Surface: Doomed Planet

Excerpt 18- Ram On Heaven's Door

"Ryu", I said, "a question if I may."

"Of course", he replied.

"What is so damn bad about this city?"

Ryu sighed, "even before the outbreak, as I have stated before, Calos was a very dangerous city. Thugs running wild, drug dealers on every corner and theft was something everyone had experienced. Even with my crack troops backed up by heavy armor policing the streets 24/7, crime was still extremely high. Now, with the undead calling the shots, I've had to pull out, leaving only scattered pockets of volunteers behind to police a few buildings housing survivors."

I crossed my arms, "so, where exactly in town are we going?"

"Outer downtown", Ryu said, "your tank commander knows the way and will fill you in on the way. Your destination is one of the city's few survivor colony's, located in the Calos City Catholic church, once there, find a nun named Angelica. The old woman is more stubborn than a mountain, so she will no doubt ask work of you in exchange for help, but she will most certainly provide it if you fulfill her requests."

"Objectives once were there?", Alcatraz asked.

"Primary objective is to locate the city's main water pumping station", Ryu said, "the water to the resort could only be shut off from there. I am hoping it's as simple as the power has gone out and the generators need to be fueled and restarted, however, don't discount the possibility of a catastrophic, irreparable failure of the systems."

"And if that happens?", I asked.

Ryu sighed, "I don't know. Dismissed."

I exhaled loudly as my friends and I left Ryu's room.

"Man sounds like he might quit if those pumps are fucked", Alcatraz said.

"Wouldn't you?", Mike asked, "no pumps means no water, which means we all die in three days anyway."

"Or six for me and all the other K-Class here", I sighed, "still though, not a prospect I wanna face."

"In that case we should leave right now", Allen said, "Steven should be down at the garage."

So without much further discussion, we made for the garage, where we found Steven working on the tank, attaching some extra lights and what looked like a bulldozer scoop to the front, he seemed as though we showed up right when he didn't want us around.

"You guys are here to ask me to take you to town ain't ya?", he asked pulling up his welding mask.

"Yep", I said, "but I'm sensing a "I'm busy so come back later", coming up somewhere?"

"Gimme a half hour to get some of these parts installed", Steven said, "Some of them I can go without."

I sighed. We gave Steven an hour to get the parts installed and when we returned down to the garage, the tank was sitting outside next to a gas truck that I hadn't seen before. Steven was sitting on the edge of the turret talking with the driver. When we approached the tank, Steven took notice of us and said something to the driver of the truck, which pulled into the garage. He then hopped off the tank and came to greet us.

"Guys ready to go?", he asked, "it's a long trip into town and diesel is scarce."

"Who was that you were talking to?", I asked.

"Buddy of mine", Steven said, "gave me what he had left in the truck, we got a full tank once again."

"Well then let's get going, Ryu said you knew the way?", James asked.

"I do", Steven said climbing back into the tank, while the rest of us climbed on top of it, everyone but Sarah.

"You coming?", I asked.