Chương 4: Getting the Good Stuff

Traffic was worse than it had any reason to be. Everybody was moving too fast, too aggressively, too reactively. A car cut hard in front of her, forcing her to slam on her brakes. Scarlet's instant response had the bike stopping just short of contact. A small weight squirmed against her chest.

"Yes, my darling. I'm sorry." She wondered if the mouse's ears were sensitive enough to catch that through her helmet. She eased around the car the moment there was space, slipping through barely-there gaps that seemed to open in front of her like she was creating them. As she made her way forward, she couldn't help but let her attention flicker to the timer in the corner of her vision. [70: 12: 49] She'd spent more time at the convention center than she'd intended to.

They were at a red light, and the rear of the car in front of her filled her vision for a moment. It's tinted back window showed her a reflection that bounced off her mirrored visor in an endless reflective loop that got smaller and smaller despite being entirely still.

"We're behind," she said, exhaling slowly just as the light turned green. She gunned the accelerator, her next seventy hours unfolding as plans began to form in her head. Traffic had not improved the farther she got from the convention centre. If anything, it got worse. Scarlett wove between the lanes with the same controlled precision she had used to navigate the foot traffic inside the building. Her movements were smooth and deliberate, and her attention was firmly on the road.

The drivers that were normally a hazard for bikes like hers had become an active danger. There were too many people looking at their phones and not enough paying attention to the road. Everyone was agitated. Accidents were everywhere. That wasn't surprising considering barely two hours ago everyone had a sudden 'notification' window shoved directly in front of them like a login-CAPTCHA.

Only instead of proving your humanity to a machine, it was a prophecy of global change, and a doom timer permanently pinned in the corner. Well, it certainly drove the point home, unlike some drivers that afternoon. Yeah, it was difficult to really blame anyone for the sudden uptick in automotive incidents.

"People are not handling this well," she mumbled to herself. Despite not being able to hear her, the small shift against her collarbone was a grounding presence as Scarlet wove her way through what was becoming increasingly perilous traffic. The chaos of the road reminded her of what she needed next. No reason not to get a head start on that now. She adjusted her path and angled towards the nearest strip mall. [69: 52: 07] When Scarlet entered the pharmacy it was all much calmer than she expected.

The place wasn't empty or relaxed, but the energy inside was settled in a way that felt almost disconnected from the rest of the world. There were a handful of people inside moving among the aisles. Most with obvious purpose, but there was none of that same urgency or anxiety that had been a constant for the past two hours and eight minutes.

Of course, the people in here didn't look 'relaxed' per-se, but whether that was because of the doom timer in everybody's vision or just the natural result of whatever had brought them to a pharmacy, at 17: 08 on a Friday evening, Scarlet couldn't rightly say. It did surprise her, though just how empty the place seemed. She'd passed a single grocery store, and the place had been painfully packed. Wouldn't medicine be higher on everybody's priority list?

That and water, she thought, adjusting her path to head towards the mini fridge near the counter.

"I suppose panic scarcely lends itself to logic," she murmured to Maus, her pet mouse. She didn't linger in the store for long. Her movements were efficient and practiced. Bottled water first, as much as she could carry without compromising her mobility. The weight settled into her only recently emptied pack. Everything was much heavier than she would have liked, but it was manageable.

She'd realized a while back that her bike simply wasn't going to cut it if she wanted to get all the supplies she thought she might need. But for now, she could at least get the absolute essentials. This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience. She moved through the aisles with purpose. Antiseptic, bandages, painkillers… anything she could get her hands on without restrictions. Gauze, instant ice packs, disinfectant.

Apocalypse or not, injury was inevitable, and infection could be the difference between life and death. She cast her gaze to the back of the store, where there were secured sections with locked cabinets and things she could unfortunately not access. Antibiotics, prescription-grade painkillers. Things that would help if the hospitals went down and that convention kid was wrong about magic healing. Useful things she had no access to… Yet. Her lips pressed together slightly, not quite a frown.

She understood why they were locked away, but it was terribly inconvenient. Instead, she cast her gaze to one camera, then the next, pinpointing the placement of all the surveillance equipment. She would have to come back when there were no witnesses. If the apocalypse turned out to be nothing then it would be a dangerous gamble, but on the off chance it was something, then it was a calculated risk she would take. The thought was amusing.

By the time she was walking up to the counter, she had filed away where the entrances, exits, sightlines, cameras, and other security features were placed. At the counter, the pharmacist looked up, clearly distracted, but alert enough.

"Find everything?" he asked, wandering over from where he had been doing pharmacist things in the back.

"I did, thank you." Scarlett offered a small, polite smile, as brief as it was perfunctory. He rang her through without comment, his attention was obviously split between her, the register, and his phone sitting just out of reach on a side counter. She didn't blame the guy. Her eyes glanced at the countdown as she stepped outside, pausing just long enough to load up her bike. [69: 29: 59] Her phone buzzed.

She slipped it free, saw that the images had transferred from the camera to the phone, and right there in the parking lot, she compiled the final report for her client. It only took a few minutes to log into the secure messenger, attach all the images, summarize concisely what she had seen, and give the client her preliminary conclusions. She hit send and watched the screen for a moment as a small 'sent' appeared underneath her message. It didn't take long for that 'sent' to turn into 'read'.

Scarlet waited exactly five minutes, the countdown in her vision told her as much. When she had still received no reply, she just sighed, pulling out the collar of her shirt. Her focused brown eyes met the beady black ones of her companion.

"Something tells me we won't be getting that final payment." The mouse just blinked at her. She huffed softly, almost amused.

"Well, my job is done," she thought, zipping up her leather jacket and swinging a leg over her bike. The grocery store was nothing like the pharmacy. Scarlett didn't even bother trying to make it inside. She slowed as she approached, taking in the parking lot first. The way it was packed way beyond capacity, at least for this time of day. For the moment, everyone was observing at least a modicum of order, but the erratic nature of the people around her bled into the environment.

Scarlett didn't even need to enter the store to be completely put off. The energy was uncomfortable and oppressive, and even the giant convention center hadn't felt like this despite how busy it had been.

"Ugh," she said under her breath, her nose wrinkling slightly as she took everything in.

"Vibes here are absolutely rancid." A small head poked out of one of the gaps between the buttons in her shirt.

"You feel it too, don't you?" Her gaze tracked a pair of people arguing near the entrances. Their voices were already loud, their movements obviously agitated. She tilted her head slightly and watched as the two went back and forth for a bit. Finally, one person shoved the other. It was obviously not a gentle push as they bumped into a large shopping cart and nearly fell in–"Yeah…" she murmured.

"The energy here is more off than spoiled milk. To be fair, this franchise isn't exactly known for its delightful atmosphere. That makes it difficult to tell how much of this terrible energy has to do with the floating system messages or if this is just another day." She, and her mouse observed for another moment, both of their faces blank and unimpressed, before Maus tucked himself away once more.

"I concur." Just as she was about to leave, she watched as the person pulled themselves out of the shopping cart. They shouted and actually pushed up their sleeves, preparing to charge at their assailant. The visual was baffling. What was he, a cartoon character from the 60's? That's when a security guard trundled in from where he'd been observing in the background. He moved with a resigned authority that suggested he neither wanted to, nor was he paid enough to intervene.

The guard said something, pushing between them with a lazy sense of command that somehow had both parties turning on him immediately. Their irritation was redirected, but they were obviously thinking better of swinging on a security guard as they grudgingly distanced themselves from each other. Scarlett watched the entire exchange like a voyeur. A few hours. It had only been a few hours, and already people were like this. She sighed, more resigned than disappointed.

Her gloved hand stroked the top of the handlebar as she spoke.

"Time to go," she said. Swinging her bike around.

"We should avoid danger when we can." She zipped her leather jacket up to her collar, mounted her bike in one smooth motion, and adjusted her grip. She needed more storage space, and she needed to get out of population centers. She'd decided she was going to ride out the apocalypse at that house. She pulled out cleanly into traffic, the road opening ahead of her in little pockets that she capitalized on as she accelerated to put distance between herself and the growing instability of the city behind her.

Almost habit now, she glanced at the countdown timer. The numbers ticked down steadily, indifferent to the rising chaos of the world, indifferent to anything but their own inexorable descent.