Seven Days to Skitter

[Derek M]

This little story is inspired partly by the latest Alpha release of the zombie survival game 7 Days to Die. The main character is Taylor Hebert, the Skitter of a mirror universe introduced in my story Demons and Angels. You probably won't have to read that fic to understand this story. Just be aware that in that alternate universe, the Undersiders work with the DWU. Danny Hebert has the power, costume, and cape name of Coil. The Undersiders include Tattletale, Regent, Skitter, and Bitch, plus Zephron (a DWU character referenced in my stories as well as Taylor Varga) who has the powers of canon Protectorate cape Assault and goes as Pulse, and Uber, who joined after the tragic death of his partner, Leet. They won't play a major role.

I intend to continue posting to Demons and Angels. This story isn't going to be nearly as long, but I felt inspired and the muse must be satisfied.

 

[Derek M]

"Let me get this straight," said Danny, a slightly exasperated look on his face. "You found a key in a box in your closet and now you want to go open a secret vault that your late partner used to have? Isn't it likely that somebody has already emptied it out?"

Uber shook his head. "No way. Leet put some massive protections on the vault itself. Trying to get in without the key would be deadly. Actually, even with the key, it would be pretty deadly without being Leet or myself."

"Isn't that kind of dangerous to leave around?" asked Skitter. "I mean, what if both of you had died?"

Tattletale was giving Taylor a look but Uber just looked embarrassed. "Eh, yeah, we weren't really into the whole forward-thinking thing back then. But then, that's another reason to go and turn everything off, right?"

"What's in this vault?" asked Danny.

Uber frowned. "I'm not exactly sure, but I know he used to keep his most expensive materials and inventions there."

Zephron was sitting off to the side, wearing his Pulse costume but with his mask off. "If I remember correctly, Leet's gear was kind of notorious for being hazardous."

"True, but we're all a lot tougher thanks to our reptilian visitors, and Danny can split the timelines for us just in case," said Sarah, seeing that Randall was starting to look disappointed. He obviously really wanted to do this, which was understandable.

Taylor frowned. "Why did you wait so long to get this stuff?" she asked.

Randall paused, a slightly distracted and sad look on his face. "It was in a box of stuff I grabbed after Leet died. I...guess I didn't have the heart to look through it until now."

For the first time in this conversation, Danny looked sympathetic. "I can understand that." He looked at Tattletale. "Tattletale is also right. The risk should be minimal. The only other option I see is bringing in the PRT, and I'm not keen on that even if Calvert has been straight with us so far." The Undersiders were now an officially recognized group of rogues operating with tacit Protectorate approval. Like most things, that was a mixed blessing, but overall it had been more positive than negative.

"So we can go?" asked Uber, looking up with a hopeful smile.

Danny nodded. "We'll all go. I have to admit that I'm kind of curious to see what your late tinker friend left behind. We'll bring the whole team, though."

"I'll go grab Rachel and Alec," said Sarah. Danny got up to go change into his Coil costume while the others did whatever was necessary.

The van was a little cramped on the way over to the boarded-up storefront that was a cover for Leet's old vault, mostly because Rachel insisted on bringing three of her dogs along. While the city was a little calmer than it used to be before the big changeover at the PRT, things were still dangerous enough that Danny could see the sense in having an alternate means of transport and defense. Of course, Danny also had to make sure Sarah and Taylor sat at different ends because Taylor got cranky whenever she wasn't in charge and Sarah couldn't resist needling her.

When they go there, Uber used a hidden catch to open up what looked like a completely nailed shut door on the side of the building. That led into a back room, where a closet door covered what was the actual door to the vault, a very high-tech appearing door like a miniature bank vault door with what appeared to be a palm scanner next to an oddly-shaped keyhole.

"Leet built all this?" asked Regent.

Uber shrugged. "I know he traded tech for some of it with Toybox. I'm not sure how much of it was his versus theirs." He stepped up to the doorway, then looked at Danny and asked, "Ready?"

In this timeline, Danny nodded yes. In a second timeline, he said to wait.

Uber reached out and put his hand on the scanner, then took out a strange-looking key with three prongs and inserted it into the lock. A glowing beam ran over the man's features from a concealed scanner, and there was a happy little chirp. A voice then said, "Password, please."

"Ah, crap," said Randall. "I forgot that part."

"That is not the correct password," said the voice.

Taylor and the others took a step back. "Nothing dangerous is going to happen, is it?"

Randall shook his head. "Nah, you've got three tries if the biometrics pass. I need to remember the damned password, though."

"Why does that voice sound familiar to me?" asked Tattletale.

He smirked and replied, "Leet copied GLaDOS's voice from the Portal games. You probably heard me playing the third one a few months ago."

Sarah got a look of realization, then glared at Uber. "Really? That's the inspiration and you can't remember the password?"

His confused look slowly changed to one of shock, and then embarrassment. "Right, sorry." He stepped up and repeated the process. The voice prompted, "Password, please." In response, Uber said, "The cake is a lie." A green LED lit up next to the keyhole and Uber turned the key. What followed was a series of loud thunks from locking bolts disengaging and what sounded suspiciously like a forcefield powering down. The vault door popped out slightly from the frame and Randall grabbed the edge with both hands and pulled it open. A light on the inside popped on, allowing the Undersiders to see the contents. Four steel mesh racks like you would find in a warehouse were arranged on the inside were covered in various plastic and cardboard boxes, a few bags, and a couple of pieces of larger equipment that were hard to identify at first glance. What really drew the eye, though, was a full set of Spartan armor from the Halo series standing against the far wall.

Uber moved forward to stand in front of the armor, Sarah following along close behind. He reached out to touch the armor's breastplate, a wistful look on his face.

"Does it still work?" asked Sarah.

Uber shook his head. "Nah. The limb servos locked up on it, luckily not while we were in combat. Kevin always hoped that he would have some way to fix it someday. Apart from the Snitch, it was one of his best creations."

She put a hand on his shoulder comfortingly. "Maybe Dragon could do something with it? She seems to have a knack for reverse-engineering the work of other Tinkers." For those who had been involved in the events surrounding Cauldron, it was also an open secret that she and her clan were still regularly in contact with the Family, who had plenty of resources even if she couldn't help directly.

Randall got a thoughtful look. "Hm, that might actually be a good idea. If nothing else, she might be able to fix it. I would be a hell of a lot more effective in the field wearing this."

While Uber and Tattletale were looking at the armor, the others had started looking in the various boxes. Zephron called out, "Wow, look at this. These are some seriously high-end electronic components. Some of them are a little dated, but they must have been beyond cutting edge when Leet stored them here."

Turning to look, Randall replied, "Yeah, that was loot from that warehouse robbery we pulled off. That was one of our more difficult jobs that wasn't for broadcast."

"That's not going to cause a problem for us, is it?" asked Danny.

Sarah shook her head. "That was several years ago. The tech is no longer unique enough to ID, and the company got compensated by their insurance for the theft. As long as we don't go bragging about it, we're safe."

"Ow!" called out Alec from the corner. He had been poking around in random boxes with his scepter and a jolt of electricity had arced out and shocked him. Now he was cradling his hand. "How the hell does some of this shit still have power?"

"Powers are bullshit," replied Taylor with a smirk at Alec's minor pain. "We should probably let Uber tell us what's safe to touch."

"That's a very good idea, actually," added Danny. "Uber, how do you think we should go about doing this?"

The man in question considered the issue. "Let's grab some of the stuff like those electronic components that we can use back at the union. After that, I think I need to come back here with Tattletale and sort through some stuff -- see what's promising to sell or ask Dragon about. Some of it we may even want to turn over the PRT, depending upon what's in all these boxes. Not everything Leet came up with was something even I want to play with. We can let Armsmaster or somebody like that deal with it."

With that, they set about carefully looking through the contents of the vault, identifying a handful of tools and supplies for which the DWU could find a use. Their big mistake came when Skitter was trying to pull a very nice handheld metal-shaping tool from a lower shelf. There was another, unlabeled box leaning against it, but not in a way that was obvious. That box tipped over and spilled open, revealing a complicated device of unknown purpose, which apparently also still had power of some kind. The room began to vibrate and there was a high-pitched whine as it activated. As everybody reached out to grab something to try and stabilize themselves, Coil suddenly collapsed in pain and a glowing hole opened up in the floor beneath one of Skitter's shoes. The girl in question lost her grip on the storage rack and fell down into the hole. Less than a second later, there was a piercingly loud screech, followed by a billowing cloud of smoke that forced the Undersiders to run out of the vault. Zephron grabbed Danny's unconscious form on the way out.

Rachel, who had stayed outside with her dogs, was watching them stumble out of the building. The dogs were whimpering and she looked really annoyed. "What the fuck happened in there?" she asked.

"What?" asked Uber, his ears ringing from the noise.

"WHAT HAPPENED?" yelled the girl. Uber shook his head, trying to clear it.

Pulse proceeded to put the still unconscious Coil in the van. Tattletale went over and checked his vital signs. "He's unconscious, but he doesn't seem to be injured." She turned to Rachel. "One of Leet's old inventions got triggered accidentally."

"I think it was the old wormhole generator," said Uber. "Um, I think we might all want to get checked for radiation contamination."

The rest of them gave him a long look. Regent simply said, "What."

"That's why we stopped using the thing," he explained. "It gave off a lot more gamma radiation than he expected."

With a frown, Tattletale looked back at the storefront. "My power tells me we didn't get enough of a dose to be immediately dangerous...but we should still get checked over."

Pulse nodded. "What about Danny? Should we take him to the hospital?"

"Wait a second," interjected Regent, looking around. "Where the hell is Skitter?"

Uber quickly looked around and realized that the nominal team leader wasn't present. He turned and dashed back into the building, ignoring Tattletale's protest at him doing so. Less than two minutes later, he came back outside, a horrified look on his face. He shook his head. "She's not in there. She's gone. I think...I think she fell into a wormhole."

There was a stunned silence at this. Then Tattletale voiced what they were all thinking. "Well, fuck."

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Taylor groaned. She was lying on the ground and felt like she had fallen off the roof of a single-story building (and she sadly knew from first-hand experience what that felt like). She also had lost contact with her swarm when she fell, which was also slightly disorienting her. Instinctively, she reached out to try and reconnect. She found a bunch of insects but the composition was slightly different from normal for New England. For one thing, Brockton Bay didn't normally have such a large population of scorpions. At that realization, she also noticed that she could feel the warmth of bright sunshine and it was actually quite hot, wherever she was.

She opened her eyes carefully, squinting in the bright sunlight. Pushing herself into a sitting position, she began looking around. Instead of Brockton Bay, she appeared to be in the middle of a small town. A derelict car off to the side still had a license plate on it and the plate was issued by Arizona. Had that device teleported her across the damned country?

"I am going to infest Randall's clothing with fleas the next time I see him," she grumbled to herself.

She forced herself to stand and look around. The street was deserted. There were also a few other cars that looked abandoned. She pulled her mobile phone out of her belt pouch but it wasn't detecting a signal. Even the GPS function seemed unable to connect. That was frustrating. If she was stranded in a fucking ghost town in the middle of Arizona, she was going to do something worse to Uber than fleas. Maybe bedbugs. That would also piss off Sarah, which wasn't really a downside in her opinion. The town itself looked fairly modern like it had only been abandoned recently. She tried to think if there were any PRT quarantine zones in Arizona, but she couldn't think of any. The closest one she remembered was in New Mexico.

Using her swarm, she tried to find if there were any other people around. Most of the buildings seemed empty, but there was what felt like a person slowly shuffling down the street about two blocks over. Grimacing at the heat in her costume but not having anything else to wear, she began trudging in that direction.

When she turned the corner past a tool and die company, she could see what appeared to be a local cop, stumbling down the middle of the street as if he was slightly intoxicated. The man was also grossly overweight. 'Jesus, I thought the cops in Brockton Bay were bad,' she thought. She hesitated for a moment, given that she was in costume. She knew that her costume had more of a villain than hero vibe, and she didn't want some hick cop overreacting to being "attacked" by a "supervillain." She reached down and verified she still had her ID showing her affiliate status as a rogue, then began walking toward the man. "Hey!" she called out, not wanting to startle him by getting too close. He stopped shuffling away from her and turned to look at her. Taylor couldn't help but think that something was very off about him. He seemed to have blood on his clothes and his skin was pale. She stopped walking toward him and called out, "Are you all right?"

The cop lifted an arm as if reaching out to grab her, even though he was still a good fifteen feet away. He then made a gagging noise as if he was about to puke. What he coughed up, though, was glowing green and flying straight at her. She dodged quickly to the side, then stared in shock as the pavement started to sizzle where the glowing puke had landed. She immediately called in her swarm to attack, while wondering, 'What the fuck is going on?' Was he a cape, or had she dropped into the middle of some type of biotinker crisis? In either case, where were the PRT or the Protectorate?

Her insects didn't seem to be slowing the cop down. He just ignored stings completely. The insects could bite into him, but he made no effort to protect his eyes or any other sensitive spots. He just kept stumbling toward her, and she could hear a low-pitched moan coming from his throat. Grimacing, she pulled out her batons, snapping them open with a click-click sound. Being on a team with Uber meant you absorbed far too much pop culture, and she knew the zombie tropes pretty well. This guy was acting like the stereotypical walking dead. She broke into a short sprint, being careful to watch for any more gagging motions and to stay out of his reach. A quick dodge to the side let her smash his arm and the base of his skull with her batons in quick sequence. The arm broke, with the end dangling loose, while the skull blow made him stumble. He quickly recovered, though, turning to grab at her despite the fact that his reaching hand was now useless.

"Damn it," she said. Resolving herself to what she had to do, she said, "I really hope there's no cure for whatever is wrong with you." She then darted inside his reach and smashed her batons into his head, cracking his skull in two places. One of them left a visible dent in the bone, but he still didn't go down. Dodging a grab from his other arm, she hit the spot again with a blow that shoved a chunk of skull into the creature's brain. That finally stopped him and the large man fell over and stopped moving. She just hoped she hadn't inadvertently murdered a cop who was drugged out of his mind.

She paused for a minute with her hands on her knees. If she was stuck in some kind of zombie apocalypse -- which sadly wasn't impossible given what had happened in places like Ellisburg -- then she needed to find herself someplace to hole up that was safe until she could signal for help. She looked at the cop's body. He seemed oddly well-preserved, but up close she could see signs that he was not among the living in the form of bloodless injuries on his hands and face. Insects also seemed to have no interest in his flesh unless she forced them to attack, which was an important thing for her to remember. In her experience, dead bodies attracted a lot of bugs, but that wasn't likely to be the case here. His gun was still in his holster. He hadn't made any attempt to reach for it, meaning that whatever had happened to him, he probably had lost a lot of his intelligence. With a slightly disgusted noise, she used a baton to undo the holster snap and pull out the weapon. It was a 9mm semi-automatic pistol, similar to what she thought the army used, and was still in reasonably good condition, having been protected by the leather of the holster. She briefly considered searching the body for more ammunition but felt nauseated at the thought. A more palatable alternative presented itself in the form of a sporting goods store down the block.

Putting the gun in her belt and keeping her batons out, she trotted down to the storefront. The glass window was still intact, but she could see that a sizeable chunk of the merchandise had already been looted. That further cemented the idea that something was deeply wrong here, wherever she was. Nobody had bothered to clean up the trashed store. It even looked like somebody had even tried to drag a kayak out of the store before giving up on it, leaving the hull wedged into the front entryway. She did see something useful, though. Carefully stepping over the kayak, she went over to the rack near the front of the store and picked up an aluminum baseball bat. She didn't recognize the brand, but she could tell it was fairly solid and well-balanced based on a couple of practice swings. She put her batons away and kept the bat ready as she moved down the aisle toward where she could see the store's gun counter at the back.

That proved prudent, as a legless zombie reached out to grab her from under one of the racks. It was faster than she expected but she was able to dance out of the way and slam the bat down on the thing's skull. The result was nauseating, but she was satisfied that it only took one strike to put the thing down for good. While Taylor was used to violence, she wasn't so accustomed to it that repeatedly having to break human skulls didn't disturb her.

Unfortunately for her, the gun counter was even more looted than the rest of the store. She found a handful of loose 9mm rounds that somebody had probably dropped in their rush to loot. She also found a holster that would attach to the belt on her costume. There were a couple of hunting bows still there, but she didn't actually know how to use one effectively. Frowning, she thought it might actually be useful to have Hess around with those funky crossbows of hers in this situation. Eh, she would make do. The rest of the store was a bust. There was a stock of protective equipment but most of it wasn't better than her armored costume. She did grab a lightweight sleeping bag in case she had to camp out somewhere, though she wasn't sure what would be safe. That thought actually made her stop and consider for a moment. Where could she go that would be safe to sleep? Of the two zombies she had seen, one had been dumb and spat some kind of acid, while the other one had already been almost cut in half. How far could zombies spit? Could they climb? It would be convenient if she could find some kind of fully stocked bunker but poking around in a bunch of basements to find one didn't strike her as a particularly safe approach in the middle of a zombie apocalypse (assuming that was what was happening).

Back on the street, she looked around at the skyline in an attempt to find a high vantage point. Most of the buildings around were about two to three floors. Maybe three blocks away was what appeared to be an apartment building that was five stories tall. She could get a good view of the surrounding area from the top, which might give her some ideas. Taylor began moving in an easy trot in the right direction, keeping the top of the building in sight as much as possible. Her journey had her almost stumble across another zombie that lurched out of a bush, this one a thirty-something-looking man in a business suit. A couple of whacks with the bat took care of the threat, but her bugs were proving to be particularly bad at giving her forewarning of the walking dead. The bugs had no interest in eating them and suit-guy had been completely motionless until she was almost on top of his location.

Once she was in front of the apartments, Taylor could see that the building was in much worse shape than it had appeared at a distance. The entryway was fortified with sandbags but the large patches of dried blood covering the bags and floor suggested it hadn't been very effective. There were also visible holes in the walls and plenty of broken windows, including one patch on the third floor that looked like it had been on fire. The interior lights were still on but they were damaged and flickering from whatever fighting had happened. It gave the interior halls a very horror-movie vibe, which was undoubtedly appropriate to the circumstances but not helpful. The displaced cape gingerly stepped over the sandbag wall, bat at the ready. Nothing jumped out of the flickering darkness, which was slightly encouraging. Her goal was to make it to the roof, hopefully skipping triggering a mob of the formerly living residents of the building. The floor creaked ominously but held. The stairwell leading up was immediately off of the entry hall, thankfully, and she quietly made her way over to it. The building was silent, apart from the occasional groan from the overtaxed structure. That silence was broken when she put her foot down on a stair that collapsed instantly with her weight, taking out part of the flight above and below that point and dropping her down into the stairwell on the next floor down.

Luckily, her costume absorbed most of the impact and protected her from the falling bits of the stairwell. She rolled down the stairs and ended up sprawled spread-eagled in the apartment building's underground parking deck. She shook her head back and forth as the dust settled, trying to clear it, but looked up quickly when she heard movement. Her eyes widened as she could see at least a dozen forms begin to rise from the floor where they had been lying. Closest to her was a woman who looked like she might have been a school teacher or librarian in life. Now, she was pushing herself to her feet. Taylor could see her jaw through the large tear that had ripped off most of the right cheek of her face. Frantically looking around for an exit, she could see the light coming from the entrance ramp to the garage. Most of it was blocked by what looked like a short school bus, though the bus was painted light blue instead of yellow.

Out of options, she began to dash toward the light. She swung her bat at the librarian zombie in passing, knocking her down with a sickening crunch to the face but not pausing to finish the job. The next too-close walking dead was a teenager in a hoodie who could have passed as somebody who had been up all night studying if he hadn't been trying to claw her face off with blood-stained hands. She used the tip of the bat to push him off balance and jumped over his legs. The only reason she was still alive was that the zombies weren't that fast but she couldn't fight off all of them with only a bat and a pistol. She stopped short as a man in an army uniform lurched in front of her. Her bat wasn't going to work easily because he still had his military helmet and body armor from before he died. A small part of her brain not fixated on survival wondered if he had died trying to defend the residents of the building from the undead horde. Reluctantly, given her sparse ammunition supply, she settled a fly on his nose to aim, then pulled the policeman's pistol she had taken out and put a round through his face. That cleared the way to the barrier blocking the entrance but she had to stop again. Around the bus was an array of sharpened wooden spikes wired with what appeared to be pipe bombs and other homemade explosives. Whacking away the grabbing arm of an overweight zombie in a wife-beater t-shirt, she leaped up for one of the broken bus windows and slithered her way inside. She then turned and put another bullet into the face of Cletus the slack-jawed zombie before scrambling for the other side of the bus.

The other side of the bus was facing the outside and was thankfully clear of zombies, so she dropped to the ground and started to make her way up the ramp to the outside. She winced as one of the dead set off one of the various IED's. While it undoubtedly took out at least a few of her pursuers, it was LOUD. From what she had seen so far, the undead around here seemed to just sit or stand or shamble quietly until they heard somebody and then they started to attack. Sure enough, she could see several stumbling townsfolk heading toward the apartment building from wherever they had been resting uneasily as she topped the ramp. The back of the building opened up on some overgrown fields that lacked anything in the way of cover or even a decent-sized tree to climb, so she began jogging around the building back to the street through town. She had to use another bullet when she met a stereotypical leather-clad biker wearing an open-faced motorcycle helmet and she could hear an increased volume of moans from the coming horde after the sound of her shot.

The street was a mess of animated corpses. Luckily, she could sense with insects where there were fewer clustered together. She quickly made her way through the press, smacking down any of the dead who got too close with her gore-slicked bat. A quick calculation showed that this was a losing battle, though. Whenever she slowed to defend herself, the rest of the horde grew closer. She was already tired and she was over-used to being able to blind, distract, and poison her foes with her insect swarm. These zombies just ignored her swarm clones, though, probably because they didn't trigger whatever caused these shambling dead to sense prey.

Her salvation came in the form of a Jeep Wrangler that plowed down three zombies as it screeched to a stop nearby. A man popped out of the driver's side with a Russian-made assault rifle and began using single shots to the heads of the walking dead. She must have paused in surprise, because he glanced at her and yelled, "Don't just stand there, get in the goddamned car!" She quickly ran to the vehicle and jumped inside, at which point he stopped firing and put the Jeep in gear, running down another couple of the dead while making his u-turn.

Catching her breath in the passenger seat, Taylor looked at her rescuer. He was burly like a dock worker but dressed more like a survivalist cowboy with a long duster, sunglasses, and cowboy hat. A bandana was wrapped around his neck beneath a long, bushy red beard. Feeling her gaze, he asked, "Did you get caught by surprise while scavving?"

She shook her head. "I was just trying to figure out where I was."

That caused him to glance over at her. "You managed to get lost? How the hell have you survived all this time?"

"I just got here. What the hell happened here, anyway? Is this some kind of biotinker attack?" she asked.

He glanced at her again. "I don't know what that is. The zombies showed up after the war but I don't know how you can't know that already."

At his casual mention of a war, Taylor got a sinking sensation in her chest. "What's the date?"

He seemed slightly puzzled. "I don't rightly know. Sometime in August. I had a watch that kept track of the date, but it got broken a couple years ago."

"No, I mean, what year is it?" she asked nervously.

"2015," he replied, clearly confused by her line of questioning.

"Fuck," she said. If Uber was still alive, then she was going to kill him. "I was helping a friend clear out a tinker's vault, and I got sucked into a portal of some kind. That was in 2011."

He was quiet for a bit. Finally, he said, "My name's Hugh, by the way."

Still fuming, she said, "I'm Skitter." After a short pause, she added, "Thank you for rescuing me. I wouldn't have been able to hold off the horde for much longer."

"You're welcome," he said and kept driving.

After an awkward silence, she asked, "Where are we going?"

"Well, unless you've got a safe base somewhere, I'm heading back to the White River settlement. We've got stockpiles of food and ammo, enough to keep the walkers at bay, at least." He seemed to consider something. "We've got a doctor, too. Oh, and there's some honey in the glove compartment. You might want to have a couple of spoonfuls."

She peered at him. If he was trying to drug her, he was doing it in the weirdest way possible. "Why would I want to eat honey?"

He glanced at her again and now he was clearly surprised at her question. "It keeps the disease that turns you into a zombie at bay. Something in the local pollen. It's not a cure but it was one of the few useful things they discovered about the plague before everything fell to pieces. How can you not know that?"

"I told you, I just got here. Earlier today I was in Brockton Bay, and apparently four years in the past," she said bitterly.

There was another awkward silence. Then he asked, "Where's Brockton Bay?"

Now she looked surprised. "It's not far from Boston. I'm surprised you haven't heard of it, though. It was in the news a lot."

He actually chuckled at that. "I haven't heard an honest-to-God news broadcast in years, miss."

"Still," she said, hesitating, "we had the largest number of capes per capita of any city in the U.S."

He shrugged while keeping his hands on the wheel. "Eh, even before the war, I was never much into fashion. Don't know that I recall anybody around here who wore a cape."

"Where is here, by the way? What town is this?" she prompted, hoping to get some more useful information out of this decidedly strange conversation.

He waved his hand out at the buildings rushing past. "This lovely place is the town and county of Navezgane, Arizona. Last habitable place in the state, as far as I know."

"Are the zombies that bad everywhere else?" she asked. They seemed pretty thick on the ground, here, so she wondered how much worse it could get.

He shrugged again. "I guess they can be, but the real problem is the fallout and contamination from the bombs."

Taylor was now honestly shocked. "They nuked Arizona? Why?"

Now he actually turned his head, taking his eyes off the road, and looked at her. "Are you trying to be funny?"

She shook her head. "I'm not. Not at all. I swear to you that I've got no idea what's been happening in the world."

He turned back to the road, not even noticing as he ran over a zombie crawling across the middle of it. "Some of it was population centers and military installations targeted during the war. Some of it was attempts to contain or purge the zombie plague. Guess they were desperate enough at the end to try anything. The Colonel says Navezgane has something called a microclimate thanks to the mountains nearby. That gives us a spread of space for wildlife, native plants, and crops to survive."

"Who's the Colonel," she prompted, horrified by what he was saying but needing more information.

"He's the head of White River. Used to be in the Army Corps of Engineers, and he knows a lot about how to keep things running." Hugh sounded respectful when he said that second bit. "He'll want to talk to you, I think."

She gave him a suspicious sideways look. Of course, her choices right now were to jump out of a moving car and back into a zombie-infested wilderness or to take a chance that Hugh and this Colonel person weren't worse monsters than the undead. At that moment, her stomach growled loud enough for the driver to hear.

With another chuckle, he said, "Go ahead and have a bit of honey and there's an energy bar in the glove box, too. I was on patrol, so I don't have much else, but we can get you something better when we get to White River."

Slightly reluctantly, she opened the box to find a small jar of honey and an energy bar, along with a couple of packs of plastic eating utensils. She opened up the bottom of her face mask, then she grabbed the plastic spoon out of one and ate a bite of honey. It was quite good, actually, and she couldn't taste anything off about it. She had a couple of more bites, then closed the jar and unwrapped the bar. It was one of those sports bars that weirdly tasted like crap normally but was delicious after your body had been through a hard workout like a long run. At the moment, it was almost heavenly, though it wasn't enough to satisfy her hunger completely.

The White River settlement was a walled compound surrounded by a clear-cut swath, presumably to give the guards she could see a clear line of fire to stop any zombies. In fact, as they were driving down the entrance road, she saw a barely-dressed zombie stumble into the cleared area and start heading for the settlement. The head of the zombie popped in a red mist and it toppled, and then Taylor heard the report of a rifle shot. "Must be hard to sleep at night with all the shooting," she commented.

He shook his head. "Nah. Most of the local area is pretty clear, now. That one is probably the first one in a couple of days to wander in. It must have got lucky and missed all the deadfalls and snares." He smirked. "Also, most of the guards aren't pricks, so at night they'll just let them get closer and use a bow to take them out."

"Most of them?"

"Eh, you'll see," he replied. "You'll meet Rekt pretty quick. Guys a genius when it comes to everything related to farming and a moron when it comes to everything related to people."

She couldn't help but smile at the description. "I won't mention that you said that."

Hugh scoffed. "Go ahead and tell him. He won't give a fuck. Not like he'll be nice to you if you're nice to him."

As they got close to the gate across the road, the gate began to open. Hugh waved out the window to one of the guys manning the gate and the guard waved back. It reminded her a little of the DWU compound. She suspected that the occupants of this miniature fortress were every bit as competent as the members of the DWU, especially if some of them were ex-military. Hugh turned the Jeep into a parking area that had a few other vehicles, mostly of the more rugged civilian variety like pickup trucks with a few motorcycles, though there was one large military truck parked to the side. There was also a bike rack with several bicycles on it, presumably for getting around inside the settlement, which was larger than she expected from the initial view coming in.

Hugh led her into a Quonset hut near the vehicle pool. Inside was a casually dressed older man with grey at his temples talking to a younger kid who looked to be about nineteen. Hugh waited until they were done talking and the kid ran off with some kind of message, then said, "Picked up another stray, Colonel, and she's got a bit of a story."

He raised an eyebrow at Hugh, but turned to Taylor and said, "Welcome to our settlement. My name is Joel Whitcombe, formerly of the United States Army. Who might you be?"

"I'm called Skitter," she replied, "out of Brockton Bay."

He shook his head. "I'm afraid I've never heard of Brockton Bay. Is that another survivor's colony?"

Starting to worry a bit at the lack of recognition, she clarified, "No, it's a city on the New Hampshire coast, not far from Boston?"

"Miss, I grew up in Danbury, Connecticut, and I've never heard of Brockton Bay," he said. His expression showed a great deal of skepticism.

Nonplussed, she said, "I'm...honestly not sure how that's possible. Here, look at this." She pulled out her Protectorate Affiliate ID, which had the addresses of the local Protectorate and PRT offices on it.

He examined the ID, holding it up to the light. Finally, he said, "Miss, on the one hand, I've never heard of either of these organizations and I've never seen an ID that lets you take a picture while wearing a Halloween mask. On the other hand, I've never seen a fake with such realistic anti-tampering and counterfeiting measures. It's even got a very real-looking microchip embedded in it. I also can't figure out why you would be telling me such an unbelievable story."

Frustrated, Taylor asked, "Do you have a globe or an atlas or something?"

With another raised eyebrow, he reached back to a bookcase behind his desk and pulled out a thick Automobile Association road atlas dated 2009. He dropped it on the desk in front of her. The table of contents let her quickly find a map for the state of Massachusetts. She then checked an adjacent map of the Boston metropolitan area, and then a broader New England overview that only showed major highways and cities. Not one of them had the city where she had been born and had lived her entire life.

"Well...shit." She had no idea what to tell the two men in the room who were clearly waiting for her to explain herself.

 

[podlizurko]

So are they not part of the Multiversal Council with no phones to Saurial's Angels?

 

[Derek M]

So are they not part of the Multiversal Council with no phones to Saurial's Angels?

Click to shrink...

Danny has one. Danny left his in his office. He is also currently unconscious.

 

[Orion525]

Interesting start. Not particularly a zombie fan, but in this case that may just mean I have fewer preconceived ideas about where Skitter is now. I look forward to find out more.

Thanks for writing and sharing this with us.

 

[Derek M]

Chapter 2: Insect Queen

The two spiders synchronized their movements in a complex dance that looked like an eight-legged cross between the cha-cha and break dancing. A cloud of gnats swirled above the two, pulsing their swarm in a way that implied an inaudible beat. Colonel Whitcombe stared at the display, his face an unreadable mask. Then he looked up at Skitter. "Honestly, miss, I don't know what to make of your story. My initial fear was that you were delusional. More than one normally solid person has gone a little sideways thanks to the apocalypse." He pursed his lips. "I'm not one to disbelieve my own eyes, however, and in a world where the dead get up and walk away, it seems foolish to cling too closely to skepticism." He appeared to think for a moment. "Exactly what kind of things can you control?"

Taylor considered how much to share about her abilities. "Pretty much anything you might think of when you think of the word bug. Spiders, ants, flies, wasps...all sorts of things."

"Bees?" he asked.

She nodded, wondering where he was going with this.

"What about snails? Earthworms?" He had an odd look in his eye as he asked, but it was hard to say what it might mean.

Taylor shrugged. "Yeah, sure? I mean, I haven't really had a reason to do it much." With a force of will, she stifled a small smile at the thought of the E88 capes fleeing in terror from a pack of snails.

The Colonel gave her a sincere smile. "I can understand that, but things are a little different here. Hugh, take her to get some food at the canteen and then take her to see Rekt. He's got a couple of projects that Skitter here can make feasible."

Hugh winced. "He'll take some convincing. You know what he's like."

Whitcombe gave a chuckle. "Miss, can you give him a demonstration that's a little more...impressive than what you just showed me?"

Now she actually smirked. "I think I can do impressive."

The man nodded. "He'll come around. Rekt is an asshole, but he's also a genius when it comes to farming. Once he absorbs what you can do, I think he'll..."

The Colonel paused in mid-sentence at the sound of shouting from outside. He quickly went out into the hall to look out the window there, and Taylor and Hugh followed him. Taylor could hear what sounded like a rhythmic, mechanical sound that was slowly getting louder.

"Is that Bob?" asked Hugh.

The man in charge gave a grunt of agreement, then turned toward the door to the outside. The three of them quickly moved out to where a small group of people were gathered around a flat section of pavement that had been spray-painted to look like a makeshift helicopter landing pad. Taylor followed the gaze of the others and she could see what looked like a small flying machine coming closer. It looked about the size of an ultralight airplane, but instead of wings, it had whirling blades keeping it aloft. As it got closer, she could see that it was fairly rough-looking, as if somebody had assembled it from scratch. It was also really loud, and she soon had her hands over her ears, as did the others watching.

The crowd backed up a bit as the craft came in for a somewhat rough landing on three wheels that had been welded to the fuselage. It suddenly got much less noisy as the pilot, a thin, bearded, dark-haired man in a leather coat with pilot-goggles over his eyes, shut off the fuel feed to the engine and it coughed to a stop. Whitcombe moved forward, being careful to stay out of the way of the still rotating blades. "Well, I'll be damned, Bob. I was afraid that 'thopter you built wasn't going to hold together," he commented with a bit of snark.

The pilot gave him an unimpressed look. "I knew she would." He frowned slightly. "Although, I will admit that she handled a bit rougher than I expected." He shook his head. "Anyway, that's not important right now." He looked straight at the Colonel. "Joel, we got a horde coming in."

The Colonel grimaced. "How big and where from?"

"I counted maybe three or four hundred. They're walking down the highway from Phoenix. I'm not sure what's pushing them in this direction, but they'll be here soon."

"How soon?" asked someone in the watching crowd.

Bob turned his head to spit out some dust onto the dirt. "We've got...maybe seven days?"

The crowd fell to murmuring at that revelation. Colonel Whitcombe raised his hand and whistled. "All right folks. We know how to handle a zombie horde and thanks to Bob, here, we've got a solid week to prepare. Let's get back to work." People began to disperse, and the Colonel turned to Hugh and said, "Go ahead and take care of our guest, here. We'll have a strategy session at sixteen hundred hours."

The dining hall was relatively mundane, with picnic tables set up inside a corrugated metal shed and a food prep area with a variety of electric appliances. There were several standing freezers with pre-pared meals -- mostly stews -- as well as fresh food that presumably could be used to prepare something yourself. There didn't seem to be a dedicated cook, at least. It did cause her to ask one question that had been tickling the back of her brain. "Hey, Hugh, where does all the electricity come from?"

"We've got a solar panel array on some of the roofs. We've also got some backup generators, but we'd rather use the fuel for the vehicles," he answered as he picked himself up some kind of meat stew and began heating it on a burner.

"What about the town, though? Are you guys supplying the grid?" The lights in the abandoned town had still been on, even if some of them were broken.

He stuck a pinky into the stew to judge the temperature, then turned the burner up a bit. "Nah, we actually still draw on the grid ourselves for non-critical things. The grid itself is mostly still intact around here and Bob says the experimental solar station outside of town is still running. We might even still be getting some hydropower from Glen Canyon or Hoover, but that's less likely. They'll all shut off on their own eventually unless somebody starts maintaining them again. We don't really have the manpower."

That prompted another question. "Are...is this camp all that's left of humanity in this world?"

Hugh sighed. "Naw. We aren't even the only survivors in this part of Arizona. There are a few independent hold-outs, mostly just a few degrees shy of batshit crazy. Then there are a couple of groups that are no better than bandits. Then there's the Duke."

"The Duke?" Taylor began heating her own stew up as they talked. From the taste, it looked like venison.

Hugh nodded. "Before the war, he was the owner and operator of Duke's casino. He's Native American, but I'm not sure what tribe. When the shit hit the fan, he gathered his family and employees, plus whoever could make it there from the local res or was willing to work for him. They ain't bandits, but they also ain't the least bit charitable. He runs his group like a protection racket. Some of the guys who knew him before said they thought he had links to organized crime back in the day."

"It sounds like you don't like him much?" she asked.

The man shrugged, which was a bit of an acrobatic feat as he was simultaneously pouring hot stew into a bowl. "We've had some run-ins with his people. He also screwed over one of our guys pretty badly, though he managed to make it back to base. Left him in the middle of the wilderness with nothing but his underwear, a jar of water, and a can of chili."

They sat down and began to eat, when Hugh added, "Oh, and there's got to be some kind of government or something somewhere. We keep getting the supply drops." At her quizzical look, he elaborated. "Every week or so, somebody flies an airplane overhead and drops a pack of supplies via parachute. It's usually a mish-mash of survival gear, seeds, tools, etc. Most of it marked as government property."

"You guys ever try to contact the pilot?" she asked, curious.

He swallowed, then replied, "'Course we did. Tried the commercial and military aviation frequencies. We tried signal mirrors with morse code. Hell, somebody even rigged up a big message in a parking lot asking them to include a note identifying themselves in the next drop. Whoever it is, they've never replied."

"Weird," she commented before taking another bite of her own stew.

"Yeah, the guys here have a lot of theories. Some think they've got some kind of fancy autopilot system that's still doing the last thing it was ordered to do, but the Colonel said there's no way you could automate loading, refueling, etc. Plus, all the packages are different and some of the stuff looks like it was scavenged. Me, I think it's somebody who wants to help but doesn't want to get too attached to anybody stuck out in zombie country...assuming the whole damned continent isn't zombie country." Hugh looked fairly grim as he said the last part.

They finished the rest of their meal in silence. Taylor figured her dad would end up calling the lizards to rescue her. She was kind of surprised they hadn't shown up already. Her spoon froze halfway to her mouth as it occurred to her that something could have happened to the Undersiders after she fell through the portal? What if Leet's device had exploded? Were her father and the rest of the team all right? Something must have happened to keep her dad from dropping that timeline... She had been on the move up until now, just trying to survive, and hadn't really thought it through.

Something must have shown in her posture or actions, because Hugh asked, "Are you all right?"

She shook her head. "No, I'm fine. I just thought of something that has me a little concerned."

He just snorted. "Yeah, welcome to fuckin' Navezgane." He got up and went to drop his dishes in a plastic bin that already had a couple of dirty coffee cups in it. "Guess I better get you over to Rekt's. Lucky me."

Rekt apparently lived in a shack next to an open field. There were a variety of crops growing on the field in individual planters, though nothing was planted in the soil itself. That seemed a little odd. Hugh walked up to the shack door and pounded on it for a good five seconds. Taylor could hear a massive amount of swearing coming from inside, and then the door was flung over. Inside the shack was a man who looked like the picture you would see next to the word farmer in the dictionary, down to his overalls. His eyes were bloodshot and he looked rumpled as if he had just woken up. The man glared at Hugh. "What the fuck do you want?"

"Good morning to you, too, Rekt. The Colonel sent me over here with somebody who can help you," said Hugh.

The unpleasant man looked over at Skitter. Then he scoffed. "I don't need a whore...especially not one that's so damned scrawny."

Skitter's eyes narrowed and suddenly the sky got dark. She heard Hugh gasp in shock as he looked up and saw that the darkness wasn't caused by an errant cloud but by a massive swarm of insects of all types that had just appeared overhead. Taylor had been building up a swarm since she arrived in this world and it was now pretty damned impressive. The ground around her was suddenly swarming with roaches, spiders, and most especially scorpions, though the two men hadn't noticed that yet. Rekt noticed the wasp that settled on the bridge of his nose, though. The cross-eyed look would have been comical if she wasn't so pissed.

"You want to apologize to me," she said, an air of menace in her voice.

His eyes narrowed, though he made very sure not to move. "I ain't in the habit of apologizing to people," he said quietly.

"Most people don't have your pants covered in scorpions," she replied. Now his eyes widened as he noticed the feeling of the pincered bugs crawling on and into his clothes. Apparently, the wasp on his face and the swarm overhead had been drawing most of his attention. To the side, Hugh actually began edging away from her. To be fair, Skitter had found that to be a pretty common reaction to her when she was in full swarm mode. Even her own team still did it occasionally.

Rekt swallowed. "I apologize," he said. It sounded like he had to force the words out of his mouth.

The wasp took off and hovered in the air while the scorpions began making their way off of his legs and onto the ground. "Now, your Colonel sent me to you because I can control insects, arachnids, and worms. You're supposed to be a farmer, so I would think you could see the advantages to that. If you can't be respectful, though, you'll wake up covered in black widows. Do I make myself clear?"

The man nodded, though he didn't look happy. "Clear. How the fuck are you doing that, though?"

She shrugged. "It's an innate ability I have." Best if he didn't think it was some kind of technology or chemical she had that he could take. "Where I come from, people can get superpowers. That's mine."

He gave her a look that was skeptical, then he grimaced. "Fine, don't tell me." Then he began to think through the ramifications of what she had claimed. "You can control earthworms?"

She nodded.

"What about bees?"

Impatiently, she nodded again.

As if a switch had been flipped, he suddenly started walking over toward the fields where the plants were located. "Come here, then," he said, motioning her to come along.

Taylor looked to Hugh questioningly, but the man was still staring at her with a slightly slack jaw. With a shrug, she went to follow the abrasive man.

Rekt gestured toward the ground. "The soil here is shit. Folks around here who did any kind of gardening have to put a lot of labor into it, and they used a shitload of fertilizer and water. Can your bugs and worms clear some of the stones out and aerate and fertilize the ground?"

She considered the problem. She hadn't actually tried to do anything like that before, but it seemed like a straightforward enough thing. She stared at the field and began concentrating. Eventually, Hugh wandered over from where they had left him standing. He tried to say something to Rekt, but the man held up a hand and shushed him while he stared at the field alongside Skitter. Bits of the ground began to move as the various creepy-crawlies worked their way into the soil. After a minute or so, insects began pushing stones out of the ground and to the surface, where scorpions and ground beetles would start hauling them off to the side.

Rekt began to cackle disturbingly. "Well, fuck me! You can actually do it." He looked over at Hugh. "Damn it if you didn't do something useful for once!"

Once she figured out what to have her swarm do, she looked up at Rekt. "Is that all you needed?"

He stopped his laughter, then considered her. "Do you need to keep concentrating or something?"

She shook her head. "They'll continue to do what they've been ordered until I tell them to stop." It was a little more complicated than that, but she wasn't about to share any more details with this asshole.

"Well...if you can keep pests away from the plants and the harvested food, that would be useful. There is one other thing, though..." He began walking around to the back of the shack. Stacked there were some crates. The labels on the boxes indicated they were beehives. "Somebody stumbled across a bunch of disassembled hives. Problem is, we don't have any queens to populate them. Joel won't send out anybody looking for queens because he says it's too dangerous." The expression on his face made it clear he didn't think much of that opinion.

"To be fair, Rekt, none of the guys would know how to collect a queen from a hive," interjected Hugh, apparently having had enough time to recover the ability to speak.

Rekt scowled. "Yeah, part of the problem is I'm surrounded by fucking ignoramuses." He glanced over at Skitter. "Do you think you could find us some queens?"

Taylor nodded. "If I can get out and around, I'm sure I can. If we're lucky, I might be able to find some hives that are getting ready to birth new queens, or I could force it. That would take longer." She knew a bit about bees, having studied up on insects in general for obvious reasons.

"I can talk to the Colonel about having you tag along on some of the salvage runs," said Hugh. "We're probably going to make more than usual as we get ready for the horde that's coming in."

"What horde?" asked Rekt, suddenly interested in something besides bees.

"Bob just landed. There's a horde coming down the highway from Phoenix," replied Hugh.

That led to a fairly impressive string of curses. Taylor spent a lot of time hanging around dockworkers, so she could appreciate an inventive tirade of profanity.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Back in Brockton Bay, Rachel was just asking what the hell had happened inside of Leet's vault.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

To her surprise, Skitter found herself invited to the Colonel's planning meeting along with a handful of the Colonel's top people. Hugh and Bob were both there as well, along with some others she didn't recognize. Rekt was not there, which wasn't terribly surprising. She couldn't imagine the difficult man working well with the rest of the group.

The meeting started off with different people giving a status report on supplies, defenses, armament, etc. One of the attendees, a woman named Jen, was apparently in charge of medical supplies. She mentioned needing to do something called a "hospital run," and the Colonel turned to Skitter for the first time. "Jen, I want Skitter here to come along with your team. She's an expert on insects who can find us some queens for Rekt's hives. Just listen to her if she asks you to take a detour."

"Is that really what we should be focused on right now?" asked one of the men that Taylor didn't know.

The Colonel nodded to the man in question. "I understand why you're asking. The horde is a problem, but we can't lose sight of the bigger picture. Having our own hives means having healthier crops and our own source of honey." The man who asked considered that for a brief moment then nodded his acceptance. Taylor remembered what Hugh had told her about the local honey helping prevent infection from the zombie plague, so she could see why it would be a priority.

"Now, one other thing we need to do to prepare is to let the other local survivors know about the horde," continued the Colonel. "That includes the Duke."

Some of the other attendees swore. There were some mutters, and somebody said, "Don't know why we should after what that bastard did to Teddy."

Whitcombe frowned. "Now, I know what the Duke did to Teddy was harsh, but he managed to make his way back all right. The Duke is not...currently...our enemy and we should make an effort to keep things that way. I'm going to go meet with the man in person and I'll be sure to share our concerns about his actions. He and his people need to know about the horde, though. That's just being humane."

"You should take Skitter with you," said Hugh. The Colonel raised an eyebrow at him, and Hugh shook his head. "Trust me. She can be scary as hell. She made Rekt apologize."

Some of the other meeting attendees literally gasped, which Taylor thought was a bit over the top. They were all looking at her with a mixture of expressions.

"Really?" asked the Colonel. He regarded the girl assessingly. "We'll have to talk more about that after the meeting, but I wouldn't say no to having an ace in the hole." A few of the others chuckled for some reason. It took Skitter a few moments to remember that the Duke supposedly ran a casino.

"Do you think this Duke person is going to try something?" she asked.

The Colonel shook his head. "He won't if he sees that we're obviously ready for trouble. The man's not stupid. He's just greedy and arrogant." He pretended to ignore the person who quietly added, "...and dishonest, and racist and misogynist."

The rest of the meeting dealt with some more mundane preparation. This was apparently not the first horde of zombies they had survived, and if anything, the survivors seemed confident that they could deal with it. After the meeting, Skitter went over to Jen to ask about the hospital.

"We'll be going to Navezgane General to try and scavenge medical supplies," she answered.

"There are still medical supplies at the hospital? I would have thought that it would be one of the first places to be looted?" asked Skitter.

Jen frowned and shook her head, her ponytail swaying back and forth. "The hospital was the place a lot of the infected went when this whole pandemic started. It was packed with sick people."

Skitter stared at her, thinking through the ramifications. "Sick people, who all had the zombie plague?"

"Yep. Sick people who turned into zombies, and turned the medical staff into zombies, and the soldiers guarding the hospital, and any other patients and visitors unlucky to be stuck there. If we're lucky, we can sneak our way in and out...but any useful supplies are going to be in places that haven't been cleared by scavvers in the past." At Taylor's expression, Jen put a hand on her shoulder. "Don't worry. Just focus on your job. We'll make sure you don't get eaten or turned."

Taylor was, for the first time, really hoping to see a giant lizard sometime in the near future.

 

[Ace Dreamer]

Looks like a story worth following... Really not a fan of zombies, or post-apocalypse settings, but you are the author, and it has Taylor/Skitter, which counterbalances that. Me being a suspicious person, might wonder why a Leet wormhole drops Skitter into a zombie game... But, I'm likely wrong.

 

[Norgarth]

plus Zephron (a DWU character referenced in my stories as well as Taylor Varga) who has the powers of canon Protectorate cape Assault and goes as Pulse,

Click to shrink...

Didn't Zephron/Pulse have Battery's powers? IIRC, Assault was a natural trigger, Battery was the Cauldron cape.

Bob turned his head to spit out some dust onto the dirt. "We've got...maybe seven days?"

Click to shrink...

title drop

seeing several familiar characters from the game Jen, Rekt, Hugh (though the description sounds more like Joel?).

Left him in the middle of the wilderness with nothing but his underwear, a jar of water, and a can of chili."

Click to shrink...

For those who don't play, this is you when you start the game,

I've heard the older version of the game had giant wasps that you'd encounter occasionally (now replaced by zombie vultures) those would be fun for Skitter.

 

[Derek M]

I've heard the older version of the game had giant wasps that you'd encounter occasionally (now replaced by zombie vultures) those would be fun for Skitter.

Click to shrink...

I didn't start playing the game until Alpha 18, and that was right before Alpha 19 dropped. (For anybody who isn't familiar with the game, it has been in open Alpha state for more than 5 years, now. Such an extended period is, naturally, highly unusual in the gaming industry, though I would argue it just shows that the play is enjoyable enough even unfinished to have a regular following.) This little vignette was inspired by the dropping of Alpha 20, with the new worldgen making the map seem much more like a real place rather than something that was obviously generated at random.

In addition to 7 Days to Die, I've also been playing some Fallout 4 and RimWorld...and I have to say that a game mixing the best features of those three would probably be my ultimate gaming experience...

 

[Lord Sia]

My one complaint is that you seemed to really undersell Skitter's localised omniscience when dealing with her first zombies. The excuse about the corpses being unmoving and not attracting insects doesn't really hold up...

... But other than my contractually obligated nitpick, a good story so far, and I'm looking forward to seeing more!

 

[Ace Dreamer]

My one complaint is that you seemed to really undersell Skitter's localised omniscience when dealing with her first zombies. The excuse about the corpses being unmoving and not attracting insects doesn't really hold up...
...
But other than my contractually obligated nitpick, a good story so far, and I'm looking forward to seeing more!

Click to shrink...

This could easily be because while her biology is compatible with the local reality, it might take a little time for her powers to get used to things? An element of shock might not be unreasonable, either.

I'd agree this looks as though it's a fun and interesting story.

 

[Derek M]

Skitter pulled her costume back on after her morning ablutions, thankful that she'd cleaned and sterilized it before bed the night before. She had consciously decided to ignore the origins and identities of the various bits and stains on the silk, aware that she had been essentially wading through human corpses for much of the previous day. The armor built into the costume had kept her alive and she definitely wanted to keep wearing it. She also kept her mask on. While she had wondered if that was excessively paranoid, given that she was in an entirely different dimension that didn't have capes, it had occurred to her that if and when the Family showed up, they might very well offer an evacuation to the locals to wherever they wanted to go. It would be awkward to unmask to a local, only to have that local end up moving to Brockton Bay. She wouldn't put it past the perversity of whatever entities controlled the multiverse to pull that kind of crap on her.

Jen and her team were waiting for her at the motor pool. She joined Jen and another guy, introduced to her as Damian, in the lead vehicle. The four-wheel-drive pickup was branded with a Saturn logo that was completely unfamiliar to her. Briefly, she wondered if that was because it didn't exist on her world or if it was simply uncommon enough that she had never seen one. The truck had had some kind of corporate logo crudely covered over with paint on the doors. The remains of plaster and drywall dust on the interior suggested the truck's use before the zombie apocalypse.

Damian took the wheel while Jen literally rode shotgun, a pump-action 12 gauge in her hands. Skitter was in the back, taking up some of the space that would normally be used for salvage. Another two vehicles followed behind with the rest of the salvage team.

Jen turned to look at her. "Do you need us to do anything special while you search for bees?"

Taylor thought about it, then shook her head. "Just travel at normal local speeds. If I sense any useful hives, I'll mention it and we can stop on the way back to collect queens. I assume we don't want to be carrying live bees around with us while we're looting the hospital?"

The slightly older woman looked a little non-plussed for a brief moment. "Yeah, I think I'll pass on that experience. We're going to have to go deep into the hospital complex to find anything good."

"Emergency, pharmacy, and the ICU have been pretty well cleaned out," agreed Damian as he navigated the truck around a wrecked motorcycle. "Radiology and maternity are probably the best bets."

Skitter's eyes widened behind her mask. "We're not going to have to deal with...baby zombies, are we?"

Jen frowned and shook her head. "No, the virus can't turn anybody who hasn't gone through puberty. They just die." She looked closely at the costumed girl in the back. "Has anybody explained how the virus works?"

Taylor shook her head. "I only know that honey somehow slows down the infection."

"Yeah, it has antibiotic properties for the bacteria that carry the infection," agreed Jen.

Winslow hadn't had the best biology education but Taylor knew enough to know that sounded wrong. In a confused tone, she said, "I thought you said it was a virus?"

Jen nodded. "The zombie plague is an engineered bioweapon. The spreading mechanism is a heavily modified version of a strain of streptococcus bacterium. The bacterium is seeded with a viral load that infects and alters the victim's cells. Honey or other types of antibiotics can slow the spread of the bacteria. There's a threshold of infection of the viral load that needs to be reached before the victim begins to transform. That includes changes to the brain that only take if somebody has gone through puberty as I said before."

"Where did the bioweapon come from?" asked Taylor.

Jen shrugged. "Who knows? Maybe a bio lab in Russia or China? Maybe some weapons research facility in the U.S.? Honestly, nobody knew for sure. There was a lot about the plague that nobody figured out before things fell to pieces. It's pretty obvious, though, that the intent was to both kill people and turn their corpses into a combination weapon and infection vector. In some cases, the zombies develop features like fangs or the ability to hurl exploding tumors."

Thinking back to her arrival, Taylor said, "I had a cop spit acid at me when I got here."

"Yeah, it sounds like you ran into a spitter," agreed the other woman. "They grow an extra organ that concentrates the increased acidity from the rest of the corpse into globs that they can expel through their mouth."

"Increased acidity?"

Jen nodded. "Don't you think it's odd that the zombies aren't all getting devoured by insects, microorganisms, and wild animals? Somehow, through a reaction we don't really understand, zombie flesh turns acidic and toxic."

That actually explained some of why the walking corpses weren't covered with insects. It also explained why she had to order her insects to bite them, even for species that were normally necrophages.

"Yeah, zombie flesh is not something you want to eat," commented Damian.

Slightly disgusted, Skitter asked, "People have tried to eat zombies?"

"Not human zombies, but I've heard some starving folks tried to eat zombified dogs," explained the driver.

"And before you ask," added Jen, seeing the look on her face, "some animals can get the zombie virus. Typically predators that attacked zombies or ate zombie flesh because they were starving. We've seen dogs and vultures that have been infected. Some folks have claimed to see zombie bears, too. The virus can animate them but so far it doesn't seem to be able to mutate them the way it does humans."

"Pedro told me once that he knew a hermit that used to boil the zombified dogmeat for a whole day and it was safe to eat." He made a face. "Can't say it sounds appetizing, though."

Skitter was distracted from considering this information dump as the truck entered the range of a wild beehive. "I've got a hive. It's about a hundred yards that way," she added, pointing. "We should stop here on the way back."

There was a brief silence. Then Damian asked, "How can you tell?"

Taylor considered how to answer, then simply said, "It's a particular skill I have. Don't worry. The hive will be there." Changing the subject, she asked Jen, "So, do you have medical training?"

Jen got a slightly distant look and put her head back against her seat's headrest. "Yeah. I was a nurse at a GP's office in Vegas. Some friends and I were camping when everything went to shit and Navezgane was the first place I could find that had organized survivors." Taylor noticed that she didn't say what happened to her friends and was smart enough to not ask for details.

"I was actually an EMT in Navezgane," added Damian. "What saved my life was that I was stuck home with a broken arm when the hospital was overrun."

"How'd you break your arm?" asked Skitter.

The man blushed. "I fell off a ladder trying to get a squirrel out of my dryer vent."

Jen laughed at that and Taylor couldn't help but smile. It was such a mundane cause for an injury, given the circumstances.

The three vehicles soon pulled into the parking lot of a large building that Taylor would have guessed was a hospital even if it hadn't had a large cross and the name written on the side of the building. There was a rusting ambulance sitting beneath an overhang near the emergency room entrance and Taylor idly wondered if it had belonged to the same company as the one where Damian used to work.

"All right, we're here," commented Jen somewhat unnecessarily. She turned to Skitter. "The rest of the team has done this before, so I'll go over the basics for you. Zombie jerks will wander around for a while after being turned. If they don't hear or see anything that draws their attention, then they sometimes go into a kind of sleep state where they'll sit motionlessly. They can get woken up by nearby sound or light, so we go in quiet and only use flashlights when we need them. We don't want to fight off a horde if we can avoid it." She pulled out a steel club that had spikes and gears welded to it. "Use blunt force to take out single zombies if you can. Gunshots will attract more of them."

Taylor reached down and lifted up the handle of her bat to show it to Jen, who nodded. She also had her pistol, cleaned and restocked with 9mm from the compound's armory.

"Let us take the lead," continued the experienced zombie fighter. "If you see a zombie behaving strangely, let us know if you can and let us handle it."

"Strangely how?" asked Skitter, wanting to make sure she understood.

"Crawling on all fours, strangely colored or glowing skin, or looks visibly inhuman in some way," explained Damian. "If you see a female zombie that looks like she has a split jaw covered in fangs, make absolutely sure that she doesn't see you. Those are screamers and they'll bring the whole horde down on our head."

Taylor tilted her head, considering that. "Only women turn into screamers?" That seemed a little sexist in a weird way.

"Different kinds of zombies seem to require different qualities of infected. I don't know what triggers the screamer mutation. They did figure out that the spitter type you ran into only develops in people who are diabetic or pre-diabetic...for some reason." Jen paused. "Anyway, that's not really important right now. We can talk some more about it after we're all back safe at home. Keep an eye open for zombies, and also keep an eye out for where food, drugs, or other useful things might be stashed. Locked cabinets and closets, suitcases, food carts...hell, we've found a lot of stuff stashed in drop ceilings or hidden in vents. People do strange shit when they're trying to survive the walking dead."

The three of them joined four others from the other two trucks and the group made their way to the emergency room entrance. The inside looked as if there had been a riot, with smashed furniture littering the room. One of the plexiglass windows over the admission desk had been physically ripped out of the wall by something much stronger than a person. There were dark brown smears on the walls and floors in far too many places. Most of the fluorescent lights were still on, though there were a handful that were smashed or flickering. Overall, it looked like the set of a zombie film or disaster movie...which was appropriate, she thought on consideration.

Jen led the group of them out of the emergency room and down a hallway through a pair of smashed swinging doors. They passed a bank of elevators and a stairwell entrance that had a big red "X" painted on it with spray paint. They then came to another stairwell that was similar except it hadn't been spray painted. Jen pushed the door open while one of the other team members flashed a light inside, being sure to illuminate all of the corners and ducking his head inside quickly to check that nothing was lurking out of sight. Taylor noticed that everybody had some type of melee weapon -- shovels, bats, and even what looked like a combat knife duct-taped to the end of a pool cue.

They left the stairwell on the third floor, and Taylor could tell that everybody on the crew immediately got tenser. Presumably, the lower floor had been cleared previously by either this team or other scavengers but the upper floors were still dangerous. In fact, Jen stepped into the hall and made a hand sign for the rest to wait. She then pointed at one of the team, a twenty-something black kid who hadn't given his name during the brief intro. Taylor realized that the contraption strapped to his back was actually a compound hunting bow and covered quiver when he pulled it off and began to nock an arrow. He stepped into the hall with Jen and then fired four arrows, three in one direction and one in the other. Jen then motioned the rest to leave the stairwell.

When Taylor was in the hall, her eyes widened slightly when she saw where the arrows had gone. Two zombies in medical scrubs, a man and a woman, were leaning against the wall with arrows in their skulls. Next to them, an elderly man in a hospital gown had an arrow through the top of his skull. Turning to look in the other direction, her jaw dropped open when she saw what looked like a large Doberman pincher. Half of its face was missing from what looked like an old wound, bone showing. There was an arrow buried up to the fletching in its chest. That told her three things. The first was that this kid was a hell of a shot with a bow. The second was that the dead dog zombie showed that you didn't need to hit these zombies in the skull, necessarily. She made a mental note to ask somebody how the hell a dog made it up to the third floor of the hospital, as well as get some clarity on what was a disabling shot on these things. The third thing was that there were probably a shitload of zombies left in the hospital if they had to kill four of them right out of the stairwell.

The first stop for the salvage group was a set of four maternity recovery rooms. The team quickly checked the rooms, including closets and bathrooms, and rapidly dispatched the one zombie, a middle-aged man in a bowling shirt, that had been hiding under one of the beds. The group, Taylor included, then quickly searched through the rooms. There wasn't much, other than a bottle of painkillers and a granola bar left in a purse sitting by one of the beds. The next stop proved far more lucrative, as a quick lockpick let them into a supply closet that had a locked medicine cabinet. This lock took Jen the better part of a minute to pick, but the inside was what looked to be a fairly sizable collection of drugs in vials and bottles, some of which clearly had the kind of warning labels they put on opiates. The team quickly started grabbing both the drugs and the other medical supplies in the closet -- needles, pads, cleaning supplies, and anything else that seemed useful. Taylor helped by keeping a lookout in the hallway and ended up carrying a bag of supplies, having no idea what most of the contents were. A staff lounge led to three more zombies dispatched via arrow, plus a mix of packaged food and drinks. Taylor noted that the refrigerator and freezer were still running. If that was common, then there were probably a lot of food supplies still salvageable through the county. There was also a case of Diet Coke in one of the cabinets that they pulled out and set in the hallway. Somebody would grab it on the way out unless there was more important salvage or they had to evacuate quickly.

The neonatal ICU was another high-priority target, and it was at the nursing station outside that Taylor got introduced to yet another zombie mutation. She was searching through the drawers of the station when there was an eerie shriek and the sound of something breaking as a body fell out of the drop ceiling and landed on all fours in the middle of the floor. She froze for a moment as she got a good look at the thing. It appeared to have fangs jutting out of its cheeks, almost like insect mandibles, and it appeared to be glaring at her. One of the team tried smashing at it with a shovel, but it leaped away and hung off of one of the walls like freaking Spider-Man. Then it jumped straight at her, causing her to drop to the ground. She felt claws rake the armor on the back of her costume.

Rolling to her feet, Taylor raised her bat to the ready position. The thing was clinging to another wall and as she waited for it to move, an arrow pinned one of its arms in place, piercing the drywall. It shrieked again, somehow sounding like it was in an echo chamber, and began tearing its arm away to free itself. Jen stepped in with her makeshift steel club and smashed it in the head once, then twice, and finally a third time. At that point, its skull was severely fractured and it finally stopped moving, hanging from the arrow like some kind of bizarre Halloween-themed puppet.

"What the hell was that?" asked Taylor, momentarily stunned by the unexpected assault.

"Spider zombie," said Jen, flicking some bits of flesh off of her club with a quick jerk. "Fuckers can jump like crazy and they make a lot of noise. This one probably woke up some of the sleepers nearby, so keep an eye and an ear out."

"I thought you said the loud ones were called screamers?" she said as the adrenaline began leaving her system.

Jen smirked. "The loud ones are called screamers. This one wasn't loud. A screamer would have woken the whole damned hospital up."

Thankfully, the rest of the salvage run didn't offer up any more sudden surprises, though she had to use her bat a few times. The zombies that were just animated corpses lacking mutations (and she couldn't believe she was thinking of it that way) weren't that dangerous once you knew what to expect...and as long as you weren't facing massive numbers of them alone. Taking them out certainly seemed to be fairly mundane to the rest of the team, who did so with a quiet efficiency and without comment. They managed to fill most of the three vehicles with supplies, including three industrial-sized packs of toilet paper and the retrieved case of soda. There were enough drugs and medical supplies that Jen appeared satisfied, even after looting only part of a single floor. Taylor had lost count of the number of zombies killed -- which was slightly depressing when she stopped to consider it.

The beehive was, of course, still where she had sensed it. The salvage crew definitely gave her some strange looks as the bees just left the hive and migrated to the back of their truck to rest for the ride back to the compound. The queen actually settled down on Taylor's shoulder and hid in her hair, which made a couple of the others grimace. One actually shuddered. Mentally, Taylor just shrugged. She was used to that kind of reaction. The team seemed to shake out of it when she suggested they harvest the honey that was left behind, however. Being able to quickly move past weird shit seemed like a necessity in this world, and the honey was soon stowed safely in plastic containers.

Back at the compound, Rekt actually smiled as the bees moved into the assembled hive and began creating a honeycomb. Some of the others looked more disturbed by his expression than they were by her mentally controlling bees. Taylor doubted the disagreeable man smiled often and probably did so for different reasons than other folks. Once she was sure the insects were settled in, she went off to clean up and get something to eat. The run had taken the whole morning into the afternoon and she was quite hungry.

Jen and the rest of the team beat her to the dining hall and they waved her over to sit with them. "You did good on your first salvage run, Skitter."

"Thanks," she said with a slight smile. "I'm definitely glad I wasn't there alone."

"Ha!" exclaimed Damian. "Scavvers who try to handle a building that big alone don't live too long. There are way too many places for zombies to hide and you can get swarmed pretty quick."

"Some of the buildings are pretty dangerous, too," added a slightly older Asian man who had ridden in another vehicle with the archer. "There was a lot of fighting at the end, and not just against the zombies. Also, not every building was in good condition to start with..."

Skitter nodded. "When I first got here, I fell through a staircase and into the basement floor of an apartment building. Hugh rescued me from the horde that got stirred up."

"She also said she ran into a spitter on her first day in Navezgane," added Jen, "so she got a good introduction to this place and its perils."

"I hate those spitter bastards," commented the archer after swallowing a bit of roll he was chewing. "Zombies shouldn't have range."

Jen laughed, then looked to Taylor and said, "Marvin's just jealous he's got competition." Taylor filed away the guy's name for future reference.

Taylor found the camaraderie in the group surprisingly relaxing and enjoyable. It was definitely more pleasant than the way the Undersiders acted around each other. Part of that was probably due to Sarah's need to be the smartest one in the room but she couldn't help but wonder how much of it was the powers themselves. The purple lizard, Ianthe, had told them that powers tended to warp the personalities of capes to increase conflict. Maybe she should talk to the Family when they showed up? It was a little disturbing to think that her power might be warping her behaviors and opinions. Her father had seemed to think her behavior at school with Hess had been taking things too far, at least.

She was explicitly continuing to assume that the Family would show up. Even before the apocalypse, this world lacked tinkers, wizards, or anyone else who might be able to open a way back home. As the group around her laughed at another mild bit of teasing directed at Jen, she wondered what was going on back with the Undersiders and hoped that they were all OK...especially her father.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Sarah was concerned. They finally made it back to the DWU compound but Danny was still unconscious in the back seat. Whatever Leet's old device had done had clearly hit him pretty hard.

"Do you know where he kept the phone that the Family gave him?" asked Randall, concern etched into his face.

She nodded. "It's in his safe in his office." She reached for the door handle as the van stopped.

"You know the combina...right, of course you do." Randall's question stopped halfway at his girlfriend's look of annoyance.

"Just stay with him and keep him comfortable," she ordered, then began to sprint for the man's office. Luckily, it was quite late in the evening and there were few of the regular staff left on site to get in the way. It actually took her two tries to open the safe. Danny was apparently being paranoid about his combination choice and had picked the less likely one. Understandable, but fairly useless against her power. Her boss would have to invest a lot more money and time to keep her out if he really wanted to do so.

The phone itself looked like a typical top-of-the-line smartphone, although the FamTech and DracoTech logos were unique in her experience. Pressing the power button turned it on immediately and there was actually an icon on the front page for contacting the Family in an emergency.

"Hello," said a very reptilian voice that Sarah recognized as the black lizard, Metis.

"This is Tattletale. We've had a bit of a problem..." She explained what had happened in detail, including the fact that Danny was unconscious for unknown reasons and admitting that she didn't actually know what had happened to Skitter though she suspected that she had fallen through a portal. Metis seemed to agree that a portal was the most likely scenario and actually seemed suspiciously familiar with Leet's work.

"We'll have a pair of troubleshooters with you in the next ten minutes or so," said Metis. "Just wait for them to arrive and we'll work from there." The phone then disconnected rather abruptly.

Sarah slumped into Danny's chair. She massaged her forehead with her hands, trying to relieve the slight headache that came from interacting with the reptiles. Metis, in particular, seemed to give her power fits. Maybe it was because the alien lizard seemed to have abilities close to her own? She quickly cut off that train of inquiry to avoid the risk of accidentally giving herself a migraine. It was better to focus on what had happened back at the vault. Why had that device knocked Danny unconscious?

The device malfunctioned and opened a portal in a way that was not supported by its original design...the portal opened someplace that differed substantially in some way that disrupted everyone nearby. Unclear exactly what aspect caused the disruption. It disrupted Coil's power, forcing him to drop the alternate timeline where they didn't go into the vault.

So...something about the other side of the portal was incompatible with their reality...somehow? It was hard to assess the impact of that without knowing the identity of the incompatible factor. What did that mean for Skitter if she was transported somewhere else? Sarah couldn't say she liked the girl, but she didn't wish her ill, and Danny's mental well-being was heavily dependent on the well-being of his daughter. She also thought the girl would get easier to handle when she matured a bit. She was still in high school, after all. Her powers were also very powerful and useful for the Undersiders as a team.

Her musing was interrupted by a flash of light, after which two humans were standing in the office. Both appeared to be dressed in a fairly tight uniform with the golden Family logo on the front.

"Hi, there!" said the woman. "I'm Bobbi Cade, and this is Robert Esposito. We're here from the Family to help with your problem?"

Based on their body language and the rings on their fingers, Bobbi and Robert are married. They don't like being referred to as Bobbi and Bobby, and she kept her maiden name because... Not important right now! They're wearing uniforms provided by the Family that are much, much stronger than they appear and probably have additional functions built-in. They know who I am and they're waiting for me to ask why the reptiles didn't come in person. The Family is busy with something else. These two have been preparing for this mission for some time, hours if not days...because the Family wormhole drive lets them arrive just in time to avoid paradox.

"What has the Family so preoccupied that they sent someone else to help?" she asked, unable to stop herself from being slightly rude to the couple, despite their being there to help.

"They have a multidimensional crisis that they're dealing with right now," replied Robert. "We'll call them in if we need their help. First, though...we should heal your boss."

The scope of Family activity is vast. Likely consequences...unable to factor out of context scenarios sufficiently to predict.

Sarah frowned slightly at what her power wasn't telling her, then said, "Right, let me take you to Danny." Getting him healed was certainly the first priority.

Randall and Zephron were both still sitting with Danny, though they had moved him to a cot in one of the nearby buildings. Rachel had left with her dogs, not surprisingly. Sarah told the two Undersiders who the strangers were so they wouldn't prevent them from helping Danny. Bobbi took out a small lozenge-shaped item and pressed it to Danny's arm until it squeaked.

"What happened to the supply of healing one-shots that the Family left with you?" asked Robert curiously.

"The PRT confiscated them," said Sarah with an annoyed frown. "They claimed that they were untested biotech."

Robert clearly wasn't happy with that answer. "All right, we'll deal with that nonsense after we get your friend back."

At that moment, Danny opened his eyes and sat up quickly. He looked around, took in the two strangers in strange costumes, then focused on Sarah and asked, "Where's Taylor?"

Sarah paused, unsure how to explain without triggering the man, when Robert interjected with, "Currently missing thanks to a broken wormhole device, which is why the Family sent the two of us to bring her back."

Danny assessed the Hispanic-looking man in front of him. "Who are you?"

"I'm Robert Esposito, Sineya Council Mage, and this is my wife, Bobbi Cade, of the Family Starship Design Group. She provides the technical expertise while I provide the mystical. Between the two of us, we should be able to locate where in the multiverse your daughter is located," explained the man.

"We need to go to the site where the portal opened, first," interjected Bobbi before Danny could reply.

Danny considered that then began to stand up and said, "All right, let's go back to Leet's vault, then."

"Should you be getting up, boss?" asked Zephron. "You've been unconscious for almost thirty minutes."

"If he feels all right, then he should be fine," said Bobbi. "The healing one-shot would have cleared up any problems, including a concussion or other brain damage."

Danny nodded at that. "I feel fine and we need to find Taylor."

Sarah had a sneaking suspicion that this was going to be a long night and she knew Danny wasn't going to calm down until he knew his daughter was safe.

 

[Derek M]

FYI, the reference to "zombie jerks" is a small shout-out to Saven's World, one of several YouTube channels that cover the evolution of the video game Seven Days to Die. YouTube is by far the best place to go if you're curious about the game itself.

 

[Shiv Ers]

Thanks for the continuing chapters. Looking forward to more of this and other stories.

 

[Ace Dreamer]

the portal opened someplace that differed substantially in some way that disrupted everyone nearby

Click to shrink...

The details of what that difference is will be fun to find out...

 

[Kiche]

Time seems to flow faster there... I could see that playing havoc with Danny's duplicity shard

 

[Derek M]

In the two days following the hospital scavenging run, Taylor better familiarized herself with the White River settlement both in person and with the help of her insect swarm. Of course, she kept part of her swarm working on improving the soil for farming, much to Rekt's delight (such as it was). She also got their new beehive working on breeding a couple of new queens to create new hives. They had several artificial hive boxes, after all. Scorpions and some of the larger spiders helped keep pests out of the crop stores and helped feed the rest of the swarm in doing so. From her interactions so far, the insect mistress had to grudgingly acknowledge that the unpleasant man knew a lot about farming and wasn't afraid to get his hands dirty.

Based on her explorations of the rest of it, the settlement was a combination of a refugee camp, a military camp, and a light industrial production facility. Keeping the survivors alive meant having the ability to feed, clothe, house, and defend everybody. Living quarters were slightly cramped but relatively comfortable. Space wasn't really an issue and was assigned by need and, to a lesser degree, rank. Supporting the necessary industry was a little more challenging. The rapid decline in the local population during the zombie outbreak meant there was plenty of salvage, but collecting it was inherently risky and it was better to maintain high-quality tools and weapons than to try and create them from scratch or hope for a lucky find. Hence, there were forges for smelting down salvage. There were workbenches of various types for maintaining guns, vehicles, tools, electronics, and other critical bits of infrastructure. There were chemical stations for creating explosives, rending animal parts into glue, and even converting oil shale (which was apparently common around here) into various useful petrochemicals. Craftsmen were also constantly creating ammunition, ranging from steel-tipped arrows to bullets in various calibers to pipe bombs and Molotov cocktails. Apparently, zombie hordes could burn through a lot of ammunition relatively quickly when they appeared. Some of these facilities weren't accessible by her in person, but she could sense most of it through the omnipresent insects. Her experiences in Brockton Bay made her quite familiar with how things like gasoline and gun oil smelled to her bugs.

Another thing her insects revealed to her is that she was under constant observation. Anywhere she went, there was somebody who made sure they kept her in sight and monitored her activities. By her third day in the camp, she tracked down Jen and asked her about it, wondering if they thought she was particularly untrustworthy...possibly because of her unusual origins?

"It's nothing particular to you, Skitter," said the former nurse at her question. "Every newcomer to the camp is watched for several reasons for at least a month."

Taylor blinked at that. "Do you have that many problems with other survivor groups trying to spy or steal stuff?"

"Not so much anymore, especially with the trading network we have now, although it was a serious problem in the beginning." White River maintained several heavily fortified zones in different parts of the county where anybody could go in and trade their salvage or surplus items for other necessaries. The trading outposts were considered neutral ground by anybody with any sense. Trade was via barter, although there were two generic currencies still accepted. Pre-war money could be traded, though it generally was worth much less than before the apocalypse. The other currency was a form of brass casino chip issued by Duke's casino. Apart from being able to trade them at the casino for liquor, tobacco, and other luxuries, the chips themselves were made from ammunition-quality brass and could be melted down for shell casings by independent survivors in a pinch. Of course, they could also be used for gambling in the casino, and entertainment options were somewhat scarcer after the end of the world.

"The real reason we watch new people, Skitter," continued Jen, "is largely for mental health reasons. It's for both their safety and our own." At the younger woman's confused look, she elaborated. "Almost every person in this camp has some form of PTSD, survivor's guilt, or severe depression. When the camp was first set up, one of the leading causes of death was suicide, not zombies or bandits. Apart from that, do you have any idea how medicated the pre-war population was? What do you think happens when people run out of anti-psychotic drugs, anti-depressants, or even ADHD meds? We have to prioritize scavenging and psychiatric meds are low on the list unless they have other uses. A psychotic break by the wrong person at the wrong time could be devastating for the camp, especially if they have access to the armory."

After that conversation, Taylor had paid a little more attention to the people around her. There were plenty of thousand-yard stares and signs of extreme stress. She hadn't really noticed it at first, as the folks in charge and those that went out to scavenge places like the hospital tended to be the most mentally stable people who had adjusted to their current circumstances. Realistically, she also had to admit that her own home city was a little too much like an active war zone for comfort. She was probably far too used to dealing with over-stressed and anxious people in general and so hadn't noticed what was blatantly obvious in retrospect.

One other thing stood out to her and it was something she was used to seeing back home with the DWU. These people were just trying to survive. They weren't making plans to rebuild anything. There didn't even seem to be any hope that they *could* rebuild society. She had to admit that their problems seemed insurmountable. According to the Colonel, the whole area around Navezgane was a highly irradiated wasteland. Even the parts that weren't dangerous due to radiation were hazardous because of the general level of destruction and the hordes of undead. Zombies apparently weren't bothered by radiation, which is why they occasionally got swarms coming out of the wastes like the one Bob had reported the other day. That meant that clearing the county of zombies and keeping it cleared was a Sisyphean task.

If she found a way home (and she hadn't given up hope, yet), could she offer to take anyone with her? Brockton Bay wasn't exactly a paradise, but it was far better than this little slice of post-apocalyptic Arizona. It was also likely that the PRT would step in to take care of any refugees, as cross-dimensional shenanigans were typically part of their remit. In fact, she and anyone else that came along would undoubtedly be in quarantine for quite a while until they were sure they weren't bringing the zombie plague with them. Taylor shuddered at the idea of the plague spreading through Brockton Bay and the rest of the world. Would zombie capes still have access to their powers? That...was a question better left permanently unanswered, in her opinion.

The Colonel asked to see her after lunch on her fourth day.

"We're going to have a face-to-face meeting with the Duke and his men tomorrow morning. Based on what my people have told me, I think I'd like to have you back me up with your swarm. Is that something you're willing to do?" he asked. Taylor had noticed that despite the man's military background, he rarely gave orders in the strictest sense. His leadership style was much more laid back, which probably helped a lot given the mental state of most of the survivors. From what she had heard in passing, it sounded like the Duke handled the same problem through strict and somewhat harsh discipline. Both styles worked, but she considered herself lucky that she had ended up with White River by chance.

"Of course. You and your people have been nothing but helpful," she agreed. "What are you expecting from this meeting, though? Is he likely to betray you?" It seemed pretty short-sighted to try and stab somebody in the back when they were coming to warn you of an external threat.

Whitcombe shook his head. "I don't think that will be his intent. The Duke is, however, slightly paranoid and overly proud. We've had issues in the past that have kept things tense between the two factions. He'll have enough of his people with him to cause problems if he thinks he's being insulted...or even if he sees an unexpected opportunity. The man can be damned hard to predict, at times."

Skitter got a slightly nasty grin. "Well, I think I can be pretty unpredictable, too. If he does try something, I think I can make him regret it."

The older man regarded her assessingly. "Don't go overboard. We're going to have to live in the same county with these people after this latest horde is dealt with. Starting a war isn't in anybody's best interest."

She thought back to the gang politics that were par for the course back home. "I understand politics. I'm also not going to start anything." They both knew what the logical next sentence would be so it remained unspoken. Regardless, the Colonel seemed satisfied and spent the next half-hour going over the details of the planned meeting with her.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Bobbi walked back and forth through Leet's old vault, taking readings with her engineering tricorder. The decay particles clearly indicated a wormhole had opened, but the readings were strange. This soon after closing, there should have been signs of the destination dimension still floating around -- air molecules, or at least loose particles, with variant dimensional signatures. Those would disperse or decay fairly rapidly, but a closed environment like the vault should preserve signs for some time. The tricorder wasn't picking them up. Instead, it was reading chronitons and they were behaving weirdly. She moved over and began scanning Leet's device, comparing it to the known schematics of the wormhole generators used by the Family.

"Anything?" prompted her husband, Robert.

She frowned. "The safety interlocks for the targeting circuitry are shorted." She paused. "It was a little weird even before it shorted out, though. It almost looks like deliberate sabotage."

He nodded. "That fits with the details in the briefing." Leet's power was slightly notorious for trying to kill him in various realities, though the Family seemed to be able to get around that in their home universe. "Do you want me to try a trace?"

"Give me a second." She focused on the singularity mechanism. That seemed to be working fine, albeit without an EDM shield to block the prevalent gamma radiation. There also weren't any residual power readings. A still-charged capacitor might do strange things when exposed to raw magic. "OK, go ahead and do the ritual. Be aware that I'm getting a weird chroniton flux reading from the site of the opening."

Robert pulled out a flask and began pouring out a circle of sand, making sure to include both the site of the wormhole mouth as described by Tattletale and the device itself. Far more sand came out of the flask than you would expect based on its external size, but then wizards were using expanded space charms on things long before the Family first arrived in Brockton Bay. Once the circle was unbroken, he swapped the flask for some colored wax sticks (they were NOT crayons, despite what his wife implied) and began scribing runes. The runes were a combination of different languages -- consistency didn't matter that much for this purpose. He made sure the runes related to time were done in Egyptian hieroglyphics, as it allowed for more complexity, which paradoxically made the ritual safer.

Once the stage was set for the ritual, he sat inside the circle and began to chant in Sumerian. The language had kind of a reputation for being associated with dark rituals, but he always thought that was overblown. Really, it just made it easier to manipulate certain types of energy, including soul energy. In his mind, it was like saying superconductors were evil because they could channel more current with which to electrocute you if you grabbed hold. With this ritual, he was trying to trace a soul through a transdimensional shift. It was easier if the soul was familiar. Luckily for the locals, the Family had really, really good records about Taylor Hebert's soul. Robert presumed it was because a version of the girl was part of the original Fools crew.

Bobbi watched her husband practice magic with an experienced eye. If you had asked her when she first came to Sineya whether she thought magic would ever become mundane, she would have replied in the negative. That, however, was before she met and married a wizard. She knew that magic could be dangerous, but she also knew that antimatter, singularities, and hyperspace could be equally as dangerous. The couple were both professionals in their own areas, both quite well acquainted with and able to mitigate the inherent risks of their respective jobs. She grew slightly concerned when the cadence of his chanting appeared to change, speeding up and slowing down in unusual ways. Her eyes darted to the candle he had lit. It seemed to flicker in tempo with his speech. It was very strange to watch, but not the strangest thing she had seen.

In his mind, Robert watched as Skitter was dumped into the middle of a zombie apocalypse. He got the sense that she was currently in a safe place, but she seemed to be moving on fast forward in the visions he received. He broke his trance and informed his wife of the results.

"It sounds like there's a severe variance in the rate of time passing in the target dimension," said Bobbi distractedly. She was clearly working through the ramifications. "It's going to be hard to target a specific time, though it sounds like Skitter got lucky and fell in with somebody who can help her."

"We need to go and grab a Biosculpter, too," commented her husband. "We want to make sure we don't bring a zombie plague back with us." That would cause a lot of people to complain and they would likely never hear the end of it.

"What kind of zombies were they?" she asked.

He considered what he had seen. "More Night of the Living Dead rather than 28 Days Later. I wouldn't say I got a full report, though, so take that with a grain of salt. It could also be a Resident Evil situation." In other words, slow zombies, but the safest bet was to expect utterly random dangerous bullshit. Given what they knew of how the multiverse worked, using analogies to works of fiction was often surprisingly useful, although occasionally misleading.

Robert vanished the remains of the ritual with a bit of magic and the two of them went out to face Danny and the Undersiders. The former had an understandably worried look and was pacing nervously, though none of them looked happy. "The good news is that we've verified that your daughter is alive and in a safe place. We also know what dimension she's in," explained Bobbi to the waiting group.

"What's the bad news?" asked Tattletale, obviously expecting some but not having enough information to intuit what it was.

"Not bad," equivocated Robert, "so much as slightly complicated. The rate of time seems to pass in that universe at a variable rate compared to this one, although it generally seems to pass more quickly from what we've seen so far. That means we can't just pop in and grab her the moment she arrived with any degree of certainty. She seems to have managed fine so far, though. The other complexity is that she's in a zombie apocalypse world. We'll need to take some precautions to make sure we don't bring anything nasty back with us. I don't think you folks want to deal with zombie capes."

Based on the look on Tattletale's face, it was pretty clear the idea horrified her. Danny, however, seemed to relax slightly. "Just bring her home safely, please," he asked the couple.

"Of course," agreed Bobbi. "We just need to go pick up a Biosculpter to handle the walking dead. With any luck, they may even be able to fix that world's zombie problem entirely. They're pretty capable at that sort of thing."

"We should get going," added Robert. With a mutual nod, Bobbi triggered their beam out and the two vanished in a flash of light.

The Undersiders stood around for a few moments, each of them pondering what the pair had revealed. Uber was the first one to speak. "Is it wrong that I'm a little jealous that she got to see an actual zombie apocalypse?"

Tattletale stepped toward her boyfriend and smacked him fairly hard on the back of his head.

"Thank you," said Danny with an eye roll.

 

[Derek M]

This one is fairly short. It's more of a transition chapter to get to the more interesting parts toward the end of the story. As I said in the introduction, this is more of a side story and isn't intended to mimic the length of Ship of Fools or Demons and Angels.

 

[blankslate]

The Undersiders stood around for a few moments, each of them pondering what the pair had revealed. Uber was the first one to speak. "Is it wrong that I'm a little jealous that she got to see an actual zombie apocalypse?"

Tattletale stepped toward her boyfriend and smacked him fairly hard on the back of his head.

"Thank you," said Danny with an eye roll.

Click to shrink...

Uber totally deserved that.

Zombie apoc fiction is interesting and fascinating in the same way that chain-reacting plutonium is: as long as it's happening way the f* away and preferably on another planet, awesome booms.

Reality would be so much horrible and mind breaking... I know some people who've made comments in my hearing about how awesome living in a zpoc would be, but...

Just think about it though: no more internet. Who'd be wasting time trying to keep it up and accessible? Phone networks similarly gone. As mentioned in the above piece, the pharma that so many people depend on for healthy lives is either drying up, completely gone, and/or impossible to replicate without critical materials now literal months away.

Your world has changed to be limited to a five, maybe ten mile radius from where you're standing right now, and the possibility of horrible death starts not outside the walls a hundred yards away, but possibly four feet away where the guy who just completely cracked from the mental strain is sitting next to a machete.

And that's without even getting into the other setting issues 7DtD apparently throws in - namely, a radioactive wasteland more in keeping with the Fallout universe than anything else, so even if you did want to try to get outside of the new "bubble" of your reality you'll die to the radiation.

...having recently finished HBO's Chernobyl I have a much greater appreciation for just how painful that death would be.


Well, all that aside, this is great fiction, and I like the variable time-frame bit. It's something that really does change how you have to react to the situation in fixing it, because you will either have lots more or lots less time to accomplish your needed goals.

 

[PrinceOfDoom]

Well, if one thing... insects are the ultimate bane of zombies.

Realistically, zombies would be devoured down to the bone by all the flies and roaches if they existed or could exist.

So Skitter v zombies? Skitter wins.

 

[Jormuungaand]

As I said in the introduction, this is more of a side story and isn't intended to mimic the length of Ship of Fools or Demons and Angels.

Click to shrink...

Famous last words, fate tempted, etc.

Well, if one thing... insects are the ultimate bane of zombies.

Realistically, zombies would be devoured down to the bone by all the flies and roaches if they existed or could exist.

So Skitter v zombies? Skitter wins.

Click to shrink...

Not in this one. Skitter specifically thought about how the insects were avoiding the zombies.

 

[Ace Dreamer]

This is Skitter-with-a-goatee (i.e. from 'Demons & Angels'), not classic Skitter (from 'Ship of Fools'). I continue to be curious how this difference will affect things...

Of course, I may have missed the clue that would explain that... But, such is life.

 

[Derek M]

This is Skitter-with-a-goatee (i.e. from 'Demons & Angels'), not classic Skitter (from 'Ship of Fools'). I continue to be curious how this difference will affect things...

Of course, I may have missed the clue that would explain that... But, such is life.

Click to shrink...

One of the places where mirror universe logic tends to break is that the vast majority of people are not wholly of one moral or ethical stance. Canon Skitter is not a nice person. You could blame that on circumstances, but a very common characterization of the Heberts, in general, is that they tend to be nice, or at least polite and friendly until you cross a line, at which point they can be terrifyingly ruthless. Remember, it was Skitter who killed Tagg and Alexandria because the big A thought she could gaslight Skitter into compliance through a show of brutality. Arguably, Taylor in Taylor Varga is exactly the same. She just has SO MUCH POWER that she can afford to have the line be pretty far into the realm of deliberate provocation (e.g., being shot in the back of the head by Eidolon is just a nuisance).

So, the primary difference for mirror Skitter is that she was in a better social position and triggered earlier than Sophia in Demons and Angels. She's the explicit leader of the Undersiders, though her father is ultimately in charge. She kind of fucked up in that she let Emma goad her into bullying the daughter of a union member, which is generally bad for business, but she's still not Snidely Whiplash evil in the strictest sense of things.

Another issue is that Brockton Bay in canon Worm is SO screwed up that an alternate version of it is just...different. To make it truly opposite, you would have to turn it into Metropolis, which would mean completely changing groups like the E88. I didn't feel up to writing a fic where Nazis are actually the good guys, as there are just so, so many ways that that can go wrong. Even if I made them explicitly anti-fascist and pro-inclusivity, somebody would take that as me trying to whitewash actual fascism, etc.

So, I guess what I'm saying is a bit of a mea culpa about my attempt at a mirror BB. Most of the characters, outside of murder hobos like the S9, fall on just the other side of heroic or villainous from canon Worm because most of the characters in that story are grey at best. Armsmaster is a really nice guy in Taylor Varga. In canon Worm, he's largely the initiating factor for why Taylor became a villain in the first place. Panacea in TV found her happy place. In canon, she ends up in the Birdcage. I see TV as a mix of fix-fic and crack-fic (slightly), which means that if you read it, you may get the impression that a mirror universe would be a very evil place, but this version of Skitter is a mirror of a mostly canon universe, NOT Taylor Varga.

 

[Derek M]

Robert and Bobbi looked down on the Earth below them, each of them grimacing. "That's a bit of a mess," commented Bobbi. The planet was the same familiar pattern of continents, but there were large swaths that appeared brown and dead...and parts of the continents were literally glowing a sickly green color, although that was only visible on the night side of the planet. Some areas were so radioactive they were ionizing the atmosphere.

Robert said in a surprised tone, "The spell showed she was still alive, but I'm not sure how she survived this mess."

"Can you cast it again to pinpoint her location?" his wife asked.

The Council mage shook his head. "That spell was very much a general detection spell. I have tracking spells that could lead us to Hebert, but we would have to be on the ground. Frankly, I would prefer to have our biosculpter here before we try actually landing."

Bobbi agreed with that whole-heartedly. "Ianthe said she was sending somebody. She can't come herself. They're in the middle of planning the Family response to Ba'al."

"With the time variability in this reality compared to our own...and I really want to do some research to understand why that is happening...it may take a while for whoever it is to get here," said Robert.

His wife began typing on a terminal. "I'm going to send a stealth probe down to where Brockton Bay would be if it existed on this version of Earth." The console gave a quiet beep as the probe was launched. Bobbi entered another command and a real-time feed from the probe began to play on the view screen.

The stealth probes had a variety of uses, but their priority behavior was to stay hidden. That meant that they were aerodynamic enough to settle through a planet's atmosphere without leaving a burning trail or visible turbulence, although doing so meant they took a while to get to where they were going relative to other orbital drops. While they could be teleported into place, most technological means of doing so were fairly easy to detect, even visually, and magical teleportation tended to be even easier to see if the observer had any magical ability. Family teleportation was different, apparently. It had come up during a discussion, once, and Bobbi had been told that it technically wasn't teleportation but hadn't managed to get a more satisfactory explanation of what it was Saurial and her siblings were doing beyond "math."

The images displayed by the probe were grim. At several points, the probe zoomed over craters that were clearly the site of nuclear detonations. These were surrounded by the expected devastation. Further out, though, any signs of human civilization tended to be marred by post-apocalyptic indications -- fires that had clearly burned out of control, buildings left to disrepair, abandoned vehicles, and an absence of normal human activity. The probe began to slow when it reached the site of Brockton Bay. It was clear that the area was pretty rural. Like many alternate Earths, there wasn't a city there. There were a few buildings along a state highway, and Bobbi took manual control of the probe and moved it closer to get a look. That managed to get them their first good look at an actual zombie. This one had been a young woman, and slightly bizarrely seemed to be wearing a sexualized version of a nurse uniform from the 1950s, including a little hat with a red cross that was clipped to her hair. The uniform was torn and covered in what looked to be dried blood, and the dead flesh of the woman took on a slightly greenish cast in the light. She was ambling around in a seemingly random pattern.

The reason for the uniform became clear when Bobbi turned the probe to display the building she was circling. A sign proudly (and erroneously) proclaimed the presence of live girls. The name of the place was "The Boobie Trap," which made Bobbi roll her eyes, though her husband snorted a laugh. She guided the probe in through a broken window, being careful not to get the device caught on the tattered blackout curtains. Inside, among a series of booths and tables, they saw several more zombies -- a man dressed in a business suit, another busty young woman dressed only in a g-string, and a disgustingly fat tourist wearing the rotten remains of a Hawaiin shirt. These weren't moving around, though. They appeared to be dormant, although clearly they had been animated at some point given the physical damage to their bodies and bloodstains. "Who the hell would go to a strip club in the middle of an apocalypse?" asked Bobbi. Her husband just shrugged, which was probably wise.

Other than the club, this little strip of buildings included a gas station and some kind of storage facility for the local public works. There weren't any signs of recent live human habitation or activity, though it was clear that somebody had looted the convenience store at the gas station. The layers of dust indicated that it happened quite a long time ago, though. "I don't think Skitter came through near here," concluded Bobbi.

"We could send out some more probes and set them to scan for Hebert's quantum signature," suggested Robert.

Bobbi frowned. "We could, but the range is going to be fairly low, especially given the radiation and ground clutter. Also, we don't know how long she's been here. If she's been eating local food, it's going to eventually start masking her signature as her body absorbs local nutrients."

"Do we have a better idea?" he asked.

Grudgingly, she shook her head. "Not really. We'll have to wait until the biosculptor shows up and gives us a safe zone to land. Until then, we'll see if we get lucky. We'll try to focus first on areas that are somewhat habitable." She began setting up the desired search parameters as Robert took over the probe that was already deployed and began heading down the nearby highway, looking for other signs of life.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

In one of those somewhat habitable regions, Taylor was looking at the site of their meeting with the Duke. It was a two-story bar called "The Bear Den." She had assumed it was a gay bar, but apparently it was a redneck bar with a gimmick. Anybody who spent some time in a cage with a live bear got a free drink. She didn't really think anyone willing to do that was very bright, but whatever. She looked over at Bob and the Colonel and asked, "What happened to the bears when everything fell apart?"

"They turned," answered the Colonel with a snort. "The animals were locked in cages, and the only thing to eat was the former patrons that had gone zombie. It's kept scavengers out of the building, at least. Nobody wanted to go in just in case they got loose from the cages. That's why we're using it as a meeting place. The Duke will have sent in a couple of guys with assault rifles to make sure it isn't dangerous anymore." He looked around at the surrounding buildings. "Can you sense where his backup men are located?"

Skitter focused her attention on what her swarm was telling her. It was much easier for her to sense living humans than the walking dead. "He's already inside with two other men. They're all armed. I've also got eight people in cars about three blocks to the east, and a pair of men on the top of the fire station down the street. They also all have guns." The smell of propellant and gun oil was a dead giveaway.

"Probably a sniper nest on the fire station," commented Bob. "Think he's planning something?"

The Colonel shook his head. "No. He would have more than just two cars full of backup if he was. The sniper's nest is probably also meant to be overwatch in case anything unexpected shows up, either from us or just local hazards. It's not a bad idea, but it means sending scouts into uncleared buildings which is a little risky." Apart from the danger to the scouts, any real fight inside ran the risk of making it blatantly obvious that the Duke had men stationed inside. As they had no idea about Skitter's abilities, they would be trying to keep the sniper's nest a secret until it was needed.

"Well, no sense waiting out here," said Bob. At that, the three of them got out of their Jeep and went through the front doors of the bar. Inside, it was fairly dark, as half of the internal lighting appeared to be broken. There were large brewing vats along part of the back wall that made it clear that they were also a brewery, which seemed a little out of character for such an establishment. The Duke was sitting at the back bar, flanked by two men who were obvious bodyguards dressed in blue jeans and button-down shirts armed with fancy-looking assault rifles. Skitter thought they were the kind used by the U.S. armed forces, though identifying firearms wasn't really her thing. Alec would probably be able to tell her the model numbers based on his gaming experience, not that she would have asked. The Duke himself was wearing a nicely tailored suit and a cowboy hat. His face was weathered and clean-shaven, with faded pockmark scars on his cheeks. His skin tone and eyes were clearly Native American, and he wore his hair shoulder-length. She could see it was still mostly jet black, though there was plenty of gray mixed in.

As they walked toward the back of the room, the Duke nodded in greeting. "Colonel Whitcombe. I was surprised to get your request for a parley. As far as I know, things have been fairly quiet between our two groups recently."

"Duke, I agree. I didn't ask for this to complain. We're here because Bob here," he nodded toward his companion, "was scouting the area in a gyrocopter and he discovered that there's a massive horde heading down the highway toward our holdings."

"How big is it?" asked the Duke, eyebrow raised.

Bob spoke up. "At least three or four hundred. They're headed down the highway from Phoenix."

"What's worse, Noah thinks that the heavy radiation zone out there has probably made the zombies even more lethal than normal," added the Colonel. Noah Devlin was the senior scientist for the White River settlement. Skitter had only met him in passing, as he seemed to spend most of his time locked in his lab.

The Duke regarded them for a few moments. "So...thank you for the warning. Is that all, or did you have any other suggestions?"

"Well, I don't think we're at the point in our relationship where we could coordinate forces," replied the Colonel with a small smile. "I would appreciate it if your men could hold down the eastern edge of the county. We expect most of the horde to come straight in at our defenses, but things would be easier if we didn't have to worry about that flank."

"That's our territory, so that goes without saying," replied the Duke. "I assume what you're really saying is you want us to keep our heads down and not cause your folks any problems while the horde is in play."

"Isn't that the status quo?" asked Whitcombe, thought from the tone of his voice Taylor could tell it was slightly disingenuous.

The Duke didn't bother answering that. Instead, he said, "I think we're finished here."

The Colonel simply nodded, then turned to leave, followed by Skitter and Bob. After they got back into their own vehicle, he asked Skitter, "Can you tell what they're saying through your swarm?"

Taylor nodded. "Duke is telling one of his subordinates to make sure they set up barriers to channel the horde away from their defenses and toward ours."

The former soldier just nodded with a sigh. "That's about what I expected. Still, it means he probably doesn't plan to stab us in the back, and hordes have a tendency to force through things like that. It will work to an extent, but they'll still be busy fighting off zombies."

She could sense the two spotters on top of the fire station moving down the outside of the building, which explained how they got up there without creating a ruckus. One of the Duke's cars began moving in that direction, presumably to pick them up, while the other was moving to join up with the Duke and his guards. "All of the Duke's men are picking up and withdrawing," she said out loud.

"Do you think that man is ever going to be anything other than difficult?" asked Bob, starting up the Jeep.

Whitcombe sat and thought for a bit. "Did you know he used to be a big activist for Native American rights?" Bob just shook his head. "He used to try to work with the system, up until a big oil company used bribes to get his family lands seized through eminent domain at a fraction of its market value. His own brother was complicit in that. After that, he grew bitter and used his remaining money to buy into and eventually take over the tribal casino here. I think he decided he was going to only worry about himself because that seemed to be what everyone else was doing."

Skitter considered that. "It all seems kind of pointless now, what with the zombies and the end of the world and everything."

The Colonel glanced back to where she was sitting in the back seat. "Perhaps. It isn't always easy to let go of the things that made you who you are today, though. He has mellowed a bit, though, from what some of the locals have said..."

They were quiet most of way back to the settlement. Skitter spent a lot of time thinking about what the Colonel had said.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

The circular vessel of the Engineer appeared through a wormhole close to Earth. The pilot regarded the planet below. The inhabitants of this world had polluted the world with a mixture of radioactive contamination and some type of necrokinetic pathogen. His Guildmaster had commanded him to cleanse the world of those problems, while leaving the surviving idiots alone. He didn't have a very high opinion of a species that would destroy their only habitable world, but he would obey his Guildmaster.

His first step was to teleport two of the motive deceased to an onboard isolation lab. He grabbed a male and a female, just in case the disease manifested differently based on gender. The first thing he verified is that the two samples were no longer sapient, as his Guild now had some very specific rules about handling other sapients. He actually agreed with the new rules, as it was blatantly obvious that carelessness about such things had created a number of unanticipated problems. Intelligent life could usually find a way to make a nuisance of itself if given a chance and proper motivation. Luckily for him, the pathogen appeared to rewrite the subjects' brains in a way that promoted aggression and hunger by overwriting any sense of self. That gave him a lot of options in terms of analysis and experimentation, up to and including vivisection.

His examination of the motive dead humans soon led to several interesting discoveries. The first was that the disease leading to animation actually involved more than one microorganism. The design, and it was clearly a created plague, was actually mildly impressive for the level of technology involved. The second was that the mutagen virus was capable of altering hosts differently, although perhaps not based on gender. The female he had captured had had its jaw converted into distended mandibles and it was capable of producing a screech of up to 90 decibels in volume when it detected nearby prey. Presumably, this could be used to draw other animated dead to attack the prey. At this latter discovery, he sent probes out to survey the population of infected, looking specifically for unique mutations. He soon discovered versions capable of spitting acid, throwing explosive tumors, and jumping long distances with a variety of acrobatic movements. Disappointingly, the mutations appeared to be dependent upon pre-existing host characteristics, rather than being an intelligently allocated ratio based on desired force dispositions. His probes also detected infected canines, which proved that the virus could infect certain other animals, although without the variable mutations inflicted on human hosts. The jumping of species was possibly incidental and unintentional.

Once he was satisfied that he had a comprehensive profile of the plague, he began creating a counter-agent. This would prevent additional animations, but it wouldn't destroy the already transformed deceased humans. To deal with that, he began to spool up the cloning tanks to create a suitable force of xenomorphs. He altered their targeting parameters to only attack the animated deceased and not uninfected humans and animals. They would still defend themselves if attacked, but then any idiot human that attacked a xenomorph without provocation deserved whatever it got. With a little further thought, he decided to allow for queen mutations, using the walking dead as gestation hosts. That would accelerate the cleanup of the planet and reduce the number of times he had to check back on this effort.

His next step was to scan the system and verify that this version of the Sol system also had an asteroid belt. A quick wormhole jump brought him quickly to a rather large asteroid rich in nickel and iron, and he soon had drones gathering resources that would allow him to manufacture the automated drones and satellites that would facilitate scrubbing the planet of radiation and dispersing the anti-plague. Unfortunately, certain aspects of the technology were very expensive to replicate. He also included the ability to deploy Ianthe's anti-xenomorph virus once the population of infected deceased dropped below a specific threshold. Xenomorphs without prey tended to get twitchy.

Back in Earth orbit, Robert and Bobbi were annoyingly wondering why an Engineer vessel had appeared in orbit, deployed probes, and then left without communicating with them in any way. The alien ship had even ignored their attempted hails. They had to call Ianthe again to verify that this was the help that had been sent by the Family and that the Engineer in question was just an antisocial jackass.

 

[clonezero]

Fine story but for me, it would have been better if it didn't involve Taylor Varga. It makes any sort of urgency and tension feel artificial.