Chương 80: 78: Half an Hour

I suspect the police chief would have liked all hell to break loose and fiery meteors to rain down upon me. Or maybe just a serious shootout where every other person with a gun aimed at me and fired simultaneously. Instead, everyone seemed frozen: no one certain what to do. The police chief was cradling his wrist against his chest like a little kid; the lawyer was gaping like a fish; the deputies were shifting uneasily but keeping their own hands well away from their weapons.

The mayor's smile was gone, her lips pressed together in a thin, angry line. Before the police chief could start yelling again or the mayor start casting her mind-control spells, Nat grabbed my arm above the elbow and yanked me back to the enclave entrance. Her other hand was doing the same to Emma. In a loud, piercing voice—the classroom monitor at recess voice—she said, "We'll discuss this and get back to you. Forty-eight hours? That's the notice period? Yeah, we'll have an answer before then."

She didn't quite shove me into the shimmer, but I was sure if I hadn't been going willingly, she would have. We emerged into the small crowd of people who had gathered at the gate, and Emma promptly fell to the ground. My first instinct was alarm—had the mayor gotten off some mental attack? Had I missed someone else using an ability on her? I crouched next to her, reaching out. Then I heard the sound she was making.

She was laughing so hard she couldn't breathe, curled on her side, one hand pressed to her mouth as if that was going to stop it.

"Did you see—" she managed, and then lost it entirely, dissolving back into stifled wheezing. She tried again.

"Did you see his face?" I looked at Nat. Nat looked back at me. And then Nat plopped down on the ground next to Emma. She waved one hand at the crowd.

"Show's over, folks, at least for now." I moved from my crouch to a cross-legged sit.

"Sorry, if I, uh, made things awkward."

"Awkward?" Emma giggled.

"Awkward?" She dissolved again, rolling onto her back.

"Awkward is forgetting to say thank you, not stealing the police chief's gun," Nat said.

"I told him he could have it back," I defended myself.

"When he—when he—" It was too much for Nat. She started laughing, too. I wasn't sure if I should laugh with them or try apologizing again. Emma wiped at her eyes.

"Oh, man, that was…" She giggled again.

"We need to find Jack. We need Jack like right now, so I can tell him that story."

"It's on my to-do list." I glanced back at the shimmer. If I brought Pen here, she could probably fix the police chief's wrist. It might be a nice gesture. Not that I necessarily needed to make nice gestures, but still. Emma rolled over onto her side, propping herself up on her elbow.

"Jack and I were in that exit interview thing together, you know."

"Exit interview? Oh, at the end of the scenario? I had Zelda with me."

"Well, of course. But apparently it's unusual to let people make their choices together. The old guy said we were only getting the option because you'd turned down the enclave while insisting we should be rewarded, too. We wouldn't have gotten it otherwise, just the participation prizes.

"Dying in the scenario—" Even lying down, I could see the little shudder she gave at the memory, "—is bad for your score, I guess." I grimaced at the idea that the System was scoring our deaths, but I wasn't really surprised.

"I'm glad they decided you deserved more."

"Yeah, but it should be yours, really. Do you want it?"

"Ha, ha, ha," I said, deliberate pauses between sounds.

"Not a chance."

"Jack let me take it. I was higher-level than him at the end, and he'd died before me, so he told me it was mine, even though the old guy said we were equal." She hesitated, then continued.

"Also, he was being nice. Getting the enclave meant I ended up here. I'd been hiking in the Pine Barrens. I was at least ten miles away from civilization, and the Pines have plenty of animals. I'd used my bear spray and a rock on the rabbit that attacked me, but against a real bear? Or a coyote? I wasn't sure I'd make it out."

"You would have been fine," I told her.

"Level 13 means more than you think it does."

"Twelve, then. Fourteen now, after that stone you gave me. But yeah, maybe." She sat up and hugged her knees, gazing at the enclave. The crowd had dispersed when Nat had waved them away, but people were still watching us with worried eyes.

"I should have let Jack have it, though. He'd be better at this. He'd know what to do."

"You're doing great," Nat said firmly.

"As good as anyone has any right to expect." Emma hooked a thumb over her shoulder toward the gate behind us.

"All they have to do is block the gate. We've got people out scavenging for supplies. If they prevent them from coming in, what do we eat? I'm not gonna start beating up the guys in blue. Although," she chuckled faintly, "maybe just the chief. That guy has always been an asshole."

"You can't let the mayor have it." Nat was staring off into the distance, maybe watching some specific family or one of the groups of kids.

"She'd choose to save everyone with money. She'd probably let people buy their way in. Big donation to her re-election campaign, welcome to the safe haven. And with that mind-control ability… No." Emma dropped her head onto her knees.

"But I don't know what to do," she said, voice muffled.

"Jack would know." I sighed.

"Okay," I said, straightening. I pointed at Emma, who looked up in time to see the gesture.

"You are going to owe me something good. Something from the picnic basket. Maybe something chocolate. Brownies. Cupcakes. Something delicious." Her smile was wan.

"If you can fix this…" I shrugged.

"Fix it? Yeah, no, the System has arrived, and there's nothing I can do about that. But I can help. First, a healer. The police chief might want to block the gate, but if you have numbers on your side, he might find it harder than he thinks. We heal all those injured people and you've got at least fifty or sixty more able-bodied adults to work with, yeah?"

"Some of the injured are kids, but forty or so are adults," Emma replied. I scrambled to my feet. I should have asked that question an hour ago.

"Okay, so first the healer. Second, some food. I think I can get almost anything except fresh stuff, although probably not enough to feed everyone. Is there—""Formula," Nat interrupted me.

"Please, please, please, baby formula. I don't think we even care about brands or types or…" She gestured toward a woman pacing in the distance. I couldn't tell from this far away, but it might have been the woman who'd been ahead of me in line, the one carrying a baby, who Nat had turned away with such apparent callousness.

"Whatever you can get that a four-month old can eat, that's what we want." Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings. I nodded. Did I know for sure that the Dollar General had baby formula? Nope, because I hadn't looked. It hadn't even crossed my mind. But it was a Dollar General. It had to.

"After that, protein," Emma said.

"It packs the most nutrition for its weight."

"Gotcha." I nodded, then eyed Nat appraisingly.

"What's your weapon?"

"Weapon? I—" For a moment, Nat looked like she wanted to deny ever touching a weapon in her life, and then she sighed.

"Spear, I guess? Pointy stick, anyway. It was those damn dino birds. I chose my class in a hurry because we were getting swarmed and somebody needed to fight back. Brent…" She shook her head.

"We needed a fighter, so I grabbed an IV stand and fought."

"All right, you're coming with me, then."

"I'm what?"

"Coming with," I repeated.

"We're going to go kill a bunch of cockroaches. The XP's useless to me, but you might be able to level up from it." Nat scrambled to her feet.

"Lead the way." She had a little half-smile on her face, which wouldn't have been my reaction to being told I needed to kill a bunch of cockroaches. But [Uncanny Insight] kicked in and let me know that she was more than ready to do something that felt useful. More useful than turning away people who needed help.

"We'll be back in half an hour or so," I told Emma.

"Half an hour?" She stood, too, more reluctantly.

"There's no store within fifteen minutes of here that hasn't been cleaned out already, I promise you. And I don't think you should go back through the gate while the police chief is still out there. You did steal his gun, after all." Her spasms of laughter were over, but she still giggled a little at the memory.

"Not a problem." I almost began explaining in more detail, but then I caught sight of the tent serving as a hospital ward and decided it could wait until we were back with Pen. Priorities, after all. We were still right next to the gate, so I turned to face it. I wasn't exactly sure how taking other people into a rift worked when stepping from one mana domain to another, so I grabbed Nat by the hand and tugged her with me as I entered the shimmer. I chose Thorn's Edge from my list of destination options.

It worked perfectly. Nat stumbled out of the gate right behind me as we appeared on the dirt road.

"Whoa! How did you do that?" She scanned our surroundings, instantly assessing. I ignored the question.

"There are giant crickets in the woods, beetles in the garage, but the roaches are in the Dollar General." I pointed at each area as I named it.

"And so's the food. We'll head straight there, but we still need to find you a pointy stick." I eyed the trees. The blade on my shovel was sharp enough to cut through wood, but the trees were mostly scrubby pines with rough bark. Maybe loblollys? Even if I could find a low branch to break off, it'd probably be crooked, sticky with resin, and not much use. And how would I carve a point into the end with a shovel? Oh, but I still had that dagger I'd picked up after killing the gargantuan slime.

I tapped my companion pouch, thought dagger and the Void-Touched Dagger appeared in my hand. Nat didn't quite shriek. But she did jump away from me as if I'd brandished the dagger at her. For the record, I didn't.

"Where did that come from?" Her voice was higher-pitched than usual.

"This slime I killed. That was a different rift, you don't have to worry about them. Slimes, I mean. There are only giant bugs in here."

"I'm not worrying."

"Good." She was clearly lying, but I didn't call her on it. I flipped the dagger in my hand so that it was pointing toward me and extended it in her direction.

"A weapon. Maybe we can find something to tie it to in the Dollar General. Like a broom handle or a bat or something. I don't think you really want to be stabbing the roaches from up close if you can avoid it." Did I want to mention the goo? Probably not. Gingerly, Nat took the dagger.

"What about you?"

"I've got a shovel if I need it, but these roaches are low-level for me. I could probably just kick them or jump on them if I needed to."

"Right. Great." I started walking, Nat by my side. She was trying to look in every direction at once. I debated reassuring her again. Thorn's Edge had never had bugs anywhere but the three zones I'd already told her about. Or any other dangerous creatures, either. But her instincts were probably safer for her than taking my word for it. We did not find a bat or a broom handle before we found the bugs. And Nat didn't like bug goo anymore than I did.

I didn't laugh because it would have been unfair and probably mean, but I was hard-pressed not to as she cursed her way through the aisles, slaughtering roaches with a single strike from the dagger and squealing every time their disgusting guts splattered on her legs. She recoiled when we reached the boss, though. Entirely understandably, because it was ugly as hell and hissed like a boiling teakettle.

"I don't think so," she said, backing away from it.

"Check your XP," I suggested.

"Can you level up yet?"

"Level 4," she said, followed by, "Oh, wow," as her new stats hit. And then, "Oh, wow," again as she glanced at me.

"Did you know…?"

"Did you get an achievement?" I asked, wincing. I mean, obviously, it was good news that I could give people three extra stat points just by talking to them, but it was still embarrassing. I guess it shouldn't surprise me that dragging Nat into a rift to safely get her levels counted as strategic guidance.

"Um, yeah. And +3 to my Will."

"Nice," I said.

"That might be my favorite stat. Resistance to mind control, which, under the circumstances, might come in very handy for you." She looked at me. [Uncanny Insight] let me know that she was searching for a way to say thank you and that the entire idea of needing to express gratitude to an almost stranger made her deeply uncomfortable. I let her off the hook as fast as I could, saying briskly, "How close are you to Level 5?"

"I need 200 more XP."

"Then you should kill this thing. It's that or go kill beetles in the gas station."

"Beetles? Like…"

"Shiny black things with hard carapaces, yes. About the size of these things." Note that I had not suggested the crickets to her. That was because of the three types of bugs in Thorn's Edge—the roaches, the beetles, and the crickets—I most hated the crickets. It wasn't that they were more disgusting than the roaches. Nothing is more disgusting than gigantic cockroaches. But the crickets jumped.

And they had these long spiky legs and skinny bodies and they made a noise that was probably supposed to stun their enemies, but was just soooo annoying to me. Nothing like real crickets who have a peaceful music that I quite enjoy. It was more like the relationship of punk rock to, say, the Beatles. The musical Beatles.

"Which is worse?" Nat asked the smart question.

"Just kill this thing and get it over with. Oh, and if you have any free points, you need to get your Intel to 5."

"My Intelligence is at 5, thank you very much," Nat muttered, and then she went in swinging. The boss didn't die in a single strike, but it only took two, maybe three hits, and she managed to heal the damage it had done to her hand in the very next second when she leveled up to 5. I jumped up and down, applauding for her, her own personal cheering section, and she shot me a half-hearted glare.

"Here." I pulled one of the translation stones out of my pouch and handed it to her.

"At Level 5, you get to evolve your class, but if you use this first, you might get some interesting options. Well, plus a bunch more levels." Nat took it, and it dissolved into her hand. Her eyes widened, flickering back and forth as she read her interface.

"That's… huh. I'm going to have to think about this."

"You can take your time," I told her.

"Maybe decide back at the enclave? But don't forget to loot."

"This thing?"

"It'll be bug chitin, mostly. Worth 2 credits when you sell it back to the System store, which is almost half a healing potion." Nat looted her bugs, and I looted the store, loading up Zelda's Bag o' Treats with as much food as I could carry and every bit of baby formula on the shelves. There wasn't a lot, only three cans, but that ought to be enough for a few days.

"How are you doing that?" Nat asked, her hands full of bug parts. I rested my hand on the pouch.

"You've seen Emma's picnic basket, right? That was her reward from the challenge scenario. This was…" I started to say 'mine' and then stopped myself with a laugh.

"This was my dog's. It's got dog treats but also spatial storage, so I can carry a lot more than it looks." Still, even after the pouch was full, the store had plenty of food, so we also grabbed shopping bags and loaded them up with everything that made sense and a little that didn't. I finished off all of my bags with as many chocolate bars as I could stuff around the edges. Sugar, caffeine, what's not to love? We left laden down with as much as we could carry.

Outside the store, I hesitated for a second, but then headed for the exit. I could kill all the bugs to get to the core and use the fast-pass core exit, but it would probably take longer than hiking down the road to the actual gate. And 10 Strength changed things. I was carrying as much as I could carry by volume, but it wasn't hard. The equivalent of a full shopping cart was challenging only because it was awkward. I wasn't even breathing hard when we made it to the gate.

Nat looked through the shimmer and said, "Where is this?" I followed her gaze, eyed my sunroom with a certain amount of longing, and said, "Doesn't matter, we're not going there." And then stepped into the shimmer, chose our destination, and stepped out into my RMI. Okay, into my own personal coffee shop. Tomato, to-mah-to, right?