Born of Silicon

Our watch continues silently as the outside light begins to disappear. Tonight would probably be a good time for them to attack, although fighting in near total darkness would be disastrous for anyone other than Ivy.

A scream suddenly rings out from the floor below. Fuck.

“Go.” Ivy says quickly while keeping her gun pointed at the entrance. 

I’m already turning before she says anything. I leave Lucas’ guns on the floor and draw my knife and pistol. Speed is king right now, I can’t be weighed down by those two. Every pound matters. 

I reach the stairs and leap, landing smoothly on the bottom floor and continuing my run. Taking a moment to check my surroundings, I see that nothings wrong? Or at least nobody’s about to kill us all.

Ian is on a makeshift cot, screaming and thrashing. Percy and some girl with only one arm are rushing over to him. 

I should probably help, shouldn’t I? What would I even do? 

Instead I head back upstairs and take my position next to Ivy. Preventing the bandits from trying to capitalize on the chaos is way more important.

“I think it was just a nightmare.” I report back to her.

“You think?” She asks as his screams continue to echo up the stairs.

“Either way Percy and some girl are taking care of it.”

“You really just left him?” Ivy asks disbelievingly.

“Look! I’m more focused on the bandits than some nightmare.” His screams finally fade, only to be replaced by soft sobbing. That’s probably loud enough for Ivy to hear. “See, they’re taking care of him.”

“You’re ridiculous.” She says with a soft smile.

It takes nearly ten minutes to calm him down. Glad to hear they’ve got that under control. If he’s unable to sleep, he’s not really going to be able to fight, and definitely shouldn’t be left on watch. 

It’s only the end of the second day since the last storm. Worst case scenario, it could be up to five days until the next one. Ivy has some sort of implant to let her stay awake for a few days, but if she uses that she’s useless for a solid week after she crashes. I don’t have anything besides my legs and ears so there’s zero chance of me staying awake for five fucking days.

God we left so unprepared.

“We’re going to have to sleep at some point.” I tell Ivy. “Wake me up if you see anything.”

“Will do. Sleep well.”

“That’s the goal.”

I unhook my sleeping bag from my backpack and lay it out next to Ivy. I make sure to leave the side unzipped, if anything goes down I need to be ready. No way am I dying with my pants down fighting against a sleeping bag. 

My stomach rumbles while I try to fall asleep, but I’ll fix that in the morning, maybe. The injured need food more than I do and the only other thing possible to eat is the chef downstairs. It doesn't matter how hungry I get, I’m never going to make anyone eat that.

My sleep is restless, full of imagining the horrors everyone must have gone through downstairs. 

One thing I learned early in my life is how to not scream at nightmares. Too often that would have led to my death. 

Ian downstairs never got the same lesson. He wakes up screaming every hour like clockwork. It takes a lot less than that to wake me up, even Ivy shifting does it sometimes. My ears don’t exactly have an off switch. Not to say I’d turn them off even if they did. They’ve saved me a few times.

When I finally give up on getting a good night's sleep, a small amount of sunlight is filtering in through the front door. 

I feel almost worse than when I went to sleep. Whatever. I grab my morning ration of water and down it. The others can drink the filtered water, I’m not risking getting addicted.

“Sleep well?” Ivy asks once I finish my bottle.

“What do you fucking think?”

“Alright grumpy, sorry.” She’s not trying to hide her amusement.

I’m really not in the mood to talk. I can at least bury myself into figuring out rations. We each packed 3,000 calories per day. We each brought a week of food totaling 42,000 calories. There are now eight of us, which means we each get 750 a day. Fuck. I’ve always heard that eating less than 1,000 a day has the same effects as starving. I need less than everyone else because of my legs, but that doesn’t change the math much.

If we want to give everyone 1,000 calories that only gives us five days of food. It’s been two days since the last storm ended, so a week until we’re back with Vince at most. Shit, Ivy also gave everyone food yesterday too, so we’ve probably only got 4 days left. 

I can’t eat breakfast. At the very least I have some gum that I can pretend to eat. I pop a stick into my mouth and pass another to ivy.

“Breakfast time.”

“I’ll eat it later. You ok if I get some sleep?” She asks. I know how tired she must be.

“Sure.”

Ivy waits for me to get settled in next to her with both of Lucas’ weapons in position before she puts Vince’s rifle down. She doesn't even pull out her own sleeping bag, instead she just climbs in mine. 

I can hear her breathing slow as she only takes a few seconds to fall asleep. Hopefully she can get a little more rest than I did.

I settle into my watch and try to ignore my complaining stomach. The gum helps, but it certainly doesn't fix anything.

Is there anything else I could be doing right now? No, if the front doors weren’t open I could set up some traps, but for now it’s just too dangerous. 

It looks like Ivy’s been using our two other shotguns as single-use backup weapons, so at least they aren’t going to waste. As for the grenades we should think about tossing them out from one of the higher floors, but only when Ian and Percy are capable of fighting. I’m not itching to poke the bear without every possible advantage. Plus the longer we wait, the more desperate for Marrow they get. If it’s not in their system they might be easier to kill.

Can we sneak out? Not with the injured people, because I wasted the shaped charge like an idiot. The walls are a mess of welded metal reinforced with rebar and wood, all using concrete as glue. Sure there are some potentially loose bits, but not nearly enough to break through. We can’t get out and nobody can get in, I hope. 

Ian’s screams rip me out of my thoughts once again. Another nightmare. Ivy jerks to attention, grabbing Vince’s rifle and rolling into a fighting position nearly instantly. It’s only after a few heartbeats that she realizes what’s happening. She drops back into my sleeping bag silently. Welcome to the club. 

I can’t believe he’s still going downstairs, I would have thought he would have collapsed from exhaustion by now. He can’t actually be getting any benefit from his hour-long naps. How did Percy get his tongue cut out instead of Ian? 

That’s not funny, don’t think like that.

Maybe it’s a little funny.

Finally they get him to calm down. At least it gets a little shorter every time. No idea if it’s from exhaustion or because he’s getting used to it. You do get used to it, but that doesn't mean it gets easier.

Behind me, I can hear someone walking up the stairs. I keep one gun on the door and one on the stairs. A tall woman appears with long, matted hair. It’s so caked in blood that I can only see a few spots where her natural black color is peaking through. She’s wearing clothes that are way too big for her and are equally covered in blood. One of the sleeves has no arm sticking out of it. She has a dozen repurposed butchering and cooking tools stuck in her belt, most of which are shiny and have been recently cleaned. 

“Ivy!” She says just before she sees me without even blinking at the gun in her face. “Or, Cassie right? I need to talk to the two of you.”

I roll Ivy out of my bag and turn my focus back to the front door. Her eyes open but she makes no effort to stand up.

“Oh, hi Blackwell.” She says casually from her spot on the ground.

“Ivy, Bernie’s turned south and Valerie isn’t far behind. I think they’re both infected.”

Ivy’s face turns serious and she stands up. 

“How long will they last?”

“Bernie won’t last the night how he is now and Valerie probably won’t last more than two or three without antibiotics.”

“Can’t you just cut off the infected bits?” I offer.

“Oh yeah, of course. Why didn’t I think of that? Let me just amputate his chest real quick.” She layers the sarcasm on thick.

Dick, but I probably deserved that.

“Cassie,” Ivy says. “Do you think you can make it to the tower?”

“Not unless you’ve got another shaped charge or a parachute in your pants. Can’t imagine the skyscraper we snuck in would be happy to see me.”

“Great. Give me a minute to check what’s going on outside then.”

She grabs both rifles and heads upstairs. I still don’t move from my spot even if there is a woman behind me covered in blood with a dozen knives. I can probably draw my knife quickly enough if she tried to attack me.

“We’ll get them home, somehow.” I do my best to reassure Blackwell. “Just make sure everyone else is ready to move.”

“Bernie and Val are on stretchers already, I’m just not sure how we’re going to carry them.”

“The three of us can probably carry the two of them. My legs can take it.” I bang on the side of my pants, creating a muffled metal noise to demonstrate.

A few minutes later Ivy comes back down the stairs.

“Still over a dozen of them out there.”

“What the fuck are they waiting for?”

“They’re in no rush to come back in. Looks like they got their hands on a runner.” Ivy says grimly.

“Shit.” Fucking cannibals! “I don’t like it, but we’ll make it work. We’ve got four pipe bombs, a flashbang, two shotguns, and a few other guns. Do you know how to shoot?” I ask Blackwell.

“I’m a doctor. I’m intimately familiar with the location of vital organs.”

“Good.” I pull out one of my pipe bombs and toss it to Ivy. “We on the same page?”

“I think we are.” Ivy says with a grin. She places down Vince’s rifle before heading upstairs. On the way she disables my two shotgun traps. “Here.” She tosses them to me before disappearing upstairs.

“Get Ian and Percy up here.” I pull four pills out of my pocket. I give Blackwell three and pop the remaining one. “Take one and give the others to them to wake them up.”

“What are these?”

“Caffeine pills.”

“Aren’t these expensive?”

“I’d rather be poor than dead. Go.” 

I grab a fruit bar from my bag and wolf it down. Soon enough Blackwell is helping the two of them up the stairs. Ian looks like hell, but it’ll all be over soon. One way or another. 

The three of them get into position. I hand one submachine gun to Blackwell, the other to Ian and Vince’s rifle to Percy, along with some ammo.

“Everyone ready?”

“I don’t even know what we’re doing.” Ian complains. He sounds exhausted, but the adrenaline should wake him up in a few seconds.

“Just shoot whatever comes in. We’re ready Ivy.”

I don’t have to talk much over my regular volume for Ivy to hear me. Her only response is the sound of a match striking.