Chương 10: Chapter 9: "The Rifleman"

As the Ford van rolled through the darkened streets, the sheer scale of the urban rot became impossible to ignore. Shadows darted frantically between structures—frenzied silhouettes caught in the middle of looting, killing, or sprinting from predatory entities. The nightmare was reaching a fever pitch. Suddenly, a sequence of sharp, concussive cracks shattered the air, followed by the metallic ping of small-arms fire violently denting the side panels of the van.

Someone was taking blind shots at our headlights from the dark. I gripped the steering wheel, punched the accelerator, and drifted the vehicle through the final three intersections until I slammed the transmission into park directly outside my house. The moment the engine idled, a cold spike of adrenaline hit my throat. My stomach dropped.

The house was entirely dark, but the large bay window at the front of the living room was completely shattered, and the deadbolted front door hung loosely inward, visibly splintered from a heavy breach. I threw my door open and exited the cab in a dead sprint, drawing my framing hammer in my right hand while slipping my custom bushcraft blade into my left, tucking the steel flat against my forearm in a tactical reverse grip.

"Dog, heel!" I hissed. The massive dingo vaulted from the cabin, his claws scratching against the pavement as he locked onto my flank. We breached the threshold together, sweeping into the dark foyer. The interior was a disaster zone. The living room had been aggressively tossed—drawers ripped from their tracks, cabinets left gaping wide as opportunists hunted for portable valuables. But as my eyes adjusted to the shadows, my panic began to recede.

There was no biological splatter on the walls, no signs of a struggle, and most importantly, no bodies. I systematically moved through the downstairs footprint, clearing the primary guest bedroom, the bathroom, the washroom, and finally the attached garage. Satisfied, I glided up the staircase to sweep the upper level. The story was the same up there; the space had been ransacked, but no blood had been spilled.

I jogged back down the stairs, my heart pounding a slightly more rhythmic beat as I began hunting for the one thing I knew my wife would leave behind: a sign. I knew her patterns inside and out, and I was dead certain she would have secured a fallback position at her father's house on the opposite side of town. But in our world, assumptions get you killed. I reached the front door casing and began tracing the framework with my fingers until my eyes caught it.

Written in thick, bold black Sharpie directly onto the white trim was a single word: CHUCK. I let out a massive, shuddering sigh of relief, dropping my weight onto the bottom step as the crushing weight of the anxiety finally lifted from my shoulders. Frank stepped through the shattered doorway, tracking my expression.

"What's the verdict? What the hell does 'Chuck' mean?" A tired grin broke across my face.

"Chuck Connors," I replied, rubbing my eyes.

"Growing up, one of Denise's dad's absolute favorite television shows was The Rifleman, starring Chuck Connors. It became this running inside joke within the family. Whenever we go out to a busy fast-food joint or a crowded diner and they ask for a name to attach to the receipt, Chad always gives them 'Chuck Connors.' The hilarious part is the old man almost immediately forgets he did it." Frank snorted, leaning his weight against the wall.

"We'll just be sitting at a booth, waiting," I chuckled, "and some poor teenage cashier will be standing at the counter, screaming into the microphone:'Order for Chuck Connors! Is there a Chuck Connors in the lobby?' Denise and I always just look over at her dad and say,'Hey, Chuck, your burgers are getting cold.' He snaps out of it, realizes what he did, and has to do the walk of shame to retrieve the tray. It's his signature."

"Clever," Frank nodded, his posture relaxing slightly.

"So, what's the tactical play?"

"I need to check the master closet and see if my hardware is still secured in the safe," I said, standing back up.

"If the locker is untouched, I'm gearing up before we make the push to my father-in-law's place. While I'm extracting the gear, we need to process the notifications from that alleyway skirmish. If the System dumped enough experience to trigger another level advancement, I want those attribute modifiers active before we attempt to cross the city center again. If we hit another ambush, I want every mathematical advantage we can muster." I pointed a finger down at the dingo.

"Dog, stay. Guard Frank." The dingo lowered his haunches, anchoring himself at the base of the stairs while I turned and ascended to the second floor. I stepped into the pitch-black void of the master walk-in closet. Without electrical power, the space was a cave; I reached into my wife's vanity drawer, fetched a standard plastic lighter she kept for scented candles, and flicked the wheel. Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

In the flickering, amber flame-light, the steel face of my heavy gun safe came into view. The dial and handle were scarred with deep, jagged gouges and impact marks—crude tool indicators left behind by looters who had clearly tried to hammer their way through the locking pins. But without heavy-duty plasma cutters or industrial angle grinders, the hardened steel locker had held its ground, remaining firmly bolted to the wall studs.

I reached my hand up to the top of the interior door casing, ran my fingers along the hidden ledge, and retrieved the mechanical bypass key. I slipped it into the cylinder and threw the three-spoke handle with a satisfying, heavy CLACK.

"If only those idiots had checked the trim," I muttered to myself, shaking my head. I swung the heavy door open, but the interior was largely hollowed out. Denise and Chad had clearly beaten the rioters to the punch. The primary long-gun racks were cleared, leaving behind only a single tactical twelve-gauge pump-action shotgun and a lone, heavy box of 00 buckshot. However, resting on the mid-tier shelf was my old law enforcement duty rig.

Securely snapped into the black Kydex holster was my service pistol: an HK USP. 45. I unlatched the mag pouch on the belt line, verifying three fully loaded magazines—one seated in the well, and two riding the left flank of the leather. Next to the duty rig sat a compact Motorola two-way radio. A spark of genuine admiration for my father-in-law hit me. Chad was a hardcore, old-school doomsday prepper—miles ahead of my own standard survival baseline.

For years, his primary fixation had been the looming threat of a high-altitude Electromagnetic Pulse. Turns out the old man was a prophet; he'd just pinned the blame on a foreign military strike instead of a cosmic reality rewrite. To mitigate the threat of an EMP, Chad had converted a heavy, commercial steel filing cabinet in his garage into a functional, makeshift Faraday cage.

He had lined the entire interior volume with thick vulcanized rubber insulation and run a heavy-gauge copper grounding rod directly through the garage floorboards into the earth. Because of that meticulous setup, the electronics inside had survived the global initialization completely unscathed. I snatched up the Motorola, toggled the power dial, and pressed the push-to-talk button three distinct times in slow, rhythmic succession—our pre-established emergency communication protocol.

Three clicks meant a friendly was on the net. The protocol dictated that if no one answered immediately, the operator would standby; at the top of every hour, the base station would activate and broadcast three pulses every sixty seconds for a five-minute window before cutting the power to preserve the battery cells. The airwaves remained completely silent. Accepting the radio silence for now, I left the unit powered on.

I grabbed the nightstand drawer off the floorboards, flipped it over, and retrieved my low-profile surveillance earpiece and whisper-mic attachment, threading the wire cleanly beneath my shirt collar. The last thing I needed was a sudden burst of static or a loud radio check giving away our position during a sneak approach. I left my heavy construction belt fastened around my waist, simply strapping the rigid leather law enforcement duty rig directly above it.

I spent a moment adjusting the positioning, sliding my framing hammer thong back behind the Kydex holster on my right hip to ensure the two tools wouldn't bind or interfere with each other if I needed to execute a rapid draw stroke. As I turned to clear the room, my eyes drifted to the far drywall where my family crest always hung. Beneath the crest, my hand-and-a-half steel broadsword was missing from its mounting brackets. A surge of protective pride flared in my chest; that blade meant everything to me.

I silently prayed to God that Denise or Chad had possessed the foresight to pull the steel before they evacuated. I walked back down the stairs, carrying the twelve-gauge and the heavy box of shells, and extended them toward Frank with a wide grin.

"Got a little homecoming present for you, brother," I said, the weight of the firearm balanced between my hands.

"Think you can manage the recoil on a scattergun?" Frank's face split into a massive, dangerous smile.

"You know damn well I can, brotha." As Frank slid the heavy brass 00 buckshot shells into the tubular magazine of the pump-action with practiced, rhythmic clicks, I sank onto a step, focused my thoughts, and unrolled the massive backlog of System alerts waiting on my HUD. The gold text cascaded across my field of vision in an absolute landslide of data. [You have defeated a Human (Level 7 Bandit). Moderate EXP gained.] [You have defeated a Human (Level 5 Bandit). Moderate EXP gained.] [You have defeated a Human (Level 4). Moderate EXP gained.] [System Alert: Hidden Quest Completed — Damsel in Distress] Objective: Extricate an innocent civilian from an active, non-consensual hostile containment matrix. Target Rescued: Samantha Harper. Reward: Moderate EXP awarded. [System Alert: Optional Hidden Side-Quest Completed — Good Will Towards Woe-Man] Objective: Voluntarily compromise your own logistics to ensure the survival of a rescued civilian.

Action: Material supplies and defensive weaponry transferred to Samantha Harper. Reward: Moderate EXP awarded. [Notice: Cumulative experience thresholds breached. You have advanced to Levels 4, 5, and 6.] Unassigned Attribute Points Available: 9 Unassigned Skill Points Available: 10 [CRITICAL MILESTONE ACHIEVED: Level 5 Threshold Exceeded.] System Notice: Universal Class Matrix unlocked. You are now eligible to select a specialized evolutionary archetype. Would you like to review your available Class options?

[YES / NO]