*Boom boom. Boom boom boom scratch boom. Boom boom boom scratch boom. Boom boom scratch boom.* “When the night has come, and the land is dark, and the moon is the only light we’ll see.” The song ‘Stand by Me.’ played as I made my way to visit an old friend with his daughter. “Can you stop singing along with the songs?”

“No, I won’t be afraid. Oh, I won’t be afraid. What the fuck is that?” I turned down the song as I looked forward at the massive pile of cars in the middle of the road. The wave was big and fast enough to move cars, but thankfully, not strong enough to destroy most houses. The wave pushed all the vehicles together, but a large tanker truck had turned sideways and blocked the path forward, making the cars pile up.

I moved over as I stepped off the boat and onto the vehicles. “Milady.” As I held my hand out, she made a disgusted noise. “Please don’t ever say that again.” Grabbing her hand, I pull her onto the vehicle pile before storing the boat. “You need help climbing this?” Alice was a malnourished girl. I thought she was fourteen, but she was sixteen.

I had her mentally closer to Alex in age, but she was five years older than him. The power she gained did nothing for her physical capabilities, and she only practiced with no one around because she didn’t want anyone to know how cool she thought her magic was. She was on the lucky side. While Alex got a ten times speed boost, putting his speed higher than Usain Bolt’s, Alice could create and control fire.

Elemental manipulation was an extremely strong power, but it was a step behind physical material manipulation. Metal manipulation was possibly the strongest out of all the powers untrained, and it only grew stronger the higher the person raised their rank. By the time Negan died, he could elementalize his body, increasing his durability and making it so he could maneuver around the battlefield by manipulating himself. He could fly, just not for very long.

If I used anything but acid to blind him, it most likely wouldn’t have worked. We made it to the other side, and I resummoned the boat. That’s when I heard a very familiar sound. Someone was firing guns. “I hear guns. You get on this spare boat I’ll make, and I’ll go check it out… Going to need some good music for this, though, so give me a second.”

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Maria’s Point of View

I crouched behind the submerged vehicle with only my head and arms poking out of the water as I fired at the bank. Some geniuses thought that they could rob the bank because of the power outage, but this was one of the only places that retained its intrusion detection and could alert the police without power. The criminals were more bloodthirsty, which seemed to be normal now.

We had been working around the clock since the flood hit, and patrolling on a boat led me to a domestic dispute where the wife killed the husband, a fight where one of the men was almost stabbed to death, and mass looting of almost any place of business. I was tired, and only the spike of adrenaline I got from being fired on was keeping me on my feet.

The bone armor I was wearing was drawing most of the fire towards me. It wasn’t drawing all the fire, though. “I’m hit!” My officer partner yelled out as he took cover behind a pole. It wasn’t much for hiding, but with most of our bodies submerged in the water, it was hard to shoot or get shot. They didn’t train you on what to do when you get into a gunfight in chest-high water. 

My mind focused as it drowned out the sound of the rain, and the only thing I could hear was the gunfire and my own heart beating… Also, the song Freebird for some reason. The song was slowly getting louder and louder until it hit the vocal part, and I could see where the sound was coming from. “LORD HELP ME, I CAN’T CHA-EA-EA. LORD I CAN’T CHANGE! WON’T YOU FLYEIE FREEBIRD YEA!”

*BANG BANG BANG BANG* The gunmen all switched what they were shooting at to the boat as it slammed into the building, climbing it before it disappeared with a man jumping through the air, front, kicking one of the robbers. The waterproof stereo floated on the surface of the water as it still played the guitar solo of Freebird, and the men inside began to scream.

I recognized the man as he drove to the bank and couldn’t help but smile. We didn’t have a number on how many were inside, but as more voices rang out in pain and terror, I knew we had drastically underestimated how many robbers were inside. “W-Wait! We surrend-.” *Ack* His plea was interrupted and silenced by a bone spike piercing into him.

It hadn’t even been fifteen seconds before the building went silent, and the screams stopped ringing out. Only the sound of the police officer nearby, moaning from the pain of being shot, could be heard. “Clear! Uhh… Can you turn off the stereo? I really thought this fight was going to last longer.” The song still had another four minutes of the song left, but the vocals were done. I took aim, and he knew what I was doing as the stereo disappeared.

“Don’t! These stereos will be as good as gold once the flood ends.” I scoffed at his obvious lie. Ain't no one is going to pay more than fifty bucks for one of those cheap stereos. It must have been sentimental to him if he was willing to use his power like that. “Alright… Now that this is done… Is anyone alive in there?” The sound of water sloshing around could be heard as he moved around to check. “Nope. None of them could gain powers, so they weren’t worth keeping alive.”

“You can’t just kill people even if you’re helping the police.” “Listen… I don’t care about stuff like that. I’m taking their guns. You can come get your car after this flood is over. You’re welcome, by the way.” I couldn’t help but blush, as I only mentioned him killing people because that’s something the police should care about. My partner, who was still heaving from the pain of having his shoulder shot, smiled at me.

“You two… Should just fuck already.” I had the urge to fire and energy blast at him, but it took too much of my energy. If I did, I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t pass out. Our boat was shot full of holes, so we’d have to patch it before making our way back to the police station to report on the situation here. As I thought that, my father, who was out on patrol, came motoring up with the rest of the police on the larger boat.

“Everything okay here?” I caught my breath. “Y-yea… Just, everyone inside should be dead. That guy showed up again and helped us, but killed everyone.” We went inside the bank and… He was gone! Where the fuck, how? I wasn’t sure, I just knew that looking at the fifteen corpses inside the bank, they’d have eventually killed both of us with a lucky hit. With those numbers, they could have killed all the police if they were lucky enough.