Chapter 98

Ivey walked up to him, his utility knife in her hands.

“Good,” she said, simply staring at the beast they had killed. Daniel then saw her eyes flick to where the dead lay. There was none of the recoil that he expected, but then again, she was a nurse, so maybe she was desensitised to blood. “We will have to do a funeral service,” she continued thoughtfully. “They died as heroes.”

Daniel lay there gasping for breath. There was nothing he could do to stop the shuddering movements. But each jerk of his chest sent pain radiating through his arms. “Hea—”

Air rushed out, and he shut his eyes instinctively to cut off the cry that would only make things worse. Ivey did not hear. The body needed its oxygen and would not be denied. Sucking air in, then out, “Heal,” he rasped out louder.

Her eyes softened, and healing washed over him. He felt it mending his torn muscles and tendons. Surprise rolled across her face. “Internal . . .”

Daniel could see her preparing another spell.

“Save it,” he started on the next outflow.

“You need it,” she responded in a dismissive tone. Incapacitated as he was, he could not argue back. “I don’t know what you did, but you did a lot of damage to yourself.”

Her healing, and probably time, meant he was getting more control of his body. He still could not move, but the uncontrollable breathing was moderating. “I stopped it running,” Daniel admitted. “It was too powerful and—”

“It is okay.” Healing hit him like a tsunami and all those muscles that her previous spell had barely affected mended together perfectly. Relief washed through him, and he sighed at the unexpected pleasure of being able to breathe without pain wracking him.

Now that enough mana had regenerated, with a thought, the vine tying him dropped away.

Next to him, Ivey handed the knife to Janice. “Go free the others.”

The octopod was clearly dead, and with its job done, the white and black cavalier that had delivered the bulk of the damage shrank back to its normal size. That dog, Daniel understood instantly, was why the five people in the penthouse had held out for as long as they had. The three dogs pulled away, and Priscilla was dancing on his shoulder, her eyes still fixed on the white and red one. Daniel wished he had some meat to throw to them. Without those dogs, the outcome of the fight would have gone differently.

“Hello,” an older male’s voice called out from above. It had to be the people from the penthouse.

“We need to greet them,” Ivey said.

They needed to collect the core.

That telekinesis ability was something that Daniel decided that he really wanted, and if he could use the monster’s core to get it, then he was doing it. He did not even care how painful it would be. If he could mentally move traps from a distance, his trap fields would rank up in deadliness. No longer would he have to rely on the animals being stupid enough to step on them.

The octopod was a blubbering mass in front of him, and he was not sure where to cut.

“I want the core.”

Suddenly, light started gathering to the right of the monster. Daniel instinctively lifted his club.

Was this some sort of second life thing? Next to him, Ivey had frozen, a look of surprise across her face, and her eyes went unfocused.

Daniel shifted the club to his shoulder and moved into a battle stance.

What was it? Priscilla seemed unconcerned, so it was probably not a threat.

The lightning concentrated before consolidating into a physical wooden chest. What? Loot? Like in a computer game?

“Vivien, Red, Finigan,” a female voice yelled from the floor above. The three dogs, which had been licking each other, startled and dashed past them, running for the wide-open stairs that linked levels. Daniel pushed himself to his feet and stepped towards the chest, wondering what would be in it.

Ivey’s hand grabbed him. “No time,” she whispered. “We need to greet them.” She tugged on his arm insistently, and he considered shrugging her off and opening the chest anyway, but then decided that was foolish, as based on Ivey’s reaction she had got a prompt explaining the details. “Dave, get the core and guard the chest. No one but us opens it.”

“Raraf.”

Ivey strode in front of him, and he followed, pausing only to touch the vines still holding people so they would fall away and free them.

“Everyone head downstairs before it is dark,” Ivey yelled. “We will collect the bodies in the morning.” She leant toward him and lowered her voice. “Keep quiet about the chest.”

His people started moving light globes that appeared to help them navigate, and Daniel was amused that they actually threw the space with the octopod into shadow. Tamara had probably done that deliberately to hide Dave. She knew newcomers like those coming from above could react badly to the hairy man. The push to leave immediately was pretty weak and was intended to stop people from discovering the chest, but given how shell-shocked every face he saw was, there was no resistance. They were all happy to follow orders. It was easier than processing what had happened. Easier than acknowledging the losses.

Janice had apparently run straight to Tamara, the person furthest from where the monster lay, and freed her first. The result was that most of his fighters were still tied down by the vines. As he walked, he touched the emergency harnesses, and they fell away. Scared faces nodded at him in thanks even as they rubbed their waists and grimaced at bruising. They knew the vines had saved their lives. Daniel empathised with the tender way they touched the lines where his vines had secured them. The octopod had not been kidding around when it had plucked them forward. It did with almost impossible force, and the hastily created vines dug in hard when it did so.

“We got it?”

“Yes.”

“Is it dead?”

“Dave’s grabbing the core,” Ivey told them. “Nothing is alive up here. We can deal with the rest in the morning.”

There was noise of people above them, and five people finally appeared. Parents with their three adult kids. The children ranged from eighteen to twenty-five under Daniel’s quick assessment. While he had saved them, they had also saved him back, and they were battle-hardened fighters. Daniel hated the instinct, the need to study them with a critical eye. They might be dangerous; if they were strong enough to have held off the octopod, then they represented a potential threat as much as a boon. After the way Beau had turned, he would never trust someone automatically again.

The girl on their right looked up from patting the black and white dog. She was the oldest of the kids in her mid-twenties and was dressed in jeans and a leather jacket. In fact, the whole family had chosen function over comfort, with all of them wearing heavy clothes. The low twenty-year-old son had donned a jacket that Daniel guessed from its size and looks must have been the dad’s old biker jacket. It was too tight for him and could not be zipped up but it looked like he had free range of arm movements as he had opened up the seams on the arms. It would not be comfortable but the leather would at least stop some attacks.

The girl patting the dog’s initial smile changed to horror, and she was looking past his shoulder. Daniel knew exactly what had got her attention. While the lights hid Dave, the chest, and the octopod corpse it did nothing for the pile of broken bodies. Deftly, he stepped slightly to the side to block her vision. The girl’s hand went up to her mouth as she gasped in shock.

“I . . . we.”

“It is dead,” Daniel said evenly, making eye contact to stop her from trying to look past him again.

They continued to step down, and as they did, Daniel backed away. Ostensibly to allow them to pass him and continue down the stairs, but really it was to prevent them from peeking around the corner and catching sight of the chest. Ivey wanted it hidden, and he trusted her decision. The mum nodded in appreciation at his polite gesture. “Madam.”

He knew nothing about these people apart from the fact they came from the penthouse and had adapted incredibly well to the apocalypse. They walked like fighters.

They were an asset or a menace and nothing in between.

Their weapons were all improvised, kitchen knives and a makeshift baronet—created out of a dagger and a mop handle—cricket bats, and if he was not mistaken, they had thin metal packed under their jackets.

Daniel wished he had Ivey or Tamara’s identification ability. It would have been nice to get a sense of what he was dealing with. On his shoulder, he could feel Priscilla focusing on them. Magic, magic, magic, brawn, magic. As he suspected, they were all combat orientated. For all five to have chosen that option, it did not feel like a fluke. It might not be fair to them, but the hairs on the back of his neck were rising.

“I am Alex,” the dad said, offering a hand.

“Daniel,” he responded, automatically shaking the hand. The polite gesture felt weird. The dad’s eyes saw the bodies, but he said nothing.

“I am presuming you are guys from halfway down our tower.”

“Yes,” Ivey said, coming up beside him. Also positioned to discourage them from getting to close the octopod. The game was simple. They wanted to get them downstairs and away from whatever treasure was in the chest.

Alex, the dad, exhaled tiredly. “Thank you for helping. Did you lose a lot?”

“Yes,” Ivey responded bluntly.

“I am sorry for your losses,” Alex said. “You saved our lives. I am not sure how we can—”

“And you ours,” Daniel interrupted, not willing to play games. “We had to stop that thing. After it eliminated you, it would have come from us.”

Alex nodded at that. “What now?”

They were exhausted, Daniel realised. Alex was almost swaying as he stood. They all were. The youngest daughter was even resting her eyes. Dozing on her feet.

“I think we will get you somewhere safe to sleep and then we can talk in the morning.”

“I agree,” Ivey said hurriedly. “Let’s all head downstairs. There is too much death up here.” She pointedly glanced at the bodies they were abandoning.

“We have a community based around the twenty-fifth floor,” Tamara added.

“A community?” the eldest daughter asked, the one who had patted the black and white dog so vigorously.

Tamara nodded. “Yes. It is safe and we are all working together.”

“How many?” Alex asked.

“Around ninety, maybe slightly more if you count the kids,” Tamara answered.

The dad visibly deflated. “From the whole tower?”

“As far as we can tell. We can only see down to level fifteen.”

“What is that, five per floor?”

“Fewer,” Ivey answered honestly. Tamara nudged her. “No point pretending otherwise,” Ivey said loudly. “I think we are lucky it is that many.”

“Our starting floors are the safest, so let’s get everyone down there,” Daniel said, taking charge. While he was fine without the light globes, it was already getting hard to see with the setting sun, and his stomach was grumbling.

They left the bodies, and the monster, mood subdued. Dave tacked on behind them, but the family did not notice.

As he walked next to the newcomers, he wondered what the chest was and why Ivey was being so cagey about it. She clearly wanted to control its contents. A mystery for later. It was not like he could talk to her now. While he might have appeared relaxed, he was far from it. Never again around strangers. Priscilla sat on his shoulder, making sure there would be no surprise attacks. The family was powerful, and he was paranoid that they would try to take control—and getting rid of himself and Ivey was the fastest way to do it. Then again, whenever he looked at them, they appeared exhausted. He suspected that for tonight at least there would be a truce.

Everyone was silent, and Tamara’s bright lights were not helping either. It meant the stunned look on everyone’s face was visible. Seven people had died in that first minute. That was a significant chunk of their previous fighting force. No matter how he might attempt to shrug off the losses, he couldn’t be that callous. Those dead eyes looking at him from cheeks that had all their blood sucked out of them. The shock and fear of the survivors.

Daniel’s survivors would definitely need a funeral to give a sense of closure. They had won the upper half of the tower. He couldn’t let that victory fracture their community.

He pushed to the front to open up the first layer of barriers that quarantined the zombie floors. With a touch of his mind, he could shift the big chunks of wood to the side to allow them to squeeze through. Then he went ahead of the others, checking each door to ensure that their structural integrity was still in place.

These were it, Daniel realised. These two floors, the ones right above his original hotel room, were the only ones not yet cleared. Tomorrow they would deal with it, and then over half the highrise was enemy free. Then they just had to fight intelligent zombies and whatever else was down below. They had survived one almost impossible challenge, and then tomorrow they would throw themselves at another. That Daniel guessed was the new world.

The whole “we need to risk our lives to save others” bullshit would not motivate people, but he knew that winning over the tower was only the smallest of steps to establishing themselves in the changed world.

They had to win at street level.

They needed to kill the monsters he had seen out the window.

They couldn’t just run from it, because as far as they knew, every suburb of Melbourne was owned by a similar beast.

If they ran from this beast into another monster, they would die for sure. Claim the tower, then with traps, claim the next street and grind out an area of influence. Or get scouts to explore beyond them to see if there was safety out there. Given what he had seen so far, Daniel doubted that very much.

Around him, Tamara dimmed the light, as she did not want to attract the attention of the still-alive zombies. Each of these floors had over ten elites on them. It was a simple enough fight with their growing strength, but with preparation it would become trivial.

Tomorrow they would clear them and have so many traps that they would do it without a loss. Forget giving everyone else experience a flawless victory to fix up their morale was more important.

Daniel smiled at Tamara and gave her a thumbs up. Despite the hard day, she was still thinking and playing smart, even if in this case it was unnecessary. He had long since expanded these doors to make them both light and air tight. The way he had literally grown the wood into the floor was more effective than any blackout curtain. His fighters knew to be quiet because he had nothing to stop sound and the family they had just saved was walking in silent exhaustion.

Everyone filed past him, and then he went and put the barriers back in place. If they broke out, he wanted to keep them contained in one spot, as it would be easier that way to lure them through a killing field.

Naturally, he was last out, and when they got onto level twenty-five, he was greeted with a heavenly smell. They might not have much in the way of tools or ingredients, but a cooking profession in this new world could create wonders.

The new family sniffed appreciatively and had a quick conversation between them. When Alex turned to him, the decision they had come to was clear on his face. “We need to crash. I have not slept for two days.”

“You don’t want some of the food?” Ivey asked from next to him.

Alex shook his head. “It smells . . . but I can’t—we need to sleep.”

“We had heaps of food,” the eldest daughter told them. “And we knew darkness would make it more active, so we ate before the sun started setting.”

Daniel looked at Ivey as he was not sure where to settle them.

Ivey smiled brightly. “I will show you to a room.”

“Where are all the doors?” Daniel heard the eldest daughter ask as Ivey led them away.

Daniel watched them leaving. He got good impressions from them. For some reason, he was confident they would pull their weight. Although they clearly came from money, they did not look like the layabout type. Their weapons and poorly reinforced clothes might have been driven by necessity, but it showed ingenuity, and their greatest quality was the fact they had survived. If only there was a way to work out whether they could be trusted.

The three dogs went into the room with them, and he sensed Priscilla’s disappointment as they left. He scratched the mouse absently. There was something about that dog that interested her, and he had not worked out why. But he would.

Priscilla focused on a memory, and just like with the zombies, he got an impression of the dog’s skillsets. Its main ability was speed and quick healing. The connection stopped with a feeling of encouragement.

His stomach rumbled.

“You should get some food,” Tamara said from next to him.

“Yeah,” he said as the family was taken into a room. The bedsheet used as a curtain fluttered shut behind them. It was not proper privacy, but it was some, and everyone had taken to putting them up. The new family was a problem for tomorrow. Right now, food. And then, he guessed they would find out what was happening to the humans in the wider world.

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