Chapter 151: A Lot of Chewing

Nobody in that helicopter could look at me after Leo asked it.

Kara was looking at the box of tomato seedlings on the cabin floor, Nora was looking out the door past Nia’s boots at white fields with nothing in them, Mr. Norton had his glasses off and was polishing a lens that didn’t need polishing, and Leo, having finally asked, was staring straight at me like he was afraid to miss whatever showed up on my face.

Even Nia had her eyes on the trees.

[...Oh... They’re not scared of what’s out there. They’re scared of me. Of how a guy like me gets to a hundred and fifty million in nineteen days, because the only way they’ve ever seen me get anything is by killing whatever was standing in front of it.]

And honestly? Fair. Not even a week ago they’d watched me come home from a nuclear plant having poisoned a third of the country. A few days ago they’d heard me pitch robbing a rescue fort for its helicopters. Four days ago they’d watched me throw a rock through a man’s head from forty meters. Every one of them had thought, more than once, about what a guy like that does when he needs a number that big, and every one of them had landed on the same answer.

Never thought a day would come when the people I love the most would be afraid of me, of what I might do.

But then again, I wouldn’t be me if I was that easy to read.

"None," I said.

The intercom stayed dead quiet for about three seconds.

"C-Come again?" Leo managed.

"None... Nobody’s dying. The next hundred and fifty million doesn’t cost one human life..." I glanced back at Kara, who had finally looked up from the tomatoes. "I’ve had the plan since the porch at Ruth’s. I just didn’t tell you... needed some time to chew on it first..."

"That was a lot of chewing," Nora informed the door.

"A bit, yeah."

"Then what’s the plan?" Kara’s voice came out flat, but her eyes didn’t match it.

"The plan’s a mechanic I should’ve explained weeks ago and didn’t, because I’ve used it exactly once and forgot it was there." I held up one finger. "The System doesn’t just sell me stuff. It buys stuff too."

That turned Nora’s head right around.

"Buys what?"

"Anything I can fit in the Inventory, really." I tilted my head, dragging it back out of wherever I’d shelved it. "I touch a thing, it goes into the Inventory, and if I want, the System makes me an offer on it... Not a particularly good offer though... It lowballs everything, every time, and there’s no haggling with it, but it pays, and it pays instantly."

"So the two helicopters in there you don’t fly-" Leo started.

"Two helicopters. Fifty-odd RV rigs from two truck stops. Close to a hundred trailers full of whatever the truckers were hauling... A special sleeper truck I’m apparently only babysitting." I counted them off on my fingers, and Nia made a small noise at the door, and I ignored it. "All of it is worth a fortune, and all of it is completely useless to me. I can’t drive fifty trucks. But I can sell fifty trucks."

"Then why haven’t you?" Kara asked, which was the right question.

"Because of the catch... There’s always a catch." I turned in the seat so I could see all four of them. "There’s a daily selling limit. Right now it’s thirty grand a day... That’s the most the System will pay me in a day, total, no matter what I put in front of it... Sell it a truck worth two hundred thousand, it pays thirty and says thank you... Sell it a second truck the same day, it pays nothing, because the day’s spent."

"Thirty thousand," Kara repeated. "You spent four million on the prototype of a base."

"Yeah. Spending’s easy... selling isn’t, " I held up a second finger. "But the limit isn’t fixed... I can raise it. The System lets me double the limit any time I want, as many times as I want, on one condition, which is that I pay it an amount equal to whatever the limit is right now... Pay thirty grand, the limit’s sixty. Pay sixty, it’s one-twenty. Pay one-twenty, two-forty. It doesn’t make me wait a day between doublings, either... If I’ve got the credits, I can do ten of them sitting in this seat before we land."

Nora went quiet, counting, and it lasted about four seconds.

"That doesn’t work." She told the door first, then turned round and told me, nodding at me like some wise sage. "If you sell thirty and pay thirty to double it, you’ve got nothing left... You’d never keep any of it. The whole thing eats itself."

[Not even Enhanced Learning can save this girl...]

"You’re right. But only half right... It’s an investment. You pay for the rungs with money you already had, so that when you do start selling stuff worth millions, your daily limits can afford to pay you... Nobody pays for a ladder with the ladder."

"Then what pays for it?" Leo asked, and then answered himself before I could. "...Ferrow Point."

"Yep... Ferrow’s still paying me."

That got the quiet I expected.

"Every infected that dies because of something I did lands in my account as a kill," I went on, plainly, because there wasn’t a clever way to say it. "... And that river runs through a third of the country. There’s a dozen cities on it, big ones, small ones, villages relying entirely on it... and every one of them is full of infected, and infected are drawn to water... They go and stand in it. They drink it. That water’s basically poison since the day I lit the plant, and they’ve been dying in it in numbers I don’t want to think about, every hour, every day, and every single one of them is cedits..."

Kara’s face didn’t move. "You’re being paid for that."

"Every day. That’s why I could buy a base and eight injectors in two days without blinking. It’s a lot of money." I looked at her, because she deserved to see me say it. "It’s not a hundred and fifty million... Nothing’s a hundred and fifty million. And even if it got there on its own in nineteen days, I’m not betting Nia’s life on a trickle. But it pays for rungs."

Nia, from the door, without turning: "How romantic."

"So here’s the math." I held up the third finger, because Leo likes math and genuinely hoped some of it would rub off on Nora. "... Ten doublings take the limit from thirty thousand to about thirty million a day, and all ten together cost about thirty million in total... Thirteen would take it to two hundred and forty-odd million a day, and cost about two hundred and forty million... So I’m not doing thirteen. I’m doing ten. Thirty million a day is the line."

"You’ve got thirty million?" Leo’s eyebrows went up.

"No. I’ve got enough to keep two million aside for emergencies and buy the first few rungs today, which gets the limit into the low millions by tonight." I let him hear the rest of it. "... The other twenty-odd million has to come from somewhere... And as luck would have it, there’s a city between here and your place."

"Since when do you have this kind of financial discipline?" Kara had started to smile despite herself.

I simply rolled my eyes at her.

"So the truck stop was money," Leo said, slowly putting it together.

"The truck stop’s a lot of money, once the limit’s tall enough to sell stuff in there for what they’re actually worth... Well... Then there’s the Chinook and the Caracal... But the limit needs to increase first... and then the city of Marlow is an all-you-can-eat buffet..."

I’d been sitting on that since the porch, so I gave it to them in the order I’d worked it out, one piece at a time.

"Marlow had around two hundred thousand people before the fall, which means north of a hundred and ninety thousand infected now, most of them shamblers, every one of them worth a hundred and forty credits a head... and I’ve got the loudest thing in the world under my ass right now, a belly full of napalm, and a rule from Leo that says open ground only... So step one, I ring the bell over the city, pull them off the streets and into a car park, or stadium, and burn them... A few million a drop, more if they pack in tight... Three or four drops, and that’s pretty much the selling limit paid for."

Leo hadn’t said anything, but he’d stopped looking like he might be sick.

"Step two, once the blocks are empty, we go shopping... Marlow’s got a luxury car row, Lambos, Porsches, BMWs, three parking structures full of whatever people drove to work the day it ended... a jewelry district with diamonds and gold and platinum sitting in the windows... All of it worth a fortune and none of it any use to anyone alive. Cars go eight to a car carrier, the carrier goes into the Inventory as one item... Jewelry goes in the chest... We’re basically clearing the city of everything expensive in it, and I sell thirty million of it a day for a week."

I held a finger up before Kara could ask. "And step three’s the prize... The Bank of Marlow’s head office is downtown, there’s a vault under it, and in the vault there’s gold, a lot of gold... That’s the piece that gets sold last, on the day the limit’s tallest."

"And nobody-" Nora started.

"Nobody gets hurt who isn’t already dead." I put my hand back on the collective it didn’t need me to touch. "...That’s the whole plan... That’s our hundred and fifty. It’s a lot of flying and a lot of fire and a lot of touching expensive things, and it’s boring..."

Looking at their faces, one at a time, I said my piece, the reason this little plan existed at all.

"Nobody in this helicopter will ever have to watch me do anything again that they’d want to look away from. That I promise."

Nobody said anything for a full kilometer of white fields.

Then Leo breathed out and gave me a "Right," that sounded like a signed permit.

"Can you sell a mall?" Nora asked from the door.

[Yep, not even Enhanced Learning...]

But still, a kid’s curiosity must be satiated.

"Piece by piece."

"What about the building’s parts? The beams and stuff?"

"I’m gonna have to dismantle the place... bad return on investment."

Kara’s shoulders had come down about an inch.

Mr. Norton had his glasses back on as he informed the cabin

"I would like it noted... that I never once thought you’d hurt anyone here."

"Noted."

"I do believe you’d hurt a great many people."

"...Also noted... and agreed."