Chương 88: 1 - ALWAYS NOT FOREVER

"I've seen the world outside of Acron. It's torn up. I knew it would be somehow. Outside was worse than everything I saw at the church. Not because there was more hurt or destruction, but because it was empty. The city wasn't the most populated, but it was far from the middle of nowhere. But now, after Zero Day, everything outside it seems like a lifeless wasteland. Long stretches of open plains, destroyed houses, broken roads, and the smell of nature reclaiming itself after the death of the Earth.

The demons out here just roam around like aimless NPCs, waiting for people. They look so out of place…"

"Whatcha writin'?" Acelin peeked over T'balt's shoulder from the back seat of their stolen convertible. T'balt was in the front passenger seat writing in his notebook when the kid whispered in his ear, jump-scaring him back to reality.

"It's nothing, just a journal entry." They were out on the open road, surrounded by grassland. It was a hot, autumn day, and heavyweight wrestler, Cannon Valkyr, had the top of the convertible down so they could all feel the wind in their hair. The eleven-year-old, Acelin Tinker, was bored in the back, dragging his nails across his metal baseball bat. The auburn-haired young woman in a church dress, Ellie Brazer, sat next to him, thumbing a philosophy book they scavenged days ago.

"Do you have to drive so slow, Cannon?" Acelin moaned.

"I'm pretty sure I can run faster than this thing."

"With speed loot, I'm sure you can," the brawny wrestler said.

"But I'm in charge of getting us to where we need to go. And when I drive, we go the speed limit."

"It's the apocalypse. The speed limit's whatever you say it is."

"And I say it's a smooth forty for the next thousand miles…." Cannon flipped down his sunglasses from his head. Acelin looked to T'balt for backup, but T'balt only shrugged. And then, like always, Ellie would come in to serve the kid his daily dose of logic.

"Since the world's collapsed, there aren't any rules, but that also means there's no one taking care of the roads. Which means more potholes, craters, debris, abandoned cars, and not to mention giant hellspawns roaming the road. Better to keep it slow so we can see any danger coming." Acelin groaned.

"Fine."

"But if you'd rather run, I won't stop you." Acelin blinked and sought out T'balt for confirmation.

"I think it's time for another scouting mission," said T'balt. The kid got excited, dropping his bat on the car floor. Without waiting for a stop, he leaped out of the car and zoomed ahead at twice their speed using the power of his speed loot. With that out of the way, T'balt went back to writing.

"This iteration, we've been searching for just about a month since leaving the church. Still looking for the illustrious 'Looter's paradise.' I wish I could say we're doing anything but driving blind. But that's all we can do. I don't know what it looks like, what kind of place it is, or even if it's in this country. But surprisingly, I've been okay with that. Since Monan left, I feel a lot less anxiety than I used to.

I'm not worried about all the little things that can go wrong because, in a weird way, the worst thing that can happen has already happened. And everyone's still here, without a scratch. It's almost too easy to forget the horrors that man put all of us through."

"Seriously, though, what ARE you writing?" Now it was Ellie, over his shoulder, peeking down at his book from the backseat. T'balt closed the book before she could read too much.

"It's something of a memoir, I guess."

"Chronicling the lives and endless time of T'balt Ferrier?" she teased.

"Why not? It's something that might be worth a book one day."

"But I thought the book didn't go with you when you die." Ellie quietly reached for the book, and T'balt slapped her hand. She pouted for a moment and retreated back to the backseat.

"Are you assuming I'm going to die again? No, this time I plan on living a long, fruitful life. Not dying til I'm old, fat, and my grandkids can't stand me cuz I can't control my own farts." Cannon laughed from the driver's seat.

"That's pretty specific there, maestro."

"I've had a lot of time to think about it."

"I'm all fine for a good plan, but I've been doing some thinking of my own. If I understand the situation right, there are at least 4 others with the same ability as you…"

"I know."

"Oh, have you heard this one before?" T'balt ignored the question.

"Since the thing with Monan ended, I haven't been reset by anyone else. But if he's right and one of them is going to keep dying trying to save this world from what it's become, then I won't get my true ending until that's settled." Ellie frowned.

"It's kind of strange when you don't know what's going on?"

"How so?"

"I mean, the first month we knew you, it seemed like you knew everything about everything before anyone ever told you. That's what made you so…"

"Attractive?"

"Impossible to ignore." Ellie smiled.

"But now that we're out here, you seem just like the rest of us." T'balt chuckled. Acelin zipped back into his seat, huffing and puffing after his long run. He looked so excited to tell what he discovered.

"There's a fork up ahead. I think they both eventually go to the same place, but they're blocked up with cars and junk." Ellie's eyes glowed red, activating her hypersensitivity.

"He's right. But it looks like the left is more manageable for us to clear." Acelin frowned.

"I don't understand why you even send me to scout when she can just do that." T'balt shrugged.

"You looked like you could use the exercise." The fork in the road came just as he said. T'balt sat in the car as he watched the others clear the wreckage of cars. Cannon made it into a contest to see who could launch cars furthest: him with his strength loot or Acelin with his psychic. Ellie acted as the judge, using her hypersensitivity to sense the distance. But T'balt knew that regardless of how far Acelin's cars went, Ellie would declare him the winner.

Cannon would fake pout until they all laughed themselves silly. T'balt put the finishing touches on his writing.

"Even though I know the world's gone and nothing I have will ever be the same, I know I'll be okay. Because I'm comfortable with the people around me. So hopefully we'll find the Redeemers this iteration. If not, that's okay too." That night, they set up camp inside an abandoned strip mall. It had a few roaming demons inside, but with a proper formation of Acelin's speed and psychic, Cannon's strength and forcefield, and Ellie's perception and healing, they didn't prove much of a problem.

All low-level, single looted. They would be added to the duffle bag in their car's trunk, where T'balt kept all their spare loot. Once they cleared the area, the strip mall was pretty comfortable. It was still running on backup power a month after Zero Day. So they could turn the lights on wherever they wanted once they found the switches. There was plenty of time before nightfall, so they searched the mall for anything useful.

That was until they stumbled on an unoccupied salon, and Ellie decided that the boys could all use haircuts. It had been a month since any of them had a full shower and proper grooming, so they treated it like a spa day. Ellie threw a ripped-up tarp around T'balt's neck and got to work with a pair of scissors. Cannon and Acelin patiently sat in the waiting area for their turns, the former reading a magazine that would be long expired if it were produce.

"Man, these gas prices are getting ridiculous." Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings. Acelin was practicing his baseball swing.

"What are you talking about? We steal our gas from other cars."

"Well, no wonder. The economy is in the toilet."

"Alright, done." Ellie sprayed T'balt's head with water and then smacked him on the back.

"How do you feel?"

"That was nice. I didn't know you were such a good barber."

"Don't be silly. I've never cut a boy's hair in my life."

"What?" When he turned around, Acelin and Cannon were giggling. He found the wall mirror and stared into an amalgamated mess that an emo kid wouldn't even touch. It looked like his hair had been ripped out with someone's bare hands rather than scissors. Ellie looked way too amused.

"You did this on purpose," T'balt accused.

"Looks like I can still catch you off guard. Who's next?" The others had thought she was just getting one over on T'balt when she said she'd never cut hair before. But they found out a little too late that she was telling the truth. Ellie was the worst barber any of them had ever seen.

"I look like someone used a defibrillator on a bowl of chicken noodle soup," Acelin complained, staring into the mirror.

"I didn't have a mustache before. But my forehead is probably a good place to have one," said Cannon, next to him.

"What? I think you all look great." Ellie couldn't contain her own laughter, and the boys were forced to accept that they'd been played.

"It's always the innocent-looking ones." Cannon picked up a set of clippers and finished the jobs Ellie started. By the end of it, each one of them looked respectable and short-haired. T'balt had an undercut, leaving just a patch of messy black hair on top of his head.

"Actually, that's not too bad, Cannon."

"Years living on the road teaches a man how to groom himself." T'balt saw in the mirror that his facial hair was getting out of control, too. He followed its trail down to the choker around his throat. He let his finger loop through the chain link on the front and paused for a moment.

"Something the matter?"

"I could probably use a shave, too." Moments later, they were slapping their faces with shaving cream. Acelin joined in when Cannon noticed he had a patch of cheek fuzz on him. So Cannon taught him all the proper ways a man should shave. And he started teaching techniques that even T'balt had never used.

"Now you don't want to attack your face like a wild animal. You've gotta have class and take it slow. Up on the neck and down on the cheek. Go with the grain, and you're less likely to nick yourself." Acelin wiped away the cream on his cheeks with the razor, leaving his smooth, pale skin exposed beneath it.

"How's that?"

"You're a man now, boy. You tell me how it is." Acelin grinned.

"It feels good."

"You're right, it does feel good." Ellie appeared behind him, with her own razor and face covered in enough shaving gel to look like a mall Santa. Not one to be left out, she pretended to shave next to the rest of them.

"Am I a man now, too?" That got a laugh out of everyone. When they were done grooming and using the resources they found to wash themselves the best they could, they made camp in the middle of the food court. They had sleeping bags for each of them and laid them next to each other on the hard tile floor. Ellie and Acelin were still exploring around the building while Cannon prepared some rice and canned tuna in a mobile hot pot they packed with them. The glass ceiling let the cool, blue moonlight in.

"So are we any closer to actually finding this place?" Cannon asked. T'balt laid back on his sleeping bag.

"I don't know."

"I hope you don't blame me if it feels like we're spinning our wheels a little out here. We don't have anything but the name of a place that sounds like an underperforming novel. I mean, how do we even know we're looking in the right direction? We went east when we left the church. What if it's west? Or south? Or…"

"Not real?"

"The thought did cross my mind. You did say the person that told you about was your… mortal enemy."

"That's true. But what more can we do but keep looking?"

"Well, for a guy looking to save the world, you don't seem to be in much of a hurry." T'balt blew through his lips.

"Time… is a bit more flexible than it used to be. Rushing things only makes everything volatile. More likely to get reset doing something stupid when you have a one-track mind. My bout with that man taught me that." A wind nearly knocked over Cannon's hot pot, and Acelin was suddenly on his sleeping bag, pretending like he was there the whole time.

"So question." He raised his hand.

"Go."

"How do the powers work exactly? I know you explained it, but if you can see the future, how come you don't already know where the other Redeemers are?"

"Think of it more like lives in a video game. It isn't that I can see the future. I just retry when things go wrong. And the same stuff will happen as long as I don't do anything different. It feels like seeing the future, but it's really just restarting from a checkpoint. For example, Ellie will be here any moment, wearing a sun hat with a huge bag of thrift store dresses."

Acelin looked where T'balt had pointed, and the woman came bustling in the hall, wearing a white sun hat, oversized shades, and a new outfit straight out of a hipster market.

"Guys, you won't believe the deals they had over there. Everything was half off. If I had found this place before Zero Day, I wouldn't have had to wear that same church dress all the time." She was almost unreasonably excited.

"Am I the only one who understands what an apocalypse is?" Acelin complained.

"Everything is free. Why do you adults still fawn over the prices of things?"

"You'll understand when you're older, Acelin," Ellie answered.

"Besides, it wasn't free. Just because no one was there doesn't mean I didn't steal it."

"So you're promoting stealing now?"

"Yes… No? I don't know. Who the hell cares? I got new clothes." The boys stared, caught off guard by the same thing.

"Ellie, are you feeling alright?" Cannon asked.

"Fine. Why?"

"I don't know. I just didn't know you could… curse." She retracted into herself, getting nervous and clammy.

"Oh, sorry… I didn't think you all would care."

"I don't," Acelin spoke up. Cannon palmed the kid's head.

"It's not really a problem. Actually, pretty refreshing. I had it in my mind that you were a prude." Ellie sat down, forming a circle between them.

"I lived in a church for a year. Of course, I had to censor myself. But for the first time in a while, I'm not attached to it. So I guess I feel a little freer."

"It was weird to me at first, too," T'balt said casually, making sure the rice wasn't burning. But there was a pause in the others. Comments like that still made them a little uncomfortable.

"Wait," Acelin said.

"If you knew what Ellie was gonna do, then that means we've been in this mall before, right?" Everyone stared at him. T'balt rubbed his head nervously.

"I guess I forgot to mention that." Ellie started pouting.

"T'balt…" she seemed to want to yell at him, but thought better of it. Sighing, she said, "What went wrong?" T'balt waved it off.

"We're already through it. Remember that horde from yesterday? Last time, we fought them, and one of them followed us here and… uhhh, well, you get the rest."

"So that's why we spent the whole day hiding," Ellie said. Acelin started posing.

"Oh, you didn't realize. I knew the whole time."

"Yep," T'balt nodded.

"That's why Cannon had to nearly put you to sleep to stop you from fighting them… because you knew the whole time."

"Well, I still think we could've taken them, especially if you weren't lootless."

"I'd rather keep myself open for any new loot we come across. Besides, you three have been doing a pretty good job of protecting me so far."

"In this life, maybe," Ellie commented. T'balt couldn't help but get the feeling that he was in trouble for something.

"We'd better all eat and get to sleep so we can keep searching tomorrow." A little reluctantly, everyone did as he said, shutting themselves down for the night. It was the most comfortable sleep they'd had in a while, considering they were inside. And it'd be the most comfortable they'd have for a while after that. Well, at least two of them were sleeping. Acelin woke in the middle of the night, noticing T'balt and Ellie weren't in their sleeping bags.

Instead of looking for them, he turned over and rolled his eyes. T'balt and Ellie were lying half-naked inside that clothing store Ellie liked so much. The room was just barely lit by moonlight as Ellie rubbed her finger in circles on T'balt's bare chest.

"Is it just me, or are you a lot more toned than when we met?"

"Probably just you. But Cannon is pretty particular about our rations, and I guess I do get a lot more exercise these days…. Yeah, probably just you."

"Wise guy, huh." She pinched him.

"Ow. I'm sorry. I'm sorry." Satisfied, Ellie got up and started putting her clothes back on.

"You going to bed?" T'balt asked, raising up.

"Yeah. Don't want the others to realize we're missing."

"I keep telling you they won't mind… knowing about us."

"Because they knew before, right?" Her expression turned somber, like she was contemplating something.

"Look, I'm sorry I didn't tell you that we've been here before. It just slipped my mind." Ellie gave a fake smile.

"It didn't… Otherwise, you wouldn't have told us to hide from those creatures. It was just one of those things that you know, and we don't have to."

"It isn't like that. I don't keep things from you on purpose. I just—""What do we mean to you?"

"What do you mean?"

"Like, are we like this every time, you and I? Or maybe sometimes, you leave me wondering… not knowing the things you do." T'balt relaxed some, standing to pull her closer to him.

"You're a tricky one sometimes. But my feelings for you never change."

"They will one day," she nudged him away.

"That's just how people are. They get tired of each other. Even if you say that now, this… thing of yours lasts forever… we don't. I can't help but wonder what happens to us when one time down the line you decide not to come." T'balt grabbed her by the shoulders.

"Don't say that. I will always come back for you, Ellie. You all mean too much to me to leave behind." He kissed her and hugged her.

"I will always come back for you… always."