Day 32.
The Lung (Sector 1).
Sauget, Illinois.
13:00 Hours.
The air in the Lung usually smelled of hope—damp earth, ozone, and the faint, sweet scent of sprouting greens. Today, it smelled like a hospice.
It was the cloying, metallic stench of failing organs. Ammonia sweat. Old blood. The smell of a body eating itself from the inside out to keep the furnace burning.
Travis sat on the edge of a cot, shirtless.
In the first week, he had been a mountain of a man. A gym-sculpted giant who moved concrete blocks like they were Styrofoam. Now, he looked like a statue that had been left out in acid rain for a century.
His skin was grey, the color of wet slate, pitted and cracked where the calluses had grown too thick too fast. The orange glow of his veins—the bioluminescent signature of the Tank Class—was dim. It flickered weakly under the surface, like a fluorescent bulb in a hallway about to go dark.
He was trying to tie his boots.
His fingers, thick sausages of muscle that could crush a human skull, were trembling. A fine, palsy-like shake that made the simple act of threading a lace impossible.
He fumbled. The lace slipped. He tried again. The lace slipped.
A low, frustration growl rumbled in his chest.
"Stop it," Helen snapped.
She swatted his hands away and knelt in front of him. She looked exhausted. Her hair was a bird's nest of grey and blonde, her eyes rimmed with red. She smelled of stale tobacco and antiseptic.
"You're not going," she said, pulling the laces tight with angry, jerky movements. "Your blood pressure is sixty over forty. You're pissing black sludge. If you exert yourself, your heart is going to stop before you even get to the truck."
"We need fuel," Travis rumbled. His voice sounded like gravel grinding in a mixer. "Generator's dying. Turret's dry. If the lights go out, the walls don't matter."
"Let Jack go," Helen said, tying a knot so tight the leather squeaked. "Let Ronnie go. Let anyone else go."
"Jack is running the Silo," Travis said. "Ronnie is... Ronnie. He's got one eye and he's scared of his own shadow."
He stood up.
The movement was a mistake.
His equilibrium failed. The room tilted. He swayed, grabbing the steel frame of the hydroponic rack to steady himself. The metal groaned under his grip, bending slightly.
"I'm the Tank, Doc," he wheezed, waiting for the black spots in his vision to clear. "I carry the heavy shit."
"You're a dying man!" Helen shouted, standing up to face him. She had to crane her neck to look him in the eye.
"You have ten days. Maybe less. Your kidneys are crystallized. Your liver is shutting down. You are in active septic shock. Why do you want to spend one of your last days driving a truck into a war zone?"
Travis looked at her. He saw the fear in her eyes. Not fear of him, but fear for him.
Then he looked at his right arm—the one fused into a club by the serum and the bone-concrete. The elbow didn't bend anymore. The fingers were fused into a permanent, crushing grip.
He looked at it not as a limb, but as a tool. A broken tool that still had one good swing left in it.
"Better I die useful," he said softly, "than shitting myself in a bed while everyone else works."
He didn't say it with self-pity. He said it with anger. He was pissed off that his chassis was failing before the engine quit. He was a truck that still wanted to run, even if the wheels were falling off.
"I'm going to Brennan's," Travis said. "It's three clicks west. Big tanks. Diesel. I get the fuel, we keep the lights on."
"The Enclave will be watching it," I said from the doorway.
I had been standing there for a minute, watching them. The Cruelty trait kept my face neutral, but the math in my head was screaming a different story.
`[TARGET: TRAVIS (TANK CLASS).]`
`[MORTALITY INDEX: 98%.]`
`[UTILITY REMAINING: LOW.]`
`[LOGIC: EXPEND ASSET FOR MAXIMUM RETURN.]`
He was an asset with an expiration date. If he stayed here, he consumed resources—water, medicine, Helen's time—and produced nothing. If he went, he might bring back enough fuel to save us all.
It was a cold calculation. But it was the only one that made sense.
Travis turned to me. He didn't look surprised. He knew me. He knew I saw the numbers over his head.
"Then I'll smash 'em," he said.
"Take the armored truck," I said. "And take a radio. If you see a blue uniform, you don't engage. You call it in."
Travis grinned. It was a ghastly expression, his grey gums receding from his teeth, revealing roots that looked like exposed wire.
"You got it, Boss."
He walked past me. He moved with a lumbering, heavy grace, like a landslide in slow motion. He smelled of sickness—that sweet, cloying scent of failing kidneys and ammonia sweat.
Helen watched him go. She lit a cigarette, her hand trembling so bad she almost dropped the lighter. The flame danced, reflecting in her wet eyes.
"You're letting him commit suicide," she whispered.
"He's settling his tab," I said. "Let him have that."
The Access Road.
13:45 Hours.
Travis drove with one hand. His club-arm rested on the passenger seat like a silent passenger, heavy and useless for anything but violence.
The armored pickup—the one we'd taken from the Red Faction mutineers—rattled over the potholes. The suspension was shot, and every bump sent a spike of agony through Travis's lower back that made his vision white out.
It felt like someone was stabbing him in the kidneys with an ice pick. Again. And again.
He gritted his teeth. He focused on the pain. Pain was good. Pain meant the nerves were still firing. Pain meant he wasn't dead yet.
He looked at the dashboard.
The fuel gauge was on empty. The needle was buried in the red. We had siphoned just enough from the reserve to get him there and back. If he didn't find diesel at the depot, he was walking home.
And he knew, with absolute certainty, that he wouldn't make the walk.
He looked at his reflection in the rearview mirror.
The face staring back wasn't his. It wasn't the face of the guy who used to drink protein shakes and worry about his bench press max.
It was a monster's face. Grey skin. Sunken eyes glowing with a sick, dying light. Veins that pulsed black against the pallor.
"Ten days," he muttered to the reflection.
"Ten days," the reflection seemed to whisper back.
He thought about the life he had before. The construction sites. The beers after work. The simple, uncomplicated joy of lifting something heavy and putting it where it belonged.
He had always been simple. He liked being strong. He liked being useful.
Now, he was the strongest thing in the zip code, and it was killing him.
`[SYSTEM WARNING: METABOLIC CRITICAL.]`
`[CALORIC DEFICIT. MUSCLE ATROPHY DETECTED.]`
`[SOURCE: SELF-CANNIBALIZATION.]`
The text scrolled across his vision, a constant, nagging reminder that his body was eating itself to fuel the magic.
"Shut up," Travis told the air. "I'll eat when I'm done."
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the morphine syringe Helen had given him.
"For after," she had said. "When it gets bad."
It was bad now.
It was worse than bad. It was structural failure.
He uncapped the needle. He didn't bother rolling up his pant leg. He jammed it into his thigh, right through the canvas.
He pushed the plunger.
The relief wasn't instant, but it was close. A warm, fuzzy blanket wrapped itself around his nerves. The sharp edges of the pain dulled. The ice pick in his kidneys turned into a dull, manageable throb.
"Okay," Travis breathed. The world steadied. The road stopped shaking. "Let's work."
Brennan Fuel Depot.
3km West of Sector 1.
14:15 Hours.
Travis parked the truck in a drainage ditch four hundred yards from the depot. He killed the engine.
The silence of the wasteland rushed in, heavy and oppressive. The green sky cast long, unnatural shadows over the ruins, turning the rusted hulks of abandoned cars into crouching beasts.
He grabbed the binoculars from the dashboard. His vision was blurry—black spots dancing in the corners—but he forced his eyes to focus, blinking away the haze.
The Brennan Depot was a sprawling lot of rusted storage tanks, piping, and loading racks. It used to supply the trucking fleets that ran the I-55 corridor.
It wasn't empty.
"Shit," Travis grunted.
Vehicles were parked near the main loading rack. Two Humvees painted matte black, their turrets manned. A fuel tanker truck—a massive 10,000-gallon chrome cylinder—white and pristine, looking out of place in the grime.
Blue uniforms moved between the pumps.
`[FACTION DETECTED: THE ENCLAVE.]`
`[UNIT COUNT: 12.]`
`[EQUIPMENT: HAZMAT / MILITARY GRADE.]`
Travis keyed the radio. "Boss. You there?"
"Go ahead," Jack's voice came through the static, tinny and distant.
"Bad news," Travis said. "Blue boys got here first. Twelve of 'em. Hazmat suits. Rifles. They're siphoning the main tanks into a tanker."
"Pull back," Jack ordered immediately. "Do not engage. We can't fight a squad in the open. Not with your stats."
Travis looked at the tanker truck.
It was huge. Shiny. A rolling bomb of salvation.
Eight thousand gallons. Maybe ten.
That much fuel meant the generator ran for months. It meant the Flamethrower Turret never ran dry. It meant heat in the barracks so the Nulls didn't freeze. It meant light in the factory so the shadows didn't eat them.
It meant safety.
"They're taking it all, Jack," Travis said. "If I leave, they drain the place dry. We get nothing. We freeze in the dark."
"Travis, listen to me. Your agility is tanked. Your reaction time is slow. You can't take twelve men with automatic rifles. You will die before you cross the lot."
Travis looked at his hand. He clenched it. The stone skin creaked like dry leather.
He felt the sickness in his gut, a cold, heavy stone.
He was dying anyway. What was the difference between dying in a bed and dying in a fight?
At least in a fight, he had a chance to matter. At least in a fight, he was a Tank, not a patient.
"I'm not gonna fight 'em," Travis lied. "I'm just gonna... wait."
"Wait for what?"
"Opportunity," Travis said.
He scanned the perimeter.
The Enclave soldiers were disciplined. They had a perimeter set up. Two guards on the roof of the small office building, scanning with optics. Four patrolling the fence line in pairs. Six working the pumps, connecting thick black hoses to the underground reservoirs.
But they were making noise.
The pumps were loud, a rhythmic chugging sound that echoed off the tanks. The diesel generator running their equipment was smoking, chugging black exhaust into the sky. They were shouting orders over the noise.
And out in the ruins, something was moving.
Travis saw it through the chain-link fence on the north side.
Shadows. Fast, twitchy shadows darting between the rusted cars of the adjacent impound lot.
Runners.
A pack of them. Drawn by the noise. Drawn by the smell of living men.
`[THREAT DETECTED: RUNNER PACK.]`
`[COUNT: 20+.]`
`[BEHAVIOR: HUNTING.]`
`[STATUS: AGITATED.]`
They were Primal. Evolved. They were circling the perimeter, testing the wire, looking for a way in.
Travis smiled. It hurt his face.
"Jack," he said into the radio. "I think I found my distraction."
"Travis, do not do what I think you're going to do."
"Radio silence, Boss," Travis said. "I'll call you when the tank is full."
He switched the radio off. He tossed it onto the passenger seat.
He picked up his sledgehammer.
He climbed out of the truck and lowered himself into the tall, dead grass. The pain in his back flared, fighting through the morphine, a hot reminder of his mortality.
He pushed it down. He breathed through the nausea.
He crawled toward the north fence.
The Runners were gathering. They were sniffing the air, smelling the Enclave soldiers inside the wire. They were hungry. They were agitated.
They just needed a door.
Travis gripped the hammer. He looked at the chain-link fence separating the zombies from the soldiers.
"Knock knock," he whispered.
The North Fence.
14:30 Hours.
Travis moved to the section of the fence furthest from the guards. He moved slowly, his grey skin blending with the concrete retaining wall.
The Runners were on the other side, pacing. They hissed when they saw him, but they didn't attack.
They sensed the sickness on him. They sensed the Decay.
To them, he didn't smell like food. He smelled like competition. He smelled like something that was already dead.
Travis stood up. He grabbed the chain-link fabric with his club-hand. The metal bit into his calluses, but he felt nothing.
He pulled.
The metal groaned. The posts shook.
The Enclave guards on the roof turned. "What was that?"
Travis didn't wait. He swung the sledgehammer.
CLANG.
He hit the fence post. The concrete footing cracked. The chain-link sagged.
"Breach!" a guard shouted. "North side! Movement!"
Travis hit it again.
CLANG.
The fence collapsed.
"Dinner time," Travis grunted.
He stepped back into the shadows of the retaining wall.
The Runners poured through the gap.
Twenty of them. Fast. Hungry.
They didn't look at Travis. They looked at the white figures in the distance. The figures that smelled of sweat and blood and life.
They screamed.
"CONTACT!" the Enclave commander yelled. "Hostiles inside the wire! Open fire!"
The depot erupted.
Travis watched from the weeds.
The Runners swarmed the pump crew. They moved with that terrifying, jerky speed of the Tier 2 evolution—a blur of limbs and teeth.
One Runner leaped onto a soldier's back, tearing at his air hose. The soldier screamed as his suit depressurized, then shrieked as teeth found his neck.
Gunfire stuttered. M4 carbines on full auto.
The Enclave soldiers were pros. They dropped the first wave efficiently. Controlled bursts. Headshots. They formed a defensive circle around the pumps.
But they were distracted.
They were looking north. They were looking at the zombies.
They weren't looking at the tanker truck.
Travis stood up.
He didn't run. He couldn't run. He walked.
He walked out of the grass and toward the tanker.
A guard on the roof saw him.
"Giant!" the guard shouted. "Nine o'clock! We have a heavy!"
The guard fired.
A 5.56 round hit Travis in the chest.
It felt like a bee sting. The bullet flattened against his dense pectoral muscle and fell to the ground.
Travis didn't flinch. He kept walking.
"He's armored!" the guard yelled. "AP rounds! Load AP!"
Travis reached the tanker.
The driver was inside the cab, frantically trying to detach the fill hoses so he could flee.
Travis climbed onto the step. The truck groaned under his weight. He looked through the window.
The driver looked back, eyes wide behind his faceplate. He reached for a sidearm.
Travis didn't open the door. He punched the glass.
SMASH.
He reached in, grabbed the driver by his harness, and pulled him out through the broken window.
He threw the man onto the asphalt.
"My truck," Travis rumbled.
He climbed into the cab. The seat was too small for him. He had to squeeze his massive thighs under the wheel. The smell of the previous driver—cologne and fear—filled the space.
He looked at the controls.
"Okay," Travis muttered. "Drive. Just drive."
He slammed the truck into gear.
The hoses were still attached.
He gunned the engine. The massive diesel motor roared.
CRUNCH-SNAP.
The truck lurched forward. The fill hoses snapped, spraying diesel all over the loading dock.
"He's taking the fuel!" the commander screamed. "Stop him!"
Bullets hammered the cab. They cracked the windshield. They punched through the door.
Travis felt a sharp sting in his side. A round had made it through the thin sheet metal and bit into his oblique.
He ignored it.
He drove.
He plowed through the chain-link gate, flattening it. The truck bounced, heavy and ungainly.
He hit the access road and floored it.
In the rearview mirror, he saw the Enclave soldiers trying to pursue, but the Runners were on them. The distraction had held just long enough.
Travis laughed. It was a wet, hacking sound that brought up blood.
"Gotcha," he wheezed.
He looked at the fuel gauge.
Full.
Eight thousand gallons.
He drove east, toward the rising smoke of the Silo.
He was dying. He was bleeding. He was pissing black.
But he was useful.
FOUNDRY PROTOCOL - DAY 32
SECTOR 1 (JACK MONROE) █████████░ 9/10 Nodes
LOCATION: BRENNAN FUEL DEPOT
Status: RAID SUCCESSFUL
Asset: 8,000 Gallons Diesel (Secured)
Travis: Critical Condition (Gunshot Wound + Organ Failure)
Next Event: Black Diesel / The Return