ShowerKrogan

  Six months ter

  I rubbed my eyes to the point of burning as I walked into the workshop. Becca’s functioning body was already standing by a ptop next to the workbench, typing away when I entered.

  “Good morning, Becca,” I said through a yawn. “Did you sleep well?”

  “Good morning, Grayson,” Becca replied with a hint of annoyance in her voice. “You ask me that every morning, and every morning I say-”

  “I know, I know,” I started doing the robot. “Beep boop beep. I am a computer. I do not sleep. That is why I am always so cranky. Beep boop.”

  Becca stared me down and offered up no response. For a brief moment, I thought her eyes fshed red, but they were her normal, pissed off at me, eyes.

  “Hmm. I may need to pull up your personality code again,” I said and scratched at the stubble on my chin. I walked up to the ptop, pulled it from her, and started clicking around. “There must be a bug; we discussed how you’re supposed to ugh when I do something hirious.”

  “I can assure you, Grayson. I am desperate for a reason to ugh. If only you could ever provide one.”

  “I’m too tired for your sass this morning. I need to save my energy for a supply run. We’re running low on fresh meat and eggs. I’m going to need to take the power armor… sorry Bethesda, I mean the zombie armor out and head over to the farm,” I checked the armor’s battery on the computer.

  Full charge. That would have been a real pain if I had forgotten to charge it again, like the drones during the outbreak. Plus, Becca would be all mouthy about it.

  “Hopefully Herb will take an IOU on the antibiotics; we’re out and shockingly they’re hard to find in this apocalyptic paradise. I might need to find something else to trade him for now. Maybe some more DVDs.” I stretched and fought off another yawn.

  “You’re too tired for my sass because you’re up all night pying those adult visual novels,” Becca said, and she went to a closet to pull out the all bck near skin-tight outfit I wear in the armor.

  “Hey! Don’t say things like that out loud! You’re… Being A Dik right now,” I said and took the outfit from her. “Get it? Being A Dik?”

  Becca said nothing. I think she might have even rolled her robotic eyes. I was going to disable that feature.

  “Wow. You know, being stuck alone in this house with you isn’t easy. It’s almost like I’m… Stranded In Space. How about that?”

  “Eternum,” Becca said.

  “Yes, yes. Good reference,” I said and climbed into the outfit.

  “I am sure that Farmer Ivore would be welcome to other items you could provide in a trade. Perhaps some of the Bryce Dals Howard posters you have in your room?” Becca suggested.

  “You’re a monster! You want the zombies to win, don’t you?!” I yelled at Becca with the perfect amount of dramatic fir. “I see why so much of humanity feared AI! You’re all monsters! Maintaining morale is crucial in war. I need to remember what I’m fighting for. Don't you remember when we watched Mun?! The original, obviously.”

  An arm sounded from the rge screen against the wall, and the word ‘ALERT’ fshed across the screen.

  “A drone has detected a loud noise close to the facility,” Becca announced.

  “Let me guess, the drone closest to the church?” I asked her and pulled up the map of the city on the screen.

  “That is correct,” Becca said.

  “Another storm rolling in? It was raining pretty hard st night. But it looked clear when I was up top a few minutes ago. Actually, it’s probably those church bells. The st few months they’ve been ringing erratically. They’re probably electronic and are off schedule with no one there to adjust the times,” I pulled up the video feed from the drone detecting the sound. Sure enough, church bells could be heard clear as day.

  One thirty-eight was a strange time for the bells to chime, but that drone was fgging those church bells almost daily, and it was always at different times. I might need to clear out that area of the decayed and turn the bells off myself. It depended on whether there were any of those brainiac-zombies over there.

  The drone video feed showed a mess of zombies hanging out by the church. The decayed ones were no big deal when they weren’t in a horde, but there had been quite a few zombies that were too smart for their undead britches and were a little harder to survive an encounter against. Much like that soldier from day one, humans turned into zombies via a bite were naturally stronger and smarter than the decayed that started this mess. I had, unfortunately, been able to confirm this was the case several times over the st several months. A fight with them was more about getting away than getting a kill.

  “Anyway, any non-zombie movement detected from any of the other drones?” I asked Becca while I quickly scanned through the drone logs for myself.

  “Nothing so far this week. If you are truly ready to bring in other survivors to the facility, you may need to venture further into the city,” Becca said and marked a few pces on the map.

  I scratched at my stubble again. Probably time for a shave, but who had time for that in the apocalypse. I mean, I am hunkered down in a fancy facility that will continue to generate its own power and fresh water for years after the fall of civilization, but I had other things on my mind. Like trying to finish my Baldur’s Gate 3 honor mode run.

  “I’d rather not venture too far into the city. I know there are some human strongholds holding out, but it's still about as dangerous as it gets. Because the zombies and the people. In fact, I trust the zombies more at this point,” I cleared the map and closed the ptop. “But we need to find people soon. I’m losing my mind being basically the only living being left here. Just me, him, and I guess if you count you-”

  “I do count me. Personally,” Becca said.

  “Right. Well, I need more human interaction. I’m going a little mad. But also, we need test subjects for the cure. The best ones will be recently turned individuals. A lot of the weaker zombies decay too quickly. But if we have a group, eventually someone will be bitten and we'll have a naturally sourced test subject,” I said and walked over to multiple test tubes filled with various colored liquids.

  I grabbed the only yellow tube and slipped into a metal device that looked a lot like a staple gun with a needle on the end. It clicked into pce, and I attached it to the side of my outfit. “We need to work on more of the preventative too. But the cure comes first while we still have a yellow ready to go.”

  I tapped the test tube that contained a light-blue liquid. We had made enough progress on a cure to get it to a point where it changed zombie mice back to normal mice, but they tended to start vomiting blood before having seizures and dying. I was no doctor, but I did not believe that was the desired result of a cure.

  “I’ll admit it’s a little dark to want a group of survivors just so one can be bitten and zombified, good song by Falling In Reverse, but we can’t let the doctor’s work go to waste. She was counting on us,” I said and walked away from the test tubes. I was going to shove a bunch of random food in my mouth and then it was out into the world.

  “If you want others here with us, then I will accept them. But they will need to take care of themselves. You are the only human I care to protect,” Becca said. “Unless given a command order by you.”

  Such a sweetheart.

  “Hmm, before I head out. Becca, status. Top section only,” I said, and a little blue screen popped up in front of me.

  STATUS: GRAYSON EMCEE

  HEALTH: 100/100STAMINA: 69/100 (Nice. Also, get some sleep, Grayson)STRENGTH: 14INTELLIGENCE: 11MANA: 4Hmm, my strength had gone down. I needed to make sure I kept myself fighting fit. Too much running and sneaking around, not enough gym gains. But working on Becca’s code and fixing up her body has raised my intelligence. Nice to see that number can go up. No more ‘LOL’ next to it either. My mana had gone up a little every so often, but I still didn’t know what it represented, and Becca maintained it was just what her scans showed with no other expnation.

  “Alright, I’m heading upstairs to grab some food, coffee, and sm a beer. Then off to see the Wizard. I mean farmer. And his weirdly hot, older wife. Good for him,” I reached the elevator when another drone arm popped up on the screen.

  “What’s this, Becca? Church bells again?”“No, this alert is from the drone by the apartment complex on the edge of town that you frequent for supplies,” Becca said, and with some hand gestures, she pulled up the drone feed onto the screen.

  The drone was locked onto two girls running from a small pack of zombies. They each carried a brown bag on their backs that looked stuffed full. A supply run gone wrong, maybe?

  The drone feed wasn’t the clearest video, but they both looked to be around college age. Simir build and the same hairstyle, shoulder-length and curly. They didn’t have it tied up or tucked away; that’s a major no-no. How are they six months into a zombie apocalypse and haven’t learned to keep their hair contained? Supply run rookies from a rger group, possibly, but someone would have warned them. Maybe exiled from a group and left to their fate. Either way, they were in trouble, but I was close enough to help.

  “Becca, get that drone in close so I can speak with them. Get the armor powered on too, we have a rescue mission!”

  Becca nodded, and the drone’s image shook briefly before it dove at the women running. They kept looking behind them every couple of seconds. Standing water from the earlier storm was spshed on them as they ran. The women had a decent distance between them and the zombies, but if either were to trip, it was probably game over.

  One of them noticed the approaching drone and pointed it out to the other. I took that as my cue to speak.

  “No time for introductions, do you see that brown brick apartment building about six buildings down on your left?” I said into a microphone we had set up to speak through the drones.

  The women screamed at me and pushed themselves to run harder. That was a little rude, what the hell?

  Fine, just die then… ugh, alright.

  “Hey, I’m not trying to be a dick here, but what kind of reaction is that? I’m trying to help! Do you see the apartment?” I said into the microphone again.

  They were both clearly terrified, duh, but this time they looked for the building I described and nodded back at me before looking back at the zombies.

  “First, stop looking back. You’re liable to trip and then you’re dead. Second, I scavenge in that building frequently. It’s clear,” I said and mostly meant it.

  I had not checked every single apartment. Most were locked, and it took effort to break down the doors. But I had found a key for one apartment on the first floor, and I knew the first four floors were clear, so unless someone broke in without my drone noticing and opened a door containing a zombie, they should be safe.

  I continued, “After you pass the building before it, take a left down the alley, and there’s a dumpster against the outside wall of the apartment building. Hop up on that and climb the lowered emergency dder to the third floor. There’s an open window. Head down to the first floor to room 1102. There’s a key taped to the top of the open door. Lock yourselves in until I get there. It’s safe. I’ll be by soon to help clear out any determined zombies that don’t clear out once you make it inside.”

  By the time I had finished speaking, they were already turning into the alley. They had about a fifteen-second lead on the zombies. The first woman hopped up onto the dumpster and pulled the other one who struggled to get herself up.

  The zombies came charging down the alley, snarling in excitement at the tantalizing thought of fresh meat.

  The first girl climbed up the dder without issue and had already reached the second floor when the second girl began her climb.

  I lost two people during the day one outbreak, now I had a chance to save two here. It doesn’t make up for what happened, but it’s a start!

  The second girl was four rungs up when the zombies crashed into the dumpster at full speed. She screamed at the sound of their impact and tried to rush her climb. She jumped up to the next rung, but the sudden jerky motion of her jump paired with her wet shoes caused her feet to slip off. The rungs were ripped from her grip, and she was left holding air as she fell from the dder.