NOVEL WEB 41: Survivors of Knox
Immie agreed to help, and put down her daggers to join us in the workshop. The fact that I had her helping made the others curious, and pretty soon my friends had joined me in planning out the shrine.
I had the others flatten and pack the dirt at the site, while keeping it free of snow. Chloe decided we were going to do this properly classical, so she got started trying to make pigments to paint the statue with. Conveniently, that also meant she didn't have to interact with the rest of us, while still being helpful.
Two days after I woke up, we were pounding the first stakes into the cold ground when a cry went out from the school's side gate.
Dropping what we were doing, we grabbed whatever weapon was at hand and hauled ass towards the commotion.
Mel, the combat medic from the dungeon, was on duty, having recovered from her frostbite poison wound. She stood at the gate, shield held up, but axe down by her side while four men in ragged US Army fatigues and mismatched civilian warm weather gear stood just outside.
“Please let us in!” one of them said. “We're so cold and hungry.”
“We just want to be somewhere safe,” another pleaded.
Alec stepped forward and beckoned them in. “Come over to the forge, at least. It's warm in there. Scotty, can you run and get the Captain?”
Mel frowned, but I murmured, “Cap will want to talk to them anyway. These are the first non-Edgewood folks we've seen since the first day.”
“Right,” she nodded. “I'll give them a medical check too.”
April looked up from her endless toil at the forge when we ushered the soldiers in. I asked her to grab some sandwiches from inside the workshop while I filled her in on the situation. The soldiers, for their part, got way too close to the blazing heat and stripped off their outer layers.
My blacksmith friend returned a moment later with a tray of sandwiches, a jug of water, and four plastic cups. “Here you go, lads.”
They laid into the food like ravenous wolves, while the rest of us hung around in awkward silence. It was cramped with so many people, so Alec elected to take the others back to keep working—but only after extracting a promise from me that I'd fill them in on what happened.
The Captain arrived in the middle of Mel performing triage, and was silent until she decided the four soldiers weren't on the brink of death. “Hey there folks, I'm the Fire Captain for this community and the man in charge until we hear from whatever still passes for the government.”
“You won't be hearing from the government, sir,” a soldier with dark hair and glasses said around a mouthful of food. “We’re from Knox, sir—Fort Knox. When the… the apocalypse hit, the major general sent almost everyone who was on base into Louisville, but our battalion was sent to Frankfort to try and secure the Governor and his family. Took us three fucking days to walk there, ‘cos nothing fuckin’ works anymore. Bullets just bounce off or don't penetrate far enough to get a kill.”
“What did you find?” the Captain asked, voice heavy with the dread we were all feeling.
“We lost two companies just getting there,” the man said, expression turning haunted. “The animals… everything… it’s all…”
“Same here in Edgewood,” I said softly. “We lost like three quarters of the neighbourhood.”
He nodded, turning his empty, terrified gaze on me. “It’s worse most places. We passed through a lot of towns that were completely wiped out. Nothing there but cougars the size of cars hunting coon’s the size of wolves. Frankfort had some survivors, but they were… it was some local marine-wannabe militia with some cops. They were protecting people, but only if they could give them shit ‘for the good of everyone’. We didn’t, so they forced us away. We didn’t find anyone from the state government anyway. The capitol was a burning ruin… and I mean burning. Only ever seen stone burn once before that…”
The captain nodded sympathetically. “How'd you end up here?”
“At first we tried to turn back, but that militia was hostile by then, so the lieutenant colonel had us go wide around them… if we still had ammo, we could've gone through them easy, but all we had were knives and shovels by then. Turns out we should've tried anyway, because the way we went… we ran into this giant flying feathered thing that spat acid—”
“A dragon,” I breathed, interrupting him.
He looked at me, confused. “What?”
“Sounds like your battalion walked into a Central American dragon. Dunno what it was doing up here in Kentucky, though,” I explained.
His thousand yard stare came back, and he turned his attention to the forge fire. “Well, it killed another company before we retreated, along with the lieutenant colonel. It chased us further east, and nobody was taking charge so we just kept running. More and more of us got killed or we just lost track of each other… everything wants to kill us now. It's hell out there. It's fucking hell out there. I can't…”
“The four of you can stay here, join us until we make contact with the army again…” the captain said soothingly. “If we ever do.”
One by one, the four men began to cry with relief. Army soldiers… traumatised by a journey that would've been an hour and a half of driving just last month.
“How many of your people got lost nearby?” I asked. There might be more of their folks out there in the snow.
“Second company split from us about a day back… and our company split into… well, by the time we got to the edge of the snow, we were down to like… a platoon. Some big bear thingy chased us in, but didn't follow further. That was when the… I don't know what they were, but they had these tails so long… they picked us off and…” he started shaking, and the words stopped when he hunched forward to stare at the concrete floor.
“It's okay, son,” the captain said. “All of you, you're safe here. We have food, although not as much as we'd like, and safety. We'll have you see our medics, especially the psych, and then see what we can have you do, if you're cleared for work. Does that sound good?”
“All I can do is fight,” a different soldier said. “I joined the army because it was that or a gang. I ain't got no other skills.”
“Are you willing to fight monsters?” The captain asked, then amended, “With equipment that works?”
All four of the soldiers focused on him. One spoke for all four. “What do you mean?”
To my surprise, the captain looked at me. Ah right, I was the girl who figured out the weapons problem.
“Alright, listen close,” I said, and reached over to pluck a squiron ingot from the pile next to the forge. “Recognise this?”
They looked confused, and one asked, “It's a chunk of metal?”
“Yes, but that's not the whole story.” I picked up a tooth from a pile waiting to be melted down or worked raw. “Recognise this?”
This time, they all nodded.
“We call it squiron, because it's a piece of iron from a mutated squirrel. It's imbued with magic from the storm, the strange game-like system that caused everything. As near as we can tell, it has a toughness value just like you do with those orbs you got. You know what doesn't have a toughness value? The knives at your hip.” I held out a hand. “Can I have one you don't mind losing?”
The four soldiers exchanged looks, then one shrugged and handed me his combat knife. Taking it, I placed it flat on the anvil, then taking the tooth in both hands, I brought it down hard on the knife. There was a sharp crack-ping and the knife snapped in half.
The soldiers’ eyes almost fell out of their heads, and even the Captain looked amazed. Oh, right… I was kinda strong for my size. Te-he…
“Shit from before the apocalypse is trash,” I explained, glossing over the whole ‘tiny girl, big power’ thing. “It's not part of the storm-system. That ingot of squiron, though, came from a tooth like this. A weapon we make out of that stuff will kill shit just fine. All the axes our people have were made like that.”
“That's why you're all safe,” one of them breathed.
Another asked, “What about making guns out of it?”
“We haven't experimented with ranged weaponry yet.” I said, and looked to the Captain. “Might be something to consider, though?”
He nodded. “I’ll have some firearms and ammunition delivered to you and April. As for you four, April, if you could show them to the admin office and explain the situation, I’d like to get them settled in a room together. My wife will know what to do. Kai, I’d like to speak to you for a moment before I follow them, if that’s alright.”
Pushing down a surge of fear, I nodded and waited while everyone got their shit sorted and left.
The Captain turned to me once we were alone and eyed me from head to toe. “Quite the transformation. Are you happy with it?”
I gulped. “Um… I… Yeah? It’s taking some getting used to, but it’s fine.”
“No dysphoria?” he probed, raising an eyebrow.
I shook my head. It was true, however much I didn’t want to face the idea and all the scary shit it entailed.
“Good,” he said, with a firm nod. “Cynath had me make a pledge to protect everyone within this school, and that includes you and your new transformed body. Regardless of that pledge, I want you to know that I’d do it anyway. This is America, and despite what many of my fellow patriots would like, America is the land of the free damn it. You are free to live your life however you see fit, so long as you do not harm others in any way. That’s why I took Cynath’s pledge so quickly. Her deal was, frankly, very American.”
“You have a very… optimistic view of America,” I said, before I could really think about it. Oops. Probably not the best thing to say to a man who kept telling everyone he was a patriot.
To my surprise, he laughed. “That might be true, but a true patriot also recognises when a nation’s greatest current enemy is itself.”
What a fucking paladin. If Cynath could convert him, he’d make a damn good follower.
“Thanks, sir,” I said, giving him a grateful smile. “I go by Kaia now, by the way.”
He returned my expression with a smile of his own. “Kaia. Good to know. Now, let’s see about testing some guns. I rather like the idea of shooting those nightmare bugs from the safety of the school.”
Guns firing out of an American school. How novel.
