I'm The Only Psychic In The Zombie Apocalypse

By four in the afternoon, the balcony had gone full October, the sun sliding west while the breeze put an edge on everything it touched, and everyone stood out there in it except Kara.

Nia stood in the middle of the whole goodbye looking like a catalog shoot for the end of the world.

Brand-new Level IV plate rig cinched down over her jacket, brand-new helmet hanging off one hand, brand-new ear pro around her neck, gloves and knee pads and a blowout kit riding her belt line, and a duffel packed with everything she’d ordered off my balance including but not limited to... bolt cutters, paracord, rope, flashlights, batteries, socks, and a first aid kit thick enough to handle just about whatever.

Every buckle on her still had that factory stiffness, and her hands kept finding them over and over again, thumbs running the straps like she couldn’t quite believe they’d never belonged to a dead man first.

The only thing on her that wasn’t new was the M110A2 slung across her shoulder.

”Well?” She did a slow turn with her arms out, messy black hair swinging with it, bright green eyes flashing. ”Thoughts?”

”Very tactical,” Nora allowed from the railing.

”Three years I ran gear that was stitched, scavenged, or stolen off someone who didn’t need it anymore~” Nia rocked up on her toes once. ”This is the first kit I have ever owned with that factory smell.”

”It smells like money you didn’t have, and I will hear nothing further.” Nora poked her tongue out.

I turned to Nora and dropped the two drone cases into her hands, small matte things barely bigger than dinner plates, quiet-rotor jobs I’d bought off the Shop a few minutes ago, one standard and one that saw heat in the dark.

”Your job, kid... Get good with that rifle, and keep these in the air. Eyes up, always.”

Nora’s whole face lit up at the sight of the drone, and then she immediately tried to act like it hadn’t, which fooled absolutely nobody.

”Now, house rules while we’re gone.” I put my back against the railing so I had all of them. ”Kara’s in charge.”

Nobody blinked at that.

Not Leo, not Nora, not the trauma surgeon with thirty years of seniority on her, and that settled in my chest in a way I didn’t examine too closely.

”Leo, security’s yours. Before anybody so much as loads a mag for practice, you get on the roof, get a drone up, and do a sweep. If everything reads normal, shoot all afternoon. But if anything feels off, anything at all... you postpone. Boredom’s not gonna kill you.”

”Got it,” Leo said it plainly, the Spear already slung across his chest like it had grown there while I kept going-

”Duct tape and cardboard on every window before dark, and I mean every pane in this glass box. After sundown, you run as little light as physically possible. Water’s the roof tank, power’s the solar, you won’t run out of either if you’re not stupid. And the Cybertruck’s parked below... if anything goes truly sideways, you don’t defend this place, you get in it, and you drive west, and you don’t stop.”

”And the radio,” I went on, ”... is good for fifty, maybe sixty kilometers. Seventy if the weather and luck are in love with us. The truck stop’s at ninety... So somewhere about an hour out, we’d go quiet, and you will hear nothing from us for days, and I need every one of you to understand that silence means nothing. It’s just physics...”

”Four days,” I finally finished. ”Five if we’re sloppy. That thing up north sleeps about the same... So the math works as long as nobody wastes a day. But if we’re late... you guys start heading west without us. We’ll catch up.”

The silence after that had weight to it, and it was Tikki who broke it, hopping off the railing, crossing the balcony at a stroll, and flowing up my arm into the shoulder pocket without one glance at anybody, the whole thing executed with the bored certainty of a man boarding a flight he’d booked months ago.

[Didn’t even pretend it was a question.] I sighed.

”Okay, before you go...” Nora dug in her jacket and pressed a USB drive into my palm, fingers closing mine around it. ”Your music... I loaded it myself, so don’t complain about the mix.”

Then she hugged me, both arms around the plate rig, and got Tikki in the same squeeze, and the little pervert accepted being crushed against a girl’s shoulder with his eyes closing in open bliss, purring loud enough that I could feel it through the rig.

”He’s purring,” Nora giggled.

”He’s insufferable,” I corrected.

Nia’s father stepped up next and put both hands on his daughter’s shoulders, looking up at her through the round glasses.

”Be careful.”

”Always am~”

”You are never,” he said, with feeling, and let her go.

Then he looked at me, and I looked at him, and he gave me one small nod, and I gave him one back. Neither of us added a word to the ones he’d already spent thirty minutes ago.

Leo put his hand out, and I took it.

”Come back,” he said. ”Both of you.”

”Planning on it.”

And that was when I felt it through the glass more than saw it, and turned, and Kara stood inside behind the pane with her arms crossed and all that brown hair loose around her shoulders, looking at me.

She didn’t come out. She just held my eyes for a second, and nodded once.

And I nodded back before stepping up onto the railing and off it, TK wiping my weight to nothing while the street swung below, and glided the gap in one long shallow drop to the apartment building’s roof, boots touching down on the lip of the roof.

While behind me came the whine of the motorized ascender as Nia clipped onto the rope and rode the incline down from the tower, brand-new helmet on, brand-new gloves on the handles, descending two stories of cable over a street full of the Infected with her boots crossed at the ankle like she was on a ski lift.

[I own two things called an ascender... Branding in this economy is a nightmare.]

She hit the roof beside me, unclipped, and looked back up the line at the penthouse once.

”Show-off glide, by the way,” she said, eyes still up. ”Some of us commute like peasants.”

”That’s why some of us should’ve won that election.”

”He voted for ME~”

We took the exterior emergency stairs down the building’s flank fast, eight floors of switchbacked steel with the street noise rising to meet us, and by the last flight the nearest knot of the Infected had our sound and came at the base of the stairwell in that loose-jointed jog, five of them, swollen faces up and mouths open.

-Crack-!-Crack-!-Crack-!

The front two dropped with their necks turned past where necks go while I shot the next two before the others had even hit the pavement, before pulling the Ascender out of Inventory.

Eleven tons of matte graphite expedition truck landed on its suspension in the middle of the street with a sound like a building sitting down.

And Nia immediately stopped running.

For exactly half a second, boots planted, green eyes going up the wedge ram and across the mesh-covered windshield and along the tires that reached her hip.

”IN,” I ’suggested’.

We went up opposite sides, and the moment we got in, Tikki abandoned my pocket before I even clicked the seatbelt in, crossing the cab in one hop and pouring himself into Nia’s lap, curling down with his motor already running.

[There it is... the only reason he voted for her.]

I turned the key with a deep sigh and-

-WRROM-!

The 6.7-liter diesel came up with a roar that rolled down the block and came back off the buildings, and the street answered it from every direction at once, screeches and snarls pouring out of doorways and side streets while I shoved the accelerator down just as the first of them came sprinting before-

-TUCH-!

Its body folded around the steel and it went under while nothing of it reached us- no jolt, no shudder, just red across the mesh that the wipers were already wiping away while the truck gathered speed like the whole event was beneath its attention.

”Okay, WHAT,” Nia finally said.

-TUCH-!-TUCH-!

Two more went under the wedge while I swung us wide around the first real mass, a couple hundred of them pouring out of a plaza in a crowd deep enough that even eleven tons would have bogged down somewhere in the middle of it, and beside me Nia finally stopped watching the road and started looking at the inside of the thing she was sitting in.

The warm strip lighting running the ceiling seams. The matte walnut. The leather.

Her belt came off with a click.

”Where are you going?”

”Exploring~”

Tikki was through the cab pass-through ahead of her before she’d even gotten herself turned around, and Nia went after him on her knees in full plate and helmet, rifle knocking against the frame on the way.

Then she stopped making noise entirely.

”Nia?”

-TUCH-!

Another one folded around the wedge and went under while the truck didn’t so much as shrug about it.

”Nikki.”

”Yes.”

”There’s a bed.”

”Y-yeah...?”

”There’s a KING bed! With SHEETS! Nikki, these are sheets, this is memory foam, there are little lamps you can angle-”

”Reading lights,” I said with a little smile.

”READING LIGHTS!”

I took the next corner wide around forty more of them and heard her boots go down the hallway on hardwood, which she noticed about a second later.

”This is a FLOOR. A real one... with wood!”

”Karastan actually...”

”I don’t know what that means, and I hate that you do.”

Then the wet bath door slid, and she went quiet again.

I glanced in the mirror and caught her standing in the doorway of it, helmet still on, looking at a full onyx shower stall with a mirror lit from behind and hot water plumbed straight off a hundred and fifty gallons, and for about three whole seconds Nia didn’t have anything at all to say.

”...There’s hot water in this.”

I chuckled.

”Right.” She cleared her throat. ”Cool. Normal. Everybody has that.”

She moved on fast, and I let her.

-TUCH-!-TUCH-!

The galley got her next, and I could hear every cabinet in it opening one after another.

”You have a fridge... A tall one. You have a FREEZER. Why do you have a microwave in a DRAWER? That’s not where microwaves go-”

”It’s also a convection oven and an air fryer.”

”An AIR FRYER!?”

A glass-fronted cabinet came open, and her voice went up another whole floor.

”Are these WINE GLASSES?! Actual crystal wine glasses?! Nikki, there are people out there eating each other!”

”Second cabinet from the left.”

Silence.

Then that one opened too, and I heard her actually laugh, which was a hell of a sound in a truck currently painting its own windshield red.

Water purification tablets in bricks, hatchets, folded tents, fishing rods in their tubes, coils of line, fire steel, a case of headlamps, all of it stacked into hand-crafted walnut behind a soft-close hinge.

”Damn, dude...”

She came back up the hallway and stopped at the touchscreen mounted on the galley wall, and I knew exactly which numbers she’d found because she read them out loud in the squeakiest voice she owned.

”Fresh water, one fifty. Grey, seventy-five. Battery bank at ninety-four percent... Solar’s making power right now. While we drive... Over corpses.”

”Diesel heater too. Seventeen thousand BTU. It’ll hold this thing warm at minus twenty.”

”There’s a VACUUM built into the wall.”

”Yeah, and I’m very proud of that one.” I laughed.

[Feels surprisingly nice seeing her like this...] I couldn’t help thinking. Almost felt like showing off my new place to my-

”Kara said you had an RV...” Her voice rang out as she dropped back into the passenger seat with Tikki flowing into her lap before her belt was even latched, and she pulled the helmet off and shoved a hand back through all that messy black hair while her green eyes came around at me.

”As you can see, I do have an RV.”

”This is not an RV!” she shouted, with her hand out at the entire interior of it. ”This is a LUXURY HOUSE! With a truck under it! We lived in a Winnebago with black mold, Nikki. For three years... And this time around you’ve got a rolling penthouse with a hot shower and an air fryer!”

”27North Ascender. Ford F-550 bones, custom shell, sticker crossed one point four million.”

”One point four-”

”It’s a rental.”

”...It’s a what?” Her whole face changed.

” Rented it for two weeks from a high-end place the very same day the shitshow began.” I threaded us between a bus and a knot of maybe thirty. ”Nice lady named Maya handled the paperwork... I fully intended to return it.”

”You did not.”

I snorted.

”Oh, my god.” And Nia laughed right alongside.

I jammed the USB into the dash port instead of answering, thumbed through Nora’s menu to the only correct choice, and hit play.

The opening riff of Highway to Hell came off the Wet Sounds speakers in that slow, filthy, five-note strut, and Tikki’s ears rotated forward while the wedge put another one under the tires right on the beat.

-TUCH-!

”NO,” Nia went. ”Absolutely not. Dad rock. I’m being kidnapped by dad rock. Where’s the K-pop? I KNOW Nora loaded K-pop... she’s a woman of taste.”

”Halfway point,” I offered. ”Forty-five kilometers of mine, forty-five of yours.”

”Deal. And I’m using that shower before we hit the truck stop.”

”Nope, no deal.”

”It is now~”

And so, the last of the city came apart around us in blood and diesel and guitar, while the crowds of Infected kept thinning block by block until the buildings let go of the road entirely, and the on-ramp rose up out of the district and swung us east into the open.

And there it was.

The highway running clean to the horizon, six lanes of empty concrete with the late sun laying our shadow out long ahead of us, just a few wrecks, but not one body, not one thing moving, exactly as promised.

Ninety kilometers to the truck stop, and four days on the clock.