It’s Not Easy Making Money In the Apocalypse - It’s Not Easy Making Money In the Apocalypse – V4 - Chapter 36

“Ahhh!”

“Wait, it’s me! Guh!”

As soon as the door opened, Zara emerged from the chamber while holding a piece of pipe like she was going to smash it over my head. Her eyes were seemingly closed, but when I spoke, they opened up and in her stunned state, she didn’t stop running. She ended up running right into me, and the pair of us went tumbling to the ground.

I had the breath knocked out of me as she landed on top of me, but a moment later, she looked up, and I could see clearly in her hood. She didn’t appear violent, feral, or dangerous. Rather, there were tears in her eyes, and I could only see her as vulnerable. These were those fearful revenants that Wastelanders spoke about? She was some bloodthirsty monster that would kill me as soon as look at me? I couldn’t see that at all. With her pale skin and delicate features, she was actually kind of cute.

“D-daniel… you’re alive.” She declared.

“C-can you get off me?” I said the first words that came to my head.

“O-oh!” She was on me in nearly the same way as I had fallen on her earlier.

She nimbly leaped off of me, her cheeks appearing red. Did that mean that her cardiovascular system worked? Didn’t you need blood pumping to get red cheeks? I shook my head and lifted the valve almost defensively. When she had fallen on me, it had slammed into my hip, which was still sore with a valve-shaped bruise.

“I found the way out,” I responded quickly.

I had hoped to catch Zara off guard and keep her from asking questions, but how could she be so easily turned? She narrowed her eyes and looked at me with a suspicious glare.

“What happened to the weapon?”

“Oh, um… well, I led it away from here, and then did another circle, but this time he caused a cave-in and was trapped under the rubble.” I declared.

I had naturally thought of an excuse beforehand. I wasn’t going to tell her that I had brought it with me to another world. She’d also want to see the body if I claimed I killed it. However, claiming it died in a cave-in was plausible. It was made even more plausible because I had seen a cave-in in the lab section. If one didn’t look too carefully, they could be forgiven for thinking the abomination perished under it.

Her suspicious expression relaxed and she let out a sigh. “I see… I thought when you closed that door that… well, I tried to open the door but I couldn’t do it. If you had died, I would have ended up perishing too.”

I lowered my head. “I’m sorry. I just reacted without thinking. I didn’t want you to get hurt.”

She seemed slightly startled by my words and spoke slowly. “I am a revenant, you know. I can eat humans.”

“You don’t need to eat humans, do you?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“Then, since I saved you, don’t eat anymore, okay?” I asked sheepishly. “We can call it even.”

She stared at me, but when it became clear she wasn’t going to say anything else, I stepped around her and walked into the pace that had been the abomination’s home. There was weird biomatter all over it. It seemed like it was some kind of mold-like substance. As I approached it, my Geiger counter started to erupt. I froze and then took a few steps back until my Geiger calmed down again.

“That’s some kind of mold.” Zara gestured to the weird biomatter.

It looked a bit like fungus or mold, but it was a translucent green and even seemed to produce a bit of light. There seemed to be some damage to the wall as if the abomination had been digging there. Various pipes had been ripped out of the wall, and there was a pool of water which was where the mold was growing from.

“I think the creature managed to live all of these years by eating that fungus.” Zara made a face.

“The MGV virus.” I declared. “It must have mutated some kind of fungus or something, and it infected the water-lines. Maybe this guy was trying to dig his way out and accidentally burst the line.”

Ultimately, it was some kind of radioactive mold that replicated very quickly. He ate and drank that all day, and in conjunction with the MGV virus, he had slowly been turned into that horrible creature. Was he originally one of the guards? A scientist? He could have been one of the janitors.

“The radiation is high.” I frowned. “You were there…”

She shook her head. “Don’t worry about me. Mutants aren’t easily affected by radiation. I’m immune.”

“I see…”

“Here, give me the valve. I’ll open the door. You can just run through to limit your exposure.”

I nodded, lifting the valve and handing it to her. She took it past the radioactive slime and then plugged it into the door. She started turning the valve, and the door started to open. She seemed to use all of her strength to do it, and the door made extremely loud and painful-sounding screeching noises. It took about five minutes before the door was completely open.

Taking a breath, I raced past the radiation. I knew I got a pretty heavy dose, but I’d worry about the rads later. The outside of the underground facility was a rather unremarkable basement. It showed the signs of aging, and more importantly, it showed the beginning of sunlight. Through various basement windows, the light was flooding through and it wasn’t difficult to navigate. I glanced over at Zara, and she gave a nod. The pair of us left the vault and headed up the stairway.

We ended up in a structure that was collapsed. It was difficult for me to say if this was a shop, a government building, or what. The walls had been torn away and there was nothing else to it.

“Cecelia?” I asked.

“Yeah, I’ve triangulated where we are. If you take the road down, you need to only travel two blocks to appear back at the hospital.”

I nodded in affirmation. It was just two blocks, but it was two blocks of mutant territory in the city. That was still a difficult journey if I had to say so myself.

“Do you know where you are?” I asked Zara.

She had been looking around as well and she turned back to me and nodded.  I do…”

“In that case, good luck.” I nodded, and then started in the direction Cecelia had told me to go.

“Y-you’re leaving?” Zara asked.

“Why wouldn’t I? You’re freed and we’re safe.”

“That’s true…” Zara grabbed her shoulder, looking slightly uncertain.

Before we could share much more conversation, there was the familiar pop sound of gunfire. It sounded like two forces were fighting against each other, and it sounded like it was happening roughly in the direction of the hospital. We shared a single glance, and then both started moving at once. I didn’t know why Zara was following me. Maybe she was just curious, but I was generally worried for the people at the hospital.

I moved a lot quicker than what I would usually consider safe travel in the wasteland. The hope was the sound of gunfire would repel anyone else who would be out and about at this time of day. Besides, Katarina had once told me that the safest time to travel was mornings. Most of the deadliest creatures only came out at night.

Two blocks weren’t too hard to travel, and we took a corner to see that there was indeed a class going on between the two groups. One group was inside the hospital, taking cover and taking pot shots to keep the other group back. That group was using the cars while shooting wildly into the hospital. I had feared that they would be beasts, but that wasn’t the case at all.

“Die, revenant scum!” Someone from the hospital shouted.

I recognized the voice to be Raven’s. I felt momentary happiness that she had made it back to the hospital safely, but that was followed by the confusion that they seemed to be in a fight for their lives.

“You’re the ones who attacked unprovoked!” One of the men shouted. “You killed my daughter. Don’t expect to make it out of that hospital alive.”

“I told you that it was beasts! Beasts captured and killed your daughter. We tried to save her.” Raven yelled back. “You’re just being ungrateful!”

“If you tried to save her, where is she? We killed all the beasts, but my daughter is nowhere in sight! I suspect you made up the story about that other person completely. Just admit your mistake and accept your death!”

It didn’t take much for the pair of us to realize what was going on. We made it halfway to the hospital when we slowed to a stop. My mind worked furiously. We had to de-escalate this situation. It was dangerous, and we didn’t want anyone getting hurt. I’d need to handle this very carefully.

“Dad!” Zara shouted out, causing the shooting to stop and every eye to turn to the pair of us. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Well, that was one way to do it.