Chapter 138: No Good Deed...

/Nikki’s First Person POV/

"DON’T-! Nobody touches that door!"

I was shouting it into the mic with my boots hanging out over a road I could already see, the junction coming up under the nose with everything on it exactly where the radio had put it.

None of it looked one bit better from the air.

My truck sat slewed across the westbound lanes sixty meters past the crossing, a crushed sedan wedged beneath the front wheel. Every window had either gone white or gone entirely, holes punched through the panels, and the driver’s door was bowed halfway out of its frame.

The flatbed was nowhere in sight.

Instead, two pickups sat crooked on the state road with their doors hanging open, and six figures with rifles stood spread around my truck in the snow. All of them were perfectly still. All of them looking up at us.

-Ding!

{

Armed contacts: 6.

Classification: Civilian. Long guns.

Engagement authorization required.

}

"Hold." I was already reaching for the mic. "Nobody shoots anybody... and take the guns off them. Pretty sure they’re the ones who just saved our folks... but if they’re not..."

The chin turret swung away from the six people below and settled facing forward.

Beside me, Nia had pulled the door M3M in on its mount, one hand around the grip, her thumb resting on the safety. And she was smiling. Which was never good news for anybody she was perching over.

"Pretty sure?" she echoed. "That’s a whole lot of rifles standing around a truck they don’t own, big guy."

Her smile then widened. "If even one of them twitches, I’m turning her into soup, and I’d like it officially recorded that I won’t feel bad about it~"

"Nobody’s getting turned into soup."

"Everybody gets turned into soup eventually." She shrugged. "That’s the entire apocalypse."

Then she leaned out into the wind and waved down at them with her free hand, all friendly and cheerful, while the M3M remained pointed squarely at the middle of the group.

"HIII~!"

[Jesus fucking Christ, woman.]

The Ghostbird dropped into the middle of the junction, the rotor wash flattening the snow across the road in one long white sheet, blowing it over the bodies, over the two pickups, over the wrecked sedan, and over the six women who did not move an inch.

And the moment the wheels touched, every rifle below came up. And every single one found the helicopter.

[Yeah... fair. I’d point one at me too.]

Because from where they were standing, an NH90 dropping out of the snow with a chin gun and two rocket pods wasn’t necessarily a friendly rescue.

And I was the bastard climbing out of it.

I hopped out empty-handed, holding my hands a little away from my sides, the M110A2 dangling loosely on my torso.

Tikki came out of the cockpit behind Nia, scampered up my arm, and settled onto my shoulder with his tail curled around the back of my neck.

"Mea," he said into my ear.

Clear, whole, and not the least bit worried.

[I know, booger. Nobody’s shooting anybody... Hopefully.]

I started walking straight down the middle of the road, purposely not looking at a single rifle. Six people I didn’t know had guns pointed at me, and four people I did know had spent the last four minutes trapped inside a metal box with its windows shot out while I listened to every second of it from kilometers away.

So naturally my heart was somewhere around two hundred beats a minute.

[Please don’t shoot the rich accountant... The rich accountant is extremely rich and extremely unwilling to let this turn into a bloodbath...]

And before I could even exchange a hi with the six women, the Ascender’s rear door banged open before I reached it.

Nora came out at a dead sprint. Her cap was pulled low over her face, both arms already out, and she bashed into my chest cap first, all her weight behind it, fully expecting me to give her the little half-step of give I always had.

I didn’t move. Not even a little.

And she bounced.

Like, actually bounced. She took a whole step backward off a man who apparently doesn’t yield to momentum anymore, and she stood there for one full second with her mouth open and her cap knocked sideways.

[Right... I’m a fucking wall now.]

Then she came at me again. Harder this time.

Both arms wrapped around my rig, her face buried against my chest plate, and she started making the sound she made when she was absolutely, definitely, under no circumstances crying.

"I’m not crying," she said into the plate while her voice wobbled. "It’s the rotor... The rotor is very dusty. It’s a dusty rotor, and I hate you."

"Kid." I put a hand on the back of her cap and left it there. "You did good."

Her shoulders shook once.

"You did really, really good," I added, with genuine sincerity.

"I missed."

"You put a rifle through a broken window in a firefight and called positions off a drone while doing it." I rubbed the back of her cap. "I’ve seen soldiers do worse."

[I have literally seen soldiers do worse... I saw soldiers do worse this very afternoon. Different story, though.]

Following her, Leo came around the front of the truck with the Spear in one hand, and his other hand pressed flat against his chest plate in a way he clearly believed looked casual.

And it absolutely didn’t.

His face had gone the color of the fields, and he was walking slightly bent. As he reached me, he put that hand out and gripped my shoulder. I let him, watching him actively avoid taking a proper deep breath.

"You got here," he said.

"All three of us."

"...Right." He took a slow, carefully shallow breath. "Good."

That was the entire speech. It was also the entire speech either of us needed. I looked at the hand that went straight back to his chest, then at the grey in his face, and decided whatever lie he was about to tell me could wait ten minutes.

[That’s easily a rib... One hundred percent... Mr. Norton’s going to have an absolute fucking field day with him.]

Then Kara came around the tail of the truck. The Gen-12 was hanging from her shoulder, her hair fallen across half her face.

She stopped six feet from me. Pushed the hair back with one sweep of her arm. And everything she’d been holding in for the last twenty-one minutes came out at once.

"YOU SAID FOURTEEN MINUTES!"

I blinked. "...I flew as fast as it goes."

"You said fourteen!" She took another step. "It was twenty-one!"

And before she could launch into her scolding-

"Mea."

Tikki launched himself off my shoulder in one long, flat leap, straight into Kara’s chest.

She caught him without looking, both arms folding around him before her brain got a vote, while Tikki shoved his head beneath her chin and immediately went completely boneless.

And the very next moment, all the air left her in one long breath while she stood there with her eyes shut, her shoulders slowly coming down.

Finally, she opened her eyes and looked at me, and her voice was so quiet I almost had to read it off her lips.

"...I shot a man, Nikki."

"I know." I crossed the two steps between us and put my arms around both of them, her and the cat. "I heard it."

She stayed stiff for perhaps a second and a half before leaning into my chest plate. All I could smell was gun smoke and the inside of that truck.

"It’s okay," I said quietly into her hair. "You did nothing wrong..."

She didn’t answer. She let me hold her for exactly as long as she could stand being held in front of six strangers and her little sister. Then she stepped back, her chin lifted even though her eyes were still wet.

And that was Kara. Every last inch of her.

The last one out was Mr. Norton. Blood had somewhat dried down the side of his neck from his ear, and one lens of his glasses had cracked into a little star. He stepped out slowly, looked at me for a second, and then looked straight past me at the helicopter.

Nia was already coming across the road.

She had stepped out the moment his coat appeared in the doorway and crossed through the snow without hurrying, without stopping. Six rifles tracked her the entire way. She didn’t look at a single one.

Norton walked out to meet her. Neither of them said a word as he put both hands on her face. She put hers on his.

And they stood there in the middle of the road while snow came down between them. A father and daughter. After nearly a week. After almost losing her to the virus. After leaving her laying there in that sickbay all because a letter asked him to.

Neither of them said anything about it. They just stood there for a beat. Then another. And somehow that second beat was longer than anybody watching could stand.

Eventually, Norton lowered his hands. Then he took hold of her right arm, the one that had been in a sling the last time he’d seen her, and he turned it over, bent it at the elbow, and examined the shoulder.

"This was broken," he said, his voice quiet.

"Was~" Nia gave him a little smile. "Turns out all it needed was a couple of little black injectors and a truly horrible week."

"Rotate it."

She did, and Norton watched the joint move with an unblinking gaze.

Then Nia took him by both elbows, and picked him straight off the ground. All of him. Coat, glasses, medical bag, and blood. She held him there at eye level for one full second, then placed him neatly back in the snow as though he was some plastic furniture.

"Also that~" She tilted her head with a grin.

Mr. Norton stood there with his mouth slightly open for a moment. Then he took off his glasses, cleaned the good lens against his coat, put them back on, and looked at her.

"...We will be discussing that."

And that was when I finally looked at the women.

Six of them, spread across the road. Their rifles were coming down one at a time now. A tall one in a barn coat, deer rifle held out in front of her like a broom. A small one with a revolver two sizes too big for her hand and a face that said she’d emptied it and would happily do it again. One who couldn’t stop shaking and was pretending very hard that she could. One chewing gum with her entire jaw. One with her boots planted wide and a pump gun across her chest, staring at Nia without looking away.

And the sixth one was staring straight at me.

She stood closest to me. About my age. Grey scarf pulled up over her mouth, a hunting rifle hanging loosely from one hand, while her eyes kept moving from my shoulder... to Kara’s arms... to Tikki... then back to my shoulder.

[What? What is it? Is there blood on me? But there’s always blood on me.]

She pulled the scarf down, looked at me properly, and said, very quietly, "...It’s you."

[Do I know her? I don’t know her. Did we meet at a bar before the world ended? No, chronologically speaking, I barely had time for bars... and I’m pretty sure I’m still a virgin in this timeline... Maybe I was shit-faced drunk?]

"I’m sorry," I said, scratching my cheek. "Have we-"

"At that mafia compound..." Her eyes hadn’t moved from Tikki. "You had that cat on your shoulder that day too... and you were covered in..."

Her gaze flicked briefly toward the bodies in the road before continuing.

"You were covered in blood from head to toe..." She looked back at me. "And you had a shotgun that was somehow movie-quiet..."

The other five women had gone completely still.

She looked at me again, and this time there was something in her face that wasn’t fear.

"You’re the one who saved us from the basement of that mafia compound the very day this whole nightmare started... and you told us to go west."