Chapter 4. The Little Prince in The Ossuary (4)
# Procurement Mission (3), San Miguel.
Gas stations located along the national highway usually had hostels and restaurants in their vicinity. The one in San Miguel was no exception, there were a couple of Spanish restaurants right across the road and a small hostel next to them. With the soldiers keeping watch, the participants, now armed with firearms and machetes, started by searching those first.
The two restaurants were soon filled with participants. The place was so crowded that if mutants were to appear right now, the participants probably wouldn’t be able to react properly, so the boy decided to stay out. The rest of the participants looked extremely enthusiastic. The boy presumed that they were trying to earn the soldier’s recognition by showing their commitment now that they were in a relatively safe area. Some of them even started fighting inside the building and the noise they made was so loud he could hear them from outside.
Fortunately, everyone made it out alive. The building seemed to be free of mutants, but that didn’t mean that everyone had emerged unscathed. It was obvious that a wild brawl had taken place inside the building. One participant even came out sobbing with his bag torn and without his gas mask, but he had to go back inside after getting berated for losing his mask.
A man with a bulky frame came out swaggering, his bag full of supplies. Much to the boy’s shame, the man was Korean. It was particularly embarrassing because he knew that this world’s characters were created by analyzing the data of certain age groups from the period the game was set on.
The man asked the boy to translate his words, which the boy did with reluctance, “I’ve done my part. I don’t want to go out anymore.”
The soldiers and officers looked at the man with disgust on their faces.
Corporal Elliot grumbled in a low voice, “I knew someone would do that, but still… shit.”
The man asked the boy to translate back, but the boy pretended he didn’t hear him.
Following the orders of Private Guilherme and Corporal Elliot, the ten participants embarked on their journey to the flour factory. They had to move three blocks east and four blocks north to get there. It would’ve been nothing more than a simple stroll if not for the Morgellons outbreak.
The boy volunteered to take the lead, eliciting a concerned look from the soldiers behind. Even though he had a gun and a knife with him, he was still a boy. However, the boy was confident. He had his level 9 Close Combat, level 10 Melee Weapon Mastery, and above all, experience.
There were cars obstructing various parts of the road. The team proceeded as the participants pushed the cars to the sides while the soldiers watched their backs. The dark and empty houses that peeked over the fences looked very forlorn and desolate.
“Halt,” Corporal Elliot ordered as he raised his clenched fist.
The rest of the people lowered their postures and started eyeing around like scared animals. Much to their relief, there wasn’t any mutant around them. The boy followed the corporal’s eyes and saw a flagpole. Two flags were hanging up on the pole, one was the familiar Star-Spangled Banner, but he didn’t recognize the other one.
“What’s that flag?”
“That’s the flag of California. And that building over there, it’s a fire station. I didn’t see it during the map exercise,” Private Guilherme answered.
Indeed, the words ‘California Republic’ were written on the flag, underneath the picture of a bear.
The corporal decided to explore the fire station. Although they probably wouldn’t find any food, medical supplies such as painkillers, antibiotics, and bandages were also crucial for survival. Not just that, they might also find fire trucks which could be used to carry water in long-distance journeys.
“Even the smallest five-ton fire truck can hold over 3,000 liters of water.”
This time again, the boy decided to stand at the group’s front. The soldiers advised him to take turns rotating with the other participants, but he insisted on leading the group. A message popped up, notifying him of a slight upward revision to the two soldier’s favor, but that didn’t bring the boy that much happiness, he couldn’t bother with the small stuff.
The fire station was just a single-story building, presumably due to the small size of the town. There was an office right next to the garage, but unfortunately, nothing was visible from outside the window. The boy knocked on the door with the back of his knife, hard enough for those inside to hear, but not for those far away. Afraid that the boy’s actions would attract the mutants to them, one of the participants ran up to him and grabbed him by his collar.
“Hey, leave him alone,” said Private Guilherme, pointing his gun towards the man and flicking it to one side. He then added that if it were really dangerous, he would’ve stopped the boy.
However, the man slowly backed away and collapsed onto the floor while trembling. Something had knocked on the door from the inside.
Putting his ear against the door, the boy heard a soft growl. It wasn’t a sound that a human would make, it was a mutant.
The boy shook his head at the two soldiers who were preparing to open fire. He then grabbed the doorknob with one hand, holding his machete in the other one.
“I’ll take care of it.”
“Okay, now you’re seriously out of your mind.”
While Private Guilherme shook his head, Corporal Elliot asked the boy if he was sure of this, to which the boy answered with a nod.
“All right. If you think you can do it.”
Rather than trusting the boy, he believed that the participants needed some sort of stimulus. Still, he didn’t want the boy to get hurt, as that would only produce the opposite effect. Therefore, the corporal placed his finger on the trigger, ready to shoot at any moment.
The boy pictured the mutant on the opposite side of the door, if it was a firefighter in their suit, there wouldn’t be many weak spots to stab. His thoughts were concise and his actions swift, when he twisted the doorknob, the mutant that had been pushing against it fell out from the room and onto the floor. The boy quickly kicked its helmet off, stepped on its back and stabbed his machete into its head. With a loud crunching sound, the blade penetrated its skull. The blood-mixed brain fluid oozed out from the crack and the mutant fell into a fit of convulsion.
He had killed something that used to be human with his own hands. The boy then experienced a sensation akin to an electric current running through his hands. That very sensation was the reason he had chosen this game. The boy stayed still until the sensation completely vanished, then retrieved the knife with a flick of his wrist.
“Hey, you alright?”
“I’m good.”
Private Guilherme asked the boy with a hint of worry, but the boy answered as calmly as ever. The private then expressed his admiration in a strong language, “Damn, you’re such a badass.”
Next, the first one to enter the office was also the boy. Once again, there was a slight upward revision to the favor of the soldiers. It didn’t mean much, but as they say, many a little makes a mickle.
The office was a bit long in proportion to its width. Inside, he found a bunch of keys lying on top of a pile of papers. He also took two guns that were lying on the table. While the rest of the people stood there gawking, the boy quickly opened the emergency medical kit hanging on the wall and swept its contents into his bag.
“Hey, um…”
A middle-aged man came up to the boy.
“We have to share fair do’s. If you take everything, what about us?”
The boy stared back in silence, which made the man flinch, probably threatened by the blood dripping down from the machete in the boy’s hand. The man eventually turned back without saying more. The boy didn’t waste time and continued searching through the office.
Soon, the boy found three sets of buttons on a wall, presumably the switches to lift the garage’s shutters. The boy then looked at the soldiers to ask for permission. Elliot, who was standing near the door, gave him a nod as a sign of clearance. The boy then pressed the buttons without further hesitation.
The sound of motors activating was heard as soon as he pressed the buttons. When the boy stepped out of the office to check the shutters, he saw the people outside keeping watch with their guns ready to shoot.
Crunch! Bang!
“Wh-what the hell?”
One of the participants shouted at the sudden noise. When everyone looked at the direction of the noise, they saw the boy on the floor next to a mutant with a machete stuck in its head. There was also a bullet hole on the ground right next to the boy. It seemed like someone had panicked at the appearance of the mutant and pulled the trigger.
The boy saw the number of viewers’ messages drastically go up. He opened the message window for a moment and found that most of the viewers were poking fun at him with comments like, 「He almost died lol」. Some of them were even urging him to kill the one who shot at him.
‘I, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to shoot you!” An old-looking woman lowered her head repeatedly.
“I’m okay, so please lower your voice.”
But the boy waved his hand as if it was nothing. Lines of notifications once again popped up and filled the corner of his view.
“I’m not even joking, you are seriously a badass. How can you be so reckless?” Corporal Eliot said with a hollow laugh.
“Is that a problem?”
“No, not at all. In fact, you’re much more helpful than someone who’d let a kid stand at the front and refuse to come forward.”
After finishing his exchange with the corporal, the boy went on and looked around the garage. There were two vehicles parked in it, an ambulance and a fire truck. The rest of the parking spaces were empty.
The boy asked the corporal if he was planning to take those vehicles back to the gas station, and after getting a positive answer, he poured all the medical supplies from his bag into one of them.
Corporal Elliot then selected two people who could drive and ordered them to take the vehicles to the gas station.
“Can we stay at the gas station?” One of the participants that were picked to drive asked carefully, but the corporal pushed them into the car and answered with a scary-looking smile.
“Of course you have to come back.”
His words were, of course, translated by the boy. And as they didn’t have the guts to get on the bad side of the soldiers, they could only glare at the boy before driving off.
Corporal Elliot then immediately contacted the main force at the gas station with the radio. He notified them about the two vehicles heading there and told them to take the vehicles and the medical supplies inside and have the participants come back to the fire station. After a while, a voice was heard from the radio, asking for a confirmation of the drivers’ claim that the corporal had allowed them to stay in the cars. The corporal snorted and told them to make sure they came back.
While waiting for the two to return, the rest of the team searched the surrounding area for food. Now that they were closer to the center of the town, there were cafes, restaurants, and some other stores worth investigating.
As the boy hesitated whether to search the cafe or not, Corporal Elliot came over to him, “Look at that board next to the door. It says ‘Lunch Special’, right? I’m sure they did handle some food other than coffee.”
And indeed, there were some cans of ham and sacks of flour inside the storage room, enough to fill seven bags. They also took a leftover bag of coffee beans for the officers. It might’ve lost its flavor, but it was still a luxury item.
The team even had some time left to clear the cars blocking the road even after looking through all the nearby stores. Only after the team had finished clearing the road did the two drivers show up, lazily trudging up the road.
“We don’t have ration stamps for those who delay the mission,” the corporal warned them, to which the two participants started running hurriedly.
The boy heard Private Guilherme swearing under his breath.
After their rejoining, the team then went two blocks north. At last, they were able to reach the intersection next to the flour factory.
The boy prepared himself for the next event. There were two options that the player could choose from. One was for everyone to fill their bags individually, and the other one was to clear the road and call for the trucks. The latter option would give him more experience points, but he’d have to defend the team from waves of mutants. Even so, the former option wasn’t easy either, he’d have to deal with the mutants wandering inside the flour factory. The boy’s first ‘bad ending’ had taken place right here.
“Hey, Mr. badass,” Corporal Elliot called the boy rather affectionately. “I’m thinking of calling the trucks, what do you think?”
“I suggest we decide after securing the flour factory.”
The corporal agreed to his proposal.