Ascended

No one answered the door.

I was getting a little frustrated with knocking on doors that didn’t get answered. There was no way that the mayor would have such a big house and there not be some type of caretaker on the premises almost all the time.

“You should kick it down.” A slight smirk and the fact that she looked at Val when she said it told me that she knew what we’d done the night before.

“I don’t think that we should make a habit of kicking in doors.” I looked around. “Maybe one of the guards will know where he is.”

There was a moment of silence as we thought about what to do next.

“I’m tired.” Ziggy sat down on the ground. “Do we have to keep walking?”

I doubted that he could be tired from the walking we’d done. We had walked from one end of the city to the other, but that had only taken around an hour and we hadn’t been moving fast. There was no way that he should be running out of energy.

“I guess you need to go back to the house and take a nap.” Eveth made a show of giving an exaggerated sigh. “I guess I’ll have to take you back…”

“I’m not tired!” Ziggy jumped up. “I was seeing if anyone else was tired! Really! That’s what I meant!”

“Okay.” I dismissed the boy. “I guess we could look for a town meeting house or something.” I looked at the women. “Unless one of you can think of something.”

“I bet the Guard Captain knows where he is.” Eveth pointed at the wall to the west. “And He’d probably be very willing to help us find him if he didn’t.”

“Good point.” Val looked at me. “Should we go find the Guard Captain?”

“I thought you were in charge.” Fyga cut in before I could answer. She looked from Val to me. “So you’re the boss?”

“It’s complicated.” I really didn’t want to get into how freshly ascended the two of us were. I knew that she knew that Eveth had only been a Touched for a couple days, but there was no reason to tell her that Val and I had only ascended a week ago. “We each have our strengths.”

“R-i-i-ight…” Fyga shook her head. “Sounds like nobody wants to be on the hook for a bad call.”

“We’re just trying to make sure we’re doing the job the Council gave us to the best of our abilities!” I pointed at the black-haired woman when she tried to respond. “Stop trying to cause problems. If you don’t have something helpful to say, then stop talking.”

Fyga closed her mouth and mimicked sealing her lips with her fingers. I didn’t like how glib she was being. It didn’t help that her antics drew a little laugh out of Ziggy. Even Eveth had turned so that those two couldn’t see the smirk on her face.

“If we’re going to the island to look into this bunker, then we need a boat. To do that we need to find the mayor. Let’s go find the Guard Captain and see if he knows where to find him.” I turned around and saw that at some point the man that we were looking for had come up behind us.

There was a small look of shock on his face as he studied us. I wasn’t sure how much he’d heard, but It had at least been the last part.

He had the two goons that had been with his son earlier. I was pretty sure that I’d heard their names, but I couldn’t remember them off the top of my head. One of them was tall and toned, while the other one was shorter, very hairy and husky. Both of the other men took a step back as the mayor moved towards us. I couldn’t help but notice the look that the shorter man gave Fyga before looking away. There was definitely some anger there. I was just glad it was their boss that we were dealing with and not them.

“You think there’s a bunker on Cursed Island?” The old man sounded shocked. “There’s no way that anything could live out there. The ghosts would get them!”

“My companion is a little too free with his tongue.” Val eyed me as she stepped forward to put herself between us and the mayor. “What we think doesn’t matter, only where we want to go.” She nodded to the east. “I’m told you’re the owner of the large boat in the harbor?”

“I am…” The mayor swallowed. “But if you’re asking to use it, that won’t be possible.”

“You would refuse the Bokor?” Val growled as she folded her arms in front of her.

“No! Of course not!” The nervous man looked around her at each of us like he was looking for a sympathetic face. His gaze moved back to Val. “But that boat has a leak. I’m guessing you didn’t look too closely at it?”

We hadn’t walked up to it, so I guessed it was possible for what he was saying to be true.

Val sighed “Do you have any other boats?”

“We have the fishing boats, but they only hold three people at a time.” He looked at Ziggy. “Maybe four because of how small the boy is.”

“H-!”

Eveth clamped her hand over her cousin’s mouth before the boy could protest.

“Can you arrange the boats?” Val snapped her fingers to draw the mayor’s attention to her.

“Please understand…” The mayor started to wring his hands together. “As poor as the hauls are, if we pull two boats from fishing, then the already dire food shortage of Port Reggo is going to become worse. But…” He took a nervous breath. “With the extra Zombie activity lately, we haven’t dared to send anyone outside the walls. If you’d be willing to escort some of our hunters and lumberjacks, then the meat would make up for the loss of fish and we could get some wood that we need to make repairs.” There was shame on his face as he looked towards the village. “We’ve been having to scrounge wood from old houses. It won’t be long before we’ll have a housing crisis on our hands.”

Val glanced at me.

Going out with Humans was going to attract every Zombie in the area. Especially if they were making noise from cutting down trees. It was asking for a fight and that was a risk with the Touched potentially in the area looking for Fyga. We could just demand the boats, but that would be depriving the city of some of their already meager rations.

“We can protect a group of loggers, but hunting is off the table.” I shook my head. “Anything you didn’t raise behind walls could be contaminated and we can’t condone bringing in meat that could infect the town.”

The mayor frowned and his shoulders sagged, but he nodded. “I’ll have a group ready by the southern dock in an hour.”

“We’ll be there.” Val nodded for us to leave. The two henchmen moved out of our way so that we could get through the gate.

It was a detour and didn’t have much to do with the immediate safety of the Humans, but maybe it would help with their food shortage in the future.

Eveth hurried to catch up to us. “What are we doing now?”

“Now?” I looked over at Val. “We get ready to fight Zombies.”