2026-07-26 21:41:42
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Chapter 29: Entry Card
Zach didn't have a shotgun in hand and figured Jake just didn't trust him enough to hand one over.Fair enough, really. In this kind of chaos, Zach probably wouldn't have trusted a stranger with a weapon either.Truth was, Jake had switched seats purely because driving would've cost him valuable shooting time.Crows could drop cards too, lower odds than a full-sized humanoid infected, sure, but with a swarm numbering in the thousands, maybe tens of thousands, the raw volume more than made up for the weaker drop rate.Even a rare card wasn't out of the question in a swarm this size."Open the door, let me in!""Help! They're right on top of us!"...Watching Zach climb into Jake's van, several more quilt-wrapped stragglers rushed over, assuming Jake was an easy mark. They started pounding on the doors, demanding entry without even offering a reward in return.Jake didn't spare them a glance. "Drive. Stay tight with the group ahead."Jake wasn't in the charity business. Early on, sure,
Chapter 28: Zombie Crows
Beyond the watch team dropping the ball, the real reason this crisis had built up was simple, the Caravan had overstayed its welcome in this spot.Nearly a hundred people parked in one place for days sent out a scent no infected could resist.If the earthquake hadn't wrecked the roads, crows wouldn't have been the worst thing to show up. Something far more dangerous could've found them just as easily.Jake didn't risk moving yet. He sat quietly in the van, bracing for the worst.The quiet couldn't hold forever. It was only a matter of time before it broke.With close to a hundred people scattered across their own vehicles and tents, getting word out fast was its own problem. Some people were already awake, tense as coiled springs, unable to actually do anything yet.Others were still dead asleep, completely oblivious, every one of them a live wire waiting to set the whole thing off.After ten more tense minutes, people slowly started stirring."Ahh"One easygoing guy stretched and let
Chapter 27: New Trouble
With the fusion finished, Nikki said a quick goodbye to Jake, practically dragging Sierra back toward the vehicle to inspect every inch of their upgrade.The vehicle didn't look small from outside, sure, but stepping inside made it obvious the interior ran far more spacious than the exterior suggested.That was the origin card effect at work.Like fusion cards, origin cards fell under the rare-card category. Their whole value came from granting a vehicle special baseline traits.Some boosted overall structural strength. Others added speed. Some cut fuel consumption. All kinds of effects, depending on the card.Nikki and Sierra had used a Space Expansion origin card on their vehicle, with that boost active, the interior volume had grown by a full thirty percent over what the shell suggested....Elsewhere, two men were asking around for help lifting a van, propping it up on bricks and stone to swap out the tires.These two counted as another lucky pair who'd landed a working vehicle, n
Chapter 26: The Lucky Ones
By the time the modifications wrapped up, over an hour had passed and full night had settled in.The delay was entirely Reeves' doing, he kept tossing out new upgrade ideas mid-job.One-way white tint on the rear windows to match the body paneling, for instance, privacy and better concealment, all in one.Custom-fit curtains for every window, including the windshield, didn't interfere with driving, still let air and light in normally, but could be drawn shut fast if things got dangerous.He also floated a thick floor mat for the newly emptied cargo space, looked decent, cut down on noise inside the vehicle, which meant less chance of getting noticed while moving around at night.Then a fold-out cot, so even camping out in the open, the van could double as a basic RV.Jake couldn't help thinking Reeves was somehow turning his van into a hybrid of delivery truck and funeral home, but he had to admit, every suggestion was genuinely useful. Problem was, the full package blew way past what
Chapter 25: Modifications
If the story had stopped there, it wouldn't have been anything worth remembering. The real twist came after.Once the divorce went through, the husband hadn't even been that angry at first, right up until he found out the woman's new husband was the exact same guy who'd whispered in his ear about her refusing to pay for his rescue.And it turned out that same guy had also been the one quietly pushing her toward the divorce in the first place.Once that clicked, there was no missing what kind of game he'd been running.Both of them were furious. The woman regretted the whole thing on the spot, cursing the man out for being a snake.Her new husband wasn't backing down easy either, fine, call it off, but the bride price was coming back first.Jake blinked. "There was an actual bride price? Even now?"Nikki grinned. "Yep. Heard he handed over a weapon card as the dowry.""So did they give it back?""Not a chance. The ex and his ex-wife are refusing to return it *and* demanding he pay them
Chapter 24: A Farce
Out of the seven or eight people who'd supposedly lost someone in the rubble, it turned out only the kid had actually been looking for his father in good faith. The rest of it was pure theater.With almost nobody willing to actually pay, Captain Blake found himself in an awkward spot, he'd already given his word publicly, and backing out now would cost him.So he ended up covering part of the payment himself, scraping together a handful of high-Perception survivors to sweep the rubble. They pulled two injured men out alive.One was the boy's father. The other was the so-called husband from earlier."Dad!" The kid lit up, laughing and crying at once as he sprinted toward his father."Baby" The woman called out too, sweet as ever on the surface, though her expression didn't quite land right no matter how you looked at it.Both men had minor injuries, but a healing card sorted that out fast.As for everyone else still unaccounted for, no signs of life turned up. Likely gone for good.You
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