AZU-1: Lifehack Read online

  The only feature the General had besides the random mish mash, was a loose cable hanging out of its side. It didn’t look like a power cable. She zoomed tight on the suspicious cable and raised the P90 to aim.

  No good. The gun was so magnified through the goggles that it was impossible to even know if she even had it facing the right way, if it wasn’t for the fact that she could feel it in her hands.

  She looked around the building for hints about how things were inside. A few windows had lights on and one caught her eye. She counted what floor it was on. Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen. It was Harold’s lab. At least, it was the window he waved at her from before.

  She zoomed into it as tight as she could. She couldn’t see activity, but she couldn’t exactly see a lot inside other than the ceiling. He could be just a couple meters away from the window and be obscured thanks to Regan’s viewing angle. On the plus side, there were no signs of violence that she could see.

  That was it, she needed in there. She felt a bit more like she hadn’t just wasted her time. Now she just needed to get past the General and his troops.

  She zoomed back in on the General’s suspicious cable. She sat back and lifted the goggles onto the top of her head, and stared at the P90. She was still getting to know the weapon. She had taken long enough to figure out how to switch it from single shots to fully automatic firing, and she still didn’t know what the little cable on the bottom was for.

  A lightbulb turned on over her head. She felt like an idiot. She pulled the little cable out and found it plugged in quite nicely into the mysterious little socket on the side of the goggles. She put the goggles back on properly.

  The goggles displayed ‘wait....’ for a moment then popped up with ‘Accept weapon targeting data feed? Y/N’ Regan giggled at her stupidity, not having tried this before... but then, she didn’t have a need to.

  Now when she aimed a handy red icon waved around in front of her. She zoomed into the General. The aiming icon was shakier the more she zoomed in. The minor unintentional movements in her aim counted for more at long range, but she could deal with it. She aimed at the cable sticking out of his side. It must be important. She switched to single shots.

  She fired and missed. She quickly fired again and hit the cable, severing it. It fell to the ground. The other end wasn’t attached to anything. It wasn’t important. However, shooting it off was not entirely without effects.

  She zoomed out a bit to see that the General had turned its eyeless head towards her. She zoomed out more and saw about thirty zombies headed her way. They weren’t moving faster than a brisk walk, but they were determined, they were focused, they were following orders.

  She switched to full-auto and targeted one of the approaching zombies. It fell easily enough, but the moment it did, another from the formation started towards her. She shot it, and again it was replaced. She debated just mowing them all down until she saw stray zombies coming from various directions to fill the gaps.

  The General..!

  She zoomed back to him, and traced the severed end of the cable, and visualized where it might be leading inside his body. She fired. The General’s body jerked back a little for a split second, and then the mounds of flesh moved and churned, putting more of itself in the way of Regan’s attack. It was using its flesh to defend whatever that cable belonged to and the P90 wasn’t getting through. Of course it was hard to tell even through the scope, but repeated rounds just seemed to hit like pebbles sinking into mud.

  Small groups of zombies that she hadn’t noticed before were joining in from most directions. Directly behind her still presented a clear path, and if she didn’t take it now, she’s be swamped soon enough. The zombies were still a fair way away but she had seen how these openings had a way of disappearing quickly. She pulled herself together and bolted. Looking back over her shoulder for a moment, she saw Harold’s window. She’d have to come back but she’d need a little help. She knew where to get it, too.

  ~~~

  Making her way though the city was slowly becoming routine. The aggravations of dodging groups of zombies and staying sharp for the stragglers was no less hazardous, but she was getting a sense for how they behaved in general.

  They didn’t tend to pay close attention to her if she was far enough away, unless she made a big sound. That wasn’t the kind of thing she wanted to bet on though. Their random ambling around made any non-secure places a risk to linger in. It was starting to make a bit of sense. At least it had a pattern. They liked to be near others. They ambled around and if they found other zombies, they’d stick together for a while, often creating these big mobs. If they instead found someone alive, well… yeah. Chomp. Welcome to the club. It was all very heartwarming.

  Regan felt her little head wound. She didn’t want to be in the club. It had been quite a while now. Did she manage to avoid getting infected, or did a small wound just take longer to convert you?

  Some aspects of their behavior were a little beyond her. Many of them seemed attracted to truly tacky things. As she traveled, she spotted a mound of bodies, some motionless, some shifting. Sticking out of the mound were about two dozen pink, plastic, flamingo lawn ornaments. Zombie art. Wonderful.

  She made it to her destination, the crashed airlimb. It was much as she left it, minus the mob that chased her away.

  The two zombies she’d gunned down were still there on the ground, but they looked like they’d been decaying for ages, not overnight. Even the skeletal structure appeared to be rotting. Exposed bones were much thinner. The head and rib cages seemed far more collapsed than her shots would seem to account for.

  Regan decided to keep clear in case they were somehow diseased. This precaution felt a little silly given the bite on the back of her head, but it didn’t hurt to keep clear of them.

  She went back to the armoury compartment, and uncovered the container she had seen before. ‘AP MASS IMPACT ACCELERATOR’. She knew AP meant ‘armour piercing’. Hopefully it would apply to fleshy armour. She pulled the dull-green metal container out to get a better look at it. About a meter long and thirty centimeters wide, it had little wheels on one end and a handle on the other so it could be dragged along like luggage.

  Ignoring that for now, she opened the little latches on one side and flipped open the lid. To her dismay, it wasn’t assembled and ready to go. It was in about seven large pieces and had a sub-compartment of at least thirty little bits and pieces. And no instructions.

  She looked around the rest of the armoury for any kind of manual, but nothing useful could be found. A little label on the lining of the case pointed to the edge of the lining and said ‘AMMUNITION’. Sure enough, by lifting the edge Regan saw six large ‘bullets’, a couple centimeters across and about twelve centimeters long.

  That would have to be enough, since no more were to be found around the airlimb. She tinkered with the parts a bit, but it was soon apparent that it would take a long time to figure out. It wasn’t safe to dawdle here if she couldn’t keep her guard up.

  She threw some more P90 ammo into the box just because she was here again, and closed it up to drag it back to her little locker room fort. To ‘home’. Before she left she tried an experiment with a spare visor laying around. She turned it on and got it to access the network she had created before. With a little toying around, she was able to see though the second pair of goggles using her first set. She left the second pair on the floor, positioned to watch the entrances to the airlimb, and packed some extra goggles into the metal case.

  ~~~~~

  Chapter 11: Rally

  ~~~~~

  The sound of the case’s wheels going down the middle of the street attracted some attention here and there but thankfully no mobs. The stragglers that took a liking to her were spotted soon enough that she dispatched them at a safe distance.

  She made it ‘home’ to the locker room and checked to make sure she didn’t have any unwanted pests settle in while she was gone. She dumped her cargo on the flo
or near her little ‘laundry bed’ and took out one of the spare visors and some duct tape she had found, then went to the concession stand outside.

  She set up the goggles to her little network, and taped them to the wall inside the concession before picking out a ‘meal’, and returning to the locker room and barricading herself in.

  Well, the experiment worked. With her main visors, she could view the other two she set up. The interior of the crashed airlimb, (which currently had about five zombies roaming around it), and the concession. Ah, she could now keep a close eye on her precious treasure hoard of junk food. If she didn’t get out of Autar soon, she’d have to raid a grocery store or something. Artificially cheeze flavored food stuffs just aren’t a balanced diet.

  But then again, the infectious bite on the back of her head was probably a bigger worry. That thought slowed her down for a moment, and self pity wrapped itself snugly around her again.

  She curled up on her haphazard bed and closed her eyes. She didn’t feel like she was turning into a zombie. She looked okay in the mirror and the wound didn’t seem especially bad from what she could see through her hair, but she didn’t know anything about how these zombies worked. For all she knew, some mysterious growth was developing around her vital organs at that very moment, preparing to choke her from within or hijack her brain.

  What about Harold? She had no idea where he was, and her best hunch was vague at best, behind an army of corpses. Why did this have to happen?

  Things weren’t all peaches and sunshine before the zombies, but needing a job sure seemed like a small problem now. Things were great! She was with the one person in the world she could trust, and things... things were great.

  Then this mess. Even that bitch Kris would be welcome company now. What’s worse? Being alone in a city full of people who don’t care about you, or being alone in a city where they just want your body? And which was which?

  She realized she was crying and sat up, mentally scolding herself. There was work to do. She violently flipped open the lid to her new ‘AP mass impact-‘ thingy, and tried to focus on the puzzle of making it work.

  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.