3 – On the Road

Andy stood to the side, leaning on his spear, watching as the people from Construction City—Grace Refuge, he reminded himself—hitched two horses to a large wagon that they’d loaded with construction supplies and tools. They’d piled on nails, hammers, saws, two by fours, plywood sheets, brackets, straps, galvanized pipes, roofing material, and a hundred other things. It was a hell of a load, and Andy was worried the two horses would struggle with it, but the resident horse expert from Grace Refuge assured him they’d be fine, so long as they didn’t attempt to climb any mountains.

Of course, that got Andy worried about another thing: they’d have to use roads to get back to the settlement, which meant a much longer trip through areas of the desert, and a corner of the city he’d yet to explore. He hoped they wouldn’t run into anything too dangerous. It wouldn’t be just him and his little group escorting the wagon, though; Lydia was sending ten people along, including herself. She wanted to see the mesa and meet James and the other folks who’d taken up crafting-type classes.

“You look nervous,” Lucy said.

“Just thinking about the trip back.”

“It shouldn’t be that bad. We’ll take Redington east and then turn off to the north, right? There aren’t a lot of buildings or anything along that route.”

“Yeah, I know. Just worried about, like, a goblin army or something.” Andy snorted, shaking his head to show he was joking. He was only half kidding, though. There was a lot of desert out there, and with the System and its shenanigans, he wouldn’t be surprised if it were giving a quest to a pack of minotaurs to raid his “convoy” or something.

“What did you think about that dungeon business?” Lucy asked, speaking softly, clearly not wanting to get Lydia’s or the others’ attention.

Andy matched her tone as he shrugged. “I want to check it out, of course.” Lydia and Oscar had told them that, in an effort to be allowed back into the store after the disastrous attack on the mesa, one of Brooks’s loyalists had told them what they’d been guarding up in the hills. There was a cave there, and, supposedly, the entrance to a dungeon—some kind of pocket dimension that the System had put there.

Of course, having played more than one game in his life, Andy knew the term “dungeon,” and he wasn’t surprised to hear that the System was using it. Why not? After all, it was giving them attributes and classes, and all sorts of game-like metrics for improvement.

Lucy glanced nervously at the people gathering around the trailer. “Yeah, I mean, me too, but do you think we’ll run into more people like Brooks or Rhodes? If they weren’t allowed to come back here, wouldn’t it make sense?”

Andy nodded. “Yeah. If they were going to gather somewhere and try to set up a new settlement, I’m sure that’ll be the place. It’s what I’d do, after all. Oscar said the old ranger station was close, so I’ll check it out.” He looked up at the sky, noting the sun was still high. “Maybe tonight.”

“I’m coming with. You can scout ahead, but I’m coming.”

“Us too,” Bella said, surprising them both. She’d come up behind them, and Jace was with her.

Andy wanted to object to them all; the whole point of going out at night was so that he could sneak around, but Lucy made a good point: he could just scout ahead. “Sure, but you all understand why I want to go at night, right?”

Jace nodded. “Yeah, man. You gotta do your thing, but I can see pretty damn well in the dark, too.” He tapped his strange, black eyes and grinned, exposing his many sharp teeth.

Andy nodded. “Fair enough.”

Before they could plan anything more, Lydia walked over. She had Robert Fox with her, the guy who was in charge of the horses. “Wagon’s ready. You think the horses will be able to make the climb up to the mesa? I don’t want to leave them down at the bottom if we end up camping overnight at your place.” As Andy had done, she looked at the sky, squinting against the sun’s light. “Making this trip in daylight is one thing, but the activity out there”—she waved an arm toward the city, but Andy took her to mean the world in general—“really picks up in the dark.”

“Yeah, I get it. They’ll make it; we got one horse up there already.”

Robert, a stout, ginger-haired man, cleared his throat and interjected, “What’s that about another horse? Was it one of the ones Rhodes took out?”

“He doesn’t know who Rhodes—” Lydia started to say, but when Andy nodded, she cut herself off.

“Yeah, it is.”

Robert frowned, folding his arms over his burly chest. “Well, them horses came from my ranch, and I was none-too-pleased when Brooks made me saddle ’em up for his little raiding parties. Love to check in on it. Was it a gelding or a mare?”

“Um…” Andy looked at Lucy, who shrugged, but then Jace cleared his throat and answered:

“Gelding.”

“Oh, that’ll be Drumstick,” the man said with a broad, tobacco-stained smile. “The mares didn’t turn up?”

Andy didn’t want to tell him the other horses were dead, so he just shook his head. “We just have the one, sorry.”

He sighed. “Is what it is.”

“Well, on that note,” Lydia said, clapping Robert on the shoulder. “Shall we move out?”

“Ayup. Better sooner than later.” He turned and walked back to the front of the wagon, and Andy looked over the assembled party, frowning when he didn’t see Bea.

“Where’s—” he started to ask, but Lucy finished his thought.

“Bea?”

Andy walked over the blacktop toward the front entrance to the former hardware store, but then Bea emerged, her smile bright as she paused to hug a shorter woman goodbye. Andy couldn’t help thinking she looked younger than before Day Zero—a term he’d heard people using to refer to the day the System and mana came to the Earth. “I’m coming, I’m coming!” she called, hurrying over.

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“Everything all right?” Lucy asked.

“Just fine. I’m exhausted, but it’s the good

kind of tired, you know? I made a bunch of healing draughts for the folks here, and even helped close up some bad cuts.”

“Like, with your enchanted water?” Andy asked.

“Well, some of that, but I can also manipulate blood a little bit. It’s a new skill, but I’m learning.” She paused and gave Bella a measured look. “I’m proud of you, girl.”

Bella blushed, shrugging. “What for?”

Bea smiled, reaching out to gently grip Bella’s shoulder. “You let a lot of that anger go, like we talked about.”

“It wasn’t really hard. None of these people were part of that group that took us.” She looked away, her voice getting quiet, and suddenly Andy felt like he was intruding on a private conversation. He cleared his throat and started to step away, but Bella spoke again, “Most of those people looked pitiful. How am I gonna go around screaming and kicking when they’re just trying to get help? Those women in there—they were grabbed the same as me and my group. If there were creeps still living here, they wouldn’t be so…” She trailed off, and Bea clicked her tongue, pulling her close for a quick, motherly hug.

Robert hollered at his horses to get moving, clicking his tongue and pulling on the lead. Andy welcomed the distraction, watching as the big wagon slowly began to move and then pick up speed, trundling toward the opening in the perimeter wall. “I’m steering ’em toward Reddington Road, right?” he called, peering under his broad hat brim toward Andy.

“Yeah!” he yelled back, shifting his spear to his shoulder and walking toward the front of the procession. “I’ll take the lead. Lucy, you’re with me. Bella and Jace, can you watch the rear?”

Bella still had her face buried in Bea’s shoulder, but Jace nodded, walking toward the back of the column—if you could call it that. Most of the people from Grace Refuge were clustered around the wagon, clutching their weapons, but not looking particularly watchful as they chatted and laughed with each other.

Lydia must have seen a little judgment in Andy’s eyes because she followed him and Lucy toward the front, saying, “We won’t see any trouble nearby, I don’t think. As you said, Brooks was an asshole, but he was diligent about killing anything that got within a mile of this place.”

“Okay, well, we’ll see. Things have a way of changing pretty damn fast, thanks to, you know, magic and all that…” Andy let his words trail off as he stretched his legs, getting a lead on the trailer. Lucy half-jogged to keep up with him, and Lydia turned, waiting for the trailer and the bulk of her people.

When they were a reasonable distance ahead, Lucy tugged on his sleeve. “We don’t want to get too far ahead.”

Andy slowed and turned, looking back to see that Robert was still carefully guiding the wagon out of the parking lot and down onto the street. Brooks and his people had done a good job pushing the dead cars out of the road in that area, but looking south—the direction they’d be going to reach Reddington Road—Andy could see the congestion started up a few hundred yards ahead. “Gonna take a while to get where we’re going.”

“Kinda wish we could just drag that trailer across the desert,” Lucy said.

“Yeah, but that’s a no-go. I mean, maybe we can call that a project—building a straight dirt road between the two settlements—but for now, there’s no way.”

“Anyway, it’s not that much further on the roads. What do you think—six or seven miles?”

Andy nodded. “Something like that.” He saw the trailer make the turn out of the parking lot and resumed walking.

They were silent for a few minutes, looking left and right, but the gas stations and strip malls were eerily quiet and still. After a while, Lucy asked, “Tell me something about you, Andy. You were a student at the U, too, right?”

“Um, well, I was

, but I dropped out a while back.” Knowing Lucy had been enrolled before Zero Day made him cringe a little at his admission.

“Really? Why, though? Grades?”

Andy sighed, shrugging. “Probably a combination of things. I mean, my grades were okay, but I think I overdid it. I was working on my prerequisites for nursing school, and I dunno how many science classes you’ve taken, but it was a lot of memorization. I just…” Andy sighed, frustrated at his inability to give voice to feelings he’d been avoiding even before the System came. “I kind of had a major crash-out, and I don’t even have a good excuse, I don’t think. I was just studying all the time, and well, my dad died pretty young, and I think I was just…” Again, he struggled to find the words.

Lucy reached over, a little awkwardly, to rub his shoulder. “I get it. Sometimes, I’d lie on the roof of our trailer and look up at the stars, and I’d wonder what the point of everything was. Especially after our mom died.”

“Yeah, I think… I think I was going to go back. I think I was just letting myself stew in my failure for a while. Sometimes you have to do that, you know—take time to assess and reflect and realize you don’t want to live in a trailer and plant trees in the desert for just a little more than minimum wage.” He chuckled, shaking his head. “I mean, I guess the System kind of hurried that process along.”

“So, you were gonna be a nurse, huh?”

Andy shrugged. “It seemed good. My mom was one her whole life, and I admire her a lot. I like helping people, you know? She was like that, too—is—she is like that.”

Lucy’s voice was a little tentative as she asked, “She’s, um, she’s in Florida, right?”

“Yeah.” Andy sighed. “She might as well be on Mars, I guess.” He didn’t want to say it, but some impulse made him blurt out, “If she’s still alive.”

Again, Lucy briskly rubbed his shoulder. “We have to keep positive. You’ve said so yourself. You have to hope she got in with some good people, some survivors. If she was a nurse her whole life, maybe she’s got some kind of healing class.”

Andy looked over at Lucy, smiling. “I like the way you think. I mean, it’s crazy, but I hadn’t really thought about what kind of class she might have gotten. It makes sense, though, right? If she’s a healer, people are going to want to help her. They’re going to want to protect her.”

She smiled, crinkling her eyes against the sun. “That’s right.”

By then, they’d come to the first of the stalled-out cars blocking the way, and Andy moved toward the one on the right. It was a newish pickup truck, and though it had been abandoned, he couldn’t find the keys anywhere. “It’s in park. No keys.”

“This one’s a manual,” Lucy called, peering through the window of the car beside the truck. “I’ll pop it into neutral. You push!”

“Right.” Andy moved around behind the little sports car and waited as Lucy climbed in and engaged the clutch. Then, he put his spear on the trunk, hunkered down, and pushed, driving the car forward with his legs.

It veered to the left immediately, but then Lucy called out, “Steering wheel’s locked! Just keep going.” Andy pushed, and when the tires hit the curb, he didn’t slow down, amazed at how easy it was to push the car up over the curb until two wheels were on the sidewalk and it was out of the road.

When he straightened up, he saw someone jogging forward from the trailer—one of the Grace Refuge people. He was tall and lanky, and carried a large hammer in one hand and a…screwdriver in the other. “Hey, man! I’ll walk with you two until we clear the dead cars. Name’s Dave.”

“Hey. Um, Andy.” He felt stupid introducing himself when everyone probably knew who he was. He eyed the screwdriver, and Dave chuckled, holding it up.

“You know about shift-lock overrides?”

Andy heard the car door slam as Lucy climbed out. He shook his head. “I don’t.”

“Well, most automatics have ’em. Usually a little slot by the gear shifter that lets you put the car into neutral without a key.”

“What about the steering wheel locks?” Lucy asked.

Dave shook his head. “Gotta break ’em. We had a guy with high strength doing it for us when we cleared the road by the store. You can jam a screwdriver into the ignition—if it has one—and twist it until it breaks, or, if it doesn’t, you can just yank the wheel until the pin snaps or comes outta the housing.”

Andy didn’t know what “pin” he was talking about, but he figured it was something that kept the wheel from turning. “Sounds good, man.” He looked past Dave to the slowly advancing trailer. “Let’s keep it moving. Gonna be a long walk home.”