I'm The Only Psychic In The Zombie Apocalypse

Nia held that disgusted side-eye on me for a solid ten seconds before she went back to the rifle, all the while I shamelessly hummed along to her playlist.

Then, about a kilometer later, she started talking again.

”You know what’s funny about this scope?”

”Hm?”

”It ranges to fifteen hundred meters easy...” She turned the rifle slightly in her lap. ”Not to mention the scope... It’s built for a person who is very far away from the problem.”

”Mm-hm...”

”And the ballistic module doesn’t even wake up properly inside about a hundred meters. It just sits there. I mean, there’s barely any drop in a 6.5 Creedmoor at that range... You’re basically carrying a supercomputer to solve one plus one.”

”Sure...”

”And 6.5 Creedmoor’s whole personality is retained energy at distance,” she went on, in the exact tone you’d use to read out a weather report. ”... High ballistic coefficient... Beautiful cartridge really. At range of course.”

”Yep...” I agreed, and kept humming.

”Now, inside a building? This’ll go straight through...” She tilted her head at the windshield. ”You don’t want a needle. You want mass. You want something that hits a chest and dumps everything it’s carrying right there instead of politely passing through and going to see what’s in the next room... Which is, coincidentally, exactly what a fat 7.62x51 does.”

”Coincidentally...”

”And your offset red dot’s great, don’t get me wrong, but that means the man clearing rooms is running on the little dot while ninety thousand Credits of sci-fi scope rides along on top doing absolutely nothing.” She let that sit for a beat. ”... Which is such a shame.”

”Terrible waste...” I kept innocently humming.

”Whereas Overwatch,” Nia continued serenely, ”... Overwatch is a person sitting very still, very far away, who could use every single one of those fifteen hundred meters.”

”Uh-huh.”

”So really, when you think about it, whoever’s going inside should be carrying something with a big thumpy cartridge in it...”

”...Uh-huh.”

”And whoever’s on overwatch should have the smart scope.”

I stopped humming and turned my head, very slowly, and gave her the flattest look I owned.

Nia met my eyes for about half a second, and then her attention snapped back down to the scope with the speed of a woman who had suddenly discovered a very interesting speck of dust on the rifle.

”Yeah...” I said slowly. ”Now can I get my rifle back? We’re pretty close now, so I’d rather keep it loaded and chambered... you know, just in case.”

She didn’t answer, and I kept the side-eye on her while I slowly eased off the accelerator, brought eleven tons of Ascender down through the gears, and rolled us to a full stop in the middle of six empty lanes of highway.

Nia laughed just as the engine idled.

And it was one of the stiffest sounds I have ever heard a human being produce.

”Gotta use the restroom...”

And she was out of that seat and folding herself into the cab pass-through before the sentence was finished, rifle clutched to her chest, boots scrabbling on leather.

”You’re gonna take the rifle with you?” I called after her. ”Let me hold it for you... Look, I even stopped the vehicle...”

”S-sure, I’ll take it with me...” She looked back over her shoulder mid-crawl, messy black hair falling across one bright green eye. ”I mean, safety! What if a bunch of Infected shows up?”

”We haven’t seen more than twenty Infected so far.”

”T-then what if hostile survivors show up?”

”The gun isn’t loaded, Nia...” I said. ”The mag’s on the dashboard... So is even if someone does show up...”

The silence that fell over the inside of that vehicle was one of the most complete silences of my entire life.

Nia stayed exactly where she was, frozen halfway through the pass-through on her hands and knees with her rear end up in the air and the rifle pinned under her chest.

While I faced front and looked at the empty highway.

And somewhere behind us the sun kept going down.

-Click-!

My seatbelt let go.

And Nia went off like a starting gun, scrambling through that pass-through so fast she took a knee into the frame on the way, and I was out of the driver’s seat and after her before her boots hit the hardwood.

”THAT RIFLE IS MINE!”

”IT’S MINE NOW!”

She hit the hallway running with the rifle over her head and made straight for the wet bath, one hand out for the door, and I shoved a wave of TK past her and slammed it shut in her face.

-Thack-!

”That’s CHEATING!”

”Give me back my rifle!”

”NO!”

She spun off the door and went the other way, and I got a fistful of her sleeve, and she twisted straight out of it, giggling so hard she could barely stay upright, and then she was up on the dinette bench, over the walnut table, down the other side, using the entire back half of my house like a playground.

And I went over the table after her.

She shrieked.

I got both arms around her from behind, and she wriggled like a fish, holding MY rifle out at arm’s length with her whole body arched away from me, and both of us were laughing too hard to be any good at this.

”Let GO!”

”Then give it back!”

”NO!”

”Nia!”

”You can’t HAVE it, it’s MINE now! I’ve BONDED with it-”

”You’ve had it for one hour!”

”And we became very close in that hour!”

I hooked an arm past her shoulder and got two fingers on the handguard and she rolled her whole body, and the two of us went sideways into the galley cabinets hard enough to rattle every wine glass in there.

”Careful of my kitchen!”

”YOUR kitchen?! You RENTED this!”

”I’m going to throw you out of my rented kitchen!”

She got a hand flat on my face and shoved, still cackling while I felt her other arm go higher with the rifle, and I fought for that arm, but she twisted away, and somewhere in the middle of all of it she got a knee up between us, and I nearly went down.

”I gave you my rifle last time!”

”Give it back! I didn’t even get to use it properly!”

I got her wrist, and she went backward one step, then another, still holding that rifle up over her head, still laughing at me, but eventually I got her cornered.

”Nowhere left to go now!” I grinned.

I closed the last of the distance with my hand still on her wrist and my eyes still up on the rifle, working my fingers toward the stock while she held it as high as she could, and I was already halfway through some smug thing I was about to say.

Then I looked down.

And she was right there.

Her back against the dinette and her chin tipped up and both of us breathing hard from all that running, close enough that the air between us was warm, close enough that I could feel her chest rising against mine.

And her eyes were already on me.

Bright green, very steady, very close.

And I forgot the smug thing I was about to say as I felt the heat coming off her skin and the scent that came after, hitting me somewhere old and low and all at once.

Somewhere along the way, the truck, the music, and the road all disappeared behind my heartbeat.

And that’s when I noticed her free hand was on my chest. It just rested there, fingers spread over the front of me, while the last of the sunlight came through the mesh on the dinette window and laid stripes of orange across her.

Her hair fell across her cheek, while neither one of us said one single word and just stood there, with the rifle still up in the air somewhere above us.

Neither of us was thinking about it anymore.

And I started to move.

I didn’t decide to.

My face just leaned in, slow, watching her the whole way, watching her lashes come down while her chin lifted, watching her breath go shallow.

She didn’t move away by so much as a millimeter, while the hand on my chest curled slightly into my jacket as I got closer

Slowly her eyes closed as I went closer still until I could feel her breath on my mouth.

And then-

-BANG-! -SNARL-!

We both jolted so hard we nearly headbutted each other, and out past the entry door something threw itself against the steel and dragged its hands down it, snarling through the mesh into the golden evening light.

And before I could get a single thought back in order, Nia laughed.

It came out breathless and much too loud, and her hand shoved my chest, and she was already sliding out sideways.

”P-perfect timing!” She went, with a face that had gone completely red, all the way to her ears. ”Don’t snap its neck! I’m gonna go try the rifle out!”

And with that she fled, straight down the hallway, through the pass-through, up into the passenger seat, and I heard the magazine come off the dashboard and go into that rifle with a very authoritative click.

While I stood there in the middle of my own kitchen with my hand still half raised, scratching my cheek.

Then I looked up.

Tikki lay stretched across the king bed above the cab, one eye barely open, the other still shut, watching me.

He didn’t move.

He didn’t blink.

He just looked at me with the deep and total disappointment of a man watching his protégé miss an open goal.

”Oh, go back to sleep you degenerate.”