The journey wasn’t going smoothly at all. Just getting the convoy of dozens of vehicles rolling took them far longer than he expected.

  Sure, it wasn’t all bad, they had raiders with radios throughout the convoy and spread their group out to provide heavy hitters. David and Camila leading, then the convoy with Mark and Katie and finally Sarah, Charlie and Carl bringing up the rear.

  They hit their first big problem as they exited the industrial areas around the airport. Scared and desperate people started flagging them down.

  Survivors who woke up after days in coma’s were now spread across the city now. They had no power, and were quickly getting a sense of how bad things were, either from the initial quest or just looking around. Many were afraid to move on their own and an organized convoy was their chance.

  They ground to a halt when this happened and inevitably more people emerged, people with questions and needs and worse, with children. All begging to be taken to safety.

  The first time this happened David and Camilla backed by a radio team were at the front of the convoy stopped in front of a series of large apartment buildings.

  Half a dozen people had emerged from the first of the three identical structures facing the street. The people were arguing that there were ‘things’ inside and they needed to go unit by unit to clear the place.

  The commotion had attracted more residents who were making a break from the other two buildings.

  Camila was engaged with the people, trying to reassure them and figure out if they could add them to their convoy. David was half-listening and realizing that this was going to be slow going.

  Then he saw it. An elderly woman had just emerged from the far building and was making her way over to them, a distance of less than a hundred yards. There was a burst of movement as the distinct low, fast moving shape of a mutant appeared in the door of the building she had just left.

  It rushed her, maybe twenty yards behind while they stood more than fifty away.

  “MUTANT! CONTACT AHEAD!!” David was running, pouring everything he had into speed, wishing he had more. How close did he need to be? He wasn’t sure but he knew from experience that the power of his magic dropped off rapidly with distance.

  Camila reacted later but she was a lot faster than him. He watched envious as she surged forward at full speed clearly triggering both her Boost and Charge skills, shooting past him and covering the distance faster than an Olympic sprinter.

  Each second it took her to arrive was an eternity as David strained to close the gap.

  One second, the creature halved the distance to the woman who had stopped when David shouted.

  Two seconds, the mutant reared up claws reaching to strike and the woman saw movement in the corner of her eye.

  Three seconds, tragedy, claws tore home and started the yank the surprised woman backwards.

  Four seconds, Camila’s crowbar was raised and she was closing in. The creature was starting to pull its prize back and paused, realizing it wouldn’t get clear without a fight.

  Then there was a chaotic mess of fighting as Camila and the creature collided and went tumbling away from the bleeding woman in a rush of metal, limbs and claws.

  David finally got close enough and threw magic.

  “HALT!”

  The creature was barely slowed but in a confrontation of this speed it still spelled disaster as Camila’s boosted strength allowed her crowbar to shatter a joint then with a vicious whirl get a stab of the flattened split end into the torso pinning the thing to the ground.

  Then the creature bucked awkwardly sheer strength allowing it to lift Camila into the air so it could twist free. It started to rise as Camila shifted to a more defensive stance crowbar ready to block.

  Then David arrived and ended the fight. He simply tackled the creature, trusting his defenses to tank any hits as he wrapped his arms around it and cast again.

  “HALT”

  At point blank range his power locked it down completely for multiple seconds. Which let the enraged Latina beside him make multiple brutal swings with her crowbar without opposition of any kind splattering him with dark blood as even tough hide gave way under the furious assault.

  When they were both sure that the thing was dead Camila wordlessly offered him a hand and hauled him to his feet as they turned to assess the damage.

  The old woman lay there in a growing pool of blood with Mark and both of the raiders other healers kneeling over her.

  “She doesn’t have health! I can’t stop the bleeding.”

  The female healer, Bridget he thought, sounded desperate.

  The other, a guy was pressing a wadded up something to a wound and calling out.

  “compression, stop the flow.”

  Then Mark pressed his hand to the wound in the woman’s neck ’s and there was a visible glow from his hand.

  Grimly, he repeated the casting. Then again.

  “It’s working, keep doing that, come on lady, stay with us!”

  After one more casting Mark finally spoke,

  “I think she’s stable. Bandage her, layer her in Infuse. Then we can move her to one of the vehicles. Bridget can you stay with her?”

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  “Yes boss. What is that spell you’re using?”

  “Cure wound. Keep advancing Infuse and you will get access to it. Crap efficiency but your target doesn’t need to spend health.”

  Mark was a little pale.

  “Really crap efficiency without target health. I’m basically tapped from saving one person.”

  Everyone was silent until Carl and David started yelling, organizing people and pushing raiders out to form a perimeter.

  They swept the buildings, it took them twenty minutes to move on and they picked up several hastily loaded passenger cars.

  That pattern marked the rest of their journey, as they were flagged down repeatedly by desperate people who saw or heard the convoy and made a break for it. Attacks often followed.

  David wasn’t driving anymore, they needed him ready to dismount and fight, they needed him watching their surroundings with spirits and after their first encounter with a large roving pack of zombies they needed him to carve through the undead. What they didn’t need was him being busy driving a heavy vehicle.

  David poured his XP into physical stats, choosing strength and agility to round out his initial build.

  They lost the race with the setting sun as they moved across the city picking people up and fighting. Each stop honed the raiders a little more and further enlarged the convoy. As long as they kept moving their fights were minor skirmishes easily handled by the now experienced raiders.

  Mostly it was zombies, the mutants were a lot less willing to get close to them and seemed to focus on picking off isolated targets.

  As they approached the safe zone they hit a real surprise, that probably shouldn’t have been unexpected. A traffic jam.

  They were still a mile from the safe zone when they saw the red tail lights lined up. Desperate people had clearly piled into their cars and tried to reach the zone. More than the roads could handle, probably more than there was space for anywhere near the park.

  Thousands of vehicles piled up. Presumably from every direction like the worst rush hour imaginable.

  “What do we do now?” the radio operator in the lead truck asked, sounding plaintive.

  David thought for a moment then asked Camila “Do you know an alternative route? One that would get us to the industrial site? Isn’t it sort of quarter the way round the safe zone from here?”

  Camila shook her head then picked up the radio. “Sarah, Katie, you were always better at this than me. Do you know a way to get to Dollar Tree from here, one that doesn’t use the main roads?”

  David looked quizzically at her.

  “Dollar tree is near the old mill site, I can find it from there.”

  After a moment Katie came back over the radio. “I think so, we need to back up and get off a couple of intersections ago.”

  This predictably caused chaos.

  As raiders dismounted to help those still driving back up David stretched his senses out pouring spirits out to sweep over the convoy and froze. There was no mistaking it, at the edge of his range up ahead he heard a death scream.

  Someone had killed a zombie near the road up ahead and the response was already rippling through the surrounding Nath.

  David grabbed the radio.

  “Heads up everyone. Someone up ahead just killed a zombie, we have a death scream and the Nath are reacting. I need four radio teams on me. Katie, can you take charge of the convoy and get us pointed in the right direction?”

  “Yes David. I’ll need enough people to cover all the survivors though.”

  Carl came back on the radio “David, whatcha thinking?”

  “Someone did something stupid and killed a zombie, maybe afraid it would get in their car. The people up ahead are going to get swarmed in the dark by angry zombies.”

  Unspoken was the fact that he wasn’t prepared to let that happen.

  “Understood. Look, it’ll be dark and probably chaotic with how you fight. Guns are less use than you think, especially with our training levels right now. Quality over quantity. Bring me, Charlie, Camila, Mark plus say one radio team, leave the rest for Katie to get this clusterfuck sorted.”

  “Good call. Any final suggestions?”

  With that they formed up and while Katie and Sarah stayed behind to move the convoy around David and his hastily assembled strike force started trotting along the road.

  People wound their windows down to ask what was going on, a few even got out of their cars.

  “Everyone, back in your cars, lock your doors and turn off your engines! There are hostiles incoming that will be attracted to loud noise and movement. STAY IN YOUR CAR!”

  The last was yelled at a middle-aged man who was out of his car standing in the road dealing with a kid in a car seat.

  Seeing a group of grim faced bloody, gun toting people jogging along the road most people got the idea and stayed put.

  As he got closer David focused on his spirit net, aware that in the darkness it would be easy for something to ambush them.

  After five minutes of running he saw exactly what he was afraid of, while the vehicles behind him were going dark and quiet, the ones ahead were fully lit up and he saw movement as zombie packs spilled onto the road, looking for things to attack.

  They found cars, and inevitably scared people made mistakes and attracted their attention. Shorn of mobility by the gridlock things were rapidly spiraling out of control when David and his group arrived.

  Immediately they started hitting the zombies.

  “Careful, there are civilians all around us! Get in close to the cars and watch your overshoot!”

  Carl was barking orders as he swept in, his SMG raised as he continued his practice of carefully placing single shots using his enhanced skills and leveraging his supernatural Dexterity.

  With him leading the gunners out in the middle of the road where they had the largely clear lanes heading away from the safe zone to shoot into and the raised concrete of the central reservation serving a literal stumbling block for zombies, he waved David to focus on the messier space where cars, people and zombies mixed.

  Camila and Mark both looked at David as he spoke tersely.

  “Hand to hand, we mix it up. Charlie Snipe but stay with Carl so you are covered.”

  Then the three of them surged forward into the mess with David’s power flowing out ahead of them like the tentacles of a kraken slapping down zombies.

  “Halt!”

  His use of power was more controlled that earlier, his target a group of four zombies attacking a car. He started ripping at the Nath immediately. The others moved in and killed two of the immobile zombies while David stripped the other two and then they were moving on.

  It was a steady brutal blitz, as the death screams mounted the focus on the zombies shifted more and more to them and David let rip with more of his power.

  As they decimated the undead something nagged at him. This wasn’t one of the big packs they had seen where free zombies tended to congregate and swarm. This was multiple smaller groups.

  Why?

  Things snapped into focus when they saw a family their car windows had been smashed and they were out of the vehicle keeping it between them and a trio of zombies.

  “On three, go round the back and run as fast as you can, get to the buildings and keep going. I’ll be right behind you. Don’t look back just go!”

  It was the plan of a desperate father, one who likely wouldn’t be going full tilt, just trying to make sure his family got out.

  It was smart, predictable. The defenders focusing on blocking the hunters they could see.

  Even as they closed in to resolve the situation rather more permanently David followed up on his hunch and flooded spirits towards the shops on the roadside.”

  Then he caught it. Not far from the road and up high. The soft muted buzz of a mutant, one trying to be quiet.

  “STAY BY YOUR CAR, STAY ON THE ROAD.” David roared to get the attention of the desperate family.

  “Charlie, look out high. Mutants! Everyone, heads up, we have mutants nearby.”

  Carl swore and fumbled with his gun snapping the under barrel torch on then swinging his gun up to scan the roof line.

  Charlie pulled a powerful torch off his belt and added another beam of light.

  Several pairs of eyes reflected the light from up near the roofline, then withdrew, clearly unhappy about being seen.

  David barked into the radio “Heads up all raiders. We have mutants up high, presume hostile but do NOT engage or pursue unless attacked.”

  They had little choice, the zombies were right there and already causing havoc among an ill-prepared population.

  The only question was whether the mutants were opportunistic? Or had they arranged for this whole thing?