Chapter Twenty-One

The world's gone mad, he thought. The dead walk about and I think nothing of it. The return of corpses has become trivial in import. How quickly one accepts the incredible if only one sees it enough!

-I Am Legend

Her eyes rested on it for a moment. She had almost 600,000 points … and what else was she going to use it on? Upgrading clothing and ammo would take 10,000 UP give or take. Fortifying the coach was going to take significantly more, but she would be very surprised if it exceeded 50k.

So she accepted. It could have been completely in her imagination, but Liza felt suddenly a little drained, as if her energy was connected to the points she had racked up, but that was probably not the case. It was tough to spend that many points, but she was instantly rewarded with a brand new screen when she returned to the previous page.

Name: Liza Volkov

UP: 469,000

Weapon

Features

Power

Range

Glock 19

Capacity: 15

25

50m

Bowie Knife

None

10

1m

M1 Carbine

Capacity: 10

20

300m

Attributes (100,000 UP)

Strength: 10

Agility: 13

Constitution: 12

Stamina: 11

Skills (Varying)

None

It was ‘Skills’ that caught her attention more. With ‘none’ there and no other information it implied it was almost certainly the same as the upgrading procedure as with everything else. She had to know for sure what she wanted and it would appear there.

But what kinds of things could they be?

Like … if she had a demonstration of some kind of a martial arts technique, she would be able to unlock and do it, presumably?

“Liza. Any use for these?”

She turned around and saw James had slid open a drawer from behind the counter using a small key he had unearthed somewhere. She stepped behind the counter to take a closer look at what he was motioning to, and raised her eyebrows. A range of knives set into black foam with little price labels underneath them -- a couple of layers of them, too. The prices ranged from £25 to £1200.

Her eyes were drawn first -- of course -- to the most expensive knife. A huge thing with shining steel blade, serrated and hideous, but strangely beautiful. Liza couldn’t see any practical use to the thing at all other than to carve through a foe, and she wondered if they were legally allowed to sell things that were obviously just … weapons.

Her eyes then trailed over to a set of four beautiful knives. Smaller, compact and with swirling patterns in their steel. Damascus steel, or a compelling imitation. She recognised that they were throwing knives from their shape, and popped one of them out of its protective casing and turned it around in her hands. Much more her speed. Small, powerful, light.

“I want this fucker,” James laughed, hefting the serrated blade from its place and zipping it through the air with a manic grin. “I bet this could cut through bone without even trying.”

Denslow approached, dark eyes shining. “Guys, they have knives like that? Do you think they have swords?”

“Swords..?” Liza repeated, not looking up.

“Hell, let’s go searching,” James said happily, and Denslow shrugged and followed behind him, dodging his merrily swinging arms.

“Sheathe that thing before you jab me,” she snapped.

“Right, yeah.”

“Throwing knives.” Liza held onto the metal shaft -- there was no grip or pommel or anything to distinguish the blade from the rest of the knife, just the gradual blunting of the edges. The thing was weighted perfectly. The dark swirling pattern across the matte blade was totally mesmerising. There was no doubt in her mind as to why the set of just four cost such an exorbitant amount.

She chewed on her lip and tried to recall a memory she had long since tried to forget. One of many. If this worked, the system was going to have her trawl through her childhood to pick out old skills she had been taught.

*

The knife sailed through the air with an audible whistle and punched into the wood of the old oak tree. Dusk, her father’s old mare, whinnied and gave them the side eye. She did not care for them using her field as weapons practise.

“It should be a knife made specifically for throwing purposes,” her father was explaining. He handed an identical small blade to each of the five Volkov children. “Feel the way it’s weighted.”

He paced in front of them, holding it balanced on his four fingertips and bouncing it up and down. They copied him. Tobias dropped his and hissed a word they weren’t allowed to say. His twin Emil -- though they pretty much looked nothing alike -- covered his mouth with his hands.

Peter flicked his own blade upwards, caught it in his palm, and with his other hand he clouted his son over the ear. Tobias bent to pick it up with wobbling lower lip.

“Do you understand what I’m saying?”

The boys mumbled an answer, and Liza stared into the distance. The horses were running around the perimeter, like they had been spooked.

Droplets of rain landed on her nose and she flicked them away, craning her neck to look up at her oldest brother who smirked, tossed the blade from his left hand into his right, and pinched it delicately between two fingers before turning his hips and letting it loose. It smacked through the tree trunk half a foot below his father’s blade.

“Alyosha,” Peter laughed, and clapped his oldest son on the back. Alex raked back his blond hair, and looked proud, standing with feet apart and hands out. Not that he knew any other way to look. Whether he knew it or not, he was always at least partially in a fighting stance. Always ready. Exactly like his father.

Alexei Volkov was his father's pride and joy. Marco, the second oldest, did alright at every assignment, task and lesson too. The twins tried sometimes, and were rewarded for their natural skill when they did.

Liza hated all of it.

Compared to her older, stronger brothers she felt clumsy and stupid at twelve years old. She tried her hardest but it never felt like enough. Her father tried hard with her, forgiving her most of the time because she was young and she aimed to please, but she could tell: he didn't think she would ever be as competent as himself.

“Eliza. Hold it like your brother. Stand like this. Remember to breathe, and throw.”

Liza was still watching the horses kick up dust by the faraway fencing.

“Ignore the animals, child.” He muttered a phrase in Russian and instinctively she squeezed her eyes shut and waited. “Throw.”

She flicked it like she had been shown; like she had seen her brother do, but it sailed from her fingertips prematurely, and bounced across the wet grass. Liza held her breath, closed her eyes again, and waited for the blow to come.

*

Liza was back in the shop, eyes shut as her mind fought not to remember what came next. What always came next.

She just hadn’t been good at stuff. Mostly because she had been young, but also because relative to her beefy, naturally tough brothers, she just hadn’t been very strong. Her father didn’t understand the idea of not having natural strength to fall back on, and she had had to find other ways to avoid conflict with her siblings. Like running away. But avoiding conflict with her father himself had been impossible.

It was, instead, a feat of endurance.

With a sigh, she opened the system up and navigated her way to the new tables.

You have unlocked the ability to learn Skills.

A Skill is what truly separates a Player from a Non-Player in combat. When the basics and theory of a skill are mastered, the AV system will take care of the muscle memory equivalent to a certain number of hours of practise.

Would you like to learn more about Knife Throwing?

Yes/No

Uhh? She clicked Yes.

Knife Throwing is a Skill that requires equipped Throwing Knives in order to use.

Keep your body relaxed, and one foot behind the other. When your aim is true, let it fly. A Player who masters the Knife Throwing skill will be tough to defeat -- as long as they always have a spare on their belt.

To Unlock and learn Skill lvl 1: 150,000 UP

Wow. That was a lot. Liza swallowed, noticing that there was a video underneath. A still of her own body, wearing the clothes that she was wearing, with a small Play button in the centre. She wilfully focused on it, and it began. It was a simple 4-second or so video, of her own body executing a perfect -- as well as she understood it, anyway -- knife throw.

It was the way a video game would probably have displayed a learned skill, too, by showing the main character execute it, but it was really weirding her out to watch herself, so she dismissed it.

Should she go for it? The system text had been fairly convincing. And if she could could make knife throwing her favoured way to take down a straggler or two, she would save ammo by the crateload. Literally.

Ugh -- so many points, though! She bit the proverbial bullet and brought it up again, gritted her teeth, and bought the skill.

Muscle memory recalibration.

Please remain calm.

...

Her eyebrows twitched at this brand new message that had come up, and then the most bizarre feeling came across her body. At first it was a muscular tingling, throughout her arms and legs -- even in her eyeballs -- and while she thought that was bad enough, suddenly a grinding pain ripped throughout her as something inside of her shifted ever so slightly. Just for the shortest of split seconds, and then she was back to normal. She rubbed her forehead and blew out some air.

She hadn’t thought that she needed that much internal alteration in order to simply fling a little blade.

“What do we have in the way of utility belts?” she called over to the others, who were muttering and stockpiling, and fumbling to upgrade their clothing’s thickness. Yana glanced over her shoulder.

“Come and look,” she said simply. Liza smiled wide to resist the urge to roll her eyes. The things Yana said were often innocuous enough, but would it be so hard for her to just answer a question sometimes?

She drifted over, past the knives, and pulled up a couple of belts. Immediately she was drawn to the one that looked the most heavy duty, but when she picked it up and tested it around her waist it felt bulky, and wouldn’t tighten up to her size, which meant it’d jump around when she moved and possibly rub her skin raw. As well as that, she had no idea what most of the slots were for.

The second one she picked up was much more her speed. It tightened firmly around her waist and it had thin slots that would do perfectly for throwing knives. She tested them and they fit snugly, but not too tight that they might be caught at a critical moment.

She plunged her finger into another slot and frowned, looking around. “Swiss army knives,” she said aloud. Wordlessly Tucker handed her a grizzly-looking one, stuffed with razor-toothed instruments for various tasks. Liza had a Swiss army knife already, a fairly cheap and battered hand-me-down, but it was somewhere completely hidden under her stuff, back at home.

She checked over the one Tucker had handed over to see if it was missing anything, or was too bulky to fit into her belt.

“Most expensive one,” he assured her. “Nothing but the best for my girls.” His grin practically sparkled. She ignored him, and turned to walk back to her throwing knives. With her new knives strapped into her belt, she felt more secure by far, and she pulled her sloganed shirt to obscure most of it, and felt good about it.

She had to test out her newfound skill, to see how effective it actually was. No matter how many times she had tried before, after all, she had never been able to effectively throw a knife so that it consistently landed blade-first into her target. It seemed to her that there were just too many variables…

Now that the skill was running through her body and mind, though, those things shouldn’t affect her as much.

“James, hold up that jacket next to you,” she said. “In front of the wall.”

James looked up from his own shirt with a look of pure bemusement that didn’t fade. “My clothes are thicker,” he told her. “They don’t look thicker. What’s the point in them being thicker again?”

“Could protect you from a bite one day,” Liza said. “Unless, of course, it gets you in the hands or the face.” She winked, but James wrinkled his nose at the thought. “Hold up the jacket. Far away from you.”

“Uhh, why? You want to know if it’d suit you?”

“Sure,” she said. “I only wear clothes if they’ve been held up first by a trusted friend.”

James gave her a look but he grabbed the nearest jacket from the floor and dutifully held it out next to him, in front of a blank wall. Liza pulled in a breath and tried hard to concentrate. In a computer game there would be a button to press for this, but she had to assume that the skill would just activate if she tried to do it.

“What are you even tr--” James began, but Liza had already whipped the partially obscured knife from her belt and zipped it in his direction.

The beautiful Damascus steel blade caught the thick fabric and pinned the camo jacket to the plaster by the sternum of an imagined wearer, and James let go in shock. “Fuck!” he said. “Warn me!”

“Sorry,” she laughed. “I wanted to test it. It would have been pretty embarrassing if it hadn’t worked.” She clapped her hands together and walked up to yank the blade from the hanging jacket and returned it to her belt.

While she was there she upgraded her own clothing from the bottom up with the jackets that were left, and then, satisfied that she was armed, defended and ready, she settled into looking at her attributes. She trusted that she could discuss the skills with Celia a little later to bounce ideas off of her. She was pleased with the one she had chosen so far.

It was 100,000 to upgrade any of her attributes. She swallowed. She would do one for now, and leave plenty to sort out their transportation -- as well as some emergency UP to fall back on if something terrible happened -- and then later on she would spend a little more.

There was no way of knowing when her next big payout would be, after all.

Strength seemed the most obvious choice. It seemed the most logical choice for her ‘build’ -- if you could use that term to describe an actual human being. The alternatives were all appealing, too. Stamina and Constitution seemed a little similar, but she was sure that they would contribute to things like pain resistance and how much she could do before resting, and both were useful.

But Strength was something she was seriously lacking relative to the rest of her skills and attributes, and that was annoying to say the least. It had been annoying her whole life. She hadn’t been able to fight when Blazer or that looter had stolen her weapon. If someone wanted something she had, and they were bigger than her, they could probably just take it. In theory she knew basic self defence, but she had never used it, and even her father hadn’t thought it was that important to teach his daughter much more than how to throw a punch. After nuclear devastation, after all, there wouldn’t have been very many people to throw to the ground.

After some hesitation, she shoved a point into her Strength, and accepted the prompt that she was ready for muscle recalibration.

“Are you OK?” Denslow asked, wandering back up the stairs. Liza looked up, realising that she was visibly out of breath and bent double. It turned out that increasing your physical strength significantly all in one second was way harder on the body than teaching your muscles how to best throw something.

She tried to say ‘Yes’, but it just came out as a single cough, a pause, and then a coughing fit.

“Jesus,” Denslow said, her dark eyes narrowed.

“I’m fine,” Liza got out. “Growing pains.”

The other girl gave her another strange look, and then walked back to James, shaking her head. “No swords. Not a single one in this stupid place. Probably not a single one in this miserable town.”

James lifted one corner of his mouth. “It’s actually a city.”

“What?” she demanded, looking over her shoulder.

“Fairacres. It has a cathedral, which makes it a city. Technically.” He stopped talking and awkwardly cleared his throat, which made Liza snort with barely concealed laughter. She had never seen her friend so obviously interested in anyone before -- ever -- but it was pretty clear that James was at the very least awestruck by the dark-haired singer.

The thought that they were in the same room together now, here, at the end of the world when there was really no time or place for love interests, was almost hilarious.

“Maybe we can try to get some sleep before we head out again,” she suggested. “It’s been a long few hours. We can take turns keeping watch if that makes you guys feel more comfortable.”

Outside the soft hum of faraway activity made her nervous. Perhaps the sound had always been there, but the thought of sleep seemed to have made it more obvious now.

When she strained her ears to try to cut to the source of the noise -- what the hell was it? -- it began to sound a lot less like something a horde of zombies might create, and a lot more like … traffic? Some kind of mechanism?

She was pretty sure it wasn't just that she was becoming more aware of it. No -- the noise was getting louder, and rapidly.

“What is that?” Celia whispered, looking up at the ceiling. Liza instinctively followed her gaze to stare at exposed rafters.

“What is that?” Tucker agreed, striding over with a curious Eli to squint through the thoroughly barricaded small window by the door.

“What do you see?” Liza said, feeling a sudden dull ache in her abdomen. Dread? It seemed that whenever they had a single second to sit and try to make sense of the system so that they could actually utilise their benefits, something came along to destroy any sense of safety they might have had.

She had to assume that it would be that way for a long time. But there was no telling, yet, what this was. It had evolved from a noise into a cacophony, and it appeared to pass right over their heads.

“That’s a helicopter,” Denslow said low. She looked over at the others. “That’s a helicopter.”

“Rescue?” Celia breathed, moving to stand by the window too. Liza could see from where she stood that no helicopter was in view, but a dark shadow passed briefly over the buildings across the street, and the noise made her grit her teeth.

James moved to stand next to her and folded his arms. “Malcolm?” he said low, so that only she could hear.

The helicopter didn’t seem to get any further away: a rippling shadow of the blades spinning covered the pavement outside the store. The chopper seemed to be hovering over the ground on the high street nearby.

“I don’t think so,” Liza said. She chewed her lower lip, and then nodded to herself. “You guys get moving. Stay together, stay vigilant, and get up the hill to the university campus. Find a good coach, get inside by any means necessary, and stay inside. Keep gunshots for emergencies only -- and move fast after you discharge a firearm. Got it?”

The others looked at her, some nodded, and some frowned.

“You’re not coming with us?” Tucker asked, his brow creasing.

“I will meet you there,” she said. “I think I know who is in this helicopter. I have some things I need to talk to them about. I’ll be twenty minutes behind you, if that. Do you think you can keep each other safe?” She looked from face to face. “I’m really asking. You should stay here if the answer is no, but I don’t want you guys to be boxed in. I can cut through the footpath from the high street. You guys should go around the back and take the cobblestone streets. They’ll be empty of debris so that you can see all around you. Safer that way.”

“We’ll go. The sooner we get to the coach, the better,” Tucker said.

“You shouldn’t go by yourself,” Denslow said. “That sound … it’s so loud it’ll be attracting every zombie in a two-mile radius.”

Liza licked her lips and pressed them together. “You’re not wrong, but I would rather just go by myself. I know I can protect myself; I know how I move, and how I fight. I know you can protect each other in a group.” She didn’t like the idea of leaving them, but something in the back of her mind did wonder how much she could trust the men on the radio.

They hadn’t sounded very military, after all. Why they would lie, she didn’t know, but the things she had seen already -- the crazy, hysterical way so many people had been acting out of pure panic -- had taught her quickly to hold off before trusting anyone, or anything.

But she wasn’t yet too jaded to want to at least check it out.

“Are you sure you’re all OK with this?” she asked again. “I will be twenty minutes behind … oh!” She snapped her fingers and disappeared and reappeared from downstairs. “Take these radios.” She handed them out. Not quite enough for everyone to have one, and one of them didn’t seem to work, so Eli and Angie had to share and Tucker and Yana decided to share another.

“How do you use them?” Eli asked.

“They’re ready to go,” Liza told him. “Just hold that button there and say something. I know it's kind of a joke, but it does actually help to say ‘over’ at the end of your message so that people don’t talk over each other. And, uh, speak clearly? I guess that’s all the radio advice I can think of. Keep them on you. It’s important.”

Everyone nodded.

For the first time Liza felt like she had a group of people in front of her who truly wanted to listen to her; who respected her, and would follow her lead. Although Lilian had never done anything wrong, she was glad she was gone. Now it was just her, and people she trusted.

All that stood between them and safety, now, was the knowledge that London might not be the right place to go. She would scope out these shady radio guys, and try to figure out if they knew where she should go. Then when Liza got to the coach, she would direct them to the best possible place to hole up.

No point in telling them to lose hope now. Not yet. Let them get up the hill fuelled by the idea that they were going to be free soon; safe.

Liza slotted her radio into her utility belt and took a deep breath. “Everyone upgraded clothes as best they can?”

They all assured her they had. “We upgraded some of the gun capacities too,” Celia said, gesturing at Liza’s Glock. “Did you?”

"Yep."

“Good luck,” Denslow said as Liza began to take down the barricade to slip through the front door, and back into the streets. “Don’t die.”

The statement was worded simply enough, as if it were a joke. But it wasn’t. Even so, Liza shot her a dark smile from the other side of the door. “Move fast,” she reminded. “Shoot to kill. Survive.”

And she turned to pick her way over the debris towards the ominous rumbling of the nearby helicopter, a curious dread lining her stomach.