AP5: 27, 28 & news (Patreon)

Finally have release dates for my next two book releases!

Engineer's Odyssey is planned for eBook and audio release on July 22

Apocalypse Parenting #4: Breaking Rules is planned for eBook, Kindle Unlimited, and audio release on August 26

You'll note that Engineer's Odyssey won't be on Kindle Unlimited, at least for the foreseeable future. That's because Amazon heavily limits what authors can do with titles that are available on Kindle Unlimited. Keeping it off that platform will let me experiment with other things, such as trying to get the book onto Hoopla, Kobo Plus, keeping it up on Royal Road as a completed fiction, and possibly other opportunities.

Chapter 27

Time until next Challenge: 10 days, 7 hours, 38 minutes

I woke up a few hours later. Despite the predawn hour, my nap had refreshed me, so I levered myself up on my elbows and looked around.  I was in row of other sleeping people in the trailer of a semi. 

That made a certain amount of sense: abandoned trucks were common, and with the synergy our drivers had in Animate Machinery, they’d be able to keep them going for a while. The big vehicles were something we had to protect from both smaller monsters and Titans, and without windows we’d need to keep travel slow so that plenty of defenders could walk alongside. Even with all that, trucks were still a better way of carrying our tired and wounded than stretchers, so I couldn’t say I was surprised to awake inside one.

I was surprised that the vehicle wasn’t moving.

With a wave to the woman standing sentry over the sleeping crowd, I carefully tiptoed to the open back of the truck and hopped out, immediately spotting a few new faces.

Did we meet up with the Fort Knox group already? I asked Ariel.

<No. Thirty-three contestants joined your force as you slept, but they were local residents.>

So they likely don’t have as many abilities as we do.

<Average ability total of new allies: 12.3.>

Ahead of the curve, but not too far ahead. At least most have their Specialties! They’re probably some of the strongest people in their little towns, then.

<Confirmed.>

I rounded the end of the cab, and it was immediately clear why we’d stopped: the road ahead was gone, the landscape churned into new peaks and ridges, like someone had swiped a knife across the top of a fresh jar of peanut butter.

I didn’t see or feel any Titans, even when I stood up on tiptoes, although I did spot Vince at the edge of a group of people gathered in serious discussion. “Road snake?” I called.

My husband turned, his face brightening momentarily as he saw me, then falling again in a frown. “Yeah. We just got to the edge of the area where Hamlet could start spawning new Titans a couple minutes ago. We took the snake down, but it had clearly been loose for at least an hour before we got here.”

 I frowned, doing the math. “Where’s the group from Fort Knox? They were headed toward us, right? Shouldn’t they be almost here?”

“They should have been,” Byron muttered.

I took his meaning instantly. “This wasn’t the only snake, was it?”

The entire group shook their heads, and Marie piped up. “Far from it. It looks like Hamlet popped them out along every major highway he could. Not just between here and Fort Defiance, but to the west and around the other Linked Users as well.”

I clenched my fists. Damn it. I wonder if someone up there knows the importance of logistics? Or if Hamlet figured it out?

I tried not to let my frustration show, keeping my voice optimistic as I spoke, “Well, that’s going to reduce the size of any Titan wave he can throw at us, at least for the next few days.”

“It’s going to make travel much harder, though,” Priya said. “Keeping people with us while they rest… We still have stretchers, but if two people are carrying each stretcher, and people need to sleep for eight hours, there’s no one left with their hands free to protect the group. We only have one earth-shaping specialist with us, and he doesn’t think he can flatten more than a mile of road before he’s too tired to keep going.”

I closed my eyes, thinking. “Well… anyone who didn’t suffer from ability exhaustion has only been awake for six or seven hours, and a bunch of us just got a solid nap. I can be up for the next day or so…”

“That takes care of the next few hours, but we won’t be out of trouble by then!” Priya said.

“How far off is the Fort Knox group?” I asked.

“Still about 90 miles,” Marie said. “We went 40 or so before we ran into this crap, but they’ve been dealing with it almost the whole time and getting the armored cars over it is hell. They were using Clairvoyants to survey the road damage, and it apparently extends the entire distance between us. Some gaps, of cousre, but not any big enough to be very useful. I just got word a little bit ago that they’re abandoning the fleet and coming toward us on foot.”

I peeked back at the semi truck trailer, flickering Analyze and thinking. 

“That’s a good call. The cars are useless to us if we don’t have roads to drive them on, but extra manpower will be welcome. As for us… let’s get our Improvised Equipment specialists over to that semi trailer. I want its wheels cut away and sturdy handholds rigged along the sides. It won’t be the most comfortable way to sleep, not with us going up and down steep hills, but twenty of us can easily carry another twenty that way. Even those of us who aren’t specialized for strength will be able to manage.”

A woman I knew only as one of our people with Improvised Equipment clapped her hands to her mouth, clearly excited. “Jonathan! You start on the handholds. Sharon, Garth, can you gather up all our sheets? If we rig hammocks on the inside, we can use some of the vertical space and likely fit more than twenty sleeping spots inside one semi cab, while keeping the people resting away from the floor and walls! The uneven ride won’t be as disruptive, and they’ll be safer.”

A tall man pointed finger guns at her as he backed away from the group. “On it!” 

A few others burst into motion, and the rest of the group relaxed slightly, glad to have a plan. 

“Well, that will let us keep going for a while,” Vince said. “I assume we’ll still have to deal with at least one more big attack before our reinforcements reach us?”

I consulted with Ariel. “Yeah, although it can’t be as big, and it’ll be hard for it to be as coordinated.”

“The terrain will mess up arrival times?” my husband asked.

I shook my head. “Not the way you mean. Hamlet can plot a course for each Titan to the destination, so he should be able to account for the terrain pretty well… but he can’t make them follow that course. They’ll likely do something pretty similar, but over big distances like these, there are going to be little changes he can’t predict that will throw things off, especially if there are any people in the area… and there are some. It’s not totally uninhabited. We won’t be able to move much, so we won’t be able to throw off their arrival times… but I’d still expect them to arrive over the course of a few minutes, not all at the same instant.”

“How many?” Flip asked. 

“Somewhere between 20 and 35.”

“That’s a big range.”

I shrugged. “It really depends on when he strikes. Like, right now he still can’t spawn any from the area behind us, so we’re looking at 14, tops. That’ll go up as we travel further, but he also used up some of the area ahead spawning the road snakes, so the number will go up and down depending on roads in the area, cities, that kind of thing.”

“What’s the earliest he could throw 35 at us?”

“Just over 30 miles.”

“Hmf,” Flip grunted. She made a face, and I could tell she wanted to comment, but we were all trying to restrain ourselves from offering feedback Hamlet could use. Speculating about his capabilities was one thing, but saying “I hope he does this” or “I don’t want him to do that” was another. Instead, she shook her head. “Well, we’ll stay alert and keep pushing forward. It looks like they have the trailer detached already, so we can probably start moving again in a few minutes.”

I made a low-power Announcement, keeping it in a tight beam directly to Marie, my janky version of Mental Speech: Can you ask leadership to reconsider flying to Fort Defiance? Ideally for all of us, but at least for Cassie and myself. If the roads have been destroyed everywhere, we’ll have to walk. That won’t get us there before the next Challenge. I know the twotwos are a risk, but so is spending the next ten days on the run in the open, no matter how many allies I can gather up.

Marie gave me a slight nod. They’re looking into it, she said. If we go for it, we’ll want to give Hamlet as little warning as possible, so they’re trying to use other excuses to get flyers in position to help, and we’d want to do it right after Hamlet throws another big assault at you.

I glanced at her, worried. We can’t wait too long, I Announced. Titan spawns will be lower everywhere for a while after that stunt he pulled with the snakes, but that won’t last. Some big cities are probably recovered already, and even rural areas will be able to produce another Titan a few days from now.

Marie sighed. We know.

Chapter 28

Time until next Challenge: 9 days, 23 hours, 52 minutes

“You’ve been on-duty since we started moving. Flip said we should take your spots.”

“No argument here,” I said, stepping away and yielding my spot to the new arrival. Behind me, Marie did the same.

The “handles” that had been welded to the semi truck trailer weren’t actually handles, but instead big pieces of scavenged rebar my allies had found somewhere, each long enough to pass completely under the truck bed and stick out several feet on each side, letting those of us on hauling duty use both hands - or alternate our hands - as we helped carry. It was a lot better than what I’d been thinking: after seven hours with only the shortest of breaks, I was already sore, but even with alien physics bullshit I could only imagine it would have been ten times worse if I’d been trying to carry things by a standard handle bolted to the side of the truck.

Things were going reasonably well. We were maintaining the gap between ourselves and the pursuing Threats, but we weren’t pulling farther ahead. Most of my allies had gotten at least a nap at this point, including Vince and my kids. I was still well-rested from my snooze earlier, and I wasn’t doing too poorly, even though I’d been on-duty carrying the trailer since. It hadn’t taken us long to realize that while we could have our physically-specialized people help carry the truck, it didn’t make a lot of sense. People like myself, Micah, and Byron were more than capable as long as there were enough of us on the job - and there were, with 15 hand-holds on each side - and we could help defend against little monsters, even locked in one place with our hands occupied.

People like Gavin, Vince, and Priya? They couldn’t do anything to the monsters if they couldn’t swing a weapon.

So they were our first line of protection, letting those of us with ranged and utility abilities handle the schlepping.

We were expecting another big onslaught soon.

Actually, we’d been expecting it for the past six miles or so. We were out of the area that had produced the last wave of Titans, and the only thing reducing the size of the next wave was the centi-snakes he’d made to tear up the highways. The major roads in the area were a bit denser here, so he could only chuck twenty or so Titans at us now, but I expected an attack soon anyway. Ariel had said that a small city ahead held four people with Intensifiers, so Hamlet could produce a Threat to join the wave of attackers. We could detour well around the Pylon itself, so a treezilla wouldn’t be able to threaten us, but a legoliath would be an unwelcome addition to any attack. The groundswimmer hive, maybe? Yeah, that would probably be his best bet. Even if the groundswimmers weren’t technically Titans, they were on the same level, and that Threat would be able to produce new ones to send after us until we detoured to shut it down or got out of range.

It’s lucky that none of the Threats he has available are hugely mobile, I thought.

<Mobility of any type is unusual for Threats,> Ariel told me. <Titans are mobile, but Threats are generally immobile, except insofar as they produce mobile offspring or scale with time and contestant deaths.>

I scowled. I’d quizzed Ariel on potential Threats the week prior, when we’d been expecting the legoliath, and that did match what I’d learned. There’d been a few variants that had moved, but none quickly. Most had been large and stationary, spawning smaller monsters to harass us or producing other difficult-to-ignore problems: toxic clouds that slowly poisoned people and saturated the landscape; hallucinogens that made it difficult to contestants to act rationally and tell friend from foe; long-range attacks that could bombard a vast area; or even diseases, subtle infections that wouldn’t show their effects until the disease had already spread. One threat in particular was minimally dangerous unless it killed someone, whereupon it would puppeteer the corpse as a minion that could use all the strength and abilities the person had in life. I’d asked Ariel if that one had been inspired by Earth horror movies, and she’d told me that it was a popular Threat that had seen use in over 200 previous Maffiyirs, so I guess aliens like zombie movies too.

I guess Threats aren’t really good assassination tools, I admitted reluctantly. They’re good for genocide, not murder. Going over the things I’d been told about, I had to admit that none would truly have been worse for us than what Hamlet had chosen: gas masks largely neutralized the ones that put out toxins or hallucinogens. The disease-spreading one would be trivial for us, because Ariel would recognize it and we could simply use Cure Disease preventatively before the infections spread or got too big to cure easily. The mega-zombie-maker would have to actually kill one of my defenders before it had a dangerous puppet to use, and there was zero chance we’d let it pull that off with its initial weak attackers, not forewarned as we were. That left it with the monster-spawners - and Hamlet had one of those available - and the bombardment-types, which I honestly wasn’t too frightened of. The treezillas’ prodigious throwing power put them on the edge of that type of Threat anyway.

I glanced at Marie and shot her a private Announcement. Where’s that group from Mammoth Caves?

Still heading toward us, she responded. They’re a little over 13 miles away. 

Hm. They might be able to get to us in time if Hamlet drops another assault, but only if both they and us really rush. I frowned. And there’s a city in between us. 

More like a town, but yeah. Glasgow, Kentucky. We’ll be reaching it soon, Marie confirmed.

I grimaced, then turned to the group and raised my voice. “Let’s try to pick up the pace for a bit!”

We’d gotten in touch with the group from Mammoth Caves only a couple hours before, one of the most pleasant surprises of the past two days. The National Park had been host to a few hundred people and park rangers when the apocalypse hit. They’d lost several people in the first day or so, but after that, they’d stabilized quickly. It had been relatively easy to block off the entrances of the park’s eponymous caves, creating large, spacious shelters that were proof against all the early monsters and even the first Titans. The campers and rangers had also been more physically fit than average, and they’d had many low-tech tools at their disposal, some belonging to the campers, some belonging to the campground. When they’d heard how close by our group would be passing, a huge proportion of their community had leapt at the chance to help. 

They had eight people with Intensifiers among their number who were staying behind, along with a large number of families, but we’d still have over 150 people joining us, each with at least ten abilities.

Cassie’s modified cloudcar was only a few feet away, and I jogged up next to it. My daughter had passed her next Points threshold during Hamlet’s first major assault. Pointy had used the boost in power to make her transport slightly larger. Then, when we’d run out of road, the turtle had swapped the wheels for robotic legs. It… honestly looked a little creepy, but it worked. Pointy had made the legs sparkly, which made Cassie happy, so I wasn’t about to complain. My three kids and Anju were inside, dozing, while Pointy drove. 

The little turtle glanced at me in alarm as I approached, but I shook my head. “Nothing yet. I’ll do an Announcement the moment Ariel spots anything. We should get at least 20 minutes warning, maybe more depending on what Titans Hamlet picks.”

Pointy looked at me skeptically. “I’m aware of the Titans’ travel time, Meghan.”

I gave her a rueful smile. “Sorry, a little stressed, I guess.”

“Gosh, why?”

I couldn’t help but laugh at such extreme sarcasm delivered in such an innocent squeaky voice. “You too?”

Pointy shrugged. “How could I not be? It doesn’t help that I have so little to focus on. I quite miss the broadcasts from the Voices for Non-Citizens, not to mention the local radio broadcasts with communications from the other Information Assistants. All I can do is sit and calculate and recalculate our odds of surviving the day, and our odds of surviving the week. It’s not… looking good, Meghan. We got a ton yesterday, but did you realize we’ve only gotten another 1% of land claimed in the past 24 hours?”

I stumbled a little. “No. I’ve been pretty focused on what’s in front of me. That’s… way less than I hoped.”

Pointy looked uncomfortable. “I predicted a reduction today. Everyone we’d been in contact with already spent their accumulated Money on the first day, so today would have just been people we’d newly made contact with, plus any additional earnings people made. And… there’s really no reason for people to visit a Shop every day to spend their Money. As long as they make it in before the end of the duodenary, it should work out about the same, and many people don’t have one convenient. They might be waiting, so they could make fewer trips. That would be logical in many ways. Even if we’re short by 10 or 12 percent a day before the challenge, there would still be a chance.”

“True,” I said. “That’s true. I’ll try to stay positive. I was just… hoping it would be something I didn’t need to stress about so much.”

“You and me both,” Pointy said.

I sighed, looking for something to distract us both. “Any chance you can help me fill in some of the gaps in my memory? I know your cultural datapack isn’t super detailed, but…”

“But it’s better than nothing,” Pointy agreed. “Plus, I’ve done significant reading and ah, listening in, during my past few months of life. I mean, at least I know what a Rickroll is.”

“Which is…?

“That song that Andy started singing to you before everyone laughed.”

I wrinkled my nose. “I don’t understand why that was funny. Did it mean he was going to let me down or something?”

“No, no! You see…”

Pointy started to explain, which led to an enjoyable (if mystifying) discussion of internet memes in general, complete with the occasional projected visual aid that attracted the attention of some of the others walking with me. Once they found out what we were doing, they were quick to shout out suggestions for my cultural re-education, leading to cheers when Pointy knew the reference and groans and attempted explanations when she didn’t. Apparently there was something subtly wrong with her version of “nyan cat,” but no one could satisfactorily explain what. I mean it was… a pastry cat farting a rainbow? How precise did something like that need to be?

Even if it was hard for me to really grasp the significance of any of this, it was silly and fun enough for me to enjoy. The impact on the morale of my allies was undeniable, so I kept asking questions, even if I felt a little self-conscious about my missing memories. We passed a relaxing half-hour until we reached the outskirts of the town of Glasgow, which is when Hamlet decided to strike.