Apocalypse: The Savior with System

20 Attack

Paul managed to complete his ten-ton requirement for a conversion upgrade in another two days although at a high cost. Gone were almost all the buildings in the compound save for Rahu’s house and the munitions factory. When Rahu was done outfitting weapons and other implements of warfare, he offered the factory, too. But Paul put his foot down and Rahu did not push him any further.

“Won’t he go toxic with all that metal and inorganic stuff in him?” Rahu asked Judith one night after an entire day of scrounging for scraps to add to Paul’s resource stash.

“It’s quite complicated to explain but in simple terms, it’s not Paul consuming the resources; it’s the system,” she answered. With a worried look towards Paul, she asked, “You’re not feeling unwell, are you?”

“It’s weird. I feel great! Better than how I’ve felt since my train broke down,” he told them, gazing at his hands. On the outside, he did not look much different but inside, he felt more alive than he had in years.

“We’ve never really tested the hormonal effects of the system so I can only hypothesize about it,” Judith added, heading over from the kitchen to the living room where a full display of guns, bullets, bombs, and other devices was placed on the long couch and the coffee table. “Is this what you’ve been doing at the factory?”

Nodding, Rahu picked up a sleek silver handgun, small enough to conceal in a jacket pocket. “I’ve just tinkered with some old designs, most of which were lost or stolen the last time I was here. Some of these things don’t need ammunition anymore. Yardley and I were experimenting on bullet-less firearms when—anyway, instead of bullets and gunpowder, I had the idea of using liquid-based ammunition. A bullet usually just enters a point of contact and that’s it. Some explode on contact and do much shearing damage. My liquid ammunition has two phases.”

Rahu opened a tablet and demonstrated it.

“My liquid ammo needs a container, of course, so it still has a bullet-shell casing,” he explained. “Once it’s propelled out of a firearm, the outer casing starts peeling off, and an arm’s length from its intended target, the first liquid phase blasts out.”

“Like shrapnel?” asked Paul.

“Like shrapnel,” said Rahu. “But not exactly. The first liquid phase is paralytic. It’s invisible and aerosolized. If the target has the misfortune of not having a mask or protective covering, a single droplet will cause instant non-fatal paralysis upon contact with skin.” Rahu pressed on the tablet screen and the inner chamber of a peeled-off bullet was revealed.

“And the second phase?” asked Judith.

“The second liquid phase is the fatal one, if it enters the body through a point that’s highly vascular or has a lot of vessels…or ends up in a vital organ. Because it’s liquid, once the inner casing shears through the point of contact, the substance is delivered and spreads out. All it needs is an open blood vessel to work…in theory. We’ve never had the time to test the second phase because of what happened.”

Paul caught Judith frowning. “I don’t know whether there’s a difference between a solid bullet and a liquid one. They’re both damaging.”

“Which is the point of weapons,” muttered Rahu, sighing. “So far, I have not used any of these on actual human beings. We have tested them on zombies, though.”

“Oh?” Judith’s voice had risen to half a decibel, which to Paul meant she wasn’t happy at all with what she just heard. “So that makes it okay, then? Zombies are people, too. They once were people too!”

Rahu’s eyes glinted dangerously and Paul decided it was time to stop the conversation before one—or two—of those weapons were tested.

“Okay, okay!” Paul gave a half-hearted laugh. Rahu looks away, frowning darkly at the ceiling. “I think we’re all just tired from a long day. Right? I’ve been bent at the waist all day in debris and—“

Paul was not able to finish talking when Rahu suddenly yelled, “Get down!” and was pushed hard to the floor then slid with a force to a far wall. The world exploded all around him and for many minutes, it seemed, he could not hear, only smell smoke, sulfur, and old cement. In the haze, he could make out Rahu’s crouched form behind the upended couch.

“Where’s Judith?!” Paul shouted.

“Pushed her to the kitchen!” Rahu yelled back, crawling forward to grab hold of the weapons he had been showing them earlier. Quickly, he slid a handful of them over to Paul. “Get the doctor!”

Paul scrambled from his position and darted to the kitchen, narrowly avoiding getting hit by a few bullets that were coming from the hole where the front door of the house used to be. He found Judith curled up behind the kitchen island, a small gun in her hand. A thin scratch marred her face.

“You okay?!” Paul asked worriedly, looking her over.

Judith nodded mutely, possibly in shock from the blast. “I’m okay.”

“Dammit!” he said under his breath, peering to the side of the counter to see Rahu making use of the flimsy couch and the haze to gather the other weapons to him. “They’ve found us.”

“They?”

Paul shrugged. He thought it didn’t matter anymore who found them. Yardley, highly likely, come to finally finish off Rahu. Or maybe those assassins who had been wanting to kill him. Or whoever it was that unleashed those zombies on the institute. The three of them—himself, Rahu, and Judith—were like fugitives hunted by others. Were those “others” working together, too?

But this was not the time for conspiracy theories. Paul knew he had to get his friends out of there first and quickly.

“Judith, listen to me. You know there’s a twin weapons vault under the house, right?”

Judith nodded. A shower of bullets rained on the house and they heard Rahu shout, “Stay down the both of you!”

“Yardley doesn’t know about that, I hope,” he told her, pulling her closer and almost face flat to the kitchen floor. “Go down there and stay there.”

“But—“

“That space is filled with things you can protect yourself with so don’t worry—“

“I’m not worried about myself!” she snapped.

Paul couldn’t help but grin. “Have I finally grown on you, Doc?”

Judith gave him an evil glare. Paul shook his head ruefully and told her in a firm voice, “Just trust me on this, okay? Rahu and I have been talking about this and no, I’m not sorry we didn’t tell you because you’re only going to disagree with everything.”

Judith, who had been preparing for a rebuttal, closed her mouth. Paul exhaled.

“Stay there until dawn,” Paul instructed her. “If none of us come for you by then, that vault has a secret door that will lead you back to the tunnel we entered the compound from. Remember?”

“I remember!”

“Right. At the end of that tunnel, there’s a bicycle—“

“A bicycle?!”

“Yeah, we’re quite short on cars and tanks as of the moment,” Paul said with as much levity as he could. “Go and get yourself to a safe zone or wherever that’s safe for you.”

Judith looked as if she wanted to say something but when her eyes shuttered, Paul knew she decided against it. With a curt nod, Judith crawled close to the floor towards the back of the house. Once he was assured she was out of the way, Paul went to Rahu amid another wave of bullets.

“She’s safe,” Paul told him. Rahu hands Paul a large carbine.

“Ready?” he asked Paul after grabbing what looked like a grenade.

“As planned,” answered Paul.

“Good.”

Rahu pulled the pin and threw it.

Yardley pulled off his earphones and watched in controlled fury as several of his men were blasted to pieces outward from the house by an explosion that was ten times more powerful than an ordinary hand grenade.

So the bastard has been tweaking things here, he thought grimly. One of team leaders spoke to him through a speaker inside the security van he was in.

“Sir, the house is surrounded but we’ve lost ten men from the front,” he was informed. “Do we proceed?”

“Yes.”

He didn’t care how many men he lost. Rahu Knight was a blight to his existence and needed to be exterminated.

The slight pause at the other end of the communications line told him his men weren’t of the same inclination as he was but he ignored it.

“Copy that, sir.”

In the succeeding minutes, his mounting fury became more and more evident as he watched nearly fifty of his deployed men get picked off one by one.

Rahu Knight may be among the best in using guns but it was quite impossible for him to do away with all those armed men so quickly, especially not when he’s been afflicted with the virus for many years now. Rahu was supposed to be dead all this time and yet he’s back to torment him. Rahu was not alone inside that house.

A gurgling sound came on the speaker. It was the team leader again but his voice was fainter now. “Sir…mission…fail…”

The three men and one woman inside the security van with him looked back at him, their eyes full of questions. Yardley gritted his teeth.

I built this place, too. I know this place, too, you sonofabitch! I’ll kill you, Rahu Knight. For Samantha. For my kid.

Without a sound, Yardley grabbed one of the men’s large guns and stalked out of the van.