Day 4.
Sauget, Illinois.
14:00 Hours.
The smell of the apocalypse wasn't sulfur or rot. It was bleach and liquefied fat.
The Gutter—the zig-zagging concrete trench we'd poured along the perimeter—was gurgling. The intake pumps, powered by Boyd's generator array in the basement, made a wet, rhythmic thwuck-thwuck-thwuck sound as they sucked the dissolved remains of the Shambler wave into the sub-level tanks.
Five hundred and twenty kilograms of biomass. That was the haul.
`[BIOMASS HARVESTED: 520KG.]`
`[FUEL CONVERSION: 38%.]`
`[SLURRY TANK 1: FILLING.]`
I stood on the catwalk overlooking the killbox, wiping black grime from my face. My hands shook slightly—not from fear, but from the adrenaline crash.
"Disgusting," Helen rasped, standing beside me. She lit a cigarette, the flame trembling in the damp air. She stared down at the grates where bits of bone and clothing were snagged on the mesh. "We're melting people, Jack. Those were people yesterday."
"They're fuel now," I said. "Biomass. The System doesn't care about their names, and neither do I."
I pointed to the eastern section of the killbox. It was flimsy. The concrete was thin, and we were out of rebar. If a Tier 2 Runner hit that wall at full speed, they'd crack it wide open.
"We need steel," I said. "Lots of it."
`[ADMINISTRATOR: STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY CRITICAL. REINFORCEMENT REQUIRED.]`
`[ROOT: TEAR IT DOWN. RIP THE COPPER FROM THE WALLS. BREAK SOMETHING.]`
I looked back at the main factory building. It was a rotting husk of the industrial age—rusted girders, collapsing catwalks, machinery that hadn't moved since the nineties.
"Travis!" I yelled.
The big man stepped out of the shadows. He looked... wrong.
The serum I'd injected an hour ago had rewritten him. His veins were still glowing with a faint, pulsing orange light under his skin. His eyes were bloodshot, pupils blown wide. He was shivering, despite the sweat pouring off him. Corpse Cold. His body temperature was dropping to match the dead.
"Yo, Boss," he grunted. His voice sounded like gravel grinding in a mixer.
"How's the engine?" I asked.
He flexed a bicep. The muscle moved like a hydraulic piston, dense and unnatural. "Feels like I swallowed a car battery. My skin... it feels tight. Like it doesn't fit anymore."
"That's the density upgrade," I said. "Get used to it. I need you on the north wall. That old loading dock? Tear it down."
Travis blinked. "Tear it... down?"
"Deconstruction," I said. "We need the rebar from the foundation and the I-beams from the roof. Use the sledge. Or your hands. I don't care. Just strip it to the bone."
He nodded, a jerky, twitchy motion. He walked toward the loading dock, picked up a twenty-pound sledgehammer like it was a plastic toy, and swung.
BOOM.
Concrete exploded. Rebar shrieked as it was exposed to the light.
"Paige! Ronnie!" I barked. "Harvest crew. Follow Travis. He breaks it, you strip the steel. Move."
Paige looked up from the decon bucket. Her face was gray, streaked with mud. She looked at her ruined hands, then at me. The hate in her eyes was pure, distilled fuel.
"On it," she spat.
She grabbed a pry bar and marched after the human wrecking ball.
The afternoon turned into a blur of destruction.
While Travis demolished the old infrastructure, I focused on the Gutter's digestion system. The System rewarded efficiency, and I needed every point I could get.
I climbed down into the maintenance trench. The air here was thick with chemical fumes. The PVC piping that fed the bleach mixture into the killbox was leaking.
"Sal!" I shouted. "Seal on valve three is blown!"
Sal scrambled over, duct tape and sealant gun in hand. "On it, Jack! These pipes are ancient, man. They can't handle the pressure."
"Make them handle it," I said. "Or we're swimming in slurry."
Miller was chained to a support pillar nearby. His broken arm was splinted with scrap wood and dirty bandages. He looked pale, sweating through his uniform.
"You're enjoying this," Miller wheezed. "Playing god in your little shit-castle."
I checked the pressure gauge. 90 PSI. Good.
"I'm not playing, Sheriff," I said, not looking at him. "God judges the dead. I just process them."
"They'll come for you," he muttered. "The Guard. The Feds. You can't just... hijack a factory and melt people."
"Look at your phone, Miller," I said.
He glanced at the cracked screen of his phone, which lay on the concrete just out of his reach. The AR overlay projected the news feed into the air above it.
ST. LOUIS UNDER MARTIAL LAW. MISSISSIPPI BRIDGES BLOWN. RIOTS IN CHICAGO.
"There is no Guard," I said. "There is no cavalry. There's just the Cull. And right now, you're dead weight. If you want to eat tonight, you pick up a wire brush and clean those grates."
I kicked a wire brush toward him.
He stared at it. Then at his broken arm. Then at me.
His loyalty flickered: 0% -> 2%. Not respect. Fear. He realized I might actually feed him to the intake if he didn't work.
He picked up the brush with his good hand and started scrubbing the gore off the intake grate.
`[ROOT: AWW, LOOK AT HIM SCRUB. BREAK HIS OTHER ARM. SYMMETRY IS PLEASING.]`
I ignored the voice and climbed back up to the surface.
Travis had demolished half the loading dock. A pile of twisted rebar and rusted I-beams lay in the mud. It was ugly, jagged metal, pitted with corrosion.
Perfect.
`[DECONSTRUCTION COMPLETE. MATERIAL HARVESTED: 800KG SCRAP STEEL.]`
`[BLUEPRINT UPDATE: GUTTER WALL REINFORCEMENT AVAILABLE.]`
"Build it," I commanded.
[Image of reinforced concrete retaining wall cross section]
The blue wireframes overlaid the flimsy eastern wall. I grabbed a welder. Ronnie grabbed another.
We worked through the sunset. The smell of ozone and melting metal mixed with the slurry stench. We welded the scavenged rebar into a dense lattice, thickening the walls of the killbox until they were a foot deep.
My hands moved on autopilot. Weld. Cool. Check. Repeat.
This was the grind. The unsexy, back-breaking labor that the movies skipped. You didn't survive the apocalypse by shooting zombies; you survived by welding support struts at 2 AM while your stomach ate itself.
By 9 PM, the Gutter was a fortress.
The zig-zag path was reinforced with scavenged steel. The intake grates were clear. The tanks below were humming, processing the day's kill into glorious, energy-dense sludge.
I stood back, wiping sweat from my eyes.
`[STRUCTURE STABILIZED: GUTTER LEVEL 2.]`
`[DEFENSE RATING: 450.]`
`[NEXT WAVE PROJECTION: 12 HOURS.]`
Yana materialized beside me. She moved silently now, the shadows seeming to cling to her courier leathers. Her eyes glowed with that faint, amber light of the Shadow Class.
"Scouts report movement on Highway 40," she said softly. "Not Shamblers. Headlights. Motorcycles."
My stomach tightened.
Red Faction. The Road Hogs.
They were early. In the first timeline, they hadn't pushed this far north until Day 11. But my arbitrage trade, the rapid construction... I was making noise. I was putting a target on our backs.
"How many?" I asked.
"Six bikes. One truck. Scouting party."
"Let them pass," I said. "We're not ready for a war yet. We need the Command Deck online. We need the map."
"And if they stop?" Yana fingered the hilt of the combat knife I'd given her.
"Then we feed the Gutter something new," I said.
I looked down at the slurry tanks. The red biomass meter was ticking up.
580kg.
Enough for a Tier 1 upgrade. Or... something else.
`[ROOT: OFFER: INFUSE BIOMASS FOR ADRENAL SURGE. MAKE THEM FAST. MAKE THEM SCREAM.]`
`[ADMINISTRATOR: SAVE RESOURCES. COMMAND DECK BLUEPRINT REQUIRES 1000 SYSTEM POINTS.]`
I needed the Command Deck. I needed to see the board.
"Pack it up," I yelled to the crew. "Lights out. Noise discipline. Something's prowling the highway, and I don't want to invite it over for dinner."
Paige dropped her pry bar. She didn't argue. She just limped toward the half-built barracks, her boots squelching in the mud. Travis followed, looking like a glowing, shivering mountain.
I stayed on the wall, watching the distant headlights cut through the toxic fog of East St. Louis.
Day 4 was over. We had a killbox. We had fuel.
But the neighbors were waking up.
FOUNDRY PROTOCOL - DAY 4
SECTOR 1 (JACK MONROE) ██░░░░░░░░ 2/10 Nodes
GUTTER: LEVEL 2 (REINFORCED)
Biomass: 580kg | Serum: 1 Vial (Used)
Threat: Red Faction Scouts (Proximity High)