I was sitting on the steps of the intact skyscraper I had noted earlier between two eerily paired men, though from my time in the wastes I had come across quite a few unlikely groups of people forced together by these circumstances. On one side was a man dressed in a cream coloured business suit, and though he lacked the perfect brown hat to sit atop his head he at least wore darkly tinted sunglasses and dirtied dress shoes. He also wore a white moustache across his upper lip and a white goatee hung down from his chin. The look was mind-boggling familiar, as though I had seen it somewhere on some sort of sign or paper of some sorts but I couldn’t quite place it. He was the one called Mr. Burke, or so he had introduced himself to me, even handing me a business card that outlined his name and job as a “contract manager” of sorts.

The one I cared more about was the guy on the other side for it was he who carried the gun that had nearly prodded my back earlier. He wore some sort of simplistic shirt with long pants and a belt and threw an old tattered leather vest overtop it all. Around his waist were clipped multitudes of ammunitions, and grenades, alongside some less identifiable things. His face was coated with a rough greying beard that was not quite thick and long nor was it loose and scraggly. It somehow fit in somewhere in the middle. His eyes shifted between myself and his gun, though it was hard to tell as his wrinkles progressively bunched up higher on his cheeks and gave him a squinting look even with his eyes wide open. His weapon looked like a metal auto-crossbow, a rarity I had only heard about that could automatically reload itself so the user could place the bolts in it and fire. But instead it turned out to be an energy weapon that required the drawing back of a metal “bowstring” with glass along it to bend and refract light and energy at the proper angles and the end result was a weapon that either fired a steady beam of energy or released it in small blasts. Either one of the options I did not like in my situation and was very glad that the charming Mr. Burke had stepped in and averted the fire, resulting in this situation.

“I can’t believe you still live kid.” It was the other guy speaking, who Mr. Burke had referenced to only as Manning. It struck me at this moment that anybody who was even fractionally older than me seemed to enjoy calling me kid. Was it my height? Did I have a young face? I wasn’t that young, at least not to myself, though I supposed if there is a thirty year difference between two people one of them is certainly young in comparison, even if it is a hundred year old person and a seventy year old.

“Manning you’re too quick to pull the trigger. You’ve killed too many potential prospects over the years for me to not stop this one.”

“How many times do we discuss this? Business is useless in this world! It’s dead. Accept its death. Send it some flowers. I’ll dance on its grave.”

“And yet here we both are, on a business contract, going to complete somebusiness so that we can live another day, buy some food and munitions and keep going on.”

“I wouldn’t have to buy my food if you would just give up and start scavenging for once.”

“Hey, I’m scavenging for business and it is still well alive, even in these lands.”

“Then what does this kid have to do with business in these wastes?” The entire time they were talking I sat between them and followed back and forth, my eyes going in circles as I followed their banter. Now it was silenced as they looked at me as one and it took me a moment to realize I was expected to say something.

“Uhh, what kind of business is this?” I looked at Manning to find a frown and shaking head then flipped to looking at Mr. Burke and saw a wicked grin that matched how sly his voice was.

“Why it is whatever it is my boy! Be it a journey for a delivery, the salvation of a village in trouble, rescuing a friend, or brining back their corpse, there is no greater business than heroism!”

I flipped over to look at Manning as he spoke and began a new argument. “We almost always get hired to just go kill some zombies somewhere in LA. Or we go out and find some food for some lazy person with bartering power. There is no heroism, only hunting.”

“You have no appreciation for the art of business. I have been doing this since I was younger than this one between us, trading stocks back in the day when they truly meant something, buying and trading whole companies. Burke was a name people knew and I knew theirs and there was a friendship among partners and enemies, a commonality known as business!”

“I was bounty hunting back before the bombs fell and was on SWAT before then and I can tell you business is nothing. Business is a cover, a sham, a lie, it’s nothing but a bunch of men paying others to do other things for them and holding power with worthless scraps of paper called money-”

“-actually money was not printed on paper, it was on cloth and was almost completely digital before things went bang.”

“So business was used with things that didn’t even really exist! I’ll tell you what’s real now. This gun in my hands is real! I can feel the metal and be satisfied watching the bodies of my enemies splinter in front of me. That is real business!”

“And that is why I handle the contracts and you handle the splintering! We went through this and put this together. It functions. This is our compromise and how we work together!”

“Right.”

“Right.”

I stared between the two, completely dumbfounded by what had happened. “I’m sorry you two but what do I have to do with any of this?”

Mr. Burke jumped on the answer first, though I could see Manning opening his mouth in preparation. “I want to bring you in as a partner. You seem to have a gun and your general wits about you and we have had to turn down a number of contracts because we were just too few. In fact with you around we could two at once, or perhaps even more, compiling work together and creating a fully functioning business. I could even reopen my office!” Burke leapt up from the steps in excitement and started to prance back and forth, mumbling to himself in his thoughts.

“Burke you idiot, we could’ve done all that if you just put your filthy hands on a gun for once in your life. Look I can keep track of myself. While I don’t like to admit it it’s a bit easier to kill zombies with two people than it is one but I get along fine.”

“You were almost killed on the last expedition though, proving my point!”

“No it proves my point because you ran away!”

“Then let us simply agree to disagree. In any case this talented young man will be joining you on your foray into the old chip factory.”

“And what will you be doing?”

“I will be watching from inside my office, twelfth floor of this prestigious building right here, whose steps we sit humbly upon.”

“Wait, wait. “ My confusion in watching the two had grown unbearable now that they were including me directly. “Who says I want to come along anyways? And is this a computer chip factory we’re talking about?” The idea of finding such a factory intrigued me. Perhaps they made teleporters in those places? Would I find my other half in one?

Manning held his weapon out for me to see and made something of a snorting sound. “I don’t recall this baby giving you any options. If we decide you come with us then you come with us, simple as that.”

“And it’s a chip factory, like potato chips. A snack food back in the day. Now it’s just conveyor belts and gangways and old store rooms. But somebody says there are zombies living in there and they want them out. They’re ruining the neighbourhood.”

Again my confusion reached paramount and I was forced to speak up. “But wait didn’t you say your office was right above us in this building? And the factory is near here right? So you’ve been living next to a zombie-infested factory this whole time?”

The two looked at each other then back to me and Burke took the turn to answer. “Well yes I suppose we have. We don’t live here too often though since we frequently are roaming the countryside for one bit of business or the next.”

“So you two want me to go in with Manning to kill every single zombie in that factory?”

“Well actually I planned on planting some explosives at old creaky spots and just bringing the whole place down.” Manning showed me a satchel while he answered and I was left to assume that the satchel could explode on command.

“Ok well since I don’t really have a choice, when do we start?”

“Right now.” Manning handed me a couple of the satchels for my own use and Burke hopped up the stairs and through the shattered glass doors of the old office building, leaving just Manning and myself. “Little bugger. I hope zombies eat his heart while we’re in there.”

“Do you really mean that Manning?”

Well why else would I say it? Now let’s get moving.” I noted that Manning didn’t look at me when he answered the question. Instead he stood and started off towards the factory nestled between the two larger skyscrapers, or rather ex-skyscrapers. As we approached the factory I heard a strangely familiar metallic sound, followed by the whirring of pistons and gears and of an engine trying to move something very large and very heavy. Manning stopped us near the factory door, waiting and listening to the sound approaching. It began to sound rhythmic, like it was something stepping, and with each step there were the metal sounds and as the step completed the ground would vibrate a little under our feet.

I saw a massive metal arm swing around the far edge of the building just past the factory. At the end of the arm were three metal fingers, each one pointed inward to form a tri-pincer. They gripped the side of the building and pulled forward the full round body of a Sentinel, the Pariah in the top visible through the glass dome. Its other arm came around after it and where I expected a large Gatling gun like the last Sentinel I had seen I was relieved to find it ended in another set of fingers. At the machines feet was a squad of four Pariahs, each one well-armed and out on patrol with their toy.

“Fuck kid, follow me!” Manning tugged at my arm to start our run into the factory door as we heard the Pariahs shout and take notice. Did they recognize me from my time spent in their base? I thought the only person I had come across I had left blinded anyways. I wasn’t exactly a unique looker that could be tracked down and it was fairly hard to believe that they knew me as “that kid with the teleporter.” Still we feared so we ran and burst through the front doors of the factory and crashed right through a zombie.

Before I could react Manning had pulled out a combat knife and slit its throat, moving faster than I would have thought possible at his age. He grabbed me once more and pulled me down a hallway to the left, my eyes taking their time to adjust to going from outside to in so quickly, not to mention that the factory was fairly dark inside. It had the odd lights flickering here and there but the tunnel we chose had practically nothing, probably why Manning chose it to hide in.

We pressed against a wall long enough to hear the Pariahs follow us in. They fired off a couple shots at some zombies who must have strayed too close and we began running again, finding some stairs taking us up to the second floor of production. Manning twisted around suddenly and urged me to keep running, His bolt gun charged and he fired off a large blast of energy back down the stairs. I heard it collide with ancient metal, shearing through it like a hot knife and bringing down the ceiling on the path behind us. And an eerie silence fell throughout the place.

Manning caught back up to me waiting in the hall, grinning ear to ear with his filthy teeth. “Well that should hold them. And that stupid trash can of theirs can’t get through the doors at all. Maybe they’ll even clear the zombies out for us right?”

I chuckled a little nervously, hearing only the faint echoes of sounds resonating through the corridors as zombie footsteps padded around broken by the odd shot coming from a Pariah. I could even hear the grinding of the Sentinel walking around outside the factory, obviously frustrated and looking for another way in. Little specks of dust filtered down from the ceiling and wafted through the air, refracting in the little bits of light and suddenly being lifted upwards by my panicky breathing.

I reached out and caught some in my hand, treating it as delicately as a fragile memory of the Black Pueblo, a place not too far behind me in my mind and a very large part of me wanted to return there. The moments of peace I had felt there washed over me now, calming my nerves in the situation and I gave a great exhalation, blowing the dust back out into the air between Manning and myself.

With a metallic roar the wall beside us was punched through by one of the Sentinel’s fists, three metal fingers reaching out and closing around Manning. The punch drove Manning straight into the opposite wall as the fingers closed tighter, crushing into his chest cavity like it was made of Styrofoam. A bloody mist spurted forth from his body as he was pulled back out through the hole in the wall and I heard his final scream shatter the air and he was crushed and tossed aside by the machine.

And so fear had returned to me.

I sprinted down the hall as another fist smashed through the section of wall I had just been standing at. I glanced over to my right and saw there had been an opening in the wall there looking down on the first floor and I caught a glance at a Pariah looking up at me, something in his hand, possibly a radio to communicate with the Sentinel outside.

I rounded a corner twisting into the heart of the factory and stopped short of two zombies feasting on a corpse of an ill-fated adventurer. I heard the groan of metal behind me as the Sentinel outside scraped between the factory and the building beside it to chase me down the alley. One of the zombies looked up at me, snarling, but not attacking. To my right was a bridge that crossed the first floor and led to a series of platforms and gangways overlaying the first floor. And amidst the glow of half-broken lights, I saw eyes.

Thankfully none were looking at me but I could easily count about ten pairs of eyes scattered around before I wished I hadn’t begun counting in the first place. And so my decision was made for me. I would have to kill the two zombies in front of me without alerting the others to my presence. No gunshots, no excessive violence. Stab them with the blade on the end of the knife before they could react.

Or I could always try to teleport out of here? Just quietly unlock it and start warming and...the sound of metal on metal deterred me from taking that sort of time and I was rushed into action. As I brought my pistol out before me and prepared for the lunge both hands of the Sentinel burst through the wall in front of me, tearing through the floor in a downward motion and dropping the zombies down below. I was thrown back stumbling for a moment from the sudden impact into the building and felt the whole place shudder, pondering how much more of a beating it could take before it just gave up and collapsed.

With the floor in front of me gone I took the turn towards the middle of the floor, stepping out onto the bridge and painfully hearing my footsteps echo along the metal. And the eyes turned. Some of the bodies I could make out. Others I was not so fortunate. I fired my pistol off at the closest one, one I could see, and caught it in the shoulder with the shot sending it twisting over the banister and down into the floor below.

That was when I heard the shouting from below as the Pariahs organized to fire on me. For a moment my mind raced through every possible option, every alternative and escape plan and attack strategy, and after it had exhausted the list my mind was simply cleared. I was completely empty inside. And I began to move, running across the bridge as rifle fire opened beneath me and bullets splattered against metal. The zombies around me gave out bestial roars, nearing an inhuman level and lunged.

The first in front of me I took a swipe at with my gun’s blade, catching it from the top of its shoulder down across to its torso. For a moment it stopped and I kicked it square in the chest, knocking it back into the other zombies following. I turned to my left and headed down the next available walkway, dropping a satchel behind me for good measure. I was not five steps away when one of the Pariah’s bullets hit it and triggered the explosion, ripping through the air around me and knocking me forward onto my face as the walkway behind me gave out. Mine began to bend underneath me, pitching me downwards towards the floor below. With my one good arm I scrabbled at the metal beneath me until a squirming foot caught on something behind me and gave me enough leverage to push myself up onto a more stable section of flooring.

The Pariahs beneath me were moving, running underneath in an effort to keep up. Luckily for me the zombies down below distracted them from focusing their fire completely on me but that didn’t stop them from getting off shots. One glanced off the railing to my side and shot straight upwards, shattering a light above and raining down on me with sparks and glass. I crouched down and covered my face, looking through splayed fingers at a zombie charging my way. As it arrived I pushed forward into its abdomen and lifted, flipping it up behind me and tossing it down the hole left by the explosion.

Another zombie was right on its heels as I stood back up but before I could react a flurry of bullets passed by me from below and embedded themselves into the zombie. It stumbled towards me and I sidestepped to let it follow its companion down the hole. I saw an opening ahead, a clear path that took me back to the left against the wall again. While I would be going back over to where the Sentinel was it was much better than being in full view of everything else in this place. I turned and fired off a couple of shots down at the Pariahs below to get them to scatter but was disappointed as my shots either missed or grazed their armour harmlessly. And it did not deter them in the slightest. I grabbed another satchel and threw it down behind me, shooting it out of the air and feeling the rush of heat as the explosion fanned out in between the two floors. It was enough to put something between me and the Pariahs, if only for a moment. I took the time I gave myself to dash over into the hallway I was in before. Looking back I could even see where the Sentinel had torn through both the wall and floor. Looking ahead though I was given only a door at the end of the hall.

I grabbed the door handle and pulled it right out from the door, the rusted metal prying away with ease. So I opted to now simply kick the door down, another easy feat with the assistance of old steel. I had to continuously switch my gun between my hands during all these actions as my left arm was fairly useless at such quick actions but I needed my pistol in my right when I shot. The whole thing was starting to bog me down and I was contemplating just putting the gun away completely and focusing on running as fast as possible. It was as I passed through the doorway that a thought finally struck my mostly empty mind. Where was I going? I was running as fast as I could through this place to the back of the factory, not knowing if there was any possibility of there being a back door or hole in the wall I could escape through.

And it was because of this thought that I dropped through the hole in the floor in front of me, not inspecting anything before charging ahead. Luckily I still had enough reaction left in my brain to roll into a landing to take some impact out from my feet. I rolled away from the barely lit hole and into pitch black darkness around me. Unsure of what I was laying in I crawled along the floor and felt my way around until it seemed I was pressing myself between some sort of metal box and a wall. Just as I did I heard a door burst open and the growl of the zombies who were sleeping in this dark area waking as one. I debated in my head how could a zombies sense of smell was in the dark since they had worse sight that I did.

As I thought about it I heard one shuffle up close to me, brushing against the metal box that was my hiding place. It sounded like it stopped moving for a moment, sniffing the air around it and scratching against the metal of the box. I sucked in my breath as tension seized up through my body and aimed my pistol for a lunge with the blade. I could almost feel the zombie drawing nearer as it hunted for me and drove my blade forth. It felt as though I drove straight through its knee and it unleashed a low growl in response. Suddenly it became the interest of the Pariahs in the room as they unloaded their ammunitions into its chest and it collapsed upon me.

Just inches away from where it had been standing a moment ago the three-pronged hand of the Sentinel smashed through the wall and clutched at the air, momentarily blinding me with the sudden eruption of light. It slithered out from underneath the zombies wet corpse, feelings its blood oozing out onto me. The hand of the Sentinel pulled back out and behind it was a Pariah stepping into the light. I froze, staring up at its icy mask of metal and hoping that the light didn’t spread as far as I was.

The Pariah bent down and inspected the body, my legs still trapped underneath it, and held up its arm, letting it flop back down onto the corpse. Satisfied he had only killed a zombie he made a signal to the Sentinel through the hole and moved outside of my sight. I heard his armour rattle with each step he took and wondered how the Pariahs weren’t swamped with zombies. Perhaps in the darkness everyone was a little more cautious, and not even the zombies’ rampant hunger would propel them forth.

I pushed myself out the rest of the way from the dead zombie as the Sentinel’s hand burst through the wall and smashed down on the corpse, dragging it out into the light. There was a hissing noise from outside, and it sounded like the machine was idling for a moment, going into some standby mode. Perhaps its driver was getting out to explore on foot?

A grenade was thrown through the new hole, rolling around and landing just where I had been hiding before. I wiggled away on my stomach as fast as possible before simply giving up and burying my face against the floor, covering my ears and head in preparation. The grenade detonated in a shower of shrapnel and dislodged fragments of the floor, the heat from the explosion pulsing over my body and coating me in the dirt it carried with it. The Sentinel sounded like it was moving again, the driver back in place after the grenade was thrown, probably used in an attempt to flush me out of hiding. Did that mean the Sentinel was just going to punch enough holes in the wall to light this whole place until the Pariahs could see me? Or did somebody bring a light?

There were more shots fired, though only one glanced over my head. It must have missed the zombie target it was intended for. Or so I convinced myself. I pulled myself up into a crouching position, moving along the wall until I came across some sort of machinery blocking my path. I had to shuffle along it to the right, closer to the centre of the room where anyone could attack me from any direction, regretting every moment I crept slowly closer to potential foes. My pistol shook faintly in my hand, my wrist trembling in fear but my survival skills keeping it in check.

After another round of shots flew by me I heard the last zombies collapse onto the ground in growls and moans. The entire place went quiet. All that was left was a slight singing in my ears from the sudden bursts of sounds. And rain. Rain was beginning outside, drizzling lightly at first then beginning to come down in a methodical pace, not a torrent or a storm but enough to get you wet and ring against the metal of the Sentinel sitting outside. If any zombies were left they were keeping quiet and the Pariahs seemed to be regrouping after their very minor victory. And I relished in the moment of rainfall.

The Pariahs started to spread out throughout the floor just as the Sentinel outside produced another hole along the wall, each one getting progressively further down the line and slowly beginning to add light to that side of the room. I snuck over to the wall, sitting just outside the edges of the light and pulled out the last remaining satchel of explosives I had. I flipped it over and found a piece of paper coating this side. A corner of it was frayed so I grabbed at it and peeled the sheet off. Underneath was some sort of adhesive, making the whole thing sticky and giving me the option to plaster it against a wall or support beam...or Sentinel.

I looked over out the hole in the wall and could catch a glimpse at one of the Sentinel’s legs. It was still standing at the wall, possibly waiting for orders from the Pariahs or making sure I didn’t try to sneak out through the hole. But I wouldn’t have to sneak out. I could just run right by. How tall was a Sentinel’s body off the ground? Four feet? If I ran and ducked I could probably stick the bomb on its underside and then make a run for it but...I had no detonator. Unless I wanted to risk standing and taking a clean shot at satchel with my pistol once I was safely out of harm’s way. The more I thought it through the less of an escape plan it looked like, turning into more of a suicide run. So I decided to simply stop thinking about it.

I bolted forth to the hole, leaping over the tiny bit of remaining wall sticking up and tucking into a roll, finishing it looking up at the underside of the Sentinel. I pounded the bomb against the bottom of the Sentinel and rolled out from underneath it, feeling the grime and blood along my body start to flow off me as I rolled through puddles. I could hear shouting behind me and the sound of the Sentinel starting to try and move to find me.

I got up to me feet, stumbling through the rain and the pain coming from rolling on top of my arm and ignored it as best I could. I started into a sprint and then stopped, turning sideways and sliding along the slickened ground for a moment. The Sentinel had turned to face me but I was outside of its reach and one of the Pariahs was just starting to exit through the hole but was unable to shoot at me yet, thankfully. I levelled my pistol and hoped, firing off my last chance bullet. I watched it streak through the air, bursting through raindrops and arcing ever so slightly. The Pariah watched as well, helpless to stop the target-seeking projectile. It collided with the bottom of the Sentinel, scraping along the metal and carving out the slightest groove into the surface, winding its way towards my goal.

With satisfaction I picked up my feet and ran out of the alley, listening to the scream of the Pariah and metal combining as the detonating satchel ripped upwards through the machination and blasted the Pariahs coming out of the hole, scalding them through their armour. I didn’t wait around to see the results of my carnage, dashing off around the corner and heading to the office building. If I could make it in before they saw I had a good chance of hiding and not getting caught this time. Plus the pacifist Mr. Burke would surely have escape plans from his own office building if need be.

I climbed through the broken doors, not even bothering to open them in my rush. As I burst in two doors opened up in front of me to reveal a very small room with Mr. Burke standing in it. “Going up?” He titled his head in mock inquiry of my situation. I scrambled to get into the room as the two doors slid to a close behind me. Burke pushed a button on the wall, among many available, and the room started to move up. “Have you ever ridden on an elevator?”

“Can’t say I have.” I wondered if Burke could even understand my words as they came out between pants from an exhaustive series of runs.

“They used to be as commonplace as electricity before the bombs fell. They make stairs obsolete. Then nukes brought the stairs back into fashion. I bet you anything this is the only working one left in the whole country.

“How’d you know I was coming?”

“This place has windows you know. Watched you two go in, watched the Pariahs follow. They don’t seem to like Manning and I much because we cause a ruckus or something. They even made us some wanted posters. I assume since you’re the only one who came out that they got Manning? Was he behind the big explosion I saw there at the end?’

“No the Sentinel got him first. I put the satchel on the machine.”

“Impressive for one so young. Where did you come from? Just a wanderer of these wastes or were you the follower of some great survival guru?”

“Perhaps just a wanderer. Recently I came from the Black Pueblo though.”

“What a shock to find someone so experienced with survival coming from such a sheltered place. You can’t have live there long then I expect?” I shook my head in response, not wanting to divulge any more details. “I myself have frequently pondered the many business prospects that await in such a place. It does have a Black Market correct? And a pub for the lowly mercenaries like Manning? Hmm to get a room there...” The elevator shook to a halt and the doors slid open with a little ding sound. “Ah this is our stop.” We stepped out into an open office section with desks and little cubicle walls strewn about. It looked like there had been a zombie stampede through the area. Maybe when everyone had been evacuating during the wars this had happened. Everything I had ever found and read on emergency procedures said to calmly exit but I suppose missiles change everything. The large full-scale windows that wrapped around the whole floor let me look out at the rainy street below and I could see the factory wreathed in smoke on one side. As I watched the entire left side of the building collapsed and a couple of zombies scattered out from it, running off in all directions.

I saw one Pariah step out onto the street, shooting at some of the fleeing zombies in vain. The Pariah looked back at the half a factory, knowing that the wreckage of the Sentinel and his three dead squad members lay somewhere inside and he pointed his rifle up into his own face, blasting clean through his helmet, and dropping onto the ground. Burke was watching over my shoulder, breathing onto my neck and I could imagine his slimy smile behind me. “You know they will have radioed their base by now. As soon as you brought down the Sentinel they need to radio in for clean-up. That’s the third one I’ve ever seen destroyed and I’ve never seen one ever left behind anywhere. And when they arrive they’re going to scour this area. You think Pariahs are bad enough but they have worse things at their disposal, nightmare experiments you couldn’t even dream off that they use without mercy. A full-standing building like this will be the first place they search...or destroy.” Burke started to rummage through an old filing cabinet until he pulled out a large piece of rolled up paper and unfurled it across a table. It was a map of the area, a pre-war one, though Burke had scribbled in a couple of locations, such as the Ravine. “Using this can you find where the Black Pueblo is?”

I searched the map for a moment and saw that it had lines under the streets to represent the main subway lines, according to the legend on the side. I followed the one from the Ravine until what looked like the spot where there was now a crater. I had wasn’t entirely sure but I wasn’t about to admit that to Burke so I pointed to where I thought it was and he circled it with a marker. “That’s the place.”

“Excellent. Look this is where we are. That’s not too far right? A few hours walking?” He pointed to our building on the map.

“You’re willing to make that trip on your own?”

“Certainly not!” The shock on Mr. Burke’s face was almost gratifying. I thought back to the bomb sitting in the Ravine and of Roy and it cancelled out any satisfaction from surprising Burke.

“Well like I said I just left so I have no intention of going back to that place.” I inspected the map looking for any good places to try and live and spotted a large circle drawn onto the map towards the outskirts of the town. “What’s here?”

“That’s Opolis. It’s a make-shift town built by some survivors. They built it in this big patch of rocks and boulders so it’s protected, almost like it’s up on a mountain. Unfortunately it can be a real bitch to walk around inside of it and it takes quite a while to walk there but if you make it it’s worth it. Out there lay the open wastes, perhaps our only shot at trying to contact the rest of the world. But I say to hell with that, better to go downtown where the real action is. And your Black Pueblo is pretty close.”

“It’s not my Black Pueblo. Not even close.”

“So you tried to challenge the authority and ended up on the outside. Let me tell you something. I started out in the world of business by opening a company that rivalled my old man’s. I wanted to do it better than him because I thought that if I did it slightly different it would be far more productive than anything he could ever produce. And you know what, it wasn’t. I challenged him and got kicked out of my home and built up a business just like his based on that key difference and in the end it turned out that my change wasn’t the best one I could’ve made. But I learned that neither was his. There was a better one between the two of us. So I went back to him, begged him for forgiveness and proposed a new plan with a new change. Now later on I bought him out and kicked him out of the company in revenge and bought him an early retirement home a couple years after that but the point is everyone will challenge someone else sooner or later, right or wrong. Perhaps your way of doing things is right, perhaps not. Maybe it’s better in the short term and not the long, who knows. But I bet you if you went back there you could find a way to put the two together and come out on top of this whole mess, turn that place into more than just a rumour. Turn it into our salvation!”

I stood and pondered the story while Burke rolled the map up, tucked it under his arm, and ushered me to the elevator so we could leave before the Pariah rescue team arrived. Roy and I working together? How do you work together on blowing up a bomb or not. You either did or you didn’t. At best the only compromise I could see would be bringing the bomb inside the Pueblo so we could use it as a weapon only if required and to keep the Pariahs from having it. And that seemed dumb to me since it would be risky to keep an active bomb where we live. Was there any sort of compromise other than that? Roy didn’t like the idea of us being locked up for years without access to food or water, nothing else. He seemed fine with blowing up zombies and keeping Pariahs away though. An alternative supply was needed...

“Burke, you said you have lots of contacts right?”

“Indeed I do.”

“Do you have any who could supply you with food? Or water? Or builders? Inventors? Maybe even someone who knows how to farm in these conditions, or to farm indoors even? Or someone with radiation suits? And what about signs?”

“Woah, you can’t just throw all those contacts at me. How about you tell me what the goal is here and I’ll tell you what I can provide, ok?”  

“Well I’ll try.” And so, as we stepped out of the elevator and office building and started walking towards the Black Pueblo I explained the bomb to Burke and about the Villa and the takeover, the Pariahs and Roy, and a little bit of the history which I probably shouldn’t have told him anyways. And then I told him of me goal, my dream, of a haven for the world, to start over and rebuild from. And how the bomb could help us purge the whole area but how Roy viewed the bomb and the problems of radiation. Burke smiled at the end of it and patted my back.

“No promises. Give me a moment then and keep watch for zombies. Shouldn’t be too many as night is setting in.”

“How do you know?” The overcast sky made it impossible for me to tell where the sun was. Burke held up his arm and pulled the sleeve down a little, revealing a wristwatch ticking away. He then pulled out something that looked similar to the communicators the Pariahs used.

“I give one of these to each of my special contacts, my reliable ones. Now let’s say I can get you some good contacts with the right kind of supplies for your place. What’s in it for me?”

“A room at the Black Pueblo. One of the shelter rooms. You can have my old one if you want. And of course you can use that place as a business hub.”

“Will you be my new Manning?”

“No.”

“It was worth a shot.”

“Wait new Manning? Does that mean there have been more than one?”

“Of course! I have to keep hiring on a new Manning each time the old one dies. What you thought that old guy was my life partner? Hell no! I could never have put up with his whiny ass for this long. No I was with him about nine months before he died. Why, does it matter how many I hire?”

“Just curious.”

“Good now let me make these calls.”

And so I sat and rested, my body beyond exhaustion at this point but my mind constantly urging me forward that one extra step. The factory had completely wiped me out after the continuous running mingled with the threat of death every second I had stayed in there. Being afraid seemed to be more exhaustive on your body than outrunning whatever you were afraid of. I watched shadows shift throughout the street from my viewpoint, slightly hidden from an un-inspecting view inside a run-down old building. Any one of those shadows could turn out to be a threat, be it a roving gang of zombies or some crazy survivor on a killing spree. Perhaps even the Pariahs tracking us with those experimental monsters Burke mentioned.

But rather than worry about them I was content to watch them, my strained body releases something inside my body that made me feel light-headed, nearly in a complete daze. Were the shadows even real? I chuckled a little to myself at how silly I was being right after barely surviving my encounter with the Pariahs.

I watched another shadow across the street. It jumped around a little, slowly approaching and growing larger. I felt my own pupils growing larger as it approached, relishing in it like I was a little child, mesmerized by the simplest shape. The shadow rocked from side to side outside the window until a cloud broke for a moment and moonlight shone down on the wild dog sitting outside the window, staring at me. It leapt up and crashed through what was left of the glass, landing on my chest and knocking me to the ground, a snarling maw snapping hungrily in front of my face. Some of its spittle was splashed across my face and eyes and a bit even dripped down into my mouth as I struggled to grab onto the creatures jaw. My shoulder burned and throbbed with the effort of containing the thrashing beast and somewhere my body threw every last bit of adrenaline into my shoulder, calming it for the moment and giving me a moment of painless strength. I clasped my hands to the dog’s mouth and twisted as quickly and violently as I could, reminding myself of the last neck I snapped. There was a squeal accompanying the crunch and I rolled the dog off me.

It had scratched up my shirt nicely and grazed my chest a little bit, but other than the disturbing idea of dog drool in my mouth I was okay. Until the adrenaline left my shoulder. I cried out as pain surged through my body and I dropped to my knees. Burke came around to where I was, kicking at the dog’s corpse before offering a hand to help me up. I waved it away and stayed down where I was, letting the pain subside through my body. “That’s a nice reaction job you did. Clean snap too. Like you’ve practiced before.”

“Shut up Burke. Did you get the calls done?”

Yes, and I have a lot of news.”