Chapter 64

Green Pines Cemetery, Etson - 12:31 PM

It was both fortunate and unfortunate to say that I retained consciousness during the entire ordeal. I watched Thomas and Francis as I was thrown backwards almost fifteen feet. There was no doubt that I would have gone farther if it weren’t for the grave stopping me, but that was no consolation.

The pain radiating from my chest was just as excruciating as my arm had been, and I looked down to see a thick, black cylinder sticking out of my now bloody shirt. I instantly recognized the projectile, and pulled it out with a cry of pain. Despite recognizing it, I looked at it to be sure. The cylinder ended in a now-blunt point, but it was obviously a Vespae stinger. It had missed my heart by inches.

Looking up in the direction it came from, I strained my eyes. Across the street and through the trees, I saw something move on top of a building. I pointed towards the mausoleum. “Close the door,” I said through grit teeth before coughing up blood.

“Get the door for what?” Francis asked, but Thomas was already moving into action. He pulled the door closed before looking back.

“Grab him!” Thomas ordered. This time Francis didn’t hesitate, he reached down and pulled me up. It wasn’t gentle, and the pain peaked at a whole different level than it had before. Still, I didn’t protest.

“Take me there,” I said, wheezing. Francis did as ordered, and I mentally counted down the time before the next shot would come. John made it back to us but stood between the shooter and Thomas.

I slammed my hand against the door and activated Broken Boundary. We were only a few miles away from the train, thankfully. Symbols only I could see sprouted around the door and I gave the order as soon as it was ready. “I have to go last,” I said, trying not to speak much.

“You heard the man,” Thomas said as he pulled the door open to reveal a glowing light obscuring what was on the other side of the door. I appreciated his willingness to follow my words despite not knowing what they meant. John hesitated, which was fair, but Thomas grabbed him and shoved him in before doing the same to Francis. Without my crutch I nearly fell in, but I managed to stay on my own two feet. Thomas entered the portal and I followed.

I emerged on the other side of the doorway to see my room. The trio of men were looking around with bemused expressions on their faces. Understandable, given the circumstances. I raised the hand that wasn’t currently clutching my chest wound and was about to say something elegant, but instead vomited more blood onto my clean blue carpet.

“Get him onto the bed! John, potion!” Thomas bellowed, and Francis helped me to my bed. I laid down and watched as John fumbled through his inventory.

“No potion,” I croaked, shaking my head. “It’s just pain.”

“You’re a goddamn fool,” Thomas snapped. John pulled out a vial of a red liquid and pulled out the stopper. He pushed it against my lips and forced me to drink it, and at that point I couldn’t well say no. It tasted like strawberries, and I could feel my wounds close.

I took a deep breath afterwards and checked my status screen. Out of 473 hit points, even after the potion I was sitting at 98. I continued breathing as I thought it over. That had been entirely too dangerous, and would have killed me if it had pierced my heart. I almost had enough hit points to survive something so fatal, but almost wasn’t enough. It had been luck that kept me from dying today. Perhaps a little divine intervention, maybe, but I couldn’t count on that.

“His wound’s just… healing,” Francis said, reaching out like he was going to touch the hole in my chest.

“Don’t do that,” I said, and he pulled his hand back. “I said I had a belt that heals me, you didn’t have to use a potion.”

“What’s up with you and pain, you freak?” John snapped, throwing the empty vial into his inventory.

“I promise you I’m not a masochist, and even if I were, ‘gapping hole in the chest’ would not be the kind of pain I’m going for,” I said slowly. I noticed Thomas looking around at the piles of junk lying around my room. Most of it came from the traps in the forest, but it still made the place look a bit like a trash heap. “Welcome to my humble abode.”

“Are we on a train?” Thomas asked, looking from the windows to me.

“Yeah, my home sweet home,” I confirmed.

“Living on the rails sounds great, can it move?” Francis asked.

“It can, but I won’t leave until after the Vespae are taken care of.”

“How will you get from place to place? The tracks are going to be cluttered with broken down trains, aren’t they?”

“Luckily, the rails between transportation hubs exist in a pocket dimension for each traveling train. It’s the same reason why the interstates have time trials, no one wants to watch people travel to their destinations when those destinations are going to be so much more fun to watch.” Poking at my chest, I sighed. “Hey, could you guys give me a little privacy? Take a left outside, next car’s a dining car. Feel free to have a meal on the house.”

John stepped out immediately, and Thomas and Francis looked at each other first. “Do you need any help?” Francis asked.

“Well, I’m about to strip and change so my clothes can go in the wash, but if you want to stay for that you can.”

“I’m out,” Francis said hurriedly before leaving.

“You sure you’re okay?” Thomas asked at the door.

“Okay is subjective, but I’ll be alright. I’ll be out in a few minutes.”

With a nod, Thomas left. I felt my breathing come easier after a minute or so of waiting. Gingerly rolling over, I sat up and started the arduous process of pulling my clothes off of my body. Every movement sent a jolt of pain through me, but it had to be done. It was just pain, after all; I would have never made it this far if I hadn’t learned to cope with it.

I repeated this mantra in my head every time the feeling intensified enough that I wanted to stop. Waiting was an option; my allies were hopefully eating and not just sitting around doing nothing. The thought of them potentially waiting on me kept me going. I had already kept them for over an hour and took up a lot of their time. Time better spent getting stronger.

Pain aside, this was a thrilling event. Someone had just attempted to assassinate me, much earlier than usual, and yet by the virtue of hit points I survived. I would have to be more careful and keep my eyes peeled for Doctor Pustibule and his accomplice, but that was doable. Spotting a sniper was harder, but now that I knew what to look out for I could avoid situations where I was out in the open.

And use it to my advantage when I did have to be out in the open. Undeterred by the coppery taste of blood in my mouth, I almost prayed to Sara to have him shoot me in the middle of Etson Square so it could be blamed on Father Alexander. Almost. He might not miss that time or he might go for the head.

While I was fantasizing about how to best use an assassin to my advantage, I finished removing all of my clothes except for my belt and pants. Tossing the rest into the magic washer in my private bathroom, I looked at my chest in the mirror. It was a gruesome sight, but it didn’t look nearly as bad as my arm had. I cleaned up the blood and gore before pulling a spare Safari Resort bathrobe from my inventory and slinging it on.

When I joined the others in the dining room, I was pleased to see that they had taken me up on the offer of food. Thomas and John had both ordered sushi while Francis was chowing down on some chicken and fries. “Gentlemen,” I greeted.

They looked up at me, first at my chest and then to my eyes. “This is delicious,” Francis said with a mouthful of food.

“And if Kayla were here, she’d say you’re being rude talking with your mouth full.” I went behind the bar and started making myself some tea.

“How, uh, how are you feeling?” Thomas asked.

“Better, but still healing,” I said. “Thanks for the heads up on the sniper, John.”

John scoffed. “I was worried about Tommy, not you.”

“Still, it’s appreciated. I’m pretty sure he would have got me if you hadn’t spooked him into firing before he was ready.”

“You think it was Jeremiah Wilson?” Thomas asked between bites.

“Makes the most sense,” I confirmed with a nod. “Even if he had a class before taking out Zeros, the ‘royal sniper of the Vespae’, he would have gotten the weapon drop.”

“A sniper rifle,” Francis interjected helpfully.

“Yeah, a big fuck off sniper rifle that fires off Vespae stingers as ammunition.” It was a devastating weapon, and one that I liked to use during my earliest runs as a gunner. It was a single shot rifle that conjured its own ammunition since Vespae stingers weren’t always available. It came with a poison that made healing harder, but my constitution was able to fight it off. “So Jeremiah found the summoning card for Pustibule, made a deal with it, and came down here to kill me and jack his scalpel back.”

“You mentioned the scalpel before, what is it?”

“It’s a demonic weapon the size of a machete and corrupts the wielder. I had to use it on the Writhing Zeppelin, but it’s been safely stored in my inventory since then.” I turned around to look them each in the eye. “If you ever find a demonic weapon, don’t use it. You’ll eventually become one and I assure you it won’t go well.”

“Oh, but you can?” John challenged.

“No, dude,” I said, throwing my hands in the air. “Look, you keep pointing things out like you’re going to hit me with some big gotcha moment. I used it for, what? Two minutes or some shit like that? Thanks to that I couldn’t use my hands until this morning. My fingers decided they didn’t want to work while my body purged the demonic influences, which was a major pain in the ass. I could have alleviated it by using the scalpel more, but that’s just fucking addictive. And that’s with a shard of angelic divinity living rent free in my soul.”

John stared at me for a few minutes before mumbling out an insincere sounding apology, and I let it go.

“What’s this about a shard of angelic divinity?” Francis asked.

“A secret is what it is, for the vault.” I gave the young man a loaded look and he nodded, miming closing a door with his hands. Turning my attention to Thomas, I returned to the previous topic of discussion. “Could you tell me what Jeremiah looked like?”

“Sure,” Thomas said, crossing his arms as he leaned back into his chair. “He was a mousy looking fellow. Shorter than any of us, for sure. Black hair cropped short, looked like his nose had been punched a few times, and skin so pale I thought a vampire had walked into home base. The man was confident in himself, though. Spoke in short, clipped sentences, mostly asked about you and staying the night.”

“He wore military dress, and had a Colt Anaconda on his belt,” John begrudgingly added.

“The revolver?” I asked before I could stop myself.

“No, he had a half horse half snake as a belt,” John responded sarcastically. “Yes, the revolver.”

“Well, can’t say I didn’t walk right into that one.” I finished my tea and took a sip as I thought it over. “He stayed the night, though?”

“Yeah. I asked about him before we left in the morning. Albert, our guy working the front desk this morning, said he hadn’t checked out by the time we did,” Thomas said. “Though that doesn’t mean he didn’t leave. People aren’t required to check out and head out through the front door, just requested to.”

“I think he was leaving when I arrived,” I mused. The spark of anger I felt from that man simply bumping into me was more than I had expected, but I chalked it up to nerves. If he was starting to change into a demon thanks to Pustibule, then it made a lot of sense. “My gear had been updated since I had gone to Stanley so he may not have recognized me based on Pustibule’s description. Thomas giving me the card must have confirmed my identity.”

“He might not have wanted to fight you face to face if he had a sniper rifle,” Francis stated. “I mean, tales of the shit you’ve done are pretty widespread now.”

I nodded. That also could have been it. “Demonic metamorphosis is exhausting so fighting me fairly wouldn’t be easy. Really, think of the transition like cancer in the way it treats those suffering from it. They’re tired all the time because of the way their body is mutating. There does come a point where he’ll be full of nothing but energy, but that usually takes weeks. Unless Pustibule did something to make the process faster, which isn’t off the table as the demon is literally a doctor, he should be pretty lethargic. I don’t expect him to try to do much more than snipe me for now.”

“Seemed effective enough the first time.” I chuckled at Thomas’ worry and shook my head. He continued. “So what now? Going to lay low for a while?”

“Until about six o’clock, yeah,” I admitted. “I’ve got a lot of things to do. You know, just in case.”

“You’re still going to the Square? That sounds suicidal at this point.”

I merely shrugged. “I exist for the people, Thomas. The knowledge I have needs to survive, but if I don’t act on it then I don’t deserve it. Though, if you could let your people know I’m going to be there, I’d appreciate it.”

“And give Jeremiah a chance to hear that you’re planning on being there? I don’t think so.”

“That is what I’m hoping for, but understandable,” I said with a shrug. I scoffed at the look on the trio’s face. “Alright, I’ve kept you all for way too long as it is. You guys should get out there and hunt to make up for the dungeon that would have killed you.”

John looked like he was going to say something snarky, but Francis opened his mouth first. “You sure you’re going to be okay?”

I opened the robe to reveal that the wound in my chest had finally closed over with nary a scar to show its passing. “Thanks, mate, but I’m all good.”