4.4 Expedition

Drake woke up from his usual nightmare. It was early morning; the sun was just rising, its warm morning rays filtering through the window. Drake got up, sweating. It was the day of the Expedition, and he hadn’t gotten proper sleep.

Recently, he’d been having the same nightmare over and over again. It was one in which Drake was back in Beil with his mother, and then she gets eaten by the Crow Mayhem, which then chases him. He runs through town, unable to save Billie on the way, until he reaches the Defense Force. They then face a large looming threat. Drake would always wake up just before he died.

Drake sighed. “I hope this isn’t a bad omen or anything…

“I should get ready.” Drake got up.

The next few weeks would be hard and without any of the comforts that he was accustomed to. That was why he needed to get proper rest the night before the Expedition began. But nothing could be done about it now.

It was a chilly autumn day, about four months after that fateful day the Apocalypse began. After getting ready and suited up in his Military uniform, Drake headed to the Walls. Through one of the main gates, the Defense Force was getting ready for their important mission outside the walls. They had already cleared out nearby Mayhems so that their departure would be smooth.

“Steve!” Drake called out to his friend in the distance.

Steve approached him. “Hey! You all ready?”

“Ready enough.”

Drake looked around at their rides.

“So, we’re really going to use horses, huh?”

“Yup. Traditional electric vehicles like that buggy over there aren’t reliable anymore. We don’t know where we can charge them up, and solar power won’t be enough. Horses, on the other hand, run on crops that we can find along the way—stuff we eat also. We’ve chosen the route we’ll take such that it goes through former farms, where we can find food, and cities, where we’ll be out in the open to watch out for Mayhem movement easier and have shelter. The buggies will carry our supplies, but we’ll be prepared to ditch them if they ever run out of electricity; we won’t wait for hours to charge them.”

“Don’t you think the horses will be a problem? We’ve only trained in riding them for, like, two or three months.”

“That will definitely be a problem. We’ll get slowed down a lot. The SORS isn’t too far away, but I think it will take one to a max of two weeks to get there. On the bright side, though, the two of us get to ride in the vehicle!”

Drake was too injured and missed some of the horse-riding lessons. Steve wasn’t even affiliated with the Military and wasn’t expected to undergo such hardships. He would get preferential treatment as a civilian.

“It’s interesting, though,” Steve commented. “Now that technological progress has stagnated, the population has dwindled, and we are living under harsh conditions, we are reverting to using what were considered archaic tools, like swords and horses.”

“Yeah. A lot has changed. And a lot still hasn’t.”

Drake was referring to the world within the Walls, or at least what it was painted to be.

“I never would have imagined living like this, no matter how many times the news would tell me a disaster was coming.”

The group of adventurers was nervous. Drake and Steve in particular were, more so than some of the others, because of the place where they were going. It was the place where the SORS was, and coincidentally also where everything had begun. They were going to Drake’s hometown: Beil.

* * *

The Defense Force traveled for days through the barren wastelands reclaimed by nature. They ate food from farms with untrampled but uncared-for crops, which grew and spread wildly. If they had been a year later, the crops would probably have been destroyed by weather. Water was harder to come by, but they did what they could, foraging supplies from ghost cities, which they carefully passed safely through despite being infested with Rodent and Mayhems of other small animals commonly found in cities. The cities showed the true unfathomable scale of the death count of the Apocalypse.

Now that he did not have them, Drake realized many of the luxuries he’d gotten accustomed to and taken for granted in life. Those were some of the worst nights of sleep Drake had ever gotten.

The buggies were able to travel on the weathered roads. It was a blessing that Rencia had prepared well in anticipation for an apocalypse. The Military traveled in a formation, with scouts at a distance in the flanks and vanguard to look out for any Mayhems. If one were spotted, the scout would return to the main group and call them to fight and kill it.

Now, it was the tenth day of their voyage. They were riding through a green meadow. They were nearing their destination now. Maybe they’d reach it in another day. The evening would come soon, so they should set up camp before then. They could travel the remaining distance and find out their answers tomorrow.

“Feeling nostalgic?” Steve asked as he drove the buggy.

He was bad at driving, but it wasn’t like Drake, a sixteen-year-old, driving was an option.

“Nah, not really,” Drake replied. “They were only bad memories that I had here.”

“Haha, true,” Steve gave a small laugh. “But to think we were so close to the SORS when we were here…”

“Yeah, what a coincidence,” Drake said. After a pause, “Do you think we should camp here, or try to reach the city and sleep under shelter?”

The city he was referring to was Cyll, a place where the entire situation had changed for Drake when he was last there. It was Cyll where he had realized that the Mayhems weren’t isolated to destroying Beil; the sudden realization had hit hard.

“We should stop here. It would be more dangerous to travel to Cyll at night in the dark. Should we tell the General?”

“Yeah. I’ll handle it, as usual.”

Steve drove the buggy toward General Arthur’s horse. Meanwhile, Drake reminisced about the night of the Apocalypse, when he and Steve had run toward Cyll. They had gotten to know each other back then. Steve had been an important partner for Drake to talk to during such an unexpected, unknown, and confusing situation. Despite getting chased by literal monsters, nearly killed several times, traveling the longest distance he ever had by foot in the middle of the night, exhausted, and finally coming to the realization that it was the end of the world, Drake somehow could cherish those memories.

As they neared General Arthur, they heard him talk into his handheld transceiver. The Military used them for communication.

“…Alright, see if you can shake off each and every one of them. If you can’t that’s fine. Come back to the group. We’ll take them on together like usual.”

“Another round?” Drake asked Arthur.

“Yeah. This time all three—the two flanks and vanguard—have Mayhems on them. They’re coming here with the monsters. We’ll have to be careful, depending on how many of them there are. After that, it’s getting dark, so we should set up camp for the night.” Darian Arthur looked at the sky in the distance, at some clouds. “Not to mention, it might rain soon.”

He ordered everyone there to stop riding.

In the distance, a few soldiers were riding toward the group. There were Mayhems chasing them from behind. Drake looked to his left and right, and the same thing was happening on either side as well. The soldiers in the main group got off their horses or buggies and prepared for battle. As they neared, Drake could see that there were a lot of Mayhems. Fifteen? No, twenty?

The soldiers formed a ring around the vehicles and flew straight up a few yards. As soon as the lookouts merged safely with the group, everyone began the battle. Laser Blasters shot bombs and swords sliced through thick flesh. Sounds of explosions could be heard all around as the bombs detonated upon impact with the Mayhems.

With their new weapons and lots of training, the Defense Force could handle fighting Mayhems much better than they could have during the Gorilla incident, but the Laser Blasters didn’t make them omnipotent. They required skills in aiming and hitting vital organs on their targets in order to kill them as well as move around swiftly—skills which came from training hard. And only because of their efforts doing so could they do this well.

Drake flew close to a Mayhem, aimed at a vital spot that it couldn’t live without, and shot from his laser blaster. He was focused on killing them as fast as possible now, rather than taking his time torturing them or attacking without any aim.

More Mayhems poured into the scene from surrounding areas, perhaps attracted by the sounds of fighting.

After killing a few Mayhems, Drake was getting frustrated with his Blaster. He was bad at aiming and shooting things long-ranged. He was about to toss the weapon aside, but hesitated and then kept it in its holster. He had learned from the Gorilla incident when he ran out of bombs when he needed them most, and also utilized the chemical reaction in his jetpack to survive, the importance of resources in battle and to not waste them.

He shifted to his trusty axe, which he preferred over a sword because of the ease in hacking away into thick skin. Of course, it had its downsides: he had to remain stationary on the Mayhem while he did his damage, but with his developed quick thinking and reflexes against somewhat slow opponents, he could make do while being close and stationary.

Steve, who didn’t know how to fight, sat in the buggy and did the best he could distributing resources: he refueled people’s jetpacks, offered them weapons, and reloaded the munition in their laser blasters.

“Drake,” Jord approached him in the air with a smile. “I already took down six of them. What about you?”

“I’m on eight,” Drake grinned.

“Ha,” Walt Allen shouted from nearby, “I got nine!”

“What!?! No way!” Drake yelled back in disbelief.

“Use the blasters. They’re effective.” Walt shouted back.

Before Drake could respond, the Mayhem that Walt was fighting stepped on the front of the buggy Steve was in. There was a shout of surprise and pain from the vehicle.

“Steve!” Drake shouted.

He flew over to where Steve was. Meanwhile, Jord helped Walt take the Mayhem down.

The dashboard of the vehicle had caved in on Steve’s legs. One of them was injured and bleeding.

“I’ll be fine,” Steve said. He then clenched his teeth and yelled in pain as he tried to pull the leg out to assess the damage. He could free it a bit, but it was still stuck under the dashboard.

You don’t sound alright, Drake thought worriedly.

“I can stop the bleeding.” Steve grabbed a clean cloth. “You should focus on fighting.” He didn’t want to distract Drake from his crucial job.

Drake looked around. There were others who were injured, and the medic was busy healing them. Drake couldn’t do much for Steve, so he told him to take care and went back to fighting.

Killing Mayhems was better with the taste of revenge. But now, he was wondering how long he’d have to continue fighting. He realized now that people were getting injured, and had mixed feelings about whether continuing to fight would be a good thing. On one hand, he wanted to kill more Mayhems, but on the other, he didn’t want to see his friends get hurt.

“Why can’t we just fly up or take a break?” Drake asked Steve at one point.

Fleeing was not an option for Drake, but he acknowledged the danger of the situation, and that soldiers would get tired at this rate. There was no end to the Mayhems. They just kept coming.

“If we were to fly away, the Mayhems would get to our horses. The horses would transform into Mayhems also, and then we wouldn’t have any transportation. We’d be pretty helpless without transportation in this world once the jetpack fuel runs out. There would be no way to go back to Rencia or escape Mayhems. That is why we need to stay at low heights and keep them at bay.”

Oh! So that’s what we’ve been doing, Drake realized.

He didn’t care, before, why they were fighting. It was just a good opportunity for him. But now, he knew the situation was pretty serious.

This must put a lot of pressure on the General.

He decided to trust his teacher’s decision-making skills and continued fighting.

Meanwhile, General Arthur was, indeed, getting anxious. He ordered people to form groups, spread out across the field, to fight Mayhems. This would avoid bringing Mayhems into hard to maneuver-in and manage-in clusters. This was a small action to buy him more time to think of what to do.

How do these things keep coming? They’re that attracted to sound and smell? What monsters they are—animals! I should have listened to those classes along with the trainees. I don’t know enough about Mayhems. How incompetent of me… Wait, now’s not the time to think of these things. I need to find a solution. What can we do? Is abandoning our horses worth it?

* * *

It was now over half an hour since the battle began. It had begun to rain, and the soldiers were starting to get tired now.

A languid Jake Brooks got hit by a mutant Weasel. In his tiredness, he wasn’t able to keep up with its movements and dodge in time. He landed on the ground on the hard metal jetpack behind his back. His breath was knocked out of his lungs, and he felt some bones break. He screamed in pain. His laser blaster was thrown a distance away. The Weasel approached. Holding in his pain, he tried to get up, but couldn’t. His spine had taken too much damage. He looked around for help through the thick curtain of rain that blocked his view, but everyone was busy fighting for their own lives.

This can’t be happening, he thought.

He cried out for help, but everyone was spread out apart and the sound of the rain drowned his voice. A boom of thunder could be heard, and the rain intensified into a storm.

The black Weasel, its normally cute face replaced by a pure evil one, in contrast, neared.

“S-stay away,” he commanded in vain.

Why am I shivering? It’s not just the rain. I’m afraid. I’ve always been lucky. Fate guides me. It brought me to Rencia, to the Militia to fight the enemy, it let me survive the Apocalypse and the Gorilla incident, brought me friends, and helped me do well in Militia training. This can’t be the end for me. I’ve made it so far. My life means something. I have a mission to complete. I have friends and family back in Rencia. I have things to do in life…

He painstakingly got up with all his effort. He couldn’t give up here. He would survive. He tried to turn on his jetpack. Either the rain wouldn’t let it ignite, or it was broken, but it didn’t work.

Dang, it! What’s with this bad luck?!?

He started trying to escape slowly, limping. The Weasel was practically on him now. He yelled out for help. In the distance, he saw a man flying toward him. It was Commander Rein.

“Hey! Over here!” He waved his arms.

He fell to his knees and tears of joy filled his eyes.

“I’m saved. I knew it. My life wouldn’t just-” was all he could say before the Weasel chomped down on his upper body. The voracious beast tore his body in half and ate it as two separate pieces, barely chewing before swallowing.

Commander Rein cursed. He arrived too late. He hadn’t been fast enough. He killed the Weasel within a minute.

“Tsk,” he looked at the remains of his soldier and sighed. “At least I was the one who has to carry this burden.” He was already used to seeing his comrades die.

He flew to General Arthur and reported to him that people had begun to die.

“Shoot. Then it can’t be helped,” the General stated. “I have a plan. It’s risky and we could lose some lives, but it’s the best chance each and every one of us has got. At this rate, we’ll just continue to lose more lives by exhaustion, and, eventually, we’ll run out of fuel, not to mention the rain and setting sun are making it hard for everyone to see and fight.”

“Finally. I thought you’d never make a move; you slow old man. Alright, I have trust in your plan. I’ll tell the soldiers.”

* * *

Drake had his arms around a Grasshopper Mayhem, holding on as it hopped around. It couldn’t see him, but its antennae could detect that there were humans nearby. It hopped around searching for food, unable to feel Drake, each hop being as rough as riding a roller-coaster without seatbelts for Drake.

“That’s enough of that,” Drake said as he chopped his axe through the legs of the Grasshopper, rendering it unable to jump anymore.

“You know,” he said, remembering his time in the woods, “I’ve had a particularly bad experience with your kind.”

The wings were fluttering erratically. They were annoying Drake. He looked for a place to kill it, wanting to get this over with. There was a pronotum—a plate on the back of the prothorax—protecting the back of its neck. He couldn’t just cut its neck.

“Sheesh, you’re making this messy.”

He raised his axe and brought it down on the Grasshopper’s head. After a few attempts, it cracked open, spewing slimy juices and dark brown bits of a brain onto his uniform.

“That’s sixteen. Six more to catch up to Commander Rein. Well, maybe Walt is a better target—more achievable.”

He was getting tired now. Looking around, he saw the ground was littered with Mayhem corpses. There were way too many animals in existence. There was no way he could kill them all. A more realistic goal was to slaughter until his thirst for revenge was satiated or he became tired. He had no idea what he’d do then.

“Now that this area is pretty cleared, should I help the others?”

The other soldiers were struggling to get past seven kills. Nevertheless, they were eager to show the fruits of their training.

A messenger flew to Drake.

“Drake! General Arthur has chosen our move. We’re going to leave this area…”

“Eh?! We’re running away?!?”

“Don’t call it that! Call it a strategic retreat. We’re all exhausted. Some of us are dying. We can’t afford to keep fighting.”

“That sounds bad… fine. I’ll agree to retreat for now. I am getting tired too.”

Since when did you have a say in this? The messenger, Colins, thought.

“The Mayhems have basically encircled us. The plan is to concentrate most of our forces on one point and break through with the horses. We’ll slip out of the circle and escape on our horses, killing any Mayhems that can keep up with our speed. The break-through point is on the opposite side from here. You’re in the rear end of the formation, in charge of fending off the Mayhems here until everyone leaves the circle, and then joining them later. General Arthur may join you later to make quick adjustments to the plan if necessary and direct action here to keep you all, back here, safe. The Commanders are taking the vanguard.”

“Doesn’t that mean us in the back are disposable? We’re taking the greatest risk, right.”

I didn’t know he was this bright, Private Colins thought.

“Uh, well…” he tried to rephrase it better, “It also means that the General trusts you more to take care of yourself and handle more Mayhems at once.”

“I see… makes sense,” Drake looked proud.

On second thought, maybe he is simple after all.

The messenger left, feeling there was something he’d forgotten to tell Drake. The plan started being put into action.

“So that’s why there are so few people here.”

Drake looked around. He could only see Steve in his buggy a few dozen yards away. Not only were there fewer humans here, but there also weren’t many Mayhems around either. He’d killed them all.

Maybe this should have been the break-through point. The General couldn’t exactly see the whole battlefield in the rain and with the size due to how spread-out everyone was; people couldn’t even see each other if they were more than a few dozen yards away. Nothing could be done about it now.

Drake flew over to Steve. He turned off his jetpack.

“Everyone’s moving. We should go too. How’s the leg?” Drake asked.

“It’s fine. I stopped the bleeding. The problem is that it’s stuck.” Steve replied.

“Maybe I can help you with that.”

In the dim light of the setting sun on the horizon where the clouds ended, Drake couldn’t see well, especially now that he’d turned off his jetpack. Steve turned on a flashlight.

“Thank goodness we still have things like these. I’d go crazy in a true survival situation.”

Drake looked at Steve’s leg. It wasn’t as badly wounded as he’d thought.

“Think I can pull up the dashboard to let it free?”

Drake heard some thudding noises behind him.

“Uh, Drake?” Steve said.

“A Mayhem? I got it. Wait a minute.”

Drake took out his axe. When he turned around to look at the Mayhem, his heart nearly stopped.

“No way…”

In the distance was the one thing that he hated the most in the world; the thing he had sworn to kill no matter what; the Mayhem that killed his mother: the Crow.