Apocalypse: The Savior with System

18 A Past Knight

The three of them made a routine, half-domestic, half-whatever it was they did outside the house.

During the day, Rahu would go out to the woodlands to hunt and forage what they could eat. Judith cooked. Paul washed the dishes…and vacuumed.

In between meals they all guarded each other’s backs as they flitted from one building in the compound to the next, Rahu reviewing everything he had built—what was missing and what was left behind. Sometimes, Paul could see the strain on his face and he knew how it pained Rahu to see his work desecrated in this way.

The munitions factory, the offices, the storage area…all the buildings had been ransacked and damaged as much as they could be damaged without bringing the entire building down. Blueprints and designs never before seen had all been taken but it wasn’t that bothered Rahu.

The betrayal had hurt him on a personal level. And Paul came to know why when he bumped into a glass shelf by accident and picked up a framed photograph of a group of young people in their graduation togas. One of them, a handsome, East Coast old money-type boy was wearing an orange sash heavily decked with gold cords, reserved for the highest-ranked graduating student. It wasn’t Rahu.

Rahu could only be the giant of the bunch, orange-sashed, one arm slung around a golden-haired girl with the same sash but with a silver cord, the other around the other dude. It was unnerving to see a much younger version of Rahu Knight, teeth and gums bared in an open-mouthed grin. On his younger self, it looked nice. Paul imagined it won’t be at all nice to have Rahu smile like that now.

“That’s Yardley,” he heard Rahu say behind him. “Frank Yardley.”

“I take it he must have been the smartest of the bunch,” Paul muttered. “Rich, too.”

Rahu nodded absentmindedly, taking the photograph from Paul. “Yardley was a son from a wealthy winemaking family from Arkansas. Highly intelligent and a good all-around guy. We were classmates all throughout college, roommates, drinking buddies, and so on. I can say he knows almost everything about me just as I know things about him. I knew he didn’t want to go into the family business even if he loved his grandmother who ran the vineyard in Arkansas. He went into engineering against their wishes. After graduation, I invited him to share in my project.”

“All this?”

“All this.”

So they were friends who built their dreams together that was why the betrayal hurt deeper.

Paul looked at the picture again and asked, “Girlfriend?”

“That’s his wife, Samantha.”

Paul could feel there was a story there, once again seeing that flicker of pain on Rahu’s face, but declined to ask any more. Much as he now considered Rahu a friend and confidante, he didn’t know if Rahu thought of him the same way. Better to let sleeping dogs lie and all that where Rahu is concerned.

“We’ve been here four days, man, and there’s still no sign of him and his people coming here to attack us,” said Paul, moving to a wide window to gaze out at the wilderness surrounding the compound. “Do you think they still plan to attack?”

“He will,” Rahu said so surely that Paul wondered if Rahu actually wanted to be attacked. “He has a score to settle with me.”

“Shouldn’t it be the other way around?”

“I’ll let him score but I will win the battle,” Rahu pronounced. Paul opened his mouth and closed it again. This was Rahu’s turf and Rahu’s fight. Whatever it is that he needed to have out with Yardley, it has to happen first before they can all move on.

Why?

Because he needed Rahu with him, as selfish as that may sound. Even Judith reluctantly agreed to his observation when they talked in the kitchen early in the morning while Rahu hunted. Judith was of the belief that keeping Rahu with them was like insurance. Rahu had intimate knowledge of weapons, has the incredible strength of a hundred men even when sick, and was tightly connected to Pearse-Sachly in a way Judith was not. He might know things she doesn’t. When Paul asked her why she needed to know them herself, Judith clammed up, as usual.

Paul on the other hand just wanted him around and get them all to Dallas, where Rahu can get treated to slow down the virus’s effects. He didn’t labor all those days to keep Rahu alive just to let him rot…literally.

And he’s a good guy, Rahu Knight, despite what Judith or perhaps the world might say. The world badly needs a lot of good guys.

After Rahu made his inventory and revived some of the machines he needed to re-design and re-make the weapons that had been stolen, Paul went out and basked in the sun. He was getting a little suntanned, too. Yesterday, on a whim, he cleaned out and filled the large pool behind the house and stayed there, floating on an inflatable, unmindful of the hours until Judith called him in for dinner.

His industriousness paid off after another week when checking into his system, he was informed that his fireball skill had upgraded to level 7, evidenced by the previously gray-colored symbols that were now in red and orange. That level can now afford him to shoot several larger fireballs in quick succession, though that depleted his thermal energy faster. In recompense, his Conversion Level went up to Level 6 but that also meant he needed more of those resources. The system told him he needed a whopping ten tons of iron, copper, and silicon to complete the next upgrade.

“Ten tons?!” he exclaimed after finding out, causing Judith who had been washing the dishes this time to drop a plate. Rahu put down an out-dated engineering magazine he had been reading. “Where do I get ten tons of iron, copper, and silicon?!”

“Is it really that urgent to upgrade your system?” Rahu asked, removing the reading glasses that made him look like a cross between Hank McCoy from X-Men and Bruce Banner when he’s not angry and green.

Paul looked to Judith for help but Judith had already turned her back and continued to wash the dishes. “Not really, maybe,” Paul said sheepishly. “But if we want to get to Dallas unscathed, we can’t always depend on you and your guns, man. For one thing, and don’t get offended I’m just stating facts here, you’re sick. And bullets can only last so long. Zombies multiply at a rate we’ve never seen before and they seem like they’re somehow beginning to grow back their brains, too. Nuclear power would speed things up for my system, though. You don’t have a giant stash of plutonium and uranium here, do you?”

Rahu gazed into the distance for a long time before telling Paul, “I don’t have the nuclear energy, didn’t get government clearance for that even when I applied. But I have the other things you need.”

“Really? Where? The storage?”

“The storage, the munitions factory, the design lab, and this house.”

Paul blinked twice. And started laughing, swallowing the rest before noting the serious look on Rahu’s face.

“If you dig down to the foundations of all buildings, you can probably get more than those ten tons. Saves you the effort of foraging for your next upgrade. Just don’t touch the weapons because we need them.”

Paul didn’t know what to say. He just stared at Rahu for a good long while until he was able to say, “I’m not going to tear down your life’s work for this.”

Rahu grunted. “My life’s work is inside here,” he said, pointing a finger to his temple. “All this is expendable and can be rebuilt. Besides, it’s better to make use of them now in this way than to let my enemies use it for other things.”

Rahu gave him an inscrutable look but Paul in some way heard what Rahu didn’t say.

I’m dying, anyway. What use would I have for a factory? Or a nice house?

At that moment, Paul decided that whatever the reason they implanted the system into him was, he was only going to use it to protect those who needed protection, especially those like Rahu Knight, sufferer, sinner, and criminal, but was a good man at heart. Like a comrade-at-arms in the military, that was Rahu Knight to him.

In that vein, he needed to get Judith back to her own people quickly to develop a vaccine and help in research to make more of the serum that was saving Rahu’s life.

I’ll help you get better, man, if it’s the last thing I do, Paul swore in his mind.

We’ll make the world better.

The lights on the security console were still blinking, which meant the sensors were still sending signals back to him.

Which meant Rahu did not disable them even when he should have.

What are you planning, Rahu?

“Sir?”

Frank Yardley looked up at his secretary. The young woman had been a recent acquisition, a few years younger than what he preferred but the girl had a good head on her shoulders.

And a good mouth.

She handed him a phone. He glanced at the LED screen before putting it to his ear.

“Hello, Grandma,” he intoned gently, so different from the roiling emotions in his chest. “What’s going on? Are you well?”

His Grandma Bertha has always been his favorite relative. She was motherly while his own had been too busy with her socialite friends and extramarital affairs and an anchor while his father had been too heavy with his hand and condescension. He loved her as much as he loved those he had loved but even that could not make him want to be a vintner. And she never discouraged him from following his own dreams.

Even when those dreams had, in truth, been nothing more than a long and tedious project to make one man pay a debt he owed.

But Grandma Bertha did not need to know that.

“Oh, my dear boy, I’m all well and good! Just a bit of my arthritis acting up every once in a while but nothing a few pills can’t fix,” she cooed at the other end of the line. There was the noise of something like a blender in the background.

“Are you cooking right now?”

“Me? I make the best quality wine in these parts, not nice meals other grandmothers are used to making,” she teased. “I have a guest. A young lady. A very pretty young lady.”

Yardley glanced at his silent secretary to the side, who was neither very pretty nor young. But she served her purpose well. She served him well.

“When you’re not too busy with whatever it is you do there in Texas, come and visit, will you? I have a barrel that’s been aged perfectly. As my last living grandson, you should have the first glass.”

Many years ago, her words would have made him feel guilty enough to drop what he was doing and set off for Arkansas.

Now, he was so close to his goal, to finishing unfinished business. He cannot be distracted.

“I’ll see what I can do, Grandma, but don’t get your hopes up,” he tried saying in a kind but firm voice. “I’m sorry, Grandma but I can’t talk long.”

“I know, I know! Just…give me a call every once in a while? We only have each other now.”

“Of course, Grandma.”

“Okay, my boy. Bye.”

“Bye.”

He ended the call and handed the phone back to his secretary.

“Call the ops team,” he told her immediately, rising to his feet and leading the way out. “I want them in the meeting room in five minutes.”

“May I know the agenda for this meeting, sir?” she asked, following after him while hurriedly sending a text message to all people concerned.

Yardley stopped in front of a door and opened it to enter the meeting room.

“It’s time to go back to Knight Industries,” he replied.

Time to finally get back at Rahu Knight. For good.