FLARE

Focus. Just focus on getting to Kiki.

Gaunt tried for the fourth time to break her gaze from the phone. Nothing new, just whatever was said last night, but it was all far too fresh in her mind. Detracting from the present.

Especially what Lyre said.

As much as she wanted to dismiss everything Lyre said, it was really hard, particularly because she was so damn cryptic. Maybe she was making everything up, but why would she bother? And she also seemed to know about that storm, too…

Don’t go too far. But then it was only for Kiki, and if so, why didn’t she specify that at all? Or for that matter, why only warn Kiki? Why was only Kiki in danger? Gaunt was pretty sure that being swarmed by giant roaches qualified as some kind of danger, and Lyre certainly didn’t care about that.

If Lyre was being deceptive, she wasn’t good at it. But if she was being deceptive, none of the deceit made any damn sense.

Gaunt finally shoved the phone into her bag. Lyre wasn’t here right now. Probably. But even if she knew where everyone was, she had no problem announcing her arrival to Spike, so Gaunt could worry about other things for now.

Ignoring the scattered medical supplies at her feet, she wandered over to the boarded-up window on the intact side of the Starbucks. Through a crack she could clearly make out the skyscraper. Kiki was right there, and supposedly so was the wall; yet it stood unopposed on the horizon. Nothing to be seen.

Another really, really strange thing to lie about. Gaunt could only hope Kiki wasn’t completely delusional. Depending on how long it had been since the fallout of… whatever, it was a strong possibility.

Shaking her head, she sauntered back to her backpack. She tore open the bag of jerky and ate the last few pieces, then grabbed a granola bar to accompany it. Munching on that, she dug around the bottom of her bag. It took a lot less time to find the antiseptic than it did yesterday.

Finishing the last of the granola bar, she put the antiseptic in her other hand and kept looking. Rifling past a stick of deodorant, her flashlight, a can of bear spray. Not much left, and no food. She grabbed the last bottle of water and pulled that free, too. No sense rationing, she’d need all the brainpower and strength she could get, given her state.

She took a swig of the water and set it down, then took a breath. No use avoiding it. Gaunt took the end of the bandage and slowly untied it.

It was good that she didn’t bother getting her hopes up, because it was looking a whole lot worse than yesterday. Swollen around the edges, more so than yesterday. She put a finger near the site and a little bead of pus oozed out. The skin was hot.

Fuck.

Well, that was it. Find antibiotics or die, screw waiting around for someone who might be hallucinating. Gaunt splashed a healthy bit of antiseptic on the wound anyway, which prompted a loud hiss and for her to nearly fall over sideways. Then she wound a fresh bandage around, tight as she could bear, which was barely enough to keep it from slipping down her waist. It would have to do.

Time was running out. She wasted none of it shoving aside the barricaded wall and stalking off. Glancing around, the buildings weren’t just ruined but barren, too. It would make sense that by now they’d be picked clean by whoever passed through.

That said, it was peculiar that she hadn’t seen a single person so far, dead or alive. There was Kiki, along with the rest of the group, of course. Not that she’d seen them physically, but they certainly didn't act like chat bots or anything of the sort. But that was it. No bodies, no raiders, no bedraggled survivors. Some part of her was grateful for that, for the lack of those nasty ethical situations you always ended up in zombie-apocalypse scenarios and the relative lack of hostile parties, but it got lonely, too. Lonely, and also very suspicious.

Things would get worse. There was always a catch, Gaunt found. And the longer it went without a hitch, the harder it would hit her.

Now that she thought about it, the backpacking trip was really fun before she woke up under that train car. Sure, she’d gotten roped into it without any real interest, but she was pretty outdoorsy when it came down to it and she was no stranger to physical exertion. But even beyond the surface level, too, it wasn’t… She liked her group, and more surprisingly, they genuinely liked her back.

Their faces were blurry. She couldn’t even recall how many there were. Gaunt wasn’t sure if she wanted to remember or not.

Her aimless thoughts led her through a dark overpass, though she hardly noticed until the shadow fell over her. Dark enough to see, but she still unzipped her bag a touch to rifle around for the flashlight. She’d be damned if she made the same mistake twice.

Luckily, it was near the top, so she whipped it out in mere seconds. Toggling it on, a cone of light illuminated a whole lot of nothing – concrete blocks, old graffiti, and the odd broken bottle or two. Still she took care to tread gently until she was back in the light of day, turning the light hastily off and stowing it away.

Drawing her attention back in front of her revealed a dilapidated row of buildings, all but one completely decimated. That one was possibly a grocery store or fruit shop, from the wooden pallets lying out front. Small, and trashed, but it might still have something. Throat feeling a touch dry, Gaunt stepped through the ruined doorway.

As soon as she did that, she couldn’t see anything. Instinctively she reached for her zipper to get the flashlight again, before she realised exactly how big the door frame was. A good bit larger than her. And if the light from outside wasn’t filtering in…

Abandoning the flashlight, she gripped her crowbar with her other hand and whirled around, raising it to strike. She didn’t bring it down right away, assessing the situation, and that situation was soundly not good. A humongous segmented centipede reared up less than a foot from her face, blotting out all the sunlight except a thin halo around it. As its scythe-tipped forelimbs whistled towards her, she spun the crowbar around from an offensive position to a blocking one.

One blade struck it right down the middle, shoving it into her chest and winding her. As she collapsed, the other one brushed across her ribs, slicing right through her skin and about a third of the way through the bandage. The claws snapped shut in a grabbing motion, but thankfully she was well out of its range. Scrambling away, she grabbed a nearby display and tried to lift herself to her feet as the centipede tried to follow.

It didn’t quite fit through the doorway. It was just a touch too wide, flakes of concrete chipping away as it writhed in a vaguely forwards direction. Gaunt finally managed to regain her footing and hefted the crowbar high overhead as before. As it hurtled down, it struck just the flooring, shattering a tile into bits. She managed to swing it away before the centipede dislodged it from her grip.

It kept thrashing, but a touch slower. The frame wasn’t buckling anymore, just making painful creaks every now and then. Even so, Gaunt kept a good metre away from where she thought she saw the centipede’s head. A scythe managed to slip forth, nearly decapitating her before she dove to the ground. Her injury throbbed as it made contact, but she gritted her teeth and stumbled to her feet, now three metres away.

The scratch on her ribs, the new one, was starting to hurt too, but not from falling. It was a more chemical pain, a thin burning like dipping a paper cut into lemon juice, but much, much stronger. Well, she figured it was supposed to be stronger, but it faded to the back of her mind like a wave ebbing away from a thrown pebble. What did draw her attention was the monster in front of her. And the heavy steel crowbar in her hands.

She ran straight at it. This time, she swung up, and it tore straight into the wall. She managed to tug it free just as another leg soared in her direction, but she was already in the motion of another swing. Aided by gravity and the force from pulling it free, the crowbar made perfect contact with the oncoming limb, and a sharp crack resounded as it ploughed clean through the second joint.

The limb was quickly lost in the darkness, but she saw it fly off to her right somewhere far. The centipede flinched hard, but still lunged forwards once it recovered. Gaunt backed off a healthy distance to regain her bearings.

Her thoughts didn’t get far before she saw the dim figure scoot forwards a few inches. Another lunge didn’t get it anywhere, but it got another couple legs through the door frame and leveraged itself another couple inches. It was hard to make out the wall behind her, but it was closer than she’d like. Whatever she did, she would have to finish it now.

Fuck it. She took a minute to turn the flashlight on and throw it to the ground. The light shone more towards the left wall than forwards, but she’d need any advantage she could get. The glimpses she got were slate grey, speckled with dull tiny eyes. Its legs were spindly and far too numerous than reasonable. It was still squirming, but a touch slower than before, which would hopefully make her job that much easier. She set her eyes on her target, and stepped forward, waiting for it to strike.

When it did, it was a hell of a lot easier to block than before. What she didn’t account for was the claw closing fully around the crowbar, tugging it away. A burst of something cold flowed through her veins as it was nearly pulled out of her grip. Clenching her fingers, she pulled back, putting her whole body into it by turning her whole torso away.

As she did so, the leg tore free at the first joint. It fell to the ground, and she stood on it, pulling the crowbar out from its grip. Then she drove it directly towards the nearest segment, even as the centipede was starting to skirt away. It missed, but she wasn’t taking any chances. The second blow swung way wide, but the third struck true just by the base of the head, what she would call the “neck” on a vertebrate. The crowbar crunched straight past the armour, hardly slowing, and through most of the flesh beneath before coming to a stop around seventy percent of the way in.

Gaunt realised her arms were embedded nearly to the shoulder. The centipede bucked, and only then did she try to remove them, wrenching away with the crowbar still in hand. The plating was inches thick, from what she could tell. Too thick to do… whatever she just did. She didn’t care to strike it again lest it get totally stuck in it and leave her without a weapon.

It worked to her favour, though. It was enough to send the centipede into a panic, finally getting itself free of the door and scuttling off in the opposite direction. If it knew what was good for it, it shouldn’t be back for a while. As it left, the burning of her ribs wormed its way back into focus.

Shit. Not exactly what she was looking for. The exact opposite, really. And it stung like hell. Figuring it couldn’t hurt much more than it already was, Gaunt pulled the antiseptic free, along with a gauze patch, and pressed the soaked square against the cut.

She was wrong. It definitely could hurt a lot more. Despite her best efforts, Gaunt still let out a whimper considerably too loud for comfort. After a few seconds, she put the gauze aside and the pain ebbed down to what it was before. Well, she’d just have to work around it.

Wrapping another bandage around the slice, a whole lot tighter than her other wound, she proceeded to head to the back of the store. Now that the centipede was gone, she could turn off the flashlight safely. She could clearly make out the tins of tuna on one of the shelves, which she eagerly scooped into her bag. Heavy, but would be well worth it. There was also some produce, all of it rotted completely. Far beyond edible.

That was it, though. A look outside told her it was starting to get late, and there weren't a whole lot of places for her to go, so she’d just have to hope that that monster centipede didn’t decide to finish the job. That said, Gaunt did more of a number on it than it did to her. Somehow. If it had any friends, she’d be completely fucked, of course, but there wasn’t really anywhere she could go to avoid that risk in the few hours left.

Too much going on. She cracked open a can of tuna and took out the last of her water. None of that here, which didn’t bode well; she’d only have a couple days to get more. One hand was dedicated to eating, while the other was set on taking her mind off things with the phone. As much as that chat group created more questions than answers, in some ways, it was also the only thing keeping her together.

The cut stung the whole way through, even once she put the phone away and tried to sleep. There wasn’t much to sleep on, either, and Gaunt had a feeling she wouldn’t be in high spirits in the morning. She was running out of time, too, and could hardly afford that.

Fingers crossed that Kiki actually got somewhere.