29 – Reconnaissance

Andy clutched his new spear haft, smiling at how James had smoothed and tapered the end to fit perfectly into the steel spearhead the System had given him. It had a proper heft to it now and was quite a bit longer than his old shovel handle. With the spearhead attached, it was a good foot taller than Andy, making it something like seven feet long. More than the size and the weight, Andy was glad to have a genuinely hard piece of wood that he could rely on with some of his spear-fighting techniques for blocking and leveraging larger opponents.

He’d thanked the man, promised to make it back before sunrise, and then headed to the gate where he now stood facing Tucker, who seemed determined to stay on gate duty through the night. Andy had a feeling he was one of those people who liked to stay up all night and sleep during the day.

“You all set, boss?” the man asked, eyeing the spear.

“Just about, buddy.” Andy couldn’t help but find it strange that a thirty-something guy was being so deferential to him, but he was determined to just go with it. “Gimme a sec to space out. I wanna think about my skills and stuff for a sec.” He spoke more to Lucy, who’d just walked over, than Tucker, but they both nodded, and Lucy turned to face the partially open gate, her bow held ready as she scanned the darkness.

Following her gaze out into the shadows of the Sonoran Desert, Andy was reminded of his attempt to spy on the four men he’d encountered and, of course, his current quest to spy on their settlement. Maybe it was time to put some more points into perception. Maybe another point into Shadow Vigil wouldn’t hurt, either. He had three free points, and they weren’t doing him any good sitting in his bank. As rare as they may be, he certainly hadn’t had any trouble earning them.

He called up his status sheet and stared at the Shadow Vigil skill, getting a look at the description again:

Shadow Vigil – innate: Your senses adapt to the darkness, granting heightened awareness in low-light or shadowed environments. Hidden enemies and subtle movements are easier to detect.

It was innate, so he'd have the skill even if he changed his class. Was it better than simple perception? Andy thought about the term, perception, for a minute. You didn’t simply perceive things with your senses, did you? You could perceive someone’s duplicity or perceive a connection between one idea and another. It was almost like an intelligence attribute, in that regard, wasn’t it?

He felt like it was a safe conclusion that perception was more generally

valuable than Shadow Vigil, but when it came to spying in the dark, Shadow Vigil was probably king. Considering that he didn’t intend to spend the majority of his life spying in the dark, Andy put two points into his perception attribute and one point into Shadow Vigil.

This time, when he closed his status sheet to make the selection final, he focused on the darkness, staring at a cholla cactus shrouded in shadow. To his amazement, as hot tingles spread over his scalp and fuzzy electric static exploded behind his eyes and ears, he witnessed the cactus coming into focus as the hundreds of plump green segments and their spines clarified out of the shadows.

“Andy,” Lucy said, “your eyes just glowed for a few seconds.”

Andy blinked, moving his gaze to her face. “Yeah? I just upgraded a skill to see better in the dark.”

She nodded. “That’s an interesting class you have.”

Andy noted a tiny frown at the corner of her mouth and, if he wasn’t wrong, a little shudder or shiver that made her shoulders twitch. Was she…scared of him? Was it his damn notable distinctions? Mark of the Predator said something about the “weak fleeing from his presence.” Was it affecting how lower-level people viewed him?

He tried to smile as genuinely as possible and nodded toward the gate. “Guess I’m off, then.” She smiled back, but it looked forced, and when her eyes shifted in the direction of her trailer, Andy connected the dots. She was still suffering from the death of her brother, and why wouldn’t she? It had been all of two days. “Hey,” he said, pausing with his hand on the gate. “My trailer’s empty if you want to crash there for the night.”

Her smile brightened, and it looked more real to him. “Thanks, Andy. I, um—I keep thinking about Steve when I’m back at our place.”

He nodded. “No sweat. Get some sleep, though, ’cause I have a feeling tomorrow’s gonna be interesting.” He pushed the gate open and jogged through, then turned and waved his free hand. “Later, Tucker.”

As he ran into the desert, aiming southwest toward Wentworth Road, a major thoroughfare that would take him right to Construction City, Andy couldn’t help noting how much brighter and clearer the desert was. He could see a lot further and pick out the movements of animals and…creatures, large and small. He saw another gigantic reptile, and, in the distance off to his left, he saw a pack of squat humanoid figures—at least nine of them. He wondered if they were more “goblinoids” or something altogether different.

If he weren’t trying to hurry, and if he didn’t already have enough problems to deal with, he might have investigated. As it was, he just activated Twilight Steps and left them in the dust, slipping near-noiselessly through the shadows. That happened several times, but it was easy for Andy to avoid trouble, at least the kind of trouble that was in the desert on night two of the apocalypse.

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He had to assume he wasn’t the only one gaining skills and magic. The System was impartial, right? If so, that meant the monsters would become more and more dangerous…and so would the people.

At one point, Andy followed a wash, using it to guide his progress toward the city, and his mind zoned out a bit as he thought about Lucy, reflecting on how he’d read her emotions—noticing the little twitches of her eyes and her micro expressions. He had to assume that was due to his much-improved perception. He didn’t regret putting those points into the attribute; it seemed like it would help a lot in ways he hadn’t even imagined.

He avoided another pack of creatures—a dozen squat bipedal creatures rooting around a cluster of prickly pear cacti, eating the thorny pads with their enormous, tusk-filled mouths. They were so engrossed in the feast, grunting and squealing, that Andy easily avoided their attention. He couldn’t help wondering if they were mutated javelina.

By the time he put them well behind him and stopped his Twilight Steps to recover mana, he saw the moonlight reflecting off windshields in a long row of abandoned cars—he’d come to Wentworth Road. He slowed, hunkering in the deep shadows of a palo verde tree as he watched and listened.

As he observed, he thought about the fact that he’d just run four and a half miles through the desert in the middle of the night, and he wasn’t even tired. Sure, the temperature was much cooler than normal, thanks to whatever effects the mana was having on the Earth, but he figured he ought to be a bit tired. He’d been out running around all night! Thinking that, he realized he was thirsty, so he lifted his water skin to his mouth, gulping the refreshing spring water he’d filled it with.

Wiping the sweat from his brow, he continued watching the dark road and the seemingly endless train of abandoned vehicles. There was definite movement in the distance, accompanied by lots of animal noises coming out of the dark. He was on the city's outskirts now, far from downtown still, but there were big neighborhoods all over the place on the other side of that road. People or monsters had to number in the thousands out there.

With that sobering thought sinking in, Andy slipped through the barbed-wire fence and climbed the berm to the road. He saw an intersection to the south and jogged toward it, skulking in the shadows of the abandoned trucks and cars. As he got close enough to read the street signs in the light of the moon, he grinned. He’d come out pretty much exactly where he’d hoped; it was Tanque Verde Road, and Construction City was just about a quarter of a mile further south.

It was very strange to see an intersection he was so familiar with in such a state. Cars filled the streets, several of them wrecked, clearly having lost control during the storm when everything stopped working. Andy could only imagine how chaotic things must have been as people escaped their vehicles and started walking, only for half of them to start mutating. As that thought crossed his mind, he frowned, peering around. He’d anticipated more carnage.

It had been a couple of days, though—perhaps scavenger animals or monsters had cleaned up any obvious dead. Maybe the people of the “Hardhead Construction City” settlement had been cleaning up the area. The mystery didn’t remain long. As he crossed the intersection, hurriedly padding through an open area between a dead city bus and an overturned flatbed, something huffed and snorted.

It was a deep sound that reverberated in his chest, and some primal part of Andy knew it was big and that he ought to hide. He activated Twilight Step, aiming for the back of the flatbed and the mound of yard waste that had spilled out onto the street. No sooner had he crouched behind a pile of oleander branches than an enormous, twelve-legged, hairy worm-like thing meandered around the bus—the creature was almost half as big as the vehicle! As Andy watched, it lifted one of its forelimbs toward its tooth-lined maw and stuffed half of a human corpse into it.

As it munched, crunching bones and drooling fluids down its chin, the creature lowered its head, snuffled, and shuffled down the road, thankfully toward the north. Andy watched its vaguely red, sparsely furred figure shuffling along and contemplated how anyone could kill something that big. The thought only crossed his mind because he could imagine it trying to eat him, and he had no idea what he might do other than flee.

Shaking his head in dismay and disgust, he turned back to the south and continued his skulking progress from vehicle to vehicle, until, on the left, he saw bright yellow-white blooms of light that looked distinctly like propane or butane lanterns. They were hung near the main entrance to a huge red and tan big-box store—Construction City. Andy could only imagine all the goods the survivors hunkered down in there had managed to scrounge. They clearly had plenty of lamps and gas to burn.

Andy hurried to an abandoned gas station just one side street away from the big building, and, crouching behind an abandoned sedan, he took in the scene. He could see that they’d pushed cars and other vehicles together, forming a kind of barrier around the parking lot in the front. The side facing Andy was fenced to protect the garden department.

He could see figures moving around in the lot behind the cars. If they had lanterns or torches or something like that, they weren’t lit. Even so, the two lamps hanging by the main doors shone brightly in the strangely dark urban setting, and Andy, with his Shadow Vigil, had no problem marking and counting the people patrolling. He saw two walking along the edges of the car wall and two others standing near the only opening—a gap blocked by rolling dumpsters. One more sat in a lawn chair atop an RV. It was the only vehicle they’d left in the center of the lot.

Andy shifted his gaze to the building but didn’t see anyone on the roof or by the doors. He figured there would probably be a guard inside, though. “How am I supposed to get intel from out here?” he whispered, scanning the lot again, hoping something would come to him. He supposed he could climb the fence and sneak closer to the side of the building, hoping to find some lax security near the garden entrance or in the back near the loading docks.

Gritting his teeth, suddenly a lot less confident in his ability to find something useful, Andy clutched his spear and slipped through the shadows, running parallel to the street, down the side of the Construction City lot. When he was well out of any light thrown by the lamps in the front, he darted to the fence and lay down on his stomach. From that position, only one of the watchers could see him—the guy walking the perimeter, scanning overtop the cars they’d pushed into a barrier.

He watched the patroller come his way, walking slowly, an actual crossbow in his hands. When the hooded figure paused, yawned, and turned to walk the other way, Andy poked his spear through the fence. He took a deep breath, then, like he was being chased by prison guards, he scaled the chain-link fence and dropped down on the other side.