He settled himself down on a sleeping bag in the back of the bookstore. Somewhat to his surprise, Luna settled down next to him -- right next to him, close enough that he could feel her body heat.
"I've been wanting to do this for a while," she explained, almost guiltily. "To sleep next to you again, like we did in that cabin."
"Ah." Stu was a little worried about what Lucky might think, but the kid, who had spread his blanket out on the other side of a bookshelf, either didn't notice or didn't care.
Luna took Stu's arm and placed it around her shoulders, snuggling up to him. "This is nice, isn't it?" she asked.
"It's nice," he agreed. "Have you...made up your mind yet? About coming to live in my world?"
"I don't want to think about that now," she said tersely. "I don't want to talk about it."
"What do you want to talk about?"
She considered the question for a second or two. "Nothing. I just want to lie here for a while. No thinking, no talking. Is that okay?"
"It's okay with me."
"You never know when we might get the chance to do this again," she added quietly, her voice barely above a whisper.
* * *
They woke up the next morning all tangled up with each other, and with Millie and Lucky standing over them, looking down at them. Lucky's arms were crossed over his chest, and he was scowling, but Millie was giving the two of them a rare smile.
"I think they go good together," she declared to Lucky, who merely grunted and turned away.
The four of them cleaned themselves up, found some breakfast, and went to visit Dr. Snowe. The old man was in his makeshift laboratory, already hard at work. Ula and a few others were assisting him. "We're almost there," he told them happily, gesturing to the centrifuge. "We've filtered out the nanoparticles in the sample; now we're separating out the active agent from the inert material."
"Excellent," Stu said, not really understanding. "Is there anything you need from us?"
"Not at the moment," he said, frowning. "But you should probably prepare to leave, along with everyone else here. We can't stay here much longer."
"The Dread?"
"The Dread," he affirmed. "Most of our equipment has already been packed up. Rico has his eye on a new facility, an old pharmaceutical plant, about thirty miles south of town. There's a handful of functioning dynamo engines down there. The problem is..." His frown deepened. "We can't really take all these people with us. We allowed them to take shelter behind our electric shell after they fled Georgetown, but we can't feed them or take care of them all. We're not really sure what to do with them, honestly. Charger wants to cut them loose, but..." He put up his hands. "Well, the situation is less than ideal." He paused, and that was when he spotted Millie. He had seen her last night, but he must not have noticed her cyborg parts at that time, because he reacted with surprise on seeing her now: "My goodness! Who do we have here?"
"My name's Millie," she said, in her usual unaffected monotone.
"Where did you get that artificial eye? And your hand! Let me see that!"
Millie allowed him to examine her hand and eye, and he listened intently when she told him the story of how she had acquired them. "These are the most advanced prostheses I've ever seen," he remarked. "And they were installed by a brainy?"
"Natasha Valois," she confirmed. "The Researcher, we called her."
"She must have been a genius to engineer these kinds of prosthetics. How is your visual acuity with that eye? Have you any sensation in that cybernetic limb? I see that it's anchored to your radius and ulna; is that wiring connected to your nervous system?" He asked her many other questions, and soon started scribbling down notes as well. Millie was a little annoyed by this attention at first, but Dr. Snowe was so friendly and good-natured, and his curiosity so infectious, that she eventually started to warm up to him.
They spent most of that day helping Charger, Ula, and the rest of Dr. Snowe's assistants pack up their remaining equipment and supplies. Dr. Snowe suggested leaving the electric shell behind, to protect the Georgetown refugees, but Ula dismissed the idea: "We don't want to give these folks a false sense of security," she said. "The shell is useful for keeping out ordinary zombies, but it won't stop the Dread. He'll find a way to knock it down eventually. Better that these people are gone by then."
The four of them -- Stu, Luna, Lucky, and Millie -- shared a comparatively nice meal in the late afternoon; Dr. Snowe's people provided them with PrestoMeat, hard crackers, canned soup, and even some fruits and vegetables they had managed to scavenge from somewhere. They were just finishing up this meal when a siren started going off over the mall's PA system. Alarmed, they quickly got to their feet and collected their weapons, and a few minutes later a breathless Rico -- who had spent the day patrolling in his van -- burst into Dr. Snowe's lab.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
"This is it," he told them. "They're on their way."
"How many?" Charger asked. The woman seemed to be the head of security.
"Hundreds. It's the same horde that destroyed Raleigh and the Flamingo Club. They're swarming all over Georgetown now. We've got an hour, maybe less."
"That's not enough time," Dr. Snowe grumbled, glancing at his centrifuge. It was still spinning.
"We'll have to abort," Ula said.
The old man shook his head. "This is the only centrifuge we have. We don't have time to disassemble it." He made a fist and shook it in frustration. "And we need the completed serum for the computer to rerun the formula. We need more time."
"We need more time to evacuate these people, too," Ula chimed in.
"So what do we do?" Stu asked.
Charger turned to Rico. "Are they coming down Whispering Pines?"
He shook his head. "Sunset Drive."
She nodded grimly. "Maybe we can buy you some time, then. We can plant explosives up and down the street, maybe slow them down. The irregulars will be the real problem. If there's any speedies or ragers in this horde--"
"There are," Rico said.
"Shit," she muttered.
"I can help," Stu volunteered. When they all turned to look at him, he added, "I have the ICON system. I can fight. I've killed ragers before, and speedies, and lots of other kinds of zombies."
"He has," Lucky piped up. "He killed the Brute in Meku City, and the Living Hell, too."
Of course Dr. Snowe and his people had never heard of these monsters, but they took his meaning. "We'll need all the help we can get," Charger said. "I've got seven men, and we can probably recruit a few more out of the Georgetown group. But I don't know how long we'll be able to hold them off. How much time do you need?"
Dr. Snowe scratched his chin. "At least two hours."
"What are we waiting for, then?" Stu said. He reached for his bag, which contained his Midnighter, his alien chainsaw, and his Excalibur baseball bat. "Let's go."
"I'm going with you," Luna said.
"Me, too," Lucky declared.
He frowned at them. "I'd feel better if you stayed here," he said, "and helped these people evacuate."
But the siblings were adamant. "We can fight, too," Lucky said.
"And I'm not leaving your side," Luna put forth.
He didn't like this, but he knew that look; he knew that he wouldn't be able to talk them out of it. Lucky and Luna were two of the stubbornest people he had ever met. "Fine," he allowed. "What about you, Millie?"
"I'll stay with Dr. Snowe," she decided, after thinking it over for a moment. "I'll protect him."
"I'd appreciate that," Dr. Snowe said, in an amused sort of way.
As they turned to leave, Mille spoke up again: "Be careful, Lucky."
This was uncharacteristic, and Lucky didn't seem to know quite how to take it. "Yeah," he said awkwardly. "Thanks."
With this settled, they collected everything they thought they might need and headed out to the parking lot. Charger and her men, along with a handful of frightened-looking volunteers from Georgetown -- there couldn't have been more than a dozen of them, total -- piled into a couple of trucks, while Stu, Lucky, and Luna climbed into Rico's van. The electric shell was temporarily disabled, and the two groups left the mall, headed out into the hot afternoon. The sun was sinking in the west, over the ocean, but there were still several hours of daylight left -- the sky was a crystal-blue dome, dotted with crows, and the thinning clouds, high above, were a burnt orange. It was a dry day; their vehicles kicked up dust, and all around them, flies were buzzing.
They soon arrived at Sunset Drive -- a long, straight avenue which dropped out of the Georgetown hillside and ran almost directly into the commercial district where the mall was located. Stu and the others had avoided this street the other night, on their way to the mall, because they had seen a handful of zombie stragglers here, wandering about.
There were houses on either side of the street -- tall, thin houses, packed tightly together, which looked vaguely like the Victorian painted ladies of San Francisco, but which were in a much more decrepit state. Rico parked the van in front of one of these houses, and Charger and her men parked their trucks alongside the van, so that they blocked the street. Rico got out of the van and pointed to the top of the Georgetown hill. "See 'em?"
Stu looked up, using the blade of his hand to shield his eyes from the sun. The horde was still some distance away, and moving sluggishly, but it was plainly visible. He could smell the horde, too, even from here; the nauseating odor of rotting flesh was rolling down the street like a wave.
Rico grabbed a sniper rifle and some kind of machine gun out of the van and started for the nearby house. "I'll cover you from that window up there," he told them, pointing to a large window on the house's highest floor. "Good luck." And he jogged off.
Charger and her men, meanwhile, began unloading their explosive equipment, rushing up the street to plant their bombs and unrolling spools of wire. Others knocked over mailboxes, sawed down utility poles, and threw detritus into the streets, in order to build up their makeshift chokepoint. Charger shouted orders at the men, all the while preparing herself for battle; she, too, was armed with some kind of long-barreled sniper rifle. She took up a position on top of one of the trucks.
Stu spoke to Lucky and Luna: "Stay close to me," he told them. "If you're hurt, I can heal you with my Protector skill, but I have to be touching you to do it."
The siblings nodded grimly and checked their own weapons. Luna had a revolver and a rifle which she had acquired from one of Dr. Snowe's people, along with a small amount of ammo; Lucky had his oversized Hughes & Samson Elephant revolver and a carbine which Rico had given him. He was also armed with a small hatchet he had discovered in the mall's derelict sporting goods store. Lucky had a fondness for hatchets.
Stu, of course, had Virge's Midnighter, his alien chainsaw, and Excalibur. With his strength, speed, and regenerative ability, he was probably better suited to melee combat, but he wished he had thought to ask Charger for a rifle, at least.
He also had the ICON system and fourteen skill points that he hadn't yet allocated. What he needed now were more offensive abilities, or abilities that would augment his offensive abilities, anyway, so he quickly purchased the second level of Speed Freak, which cost four points. He had been wanting to upgrade this skill for a while.
That left him with ten points, which was just enough for the Marksman skill. This skill was similar to Dead Aim, except that it allowed him to fire a gun with perfect precision, rather than to throw an object. Also like Dead Aim, it could only be used once a day, so it was only good for one shot, but he figured it might come in handy in an emergency.
He started to close the ICON system, but then paused, studying its screens, its graphical flourishes, and the menu bar that read "ICON System V. 1.0." Had his subconscious mind really created all these things? Were his stats really just meaningless, arbitrary numbers, concocted by his own brain? And were the skills his own invention as well, or had the alien done that?
He shook his head, dismissing the thoughts. He had to focus -- an army of zombies was marching down the street, headed right for them. He had to get ready to fight.