The Apocalypse Exchange: I Can Trade Anything

Chapter 6: The Road Out, Wide Open Sky

For a while after that, Ryan kept up his daily training just without pushing himself to total exhaustion anymore. He needed his body ready for anything, not wrecked from overtraining.

He also spent more time watching the street below. It wasn't just the human infected that had changed the cats and dogs down there had bulked up well past anything natural.

He'd watched, once, as an infected cat caved in another infected's skull with a single swipe of its claws. The thing never got back up.

Twelve more days passed while Ryan waited for his window.

In that stretch, he'd bought nutrient formula four separate times. His balance now sat at 81 points.

He'd started to think the day was winding down like any other until the sound of heavy, sustained gunfire cracked through the air nearby.

Every infected on the street below immediately took off toward the noise.

Ryan understood instantly: this was his shot.

In this country, nobody outside the military produced gunfire with that kind of volume and rate of fire.

He moved fast combat suit on, the go-bag he'd packed weeks ago slung over his shoulders. He laced his boots tight, grabbed the key to his old electric scooter by the door, and pulled on the helmet he used to wear riding it.

It wasn't a full-face helmet, but it was rated for serious impact the kind of thing that could reportedly shrug off an axe strike, according to a video he'd watched back when he bought it. He'd stomped on it himself a few times testing it out. Not a scratch.

For the first time, he found himself wishing he'd bought a car instead.

The regret didn't last. Gas, parking, insurance, maintenance every dollar toward a car back then would've been a dollar pulled straight out of his early-retirement plan.

The moment he actually stepped out of his apartment, months after locking himself in, an irrational wave of fear hit him an urge to turn around, shut the door, and hide until hiding was no longer an option.

The gunfire in the distance snapped him out of it. He shut the door behind him and moved.

The bloodstain on the hallway floor had dried into a dark, unsettling rust color.

The door across the hall still hung open. Ryan leaned in carefully to check.

Dust coated every surface counters, cabinets, everything. The living room opened onto a small balcony, where a wicker chair sat draped in a white sheet, its shape unmistakably suggesting someone was still sitting in it.

He was about to move on when he spotted a set of car keys hanging on a hook by the door.

He grabbed them without a second thought.

Ears straining for any sound, he crept down the stairwell. Every open door made him move faster, quieter he had zero interest in looking inside any of them. Months into this nightmare, any movement behind a door was ninety-nine percent guaranteed to be something that used to be a person.

Even the closed doors with noise leaking out from behind them made him pick up his pace.

But the first floor was where things went wrong.

A dozen or so infected were trapped behind the building's security gate, snarling and slamming against the glass and metal, desperate to break through.

Ryan's building was an old one no separation between the parking area and the walkways. Every car sat out in the open lot. This lobby was the only way through.

He'd clocked it on the way down already: every ground-floor and second-floor unit had its door sealed shut. No alternate route. No way around this.

He focused, and the carbon steel blade materialized in his grip. He tore strips from a spare blanket and lashed the hilt to his wrist. A pistol appeared in his left hand a moment later.

Crouched low, blade raised, he advanced on the nearest infected.

One clean swing. The head hit the floor before the body registered it had been struck.

The next closest never saw him coming either. Ten thousand practice swings had rewired his muscle memory completely every strike landed exactly where he aimed it.

Then, whether the growing quiet tipped it off or some instinct kicked in, the infected further up turned and the whole group surged toward him at once.

Ryan raised the pistol. Bang bang bang.

He emptied the magazine in a matter of seconds. At this range, every round found its mark.

Bodies piled up against the gate, blocking it completely. He sheathed frustration into his blade instead, hacking through the pile until the way was clear enough to drag them aside.

Only once he was sure nothing else was hiding in the wreckage did he risk clearing a path through.

The smell hit him hard the moment he stepped past the gate worse than the stale mustiness that had filled his apartment for months. Out here, the stench of blood mixed with something rot-sweet and wrong.

His scooter was parked exactly where he'd left it. He checked the battery still charged, still functional. Between that and the second set of car keys, he now had a backup plan.

He doubled back a few steps, popped the scooter's rear compartment, and pulled out a handful of disposable masks, stuffing them into a pocket. One perk of the combat suit he hadn't fully appreciated until now it was covered in pockets.

The mask cut the smell down considerably.

He thumbed the unlock button on the car key as he walked, scanning the lot.

About fifty meters out, a set of headlights flashed among the parked rows.

Ryan's spirits lifted. He'd mostly grabbed the keys on a hunch even without knowing which car they belonged to, most people kept a spare. Good odds this was it. The original car had probably left the lot already, driven off by whoever had taken his old neighbor and her baby to safety.

When he reached it, he found a pair of matching off-road SUVs parked side by side the kind of aggressively muscular build he recognized from commercials, built for guys who wanted their car to look like it could bench-press a smaller car.

He slid the key in, twisted it to accessory power first, and checked the fuel gauge.

More than half a tank. Relief flooded through him.

He turned the key the rest of the way. The engine roared to life.

He stomped the gas pedal on reflex.

VROOOM.

The engine screamed in park. Ryan flinched hard, glanced down at the gear shift, and grimaced.

He shifted into D.

The last time he'd driven anything had been a summer driving course back in college. He hadn't touched a wheel since graduation but D for Drive, at least, had stuck with him.

The gunfire in the distance was already fading. No time to second-guess himself further.

He hit the gas and tore out of the parking lot.

The instant he cleared the gates of his old apartment complex, something in Ryan's chest loosened completely like he'd just broken the surface of deep water after months held under, finally free to breathe.