Shortly into the new year, trips resumed to the mainland. Beth didn’t know how the issue was resolved. She found it unlikely that the storm season had somehow ended with the change of the calendar. But it was resolved. Things were restored to a very normal state of normal.

  The two extra members of the allotment team returned to their regular jobs, and no mention was made of the remaining few days of Beth’s community service. Instead, she was invited to schedule herself for a scavenging run. She left a message for Seb for when he came past the chicken coop. He was generous enough to volunteer his living-room to arrange a meet up with Helen.

  It was the first time she had visited, and she looked around with interest. The room bore all the hallmarks of a swift clean-up. Seb was not as careful in tucking dangling clothing into an ottoman as he’d probably hoped, and there was a visible line in the dust where he hadn’t fully wiped the bottom shelf of the coffee table. But it was a decent size, and he had it all to himself. Beth was a little jealous. Her own place didn’t allow for any hiding of anything, even if she’d wanted to. Everything was always on full display. Not only to Calley, but also to Sophie whenever her stepmother decided to come in and ‘tidy up’.

  They took seats on the surprisingly new looking couches.

  “What happened for the boat crews to call off the strike?” asked Helen. “Anyone know?”

  Beth shook her head to indicate her ignorance.

  Seb said, “The semi-official line is they gained access to a reliable weather prediction skill. Someone finally managed to level it up enough to provide a reasonable measure of safety.”

  That wasn’t a bad sounding reason. A very reasonable resolution to everyone’s concerns. It might even be true.

  “There’s a weather prediction skill?” asked Helen.

  Oh, now that was a possible flaw in the story. Beth tried to remember. She’d have to go back to that military list she’d stolen from Peter.

  “If it’s the one I’m thinking of,” said Seb, “Yes. I almost bought it in the last auction. I wish I had, now.”

  “Bad auction?” asked Beth.

  “Yeah,” said Seb. “I thought I’d snagged an awesome sharpshooter skill that even produced its own dart bullets.”

  “I take it that it didn’t,” said Helen.

  If Beth was thinking of the right skill from the list, she knew it did, in a way. Just not in a way that would be useful.

  “Oh, it did,” Seb said, demonstrating them. “I can produce these little darts and then fire them where-ever I want them to go. As I level up, I’ll be able to fire them quicker and more precisely with less and less time aiming.”

  “But?”

  “But… they’re going to have no effect on zombies whatsoever. They just don’t have much momentum behind them. They can pierce skin just about, but that’s it. And zombies won’t care about a little pain.”

  There were multiple ways to deal with an infected. They could be stopped with enough damage, or disabled by breaking sufficient number of bones, or paralysed by shredding enough muscles. But they could not be incapacitated by pain alone. Bullet wounds that would send a normal person into shock would have no more effect than a bean bag. Seb’s skill would never produce enough force for them to even notice. The military had considered it for crowd-control on normal humans but discarded it in favour of other options.

  All of which Beth had known before the auction. If she’d asked Seb in advance, she might have been able to steer him away. To be fair to herself, however, she had not imagined that anyone would still risk skills the military might value. She and Helen could only wish, these days, to be of less interest to the military.

  “I’m so sorry,” said Helen.

  So was Beth.

  “It is what it is,” said Seb.

  Beth swallowed around the lump in her throat, “Wait for the third auction?”

  She’d be sure to discuss their options before hand, next time.

  “If there is a third auction.”

  “And if we haven’t been completely outpriced. Not many points left behind for normal folk.”

  “At least we can do scavenging runs again.”

  “Yes, thank the aliens. I can’t rely on my job as protector of chickens alone.”

  “Although protecting chickens does come with the perk of pancakes,” said Beth, trying to lift the mood.

  It certainly lifted her own. Whenever she thought of them, she could still feel the soft sponge melting in her mouth, and the satisfying warmth in her stomach. They had been half-drunk on memories alone, giggling on the floor of an abandoned classroom, hiding away their treasure from the rest of the occupants of the High School.

  “Pancakes?” asked Helen incredulously. “With what ingredients?”

  There was wheat flour, as a concept. The military had confiscated the remaining diesel precisely for that purpose. They had even managed to cultivate some further wheat fields using hand labour, even without the heavy-handed tactics to acquire that labour that was still to come. The flour had just then promptly disappeared into the kitchens of the military and the powerful.

  “Oat flour,” said Beth. “We managed a second oat harvest.”

  “Flour, eggs from Melanie, some apple sauce from Beth… it was awesome,” said Seb.

  “It was.”

  Melanie had invited Beth to join them without any prompting from Beth. Beth had offered the sauce in return so as not to take advantage of Helen’s good nature. It was kind of Seb to specify that for Helen, as well, so that she wasn’t left with the wrong impression.

  “I am so jealous,” said Helen.

  “And so you should be,” said Seb. “So, why did I invite you both here? I assume it wasn’t just to arrange schedules.”

  “No,” admitted Beth. “You know how they’re picking a new spot for us to move to for our scavenging?”

  “Yes?”

  “Did you ever do anything about those basement-infected that you found?”

  Helen and Seb exchanged glances.

  “No,” said Seb. “They’ve remained really suspicious of accidental discovery and self-defence claims, and we just never thought it was going to be worth it. Do you know someone in security who is open to handling it for a good price? Or some other way to launder it?”

  “No,” said Beth, a bit regretfully. That would have made everything so much easier. “But this is our last chance, and even money we have to hide is better than no money. And there are places we can still use unofficial money.”

  Seb and Helen shifted awkwardly, the couch squeaking underneath them. Beth was worried that she was losing them before she could even start her prepared idea. “Helen, the situation with the police taking your boyfriend’s side—”

  “—would have been better if I could have used bribes,” agreed Helen.

  Seb tentatively raised a single finger. “I don’t want to poke my nose into your personal business, but if you’re having problems with your boyfriend to the extent that police are involved, isn’t that a sign you should break up? I mean, bribes are good, but isn’t it better that it doesn’t happen again?”

  Helen laughed. “I mean, you’re not wrong, but it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as that summary makes it sound, I promise. It was a noise complaint from the neighbours, not any sort of domestic violence situation. The police were just… yeah. Although Beth’s not wrong either. The best way to prevent it happening again is bribes. Hell, I’d need the bribes just to break up with him, anyway.”

  “You would?” squeaked Beth. She hadn’t expected her suggestion to be necessary.

  “Yeah,” said Helen. “I actually tried to kick him out at the time of the argument, but Pines wouldn’t let me.”

  “Pines wouldn’t let you?” repeated Beth.

  Helen shrugged. “The police told me it’s not their job to get involved with personal relationships, but they had a word with him and he’s willing to forgive me and let me back. But if I’m going to be like that, then maybe I should talk to housing about a new place.”

  “And—”

  “And housing tells me I’m already registered to a perfectly good place, and it’s not their problem if I suddenly don’t like it. It is also not their problem if someone else is in it, and I should talk to the police if I want to evict someone.”

  Beth didn’t want that to be true. She wanted to say that something must have gone wrong. That if Helen just tried again and explained herself more clearly, then the authorities would understand and act more rationally. But Beth could see how they would act exactly that way, every step of the way.

  “Can you speak to Theo about swapping your allotment to one that comes with a residence?” she suggested instead. “I think there’s still dormitory openings at the High School.”

  “Or you could move in here,” offered Seb. “We could screen off some of the living room.”

  “No,” said Helen with another laugh. “Thank you for offering, but no, really, I’m fine. It was just an argument that got blown out of proportion, really. We’ll sort it out or go our own way in time.”

  “I hope so,” said Beth.

  Beth was torn. Part of her thought it would be insensitive to press forward with her argument after Helen’s revelations. More of her was thinking it was the best opportunity she was likely to get, and of all the reasons she needed the money herself.

  “I’d like the money, of course,” said Helen. “Who wouldn’t? But Seb’s right that I have other options. I don’t think it’s worth the risk of approaching the wrong person.”

  Beth took a deep breath and decided to go for it. Helen could always say no.

  “No risk if we do it ourselves,” said Beth. “And then we have tokens. The ultimate option in bribes. And we can also redeem them directly to convert them to supps, or to bid with in the third auction.”

  Helen stilled. Beth was more worried about convincing her than Seb. She watched to see if there was any fear or distaste. If Helen was opposed to killing infected entirely, then it wouldn’t be an option at all. But it looked like Helen was at least willing to consider it.

  “I don’t know if you remember,” said Seb sharply, “but I just said my sharpshooter skills don’t work.”

  “Not in the way you hoped, sure,” said Beth. “But remember that I didn’t even know about them until today. We can manage something on the combat side without it. At the very least, I think we can all agree that we’ve got enough defensive skills to keep ourselves safe. We can practice with that infected from the garden shed—”

  “If it’s still there,” interrupted Helen.

  “—if it’s still there,” agreed Beth. “We can figure out how we can kill them with what we have, and I have some ideas.”

  “I’m listening,” said Seb.

  Helen also didn’t object. So far, so good. Beth felt the uncomfortable prickling of anticipation rising in her chest.

  “Do you mind if I share what I know of everyone’s skills? I don’t think it’s anything private between us.”

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Beth didn’t think either of them were the type to mind. They’d all been open about it as they’d worked together. But it would be easier to discuss strategies with everything upfront from the start, rather than tiptoeing around everyone’s sensitivities.

  They both shook their heads.

  “Go ahead,” said Helen.

  “So, high level. Seb’s been going for a tank-and-fire, Helen’s been going for hide-and-wait, while I’ve been going for push-and-run. Seb has taunt, repel and dart-shooting. Helen has detect infected, create temporary structure and remote casting. I have knockback with stun, skin-shield and short-range teleport that can be used in combination with my inner space.”

  Beth was making a point by using descriptive nicknames rather than the formal, poetic names provided by the aliens. It distinguished the people who regarded the skills as a pragmatic necessity from those who were pro-Alien.

  “I heard about the inner space and remote casting,” said Seb. “But you have teleport as well?”

  Not as many as she could. She still had excess level ups from her acceleration, even after the doubled inner space levelling. But she couldn’t risk revealing them, so most had actually ended up in the offerings skill. No-one had found any use for that yet.

  “Yeah, a little,” she said. “I’m not putting enough levels into it to report it for the job bonus. But I can teleport something thirty centimetres after a five seconds’ delay, and I can move it into my inner space from there. And, even better, I can use both in combination with Helen’s remote casting. So effectively, it becomes a teleport at pretty much any distance.”

  Seb whistled. “I didn’t know skills can be chained like that.”

  “Neither did we until we tried it, but it’s been very useful,” said Beth.

  “Still,” said Seb, “between the three of us, we have two failed tanks, one failed damage dealer, and no healer.”

  “Unless Beth counts as a failed healer instead of a failed tank.”

  Beth frowned at them. She was getting there. “I was thinking of an entirely different game. Less MMO. More tower defence.”

  Seb blinked. “Okay, you’re going to have to explain that in more detail.”

  “In broad strokes – we create a kill zone with Helen’s scaffolds. You cast repel or taunt as relevant to channel the infected down the lanes. Helen and I then release the infected at a distance. I use knock-back to keep them from escaping.”

  “I hate to keep repeating myself, but… still lacking any damage dealing,” said Seb.

  “That’s the bit we’ll need to experiment with,” said Beth. “But…”

  “Yes?”

  This was it. The moment she had been building towards. The idea that would convince them to try, or convince them not to bother.

  Beth straightened her shoulders. “I think I can co-operate with Helen again and teleport out the token remotely.”

  Saying it aloud suddenly made it sound kind of stupid. But as the saying went, if it was stupid but it worked, then it wasn’t stupid, right?

  Seb leaned back, staring at the ceiling. “You intend to kill them by removing the token, rather than killing them first and then doing it.”

  “Yep,” said Beth.

  “Damn.”

  Neither said anything for an uncomfortably long time. The prickling completed its journey to Beth’s eyes.

  “We don’t have to risk it,” said Beth at last, into the silence. “We can still try to find someone to sell the information to.”

  “No,” said Helen. “You were right the first time. Passing on the information is more risky than killing them ourselves. We aren’t in the same position now. Not like we were when we first faced the zombies. We’ve all got protection skills to hell and back. I’d like to at least see if your theory works.”

  “If we don’t take our chance now,” said Seb, “we’ll run out of choices. I guess we can try.”

  Beth should have been relieved and gleeful that she had succeeded. It was ridiculous that she wasn’t. She had been the one to suggest it, and work so hard to convince the others to agree. It was cowardly to be afraid of the infected, and hypocritical to be averse to killing them.

  And it was too late to change her mind now.

  “And maybe it doesn’t have to be a one-off,” said Seb. “Maybe at the next stage, the dart skill will become more useful. We could have a dart tower for our tower defence.”

  “Really, Seb?” asked Helen with an eyeroll.

  “What? You can’t deny that would be cool.”

  Beth laughed a little wetly. He was right, that did sound cool.

  They rushed through their requirements as fast as they could on their next scavenging trip. It wasn’t hard to do, considering how little there was left to take. Before it was even lunch, they had finished. They found the garden shed and confirmed it still contained an infected. It was at the bottom of a long and skinny garden, which gave them plenty of space to set up their experimental grounds. The weeds and overgrowth of the previous summer were mostly sad skeletons in the winter cold, and easy to knock down. Even the few remnants of the lawn were confined to tall, isolated clumps of grass, leaving the bulk as uncovered mud. They cleared out a flat area and set up the temporary scaffolding to either side.

  The final step was placing one of Helen’s marbles against the shed door, as it vibrated from the impact of the infected within.

  “Ready?” asked Seb.

  “No,” replied Beth.

  “Going to do it anyway?”

  “Yes.”

  Beth freed the infected by the simple process of moving the entire door, locking mechanism and all, into her inner space. She was proud of that. While levelling up increased raw power, precision was the result of work. She had attempted subtle variations of the same action multiple times until she had mapped out the exact edges of her inner space skill.

  The day was sufficiently overcast that the infected came through the empty doorway almost before the taunt from Seb.

  Beth knew, intellectually, that it wasn’t moving any faster than infected normally did. But it had been a long time since she had confronted an infected, and that had been behind a row of guns. The slow shamble felt more like a sprint. Within seconds it reached the action line and then past it. It was only the product of months of deliberate practice that Beth’s reaction was the correct one – knockback and stun.

  “Okay,” she said, breathless despite having done no exercise. “Hit it with a marble.”

  Helen rolled one over. It struck the remains of a grass tuft and deflected away. The next marble rolled too aggressively and bounced back. The third had the opposite problem and stopped well short.

  Beth wondered if it was just nerves, or whether Helen had a subconscious block on killing something that still looked human. Beth had half-expected to have that problem herself. She felt a sense of loss that she didn’t. A year previous, she would still have been the type of person who cared. Who looked at an infected and still saw a person, rather than a source of money.

  “Take a breath,” Beth suggested to Helen. “The stun’s about to wear off, so let’s just wait it out and I’ll stun it again.”

  “Sure,” said Helen. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t stress. We can do this as often as we need to.”

  That wasn’t quite true, and they all knew it. They only had so much stamina for their skills. Every time Beth used stun, it dipped into her reserves. But they had enough for now.

  The infected lurched back to its feet and lunged. Despite waiting for exactly that, Beth gave into her nerves. She cast as soon as it moved forward, well before the action line they’d measured out. The infected stumbled too far back, over the shed’s threshold, and collapsed three-quarters of the way into the building. Seb ribbed her good naturedly as they waited out the full length of the stun until the infected recovered for the second time and made it back to the kill-zone.

  Perhaps the distraction was enough to relax Helen, or perhaps it was just luck, but this time the very first marble rolled smoothly and came to a gentle stop while touching the infected. Beth reached out to the corresponding paired marble and started the teleport spell.

  The infected started twitching. Before the teleport could complete – long before – the infected jerked up and disrupted the teleport entirely. Beth winced at the subtle pain of a failed cast.

  “I thought the stun would be long enough for the teleport,” said Seb.

  “It is,” said Beth. “I mean, it would have been. The stun didn’t time out. But it turns out I can’t keep it stunned at the same time as I cast teleport.”

  “Continuous casts?”

  Beth nodded. She felt like an idiot. Her entire plan had a fatal flaw that she should have predicted. She already knew that continuous casts supplanted one another. It was just that she had never thought of the stun as a continuous cast in the first place.

  The infected reached the mark again, and Beth sent it back. They stared at the uselessly stunned body.

  “Try again?” asked Helen. “It does take a while before it starts walking, even after the stun.”

  “I… no,” said Beth, defeated. “The teleport didn’t even come close to finishing. We’re not talking about some small margin.”

  “Will another few levels help?”

  “Not in the next few weeks,” said Beth. “And maybe never. It’s only a very marginal improvement per level, and rumour is that it maxes out before the delay ever drops to zero.”

  The military list outright stated that. Beth hadn’t thought it would ever matter when she’d put in her bid. Having to wait a few seconds hadn’t seemed like much of a restriction on the skill.

  “How about we keep it pinned?” asked Seb. “Helen, can you build a structure over the zombie? After Beth’s stunned it, I mean? Then Beth, you have all the time in the world for the teleport to finish.”

  “Good idea,” said Helen. “We can get the marble trapped right up against the body. I’ll try.”

  So, they did. For an instant, it even seemed like it was working. Then it failed. They tried again. And it failed again. And again.

  “It’s not enough just to stop the infected losing contact with the marble,” said Beth. “Every time the infected moves too much, the teleport fails, and I need to restart. We need the structure to restrict it more.”

  “That’s exactly what I’ve been trying to do,” snapped Helen. “Seb, you take over rolling the marble. Let me concentrate on this.”

  They swapped positions. It gave Beth and Helen fractions of a second more to achieve the lock, but fractions weren’t enough. Over and over again, they ping-ponged the infected between the two lines. Seb would taunt, Beth would stun, Seb would roll a marble, Helen would place a scaffold, Beth would start a teleport, and the teleport would fail.

  “Can’t you get it any tighter?” asked Seb.

  “No, I can’t,” said Helen. “It’s like I’m actively being prevented from creating a structure any closer to it.”

  “You might well be,” said Beth grimly. “A lot of the non-combat abilities have restrictions to prevent them from accidentally hurting anyone.”

  “Then what are we supposed to do?” asked Helen rhetorically.

  “Let’s trap it back in the shed and take a break,” said Beth. “No point on wasting our energy on something that isn’t working.

  Seb sighed. “Yeah, I guess we’re running late on lunch, anyway.”

  They trapped the infected in a haphazard way, with the ‘door’ just being another one of Helen’s scaffolds with repulsion cast on it. In a way, it was a vote of confidence. If they gave up on the idea entirely, they’d have to return to fit the original door back in place.

  Helen gave them a temporary picnic table in front of the house, and they pulled out their food in sullen silence. Beth could not have said later what they’d even eaten. Once she was finished, she stretched out, as if the mere act of sun-bathing could convince the clouds to part.

  Helen rested her head on her folded arms and spoke down into the table. “I’m sorry, but I just can’t do any better. I don’t think that’s going to change.”

  “It’s okay,” said Beth. “If this doesn’t work, it’s not like we’re any worse off than before we tried, is it?”

  Sometimes, good ideas didn’t work out. Beth would find another solution to her money problem.

  “Yeah,” said Helen.

  “We’re not giving up,” said Seb.

  Helen turned her head to look up at him. “Do you have any ideas we haven’t already tried? Because if you’re just suggesting I lock down the zombie more tightly—”

  “I do, in fact, have other ideas,” he said. “We jumped into this before we had all the details. Which is fine, I’m not criticising. If that had worked, it would have been all we needed. But now we need to step back and figure out the limits of the teleport skill when we’re using it in conjunction with the remote skill. For instance, how much motion can it tolerate? And we’re dealing with four separate elements here. The target, the marble touching the target, the marble Beth’s holding, and Beth herself. Do all of them need to be dead still, or is it only some combination?”

  “Still relative to each other,” corrected Beth.

  “Sorry?” asked Seb.

  “They don’t need to be dead still in some absolute sense,” said Beth. “The skill worked just fine when I was on the boat.”

  “And it can be used on the planet at all, for that matter,” said Helen. “That’s moving at quite a speed.”

  “Alright, more variables. How much movement can the various elements take? Is it fine if you move at the same time as the zombie?”

  Beth hoped not. She had no desire to play mirror with the actions of an infected. Luckily, she soon found out that she would be spared that. A few experiments with a box later, and they had their answer. The remote marble and target had to remain at a fixed angle and distance from each other. The rest could move as much as they liked.

  “We need to coat the marbles with something sticky,” said Seb.

  “And attach it to the head,” said Beth. “Not just to the trunk, or any body part that can move independently. Are you confident of your throwing skills?”

  They paused at that. They’d battled to even reliably roll a marble to the very big target that was an infected. Hitting a much smaller target, by throwing? There were probably plenty of people who would consider that a pretty trivial task, but that didn’t include any of the three of them.

  “Perhaps we could drop it from above?” suggested Beth. “Lock the infected in place with the scaffold first, and then just let it fall?”

  Seb shrugged. “Okay, let’s give that a try. I don’t suppose you happen to have any glue in your space.”

  “Or honey or something,” said Helen. “Something we can easily wash off and re-use. Otherwise, I’m going to run out of marbles. Which reminds me, I need to collect the ones from the garden before we start the next round with the zombie.”

  The clarification didn’t matter, because either way, the answer was no. Beth racked her brains to think of any nearby houses that might have craft supplies, but it had been too long for her to remember that kind of detail.

  “Wait,” said Seb, turning to Helen.

  “Yes?” asked Helen.

  “Are you saying the marbles are something you brought with you?” asked Seb. “They aren’t a result of your skill?”

  “No,” agreed Helen. “I was looking for something that met the criteria of being lightweight and identical and was lucky enough to come across some bags of marbles. I’ve found some more since then, but not, you know, an infinite supply.”

  Beth could feel her grin stretching as she saw where Seb was going with his questions. Of all the assumptions to make. They’d questioned everything else and still somehow decided that the marbles were a fixed requirement in the whole affair.

  “What are the exact criteria for the two linked objects?” asked Seb. “Any particular material?”

  “No, just the same shape and weight, but that’s more difficult than you’d imagine. I battled for a long time until I figured out that marbles— Why are you both looking at me like that?”

  Seb shook his head before using is skill to form two darts. “Can you link these?”

  Helen did so. “Oh.”

  “Yes, ‘oh’.”

  “I guess we don’t have to worry about sticky marbles,” said Beth.

  Seb turned towards the garden. “We’re trying this right now.”

  Beth scrambled to pack away her lunch and followed him. They positioned themselves back as they had been when Seb was rolling marbles and took a moment to make eye-contact. Helen was flushed with a combination of embarrassment and excitement. Seb looked tense and determined. Beth restrained herself from bouncing in place.

  Helen removed the structure, and without even waiting for the stun, Seb threw one of the darts to puncture the infected’s neck.

  “Your turn, Beth.”

  Beth wasn’t willing to experiment while it was randomly stuck in the shed. “Taunt it, if you would. Same procedure.”

  Seb did. Beth cast knock-back and stun, and Helen trapped it. Beth started the teleport. The infected struggled against the wooden barrier as the teleport counted down. Three, two, and… one. The infected went silent.

  Beth held up her hand to show off the token. It was clean and perfect after the trip through her inner space. The mess left behind was a problem for future-Beth.

  “That…” said Beth. “That was easier.”

  “Considerably,” agreed Helen, a little faintly.

  Seb reached out for the token, and they passed it between them, round and round again. They’d all touched one before, of course, but this was different. This was theirs. Even those very first ones she had harvested hadn’t meant so much to Beth.

  When he had it back in his hands, Seb said, “We can do this.”

  He sounded very smug, but Beth thought he rather deserved to. When it was Beth’s turn to hold it again, she ran her thumb over the edges. Such a little thing to promise so much freedom. They were going to make so much money. Far more than would ever be needed to fund whatever problems her father ran into.

  “We can indeed,” she agreed.