[Four Seasons Adult Entertainnt Center]
I stood before the weathered sign hanging at the entrance. The board itself was wooden with faded lettering that had once been professionally painted in cheerful colors, though ti and weather had dulled them considerably. But it wasn’t the sign’s age that captured my attention.
Bloody handprints sared across the surface told their own grim story—soone had grabbed at this sign during their final monts, whether seeking support while fleeing or clawing desperately at anything within reach as infection took hold or death claid them. The prints were dried now, oxidized to that distinctive rust-brown color that old blood always developed, the finger marks clearly visible where soone’s hand had dragged downward before losing its grip entirely.
The gates stood wide open, hanging slightly askew on hinges that had probably needed maintenance even before the apocalypse. No signs of forced entry—soone had opened them deliberately and never bothered closing them again, either because they’d died before completing that task or because securing the entrance no longer mattered once whatever tragedy had occurred here ran its course.
Traces of blood marked the paved road leading from the gates toward the main facility, creating a grueso trail that my enhanced vision could follow despite how rain and ti had washed most of it away. Dried puddles showed where bleeding had been heaviest—probably where soone had fallen and lain long enough for significant blood loss before either rising as infected or succumbing entirely. There were still remnants that could make anyone with imagination reconstruct the nightmare that had unfolded here during those first chaotic days of the outbreak.
After watching and assessing for a bit longer—checking for movent, listening for sounds that might indicate large numbers of infected still present, I finally moved forward through the gates.
My hand automatically went to the axe hanging at my waist, fingers wrapping around the familiar leather handle. This hand axe was still the most reliable weapon I possessed, trusted more than any firearm or improvised weapon because it never ran out of ammunition and never jamd at critical monts.
I’d acquired it in that grocery store during our first scavenging run after arriving at Jackson Township. It had served faithfully ever since—through countless infected encounters.
Maybe the blade needed sharpening after how many bodies it had cut through, how much infected flesh and corrupted blood it had waded through over these months. The edge was probably dulled from repeated impacts against bone, from the constant abuse of combat that no tool was really designed to withstand. But I could ask Mark to handle that maintenance later.
When I crossed through the entrance and got my first proper look at the facility’s interior grounds, I started understanding what the sign’s designation actually ant.
Adult Entertainnt Center.
Not the first interpretation that phrase might suggest to modern minds accustod to euphemisms, but rather sothing innocent and community-focused. Yeah, this looked like it had been a recreational park center specifically designed for elderly residents—a place where seniors could gather for social activities, exercise classes, organized gas, and the kind of structured engagent that helped maintain quality of life for aging populations.
The facility must have looked impressive and beautiful before the outbreak, probably a point of pride for whatever community organization had built and maintained it. I could envision how it would have appeared during normal tis: manicured lawns and carefully tended flower beds, elderly people playing chess at outdoor tables or participating in tai chi classes on the lawn, staff mbers organizing activities and ensuring everyone remained safe and engaged.
Currently, though—maybe influenced by the rainy weather and the slightly grey overcast sky that turned everything monochromatic—it looked rather like a dark, forbidding place. The kind of location that would feature prominently in horror films, where terrible things had occurred and left permanent psychic scars on the physical environnt.
Blood could be seen everywhere I looked, painting the landscape with evidence of mass tragedy. Splattered across walkways in patterns that suggested arterial spray. Pooled in low spots where wounded people had collapsed and bled out. Sared along walls where infected or fleeing victims had stumbled against surfaces for support. The sheer volu suggested dozens of people had died here, maybe more—an entire community of vulnerable elderly residents caught completely unprepared when infected had invaded their safe haven.
The landscaping that had once been this facility’s pride showed clear signs of violent disruption and subsequent abandonnt. Plants and flowers were stomped down and crushed, trampled by running feet during desperate flight or by infected pursuing their prey through gardens that offered no real cover. Grass had grown wild and unkempt, reaching heights that suggested months without any maintenance, creating an overgrown jungle aesthetic that transford forrly neat lawns into sothing that looked almost too old.
And obviously, the one constant presence throughout this new world that no location seed to escape: infected.
I turned my head slightly to the side, my hearing having picked up the characteristic low growl and shuffling footsteps that announced an infected’s approach before my eyes confird what my ears had detected.
An elderly man shambled toward with that distinctive infected gait. He looked to be in his seventies or perhaps eighties based on the grey hair and wrinkled skin visible beneath the gri and blood coating him. Maybe he’d been one of this center’s regular visitors, soone who ca here daily to socialize and stay active, maintaining independence and engagent with his community right up until the outbreak had transford him into this mindless predator.
Under normal circumstances before infection, this man probably shouldn’t have been capable of walking unaided—his posture and the visible joint deformities suggested advanced arthritis or similar degenerative conditions that would have made mobility painful and difficult. But he walked toward now with no apparent discomfort despite all the injuries visible around his body—gashes that should have been debilitating, broken bones that should have prevented movent entirely, damage that would have left any living human screaming in agony.
Infected—at least ordinary ones like this—were essentially brainless, their higher cognitive functions erased and replaced with nothing but base drives and viral imperatives. They walked straight toward potential prey regardless of obstacles in their path. Didn’t matter if they stumbled over debris, tumbled down stairs, or injured themselves on sharp objects along the way. Pain didn’t register anymore, self-preservation instincts had been deleted, and they’d continue advancing until they caught their target or sothing destroyed their motor functions completely.
I clenched the handle of my hand axe more tightly, adjusting my grip. I watched the infected approach with detached assessnt.
After facing Enhanced Infected—first the ones capable of walking significantly faster than these ordinary shambling types, then progressing to the true monsters that were bigger, stronger, and possessed genuine tactical intelligence—seeing one of these basic infected felt strange. Almost anticlimactic. These were the very first type I’d encountered during the outbreak’s early days, the weakest and most easily dealt with variant in the entire hierarchy of infected types.
Back then, during those first terrifying encounters when I’d still been adjusting to this nightmare reality, even these ordinary infected had seed absolutely terrifying. The sight of blank eyes and grasping hands, the sounds of their growls and the wet noises of their movents, the knowledge that a single bite could doom you to transformation—all of it had triggered fear responses that made confrontation feel like staring into the abyss.
Currently, I felt nothing toward them except perhaps pity for what the previous owner of that body had been before infection had stolen everything that made them human. This had been a person once—soone with a na, a history, relationships, dreams, fears, the full complexity of human consciousness. Now reduced to this shambling corpse driven by alien programming.
I decided not to wait any longer, unwilling to let the infected close the distance further. I walked forward, closing the gap on my own terms rather than allowing it to set the engagent paraters.
Then I swung my hand axe in a precise horizontal arc, the blade connecting with the infected’s neck with the kind of clean efficiency that ca from extensive practice. The head separated from the body cleanly, tumbling through the air before hitting the ground and rolling several feet away from where the body collapsed.
I looked at the severed head lying in the overgrown grass, watching for any signs of continued animation. It wasn’t making any weird sounds—no growls or groans or the disturbing clicking noises so infected produced. Just silence as whatever spark of viral animation had driven it finally extinguished.
So it was dead. Truly dead this ti, not just temporarily disabled.
And therefore it had been a very simple, basic infected—the lowest tier of the threat hierarchy.
So infected could still produce grunts and continue limited movent even after decapitation, their bodies operating on so kind of distributed nervous system or backup motor controls that didn’t require the brain to remain connected. But those were slightly more advanced infected types—still not Enhanced, but evolved enough beyond the baseline that they possessed marginal improvents over the standard model.
It was difficult to differentiate between ordinary infected types because there were indeed many subtle variations despite their superficial similarity. I didn’t fully understand how the classification system worked or what factors determined which infected developed enhanced characteristics versus remaining basic threats.
Especially the big Enhanced Infected—like the one I’d fought at the electrical center during the Fire Spitter incident, or the monster at the radio station —how were those created? What process transford a basic infected into those towering, intelligent nightmares that possessed tactical reasoning and physical capabilities that made them exponentially more dangerous?
Did a Starakian intervene imdiately during the infection process to create them through so kind of direct modification? Or did one of their automated technologies handle the enhancent, perhaps triggered by specific genetic markers or environntal factors that I didn’t understand? The chanisms remained frustratingly unclear despite months of observation and combat experience.
But I’d noticed a pattern that seed significant: Enhanced Infected hadn’t appeared to exist in Jackson Township until after I had started demonstrating my presence and capabilities. Like when I’d killed the Fire Spitter in that initial confrontation, proving that humans with Dullahan enhancents could threaten and destroy Starakian weapons.
As expected—were we being actively watched by the aliens? Were they monitoring human survivors and adjusting their deployed forces based on observed threat levels?
Actually, I probably wasn’t being watched specifically, at least not initially. The Starakians’ primary surveillance target had been the Municipal Office community because they wanted Wanda. They’d been tracking her location and movents, trying to force her surrender through escalating threats. And in conducting that surveillance, they’d inadvertently discovered my presence and recognized that I represented an unexpected complication to their plans.
In fact, it wouldn’t have been surprising if they’d noticed much earlier, given that both the Fire Spitter and the Frost Walker had been defeated by our group. Two major weapons destroyed by what should have been helpless primitive survivors—that would absolutely attract attention and trigger threat reassessnt protocols.
Fire Spitter, Frost Walker, and Screar. Three distinct Starakian technologies deployed in Jackson Township over the course of our ti there.
Had all three been sent specifically to force Wanda’s surrender? That seed like excessive force for capturing a single target.
Wouldn’t the Fire Spitter alone have been sufficient for that purpose if their goal was simply overwhelming force? The creature had been devastating enough on its own, capable of destroying entire buildings and creating firestorms that could consu city blocks.
Were the Starakians that wary of Wanda’s capabilities despite her being just one individual? Or perhaps—and this seed more logical given the tiline—the Frost Walker and Screar had been summoned more recently, deployed specifically after our group had arrived in Jackson Township and after I’d successfully defeated the Fire Spitter.
That interpretation made more sense. The Fire Spitter had been the initial weapon, sent to either capture Wanda or destroy the settlent if she continued resisting. When it was destroyed by an unknown enhanced human——the Starakians had escalated their response, sending the Frost Walker and Screar as a more powerful replacent that presumably couldn’t be defeated by the sa tactics.
A pattern of escalation. Each weapon more dangerous than the last.
But even these weapons—three major deploynts within a relatively short tifra—seed excessive for dealing with soone like , didn’t they? I was just one enhanced human among potentially thousands or millions scattered across the globe, assuming the Dullahan virus and other Symbiosis had managed to infect significant portions of humanity before the apocalypse had fully collapsed organized society.
Or was I missing sothing fundantal about my significance in the Starakians’ strategic calculations? So factor I didn’t understand that made warrant this level of attention and resource allocation?
I actually had a theory about why they’d chosen to deploy both the Frost Walker and Screar specifically to take down, though I wasn’t entirely confident in my reasoning. The logic would make considerable sense if the Starakians knew—or strongly suspected—that I was the host of the Dullahan Symbiosis specifically rather than just so generic enhanced human with unknown capabilities.
I didn’t know much about the particular danger that Dullahan represented in the broader context of the Symbiosis-Starakian conflict. My knowledge ca mostly from fragntary information gleaned from the alien Device, from the White Lady, and from direct observation of what my abilities allowed to accomplish. But based on those limited sources, it seed clear that even among the diverse Symbiosis race—which apparently included hundreds of distinct types with wildly varying capabilities—Dullahan was recognized as particularly dangerous and feared.
The Ti Freeze ability alone probably warranted that reputation. Being able to manipulate temporal flow, even in the limited localized way I could manage, represented a tactical advantage so overwhelming that conventional counterasures beca nearly useless. How do you defend against an opponent who can freeze ti, reposition themselves, and strike from angles you can’t possibly predict or react to?
Yeah. If the Starakians knew they were dealing with Dullahan specifically rather than so lesser Symbiosis, deploying both Frost Walker and Screar simultaneously would be a reasonable strategic response. Not overkill—prudent force allocation when facing a threat that could conceivably defeat either weapon individually through temporal manipulation and tactical superiority.
That interpretation would explain the escalation pattern and the specific weapon choices. The Frost Walker’s environntal control and area-denial capabilities would limit my mobility and create zones where Ti Freeze wouldn’t provide sufficient advantage. The Screar’s psychological warfare and ability to corrupt allies would attack on other levels and create internal threats I couldn’t simply fight my way through.
But I think even the Starakians hadn’t expected both weapons to be destroyed by our group despite their combined power. The Frost Walker had fallen to coordinated assault that exploited its vulnerabilities and used environntal factors against it. The Screar had been defeated through Mark’s artificial call system combined with my direct intervention at the radio station, preventing Jason from fully executing whatever the alien weapon had planned.
And they’d even failed to recover Wanda despite the Screar unleashing its devastating attack on Jackson Township—the main objective that should have been achievable once the settlent was compromised and survivors were scattered in chaos.
Well, they had nearly succeeded in capturing Wanda, I had to admit. She’d appeared at the radio station fully prepared to surrender herself to the Starakians. If I hadn’t stopped her at the last mont before she could complete that surrender, the Screar attack would have been a complete success.
That was the only genuinely good and useful thing I’d accomplished that terrible night. The only success I could point to when everything else had gone so catastrophically wrong. I’d prevented Wanda from being taken.
But now that I had successfully prevented Wanda from leaving, now I found myself wondering what the Starakians would try next. Would they simply stop harassing her and move on to other priorities? Accept their losses as unacceptable costs and redirect resources toward more achievable objectives elsewhere?
I doubted they would stop. Obsessive pursuit seed to be a defining characteristic of how the Starakians operated—they’d been chasing the Symbiosis across the galaxy for what Wanda had implied was potentially centuries or millennia. That kind of vendetta didn’t end just because a few weapons had been destroyed and one target had proven more difficult to acquire than anticipated.
In that case, I had to be ready for their next action—whatever form it took, whatever new weapon or tactic they deployed to either capture Wanda or eliminate as an obstacle to that goal. Preparation and vigilance were the only defenses available when facing enemies with technological superiority and virtually unlimited patience.
But even before I could focus properly on the Starakian threat and what counterasures might be possible...
Elena’s face flashed in my head. Those blue eyes filled with tears as she’d been dragged toward her father’s helicopter. Her expression of absolute devastation as she’d looked back at one final ti before turning away.
My teeth ground together unconsciously, jaw muscles clenching hard enough that I felt them creak under the pressure. Rage and grief and helpless frustration boiled in my chest like acid, eating away at whatever composure I’d managed to maintain over the past three days.
Vladislav’s mocking words echoed in my head with perfect recall.
"Saint Petersburg."
The destination he’d thrown at like an invitation that was really a taunt, daring to attempt the impossible journey if I wanted to see Elena again. He’d known exactly what he was doing when he’d provided that specific location rather than just taking her away to so unnad secure facility. It was psychological warfare, planting a goal I could fixate on while simultaneously ensuring I understood how utterly unattainable it was.
Saint Petersburg was in Russia. In Europe. The other side of the world from where I currently stood in New Jersey, separated by thousands of miles of ocean and hostile territory.
If I wanted to see Elena again—and I did, God help , I wanted that more than I’d wanted almost anything in my entire life—I had to leave Arica entirely. Had to cross continental distances and oceanic barriers in an apocalyptic world where long-distance travel had beco exponentially more dangerous and difficult than it had been before civilization collapsed.
And obviously I was ready for that. Willing to undertake whatever journey proved necessary, face whatever dangers stood between here and Russia, risk death a thousand tis over if it ant reaching Elena. The determination itself wasn’t the problem—I had more than enough stubborn resolve to sustain through years of travel if necessary.
The problem was logistics. Practical reality. The seemingly insurmountable obstacles that transford emotional commitnt into an impossible quest.
Helicopters or comrcial flights were completely impossible for soone like without connections to the surviving elite class. Aircraft required fuel, maintenance, navigation systems, trained pilots, landing facilities—infrastructure that had largely ceased to exist outside of whatever private networks people like Vladislav had managed to preserve. Unless I was sohow friends with soone possessing similar resources to that oligarch and willing to loan a helicopter for transcontinental travel... but no. That wasn’t happening.
Vladislav represented one of those few ultra-wealthy VIPs who’d known about the apocalypse in advance and prepared accordingly, maintaining private security forces and functional technology while the rest of humanity struggled to survive with whatever they could scavenge from ruins. I wouldn’t encounter another person with that level of resources randomly, and even if I sohow did, befriending them enough to gain access to their aircraft seed virtually impossible given my complete lack of anything they might want or need.
So air travel was out. That left more primitive options.
The other realistic solution was traveling across the ocean by sea—finding a ship large enough to survive Atlantic crossing, acquiring or learning the navigation knowledge necessary to actually reach Europe rather than dying lost at sea, and gathering sufficient supplies to sustain myself during weeks or potentially months of oceanic travel.
For that kind of mariti journey, I would need an actual ship rather than just a boat—sothing ocean-worthy with proper size and capabilities. And I’d need soone with genuine knowledge about seafaring and navigation, ideally soone who’d actually sailed before rather than just reading about it in books or watching instructional videos.
That was why I wanted to take my chances with Atlantic City.
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