Zombies, Run! Mission Eight: Part One
New chapter, I haz it. Standard drill, really: zombies and running and groans, oh my!
Master post
Chapter: Mission Eight - Supply Run: Part One
Summary: It’s a supply run. A supply run to New Canton. And that tells Five everything she needs to know.
Rating: PG-13.
Warnings: None.
Spoilers: Mission eight.
Mission Eight
Supply Run: Part One
Five squinted in the bright sunshine amplified by the bike’s steely chrome, and glanced at the sky for an estimate of the time. Not quite noon. She shaded her eyes with the greasy spanner in one hand, enjoying the feel of the cool steel against her forehead. She didn’t care if she left an oily streak; it’d match the mess her arms were in.
So, nearly noon, and dangerously hot. Five shifted around the motorbike’s other side to keep in the shade of the armoury, wary of sunburn despite the home-made sunblock she wore which doubled as an industrial lubricant. The rumours of drought had turned into a reality; reports from the south-east were not good. Dry winters had left groundwater reserves low, and there was a slow, steady influx of people risking the wildlands to head north, to cooler and presumably wetter weather. Good luck, though Five cynically; their own well was still productive, but Janine had ordered a stockpile of any bottled water supplies. Just in case.
There was no science to support a water ration beyond “don’t be a dick about it” so the water was still freely available, but Five suspected Janine was drawing some off to store… again, just in case. It was a sensible move, after all. Water might be the trading currency in vogue this summer, if this merciless heat kept up. The crops were being watered but they still looked like they were struggling, and with a base population of 152, the pressure on fluid was only going to rise.
Runner’s uniform had been swapped for a torn t-shirt with the sleeves ripped off, and a pair of worn dungaree-overalls that were two sizes too big. It was fine, Five didn’t mind; clothes were clothes, and they stopped her few personal possessions getting all mankey. Besides, her three weeks in the armoury’s engineering department had done her good. Within a week of medical leave, she’d found her shoulders de-torquing, tension winding down, and her days becoming easier in a way she hadn’t known for… what, months? Years?
The niggle in her left calf was completely gone, to her immense relief, and presumably to Dr. Myers’ relief, too. Five stretched it out as though to test her own thoughts, and found it pain-free and moving smoothly. Yesss, she cheered internally; still got it.
Five bent back over the motorbike, spanner thrust carelessly in her back pocket and fingers working methodically at the spark plugs. They were in pretty good nick, all things considered, but they were getting extra special attention because of the scarcity of parts. Five absently-mindedly wiped the grease from her fingers on the hip of her overalls, before leaning in with a can of GT-85 and a thoughtful expression.
The smell of GT-85 took her back, instantly, to her father’s garage: dark, a little dank, but heavy with the scent of light machinery lubricant. It was a smell associated with family, and love, and a father-daughter relationship she had never taken for granted. It hit her powerfully and she had to lean back for a moment and catch her bearings, lest she burst into tears in the middle of the courtyard. Save water, she told herself sternly. Crying is a luxury you can’t afford.
It was only a moment, and she got herself back to work, moving on to the chain and bathing it in lubricant from the can. The routine soothed her, the movements long-familiar and comforting in their usefulness, and she didn’t notice Sam until his shadow blocked out her light.
“Er, hello,” he said, hands jammed into his pockets and looking hideously self-aware in the bright sunlight, surrounded by machinery and weaponry that didn’t exist within the confines of an XBox-produced TV image. He looked like some sort of backwards anachronism.
Five tossed him a friendly grin, and a nod, straightening up and cracking out her spine with a series of audible clicks that made Sam actually wince. She laughed at his expression, rolling her shoulders, and greeted him properly, by name.
Sam passed her a piece of scrap paper with her number scrawled on it in hurried script. She unfolded it, absently noting the black engine-oil streaks she left on the paper, and read it briefly. It was short note from Dr. Meyers, assigning her back to active Runner duty. Five felt a brief flash of regret, tempered by excitement; yes, the engineering department had been a welcome break, but she missed Running. Even if it came with a side-order of zoms. It made her feel important. Five didn’t know what this said about her ego vs. her survival instinct.
“I put your name in for an easy mission, to get you back in the game,” Sam said, almost conspiratorially. Five gave him a curious look, bending down and wiping her arms off with a strip of old towelling, and managing to do little more than smear the grease on her arms to an even layer. Sam hunkered down in the sandy courtyard opposite her, and dropped his voice even further.
“It should be an easy one to warm up on, just a supplies run, but… don’t tell Janine I told you this, OK?”
Five laughed and nodded, narrowly refraining from clapping him on the shoulder and giving him an oily handprint on his clean, well-mended shirt. Sam cast a furtive glance about himself before heading back towards the Comm towers, looking helplessly conspicuous. Five shook her head with a grin.
It was a simple matter to present her haphazard transfer orders to Ed, who shrugged, Zen-like. “I knew you were only a loan,” he said, grinning, with an armful of wriggling Molly. She seemed right at home in the oily workshop, with her chewed cardboard books and Mr. Rabbit’s perpetually soggy ear. “You come on back whenever they’ll let you, if you want.”
Ed got a one-armed hug and Molly got a kiss on the forehead before Five ambled back out into the sunshine, heading toward the barracks. They were beginning to look distinctly more homey; the new influx of people had brought a few rare luxuries with them, and some posters and ornaments had gone up in the communal living spaces, very student-like.
There was some friendly banter between the people clustered lightly around the wash trough, and Five kept half an ear on it as she washed the worst of the oil from her arms with the brick-like, harsh orange soap that exfoliated more than it cleaned. She could feel her brain winding back up to full throttle, tactics and calculations and turns of speed all neatly clicking back together, as though she’d never been away from the Running.
It felt like coming home.
~
The cover guns rattled, the sirens blared, and Five jogged out from the gates at a steady pace. Her brief mission statement had simply told her to head north-west into the forest, so she set a comfortable cruising pace and waited for further instructions.
She didn’t have long to wait. Seconds later, there was a static crackle in her headset, and the unmistakeable sounds of two people bickering before one voice, just discernible, spoke directly into the microphone.
“Hello, Runner Five, Runner Five,” said a steely female voice that Five instantly recognised as Janine. Janine’s voice weakened for a moment, leaning away from the mike.
“Can she hear me, Mr. Yao?” More static.
“Oh, yeah, just… just give me a sec,” came Sam’s voice, roughened by the weak radio signal. “Heeey, Runner Five, we’re changing things up a bit. Isn’t that exciting?” he added, bright, false enthusiasm pouring from every syllable, before his attention switched back to Janine. “Listen, you just have to keep this button pressed in when you’re talking -” The static was thicker now, “- and make sure you lean… this way, so your body sort of extends the arial a bit, and -”
“Good grief,” interrupted Janine sharply, her demanding voice clear despite the crackle over Five’s headset. “Is this the way you’ve been managing all these months?”
“Yeah, pretty much, yeah, I make it work,” replied Sam distantly, instantly on the defensive. Five found that she was grinning, and had no desire to stop. Good old Sam, she thought cheerfully, keeping a steady eye on the ground in front of her, and half an ear to the wind. There were the ever-present groans, but they weren’t close.
“If,” said Janine waspishly, “you just plugged this in here -” Instantly, the static was gone, and a clear crisp signal replaced it, “- then you can sit back, and the signal’s better.”
“I, er… yeah, I knew that,” floundered Sam, before flatly giving up on the pretence. “No I didn’t, I didn’t know that at all. So,” he added, fresh, overbright cheer sparking off every word, “Runner Five, treat for you today! Janine here will be your controller, leading you off on a very special assignment, aren’t you, Janine?”
“Don’t patronise me, Mr. Yao.”
“I wasn’t! I didn’t mean - I -”
“Runner Five,” said Janine with finality, and with exasperation in every corner of her voice, “just - run.”
Five huffed a laugh, banking further west to exit the forest into the old farm belt. The path there would give her a reasonable place to start for any destination Janine might give.
The pickings were going to be slim, she thought absently, tracking the sunlight through the treetops. She’d run parts of this route at least twice, not counting return trips. Supplies would probably only be found in suburban houses, but so would the danger. Well, it might be worth the risk. Five decided to keep an ear on the local zombie movements and any updates from Janine, and allowed herself to stretch her pace.
Her muscles felt long, strong and good, and she risked a brisker-than normal pace when she emerged from the forest and on to the flat land of the old crops belt. The dirt path was neat and free from grass over-grow, as part of a regular route between Abel, New Canton, and several other local landmarks. It was just as well, really. Zoms had a nasty habit of hiding in tall grass, like demented Pokémon.
She passed a half-skeleton, and remembered looting it for supplies the first time. Its mocking grin seemed to follow her for the next quarter-mile, as if to say, a water drought? You think it’s just water that’s going to be in short supply?
Yep, definitely some house raids, she thought grimly.
The long grasses either side of her path rattled softly in the mild, dry breeze. Five kept a very careful eye on the long grass verge, knowing she didn’t have Eight as a second pair of eyes this time.
Five was entering the small, suburban housing estates in good time, following the old farmer’s path and vaulting the stile onto paved footpath. She set to running down the middle of the road, mindful of the visibility it could afford her. She risked stopping off at the first house with open doors. It was a risk this close to the old farm belt, but the memory of the skeleton’s dry, bleached grin forced her to weigh the odds.
As a compromise, she did little more than stick her head around the door and listen intently for thirty seconds. There was an iPhone on the hallway table, and a spilled laundry basket at the bottom of the staircase; but there was no blood on the walls and no sign of forced entry at the ground-floor windows. She sprinted in, grabbing the phone and the top few layers of clothes from the basket, and was out of the house within fifteen seconds. Score.
Feeling a bit better, Five packed the stuff away in her rucksack and dropped into her cruising speed. Her timing was pretty good, because Janine was barking instructions in her ear only seconds later.
“Simple expedition for you today, Runner Five,” Janine announced without preamble. “Nothing too taxing, but it is important that it’s done swiftly.”
There was a sulky background mutter of “That’s why we call them Runners, you know.”
“Yes, quite,” said Janine, effortlessly dismissive. “We’re low on cable, electronic supplies, that sort of thing.” Five pictured the Comms tower; it was becoming an impressive structure, and probably the local power in terms of communication ability. Low of electrical supplies? It wouldn’t surprise her, despite her own frequent contributions to the department.
“They’re getting harder to find as time goes on,” carried on Janine. “Weather corrodes, rats gnaw and looters, well, loot, so I need you to head to New Canton.”
There was a brief pause as Five, and Sam, tried to fit their heads around this information.
“New Canton?” said Sam, as though Janine had set ‘plague pit’.
“That is what I said. It’s all very straight forward, Mr. Yao. We treat New Canton as our enemy - why?"
Sam either didn’t do rhetorical questions, or decided this one needed an answer regardless, because he didn’t even pause.
“Because they, what, enforced martial law over there? They refused to take our people in under attack, and they’re getting too big, and they’re having dangerous outbreaks of zombie plague?”
Five didn’t think anyone at Abel could judge another Township about getting too big, but she wouldn’t have said anything even if they could hear her.
“They’re still human, Mr Yao. If we humans can’t stick together, we can’t expect to survive this extinction threat. I’ve been in touch with the people in New Canton. They’ll be waiting for Runner Five.”
Oh, great, she thought.
“I don’t think that sounds as good as I think you think it sounds.”
“It’s all going to be fine. Just keep running, Five. Everything’s going to be fine, trust me.”
“That’s the last thing you should say in situations like this,” said Sam in a half-laugh, distantly, before her headset dropped back into radio mode, the signal to Abel terminated.
Five found herself distinctly unsettled at Janine’s attempt to soothe and placate. It just wasn’t like her. What was going on here?
Five thinned her lips and kept her eyes sharp for approaching zoms, although it had been very quiet so far. She didn’t know if that was promising or not.
She nearly tripped over a battered, label-less can of food about a minute later, mistaking it for metal debris from the nearby hulk of a burned-out car. She paused to glare balefully at it before stuffing it into her pack, and kept going, keeping to the white line in the middle of the road. That seemed to be the order of the day; good things in a bad coating. New Canton, of all places. There was definitely something else going on here, some little game-changer at work underneath the politics. Five resented not being told about it for a moment, before she stuffed the thoughts away along with the tin of food, and focused on the path ahead.
There was a crackle in her earset, briefly, before Janine came through again, arguing coolly with who Five could only assume was Sam.
“I don’t need to be in touch with all of them,” Janine snapped, voice fuzzing and crackling with static. “As you know, Mr. Yao, we’ve set up a rudimentary form of the internet, which allows a kind of bulletin board operated by ‘ham radio. I’ve contacted one or two people in New Canton telling them about our need for parts. They’ve kindly offered to let us have some, and I have no doubt we’ll return the favour in due course.”
“Yes,” said Sam dubiously, “I do know. Why are you telling me something starting with ‘as you know’?”
“I suspected, from your inability to work your own aerial, that you might not actually know,” she replied waspishly.
“Hmm, well, as you know, the switch you just flicked with your elbow when you turned around is letting Runner Five hear our conversation.”
Five found herself grinning at Sam’s self-satisfaction, combing the road ahead with her eyes. The houses were starkly silent, empty windows and barricaded doors making her feel like she was trapped in one of the old Silent Hill games. She shook the thought off as Janine recovered from her brief pause.
“Oh, I, aha… Carry on, Runner Five. Yes. Run.”
Five actually barked a laugh at that, keeping her pace steady and her footbeats rhythmic. This was old turf, now, she knew the routes in and out... but she remembered the upcoming pinch point with a certain amount of concern.
Five risked a brief stop to search the wreck of a car she had dismissed the first few times as too dangerous to explore, but the silence of the zoms gave her a little extra courage. It took her nearly a whole minute to find anything useful, and then would normally been about forty-five seconds too long, but there was nothing but silence. The area was as safe as it was ever going to be.
She retrieved a water-stained pack of Duracell batteries from the plastic mess of the glove compartment, and a badly-torn shirt that would be fine with half an hour and a spool of thread. They were light, easy to carry, and went straight into the pack.
The small local road was beginning to broaden into the bigger suburban artery, and Five mentally judged the distance to the choke point. No, it was a few minutes away yet. She kept an eye out on the houses on either side of her, for movement of for the tell-tale sign of an open door. They were rare, but they might yield valuable supplies. The risk calculations were all different now.
“She’s gone to the bathroom,” came the sudden whispered voice over her headset. Five actually jumped; whispers, groans and moans were all wired into her adrenaline system. It took her a minute to locate the voice as coming through her earset.
“To be honest, I mildly suspect she might have bugged the Comms desk. Comms shack,” he self-corrected absently, before reverting to “Comms desk. Can you hear me Janine?”
He snickered.
“Yeah, she can’t hear me. Well… she wouldn’t say if she could hear me,” he conceded worriedly. “That woman is tricky. Listen, she’s coming back in a second. Er, I know she’s very good at her job, but juuuust to be on the safe side, I’m keeping as many of our scanner focused on you as I can.”
Five wasn't about to lie to herself; it was definitely reassuring.
“What are you doing, Mr. Yao?”
Five could practically hear the sound of Sam having a minor heart attack.
“I, er, nothing?” he squeaked. “Just, talking to Runner Five, that’s my job, my job is talking to Runner Five.”
Oh, Sam, thought Five. You couldn’t give the game away any harder if you had ‘LIAR’ tattooed to your forehead.
“Doing my job,” he added needlessly.
“Yes, that’s your job,” said Janine, not even trying to cut through Sam’s pathetic layer of half-truths. “While we’re here, Runner Five, slight diversion. If you just head toward the large green building you should be seeing on your right, my contact tells me there will be some electrical supplies. It’s an electrical engineering building.”
“You know what those are on this monitor, here right?” asked Sam frankly.
“Oh, yes, and there’s quite a large concentration of zombies in the area, so do run,” said Janine with disgusting cheerfulness before the line went dead.
Five angled her course from the main road, rejoining another smaller one. The green building was easily seen, a two-story-high concrete building painted that weird industrial green. It was probably about half a mile away, and through a few new roads. More zoms, Five reminded herself, settling her pace back down. Conserve energy. Careful.
More supplies, too, a treacherous part of her brain suggested. Five rolled her eyes. The need to prove she was back on form was beginning to undercut her judgement, so she forced the thought back and paid attention to the streets around her.
Five must have been about three minutes away from the building when she stumbled across a real find: a house, boarded up and silent, but with a garage wide open. There was a lot of blood on the floor - probably not the house’s original owners, but a looter who’d bitten off more than they could chew, and had ended up with more bitten off than they could swallow - but it was echoing and silent.
She risked pausing by the wide entrance, listening for a moment. She spotted a car battery on the shelf, new-looking and shiny, and a series of folded solar panels nearby.
She calculated the odds. She paused, she listened, she dashed.
Five had grabbed the car battery, the solar panel sheeting, and was out of the garage in under ten seconds and in to the relative safety of the sun shine. She had to stop completely to pack away the heavy car battery and strap the panels to the back of the her rucksack, and her adrenaline levels were high as she constantly shot glances in every directed, looking everywhere but her hands. Once she had judged it reasonably safe enough, she bolted, mindful of Janine’s warning.
There were moans in the distance, definitely. Whether they were moving was hard to tell.
On to part two.
Master post
Chapter: Mission Eight - Supply Run: Part One
Summary: It’s a supply run. A supply run to New Canton. And that tells Five everything she needs to know.
Rating: PG-13.
Warnings: None.
Spoilers: Mission eight.
Mission Eight
Supply Run: Part One
Five squinted in the bright sunshine amplified by the bike’s steely chrome, and glanced at the sky for an estimate of the time. Not quite noon. She shaded her eyes with the greasy spanner in one hand, enjoying the feel of the cool steel against her forehead. She didn’t care if she left an oily streak; it’d match the mess her arms were in.
So, nearly noon, and dangerously hot. Five shifted around the motorbike’s other side to keep in the shade of the armoury, wary of sunburn despite the home-made sunblock she wore which doubled as an industrial lubricant. The rumours of drought had turned into a reality; reports from the south-east were not good. Dry winters had left groundwater reserves low, and there was a slow, steady influx of people risking the wildlands to head north, to cooler and presumably wetter weather. Good luck, though Five cynically; their own well was still productive, but Janine had ordered a stockpile of any bottled water supplies. Just in case.
There was no science to support a water ration beyond “don’t be a dick about it” so the water was still freely available, but Five suspected Janine was drawing some off to store… again, just in case. It was a sensible move, after all. Water might be the trading currency in vogue this summer, if this merciless heat kept up. The crops were being watered but they still looked like they were struggling, and with a base population of 152, the pressure on fluid was only going to rise.
Runner’s uniform had been swapped for a torn t-shirt with the sleeves ripped off, and a pair of worn dungaree-overalls that were two sizes too big. It was fine, Five didn’t mind; clothes were clothes, and they stopped her few personal possessions getting all mankey. Besides, her three weeks in the armoury’s engineering department had done her good. Within a week of medical leave, she’d found her shoulders de-torquing, tension winding down, and her days becoming easier in a way she hadn’t known for… what, months? Years?
The niggle in her left calf was completely gone, to her immense relief, and presumably to Dr. Myers’ relief, too. Five stretched it out as though to test her own thoughts, and found it pain-free and moving smoothly. Yesss, she cheered internally; still got it.
Five bent back over the motorbike, spanner thrust carelessly in her back pocket and fingers working methodically at the spark plugs. They were in pretty good nick, all things considered, but they were getting extra special attention because of the scarcity of parts. Five absently-mindedly wiped the grease from her fingers on the hip of her overalls, before leaning in with a can of GT-85 and a thoughtful expression.
The smell of GT-85 took her back, instantly, to her father’s garage: dark, a little dank, but heavy with the scent of light machinery lubricant. It was a smell associated with family, and love, and a father-daughter relationship she had never taken for granted. It hit her powerfully and she had to lean back for a moment and catch her bearings, lest she burst into tears in the middle of the courtyard. Save water, she told herself sternly. Crying is a luxury you can’t afford.
It was only a moment, and she got herself back to work, moving on to the chain and bathing it in lubricant from the can. The routine soothed her, the movements long-familiar and comforting in their usefulness, and she didn’t notice Sam until his shadow blocked out her light.
“Er, hello,” he said, hands jammed into his pockets and looking hideously self-aware in the bright sunlight, surrounded by machinery and weaponry that didn’t exist within the confines of an XBox-produced TV image. He looked like some sort of backwards anachronism.
Five tossed him a friendly grin, and a nod, straightening up and cracking out her spine with a series of audible clicks that made Sam actually wince. She laughed at his expression, rolling her shoulders, and greeted him properly, by name.
Sam passed her a piece of scrap paper with her number scrawled on it in hurried script. She unfolded it, absently noting the black engine-oil streaks she left on the paper, and read it briefly. It was short note from Dr. Meyers, assigning her back to active Runner duty. Five felt a brief flash of regret, tempered by excitement; yes, the engineering department had been a welcome break, but she missed Running. Even if it came with a side-order of zoms. It made her feel important. Five didn’t know what this said about her ego vs. her survival instinct.
“I put your name in for an easy mission, to get you back in the game,” Sam said, almost conspiratorially. Five gave him a curious look, bending down and wiping her arms off with a strip of old towelling, and managing to do little more than smear the grease on her arms to an even layer. Sam hunkered down in the sandy courtyard opposite her, and dropped his voice even further.
“It should be an easy one to warm up on, just a supplies run, but… don’t tell Janine I told you this, OK?”
Five laughed and nodded, narrowly refraining from clapping him on the shoulder and giving him an oily handprint on his clean, well-mended shirt. Sam cast a furtive glance about himself before heading back towards the Comm towers, looking helplessly conspicuous. Five shook her head with a grin.
It was a simple matter to present her haphazard transfer orders to Ed, who shrugged, Zen-like. “I knew you were only a loan,” he said, grinning, with an armful of wriggling Molly. She seemed right at home in the oily workshop, with her chewed cardboard books and Mr. Rabbit’s perpetually soggy ear. “You come on back whenever they’ll let you, if you want.”
Ed got a one-armed hug and Molly got a kiss on the forehead before Five ambled back out into the sunshine, heading toward the barracks. They were beginning to look distinctly more homey; the new influx of people had brought a few rare luxuries with them, and some posters and ornaments had gone up in the communal living spaces, very student-like.
There was some friendly banter between the people clustered lightly around the wash trough, and Five kept half an ear on it as she washed the worst of the oil from her arms with the brick-like, harsh orange soap that exfoliated more than it cleaned. She could feel her brain winding back up to full throttle, tactics and calculations and turns of speed all neatly clicking back together, as though she’d never been away from the Running.
It felt like coming home.
~
The cover guns rattled, the sirens blared, and Five jogged out from the gates at a steady pace. Her brief mission statement had simply told her to head north-west into the forest, so she set a comfortable cruising pace and waited for further instructions.
She didn’t have long to wait. Seconds later, there was a static crackle in her headset, and the unmistakeable sounds of two people bickering before one voice, just discernible, spoke directly into the microphone.
“Hello, Runner Five, Runner Five,” said a steely female voice that Five instantly recognised as Janine. Janine’s voice weakened for a moment, leaning away from the mike.
“Can she hear me, Mr. Yao?” More static.
“Oh, yeah, just… just give me a sec,” came Sam’s voice, roughened by the weak radio signal. “Heeey, Runner Five, we’re changing things up a bit. Isn’t that exciting?” he added, bright, false enthusiasm pouring from every syllable, before his attention switched back to Janine. “Listen, you just have to keep this button pressed in when you’re talking -” The static was thicker now, “- and make sure you lean… this way, so your body sort of extends the arial a bit, and -”
“Good grief,” interrupted Janine sharply, her demanding voice clear despite the crackle over Five’s headset. “Is this the way you’ve been managing all these months?”
“Yeah, pretty much, yeah, I make it work,” replied Sam distantly, instantly on the defensive. Five found that she was grinning, and had no desire to stop. Good old Sam, she thought cheerfully, keeping a steady eye on the ground in front of her, and half an ear to the wind. There were the ever-present groans, but they weren’t close.
“If,” said Janine waspishly, “you just plugged this in here -” Instantly, the static was gone, and a clear crisp signal replaced it, “- then you can sit back, and the signal’s better.”
“I, er… yeah, I knew that,” floundered Sam, before flatly giving up on the pretence. “No I didn’t, I didn’t know that at all. So,” he added, fresh, overbright cheer sparking off every word, “Runner Five, treat for you today! Janine here will be your controller, leading you off on a very special assignment, aren’t you, Janine?”
“Don’t patronise me, Mr. Yao.”
“I wasn’t! I didn’t mean - I -”
“Runner Five,” said Janine with finality, and with exasperation in every corner of her voice, “just - run.”
Five huffed a laugh, banking further west to exit the forest into the old farm belt. The path there would give her a reasonable place to start for any destination Janine might give.
The pickings were going to be slim, she thought absently, tracking the sunlight through the treetops. She’d run parts of this route at least twice, not counting return trips. Supplies would probably only be found in suburban houses, but so would the danger. Well, it might be worth the risk. Five decided to keep an ear on the local zombie movements and any updates from Janine, and allowed herself to stretch her pace.
Her muscles felt long, strong and good, and she risked a brisker-than normal pace when she emerged from the forest and on to the flat land of the old crops belt. The dirt path was neat and free from grass over-grow, as part of a regular route between Abel, New Canton, and several other local landmarks. It was just as well, really. Zoms had a nasty habit of hiding in tall grass, like demented Pokémon.
She passed a half-skeleton, and remembered looting it for supplies the first time. Its mocking grin seemed to follow her for the next quarter-mile, as if to say, a water drought? You think it’s just water that’s going to be in short supply?
Yep, definitely some house raids, she thought grimly.
The long grasses either side of her path rattled softly in the mild, dry breeze. Five kept a very careful eye on the long grass verge, knowing she didn’t have Eight as a second pair of eyes this time.
Five was entering the small, suburban housing estates in good time, following the old farmer’s path and vaulting the stile onto paved footpath. She set to running down the middle of the road, mindful of the visibility it could afford her. She risked stopping off at the first house with open doors. It was a risk this close to the old farm belt, but the memory of the skeleton’s dry, bleached grin forced her to weigh the odds.
As a compromise, she did little more than stick her head around the door and listen intently for thirty seconds. There was an iPhone on the hallway table, and a spilled laundry basket at the bottom of the staircase; but there was no blood on the walls and no sign of forced entry at the ground-floor windows. She sprinted in, grabbing the phone and the top few layers of clothes from the basket, and was out of the house within fifteen seconds. Score.
Feeling a bit better, Five packed the stuff away in her rucksack and dropped into her cruising speed. Her timing was pretty good, because Janine was barking instructions in her ear only seconds later.
“Simple expedition for you today, Runner Five,” Janine announced without preamble. “Nothing too taxing, but it is important that it’s done swiftly.”
There was a sulky background mutter of “That’s why we call them Runners, you know.”
“Yes, quite,” said Janine, effortlessly dismissive. “We’re low on cable, electronic supplies, that sort of thing.” Five pictured the Comms tower; it was becoming an impressive structure, and probably the local power in terms of communication ability. Low of electrical supplies? It wouldn’t surprise her, despite her own frequent contributions to the department.
“They’re getting harder to find as time goes on,” carried on Janine. “Weather corrodes, rats gnaw and looters, well, loot, so I need you to head to New Canton.”
There was a brief pause as Five, and Sam, tried to fit their heads around this information.
“New Canton?” said Sam, as though Janine had set ‘plague pit’.
“That is what I said. It’s all very straight forward, Mr. Yao. We treat New Canton as our enemy - why?"
Sam either didn’t do rhetorical questions, or decided this one needed an answer regardless, because he didn’t even pause.
“Because they, what, enforced martial law over there? They refused to take our people in under attack, and they’re getting too big, and they’re having dangerous outbreaks of zombie plague?”
Five didn’t think anyone at Abel could judge another Township about getting too big, but she wouldn’t have said anything even if they could hear her.
“They’re still human, Mr Yao. If we humans can’t stick together, we can’t expect to survive this extinction threat. I’ve been in touch with the people in New Canton. They’ll be waiting for Runner Five.”
Oh, great, she thought.
“I don’t think that sounds as good as I think you think it sounds.”
“It’s all going to be fine. Just keep running, Five. Everything’s going to be fine, trust me.”
“That’s the last thing you should say in situations like this,” said Sam in a half-laugh, distantly, before her headset dropped back into radio mode, the signal to Abel terminated.
Five found herself distinctly unsettled at Janine’s attempt to soothe and placate. It just wasn’t like her. What was going on here?
Five thinned her lips and kept her eyes sharp for approaching zoms, although it had been very quiet so far. She didn’t know if that was promising or not.
She nearly tripped over a battered, label-less can of food about a minute later, mistaking it for metal debris from the nearby hulk of a burned-out car. She paused to glare balefully at it before stuffing it into her pack, and kept going, keeping to the white line in the middle of the road. That seemed to be the order of the day; good things in a bad coating. New Canton, of all places. There was definitely something else going on here, some little game-changer at work underneath the politics. Five resented not being told about it for a moment, before she stuffed the thoughts away along with the tin of food, and focused on the path ahead.
There was a crackle in her earset, briefly, before Janine came through again, arguing coolly with who Five could only assume was Sam.
“I don’t need to be in touch with all of them,” Janine snapped, voice fuzzing and crackling with static. “As you know, Mr. Yao, we’ve set up a rudimentary form of the internet, which allows a kind of bulletin board operated by ‘ham radio. I’ve contacted one or two people in New Canton telling them about our need for parts. They’ve kindly offered to let us have some, and I have no doubt we’ll return the favour in due course.”
“Yes,” said Sam dubiously, “I do know. Why are you telling me something starting with ‘as you know’?”
“I suspected, from your inability to work your own aerial, that you might not actually know,” she replied waspishly.
“Hmm, well, as you know, the switch you just flicked with your elbow when you turned around is letting Runner Five hear our conversation.”
Five found herself grinning at Sam’s self-satisfaction, combing the road ahead with her eyes. The houses were starkly silent, empty windows and barricaded doors making her feel like she was trapped in one of the old Silent Hill games. She shook the thought off as Janine recovered from her brief pause.
“Oh, I, aha… Carry on, Runner Five. Yes. Run.”
Five actually barked a laugh at that, keeping her pace steady and her footbeats rhythmic. This was old turf, now, she knew the routes in and out... but she remembered the upcoming pinch point with a certain amount of concern.
Five risked a brief stop to search the wreck of a car she had dismissed the first few times as too dangerous to explore, but the silence of the zoms gave her a little extra courage. It took her nearly a whole minute to find anything useful, and then would normally been about forty-five seconds too long, but there was nothing but silence. The area was as safe as it was ever going to be.
She retrieved a water-stained pack of Duracell batteries from the plastic mess of the glove compartment, and a badly-torn shirt that would be fine with half an hour and a spool of thread. They were light, easy to carry, and went straight into the pack.
The small local road was beginning to broaden into the bigger suburban artery, and Five mentally judged the distance to the choke point. No, it was a few minutes away yet. She kept an eye out on the houses on either side of her, for movement of for the tell-tale sign of an open door. They were rare, but they might yield valuable supplies. The risk calculations were all different now.
“She’s gone to the bathroom,” came the sudden whispered voice over her headset. Five actually jumped; whispers, groans and moans were all wired into her adrenaline system. It took her a minute to locate the voice as coming through her earset.
“To be honest, I mildly suspect she might have bugged the Comms desk. Comms shack,” he self-corrected absently, before reverting to “Comms desk. Can you hear me Janine?”
He snickered.
“Yeah, she can’t hear me. Well… she wouldn’t say if she could hear me,” he conceded worriedly. “That woman is tricky. Listen, she’s coming back in a second. Er, I know she’s very good at her job, but juuuust to be on the safe side, I’m keeping as many of our scanner focused on you as I can.”
Five wasn't about to lie to herself; it was definitely reassuring.
“What are you doing, Mr. Yao?”
Five could practically hear the sound of Sam having a minor heart attack.
“I, er, nothing?” he squeaked. “Just, talking to Runner Five, that’s my job, my job is talking to Runner Five.”
Oh, Sam, thought Five. You couldn’t give the game away any harder if you had ‘LIAR’ tattooed to your forehead.
“Doing my job,” he added needlessly.
“Yes, that’s your job,” said Janine, not even trying to cut through Sam’s pathetic layer of half-truths. “While we’re here, Runner Five, slight diversion. If you just head toward the large green building you should be seeing on your right, my contact tells me there will be some electrical supplies. It’s an electrical engineering building.”
“You know what those are on this monitor, here right?” asked Sam frankly.
“Oh, yes, and there’s quite a large concentration of zombies in the area, so do run,” said Janine with disgusting cheerfulness before the line went dead.
Five angled her course from the main road, rejoining another smaller one. The green building was easily seen, a two-story-high concrete building painted that weird industrial green. It was probably about half a mile away, and through a few new roads. More zoms, Five reminded herself, settling her pace back down. Conserve energy. Careful.
More supplies, too, a treacherous part of her brain suggested. Five rolled her eyes. The need to prove she was back on form was beginning to undercut her judgement, so she forced the thought back and paid attention to the streets around her.
Five must have been about three minutes away from the building when she stumbled across a real find: a house, boarded up and silent, but with a garage wide open. There was a lot of blood on the floor - probably not the house’s original owners, but a looter who’d bitten off more than they could chew, and had ended up with more bitten off than they could swallow - but it was echoing and silent.
She risked pausing by the wide entrance, listening for a moment. She spotted a car battery on the shelf, new-looking and shiny, and a series of folded solar panels nearby.
She calculated the odds. She paused, she listened, she dashed.
Five had grabbed the car battery, the solar panel sheeting, and was out of the garage in under ten seconds and in to the relative safety of the sun shine. She had to stop completely to pack away the heavy car battery and strap the panels to the back of the her rucksack, and her adrenaline levels were high as she constantly shot glances in every directed, looking everywhere but her hands. Once she had judged it reasonably safe enough, she bolted, mindful of Janine’s warning.
There were moans in the distance, definitely. Whether they were moving was hard to tell.
On to part two.