I'm The Only Psychic In The Zombie Apocalypse

I ran with my heart jammed up in my throat.

Branches tore at the plate carrier, roots grabbed at my boots, my shredded calf screamed on every stride while I poured everything the enhancers ever gave me into a flat sprint through black trees, following a line of clawed prints punched deep into the loam.

The math ran itself whether I wanted it or not.

That thing had a head start worth an entire wrestling match with an Infected, and it carried all of that impossible strength with none of my blood loss, so even from a dead-even start on open ground it would reach the road without breathing hard.

I was not going to get there first.

That was simply true, so my whole chest wrapped itself around the only hope left on the table.

[Tikki’s with her!]

Two point seven kilos of prematurely born cat, against a Variant whose bare name used to make grown veterans go quiet around a fire in the previous timeline.

Said out loud, that hope sounded insane.

But I believed it anyway.

I believed it the way the others believe me, blind, whole, without asking for the how, because after tonight that little guy has earned the exact same faith from me that everyone at that penthouse hands over the moment I say I’ll handle it.

He’d hold the line.

I didn’t know how. He just would.

And within seconds, the forest handed me proof.

-GRRAAAAHHHA-!!!

The roar came rolling back through the trees from up ahead, huge, ragged, furious, followed by another one, shorter, half strangled.

That second sound put strength back into my legs.

Nothing alive screams like that over a kill. That was a miss. That was a hunter missing, over and over, losing its mind about it.

[He’s alive... he’s alive and he’s making it CRAZY!]

The mist thinned, the white between the trunks went orange at its edges, then the treeline broke apart in front of me and I came out of the forest at a dead sprint, flipping the tubes up as the sodium light took over, the whole crash laid out under that lone highway lamp, my wrecked Ascender nose-deep in the semi with steam still crawling off the folded bonnet.

And in the open lane beside my truck, seven feet of death was spinning in circles, swiping at a small shape that refused to exist in the same place twice.

Tikki.

Awareness swept the cab before my eyes could, thirty meters of reach closing over the passenger seat, finding her warm, belted, and slumped, chest rising and falling slow and even.

[Alive...! She’s alive!]

The relief hit hard enough to stagger my stride.

Then I watched my cat fight death itself.

He went under the chassis on the driver’s side, came out the passenger side before the claws finished arriving, doubled back between its ankles, went up over the front tire, across the bonnet straight through the steam, then vanished beneath the truck again while two fistfuls of black claws raked sparks off an inch behind his tail.

He wasn’t trying to attack it, he wasn’t even trying to escape it, he was making it miss, again, again, again, a cat tangled up with a mouse, except the mouse refused to run away, holding every gram of that shrieking fury pinned on himself, away from the woman in the seat.

[My man!]

The rifle came off my chest on its own.

Canted red dot, cheek weld, still walking, while the cold that came down over me was fury with all the heat wrung out of it; it was the kind that measures.

-Tish-!

Center mass. The Revenant lurched mid-swipe.

-Tish-!

Center mass, staggering it one full step off Tikki.

-Tish-!

The third whisper clipped its shoulder as it whirled toward me, then the suppressor tapped out exactly on schedule, but I couldn’t have cared less who heard the rest.

-Thard-!

Miss, its whole frame whipping sideways.

-Thard-!-Thard-!

Pelvis. Chest. No penetration against that white layer beneath its skin, just every joule of energy behind the bullet delivered whole, hammering it back a step at a time.

-Thard-!

Miss.

-Thard-!-Thard-!-Thard-!

Chest, chest, hip, walking the entire time, firing on the beat of my own boots, until ten rounds were spent, seven of them had landed, and the thing stood pinned against the flank of my own truck, shrieking.

Tikki’s face appeared under the chassis, took one look at me coming out of the dark, then disappeared beneath the Ascender.

His job done. Beautifully so too.

The Revenant gathered itself off the bodywork, claws spreading, jaw unhinging past the corners of its face, but before it could leap-

My mind had already closed around its ankle.

One thought swept both legs out from under it, dropping a hundred and thirty kilograms of Variant face-first onto the asphalt hard enough to bounce.

[Not here. Not next to her...]

The grip dragged it away from my truck by the ankle, thrashing, claws gouging eight white trenches across the asphalt, out into the middle of the empty eastbound lanes.

Then I lifted it.

Upside down, one ankle, three meters of what used to be someone’s grandma, hanging in the orange light, flailing at air.

Then I bashed it down.

-CRUNCH-!

It tried to catch itself, so its left arm took everything, folding backward at the elbow.

Then I did it again-

-CRUNCH-!

The right arm went the same way, both clawed hands swinging off broken hinges now.

But I still wasn’t done. I swung it sideways, like a wet mop, bashing it into the wall of the semi’s trailer.

-CRASH-!

Sheet steel caved around it, the whole trailer rocking on its axles, but the damn thing still came off the metal, still snarling through a mouth that still worked.

So I went for the face next-

-CRUNCH-!

Its jaw met the road with its own full weight behind it, and when I hauled it back into the air, that mouth hung sideways off one hinge, swinging, done snapping at anyone forever.

Then it exhaled at me.

Its whole ruined chest emptied itself into my face from two meters out, one long, deliberate breath, the last weapon it owned, and the last chance it owned.

Too bad the filters handed me nothing except my own clean air.

”Yeah...” I chuckled. ”Not this time.”

-CRUNCH-!-CRUNCH-!-CRUNCH-!

Road, road, road, its legs breaking somewhere in the middle of it all, the thrashing draining down into twitches, until the thing that came back up into the air was a rag, every limb bent wrong and hanging slack.

I hung it there, upright, and its eyes found me, still burning.

More feral than ever, glaring down out of that caved-in forehead while its snarls turned throaty, ragged, panting, hatred running on long after everything built to carry it had been wrecked.

I left it hanging and walked to my truck.

Tikki was on the half-steaming bonnet, looking at me, trembling.

His whole small body was shaking, ears pinned low, fur standing wrong in patches, and when I reached him he didn’t climb to my shoulder; he just pressed forward.

And I gathered his little frame up against my chest with both hands and held him there while he buried his head into my jacket.

On the paint where he’d been sitting, a small wet patch was spreading, while I kept my hand over his head, thumb stroking down between his ears, and said nothing about it at all.

Because that patch is what it costs a two-point-seven-kilo cat to stand on open ground between an unconscious woman and a Variant, a thing whose bare name made hardened men shiver across campfires in another lifetime, and hold its undivided attention for every minute I spent failing to be here.

He’d been terrified the entire time.

Every single second of it, terrified, and he did it anyway, dodge after dodge with no assurance of anybody coming, because somebody had to hold the line, and the only somebody left weighed less than my rifle.

To me, bravery in its truest form.

”It’s okay, now...” I told him softly. ”You’re the most badass dude I know, you know that?”

Tikki slowly pulled his face out of my jacket and looked up at me, those big eyes still blown wide with leftover terror, but there was relief flooding in around the edges of it.

Then he blinked at me. Slow and deliberate.

I know exactly what that means from him, and I had to swallow hard before my voice would come back.

”I’m sorry I shouted at you before...” My thumb kept moving between his ears while the snarling behind us climbed, ragged and furious, a thing that could hear every soft word passing between us and hated all of them. ”Now... whaddya you say we end this?”

Tikki held my eyes for one second longer before-

”Mea!”

He flowed up my right arm into the shoulder pocket, that familiar warmth settling against my neck, and the void that had been riding my shoulder all night was suddenly, completely filled.

One more thought reached into the wrecked cab.

And Nia’s Glock 20 floated up from under the passenger seat, drifting out through the empty windshield frame, and landed in my palm, a bare-bones pistol next to mine, one red dot, one little extension on the bottom of the mag.

Awareness settled on her one more time while my hands worked.

Chest rising. Chest falling. Slow... Even... Stable.

Once I had made sure, I finally turned to the thing hanging in the air.

But my eyes weren’t on it.

They were on the pistol.

This exact pistol, the one I’d picked up out of snow that never existed and pushed into her mouth all the way to the trigger guard while she lay under me with her face broken, tears rolling sideways off her face.

I popped the spent mag, fed in a fresh one, and racked it.

Back then, a drugged puppet wearing my hands did that to her.

Right now I was completely, perfectly lucid.

Same pistol. Same motion. Pointed at the right mouth this time, for her.

The TK lowered it out of the air until that ruined face hung level with mine, and I walked up slow, steps loud on the empty road, stopping an arm’s length away to look straight into those burning red eyes with my cold ones.

My face gave it nothing, even as my heart slammed against the inside of my chest the whole time as though trying to break out of it.

And slowly, I raised the pistol and slid the barrel deep into that slack, ruined jaw, the one place on its entire body all that armor never covered, its throat still snarling around the steel.

”Too bad you’re just some...thing,” I couldn’t help but chuckle. ”A badass one-liner would go so hard right now.”

-Thard-!-Thard-!-Thard-!-Thard-!...

Round after round straight down into it, the snarl breaking apart a little further with every shot, its whole weight sagging deeper into my grip, until somewhere past the tenth round nothing at all was coming back out of it, and the only sound left on that highway was blood dripping off the pistol, over my hand, onto the road.

-Thud-!

It hit the road in a heap that did not move again, all while steam kept rising off my bonnet and the highway lamp kept humming.

And in the cab, Nia’s chest rose and fell, rose and fell, while Tikki’s warmth pressed steady against my neck.

And for the first time in hours, silence meant safe.

-Ding!

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Achievement Unlocked!

’Kill a Variant’

Rewards Unlocked!

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