Chapter Nineteen – Future

Chapter Nineteen – Future

“Food!

If you’re not buying Estlen, you’re a dead motherfucker!”

–Cancelled Estlen food promotion

***

“Lucy,” I said.

“Cat!” Lucy said right back. She clattered towards me, crutches clicking away until she slammed into me. “You didn’t die!”

I snorted and returned the hug before pulling back with a bit of a blush. We were sort of the centre of attention, all the brats, Marie and baldy looking our way.

“We can put the apocalypse on pause if you two wanna go at it,” Junior said from where she stood near–but not with–the kittens.

“Shut up you,” I said before scanning the group. “Nothing bad happened while I was off?” I asked. They were still in the area with the vending machine and washrooms. There were two ways to access the area and each had a decently tough-looking door blocking it off. If some aliens showed up they could run the other way, or hold them off. It wasn’t exactly a chokepoint, but, well, we weren’t exactly military.

The amount of junk food wrappers haphazardly tossed next to an overfilled trash can attested to that much.

Marie shook her head. “No ma’am. Everyone behaved appropriately. How did your scouting go?”

I grinned back, especially when Lucy leaned into my side. “Ah, well enough. There’s a large group of people in the parking garage. Some security people, some normal folk. Most of the group that left the shelter earlier are already there.” I smiled harder. “Even Bitchbot.”

Marie raised an eyebrow, her expression turning confused, but the kittens groaned and muttered at the news.

“I uh, cleared the way,” I said. They didn’t need to know that what I meant by that was that I had moved all the bodies I found to out of the way corners and stuffed them into offices and waiting rooms before shutting the door. I didn’t want the kittens seeing any more death than they’d already seen, and other than leaving me with the impression that my hand was dirty even after cleaning it twice, there wasn’t too much of a cost on my end. “Are you guys ready to move?”

Judging by how fast they were to get to their feet, they were as eager as I was to get out of there.

The group formed up, adults and older teens on the edges and at the front and back, littler ones in the middle and myself at the front leading the group through the same corridors and passages I had just taken.

As soon as we were moving, Lucy walked up by my side and kept pace with me. “How did it go?” she asked.

“Like a milk run back home,” I said.

Fetching things from the convenience store nearest the orphanage was an activity fraught with risk. The orphanage wasn’t in the nicest corner, and the sorts of vagrants that hung around there weren’t the nicest people.

It was still more fun than being stuck in the grungy old building though, so there were always fights to be the one let out to fetch whatever the kittens needed, despite the risk.

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“How awful,” Lucy said. “Any monsters along the way?”

“A couple,” I said. “None on the way back. Saw a nasty worm thing that ate bodies too. Couldn’t actually do anything about that one though. But, yeah, we should be safe.”