Chapter 452

Fenn watched as Dambree moved up to the car, opening the trunk and rummaging around in the back. She came up with a heavy bag marked with a red cross and a red crescent, hefting it with a grunt before slamming the trunk. Fenn was watching both babies in one of the back seats.

"Don't let them play outside," Dambree said. She moved over to a clear patch of road, sitting down. Mister Mewmew was next to her and Fenn gasped in shock as Dambree pushed up her sleeve, exposing her fur covered forearm, and Mister Mewmew opened his mouth to reveal long fangs.

Mister Mewmew bit Dambree, holding position for a moment before opening his mouth, the fangs retracting.

Dambree dug through the medical pack, finding the dataslate first. Her arm stung a bit, but it wasn't the first time she'd have Mister Mewmew 'bite' her.

The dataslate binged, the screen brightening to show the Confederate Armed Forces logo.

>Please Input Service Number

Mister Mewmew put his paw on the screen.

>Cybernetic Medical Assistant recognized

>Civilian assistance mode activated.

"State the nature of your emergency," the dataslate said.

Dambree coughed, took a drink of the fizzybrew to cool her throat, and looked the dataslate.

It was listing respiratory diseases, chest injury, and other problems, which told her that it had heard her coughing. She looked over and saw Aunt Fenn watching closely from inside the car and shifted so that the dataslate was hidden from Aunt Fenn and the other's eyes.

"Radiation poisoning," she said softly.

"State the nature of exposure," it said.

Mister Mewmew put his paw on the dataslate.

//Unarmored Exposure to M-67A3 Anti-Matter Fragmentation Grenade with Phasic Jacket

//Unprotected Exposure to Atomic Weapon Detonation

//Exposure to Atomic Weapon Deployment Fallout

all scrolled up.

>Take Blood Sample of Patient

Mister Mewmew pressed his paw again.

More data scrolled up and Dambree watched.

The results made her blanch. She knew that it couldn't have been good that she was crouched down when the first detonation had gone off, staring right at it, and outside the bushes. She knew that driving through the rain couldn't have been good.

But seeing it in stark letters on the dataslate made her sigh and crack open another fizzybrew, staring at it.

It's one thing to promise your siblings that you'll lay down your life to protect them, she thought as she took another drink. It's another thing to know that you've done it.

//Display Treatment Options with Available Medical Resources

Dambree watched as Mister Mewmew kept interacting with the dataslate. Finally it pinged.

>Step One: Remove Autoinjector Marked "ATOMIC EXPOSURE"

Dambree dug for it, tapping it against the dataslate when she found it.

Fenn was watching as Dambree stood up, stripping off the heavy coveralls, then the clothing she was wearing, standing under the mag-lev train bridge in the chilly air. She watched as Dambree carefully held a thick tube, pulled a tab off of it, shook it, then carefully wrapped her thumb across the back of it. She reached out and tugged down her panties, exposing one butt cheek.

Ellie giggled.

Elu watched as his sister drove the autoinjector into her butt. Watched her ears go straight up and heard her make a muffled noise of pain.

Ellie giggled against the Elu rounded on him.

"Don't stare at my sister," Elu said.

"I can see her butt," Ullie said.

Elu punched him in the face, tackling him when he stumbled back, and both boys fell into the dirt, Elu yelling "Stop looking at my sister" and Ullie yelling at him to get off. Ellie ran forward and Tru tripped him. Meglee turned and stared as Tru pulled Ellie back by his ears.

"Stay out of it," Tru snapped. She stared at Meglee. "You too."

Elu was on top of his older cousin, punching him in the face with one hand while his other hand held the older boy's ears flat against the ground, straddling him and using his legs to pin his cousin's arms to his side. He ignored his uncle and aunt yelling at him to stop.

He wound back for another punch.

"Enough," Dambree's voice was tired.

Tru dropped his fist, standing up.

Dambree had pulled her clothing back up and was walking forward, shaking a bottle of pills in one hand and carrying the dataslate in the other. She set the dataslate on the seat and motioned everyone to gather up.

Ullie was snuffling, his nose and lower lip bleeding as he got to his feet and moved over with everyone else. Dambree opened the bottle and rattled some pills into her hand before stuffing the bottle back into her pocket. She handed one to each of them.

"Take them, they'll keep you from getting sick like I'm going to," Dambree said softly.

"Will you be OK?" Tru asked.

"Maybe," Dambree said.

Tru's upper lip quivered as Dambree turned away, walking stiffly back to the car. She came up with another can of Liquid Hate.

"I love you, Bree," Tru whimpered.

"I know," Dambree said, hefting the can and looking at the side. Pink Cotton Candy and Sour AppleMax Energy Edition - 8.9% Alcohol By Volume the can said. Dambree cracked the seal, smiling at the little warning of 'you'll regret this!', and took a deep drink.

It tasted like chemical ass, but it was sour and sweet all at the same time and was as thick as motor oil, soothing her throat. It made her empty stomach cramp, but then the pain eased up as she took another long drink.

"We need to repack the car," Dambree said. "Tru, get the tape. Ullie, get all the emergency blankets. Uncle Inkee, I'm going to need you to repack the trunk. Aunt Fenn, I need you to inventory the food. Ellie, you're going to clean all the garbage out, keep any soft paper or cloth," she moved over to the car and reached in, coming out with the black blocky looking Terran rifle. She knelt down and Mister Mewmew put his paw on it. The light turned red. "Elu, come here."

Elu came up, swallowing nervously. At Dambree's motion he wrapped his hand around the pistol grip. He felt the grip tingle for a moment. SYNCHED appeared on the digital readout.

"Say 'unlock'," Dambree said.

"Unlock," Elu said.

The light went from red to green.

AMMO: 100%

POWER: 100%

LOW-V API

SEMI

"OK, you look through the sight. Where the little red dot is, that's where you'll hit," Dambree said.

"I remember," Elu said quietly. "I'm the best shot with a rifle."

"I know," Dambree said. She ruffled her little brother's hair. "Go stand by the back of the car. Keep watch. Shout and shoot at the same time."

"I remember," Elu said. He looked at Dambree. "I love you."

His upper lip trembled.

"I know," Dambree said as Elu moved off.

She sighed, moving to the front of the car. She sat down on the plascrete road, facing out. The rain was still coming down, coating everything in a layer of black. There were several flashes and she counted the seconds.

Thirty two.

She divided by five.

Six miles and some change away.

The ground rumbled slightly.

She felt tired but awake as she took another drink off the can of Terran energy drink. She had a nagging headache, her throat was raw, but she knew the worst was still to come.

Mister Mewmew moved up, climbing in her lap and curling up. She sat there, petting him, while she watched the entrance the underpass.

Another set of flashes.

Forty-two seconds.

The fight was moving away.

She hoped that meant the Terran military was forcing the Slorpies back and not the other way around.

Mister Mewmew sat and watched Dambree doze off with unreadable eyes.

--------------

"Unlock!" Dambree jerked awake, raising the pistol. Her head twinged and she winced, lowering the pistol as she rubbed her eyes with the heel of her hand.

Mister Mewmew looked up, giving a disapproving mrarowawal at being woken. Dambree noticed he had reverted to the dull metal look, but he was still warm and rumbling. She looked out and saw that it was late afternoon, early evening.

Dambree clipped the pistol back onto the belt and unscrewed the top of the can of Liquid Hate, taking a long drink. It helped soothe the burning in her throat.

Symptoms include unquenchable thirst, she thought to herself. She got up slowly, bracing herself on the front of the car. She paused for a second, feeling slightly dizzy, then looked around.

Elu was standing at the back of the car, the rifle in his hands, staring off into the rain.

Everyone else was laying on the ground, on the thin inflatable emergency mattresses, asleep. Tru was curled up with Nee, the new toddlers, and the new infants. They were in a small pile that shifted slightly as the babies and toddlers dreamed.

Check, please, Bree, for me, she heard Elu's voice in her head again. She looked at the tiny children, all asleep, all with suckies in their mouths. How can I keep you safe? Who will look out for you if I am no longer here?

Her aunt and uncle were curled up together, her three cousins between them, the thin inflatable mattresses pushed together. Dambree could tell they were exhausted from the fear, knew that they hadn't really gotten any rest in the car because of the stress.

Dambree moved up next to her little brother.

"Do you feel better?" Elu asked.

"A little," Dambree said.

"I love you," he said after a long moment.

"I love you too," she said. She pulled him into a side armed hug. "I love you and Nee and Tru more than anything in the world."

Even more than yourself, Elu thought bitterly. I wish you still loved yourself as much as we do.

"Were there any problems?" Dambree asked.

"A whole bunch of big bugs ran by, but they didn't pay attention to us. They were all in armor and ran really fast," Elu said. "They were chasing something. They were running as fast a ground car and had planes with them and big robots that looked like them."

"Huh," Dambree said.

"I counted to almost three hundred before they all went by and they went out as far as I could see," Tru said.

"That's a lot of big bugs," Dambree said, ruffling her brother's hair between her ears. Her watch beeped and she looked it.

The facing was cracked.

She dug the bottle of pills out of her pocket, shaking some into her hand. Elu noticed they were two different colors and she slid all but two of them back in. She popped them in her mouth, swallowed them down with liquid hate, and put them back in her pocket.

"We have to get to the cabin tonight," Dambree said. "We'll leave as soon as I wake everyone up and get them into the car."

"Are you going to be OK?" Elu asked the question he was terrified of knowing the answer to.

"Mister Mewmew says I should be, but I'm going to get really sick," Dambree said softly. "A day, maybe two."

"Like when the Slorpy attacked and you got really sick?" Elu asked.

"Like that," Dambree said. She hugged him again. "Keep watch."

"I'll take care of you, just like last time," Elu said, trying to sound helpful.

"I know," Dambree said.

She woke each little group up, only getting bitten once by one of the new babies.

They'll need names soon, she thought to herself as she handed the babies to people after they got in.

"I resealed the barrier," Tru said. She looked in the front seat. "I wish Elu or I could ride up front with you."

"I don't want you to get sick," Dambree said.

"Like you're going to?" Tru asked.

"I'm already sick," Dambree said. "That's why we have to get going," she knelt down and motioned to her sister. When Tru drew close Dambree pulled one of her ears down to murmur in it. "I want you with Uncle Inkee and Aunt Fenn. None of your cousins or Elu, they're in the back seat."

"Black eyes?" Tru guessed.

"Not yet, but grownups get them," Dambree said softly. She pressed one of the heavy Terran fighting knives into her sister's hands. "Hide it under your shirt. If their eyes go, you know what to do."

Tru nodded silently, her eyes filling with tears as she tucked the ugly knife into her waistband and pulled her dirty shirt over it. "I love you."

"I know," Dambree said. She walked back to the side of the car with Tru. The windows were covered with emergency blankets, shiny side out. She opened the middle door and Tru got in, smiling at her aunt and uncle.

Dambree got back in and saw Mister Mewmew sitting next to her.

"Oh no you don't," Dambree said. She slapped the back of the seat. "Go back with Elu and the littles."

Mister Mewmew made his noise of protest, but he still pushed his head through the seat and oozed through with a slight pop.

It took three times to start the car, but it started. The left front tire motor whined, but it still moved.

Dambree pulled the grav-skiiing mask down over her face as she pulled out from under the mag-lev train bridge and turned right.

She had a long way to go.

---------------------

Dambree leaned against the back of the car, watching around her through the night vision lenses of the grav-skiiing mask. She was holding the charging handle that was stuck into the car, watching the readout blink 'error' as the car's charge level slowly raised.

The batteries were damaged and didn't hold a charge well, making it the third time she'd had to charge the car during the night.

There was an abandoned cargo hauler with broken windows and a torn off door that everyone kept going behind to use the bathroom while Elu stood watch with the Terran rifle.

Dambree looked up at the sky. There was bright pinprick flashes, dots the size of a credit chip that kept flashing, and streaks of light across the sky.

The Terrans fighting the Slorpies in space.

Her watch beeped and she dug out her pills, taking two. They weren't making her feel any better, but she wasn't feeling any worse. She'd still had to stop the car twice to go to the bathroom rather explosively.

Each time, at Mister Mewmew's urging, she ate a tube of nutripaste from the medical kit. She's seen what was on the label.

NUTRI-MEDIPASTE FOR ABDOMINAL INJURIES AND ARS - GUT FLORA PRESERVATION

The Sour Apple Watermelon Liquid Hate she was sipping on tasted better than the nutripaste.

Tru stopped and looked at her.

"You have splotches on your ears," she said.

"I know," Dambree told her.

That had been one of the projected symptoms.

Tru nodded and went back into the car, climbing in to sit between her aunt and uncle.

The charger beeped and Dambree pulled it free, putting the charger away before turning and replacing the cap and closing the little door. She got inside, adjusting her seat belt, and started the car.

It whined, it complained, but it started.

Before she could throw it in gear Mister Mewmew oozed through the seat.

"Yes?" Dambree asked.

Mister Mewmew nuzzled her arm and she sighed, pushing up her sleeve. Mister Mewmew bit her, the fangs sinking deep, a bright spark of pain for a second. He opened his mouth, his fangs sliding back into his mouth, and he oozed back through the seat.

She rubbed her arm for a second, around the bite itching.

Her fur rubbed off, revealing a burning tingling burn, like she'd been out in the sun for too long.

Dambree swallowed, grabbed the fizzybrew, and chugged down some of it. She put the can between her legs and put the car in drive.

The car was nearly silent as it rolled down the road, headlights off, Dambree using the mask's nightvision to see.

There was only fifty miles left before it was a straight shot for two hours when Dambree rounded the corner and almost hit the brakes.

In front of her a tall purple figure in shining iredescent robes was in the middle of the robe. It had purple energy flowing off of it was it moved its hands. The tentacles on the lower part of the conical head were waving and a bright purple light was in a nimbus around the top of the head. In front of it a huge section of the ground was starting shimmer and Dambree could faintly make out the translucent forms of what she could only describe as monsters.

Her brain shrieked at her to turn or stop, not to get close to the creature in front of her.

But another part of her screamed in rage as she stomped the pedal to the floor.

The electric car was almost silent as it lunged forward.

The purple figure suddenly turned and Dambree saw that its huge orb-like eyes were completely white except for a narrow black slit in the middle.

"GET FUCKED, SQUIDWARD!" she screamed at the top of her lungs, pouring all of her hatred at it. All of her rage that she might die, that it had happened, that her mother and father were gone, that her siblings would have to grow up without them, that Mister Mewmew was hurt forever, that one of this things peers had ripped open her scalp, that all of it had happened. Her hand went to her waist even as her foot tried to press the pedal through the floor.

It flinched back from the outpouring of rage, the enraged scream of hatred making it jerk away. It tried to float to the side, away from the car that was barreling straight at it.

Dambree whipped the steering wheel with one hand as she pulled the pistol off her hip with the other hand..

The thing hit the front with a crunch, purple blood splattering the hood. It grabbed the plastic hood with two six fingered hands, the long delicate looking fingers strong enough to hold on even as purple energy surrounded its hands.

It looked up, cold fury filling it. How dare this cattle, this prey, this mobile meal, assault it. It was wounded, grievously, but its biofeedback abilities were already knitting flesh and cartilage. It lifted it's head, parting its feeding tentacles and focusing its abilities.

It stared into the bore of a pistol. It lashed out with its psychic powers.

Feeling a spike of pain across the top of her head, Dambree pulled the trigger, keeping her foot on the gas.

THWACK

The shot hit it in the open mouth, traveled down the throat, lengthwise through the body, and disintegrated the creature's hips as it exited. The body exploded into shreds of flesh, purple blood, and viscera chunks as the hypervelocity shot's hydrostatic shock obliterated it.

It flew off the hood.

Dambree ran it over.

The translucent things waved and vanished with faintly heard screams as the car sped into the darkness.

"What was that?" Uncle Inkee asked from behind her.

"Trash in the road," Dambree said, waving the pistol in the air to cool it. "Just trash."

----------------

Dawn was only a couple hours off when Dambree slowed down. The concealing brush she had dragged onto the bridge a lifetime ago was missing although the rickety bridge looked the same. She turned off the road, idling the car forward, across the bridge.

The wood crackled beneath the tires.

She looked carefully at the store slash bar slash diner as she drove by.

The windows were broken out and a dead body was half out of the window, the ears and the top of the head missing.

She slowly wove down the roads, past dark cabins, until she was almost to the lake. She stopped and got out, moving over and tearing up a sign to throw it into the bushes.

She got back in and slowly idled around a corner, down the dirt road, until she came around a sharp corner.

There, in a little pocket formed by a quirk of geology, sat a dark cabin in a loop of high rockface. A little cul-de-sac with a cabin in it. She parked the car by the front door and laid the facemask against the steering wheel, taking the moment to let the relief flow through her.

We made it. I got them here, she thought to herself. Her head hurt, she was thirsty, and her guts hurt.

She got out stiffly, her joints aching, with the pistol drawn, tapping it against her leg, and circled the house. She wrinkled her nose when she saw the little garden was gone, overgrown with weeds and missing the carefully tended vegetables. She checked the generator and saw it wasn't the Terran one she'd scavenged but a cheap one that you'd get at any bottom of the barrel wholesale store.

She looked in the windows, seeing nothing but dust.

The back door opened with a squeal and she stood to the side to the count of ten. When she heard nothing she moved in. She quickly went through each room, then checked the basement, before coming out the front door.

Elu stood between the cabin and the car, the rifle in his hands.

"Wake the others," Dambree said. "We have a lot to do."

"They're tired," Elu said softly. "They'll complain."

"I know," Dambree answered. She walked over to the car, getting her can of Liquid Hate before pushing her mask back with her thumb, still holding onto the pistol. She took a long swallow before setting the can on top of the car and dropping the mask back down.

Her watch went off.

Time to take my medicine, went through her mind as she went back around the house.

There, in the woodshed.

The heavy axe.

She picked it up, turning and staring at the lake, the moons sparkling on the water.

I'm home.