Chapter 63: Parliament’s Officially In Session
"Oh, motherfu-!"
The second half of that curse died somewhere in my throat, unspent, while the channel sat silent and the cold October breeze kept moving across the balcony.
Democracy.
Tens of kilometers of dead city between us, thousands of infected running an orgy on the shoreline below, a two-story monster sleeping in the shallows on a four-to-five-day timer, and Nia had just formally challenged my government the second I declared it.
[Well... guess we’re doing this.]
I pressed two knuckles into the spot between my eyebrows where the headache kept its residence, dragged the hand down my face, and took a long sip of coffee that had gone lukewarm on me sometime during the ambush.
Then the penthouse side of the line cracked first.
"...Called WHAT?" Kara demanded. "Democracy? What is- Nia, why are you smiling like that?!"
"Is this a regressor thing?" Nora piled straight on top of her. "This sounds like a regressor thing."
"It’s a headache," I answered honestly.
"It’s procedure~" Nia sang from somewhere near their mic, bright and syrupy, and I didn’t need eyes on her to know exactly how much she was enjoying this.
"Look..." I started, "Back in the old days, our group ran simple... Angelica led, and the rest of us did what she said."
"The mystery boss lady," Nora noted.
"Yes, the mystery boss lady..." I confirmed. "And sooner or later in any group, somebody’s gonna hate the boss lady’s plan. Now, bitching doesn’t stay small in a survivor group in a world gone to hell... it spreads, then somebody hesitates in the field over an opinion, and then people die. So Angelica built a release valve into the whole thing, and she called it Democracy."
Behind me, from the kitchen island, came the unmistakable sound of a very large stretch performed by a very small body.
Tikki bowed the entire length of himself with his tail up, yawned wide enough to show me every tooth he owned, and came strolling through the wrecked apartment toward the balcony with the little custom earbuds still seated in his ears.
I’d bought him those from the system’s catalog, ear protection and radio link in one, patched permanently into this exact channel, which meant every word of this meeting was going straight into that furry head, and every sound out of him was going straight back out to the whole group.
He hopped up onto the wide balcony railing beside me, folded his paws under himself, and settled in, right on time for our very first formal meeting.
"Here are the rules," I said, scratching behind his ear. "Rule one. You only call Democracy if you genuinely believe you’ve got a better plan. Not a complaint. A plan... Complete, start to finish."
"And if you just... don’t like the plan?" Leo asked, careful with it.
"Then you make a dildo out of it and shove it up your butt..." I replied. "Disagreement without a solution is just noise. Which brings us to rule two... You present that alternative of yours to the whole group, in detail, and you explain exactly why it’s better than mine... Rule three: everybody gets to grill you afterward, and every question gets answered. No dodging. Rule four: the leader gets the same floor. A fair chance to explain, in equal detail, why your bright idea is stupid."
"Accurate," Nia sang pleasantly.
"Rule five, if somebody else on this line decides both plans are stupid, they can jump into the debate with a third one. Caps out at half the group in the debate at once, so it never turns into a full-blown riot. After that, we vote. The majority wins."
"Wait, wait, wait." Nora again. "Do you two get to vote for your own plans?"
"Obviously."
"That’s rigged!"
"That’s called confidence," I countered before taking another sip. "There’s also a finalization round before anything locks in... everybody gets asked exactly once if they want to switch their vote. After that, it’s carved in stone."
"Has anyone ever actually won one of these? Against the leader?"
A pause happened.
"Moving on," I said.
"He reeeally doesn’t wanna talk about it~" Nia supplied, delighted.
"MOVING ON. Next rule... once the vote’s done, it’s done. The winning plan goes into effect, and every single one of us executes it like it was our own idea. No crying about it, no bitching about it, no ’I told you so’ three days later... Groups die from that shit way more often than they die from the infected."
"One more question," Nora cut in, "... and it’s important. Does Tikki get a vote?"
And right on cue, from the railing beside me, into the earbuds, across city and straight into the penthouse was sent a very firm:
"Mea."
And the channel briefly stopped being a parliament.
Nora howled, Kara’s quiet laugh broke loose into a real one, and somewhere behind them, Leo said "he KNOWS" with genuine wonder in it, while Tikki sat there in his perfect loaf, deeply unbothered, fully aware he’d just killed on his first open mic.
"He said Mea!" Nora giggled.
"He always says Mea." Nia’s father countered from somewhere behind.
"And the last rule..." I let the grin drain out of my voice so all of them would hear the difference. "The most important one. Democracy lives in here... safe rooms, morning coffee, radios. It does not exist out in the field. Out there, if the leader tells you to jump off a cliff, you jump off that fuckin cliff without so much as batting an eye. No debate, no hesitation, no raised hands. Hesitation out there doesn’t just cost cracks in the group, it costs people. Everyone clear on that?"
The channel came back sober, one yes at a time.
"Good. Then, before Madam Challenger takes the floor, everyone gets the full picture because some of you only know pieces of this trip. Most not even that..."
I set the coffee down on the railing next to Tikki and looked out east, past the wrecked rooftops of the rich district, to where the morning haze sat over the road leading to the highways.
"The trip’s a loop. Clockwise, three hundred to four hundred kilometers, four days, five at the best, all of it east of the city on highways that should be empty, because this city turned too fast for anyone to clog the roads trying to run."
Taking a deep breath, I continued:
"Stop one. A truck stop about ninety kilometers east, sitting on a four-way highway intersection... We’re talking long-haul rigs, trailers, some of them temperature-controlled, fuel tankers, a gas station with fuel still in the ground, mechanic shops, a convenience store. And here’s the beautiful part... trailers stack in my Inventory. Semis stack. Tankers stack. Loaded or empty, doesn’t matter... I can in theory stack them all in a single slot."
"Meaning?" Kara asked.
"Meaning the entire truck stop fits in one slot of my Inventory," I said, and I could hear my own voice doing the exact thing Tikki’s whole body does when a laser pointer comes out. "Every rig, every trailer, every liter, every shelf of every shop. All of it."
"You’re going to shoplift a truck stop," Nora said slowly.
"I’m going to shoplift an entire truck stop," I confirmed.
"Now, the catch. A place like that won’t be sitting empty... Most truckers carry, and out there in the middle of nowhere, they’d have had barely any Infected to deal with on day one... which means they’ve had every opportunity to circle the rigs and fortify that truck stop into a camp. I’m assuming thirty people, maybe more, all armed."
The channel went a shade quieter.
"And they’ll just... let you?" Leo asked. It came out careful, an honest question with no fight anywhere in it.
"They got what I want, Leo." I kept my voice level. "They will get handled."
Nobody said anything to that, and for a second, the static was the only thing on the line.
"Stop two, further down the east leg, then going south, there’s Brackenfield. A small farming town. We’re targeting grain silos big enough that you can see from the highway, cold storage everywhere. Silos load trucks through a discharge chute at the bottom, so the tankers I lift from stop one get parked right under those chutes and filled to the brim... wheat, corn, barley, until the silos run dry or I run out of tankers. Then the cold cellars. Picture potatoes, onions, cabbages, whatever the countryside put away for winter, straight into the temperature-controlled trailers, along with every tractor and seeder that isn’t bolted to the planet... We’re not scavenging to survive next week. We’re stocking a settlement. But here’s the snag... Farm country runs on the same math as the truck stop. Everybody out there owns a rifle or shotgun; there’s open ground everywhere... and low population density. So, expect a second camp."
"...So what I’m hearing," Nora said, steering hard away from that, "... is that we’re going to own a tractor."
"We’re going to own several tractors," Nia answered.
"Stop three... I go a little further south before turning west... there’s Lake Adler. It’s got a small fishing village with a resort around. I’m targeting boats, nets, cold-smoked fish if we’re lucky. I also plan to use Telekinesis to catch loads of fish and store them in the temp-controlled trailers, not to mention, parked at the resort’s marina, assuming she’s still floating... a party cruise ship."
"A WHAT."
"A small one..." I said, as though that made it reasonable. "The system refits her, and we’ve got ourselves a floating base. A heavily armed cruise ship that fits in a pocket. The uses are endless."
"Holy..." Nora breathed.
"Then I keep heading west and re-enter the city from the south, come straight to the penthouse, load every last one of you, and we head west... The whole thing’s gonna take four days. Five, worst case. The Tank sleeps for about the same time, so we really can’t be dallying. And... yeah, that’s the trip."
I let the numbers sit on the channel, picked the coffee back up, and drained the lukewarm half of it in one go.
"Now that everyone is in the know..." I straightened up off the railing. "Parliament’s officially in session. Nia, you’re up."
One breath of pause rode the far end, and when Nia’s voice came back, every trace of play had left it, and the Designated Marksman was on the line.
"I go with you." She began, "We’re on a clock... the Tank will wake up in four to five days. With me around... the whole operation could be handled within the Tank’s timeline. That’s a lot of loot we’re aiming for; you need that extra pair of hands. Besides, going alone will also pose massive risks to you. You’d be there with no backup... magic or not, that’s still two whole camps you will be taking on by yourself... back to back. And who knows, there won’t be folk up at Lake Adler. We here can’t lose you... You’re our greatest asset against everything."
She didn’t rush a single word of it, and she didn’t dress it up either, and I caught myself nodding along at a radio.
[There she is.]
"So how’d you propose we handle the safety of the group as a whole?" I asked, level, by the rules, no edge in it.
"Two ways we can do this..." She had this ready too. "One, they stay here. The Tank’s attracted a lot to light... so we’ll duct-tape every window and make sure no light can get through. Second, Kara mentioned you have an RV. They get in, start driving west, and hunker down on the highway and wait for us... Highways should still be clear."
"Anything else?" My hand found Tikki’s head on autopilot and began scratching.
"That’s about it."
"Now here’s my take... the group stays in the penthouse with Nia" I began my little speech, "The Tank isn’t waking up for a few days, and in those days, Nia will teach the group how to use firearms and actual survival. Doesn’t really matter what you guys shoot; the noise isn’t reaching the other side of the city. The group as it is now can barely protect itself, and I can get you guys more ammo than you’d ever need."
Downing the other half of the coffee, I continued:
"And in the event that I am late, or the Tank wakes up early... I’ll park the Ascender right below the penthouse, so Nia can extract everyone and get out of the city. She has the same knowledge as I do and can identify the signs for other threats... and if something else shows up, she’d know what to do."
"Wise..."
The word arrived low and unhurried through the static, the first one Nia’s father had spent in the entire session.
"Dad-"
But I rolled right over her.
"As for my going alone... I can handle myself. I handled a fucking Tank alone... I made fuckin history yesterday. I can snap every neck within a twenty-meter radius of me with just a thought. And if the situation needs a specific piece of gear to be solved... I can buy it right then and there. I can store shit in the Inventory. If things go south, I can just glide away... But I can’t do that if I’m not alone... case in point, every trick I own gets stronger the second nobody’s standing next to me. Simple as that."
"Okay... let’s cast votes now." Nia took the channel back, brisk, with zero sulk in it. "Kara?"
A breath got pulled in on the other end.
"I vote for Nia’s plan. I do not want Nikki taking such risks, and with extra hands, the time it would take to handle the whole trip will be shortened."
"Noted," I replied, and I meant it, because one person, one vote was the entire point of the exercise.
"Dad?"
"My vote is with Nikki." No pause in it, no hedging anywhere. "He’s right about being safer and more lethal alone. If any one of us had been with him when that thing attacked... we’d all be dead."
[Two-two... Leo and Nora left.]
"Leo?"
Nothing came back.
-Kzzzt-!
The static wandered through the gap all on its own, while far below the balcony, down at the water, the shoreline kept up its low and distant churn before finally:
"Must we do this?"
It came out so quietly that the static nearly drowned it out.
"They’re just people surviving... and they just happened to-"
"Leo," I cut in, gently as I knew how. "Who do you vote for?"
And the pause that followed was the longest one of the whole morning.
-Kzzzt-!
"You said another person can join in, right?"