Darling of Fate: A LitRPG Apocalypse Adventure, page 20
A good shooter would have realized he’d hit center mass. A great shooter might have recognized the signs of a bulletproof vest, but then they would have aimed higher. If I had to guess, they would bet that I was bleeding out in the car right now—if not already dead. But then I realized the flaw in my logic. It was very unlikely that they were killing other humans for loot—barely any stores had been looted, to my knowledge. There were supplies everywhere. Which meant they had tried to take me out for XP or some other System-related benefit. When they didn’t receive that benefit, they would know I was still kicking. So I couldn’t wait in ambush for them to check on my car—I’d have to go to them.
Making up my mind, I immediately stood upright and started racing across the roof in the shooter’s general direction. I zigged and zagged, used my Mantle to pull me in erratic directions, and was rewarded for my caution when a shot ricocheted near my head. I could see them now, about 200 feet distant, their sights still aimed towards me. My passive ability, [Climber’s Intuition], filled in the best path to the shooter in my mind, and I instinctively followed it as I weaved. More shots rang out, but I was moving so fast, I’d be amazed if they managed to get on target at this range.
When I was about a hundred yards away, only four or five large buildings between us, they stood up and took aim one more time. Pulling out a baseball, I whipped it across the distance with everything I had, using my [Sticky Fingers] ability for additional control. A shot rang out just as my ball collided with the shooter’s shoulder. I was in mid-air as the bullet ripped through my side. The force of the bullet knocked me sideways, and I rolled to the ground, popping back up to my feet using my momentum. Adrenaline pulled me through as I picked up my speed again. The shooter had disappeared out of sight as I had rolled on the roof, but I cleared the remaining rooftops in seconds. As I neared, the shooter jumped up from where they had been hidden behind the lip of the roof, holding a dangling arm with their other hand. They tried to pull up their rifle with one hand but were too slow.
I crashed into them, putting my shoulder down and bowling right over them. He was a slight man, probably a buck-fifty, and my charge absolutely sent him flying. I was a big boy, and I ran fast, bullet hole notwithstanding. Something flashed in the corner of my awareness, and I dodged back, pulling a baseball bat out of my Inventory and holding it up instinctively. A fucking katana cut straight through the bat, cleaving a couple inches into my shoulder. I cried out in pain, even as I pulled one of the knives I’d looted from the Walmart into my other hand. Ignoring the agony ripping through my body as the second attacker struggled to rip his katana free, I slammed my knife into his gut. He let out an explosive grunt, hot breath washing over my face as his eyes went wide.
Ripping my knife free, I slammed it back into his gut three times, watching the light in his eyes dim, then gutter out completely. A sound behind me made me spin, the dead man turning with me, my blade still embedded in his gut. A loud shot rang out, kinetic force hammering into the dead man and through my arm. I had inadvertently used the dead man as a body shield. As the shooter racked another bullet, I threw the dead man forward into his friend. The shooter, in his rush to take aim, didn’t see his dead friend coming to crash into him until it was too late. I followed up behind the body, kicking away the rifle as the shooter fell backwards. Pinning him with my knee on his neck, I took out another knife from my Inventory—my previous one still stuck in his friend—and I held it to the man’s eye. He stopped struggling immediately.
“Hold on, man! Hold the fuck on!” he cried out desperately. “You don’t have to do this!”
I activated [Analysis] on the man, then scowled when I saw his kill count.
“Yes, I do.”
His panicked screams cut off as my blade penetrated his brain.
Chapter 26
Duckies Can't Talk!
You have killed Fred Wilkens - 3 kills
+ 3 Chaos Points
You have killed Ray Davis - 6 kills
+8 Chaos Points
You have surpassed 10 Chaos Points — Wardens will be on guard in your presence.
What the hell? Chaos points? I cleared the notifications, focusing on my surroundings. I couldn’t rule out the possibility that these guys had friends, so I couldn’t afford to let down my guard yet. Leaving the bodies and gear for later, I pulled my knife out of Ray’s eye and surveyed the rooftop.
There was ductwork and multiple air conditioner units dispersed around the roof, but a quick scan let me know there was no one else lurking up there. A shed with a propped-open door led down into the building. With a baseball in one hand and my knife in the other, I slowly approached the doorway. I left the dead man’s rifle—it would be useless in the tight confines of a stairwell, and I was confident in my ability to throw my knife with pretty damn good accuracy if I needed range.
Throwing knife poised for a quick release, I slowly descended the stairs. The overhead light fixtures were smashed, so the stairwell was dark except for the light penetrating through the open roof door. When I reached the next landing, I paused, my ears straining to hear even the slightest indication of movement. The mechanical whirring of the air conditioner was all I could hear as I stood there. Distantly, I wondered how and why the power of the world seemed to be unaffected by the Apocalypse. Was that something Lex and his people had orchestrated?
What a considerate thing to do after nearly wiping out our entire civilization, I mused. Another thing to ask Lex when I wasn’t in mortal danger.
I continued down the stairs, past the doors leading to each floor. I intended to check every floor, and root out this viper’s nest completely. But instead of going floor-by-floor, starting at the roof, I decided to hit the ground floor first, then work my way up. That way, if someone tried to make a break for it, I’d corral them to the roof where it would be more difficult to escape rather than the ground.
Moving silently, I checked the first floor, finding nothing and no one. Then the second floor. The third. As I made my way back to the top, I found myself back at the highest floor before the roof. It was a good sign that there wasn’t more indication of habitation in the building. It meant that this group of bandits had been small. Although, I realized that it could also mean that this wasn’t their base of operations. In fact, a smart group wouldn’t have staged an ambush from their home base.
Fortunately for me, this group of bandits had not been overly smart.
As I opened the door to the eighth and final floor, I immediately noticed that this floor was different, that I had found the bandits’ home.
Crushed soda cans, candy bar wrappers, and the general debris of Apocalypse living were strewn across the ground as I entered the floor. The building had clearly been an office of some sort before the end of the world—soul-crushing cubicles crisscrossed the floor, glass-enclosed conference rooms lined the walls, and a few scattered personal offices were positioned in the corners.
I moved in a crouch, my head below the cubicle line as I went up and down each aisle. Despite the heavy presence of garbage, it didn’t seem to be enough to indicate more than a few people—if not just the two I’d already killed.
Once I’d cleared the main floor and the bathrooms, I moved to the conference rooms. The glass walls let me scan the interior without entering, and I quickly determined that they were empty as well. That only left the offices to be checked.
I moved to the corner office, my hand on the knob. A plaque was screwed into the door that read: ‘Mary Aldridge, President.’
Slowly, I turned the knob, my body positioned behind the wall in case I took fire from someone hiding. When the knob was halfway turned, I heard the distinctive sound of rustling behind the door. There was someone in there! Flinging the door open, I stepped clear, my back against the wall. I waited with bated breath, but no hail of gunfire rushed to greet me.
“Come out with your hands up,” I called into the office. “I’ll give you to the count of three, then I’m chucking in a grenade and calling it a day!”
I waited for a beat, but whoever was in there was stone still. If it was a rat or something, I was going to feel really stupid.
“1…2…”
Still nothing. What the fuck?
“3!”
I bent down and rolled the baseball into the office, then rose up into a fighting stance. Even a pro would have been a little antsy and made some kind of sound, right? But still, nothing. Okay, plan B. I flared out my Mantle, holding it out in the doorway like a matador with his cape. I half expected a bullet to flash through the cloth… and still, nothing.
I swear to God, if I stick my head out and get my brains blown out, then whoever is in there deserves it—they’re made of fucking stone!
Prepping myself to enter the room, I thought of something at the last moment and bent low. Better to poke my head in at waist height rather than head height.
Here goes nothing!
Lightning-fast, I poked my head into the doorway, scanned the room, then pulled it back.
Oh my God…
Standing back up, my body relaxing, I felt a shiver run through me. I moved into the office, my caution evaporated as I finally examined the room properly.
A desk had been shoved against the wall, sheaves of torn papers strewn about the floor. The windows were covered up with newspaper and secured with tape. And in the far corner was a small girl, her hands wrapped up tight with a rope that was secured around the leg of the radiator. She was young, probably seven or eight, with dirty blonde hair hanging in sweaty ropes across her face. Her clothes were dirty and torn but thankfully intact. Her eyes were downcast, her little body curled into a ball.
On the other side of the room, two bodies were thrown against the wall—a man and a woman. The woman’s clothes were torn to shreds, her body exposed. The smell of blood and shit filled the air.
The girl’s parents, if I had to guess. Those sick fucks had locked her in with the corpses of her mother and father…
My blood was boiling, but I kept the anger from my face so as not to frighten the girl. But if I could have raised those two men back from the dead, oh, the things I would have done to them would make the devil blush.
“It’s okay, sweetie,” I said softly, quickly placing my knife back into my Inventory as I held out my hands.
I took a slow step forward but immediately stopped as she flinched back, shuffling as deep into the corner as her bonds would let her.
Stepping back, I kept my hands raised. “No one’s going to hurt you. Those bad men are gone.”
She glanced up through a gap in her hair, her eyes casting back and forth wildly. It broke my heart to see. The world had only ended yesterday, but she had a haunted look to her that spoke of things that a child should never have to see or endure.
Fuck me, I wasn’t equipped for this. What the hell was I supposed to do?
“My name’s Dirk,” I said softly. “What’s yours?”
She didn’t reply, but as I took a slow step forward, she flinched again, so I stopped.
“Can I untie you, sweetie? Those ropes must be uncomfortable—” She panicked, her eyes going wide at my words. “Okay, okay, we don’t need to untie you right now. That’s fine.”
Seriously, what the fuck should I do?
The only thing I could think of was to get Mama G. She was the only motherly figure I’d come across in this Apocalypse. But it felt wrong to leave the girl tied up while I drove back to my Personal Space.
Through our bond, Lex was probing, sending me questioning feelings as he felt my emotions spike. Silently, I signaled for him to come to me as I tried to figure out how to approach the little girl.
“I’m just gonna sit here, okay?” Squatting down, I leaned against the wall, trying to project a non-threatening demeanor.
Pulling out another baseball, I started tossing it in the air idly as I waited. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed her head tilt up as she watched the ball arc up, then down. Suddenly, a thought occurred to me, and I pulled out another baseball. Tossing them up into the air, I began juggling the two balls. Her eyes were glued on the ball’s trajectory now, so I quickly pulled out a third baseball and added it to the juggle without breaking stride. Her eyes went wide when she noticed the third ball sneaking into the rotation. A smile filled my face as I added a fourth ball and heard a little gasp. Once I had the rhythm going, I added a fifth ball but quickly lost the pattern, all the balls crashing to the floor.
“Ah, darn,” I said as the balls all rolled in different directions.
One of them rolled towards the girl, but I purposefully didn’t move, waiting to see how she reacted. She eyed the ball intently, then flicked her eyes to me, then back to the ball.
“You want to try?” I asked, rolling one of the nearby balls in her direction so that there were two baseballs within her reach.
She flinched back as the second ball bumped gently against her foot. Pulling out two more baseballs, I held them out, showing them clearly as I started juggling again. She watched intently but didn’t reach out to grab the balls near her.
In the back of my mind, as I juggled, I noted Lex approaching. Doing my best to signal to him, I tried to make it clear that he should approach slowly. When he waddled into the office, I watched the girl’s face closely to see how she would react. Her eyes grew wide, and I worried she would be scared, but she let out an excited squeak that put me at ease.
“Duckie!” she called, her voice small.
“Honk!”
The girl flinched, then laughed as Lex neared.
“You like the duckie?” I asked.
Her shoulders shrugged as she sunk into herself at my words.
Okay, noted, I’m the scary big man.
“Lex,” I whispered. “She likes you. Make her laugh some more.”
He looked at me, his uncertainty coming through the bond. “This wasn’t in the Integration handbook, Dirk,” he whispered back.
The girl’s eyes went wide at Lex’s words, and I worried he had scared her. But on closer inspection, it seemed to be more curiosity than fear.
“Hi there, little child monkey,” Lex cooed. “Uh, what’s your name?”
“Duckies can’t talk,” she said accusingly, her eyes narrowing.
“Um, pardon me, but I’m actually a goose—”
“Lex!” I hissed.
“But duckie is fine, I guess,” he added, casting me a confused look. “And I can talk because I’m actually a cosmic spirit imprisoned inside of a goos—inside of a duckie’s body.” She tilted her head in confusion as Lex slowly approached.
“See if she’ll let you untie her,” I whispered.
“Can I untie you?” Lex asked. “Those ropes must be really uncomfortable.”
She cast fearful glances in my direction, and I realized it was me that was making her skittish.
“I’ll wait outside,” I said, slowly rising to my feet.
Leaving the office, I grabbed one of the abandoned chairs and sat down. Putting my head in my hands, my thoughts ran rampant.
Until this point, I’d approached the Apocalypse like a game. Putting my life on the line, poking fun at anyone and everyone, generally adopting a cavalier attitude—it was kind of my thing. But seeing that terrified little girl in there—some obviously unspoken trauma weighing far too heavily upon her little shoulders—it woke me up to the reality of this new world. Her parents—most likely killed in front of her… or worse. And what the hell was I going to do with a child? For now, if Lex could get her to warm up enough to allow us to untie her and bring her back, I could let her stay in my Personal Space for the time being. But in the long run?
I had no fucking clue…
Closing my eyes and focusing, I watched through Lex’s eyes as he goofed around and made the girl open up from her shell. It took a full 30 minutes before he could approach close enough for her to reach out and touch him. She gently stroked his feathers as Lex used his beak to pick apart the rope tying her hands. Once she was free, I hoped we could get her moving soon, but that proved optimistic.
I watched as the timer ticked down for the First Floor opening, trepidation filling me. The time to enter the Tower came and went, and still Lex had to very carefully coax the girl out of the office. When she saw me sitting there, she froze, but Lex whispered something to her that made her laugh and relax. I followed Lex’s lead as he led the girl to the stairwell. Thankfully, we didn’t need to leave via the roof, as I didn’t want her to see the bodies of the bandits.
I followed at a distance so as not to startle her, then quickly went to the roof to loot the bandits while Lex led her out of the building. A quick looting revealed that the only things of real value on the bandits were the rifle and katana. I pulled both into my Inventory and went to follow Lex and the girl.
When I emerged from the building, I saw them walking in the direction of my Personal Space and not toward the car, which was still in perfect running condition.
“Lex,” I called after them. “The car…”
He looked back and shook his head. I sighed. We were three miles from the Personal Space entrance.
I was going to be incredibly late for the First Floor. I only hoped Mama G and the rest of them were fine without me.
Chapter 27
Into The Tower
As we were walking back, a notification filled my vision.
Humans of Earth, this is your new Integration Guide speaking. My designation is unimportant, as we will not be engaging in any meaningful conversation. Just note that the originally assigned Integration Guide has been punished for his incompetence, and from this point forward, you will be accorded all the required assistance to propel your species towards a successful Integration. With that said, in order to balance the disadvantages your former flawed Integration Guide created, all humans that reach the Third Floor will be given two complementary [Level Up Vouchers].
