - Agility

  Point 5: X

  Spare Stones

  Clear x3

  I was as ready as I was going to be. Spear gripped tightly in my hand, I ducked my head and slipped back through the crack in the tunnel wall. The other side was much as I’d left it earlier, although the sand was much more disturbed than it had been. Drops of blood stained the sand, making me confident the bugs hauled at least some of the dead from the train down this passage.

  The trail made following them easy enough. I went straight, then took a right turn and found myself in a small dead-end space not that different from the place we’d found Emmy. There were three bodies lying on the sand there. All of them were obviously dead, but I couldn’t tell if any of them were Amanda because they were covered in pill bugs.

  The creatures were eating them.

  I felt more than a little sick, but held onto the granola bar I’d eaten earlier, somehow. The queasy feeling passed quickly, replaced by a sense of rage like nothing I’d ever felt before.

  One of those people might be Amanda. Even if it wasn’t, those had been people, with families and friends and lives, and these things were eating them!

  Afterward, when I’d had time to think, it made far more sense. From the perspective of scavenging critters like these, food was food. A meal they didn’t have to fight and kill for was better than one they didn’t. Mother Nature doesn’t waste, and neither do her creatures. I get it; once we’re dead, we’re all fair game.

  But in that moment, all I saw was a bunch of bugs eating my girlfriend, and—I lost it.

  “No!” I shouted, rushing in, spear raised. I stabbed one of the things, which got the attention of all the rest. They scuttled clear of my spear, then whirled to attack me. The nearest ones went for my ankles while the others surged over them, clambering up my knees.

  There were way too many of the things to handle with the spear. If I tried to stab them one at a time, they were going to swarm me. Just ten minutes earlier I’d been told by my crystals that tier one creatures—which I figures these were—only posed a threat as a swarm.

  Irony: this felt an awful lot like a swarm.

  I tossed the spear at one of them, impaling it into the sand. Hands free, I went to work. Two of them were trying to climb my legs. Their mandibles were ripping up my pants, but so far they hadn’t done more than scratch the skin. I couldn’t count on that lasting, though, and if they managed to get enough of that venom into me to overcome my Stamina, I’d be done for.

  There was nobody coming to rescue me, if I went down. I had no safety net here.

  I lashed out with both fists, smushing the bugs crawling over my kneecaps. Then I stomped on the ones underfoot, my heavy boots crushing them as easily as my hands had.

  One dropped on my back from the ceiling. “Shit!”

  I reached over my shoulder and grabbed onto it. The creature twitched and scrabbled at my hand, but even though it got its jaws onto my thumb, it couldn’t cut through. With a yank, I jerked it forward over my right shoulder, tossing it into the far wall so hard it burst apart on impact.

  Okay, I was starting to get the hang of this, after all! I backed myself up against one of the walls, so they couldn’t sneak up on me as easily from behind. That still meant they could come at me along the walls, but I kept an eye out for those with my peripheral vision. As soon as they got close, I reached out with a fist and crushed them.

  The battle was over way quicker than I’d expected. I panted from the exertion, but it wasn’t as bad as I would have expected, in the days before this Event happened. Whatever the source of the weirdness all around the city, the power of these crystals was at least going to give us a fighting chance of surviving.

  Some of us, anyway.

  There was bug goop everywhere, which was less than appealing, but it wasn’t easier to deal with than the human bodies, so I collected the crystals from the dead bugs first. Turned out I’d killed twenty-one of the things. I was now the proud owner of seven more grey crystals and fourteen clear ones.

  If the grey ones were all Natural Armor, then I only needed one more to rank that up to the next tier. That would be cool; I had this sense, maybe part of the memories the stones imparted, that hitting tier five would cross some sort of threshold. What exactly it would do for me, I didn’t know, but any improvement that helped me survive would be a plus.

  The other fourteen stones were different.

  One of the first ones I picked up immediately sank into my hand, merging with the Agility stone. None of the others merged right away, but I gathered them all up anyway, carefully placing each one in a pocket of my jeans. I needed to get a better, safer storage for them, but that would do for the time being.

  As soon as I’d collected them all, I took them all out of my pocket at the same time, including the three clear stones I’d already had, and waited for the magic to happen.

  Boy, did it ever.

  I held sixteen clear stones. Two of them snapped together, then merged with Agility to make it tier three. I was now not only far more dexterous than I’d ever imagined, but I was faster as well. I had a sense that I was nearing the peak of what was possible for a human being. At the same time, four more crystals snapped into a single, larger stone and sank into my palm to improve my Strength.

  The double whammy hit hard. I sank to my knees as the magic wreaked changes on my body, making me stronger and faster. Muscles twitched with something that was almost like pain, but not quite. I struggled to hold back from crying out, grinding my teeth together.

  Note to self: try to absorb the stones one at a time, not in multiples.

  Magical Stones

  Point 1: Clear Stone (Tier 4) - Strength

  Point 2: Clear Stone (Tier 4) - Stamina

  Point 3: Grey Stone (Tier 4) - Natural Armor

  Point 4: Clear Stone (Tier 3) - Agility

  Point 5: X

  Spare Stones

  Clear x10

  Grey x7

  When it was over, the surges of almost-pain ended, and I opened my eyes. Hadn’t even realized I’d shut them, and thankfully none of the stupid bugs showed up while I had them closed. I was now much stronger than I’d been before. If tier three Agility brought me close to the pinnacle of what a human could be, tier four Strength and Stamina brought me even closer. There was no pre-Event Olympian who could out-power-lift me, now.

  I’d been putting it off for long enough. It was time to check the human bodies.