"Admiral, looks like there's another defensive barrier about three-quarters of a klick from our position," Murakumo reports, peering intently down the highway from the back seat. "It might be the boundary of the survivor camp."
"Nice job. Do you have, like, improved sight over a normal human's or what?" Damon asks, minding the speed of the truck.
"Of course we do. How're we supposed to spot ships that are far out at sea? We can't always rely on just the information given to us by reconnaissance planes, the battlefield changes too fast for a perfect analysis of battlefield conditions."
"That's good to know. Is Trisha still awake back there?"
"Yeah, both the girls are," Murakumo says. "It hasn't even been that long, you think they'd fall asleep? You're the one who said that they don't trust us yet! Not fully, anyway!"
Damon chuckles. "Well...I mean, I did just have to drive four hours with two other girls basically snoozin' the entire time, so I'm just makin' sure," he smirks. "They're kids, too - they get tired easily, especially now since they're both hurt..."
"I-I'm not a kid!" Trisha says indignantly, hugging her friend Henna tighter. "I'm Trisha!"
"My bad, Trisha."
Damon peers into the rearview mirror to take another good glance at the two young girls. Trisha, has dark brown hair that reaches down to the base of her neck and sports a curious-looking scar just above her right eye, up across her eyebrow. Henna is slightly shorter than Trisha and has long, matted blonde hair in twintails. Both of them are wearing the same white shirt and short dark green pants.
"Nnn, let go of me, Trisha..." Henna says, trying to make her friend stop hugging her and freeing herself from Trisha's grasp. Instead, Henna crawls over Trisha and puts her head back on Murakumo's lap.
"Huh? Uh..." Murakumo, a bit flabbergasted, simply freezes as Henna wiggles her way deeper into her lap to get comfortable, not knowing how to react.
"Hehe...it's nice and cold," Henna smiles. "It's always so hot...but you're so cold. You're so lucky."
"R-Really?" Trisha moves over to try to wedge herself between Murakumo and the truck door. "Oh, it is cold!"
"A-Admiral..." Murakumo leans over, looking with desperate eyes to try to get him to tell the girls to get off her.
"Didn't you hear 'em? They like the fact that you're nice 'n cool," Damon says, smirking again. "It might be a side effect of your Ice Shield, or that cube that you're holding and givin' you that power - it makes your entire body feel colder. Basically, you're an air conditioner."
"I-It's not that!" Murakumo cries out as Trisha and Henna both hug onto her. "What do I with these two?!"
"Let 'em do what they want. Just be a big sister to 'em or something," Damon suggests.
"I'm so glad I swapped out seats before we left that barn..." Amatsukaze mutters with relief.
"So in other words, you threw Murakumo under the wheels so that the kids would smother her instead of you."
"Precisely."
"You bitch, Amatsukaze!" Murakumo seethes as Amatsukaze giggles madly, but she looks down at them anyway, sighing. "Well...if they're just going to sit like this, then I don't mind, it's not a bother..."
The truck continues to approach the barrier. Once it is close enough for Damon to clearly see, he suddenly brings the truck to a quick but deliberate halt.
"What's wrong, Admiral?" Amatsukaze asks. "Why're we stopping?"
Damon points dead ahead, and Murakumo and Amatsukaze peer out. The light barrier on the highway of Interstate 16 is surrounded by a crowd of men, all conspicuously wearing prison uniforms, or what used to be prison uniforms. Some men do not have any clothes on at all, but all of them are armed, most with melee weapons, many with pistols and a few with military-grade rifles. They turn to the sound of the truck.
"GET DOWN!" Damon practically screams.
A thick wall of lead is fired straight at the truck. While many bullets simply miss due to poor marksmanship, many more slam into the cabin of the truck shattering what is left of any glass still on the windowpanes. Trisha and Henna scream in fright as Murakumo pulls them closer to her body and covers them as best she can so that the bullets can strike her and do nothing. Reacting quickly, Damon guns the engine as hard as he can while still ducking under the wheel, keeping the truck to go as straight of a line down the highway.
"BRACE FOR IMPACT!" Damon grips the wheel as firmly as he can.
The truck collides with a few men who did not jump out of the way in time at ninety miles an hour, coating the front of the vehicle with a new fresh layer of red, before bursting through the light wooden barrier, which turns out to be nothing more than a simple picket fence. Blood and large wooden splinters alike fly about as the truck proceeds onwards down Interstate 16 towards the heart of the city of Savannah.
"H-Hey! Who the fuck were those guys!?" Amatsukaze yells shrilly. "Why'd they just shoot us all of a sudden without any warning!?"
"You're not used to getting shot at for no reason?" Damon looks at her in disbelief.
"THAT'S NOT SOMETHING ANYONE SHOULD BE USED TO, GODDAMN IT!"
"Says the ship girl," Damon notes. "But to answer your question, I dunno either."
"Th-There wasn't anything like that before!" Trisha calls out, and Damon looks at Trisha through the rearview mirror.
"Say that again, Trisha? It wasn't there before?" he repeats.
"Y-Y-Yeah! That fence thingy...it wasn't there last time!"
"Since when, Trisha?"
"Uh...um...since...since those people took us away from the city!"
"That fence must be recent, then," Damon concludes. "I think we also happened to pass by a county jail, too...called the Chatham County Jail, I believe...but why the fuck were there so many people?"
"Hey, why're you asking us...you're the only one out of all of us who has a remote amount of knowin' what the hell's going on," Amatsukaze mumbles, picking glass shards out of her hair and annoyed that she needs to deal with air currents blowing through into her face the rest of the way. Just then, an explosion goes off in the distance, and Damon and Amatsukaze can see a small fireball light up somewhere near the outer limits of downtown Savannah.
"Maybe we'll find out for sure..." Damon says, taking the highway exit ramp off Highway 165. "Both of you, get yours guns and have 'em ready. There's somethin' between us and the survivor camp, and if we gotta clear it out to get these girls home safe, we'll just shoot our damn way through. Amatsukaze, where's that AR-15 from earlier?"
"The AR-15? You mean the gun you gave me on my first day?"
"Yeah, that one."
"Oh...I put it in the back because I got myself another AK."
"When we stop, go get that rifle for me. How much ammo does it still have?"
"Only two more mags, why do you wanna use it?"
"For the sake of using up the rest of the ammo, it's why I asked to begin with."
Five minutes later, the truck is parked in an abandoned alley somewhere on West 32nd Street in downtown Savannah. Damon, armed with Amatsukaze's AR-15 and the trusty L.S.A.T. light machine gun on his back, and the ship girls, both armed with AK-47's, lead Trisha and Henna through the dark and decaying alleys. All the while, they can hear even more gunshots and yells of people.
"Is it always this violent around here, Trisha?" Damon asks as they hurry towards the source of the gunfire, towards West Anderson Street. Murakumo is carrying Henna, who is still in too much pain to walk.
"N-N-No...we, we always heard a couple loud noises like those every once in a while, but...I'm scared, they never got this loud..." Trisha says in a very frightened tone.
"Then we'll have to see for ourselves what's going on. Through here." Damon leads them to the left to reach West Anderson Street faster and stops them just before the alley ends and leads out into the street.
A huge crowd of about thirty or forty men are yelling and hollering at a large reinforced stone and cement wall on the north side of West Anderson Street. They, too, are dressed in a similar fashion as the group of men at the highway that they had encountered just before. Again, these men are also armed with guns and clubs of various kinds.
"C'mon, let us in!"
"You let us in, we ain't gonna kill y'all! Not all y'all, anyway, hah!"
"Don't make us hafta bust our way on through, ya shitstained coons!"
"Ain'tcha'll supposed ta be helpin' yer fellow survivors? What the hell's this here wall all 'bout, then? C'mon, open up!"
The wall appears to be resisting bullet damage reasonably well, but there some areas that are being worn down by the impact of bullets, areas where Damon notes could be potential spots for the men to simply dig their way through to open up a hole in the wall. A few people on top of the wall are poking their heads out to look down at the crowd, not doing anything back. One of them, Damon notes, sports a rifle barrel on his back, one with a muzzle brake...probably a military-grade sniper rifle or marksman rifle, meaning that the defenders are most likely well armed.
"I-I don't know these people," Trisha says, her voice wobbly but quiet as she leans out to look at the rowdy crowd. "They don't look like nice people."
"Sure as hell aren't," Damon agrees, switching weapons to his L.S.A.T. "Luckily we haven't been noticed yet..."
"What're we going to do?" Murakumo asks. "I see people on top of that wall, they're probably survivors of that camp inside this city that you mentioned, Admiral. If we can get past these guys and talk to those people up on the wall, maybe they'll know what to do with these girls."
"Trisha, tell me one more thing," Damon says, turning to the young girl. "That wall...it's been there before, right?"
Trisha nods quickly. Damon looks back into the crowd again and lifts up his machine gun. "Then that's all I need to know."
He walks out of the alley to get a good view on the entire crowd, takes a knee, and aims.
"W-Wait, why're you - " Amatsukaze begins to protest, but Damon cuts her off.
"To kill everyone."
D-D-D-D-D-D-D-DA-DA-DA-DA-DA-DA-DA-DA-DA! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !
The fearsome beating of caseless 5.56x45mm machine gun ammo being pumped away by the barrel of Damon's light machine gun drowns out the death cries of throng of shirtless men outside the wall. The power of the machine gun rounds throws blood red all over the musty and broken gray and white of the tall wall, and a few arms and legs fly about, ripped from the rest of their bodies. Blood, bone, bits and scraps of muscle and other bodily tissue splatter all about. After what seems to be an eternity of constant machine gun chugging, which only turns out to be just under a half a minute, the machine gun clicks empty, and Damon lowers his machine gun.
There are no survivors. Not for this massacre, at least.
Damon ejects the empty 200-round box magazine and simply leaves it laying on the ground as he gets back to his feet, locking the next belt feed from his reserve box of 200 rounds and cocking the charging handle. He motions for the others to follow him as he approaches the wall, stepping over, and in some cases, on many of the bodies as he comes. The three men on the top of the wall, who had ducked right when Damon had started opening fire, peer cautiously over the edge again. Seeing him approach, the young man in the middle, the one with the rifle, stands up suddenly and points his rifle straight at Damon, an M-21 semi-automatic sniper rifle with a crudely forged makeshift flash suppressor.
"Stop where you are!" he cries out, his finger on the trigger and ready to shoot. "Stop, or I will shoot!"
Murakumo hurries to Damon's side, ready to activate her Waterfall Shield if need be. "Hey, what the hell! We - er, he just got rid of all those guys for you! Why're you trying to shoot us? Weren't these guys giving you a hard time?!" Murakumo stops yelling as Damon raises a hand over her to stop her.
"I don't care, we could've taken care of all of those fucking bastards once more of our boys arrived!" he responds, his voice betraying his sense of fear at Damon's group, more newcomers who could be potential troublemakers. "Now leave! We ain't got time for anyone's shit right now! This camp belongs to us, not you! Now turn around 'n scram! I ain't repeating that! Brent, Harry, back me up!" His two comrades also pull out pistols and aim them down at Damon, whose facial expression has not changed one bit after slaying all those men.
"Hey, listen up," Damon calls up to the young men defending the wall. "These girls here? They say they've been kidnapped, and they're from the survivor camp here. We're here to return 'em, 'cause we were passing by and found 'em. And mind if you tell me what's the deal with all these dudes? We ran into another group just like this earlier on the highway."
The man with the M-21 spits bitterly. "Yeah, fucker, go ahead 'n try again, that excuse ain't gonna fucking work! I can't even count the amount of times you asshats from the outside tried worming your way in using pathetic excuses like that! And all I know about the guys you murdered is that they just broke out from the county jail nearby! That's where we throw anyone who doesn't follow our rules or any outsiders we find snoopin' around these parts! Anyway, no how, no way! I'm going to fucking shoot if you don't comply! I'm giving you five seconds!"
"Hey, yo, yo, calm down man, we can't go shooting kids like this!" the man on the sniper's right protests, but the sniper growls at him and he backs down.
"Doesn't matter if they got kids or nothin'! If we let people in, all they fucking care about is eating our food and usin' up our supplies! Hell, don't ch'all remember that one time some of the girls at camp got raped by some guys we let in a few years ago? Fuck you! Five!"
"Khhh..." Murakumo growls in frustration, about to activate her Waterfall Shield. Trisha hides behind the tall body of Damon, and Amatsukaze stands in front of Murakumo to make sure Henna does not get shot in the worst case scenario. As the man counts down rather slowly, Damon can feel Trisha hugging the side of his right leg tightly. He looks down at her, seeing that she is practically burying her face into his hip.
"I-I don't want to get hurt again..." she cries. "It hurts...! It hurts to get hurt...and it hurts to see Henna get hurt too...! Please, don't let them hurt us!"
Damon puts his hand on her head. "When I say I'll get you back home, I'm getting you back home. Leave it to big bro, 'k?" he says with a small smile.
"Two - " the man with the M-21 sniper rifle yells out, but just then a blaring of a truck engine and a consequent yell from further inside the wall catch his attention.
"Just who are you pointing that gun at, Timothy!?" It sounds like an older man's voice yelling at the sniper, and he turns around, lowering his gun, with a slight German accent.
"K-Khal! We got more outsiders here, I'm just trying to tell 'em to go the fuck away!"
"Well, how many?"
"Er...well, now it's five!"
"Now? What do you mean, 'now'? Are they armed?"
"Dude, hell yeah they're fuckin' armed!"
"Oh boy..."
Shuffling of feet climbing up the wall can be heard, and shortly thereafter another man who looks to be in his late thirties or forties peers over the wall down at Damon and company. Damon notes the .44 Magnum revolver the man carries in his left hand, raised up so he and his girls can clearly see. He looks about the area in front of the wall with a clear look of "what-the-fuck-just-happened-here". After analyzing the situation for himself, he turns to Timothy.
"I can see why you added the 'now' part in there, Timothy. Mind if you told me everything that happened here?"
"Er...well, we - we had a whole buncha guys all crowdin' around here trying to get us to open the gate for 'em, but obviously we wouldn't, so they started getting rowdy and shit, and that's when we called for you. Then these guys come in and shoot all of these guys and say they want in too!"
The older man chuckles loudly. "So, in other words, these people saved your hides from getting overrun, am I getting this right?"
"Uh, no, what the fuck are you talkin' about, Khal?! They're just another buncha asswipes trying to ruin our lives in the camp! We've been dealing with this kinda shit on a regular basis ever since we made the camp! We know what happens when we let outsiders like 'em in! You should know that better than anyone here!"
The older man smiles. "And you ought to know that I don't take shit from absolute gutless cowards who try hiding behind their facades of macho and manliness like you. How in the hell am I supposed to take you seriously at all when we all know you just use those incidents as excuses to get yourself a gun and simply defend your own worthless dick? You ain't even got a dick, let alone any balls to speak of, as far as I'm aware from any guard duty you've done. And while I can understand you don't want to risk getting shot by thirty or forty or so men, the fact that one man and those two girls down there with AK's just killed all of these blokes doesn't help your case at all, either."
"Erm..." Harry interjects sheepishly, "it...it was only the guy down there with the MG. Thems girls ain't even needed to shoot anyone...just him."
"Even worse." The older man known as Khal laughs out loud this time. "Stand down, the three of you. I shall handle this."
Dex turns to Damon. "Young man! What is it that you want? I take it you gunned down everyone else here? Did you have a competition to see who gets a chance to win an entry into our camp?"
"On the contrary, we didn't intend any of the sort," Damon replies. "We came here for the expressed purpose of returning these two girls we found on our way to pass by Savannah." He pats Trisha's head and points to Henna in Murakumo's arms.
"Hm...? Lost girls?" Khal rubs his bald head. Trisha, realizing that they aren't going to get shot now, lets go of Damon's leg and shrilly yells up to the older man.
"I'm Trisha! My friend's Henna! We live with Henna's mommy and daddy! Their names are Morgan and Antoine Cradsfeld!"
At the mention of the names, Khal's eyes widen. "The Cradsfelds?" He turns to the men he had arrived with who were supposed to be the reinforcements that Timothy and his buddies called for backup. "Hopefully it's not my age that's catching up to me, but wasn't there an emergency call sometime not long ago that said that the Cradsfeld kids were missing?"
"Yeah, Khal, they made that announcement, like, an hour ago," one of the men with an M16-A2 rifle confirms. Khal turns back to Damon.
"Then I apologize, but I need to have you wait here outside the wall for a while. I am going to call back to camp and have their parents come here and verify that these are indeed their children who went missing. I'm sorry to have to have you wait even longer, especially with this dimwit on guard duty, but it's to be absolutely sure that you aren't bullshitting your way into our camp, like Timothy claims you're trying to do. As for the rest of you, you all can go back...Timothy, Harry, Brent, keep an eye on them." Footsteps can be heard shuffling away from the wall.
"Fucking hell. Why don't these guys believe us? It's not like we simply picked up these girls off the street or anything, either..." Amatsukaze glares up at the men on the wall.
"Don't think too much about it, Amy. Remember, everyone has a right to be suspicious of everyone else. Trust is hard to acquire, and rare to have."
"Are you ever going to stop calling me 'Amy' and call me by my real name properly?"
"Does it really bother you that much?"
"In fact, it does. You say Murakumo's name in full, why can't you say mine? It's unfair."
"While I don't give two shits for unfairness and the like, you do bring up a good point. What was your full name again?"
"It's Amatsukaze! God, I can't believe you!" Amatsukaze gripes at Damon, very irritated that her own Admiral can't even remember her full name.
"Slower."
"Ah - ma - tsu - ka - ze!"
"Hm, okay. I'll probably forget it within the next forty-two seconds, but you can remind me again."
Amatsukaze clenches her gloved fist, an anger vein popping on her forehead as she contemplates using a bit of her glove's battery to set it ablaze as a warning. "You son of a bitch..." she fumes quietly.
"Besides that, how long are they going to make us have to wait out here?" Murakumo asks.
"However long it takes for Henna's parents to come here," Damon answers. "If they're any decent of human beings, they should be burning a lot of rubber to get her to make sure their kids are safe...so hopefully not too long of a time."
About fifteen minutes later, fast footsteps climb up the wall again from the inside, and a harried-looking couple peer over the walls. As soon as they see Henna in Murakumo's arms and Trisha by Damon's side, they both scream out in joy and call out their names.
"Trisha, Henna!" the mother cries out, almost hysterically. "Where did you two go!? W-We were so worried! ! ! Open the gates, I want my daughter, hurry!"
The couple rush off the top of the wall as a gate is pulled up to admit Damon's group. As they approach the gate, the mother and the father rush out to meet them, and the mother takes Henna from Murakumo's arms and hugs her tightly.
"Oh...oh, my dear Henna..." the mother starts, but Henna cries out again in pain, the mother unknowingly aggravating her back wound. "H-Henna? Henna, what's wrong? Where does it hurt?!"
"B-Back..." she whimpers, and Morgan Cradsfeld realizes there is a bandage underneath the bloody white shirt of her daughter.
"O-Oh no, honey, she's hurt!" the mother whispers in terror, and she looks up at Damon and demands, "W-When did this happen? What happened to my daughter?!"
"About an hour ago, we were driving down Interstate 16 towards Savannah when we found a burning van. We searched the place and found the girls near a tree, and they were both hurt pretty badly with lots of cuts and stuff, but Henna had that big gash on her back. I don't know what caused it, but my best guess is maybe a narrow hit from a bullet. I'd like to know what happened with the girls on your end."
"We let the girls out to play earlier this morning," Antoine, the father, explains quickly, lifting up Trisha in his own arms. He is slightly shorter than Damon. "But we started getting worried when they didn't return, because normally they would come back home like we told them to by eleven. We hadn't seem them since - we've been scared out of our minds at what happened to them. But you mentioned a van or something, right? What happened to them, did someone try to kidnap them?"
Damon nods. "A bunch of fellows - no, slave traders is more like it - apparently found them somehow and took them away. The van somehow crashed, is my guess, and somehow the girls survived. That's all we know, really."
"S-Slave traders!?" the father shakes his head in disgust. "We'd heard of them, how the slave thing's been back on the rise, but we didn't think they'd dare try to come near our camp, since we have a good reputation of keeping outsiders away, especially bastards like them. Trisha, tell Daddy, Daddy won't get mad, but how did they end up getting you?"
"W-W-We s-sneaked outside," Trisha says tearfully, "e-e-even though w-we knew we sh-shouldn't, b-b-but we j-just wanted to see what was outside, a-and then those people came - "
"Those people? You mean the bad people?"
Trisha nods, rubbing her eyes.
"And these people put band-aids on you and brought you back?"
Trisha nods again, and Antoine Cradsfeld hugs Trisha tightly.
"Well...I don't know what to say. Thanks for bringing our kids back...I guess without you, we'd never see our children again," Antoine says, offering a hand with some difficulty as he holds Trisha up with one arm, and Damon quickly shakes his hand so that he can go back to holding Trisha with both hands.
"Thank you, thank you," the mother says tearfully as well. "Oh my God...you have no idea how worried out of my mind I was..."
"We can't let this huge favor you've done for us go unreciprocated. Is there anything you wish to do? Something we can do for you?" Antoine offers.
"Um, yeah, there is. I'd like to see if there's anything we can trade or buy off you guys. Oh, especially some gas, we've been driving a long way and we can really use some more. I have a truck parked nearby, is there a way for me to bring it in?" Damon asks.
"But of course! That gate over there should fit most vehicles. But if I might ask, how long do you plan to stay?"
"We actually don't plan on staying for very long. We were only going to pass by, but obviously our plans got a bit complicated," Damon nods at the two young girls.
"Of course, it's totally understandable. Oh, but one thing I'd like to mention, it's best for you to put away the guns, it'll definitely cause a misunderstanding when you walk into camp with guns out and people don't know what you did for us. And let me tell you, we do have surplus gas, but it's going to be pricey."
Damon smiles darkly. "Think just 'bout everyone knows the price of gas. I'll see for myself..."
While Damon fetches the truck and pulls it through the heavily guarded gate, Murakumo and Amatsukaze are led in by the young girls' parents. They watch as Damon guides the truck safely past the wall, and the man called Khal jumps into a nearby pickup truck with a makeshift M-249 machine gun turret installed right on the top of the cabin with the other armed men.
"It's a bit of a drive further into camp," Khal calls out of his window as he starts the engine back up. "You guys get in that truck, and have him follow me."
Everyone, except for the three guards who threatened to shoot the newcomers, gets into the utility truck, and Damon drives after Khal's pickup.
"Er...sorry about all the glass," Murakumo apologizes quickly as Henna's parents scootch into the back seats with their children on their laps. "We ran into some trouble on our way here..."
"Oh, this's fine," Mr. Cadsfeld says, waving his hand lazily. "Glass is nothing. There was a mutant termite infestation in one of our apartment buildings sometime last winter...Christ almighty, never again do I want to see any more termites..." He leans over, calling to the driver. "Er, I'm Antoine, Antoine Cadsfeld. Your name?"
"Damon. Damon Polchow."
"Nice to meet you, Mr. Polchow. And again, thank you for rescuing our children. But I figured I'd say this now, although you're our guests now, you might want to put away the guns. The survivors who live here are highly suspicious of anyone they don't recognize..."
Damon smirks widely. "I figured as much."
Standing just below Freeway 404 overlooking the Savannah river, Damon watches as a small but surprisingly modern refueling station on River Street pumps fresh gasoline into the tank of the utility truck. Five armed men, all carrying either M4-A1 or MK-16 SCAR-L assault rifles and decked out in ammunition and military equipment watch over them warily to make sure Damon and his girls are not up to any funny business.
"We haven't introduced ourselves properly, I don't think," Khal, the older guard, says as he approaches Damon with his hand out after sending off the armed guards who had ridden with him in the military pickup truck. "I'm Khal. I was a German tourist before the whole World War III thing, visiting America for my vacation."
Damon shakes Khal's hand. "Damon Polchow. I was born in the apocalypse, so I'm afraid I can't reminisce with you about how the world was like back then."
"Hmmm...that so, huh? You must've been born right after the bombs dropped everywhere," Khal says, musing. "The gas wasn't too expensive, I hope?"
"It was...a necessary sacrifice," Damon twists his lips. The price that the guards had imposed was nowhere near the price that Damon was aiming for, and even after a whole quarter hour of haggling, he still ended up paying two hundred dollars for a tank refill and two large bulletproof jerry cans. "After all, this's probably the only place that'll even have gas the rest of the way."
"Rest of the way...where you headed, if you don't mind me askin'?" Khal inquires in his touch of German accent, pulling out a fruit cigarette of his own, a grape one, and twists the end to start smoking it. Damon follows suit and joins in with a lemon one.
"Charleston. There's something I want to look for there."
"Charleston?" Khal's face contorts. "That place is irradiated to all hell. You're not going to go in there and expect not to come out with anything less than stage 3 lung cancer."
"Hm, the radiation still hasn't subsided?"
"Nope. That radiation is heavy...so heavy, in fact, that no one's bothered trying to clean it up. When the cleaning crews came around a decade ago, every single team they sent in didn't come back, I heard. That's how they knew the radiation was too strong for humans. Just what the hell's in that city that you'd risk your neck for?"
"Sorry, but I can't disclose that." Damon slowly exhales out a breath full of lemon scent, watching the pale smoke billow up into the air. "It's just really important to me, is all."
"Hm, I suppose I can understand. We all have our secrets that need to be maintained against other people. It's just the nature of this world we live in as of now...probably won't change for the rest of my lifetime, I suspect."
Damon watches his ship girls playing around with Trisha and Henna. Antoine then walks over, waving hello to Khal.
"Hey, it's been a while, Khal," Mr. Cadsfeld says, shaking hands with the German guard. "Mind if I scalp a cig off you?"
Khal hands him a grape cigarette from his cigarette pack. "It's nowhere near the shit normal cigarettes can do for you, but it's still something...healthier, too," Khal mutters as the three men smoke fruit cigarettes together. The pungent scents of grape and lemon mix in the air.
"You know, this used to be a normal gas station, you know that?" Mr. Cadsfeld tells Damon. "I was just a kid when the bombs destroyed the world. To this damn day, I remember this one gas station that I used to live near get absolutely mobbed by a crowd. Gas was quickly becoming a rare commodity, a precious one with the value of gold, even, and gas stations were being looted everywhere. Complete anarchy. And yeah, sure, it's all fun and games until someone decides to be a fuckin' idiot and bring a gun to a gas station..."
"Lemme guess, that said idiot blew everyone up," Damon guesses, and Mr. Cadsfeld nods grimly.
"I'll never forget that day. Lookin' out my window in my room in downtown Savannah, and a really big explosion that threw me back on the floor of my bedroom. And as I watch my window, someone's arm just slaps against the glass and falls off. That bloodstain, man..." he shakes his head. "I'll never forget it. Just so damn stupid..."
"Dunno if you guys can answer me this, but where do you get your gas? You don't actually produce it here, do you?" Damon asks.
"We get regular shipments from a refinery in central South Carolina," Khal answers. "I'll spare you the specifics, but basically we have an agreement with that refinery that lets us trade some of the stuff we grow in our camp in exchange for regular shipments of gas. Mostly we use the gas for ourselves, but we do have stations like this whenever outsiders we let in want to buy gas off us."
"Yeah...profit's important," Damon remarks.
"What 'bout you, fella? What's your story? You look the traveler, too," Mr. Cadsfeld asks.
Damon takes the cigarette from his mouth. "Lived in the CCPL posts up north for basically all my life. Got tossed around a lot, too. Just did whatever I could to keep myself alive, 'cause living wasn't easy, not even in those places. That's really 'bout it."
"But you came all the way down here to the South, what for?"
"Hm...I'd rather keep that secret. But I'm looking for something."
"How mysterious there. You're looking for something...what are you, Jim Hawkins?" Antoine snickers with amusement.
"That's actually not far from the truth."
"Wonderful."
One of the guards of the gas station pulls out the nozzle of the gas pump from truck's tank and starts filling up the first of the two large jerry cans.
"But Charleston..." Khal murmurs. "We've been hearing that there's been some activity around the city. Even though I did just mention the city's still heavily irradiated..."
"What kind of activity?" Damon asks.
"Don't ask me 'bout details, this is just what our guards've been talking about, since they usually hear about news about what goes on outside. But apparently there's been activity near the naval base there. The Naval Weapons Station, or whatever it's called."
Damon, about to take another puff from his cigarette, lowers it. "Do you know anything else? Because if that base still had any functional weapons, it's going to be a lot more dangerous for me to try going into the area."
"Unfortunately, my fellow survivor, I can't tell you anything else even if I wanted to. That's really all I know...something's been going on over there in that military base, but nothing else."
"Does it bother you or any of the survivors here? How that station might have good weapons that other people could've taken?"
Khal points to the rifle slung in front of his chest, an H&K G36-A. "You see this, son? For survivors livin' in the post-apocalyptic world, you probably won't see a more high-end gun than this. We got our own caches of military-grade shit. If someone or some people wanna fuck with us in Savannah, we'll blow 'em all to hell and back, and then back again. If that place had any guns, let 'em have them, whoever took 'em. We ain't scared."
"You mentioned before that you were a German tourist touring America right before everything got nuked," Damon says. "Have you ever had a chance to go back?"
Khal falls silent for a moment, then resumes speaking. "I've technically never left the United States. The nuclear bombs shut down all international commute for a good five years, or so I've heard, so there wasn't a physical possibility for me to go back home. There was a time, though, that I could have taken a ship that was inbound for Paris, a ship full of Europeans like me who were stuck in America because of the bombs."
"But you stayed."
"Correct, I stayed. You know the reputation of this camp, I'm assuming - here, we're all family. We all know each other. That's how we make this thing work - we all know and trust each other in a shit-ridden world where you can't really afford to trust anyone else except the ones you know. So by the time I got the chance to return home, I'd've already invested too much into the city to go back. So I stayed."
"You don't have a family back home or anything? And you speak damn fluent English for a European."
Khal grins. "I am a doctor by profession, and not to credit myself, but I was a pretty well-known one too, meaning that many of my patients and clients were international, so English was a requirement. But to answer your question...yes, I do have a family that I did leave behind."
"Didn't you write to them once?" Mr. Cadsfeld asks.
"That I did - and fortunately, they are okay and doing well even without me. But that was about three years ago...their situation could have changed drastically for all I know."
"You don't want to go back and see them?" Damon asks, and Khal, chuckling, sighs.
"You jungend," Khal laughs, "with all your prying questions that have nothing to do with yourselves. But yes, one day I do wish to go back. But not until I know I can leave the family that I have made here in this part of the world safe and sound before I do depart. Only then, and only then. Remember, you two...if you call yourself a man, you finish what you start. No half-assing or pulling out halfway through. You stick with it and see it through to the end."
"That's mighty fine advice from a dirty ol' man," Mr. Cadsfeld says sarcastically, and the three men burst out in laughter at the joke.
"Hey, bro, we've put the jerry cans in the back," a station guard with a highly customized MK-16 SCAR-L assault rifle calls to Damon, pointing his thumb at the truck bed. "You're good to go."
"Well, if you're still insisting on going to Charleston, you don't have to worry about anyone. No one lives in between here and Charleston, anyway, 'cause of all the radiation," Khal assures Damon as Damon calls to his ship girls to get inside the truck.
"Got it." Damon opens the door to the driver's seat and flicks a half-salute off to Khal and Mr. Cadsfeld. "Thanks for the gas. Hopefully when we come back around, if we ever do, gas prices'll be a bit lower."
The two men laugh back at him. "Hah! In your dreams, my man!" Mr. Cadsfeld hollers. "A pipe dream, more like it, see what I did there?"
"I'll drop off these guys with my truck," Khal offers. "All you need to do is take the 404 straight out. The gatesmen should let you out easy."
Mrs. Cadsfeld is trying to call back her kids. "Henna, Trisha, it's time to go home now, it's been a busy day," she says, but Henna, realizing that Murakumo and Amatsukaze are going to go away, grabs hold of the bottom of Murakumo's long shirt and holds on, as if for dear life.
"No! I don't want Big Sis to go!" Henna exclaims. "I wanna play some more with her!"
"N-Now, now, your mom's calling for you. Go back to her," Murakumo says, a bit flabbergasted and still not accustomed to the demands or pleas of young children, but Henna refuses to budge. Trisha hugs Amatsukaze one last time in the meanwhile. Mr. Cadsfeld walks over and gently takes Henna from Murakumo's side.
"It's pretty obvious my daughter's taken a big liking to you. Thanks for taking care of her today. I didn't ask your friend in the truck, but will you plan on coming back? I'm sure Henna would like to see you again, if that's ever possible."
"U-Um..." Murakumo doesn't know how to answer his request. "I...I'm not all that great with kids, but...if that's what she wants, we...uh, we'll try to come back...I guess..."
Antoine's face lights up. "That's wonderful. Do try to come back...our Henna doesn't like to lose things she likes, and that includes people too, haha. Have a safe journey."
As Murakumo is about to climb into the cabin, Henna blurts out, "Sis, are you going to come back soon?" Murakumo turns around, again not knowing how to answer.
"Um...y-yeah, I guess, we'll come back," she answers, falteringly.
"Is that a promise?"
"Promise?"
"Yeah, a promise! Promise me!"
"Um...yeah, I promise."
"Okay! It's a promise!"
The truck pulls away from the station and gets back on the 404 Highway, headed northwest for Charleston.
"We should get there in an hour, if we don't run into more shit along the way," Damon reports, putting his sunglasses back on.
"Hey, Admiral," Murakumo calls out.
"What?"
"...there any chance...we'll come back to Savannah?"
Damon shifts his cigarette around i his lips with his teeth. "About that promise?"
"D-Don't get me wrong, that - Henna made me promise her! I didn't - I didn't have a choice!" Murakumo yells.
"I wasn't saying anything, you know. But a promise's a promise, right? We'll try to go back...but I can't guarantee anything. Do you like her?"
"L-Like her? No, no I don't!"
"Then why bother uphold that promise?"
"Just give it up, Murakumo," Amatsukaze snickers, looking back at Murakumo from the shotgun seat and smiling mischievously at her fellow ship girl. "We know what's going on."
"Shut up, you!" Murakumo screeches back, her cheeks flushed. "You liked playing with them too, don't think you didn't like it either!"
"But I'm not the one making a big fuss over something so simple. Those kids were nice, it was fun being with them. I'd like to see them again."
Murakumo flomps against the back of her seat, looking out the window, having nothing more to say. Amatsukaze turns to Damon in the meantime.
"Admiral...may I ask you something?"
"What?"
"Did you simply use those kids as a ticket into Savannah?"
Damon turns to Amatsukaze. "Are you implying that I simply picked up those kids to get inside the survivor camp, not because I was purely altruistic and wanted to return those kids home?"
"Basically, yeah."
"Good, because you'd be partially right. It turns out that things happened to fall in our favor this time around."
"W-Wait, that sounds wrong! That's just downright wrong!" Murakumo yells, overhearing Damon. "That's all they ever were to you, Henna and Trisha?! Just golden tickets into Savannah-land!?"
"To be honest, yeah, they were. Those kids were our tickets into the survivor city. Without them, we wouldn't have gotten in most likely. It's nice that we did some charity work, saving them from slave traders and getting them back to their family, but I'm not going to deny that getting into the city was my first priority. Gas, and an easy route along the coast straight up to Charleston."
"But the way you make it sound...that just sounds like we're no better than those people who kidnapped Henna and Trisha!" Murakumo counters back.
"Just because what we did sounds bad doesn't mean it is. At the end of the day, everyone got out of this happier. Those guys at the wall don't have to deal with those assholes anymore, we got some more gas so we can keep driving, and some parents got their kids back. What's there to complain about? Listen, both of you. You might have your own opinions on how I do things, but I get things done so that we get out of this better off than before. If I have to bust a few caps in a few heads to do that, I will. If I gotta save a few people, then I will."
Damon turns around to Murakumo as they stop at the northern-most gate of the Savannah survivor camp, the guards opening the gate for them. "I advise you to ditch your sense of right and wrong while you're with me. Not all the correct choices or the best choices for that matter are the easiest. I know this a whole fuckton better than either of you, so neither of you are in no position to tell me off or say what I'm doing isn't smart. Got that?"
Murakumo glares back at him. "Didn't you say that already? Stop repeating yourself, I don't need to hear you say the same shit twice."
"I'll repeat it as many times as I need to until you get it."
Not even waiting for an answer from Murakumo, Damon looks back to the road and guns the engine out of the Savannah survivor camp borders. It would be an hour to the Naval Weapons Station in Charleston.
An uneventful hour-long road trip brings the utility truck right to Bainbridge Avenue of the city once known as Charleston.
Damon looks around the abandoned and decaying city. Just like Houston, it is completely uninhabited due to high levels of dangerous radiation. Before the war, one nuclear missile detonated some twenty miles northeast, and the radiation clouds rolled down south due to wind currents. The radiation never really left the area since, despite efforts to decontaminate the city.
Easily the most valuable area in the entire city is the Charleston Naval Weapons Base. Being the busiest surface port for American defense systems, the Naval Weapons Base was also used as facilities for various other military divisions and projects, like nuclear programs and missile development programs.
In other words, it would be a prime location to find high-grade military loot and weapons.
But with all this radiation around, Damon figures no one would bother risking their lives trying to get their hands on ridiculous military loot by entering a high-radiation zone. It would be so much easier just going around trying to find police stations or military bases in other states to find assault rifles and sniper rifles. Thus, the base should remain untouched...should. But anything could've happened during the last twenty years. Nothing in a post-apocalyptic world can go untouched for twenty straight years unless you throw it down to the bottom of the ocean somewhere.
Murakumo was originally assigned here...maybe Amatsukaze, too. Damon doesn't know where else he should go to find additional ship girls to build his fleet.
Damon leads the truck towards one of the entrances into the abandoned base and clobbers down the weakened and unmaintained metal fence with ease. The utility truck simply drives through the unkempt parking lots to the logistics and storage buildings. However, as Damon drives through, what he sees deeply alarms him.
"Murakumo, Amatsukaze," Damon orders slowly, "Get your guns and standby. We have a huge problem."
"Why, what's wrong? What's going on now?" Amatsukaze asks shakily, never having heard her Admiral speak so slowly and deliberately like that as she raises her AA-12 shotgun. Damon points around.
"Look around. Tell me why a base that's been sittin' in a city full'a radiation for the last twenty years looks like this."
Every single building door in sight on every single building that they see has either been beaten down, broken through, ripped off its hinges, or simply missing altogether. Boxes, crates, containers, any sort of object that would ever be used to hold or contain something valuable strew the otherwise lifeless roads, lots, and dirt plots. It is clear that someone got here first...and had done an expert job of trashing the absolute fuck out of the entire base.
"Then...does this mean they took whatever ship girl was here, if there were any here?" Murakumo asks in a low voice.
"I have no fucking clue...for now, we're going to look for what we came here for. We'll search the place for anything else. Something tells me that someone royally fucked us, though..." Damon mutters through clenched teeth, now driving with his left hand and holding his Glock 37 with his right in case of an ambush.
"Then what's the plan?" Amatsukaze inquires.
"We're going to search the port first. That's where I think they'd store the ship girls in those containers I found you in, it's the most logical place. Maybe they put them away in a more secret place, but if they did, I don't know anything about that. We can only hope they didn't touch them..."
Damon parks the utility truck in the middle of Thompson Avenue next to the base's private harbor, and he instructs his two ship girls to begin searching the abandoned containers and nearby storage facilities. For the next three hours until nightfall, they search and search.
The moon is high up into the irradiated sky, illuminating the harbor waters more beautifully than Damon expected, but he turns back to his work of searching through the white logistics building near the harbor. So far, they had found nothing - only a stray M4-A1 or M16-A4 assault rifle that whoever had looted the base before had neglected or a few boxes of STANAG rounds. No sign of any ship girls had been found...not even any of the ship girls' equipment.
"Fuck..."
Damon curses to himself and puts his hands on his hips. He had driven halfway across the country just for this? He had driven all the way to a remote military base only to find out that there wasn't even anything here, and if there were, someone else had already gotten to it?
His mind races. What if there were ship girls shipped and stored here, and that they were found and already taken? Who else could've possibly known about the F.L.E.E.T. project? Wasn't it supposed to be top secret or something? But would they even know how to use it? No, if they knew about the existence of ship girls, most likely they would know how to activate and control them, as well. And what kind of ship girls were they, and how many? So many questions file through Damon's mind, and he sighs deeply and shakes his head. He hasn't felt so disappointed in a very long time.
The Admiral exits the white logistics building and walks back to the utility truck. Murakumo and Amatsukaze, having already completed their search runs, sit on top of the truck canopy, sucking on some sanitized water boxes. Their clothes and skin are like Damon's: covered in dust and blackened from gun oil and grease.
"Anything on your end, Admiral?" Murakumo calls over to Damon, and he shakes his head as he leans against the truck to smoke another lemon cigarette. "Aw...three hours of searching, and fuckin' nothing to show for it. This blows..."
"Hey, girls, you wanna come sit over by the edge?" Damon calls up to them with his own water box, pointing over to the edge of the road next to the water. The ship girls, having nothing better to do, take up his offer and sit by him on the edge of the road, with their feet over the edge above the pitch black water. Damon gulps down his water, thirsty from three hours of straight searching.
"You girls ever see the moon before?" Damon asks, pointing up at the distant moon.
"Well, yeah, we've been through a couple of nights already now," Murakumo says. "Of course we know what the moon looks like."
"Hm." Damon sips on his water, still gazing up at the moon. "If only I had some alcohol. I wish I had some Jack Daniels' with me..."
"Alcohol? But...you're only seventeen, why are you drinking so young?" Amatsukaze says strictly.
"Well...let's just say I have the perks of having an irradiated body," Damon replies coolly. "I don't like the taste of alcohol, but I can appreciate how it loosens me up. Neither do I drink specifically to get drunk, I think that's just plain dumb."
Murakumo scratches her ear irritably.
"What's wrong, Murakumo?" Amatsukaze asks, noticing her fellow ship girl pull on an irritated look.
"Nothing really...just...something's like, buzzing really quietly in my ear. Can you hear it?" Murakumo mutters, annoyed.
Amatsukaze also mimics Murakumo. "Yeah...I can too...it's annoying, isn't it?"
"For real..."
They sit by the water without another word for a few minutes until Damon breaks the silence. "What are you girls doing?" he asks, staring at them scratch the insides of their ears
"Something sounds like it's buzzing constantly," Amatsukaze complains. "Can you hear it, Admiral?"
Damon continues to stare. "Uh...no? I have no idea what you're talking about."
"This - stupid - buzzing - !" Murakumo yells, clearly frustrated that she cannot get rid of what she is hearing. "What the hell is going on right now? Are we getting hacked remotely or something?!"
Damon cocks his head. "Is the radiation too much for you? Maybe it's screwing with your main processors. That's surprising."
"Stop joking around, ya idiot Admiral!" Murakumo throws her empty and crushed water box at Damon, and it bounces painlessly off his nose and down into the harbor waters. Just as the crushed box disrupts the surface of the water, both Amatsukaze and Murakumo freeze.
"...so what is it this time? Have you two really become robots now?" Damon asks lazily, poking fun at them by this point and enjoying himself. Murakumo stands up, her hand still on her ear.
"Amatsukaze...you heard that too, right?" she asks, and Amatsukaze nods quickly. "Admiral...I think we're getting static from another ship girl."
Damon's eyes nearly pop out of his head. "You what?"
"There's a ship girl around here, there's gotta be! Right when that water box I threw at your stupid-looking face dropped into the water, the static we heard fluctuated like mad!"
"Was there really a need to add the 'stupid-looking' part in there...?"
"Yes, there was! Now listen, Admiral, there might be a ship girl inside the water in front of us! Or somewhere, I dunno, just somewhere in this water!" Murakumo points at the harbor right in front of them.
"And you're telling me to go get it? If she's still inside her container thing, I don't know if I can pull it right out, you know. I'm strong, but I dunno about that..."
"Well, if it's inside the water, which most likely it is, we can't look for it, since we can't submerge like submarines do," Amatsukaze says.
"What, you can't even swim?"
Neither ship girl answers him right away. Damon stares, the weird and awkward truth creeping up on him slowly but suddenly.
"...are you fucking kidding me?"
Amatsukaze and Murakumo are looking away from him, purposely not making eye contact with their Admiral. An anger vein pops on Damon's forehead.
"...are you telling me...are you FUCKING telling me...that you ship girls...can't...EVEN...SWIM...!?" Damon bellows in disbelief. It is safe to say that his mind has been blown to bits, and not the good way.
"W-We were built never needing to swim, 'cause we float!" Amatsukaze yells back. "It only makes sense for submarines to swim! Have you ever heard of a swimming destroyer ship before? For fuck's sake, use some common sense!"
"COMMON SENSE? BITCH, I'LL SHOW YOU SOME COMMON SENSE!" Damon starts to rip off his clothes right on the spot until he has nothing left on and dives straight down into the water. A large splash ensues, and some of the water kicks up onto the girls. Damon pokes his upper body out of the water and hollers, "YOU MEAN YOU CAN'T EVEN DO THIS? WHAT THE FUCK ARE THE USE OF YOU GIRLS IF YOU CAN'T EVEN SWIM?!"
"WE ALREADY EXPLAINED WHY WE CAN'T SWIM, NOW STOP YELLIN' AT US, YOU FUCKING PERVERT!" Murakumo shrieks at the top of her lungs back at the naked Admiral treading the water. "WHY THE HELL DID YOU JUST STRIP ALL YOUR CLOTHES OFF RIGHT IN FRONT OF US!? CLEARLY YOU DON'T HAVE ANY DAMN COMMON SENSE!"
Damon scoffs loudly. "Can't even swim..." he shakes his head in disgust and disbelief as he dives down into the water, coming up for air every minute or so. After only ten minutes, he pops up again.
"I see one of those containers that you girls were held in down here at the bottom. I have no idea what it's doing all the way down here, but it's there. One of you come down so you can help me get it onto the road."
Amatsukaze jumps down onto the water and walks along the top of the water as Damon dives again to get the container off the bottom. With tremendous effort, he manages to get it loose, but all the barnacles and other sealife that have taken residence on the surface of the container hinder Damon's grasp. Coming up for air one last time, he plunges down, sets his feet on the bottom, kneels down, and heaves the container up. Surprisingly, to Damon's strength, the container itself is not too heavy, but carrying it back up to the surface while underwater proves to be extremely tricky. It is all he can do to exhaustively push it back up to the surface and poke it out of the water, where Amatsukaze, at first reeling at the sight of all the barnacles and sealife, carefully lifts it easily with her ship strength, not wanting to touch any of the icky things on the container itself. Damon gasps for breath as he erupts out of the water, panting hard.
"E-Ew, don't get water on me, you damn closet pervert!" Amatsukaze yells as she carries the container back to the road, where she simply tosses it over and jumps to have Murakumo pull her back up.
"Hey, Murakumo, get me my towel from my backpack in the truck," Damon calls. "That is, if you don't want to have me walk around as I am."
"I-I-I know that, you asshole!" Murakumo blushes furiously and storms off to the truck, throwing his towel at him when she returns. "Don't ever strip like that in front of us again!"
Damon smirks. "You asked for it. You had it comin'."
"Shut the hell up!"
After drying himself off and getting dressed again, Damon sets the container upright again, looking at the front lock.
"How the hell did you two know it was there? Or rather, how'd you manage to pick up any kind of signal from this? Are you still getting the same signal now?" he asks as he claws some of the barnacles away to rip off the lock.
"We're receiving clear feedback now," Amatsukaze reports. "A Smartsteel signature."
"It's like the time when we found Amatsukaze, Admiral," Murakumo says, nodding to confirm Amatsukaze's statement. "It seems that underwater, the signal becomes very distorted and it comes off as a buzzing to us for some reason."
Damon tosses the lock aside and again disables the locking mechanism within to access its contents.
"Well," Damon says dramatically before opening the door, "any bets on who this one might be?"
Both ship girls shrug.
"No? Well, here goes."
He heaves it open, and the the moonlight falls onto the ship girl within.
Second Nagato-Class Battleship, Mutsu.