AZU-1: Lifehack (9 page)

One component was clearly a battery of
some sort and it conveniently came with a charger, so she plugged
it in. The indicator on it showed it as dead, and she may as well
start charging it now.

One part looked vaguely like a muzzle,
another featured what looked like a brace for on the shoulder, and
one had an assembly for a trigger. She laid those out in logical
positions on the floor, and then looked over to the five other
chunks and the mass of other little pieces.

Hey. No problem.

Regan awoke with an imprint on her face
from the part she fell asleep on. She sat up, and looked at her
progress. Most of the big chunks were together, kinda. Some still
needed little parts matched up in between them.

The battery was charged now, too. She
grabbed a nearby bag of junk food and had breakfast while staring
at her little project, remembering where she left off.

This wasn’t good. Her best case
scenario was Harold being trapped in AutarLabs, and here she was
playing with a jigsaw puzzle.

Well, the best case scenario would be
that Harold was out, and safe long ago. But then that would mean
Regan went through all this for nothing.

In that case, the best case scenario
would be that she had dreamt all this, and would wake up in
Harold’s guest room with her biggest problem being her lack of a
job.

For that matter, maybe she should just
wish that Kris wasn’t a bitch. Then she wouldn’t have even come to
Autar. Regan allowed her idle thoughts to stray further on Kris.
The hate she had for Kris was now almost a comical distraction
compared to her current situation, and it made the work go faster.
It beat letting herself get trapped in hopelessness
again.

About an hour and a half after she woke
up she was convinced she had the weapon put together right. She
pulled the lining of the case out to get at the ammo and dropped
three slugs into the weapon’s ammo chamber. It only held three.
That left three in the case. There was some kind of paper showing
under one of them.

Regan pulled it out. It was a booklet
labeled ‘AP MASS IMPACT ACCELERATOR: MANUAL, MAINTENANCE AND
ASSEMBLY’

“
Fucking hell!” She kicked
the case across the floor. Ok, spilt milk. She had a big ‘AP’ gun,
and a big zombie to shoot with it.

She slung the hardware over her
shoulder, and gathered her usual traveling gear including the P90
and the remaining ammo for the AP weapon.

She stepped outside, and considered
testing the weapon. She aimed it at the ground ten meters ahead of
her or so, and flipped a switch onto ‘standby’. A light on the
battery came to life, and an ominous hum built up, fading to
silence after about four seconds. A little green light came
on.

She raised it to her shoulder, double
checked her aim, and pulled the trigger.

A sound that could only be described as
both dull and sharp erupted. Regan was tossed onto her back and the
weapon slipped free, and slid back another couple meters with an
odd rattling sound.

“
Oh - kay. Note to self.
Recoil.” She’d remember to have a better stance next time. She
should have figured. The lesson the P90 taught her the first time
she fired it came to mind. She sat up and looked at where she had
aimed. Yup, there was a hole.

A very tidy little hole, actually. The
ground around it looked ‘swollen’ around it, having been pushed
around by the impact. She got closer and looked down the hole. It
was deep enough that she couldn’t see the slug. Maybe dirt had
caved in behind it, she couldn’t tell. Either way, it should do the
trick.

~~~~~

Chapter 12: Assault

~~~~~

On the trip to AutarLabs when she felt
safe enough, she flipped through the AP weapon manual. She found
out that it could hook into the visors the same way the P90 did,
thankfully. She’d never be able to aim the monster at any decent
range otherwise. Finding the manual late was better than never. She
hadn’t even thought as far ahead as aiming it.

Her position from before was not an
option now. It was casually littered with zombies who may have very
well been remnants of the group that had been sent after her
before. She spotted them long before she was near and they didn’t
take notice of her. If she wanted she could have taken them out
easily at this range, but that would have alerted the rest and
she’d be running again before firing her new toy at the
General.

She snickered to herself, half with
confidence, and half at her confidence. It was not long ago that
she was cowering in a bank vault while local authorities fled,
and/or died. Now here she was planning this attack like she was
Rambo or something.

Focus. There’s a task at hand, and she
needed a new perch. About half a block away she saw a building that
looked like it would have a clear shot at the General’s position.
She entered it carefully, mindful of her blind corners and any
little sounds that might be waiting threats.

This small, three story office building
had no lights, its power cut off. Only the setting sun’s dusky
light lit the way through the various windows. It was a gloomier,
tighter space than she’d been forced into before.

Along the stairs, there were minor
signs of blood. Of course these days, ‘minor’ meant less than a
body’s worth. Debris littered the stairs as well. Paper scattered,
trampled and stained. An office chair with a bent leg. There had
been struggles here. Desperation still hung in the stale air. Regan
almost wanted to scream, just to shatter the oppressive
silence.

Regan made it to the roof, once again
in an open space with no hiding spots for ambushes. But it provided
no relief from the stairwell experiences.

The roof itself looked like it had been
a final stand for some poor souls. The stench of drying blood was
enough to choke on. Handprints along the ledge in one corner told
the story of someone pinned down, grabbing desperately for any
help. Regan’s imagination put herself there, under a few zombies.
Smearing her own blood, trying to scream while her throat was
ripped out.

Yeah. Nothing like an active
imagination to eradicate your confidence.

She closed her eyes for as long as she
dared, and tried to relax with a deep breath. The stench of the
blood wasn’t so horrible after you got used to it. So why was she
shaking?

She gripped her new toy.

FOCUS.

She tuned out the rest of the world and
efficiently set up her sniping position. Her brother was alive and
there wasn’t time to let other theories get in the way.

She hooked her visor up to the mass
accelerator gun and zoomed in on the Autar Labs grounds. Yup, the
General was there, pretty much as she left him; surrounded by an
organized barrier of guards.

There was another activity going on
though. There was a small group of zombies walking away from the
building, one of them carrying a computer case. What the heck? Were
the zombies looting?

The small group was let past the guard
lineup and Regan just watched as they disappeared down a nearby
street. Regan tried to figure out the relevance of this, but there
were no further answers being supplied here.

Another similar group was coming out of
the building. Whatever.

Regan took aim at the General and
checked the slugs in the accelerator. Using the ledge to steady her
aim, she lined up her shot to where she had tried to penetrate with
the P90 before.

The world faded away until there was
only Regan’s breathing, her finger, the trigger, and the
target.

She pulled back on the trigger until
that sound erupted from the accelerator again. This time she was
ready for the recoil with her foot planted hard against the floor
behind her. It still pushed her back from the ledge a
bit.

She looked back to the General. The
front glass of the building had shattered behind him and the
General had a sizeable hole in his abdomen which was gushing blood
and slowly sealing.

He was looking at her and so were about
thirty of his guards, who were approaching Regan’s perch. She
remembered the blood smears in the corner. No no no, No thank
you.

She took aim again, this time in a
different area on his torso.

That sharp yet dull sound rang out
again and again. More glass shattered and tile flooring inside was
fragmented as slugs that wreaked their havoc on the General just
kept going. He already looked pretty mangled but it was the one
shot that could not pass though him that ended him.

Regan’s final wild shot hit him just
below the neck, making a dull metallic sound as it hit. The zombies
approaching her stopped suddenly, as if stunned by the
sound.

The General seemed to melt as if he had
lost the will to hold his body together. The gruesome bits of him
slid apart onto the ground, and he was soon just a pile of
meat.

The zombies coming towards Regan and
all of the guards took a stunned moment, and then started behaving
like ‘normal’ zombies; wandering without purpose, some creating
mobs.

Without their General, they were
mindless. The group that was carrying a computer away as Regan
began firing was now gone, lost in the rest of the zombies, their
computer left dropped on the ground, case cracked open.

She waited on her rooftop for the
aimless zombies to wander away. Some went into Autarlabs and some
entered the building she was standing on, but by far the bulk of
them eventually just went away to haunt other areas of
Autar.

After about two hours of waiting for
the zombies to thin out and meander away, the sun was getting close
to setting.

In this time, two zombies had wandered
up to Regan’s rooftop. Regan had been very ready for them, and cut
them down easily.

The gunfire attracted another to come
up. Not wanting to attract any more, she tried another tactic. She
stood in one corner with the P90 in one hand and used her other
hand to drag the AP gun’s bulky case.

When the zombie started getting too
close for comfort, she ran to another corner of the rooftop. As the
zombie tried to follow, it ended up walking more or less parallel
to the edge of the roof.

Regan steadied her stance and swung the
bulky case, bashing the zombie against the edge. Its upper body
flopped over the edge, lower body still secure.

Not quite what Regan was going for, but
she’d take it. Gritting her teeth, she grabbed the zombie’s ankles
and tossed him over the edge. She stepped back, looking at her
hands, revolted that she had felt some of its skin. She heard it
land.

Looking over the edge, she saw it
slowly figuring out how to get standing again. When it got upright,
it looked around side to side. Regan bit her lips trying not to
laugh as it limped away in a randomly chosen direction.

In all the time since she had arrived,
Regan hadn’t spotted any activity in the window of Harold’s office.
She let out a deep sigh and decided the mob was about as dispersed
as it would ever get.

She gathered her gear and started down
the stairs. She spotted one more zombie along the way before she
made it out, but since it lingered far from the stairwell, it
wasn’t difficult to quietly sneak past. She remained vigilant
however. She didn’t want to have to fire another shot around here.
She also didn’t need another wound to speed up her
infection.

As she approached the AutarLabs
property she came to the broken computer that the small group had
been carrying. How many other computers had other groups taken off
with before she arrived, and why?

She envisioned a van somewhere on the
other side of town, with a zombie trying to sell stolen computers
out the back along with a coat full of ‘genuine’
watches.

The stench here was stronger than
anywhere she’d come across so far and it wasn’t all coming from the
General’s nearby body. Sure, this huge pile of decayed meat was a
significant factor, but so was his legion which had been standing
on guard for who knows how long.

This place above any other in Autar,
was stained.

Regan looked over to the General’s
shambled remains. It didn’t show any signs of having being one
giant being. It was now just parts of people, butchered. Sure
enough, Regan could make out the shape of a computer tower, ripped
open by one of her shots. Maybe the other computers were meant to
be the cores to other Generals. Hopefully those plans were ruined
at the same moment the other zombies returned to their normal,
pointless selves.

~~~~~

Chapter 13: Hollow Chysalis

~~~~~

The AutarLabs lobby appeared much like
when she first saw it, in some ways. But now the occasional aloof
business types were gone, replaced by four zombies who seemed
fascinated with something on the wall towards the far end. It was
one of the slugs from the accelerator, and it was pretty mangled.
That answered the question about re-using ammo.

Also thanks to the accelerator, little
bits of safety glass were scattered across the floor. They crunched
as she walked on them. She kept an eye on the little group of
zombies to see if they cared. They still seemed content to stare
and poke at the wall damage about ten yards away from Regan’s
chosen path.