The Protagonist System

134 Turbulent Times Conclusion

I groaned as I woke up covered in bright sunlight and felt my stiff muscles. Not having a divine body anymore really sucked and becoming over-exhausted and also coming down from a potion overdose doubly sucked.

You know that feeling you get when you lay down and accidentally cut off the circulation from your hand or foot, then the blood rushes back and causes massive tingling when you try to move it? Yeah, I felt that from my head to my toes. It was excruciatingly annoying, too. I think even my eyelids were sore.

I could barely move and slowly shifted myself a bit at a time, letting more feeling return as I kept moving. The pain was bearable as the price I had to pay for not checking things over in the area before trying to clear out an infected building. That mistake almost cost me everything, because if I hadn't had those two desks to climb on to reach the roof, I would have been torn apart and eaten.

I managed to sit up eventually and looked down at the ground, the remains of the dead still there. My eyes went to the still open door to the motor pool and I realized something important. Both wooden desks were little more than ash and the entire inside of the building would have been burned as well.

I groaned at losing the potential vehicles and took out my backpack filled with supplies for two days of travelling. Making breakfast was fast with MREs and I ate last night's supper and this morning's breakfast, just because I could. I also ate some cookies and drank some nice wine.

When I was done eating, I took out some metal shelving from my inventory and guessed at the roof's height. Using the same trick I did to make stairs for the moving vans, I bolted six of them together onto shelving rails into a makeshift ladder and set it beside the building. I carefully climbed down and left them there, just in case I needed to retreat again.

I took out my handgun and a sledgehammer and used the hammer on the bottom step of the metal shelving to make it rattle loudly. I braced myself for an attack and held my gun at the ready... and nothing appeared. I let out a sigh of relief and stored the ladder and hammer before I made my way inside the building I had taken refuge on.

Disappointment filled me as I looked at the charred remains of several jeeps, two Hummers, and an entire side area of ruined parts and tools. My magic was nowhere near good enough to repair anything after so much heat warping and burn damage, so I left there and went over to the main building. It was almost as bad inside because the fire damage was mixed with the destruction that the mass of walkers caused.

I wasn't going to give up hope, though. The base was massive and I had a lot of areas to look through. With luck, most of the walking dead should have been killed already, thanks to my pyrotechnics and unlimited ammo. If not, I was well rested and had eaten, so I was as ready as I was ever going to be to work my way to the storage supply and armory. I just had to figure out where they were.

Three hours. That's how long it took to find both the base supplies and the armory, and that was only because I stumbled across an out of the way office in one of the smaller buildings that was used by one of the supply clerks. He had left notes on his desk about switching shifts with one of his friends to have an extra long weekend and directions to where and when he had to show up.

I didn't bother trying to be sneaky about things, either. I had cleared the place out and hunted down any strays that weren't a part of the main horde already. I used some magic to change the metal locking pins in the hinges of the large armored door into liquid, which I knew wouldn't last for more than a few seconds before the spell ended. That would normally be useless, except it was just long enough to release the door.

A rope and pulley attached to the opposite wall let me lever the door open and it fell out of the door hole with a very loud metal clang. When I stepped inside, I couldn't do anything but grin. The place was packed to the rafters!

I loaded up on automatic rifles, the fifty crates of boxes of ammo, several crates of much larger ordinance shells that the larger cannons and rocket launchers used, the three rocket launchers there, thirty crates of grenades, twenty crates of handguns, and a hundred crates of boxes of ammo. They didn't have many shotguns, which meant they had issued them liberally to the troops before they bugged out.

I took all the remaining ammo there to add to the shotguns I had pilfered back at the police station and couldn't share with anyone because I didn't have any ammo to spare. Now I did. Was I going a little overboard with the hoarding of weapons, now that I had access to them? Definitely. Was I going to stop? Hell no!

The next thing I grabbed was tactical armor of all different sizes, just in case people like Merle and his brother wanted them. I stored the ten large M134 mounted short range automatic mini-guns and the crates of the belt-fed ammo for them. Did I really need 200,000 rounds for them? I sure as hell did. Those little bastards were going to be set up at the four corners of the camp and I was going to build a nice walkway for the guys on watch.

I wasn't sure how I was going to bring them all at once... and then I realized I had a plane and a cleared out army base. I could pretend to come back any time I wanted and could ferry more weapons back to the camp for protection. I would just have to cheat and mount a couple of the guns onto the plane and fill up the rear fuselage with ammo boxes. They were only 5 pounds each, so I could take a lot of them with no trouble.

Of course, I needed to make a farming field and a grazing field as well, only they weren't a high priority with winter almost here. They could wait until spring to put into place and it would give me lots of time to build a barrier around them, too. That also meant I had to pop open the underground fuel tanks here to see how much was there.

If I couldn't find anything appropriate to store the fuel, I'd use garbage bags as temporary containers, even if they wouldn't last long. I just needed to store the things and any container would do.

I left the armory after clearing most of it out, including the stocks of C4, blasting caps, and detonators with battery attachments. I wasn't sure where I would need to use them; but, it was better for me to take it all instead of leaving it here for whomever might show up later. I wasn't actually going to come back and would just pull stuff out of my inventory to stuff in the plane before I landed back home.

My next stop was the supplies building and I wasn't surprised that it had been raided. Most of the dry foods were gone and only MREs were left behind, which was kind of funny. The army didn't want to eat their own military prepared food, even during the end of the world. I stored them all anyway, over 10 years worth, and grabbed the few remaining parachutes there before I left.

I went back outside and looked up at the sun to guess what time of day it was, then cursed myself for taking too long while searching the base. I had slept much too long after I collapsed and it was getting late. I had promised to be back at camp by the afternoon and I wasn't going to make it, even if I flew back right away.

“Well, fuck.” I said and ran out to the runway to take out my plane and remembered I still needed to gather the fuel from the underground tank. “Goddammit.” I walked over to the hangar and was relieved the fire hadn't damaged anything. If the tank had somehow caught fire or overheated and exploded, that could have been really bad.

I did the same melt the hinges trick and pulled open the secured top of the hatch, unscrewed the cap on the attachment, and tapped the butt of my handgun onto the metal. My hopes plummeted at the loud echo that came from the tank. I picked up a small rock from nearby and wiped it off, closed my eyes to listen, and let the thing go.

There was no sound for a second and then there was a plop and a tink sound. The tank was nearly empty and there was no point to trying to find a hose long enough to reach the bottom. The army draining the thing would explain why nothing bad had happened with so much fire and heat around it, because there was barely anything there to react.

I sighed and went over to the runway. It was mostly clear and there was enough room for me to take off again. I thought about making another pass through the base and shook my head. I gained what I needed and now I had to go back to the camp. I had people waiting for me and I also had a couple of special deliveries to make along the way.

*

The man named Negan Smith sat at the main table and enjoyed a meal of ill-gotten gains. He had just shaken down another survivor's camp and met no resistance. They had handed over half of everything they had after a great growing season and his camp was flush with food. All of his fellow raiders were proud of themselves for surviving another month and were congratulating themselves.

He wasn't talking and only listening, so only he heard the light whistling sound. As he lifted his head to look out the nearby window to somehow figure out what was going on, his eyes widened when he saw an airplane flying away from his camp. He barely started to stand with his mouth opened to shout when the world exploded around him.

*

The tiny town of Woodbury never saw what hit them and their planned raid on the nearby prison for supplies would never happen. Philip Blake, the man known as The Governor, was in his office with his enforcers and had no clue that he was about to die a quick and painless death.

*

The guards at the prison near Newnan heard the blast and wondered what had happened. There hadn't been anything on the CB radio since they talked to the townies a few days ago, so they assumed they had been overrun.

“Hey, look!” One of the guards on the wall shouted and pointed.

The second guard turned and looked. “Is that a bird?” He asked and squinted as it got closer. “Is it a plane?”

The first guard barely managed to not make the Superman joke as the plane flew overhead and dropped something. “Holy shit, it's a mail plane!”

“Really? How could you tell?” The second guard asked sarcastically as the parachute opened and a bundled package floated down to land inside the compound.

The first guard grinned. “Didn't you see its huge balls?”

The second guard clapped a hand over his face and groaned.

“Get it? It's a male plane.” The first guard said, looking proud of himself.

The second guard dropped his hand and walked over to the stairs. “I'm not talking to you anymore.”

The first guard laughed and turned back to look out over the countryside where the plane went. As he wondered who it was that had a working airplane, the second guard reached the package.

“I don't believe it!” The guard shouted and the first guard turned back to look into the compound. The package was a lot bigger than either of them realized, because it was the height of a man and was two wide. It also had stacks of military MREs, cases of ammo, and a few more handguns to arm the rest of the guards. “I'm going to get the warden!”

The first guard saw his watch partner run inside the prison, clearly excited. “Bless you.” He said to the plane that was just fading from sight.

*

“Light them up.” Dale said and the kids ran along the runway with lit torches and lit up all of them along the path to work like landing lights. He did his best to ignore the soft sobbing from behind him where Andrea held her sister, Amy. They had all stood there for hours and their worry and sorrow grew as each hour passed, because the night had crept in on them and Rick still hadn't returned.

“It's okay. Dad'll be back. He promised.” Carl said and stuck his torch in the spot to show the end of the runway. The other kids did the same to make a line before they gathered around Dale again.

Neither Dale nor Andrea tried to lie or tried to reassure him, because they didn't want to be cruel. The boy had already lost his father once and they didn't want to tell him that there was a chance that he might lose him again.

Just as dusk started to end and the only light around was the torches, they heard a sputtering sound. The heads of the kids whipped around, trying to find out where it was coming from, and only the adults looked where they needed to. The far end of the runway.

The sputtering got louder, stuttered as if it was choking, then the sputtering started up again.

“There!” Carl shouted and pointed off to the side.

It was difficult to see with it getting darker and the torches ruined everyone's night vision, so no one else could see what he saw. There was a sudden whining noise and the sputtering got really loud, then there were several clunks and the sputtering stopped.

“No!” Amy gasped, tears in her eyes, because she was the only one that understand what just happened.

Everyone looked at the runway as Rick's plane pretty much dropped out of the sky. It tilted back to a insane degree before it slammed into the ground, crushed the wheels under the wings, bent part of the propeller that wasn't spinning, and the plane skidded down the entire length of the runway without slowing down.

“Everybody RUN!” Dale yelled and grabbed Miranda's youngest boy before he dove off to the side and out of the way. Andrea and Amy were just as fast as him and tackled Carl, Sophia, and Miranda's older girl and the group barely tumbled out of the way as the plane skidded past and ground to a halt in the piles of gravel that were the runway's backstop.

It took several moments before anyone was coherent enough to realize that none of them died, then Amy yelled Rick's name and ran for the plane. The others were not far behind her and they saw parts of the plane had come off and crates of ammo were scattered around. The canopy was stuck, so Amy grabbed a large rock, smashed the glass, and reached in to grab Rick's shirt and shook him.

“You... fucking... bastard!” Amy shouted and shook him again. “Wake up! I need to yell at you for scaring me like that!”

Rick's eyes fluttered open and everyone could see the blood on his face from hitting the canopy.

Amy stopped shaking him and felt relief that he wasn't dead. “You're alive... you're alive.”

Andrea hugged her and Amy hugged her back. They all stood there in silence until Rick said something that shocked everyone even more than the crash did.

“If that stupid seagull wasn't already dead...” Rick said as his eyes fluttered closed again. “...I'd kill it for making me crash.”

They all stared at him and didn't know what to say as Rick lost consciousness again.