Andy in the Apocalypse [LitRPG System Apocalypse] 3.24 Exodus

24 – Exodus

As they climbed a steeply sloping street into the foothills of Tucson, Jasper slinking in the shadows, his lanky, misshapen figure concealed by his layered, rag-like clothes, Andy fell back and cast Deepsmoke Shroud. His mana was full, and his regen could almost keep up with the single spell running. Jasper stopped at the next intersection, turned to look behind him, and his eyes widened, glowing like red coals inside his cowl.

“You—you there, man?” he rasped, voice rough and damp.

Andy was there, maybe twenty feet back, standing beside an overgrown hedge. He didn’t respond right away but waited for the troll to turn back to the north. Then, he called out, “I’m here. Don’t be stupid.”

Jasper whirled, squinting toward the sound of Andy’s voice, but Andy could tell by the way his eyes remained unfocused as they passed over him that the troll couldn’t see him. “Um, right…moving along.” He turned and lurched up the road, pausing frequently to listen or watch the shadows of nearby buildings. After a while, Andy realized that Jasper was worried about other monsters.

The night was full of sounds—yowls, screams, roars, barks, crashes, thuds, tal scraping; if he paused to concentrate, he could have expanded that list perhaps indefinitely. Most of the sounds were distant, though, and Andy had to wonder which ones might involve Omar and the people fleeing the Tanque Verde settlent. He hoped it wasn’t many. He hoped the troll antagonists had given up when they realized the community was evacuating together, not in a panic.

Andy squinted to the east; the sky was still dark without a hint of gray. Not for the first ti, he wished he’d scavenged a decent chanical watch. “Now there’s an idea,” he huffed under his breath, squinting up the street toward where Jasper hunkered behind an overturned pickup truck. He’d been trying to think of a good scavenging target—a place to scrounge for sothing valuable to the community. There had to be so jewelry or watch stores still intact. People might loot places like that in a temporary crisis, but they weren’t likely to be top priorities during a true apocalypse.

Jasper started moving again, and Andy followed, glancing over his shoulder when sothing rumbled and crashed not too far away. Was another behemoth digging through a building? With monsters like that rooting for decayed flesh, how long would it be before most of the city was in ruins? Scowling, Andy refocused on his “guide” and hurried along, silently drifting through the shadows of the dying city.

###

Omar watched as the last of the Tanque Verde survivors pushed their way through the gap in the barrier. There were more than three hundred people in the column. “Column,” was probably the wrong term; Kent and Denise were trying to keep everyone clumped close together to more easily defend each other, so it was more like a surging crowd—like the groups of demonstrators or protestors you might have seen on TV back in the day.

They moved together up the street. Almost everyone was ard; just the youngest of the kids who were clustered near the center of the crowd had empty hands, though even most of them carried sothing—bags, toys, pillows. Omar watched the darkness—the overgrown yards of nearby hos, the burned-out and wrecked vehicles in parking lots, and the dark rooftops. He could see well, despite the night, despite the clouds blotting out the stars and moon.

The lanterns carried by many of the survivors helped, but Omar knew he could see without that light, too; his Lupine bloodline made sure of that. It was a strange sensation, knowing he wasn’t fully human anymore. He’d had so sleepless nights in the beginning, when he’d first awakened with his gold-flecked, wolfen eyes and the System’s ssage about the bloodline. Sure, he’d played it off to the others, but he’d definitely struggled to accept things—at first.

These days, he was more than happy to embrace the change. Just as he’d co to realize with his Warden of Cinerath class, what mattered to him, and what mattered to the God he believed in, was that he was still Omar. He was still himself, with the sa morals and values. It just so happened that there was more to believe in now.

Movent on a nearby roof shook him out of his self-reflection, and he pointed, shouting to get Denise’s attention. She was walking a dozen yards or so to his left, helping to bring up the rear of the loose column, and she heard him right away, turning to follow his pointing arm. She nodded, and Omar felt a surge of mana. Blue light flared, illuminating the roof for a split second before it coalesced into a bolt of lightning. Thunder cracked, and a man scread as his body gyrated with the force of the blast.

The light faded, and Omar watched the figure stagger, collapse, and then tumble off the roof. “Damn.” He glanced at Denise, but she was already patrolling off to the left, her copper staff resting on her shoulder.

A ragged cheer broke out among the survivors—so of the more spirited of them happy to imagine Denise was doling out so vengeance. Omar sure hoped the guy he’d pointed out was a bad guy, but then, why else would he have been up there? All the refugees—what else could you call them?—were on the road, moving as quickly as the smaller kids could manage. Anyone approaching on a rooftop had to be up to no good.

He could feel the energy of the crowd ahead of him. Despite Denise’s decisive show of strength, the people, especially the kids, were scared. They had good reasons to feel that way. They’d just been awakened in the middle of the night by the ground shaking, they’d had to hear the screams and other sounds of combat, and then they’d been roused and forced out into the night where they’d been told to march, told that they were fleeing their ho. That was saying nothing of the deaths.

Omar had heard Kent and Denise talking; more than a hundred and fifty had died in the mite swarm. Omar could hardly believe it; despite the number of giant arachnids, he’d never felt like his life was in danger. Was it just his levels that made him different? No, he figured experience had a lot to do with it. He and his friends had faced quite a few monster hordes in the vermin dungeon. Hadn’t he just faced down an army of goblins? There was sothing about fighting overwhelming numbers again and again and coming out alive that changed a person.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

There was more to it than that, though. He’d been ard and on his feet, ready to fight. How would things have gone if he’d been asleep, or still in bed, listening to distant sounds of combat when the mites broke into the building? He shuddered, imagining the sounds of the arachnids as they broke through windows and doors and skittered down hallways.

When another wave of fear hit him, Omar realized he wasn’t just being empathetic; he was feeling sothing real. It was palpable to him—a dark miasma that was growing thicker among the refugees, like a blanket of dark emotion that had created a feedback loop. It fed off the younger kids’ panic, and it also amplified it. Omar growled and summoned his mana, casting Bolster the Spirit.

His mace radiated a soft white light, and he imdiately felt the dark, miasmic energy retreat from him. He held the weapon aloft, spreading the light further, and then he shouted, “We’re going to be fine! We have a safe place to go!”

That was when the first fireball streaked out of the darkness, exploding into the center of the column.

###

“This is the neighborhood,” Jasper announced, turning to peer into the darkness. Andy was off to the troll’s left, but he didn’t give that away. He just looked past the troll into the smoothly paved neighborhood—large ranch hos built into the slopes of the Catalina Foothills. They were a good deal further west and north than where Andy had faced the goblin army on the Catalina Highway in a neighborhood that was probably considered a wealthy suburb of the city.

From where he stood, he could see five houses, all earth-toned stucco buildings that blended in with the desert environnt. The street wound away to the right, and he knew it would branch from there.

“You there, man?” Jasper asked, his voice hoarse and gravely. It was easy to forget he was a troll, clothed as he was—submissive as he was.

“Keep walking,” Andy said, his voice barely above a whisper. Jasper spun to stare toward the sound, and his red eyes narrowed. Had he glimpsed sothing? Andy held still until the troll turned and shuffled up the road into the neighborhood. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do with him, but Andy couldn’t stomach the idea of letting the guy loose on the world. He was a traitorous monster with a taste for human flesh, after all.

All the hos they passed were dark and overgrown, but Andy could hear and sense creatures nearby. He wasn’t sure if they were monsters or people or just animals, but there were things moving around in the brush. He felt like there were other presences, too—like eyes were on them, peering from the brush-choked windows.

The streets were clear of cars—a notable difference from the city streets below. Had Seraphine, whoever she was, had her people clear them, or was it just the difference between a rich neighborhood and the more mundane business areas below? As he walked a good ten yards behind Jasper, he asked, “How many like you? How many does Seraphine have here?” It was sothing he should have asked already, but he figured better late than never.

The troll turned to peer in the direction of his voice, then shrugged. “Not sure. Leo and , we had four others. She probably has others working for her, though.”

Andy sidestepped carefully, watching the troll’s eyes. Sure enough, they tracked the movent. Jasper’s eyes widened slightly, and he jerked his gaze aside, but it was too late; Andy knew he could see him, and Jasper knew Andy knew. Andy wasn’t sure why; maybe it was because he’d given himself away too many tis by talking. Each ti had given the troll a chance to study how he was hidden, to look for the nuances of his Deepsmoke Shroud’s magic. It didn’t make Andy invisible after all; it only hid him with light-shifting smoke.

Whatever the case, Jasper knew he was busted and apparently decided he didn’t want to find out how Andy would react. He turned, started sprinting, and scread, “Help! Seraph—” The rest of his cry was cut short when Andy drove his spear through his spine. It was his primary spear, the one that felt the most comfortable in his hands, and the one that was enchanted with Balefire.

A length of hard, cold steel severing the spine was an excellent way to shut a troll up, especially when the magical black flas it carried kept the creature from regenerating. Jasper collapsed, and Andy twisted his weapon, drew it back and drove it into the left side of the troll’s back. His Critical Mastery ensured he struck true, and the steel pierced Jasper’s heart. Andy held the weapon there as the troll gasped and twitched. While his enemy died, Andy scanned the sides of the street, wondering if that truncated cry for help had been heard.

A light flared three houses down. The lots were big; it was a good hundred yards distant, so Andy yanked his spear out, cast Deepsmoke Shroud again, and then jogged off the road. He glanced over his shoulder, ensuring his spear’s hungry black fire was finishing the job on Jasper, and then he turned toward the light. Jasper might have intended to lure Andy into a trap, but as far as Andy was concerned, the shoe was on the other foot—whatever had sparked that light was his prey.

###

The night was madness incarnate. Screams resounded from every corner; fire and smoke filled the air, lightning strobed, and thunder bood. Thick, cloying fear filled the air, and Omar felt like he was losing the battle against that dark, rising tide. Whatever enemy had thrown the fireballs—spells or bombs, he couldn’t tell—was dead; slain by Kent or Denise or so other archer Omar hadn’t seen. Even so, the damage had been done; dozens of refugees were afla, dying or dead, and panic had overco most of the kids.

Worse, as Omar and so of the other more experienced, more stalwart people rallied the crowd, herding them together, and stopping most of the runners, a new threat erged—war drums echoed through the darkness, a sound all too familiar to Omar. He looked at Denise. She winced and cried with sympathy, struggling to help a badly burned teenager to his feet. “Goblins,” he growled.

She nodded, turning toward him, face a grim mask. “They’re coming from the north. We have a chance—a chance to get the kids through, but—”

“So of us need to stay back,” Kent replied, jogging close. “We need to slow them down.”

Omar didn’t hesitate. “Get going, Denise. You’ve got the directions. Give ten fighters, and we’ll stop the little green sons of bitches.” He didn’t ntion that war-drums likely ant so of the bigger goblins, the hobs, would be there, too.

Denise urged the young man to move, limping as he hurried after the bulk of the refugees. She looked at Omar, licking her lips. “I’d stay, but—”

“But they need you and you’re out of mana.” He was guessing, but Omar could see his words hit the mark.

She nodded. “Kent, get your best rangers together and do what Omar says.” She stepped close, holding out a hand. As Omar took it, she said, “Don’t get yourselves killed.”

Kent shook his head. “We won’t.”

Omar grinned, his face a grim mask of splattered gri and gore. “By goblins? Not a chance.”